UK Nuclear Site's Clean-Up Costs Rise To £136 Billion

The cost of cleaning up the U.K.'s largest nuclear site, "is expected to spiral to £136 billion" (about $176 billion), according to the Guardian, creating tension with the country's public-spending watchdog.

Projects to fix the state-owned buildings with hazardous and radioactive material "are running years late and over budget," the Guardian notes, with the National Audit Office suggesting spending at the Sellafield site has risen to more than £2.7 billion a year ($3.49 billion).

 Europe's most hazardous industrial site has previously been described by a former UK secretary of state as a "bottomless pit of hell, money and despair". The Guardian's Nuclear Leaks investigation in late 2023 revealed a string of cybersecurity problems at the site, as well as issues with its safety and workplace culture.	The National Audit Office found that Sellafield was making slower-than-hoped progress on making the site safe and that three of its most hazardous storage sites pose an "intolerable risk".

The site is a sprawling collection of buildings, many never designed to hold nuclear waste long-term, now in various states of disrepair. It stores and treats decades of nuclear waste from atomic power generation and weapons programmes, has taken waste from countries including Italy and Sweden, and is the world's largest store of plutonium.

Sellafield is forecast to cost £136bn to decommission, which is £21.4bn or 18.8% higher than was forecast in 2019. Its buildings are expected to be finally torn down by 2125 and its nuclear waste buried deep underground at an undecided English location. The underground project's completion date has been delayed from 2040 to the 2050s at the earliest, meaning Sellafield will need to build more stores and manage waste for longer. Each decade of delay costs Sellafield between £500m and £760m, the National Audit Office said.

Meanwhile, the government hopes to ramp up nuclear power generation, which will create more waste.

"Plans to clean up three of its worst ponds — which contain hazardous nuclear sludge that must be painstakingly removed — are running six to 13 years later than forecast when the National Audit Office last drew up a report, in 2018... "

"One pond, the Magnox swarf storage silo, is leaking 2,100 litres of contaminated water each day, the NAO found. The pond was due to be emptied by 2046 but this has slipped to 2059."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/26/0239228/uk-nuclear-sites-clean-up-costs-rise-to-136-billion?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

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Did Capturing Carbon from the Air Just Get Easier?

"We passed Berkeley air — just outdoor air — into the material to see how it would perform," says U.C. Berkeley chemistry professor Omar Yaghi, "and it was beautiful.

"It cleaned the air entirely of CO2," Yaghi says in an announcement from the university. "Everything."

SFGate calls it "a discovery that could help potentially mitigate the effects of climate change..."

Yaghi's lab has worked on carbon capture since the 1990s and began work on these crystalline structures in 2005. The innovative substance has lots of tiny holes, making it "great for storing gases or liquids, much like a sponge holds water," Yaghi said... While it could take one to two years for the powder to be usable in large-scale applications, Yaghi co-founded Atoco, an Irvine company, to commercialize his research and expand it beyond just carbon capture and storage.

"Capturing carbon from the air just got easier," says the headline on the anouncement from the university, which explains why this technology is crucial:

 [T]oday's carbon capture technologies work well only for concentrated sources of carbon, such as power plant exhaust. The same methods cannot efficiently capture carbon dioxide from ambient air, where concentrations are hundreds of times lower than in flue gases. Yet direct air capture, or DAC, is being counted on to reverse the rise of CO2 levels, which have reached 426 parts per million, 50% higher than levels before the Industrial Revolution. Without it, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we won't reach humanity's goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degreesC (2.7 degreesF) above preexisting global averages.
A new type of absorbing material developed by chemists at the University of California, Berkeley, could help get the world to negative emissions... According to Yaghi, the new material could be substituted easily into carbon capture systems already deployed or being piloted to remove CO2 from refinery emissions and capture atmospheric CO2 for storage underground. UC Berkeley graduate student Zihui Zhou, the paper's first author, said that a mere 200 grams of the material, a bit less than half a pound, can take up as much CO2 in a year — 20 kilograms (44 pounds) — as a tree.
Their research was published this week in the journal Nature.

And it's also interesting that they're using AI, according to the university's announcement:

Yaghi is optimistic that artificial intelligence can help speed up the design of even better COFs and MOFs for carbon capture or other purposes, specifically by identifying the chemical conditions required to synthesize their crystalline structures. He is scientific director of a research center at UC Berkeley, the Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet (BIDMaP), which employs AI to develop cost-efficient, easily deployable versions of MOFs and COFs to help limit and address the impacts of climate change. "We're very, very excited about blending AI with the chemistry that we've been doing," he said.
Another potential use could be for harvesting water from desert air for drinking water, Yaghi told SFGate. But he seems very focused specifically on carbon capture.
"Another thing is that we need a strong determination among officials and industries to make carbon capture a high priority. Things have to change, but I believe that direct carbon capture from air is very doable."

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/26/2318201/did-capturing-carbon-from-the-air-just-get-easier?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/26/2318201/did-capturing-carbon-from-the-air-just-get-easier?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Egyptian Blogger/Developer Still Held in Prison 28 Days After His Release Date

In 2004 Alaa Abd El Fattah answered questions from Slashdot's readers about organizing the first-ever Linux installfest in Egypt.

In 2014 he was arrested for organizing poltical protests without requesting authorization, according to Wikipedia, and then released on bail — but then sentenced to five years in prison upon retrial. He was released in late March of 2019, but then re-arrested again in September by the National Security Agency, convicted of "spreading fake news" and jailed for five years...

Wikipedia describes Abd El-Fattah as an "Egyptian-British blogger, software developer and a political activist" who has been "active in developing Arabic-language versions of software and platforms." But this week an EFF blog post noticed that his released date had recently passed — and yet he was still in prison:

It's been 28 days since September 29, the day that should have seen British-Egyptian blogger, coder, and activist Alaa Abd El Fattah walk free. Egyptian authorities refused to release him at the end of his sentence, in contradiction of the country's own Criminal Procedure Code, which requires that time served in pretrial detention count toward a prison sentence. [Human Rights Watch says Egyptian authorities are refusing to count more than two years of pretrial detention toward his time served. Amnesty International has also called for his release.] In the days since, Alaa's family has been able to secure meetings with high-level British officials, including Foreign Secretary David Lammy, but as of yet, the Egyptian government still has not released Alaa...

Alaa deserves to finally return to his family, now in the UK, and to be reunited with his son, Khaled, who is now a teenager. We urge EFF supporters in the UK to write to their MP to place pressure on the UK's Labour government to use their power to push for Alaa's release.

Last month the EFF wrote::

Over 20 years ago Alaa began using his technical skills to connect coders and technologists in the Middle East to build online communities where people could share opinions and speak freely and privately. The role he played in using technology to amplify the messages of his fellow Egyptians — as well as his own participation in the uprising in Tahrir Square — made him a prominent global voice during the Arab Spring, and a target for the country's successive repressive regimes, which have used antiterrorism laws to silence critics by throwing them in jail and depriving them of due process and other basic human rights.

Alaa is a symbol for the principle of free speech in a region of the world where speaking out for justice and human rights is dangerous and using the power of technology to build community is criminalized...

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/10/26/0312259/egyptian-bloggerdeveloper-still-held-in-prison-28-days-after-his-release-date?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/10/26/0312259/egyptian-bloggerdeveloper-still-held-in-prison-28-days-after-his-release-date?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


DTrace for Linux Comes to Gentoo

It was originally created back in 2005 by Sun Microsystems for its proprietary Solaris Unix systems, "for troubleshooting kernel and application problems on production systems in real time," explains Wikipedia. "DTrace can be used to get a global overview of a running system, such as the amount of memory, CPU time, filesystem and network resources used by the active processes," explains its Wikipedia entry.

But this week, Gentoo announced:

The real, mythical DTrace comes to Gentoo! Need to dynamically trace your kernel or userspace programs, with rainbows, ponies, and unicorns — and all entirely safely and in production?! Gentoo is now ready for that!

Just emerge dev-debug/dtrace and you're all set. All required kernel options are already enabled in the newest stable Gentoo distribution kernel...

Documentation? Sure, there's lots of it. You can start with our DTrace wiki page, the DTrace for Linux page on GitHub, or the original documentation for Illumos. Enjoy!

Thanks to Heraklit (Slashdot reader #29,346) for sharing the news.

https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/10/26/0211222/dtrace-for-linux-comes-to-gentoo?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/10/26/0211222/dtrace-for-linux-comes-to-gentoo?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Password Manager Bitwarden Makes Changes to Address Concerns Over Open Source Licensing

Bitwarden describes itself as an "open source password manager for business." But it also made a change its build requirement which led to an issue on the project's GitHub page titled "Desktop version 2024.10.0 is no longer free software."

In the week that followed Bitwarden's official account on X.com promised a fix was coming. "It seems a packaging bug was misunderstood as something more, and the team plans to resolve it. Bitwarden remains committed to the open source licensing model in place for years, along with retaining a fully featured free version for individual users." And Thursday Bitwarden followed through with new changes to address the concerns.

The Register reports the whole episode started because of a new build requirement added in a pull request a couple of weeks ago titled "Introduce SDK client."

This SDK is required to compile the software from source — either the Bitwarden server or any of its client applications... [But the changed license had warned "You may not use this SDK to develop applications for use with software other than Bitwarden (including non-compatible implementations of Bitwarden) or to develop another SDK."]

Phoronix picks up the story:
The issue of this effectively not making the Bitwarden client free software was raised in this GitHub issue... Bitwarden founder and CTO Kyle Spearrin has commented on the ticket... "Being able to build the app as you are trying to do here is an issue we plan to resolve and is merely a bug." The ticket was subsequently locked and limited to collaborators.

And Thursday it was Bitwarden founder and CTO Kyle Spearrin who again re-appeared in the Issue — first thanking the user who had highlighted the concerns. "We have made some adjustments to how the SDK code is organized and packaged to allow you to build and run the app with only GPL/OSI licenses included."

The sdk-internal package references in the clients now come from a new sdk-internal repository, which follows the licensing model we have historically used for all of our clients (see LICENSE_FAQ.md for more info). The sdk-internal reference only uses GPL licenses at this time. If the reference were to include Bitwarden License code in the future, we will provide a way to produce multiple build variants of the client, similar to what we do with web vault client builds.

The original sdk repository will be renamed to sdk-secrets, and retains its existing Bitwarden SDK License structure for our Secrets Manager business products. The sdk-secrets repository and packages will no longer be referenced from the client apps, since that code is not used there.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/26/0525224/password-manager-bitwarden-makes-changes-to-address-concerns-over-open-source-licensing?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/26/0525224/password-manager-bitwarden-makes-changes-to-address-concerns-over-open-source-licensing?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


NASA Is Developing a Mars Helicopter That Could Land Itself From Orbit

Longtime Slashdot reader MattSparkes writes: NASA is working on plans to send another, much larger helicopter to Mars than Ingenuity. The "Chopper" craft would land itself after "screaming into" the planet's atmosphere at speed, before covering several kilometers a day while carrying scientific equipment. It would probably be the most graceful arrival on the red planet of any lander yet.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/26/0018241/nasa-is-developing-a-mars-helicopter-that-could-land-itself-from-orbit?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/26/0018241/nasa-is-developing-a-mars-helicopter-that-could-land-itself-from-orbit?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Boeing Explores Sale of Space Business

According to the Wall Street Journal, Boeing is weighing the sale of its space division. "The plans, which are reportedly at an early stage, could involve Boeing offloading the Starliner spacecraft and its projects supporting the International Space Station," reports The Verge. From the report: Boeing is facing a series of predicaments, including a fraud charge over 737 Max plane crashes and Starliner issues that left two astronauts at the ISS for months. Just this week, a Boeing-made satellite for Intelsat stopped working and fell apart suddenly after suffering an "anomaly."

"We're better off doing less and doing it better than doing more and not doing it well," Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg said during an earnings call this week. "Clearly, our core of commercial airplanes and defense systems are going to stay with the Boeing Company for the long run. But there's probably some things on the fringe there that we can be more efficient with or that distract us from our main goal here."

However, sources tell the WSJ that Boeing will likely continue to oversee the Space Launch System, which will eventually help bring NASA astronauts back to the Moon. It's also reportedly expected to hang onto its commercial and military satellite businesses.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/26/0027249/boeing-explores-sale-of-space-business?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/26/0027249/boeing-explores-sale-of-space-business?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Former Nvidia Engineer Discovers 41-Million-Digit Prime

Former Nvidia engineer Luke Durant, working with the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), recently discovered the largest known prime number: (2^136,279,841)-1 or M136279841 (where the number following the letter M represents the exponent). The achievement was detailed on Mersenne.org. Tom's Hardware reports: This is the largest prime number we've seen so far, with the last one, M82589933, being discovered six years prior. What makes this discovery particularly fascinating is that this is the first GIMPS discovery that used the power of data center GPUs. Mihai Preda was the first one to harness GPU muscle in 2017, says the GIMPS website, when he "wrote the GpuOwl program to test Mersenne numbers for primarilty, making his software available to all GIMPS users." When Luke joined GIMPS in 2023, they built the infrastructure needed to deploy Preda's software across several GPU servers available in the cloud.

While it took a year of testing, Luke's efforts finally bore fruit when an A100 GPU in Dublin, Ireland gave the M136279841 result last October 11. This was then corroborated by an Nvidia H100 located in San Antonio, Texas, which confirmed its primality with the Lucas-Lehmer test.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/25/2351234/former-nvidia-engineer-discovers-41-million-digit-prime?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/25/2351234/former-nvidia-engineer-discovers-41-million-digit-prime?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Video Game Libraries Lose Legal Appeal To Emulate Physical Game Collections Online

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Earlier this year, we reported on the video game archivists asking for a legal DMCA exemption to share Internet-accessible emulated versions of their physical game collections with researchers. Today, the US Copyright Office announced once again that it was denying that request, forcing researchers to travel to far-flung collections for access to the often-rare physical copies of the games they're seeking.

In announcing its decision, the Register of Copyrights for the Library of Congress sided with the Entertainment Software Association and others who argued that the proposed remote access could serve as a legal loophole for a free-to-access "online arcade" that could harm the market for classic gaming re-releases. This argument resonated with the Copyright Office despite a VGHF study that found 87 percent of those older game titles are currently out of print. "While proponents are correct that some older games will not have a reissue market, they concede there is a 'healthy' market for other reissued games and that the industry has been making 'greater concerted efforts' to reissue games," the Register writes in her decision. "Further, while the Register appreciates that proponents have suggested broad safeguards that could deter recreational uses of video games in some cases, she believes that such requirements are not specific enough to conclude that they would prevent market harms."

A DMCA exemption for remote sharing already exists for non-video-game computer software that is merely "functional," as the Register notes. But the same fair use arguments that allow for that sharing don't apply to video games because they are "often highly expressive in nature," the Register writes. In an odd footnote, the Register also notes that emulation of classic game consoles, while not infringing in its own right, has been "historically associated with piracy," thus "rais[ing] a potential concern" for any emulated remote access to library game catalogs. That footnote paradoxically cites Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) founder and director Frank Cifaldi's 2016 Game Developers Conference talk on the demonization of emulation and its importance to video game preservation. "The moment I became the Joker is when someone in charge of copyright law watched my GDC talk about how it's wrong to associate emulation with piracy and their takeaway was 'emulation is associated with piracy,'" Cifaldi quipped in a social media post.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/10/25/2046233/video-game-libraries-lose-legal-appeal-to-emulate-physical-game-collections-online?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/10/25/2046233/video-game-libraries-lose-legal-appeal-to-emulate-physical-game-collections-online?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Climate Scientists Respond To Attacks on Objectivity

Climate scientists who were mocked and gaslighted after speaking up about their fears for the future have said acknowledging strong emotions is vital to their work. From a report: The researchers said these feelings should not be suppressed in an attempt to reach supposed objectivity. Seeing climate experts' fears and opinions about the climate crisis as irrelevant suggests science is separate from society and ultimately weakens it, they said.

The researchers said they had been subject to ridicule by some scientists after taking part in a large Guardian survey of experts in May, during which they and many others expressed their feelings of extreme fear about future temperature rises and the world's failure to take sufficient action. They said they had been told they were not qualified to take part in this broad discussion of the climate crisis, were spreading doom and were not impartial.

However, the researchers said that embracing their emotions was necessary to do good science and was a spur to working towards better ways of tackling the climate crisis and the rapidly increasing damage being done to the world. They also said that those dismissing their fears as doom-laden and alarmist were speaking frequently from a position of privilege in western countries, with little direct experience of the effects of the climate crisis.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/25/1754241/climate-scientists-respond-to-attacks-on-objectivity?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/25/1754241/climate-scientists-respond-to-attacks-on-objectivity?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


OpenAI Says It Won't Release a Model Called Orion This Year

An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI says that it doesn't intend to release an AI model code-named Orion this year, countering recent reporting on the company's product roadmap. "We don't have plans to release a model code-named Orion this year," a spokesperson told TechCrunch via email. "We do plan to release a lot of other great technology."

The Verge reported on Thursday that Orion, which is expected to be OpenAI's next frontier model, would launch by December, and that trusted partners would be the first to preview it ahead of a rollout through ChatGPT. According to The Verge, Microsoft, a close OpenAI collaborator and investor, expects to gain access to Orion as early as November.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/25/1747204/openai-says-it-wont-release-a-model-called-orion-this-year?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/25/1747204/openai-says-it-wont-release-a-model-called-orion-this-year?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


PayPal To Share Customer Purchase Data with Retailers

PayPal will begin sharing detailed customer purchase data, including clothing sizes and shopping preferences, with retailers for targeted advertising starting November 27, the payments company announced in a recent privacy update. The initiative affects PayPal's 391 million active consumer accounts worldwide. While customers can opt out through the app's settings, the GAO reports such opt-out rates typically remain below 7% across financial services.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/10/25/1743212/paypal-to-share-customer-purchase-data-with-retailers?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/10/25/1743212/paypal-to-share-customer-purchase-data-with-retailers?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


San Francisco Billboards Call Out Tech Firms For Not Paying For Open Source

An anonymous reader shares a report: Drivers passing through San Francisco have a new roadside distraction to consider: billboards calling out businesses that don't cough up for the open source code that they use. The signs are the work of the Open Source Pledge -- a group that launched earlier this month. It asks businesses that make use of open source code to pledge $2,000 per developer to support projects that develop the code. So far, 25 companies have signed up -- but project co-founder Chad Whitacre wants bigger firms to pay their dues, too.

Whitacre, whose day job is head of open source at app-monitoring biz Sentry, told The Register his employer has for three years operated a scheme to pay developers who maintain and upgrade open source code. "We do dollars per developer, the thinking being it's the developers and software engineers on the staff at a company who benefit the most from open source, who become more productive because of open source," he said. "I had one conversation with a representative from a larger firm and he's like: 'Chad, you're asking me to spend ten million on maintainers.'" Whitacre affirmed that request, and pointed out the firm "spends ten million on something anyway."

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/25/1654257/san-francisco-billboards-call-out-tech-firms-for-not-paying-for-open-source?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/25/1654257/san-francisco-billboards-call-out-tech-firms-for-not-paying-for-open-source?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Study Finds UBI Results Are Not Positive

Seven Spirals writes: A working paper [PDF], published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, studies the employment effects of a guaranteed income by providing $1,000 per month to 1,000 low-income participants for three years, compared to a control group receiving $50 per month. The results show a decrease in labor market participation by 2 percentage points and a reduction of 1.3-1.4 hours in weekly work hours. Most of the additional free time was spent on leisure, and there were no significant improvements in job quality or human capital investments. Overall, the guaranteed income led to a moderate reduction in labor supply without other substantial productive benefits.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/25/1640219/study-finds-ubi-results-are-not-positive?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/25/1640219/study-finds-ubi-results-are-not-positive?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Microsoft Bets on Latest 'Call of Duty' To Power Up Video Games Strategy

Microsoft is seeking to boost its video games business with the release of the latest instalment of the Call of Duty franchise on Friday, pushing to increase subscription revenues through the new game to offset falling Xbox console sales. Financial Times: Black Ops 6 is the first of the best-selling series to be launched on the tech giant's Game Pass subscription service. It represents the biggest test of the company's gaming strategy [non-paywalled link] since its $75bn deal to acquire Activision Blizzard -- makers of Call of Duty -- received sign-off from regulators last year. Microsoft hopes that the release will help achieve its target of reaching 110mn Game Pass subscribers by 2030, a substantial rise from 34mn in February this year.

The company has shifted its focus towards its subscription games service as hardware sales have slowed in recent years. Xbox hardware revenue fell 13 per cent year-on-year in Microsoft's fiscal 2024, which ended in June. For the first time this year, subscribers to Game Pass, who can already access a growing library of Xbox titles for as long as they keep paying a monthly fee, will be able to access the latest Call of Duty without having to pay a traditional price of $70 or more for the packaged game. Microsoft is still making the game available to buy on PlayStation, after concerns from regulators during the Activision merger probe that it might make the title exclusive to its own platform.

https://games.slashdot.org/story/24/10/25/1447203/microsoft-bets-on-latest-call-of-duty-to-power-up-video-games-strategy?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://games.slashdot.org/story/24/10/25/1447203/microsoft-bets-on-latest-call-of-duty-to-power-up-video-games-strategy?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Polish Radio Station Replaces Journalists With AI 'Presenters'

OFF Radio Krakow sparked controversy by replacing its journalists with AI-generated presenters in an experiment to attract younger audiences. CNN Business reports: Weeks after letting its journalists go, OFF Radio Krakow relaunched this week, with what it said was âoethe first experiment in Poland in which journalists ... are virtual characters created by AI." The station in the southern city of Krakow said its three avatars are designed to reach younger listeners by speaking about cultural, art and social issues including the concerns of LGBTQ+ people. "Is artificial intelligence more of an opportunity or a threat to media, radio and journalism? We will seek answers to this question," the station head, Marcin Pulit, wrote in a statement.

https://radio.slashdot.org/story/24/10/25/0418209/polish-radio-station-replaces-journalists-with-ai-presenters?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://radio.slashdot.org/story/24/10/25/0418209/polish-radio-station-replaces-journalists-with-ai-presenters?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Europe In Talks With SpaceX On Tackling Space Junk

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The European Space Agency is in talks with SpaceX about the possibility of Elon Musk's space venture joining an international charter designed to reduce a growing swarm of debris in space, Director General Josef Aschbacher told Reuters. The 22-nation agency is spearheading one of several efforts to roll back the mass of space junk swirling round the planet from past missions that poses a risk to active satellites. Aschbacher said 110 countries or entities have joined ESA's Zero Debris charter, which aims to stop any new orbital garbage being generated by 2030.

Asked whether SpaceX, whose satellites now make up some two thirds of spacecraft active in low Earth orbit, had signed up, Aschbacher said: "Not yet, but we are in discussion with them... This is a charter that keeps evolving and... we will keep raising the topics because they are so fundamental." [...] There are currently 18,897 pieces of trackable space junk in orbit, according to Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer who tracks such objects. Space debris and junk are often used interchangeably, but some consider space junk to include inactive payloads and rocket bodies as well as debris, or errant shards of broken satellites. There are no international laws on debris, but countries and space agencies have begun in recent years to devise proposals and national rules for tackling the problem.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/25/0423244/europe-in-talks-with-spacex-on-tackling-space-junk?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/25/0423244/europe-in-talks-with-spacex-on-tackling-space-junk?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Carbon Emissions Are Now Growing Faster Than Before the Pandemic

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Scientist: As the world emerged from the lockdowns of the covid-19 pandemic, many countries promised to rebuild their economies in a climate-friendly fashion, amid hopes the recovery effort could accelerate the global journey to net-zero emissions. In reality, the opposite has happened. Instead of a "green recovery," global greenhouse gas emissions are rising much faster now than they did in the decade preceding the global pandemic. Emissions rose 1.3 percent to 57.1 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2023. That is a far faster annual rate of growth than during the decade 2010-2019, when emissions grew on average 0.8 percent per year. In fact, global greenhouse gas emissions are now just below the 59.1 gigatons peak recorded in 2019.

All sources of greenhouse gas emissions except land use are rising, according to a report from the United Nations Global Environment Program (UNEP), as economies continued to rebound from covid-19. Emissions from road transport, leaks from oil and gas infrastructure such as pipelines and industrial emissions all grew rapidly in 2023, UNEP said, while aviation emissions grew 19.5 percent. Rising emissions means the world's opportunity to avert catastrophic climate change is shrinking, Inger Anderson at UNEP said in a statement. "Climate crunch time is here," she said. "I urge every nation: no more hot air, please."

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/24/2128219/carbon-emissions-are-now-growing-faster-than-before-the-pandemic?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/24/2128219/carbon-emissions-are-now-growing-faster-than-before-the-pandemic?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Europe's Top Court Rules For Intel To End Long-Running Antitrust Case

The EU Court of Justice ruled in favor of Intel, dismissing the European Commission's appeal and ending a nearly two-decade-long case over allegations that Intel's rebates to computer makers were anticompetitive. Reuters reports: The European Commission had fined Intel for giving rebates to computer makers Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo for buying most of their chips from Intel, which regulators said was an attempt to block Advanced Micro Devices. Regulators generally oppose rebates offered by dominant companies because they fear they may be anticompetitive, while companies say enforcers must prove discounts have anticompetitive effects before companies are sanctioned.

EU regulators had initially fined Intel 1.06 billion euros ($1.14 billion) but a lower tribunal scrapped that. Intel's case was boosted earlier this year when an adviser to the court said regulators had not properly performed an economic analysis.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/10/24/2113245/europes-top-court-rules-for-intel-to-end-long-running-antitrust-case?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/10/24/2113245/europes-top-court-rules-for-intel-to-end-long-running-antitrust-case?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Georgian Authorities Raid Homes of Disinformation Researchers Ahead of Elections

Ahead of Georgia's parliamentary elections, Georgian authorities raided the homes of disinformation researchers Eto Buziashvili and Sopo Gelava, seizing personal devices. The Record: Eto Buziashvili and Sopo Gelava, both employees of the Atlantic Council think tank, had their homes searched and their own and their family members' personal devices seized by investigators working for the country's Ministry of Finance, according to friends of the pair who spoke to Recorded Future News. Both women are said to be safe, although there are concerns about the security of their devices and online accounts. The searches come a day after Buziashvili published an article detailing how the Kremlin was influencing Georgian politics by supporting the incumbent government and interfering in the upcoming elections.

Local media reported that the offices of outsourcing company Concentrix and other Georgian citizens were also subject to searches. The Ministry of Finance claimed on Facebook it launched searches of "specific facilities" related to "call centers" alleged to be engaged in illegal activity. The investigations come ahead of an election that is being seen as a bellwether of the country's future direction, either pursuing closer ties to Russia under the current prime minister Irakli Kobakhidze or moving towards the West through opposition figures. Graham Brookie, the Atlantic Council's vice president for technology programs and strategy, said the organization "is deeply concerned about this development and its impact on our staff's work shortly before Georgian elections. [Gelava and Buziashvili] are engaged in independent, non-partisan work aimed at defending and strengthening democracy from those who would undermine it in online spaces, including research related to foreign influence efforts, the targeting of marginalized communities, and other online harms."

"We trust that Georgian authorities will provide more clarity on their actions, ensure the safety and security of our staff, return their property, and allow them to continue their contributions to Georgian democracy."

https://politics.slashdot.org/story/24/10/24/2024241/georgian-authorities-raid-homes-of-disinformation-researchers-ahead-of-elections?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://politics.slashdot.org/story/24/10/24/2024241/georgian-authorities-raid-homes-of-disinformation-researchers-ahead-of-elections?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Google Offers Its AI Watermarking Tech As Free Open Source Toolkit

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Back in May, Google augmented its Gemini AI model with SynthID, a toolkit that embeds AI-generated content with watermarks it says are "imperceptible to humans" but can be easily and reliably detected via an algorithm. Today, Google took that SynthID system open source, offering the same basic watermarking toolkit for free to developers and businesses. The move gives the entire AI industry an easy, seemingly robust way to silently mark content as artificially generated, which could be useful for detecting deepfakes and other damaging AI content before it goes out in the wild. But there are still some important limitations that may prevent AI watermarking from becoming a de facto standard across the AI industry any time soon.

Google uses a version of SynthID to watermark audio, video, and images generated by its multimodal AI systems, with differing techniques that are explained briefly in this video. But in a new paper published in Nature, Google researchers go into detail on how the SynthID process embeds an unseen watermark in the text-based output of its Gemini model. The core of the text watermarking process is a sampling algorithm inserted into an LLM's usual token-generation loop (the loop picks the next word in a sequence based on the model's complex set of weighted links to the words that came before it). Using a random seed generated from a key provided by Google, that sampling algorithm increases the correlational likelihood that certain tokens will be chosen in the generative process. A scoring function can then measure that average correlation across any text to determine the likelihood that the text was generated by the watermarked LLM (a threshold value can be used to give a binary yes/no answer).

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/24/206215/google-offers-its-ai-watermarking-tech-as-free-open-source-toolkit?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/24/206215/google-offers-its-ai-watermarking-tech-as-free-open-source-toolkit?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Code.org Taps No-Code Tableau To Make the Case For K-12 Programming Courses

theodp writes: "Computer science education is a necessity for all students," argues tech-backed nonprofit Code.org in its newly-published 2024 State of Computer Science Education (Understanding Our National Imperative) report. "Students of all identities and chosen career paths need quality computer science education to become informed citizens and confident creators of content and digital tools."

In the 200-page report, Code.org pays special attention to participation in "foundational computer science courses" in high school. "Across the country, 60% of public high schools offer at least one foundational computer science course," laments Code.org (curiously promoting a metric that ignores school size which nonetheless was embraced by Education Week and others).

"A course that teaches foundational computer science includes a minimum amount of time applying learned concepts through programming (at least 20 hours of programming/coding for grades 9-12 high schools)," Code.org explains in a separate 13-page Defining Foundational Computer Science document. Interestingly, Code.org argues that Data and Informatics courses -- in which "students may use Oracle WebDB, SQL, PL/SQL, SPSS, and SAS" to learn "the K-12 CS Framework concepts about data and analytics" -- do not count, because "the course content focuses on querying using a scripting language rather than creating programs [the IEEE's Top Programming Languages 2024 begs to differ]." Code.org similarly dissed the use of the Wolfram Language for broad educational use back in 2016.

With its insistence on the importance of kids taking Code.org-defined 'programming' courses in K-12 to promote computational thinking, it's probably no surprise to see that the data behind the 2024 State of Computer Science Education report was prepared using Python (the IEEE's top programming language) and presented to the public in a Jupyter notebook. Just kidding. Ironically, the data behind the 2024 State of Computer Science Education analysis is prepared and presented by Code.org in a no-code Tableau workbook.

https://developers.slashdot.org/story/24/10/24/1717213/codeorg-taps-no-code-tableau-to-make-the-case-for-k-12-programming-courses?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://developers.slashdot.org/story/24/10/24/1717213/codeorg-taps-no-code-tableau-to-make-the-case-for-k-12-programming-courses?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


IPv6 May Already Be Irrelevant - But So is Moving Off IPv4, Argues APNIC's Chief Scientist

The chief scientist of the Asia Pacific Network Information Center has a theory about why the world hasn't moved to IPv6. From a report: In a lengthy post to the center's blog, Geoff Huston recounts that the main reason for the development of IPv6 was a fear the world would run out of IP addresses, hampering the growth of the internet. But IPv6 represented evolution -- not revolution. "The bottom line was that IPv6 did not offer any new functionality that was not already present in IPv4. It did not introduce any significant changes to the operation of IP. It was just IP, with larger addresses," Huston wrote.

IPv6's designers assumed that the protocol would take off because demand for IPv4 was soaring. But in the years after IPv6 debuted, Huston observes, "There was no need to give the transition much thought." Internetworking wonks assumed applications, hosts, and networks would become dual stack and support IPv6 alongside IPv4, before phasing out the latter. But then mobile internet usage exploded, and network operators had to scale to meet unprecedented demand created by devices like the iPhone. "We could either concentrate our resources on meeting the incessant demands of scaling, or we could work on IPv6 deployment," Huston wrote.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/24/1625249/ipv6-may-already-be-irrelevant---but-so-is-moving-off-ipv4-argues-apnics-chief-scientist?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/24/1625249/ipv6-may-already-be-irrelevant---but-so-is-moving-off-ipv4-argues-apnics-chief-scientist?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


LinkedIn Fined More Than $300 Million in Ireland Over Personal Data Processing

Ireland's data-protection watchdog fined LinkedIn 310 million euros ($334.3 million), saying the Microsoft-owned career platform's personal-data processing breached strict European Union data-privacy and security legislation. From a report: The Irish Data Protection Commission in 2018 launched a probe into LinkedIn's processing of users' personal data for behavioral analysis and targeted advertising after its French equivalent flagged a complaint it received from a non-profit organization. Irish officials raised concerns on the lawfulness, fairness and transparency of the practice, saying Thursday that LinkedIn was in breach of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation.

"The lawfulness of processing is a fundamental aspect of data protection law and the processing of personal data without an appropriate legal basis is a clear and serious violation of a data subjects' fundamental right to data protection," said Graham Doyle, deputy commissioner at the Irish Data Protection Commission. In their decision, Irish officials said LinkedIn wasn't sufficiently informing users when seeking their consent to process third-party data for behavioral analysis and targeted advertising and ordered the platform to bring its processing into compliance.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/24/1554215/linkedin-fined-more-than-300-million-in-ireland-over-personal-data-processing?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/24/1554215/linkedin-fined-more-than-300-million-in-ireland-over-personal-data-processing?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Journals With High Rates of Suspicious Papers Flagged By Science-Integrity Startup

schwit1 shares a report from Nature: Which scientific publishers and journals are worst affected by fraudulent or dubious research papers -- and which have done least to clean up their portfolio? A technology start-up founded to help publishers spot potentially problematic papers says that it has some answers, and has shared its early findings with Nature. The science-integrity website Argos, which was launched in September by Scitility, a technology firm headquartered in Sparks, Nevada, gives papers a risk score on the basis of their authors' publication records, and on whether the paper heavily cites already-retracted research. A paper categorized as 'high risk' might have multiple authors whose other studies have been retracted for reasons related to misconduct, for example. Having a high score doesn't prove that a paper is low quality, but suggests that it is worth investigating.

Argos is one of a growing number of research-integrity tools that look for red flags in papers. These include the Papermill Alarm, made by Clear Skies, and Signals, by Research Signals, both London-based firms. Because creators of such software sell their manuscript-screening tools to publishers, they are generally reluctant to name affected journals. But Argos, which is offering free accounts to individuals and fuller access to science-integrity sleuths and journalists, is the first to show public insights. "We wanted to build a piece of technology that was able to see hidden patterns and bring transparency to the industry," says Scitility co-founder Erik de Boer, who is based in Roosendaal, the Netherlands. By early October, Argos had flagged more than 40,000 high-risk and 180,000 medium-risk papers. It has also indexed more than 50,000 retracted papers.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/24/0155247/journals-with-high-rates-of-suspicious-papers-flagged-by-science-integrity-startup?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/24/0155247/journals-with-high-rates-of-suspicious-papers-flagged-by-science-integrity-startup?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Boeing-Made Satellite Explodes In Space

"Boeing has had a series of issues over the past few years," writes Slashdot reader quonset. "From planes crashing, lost service records, to a recent strike which cost them $6 billion, now comes word a satellite they made has exploded in space." CBS News reports: The Intelsat 33e satellite, which was launched in 2016 and provides communications across Europe, Asia and Africa, experienced "an anomaly" on Saturday, Intelsat said in a news release. Attempts were made to work with Boeing and repair the satellite, but on Monday, the U.S. Space Force confirmed that the satellite had exploded. The satellite's breakup left some customers without power or communications services. Intelsat said it is working with third-party providers to limit service interruptions, and is in communication with customers.

Since the breakup, the U.S. Space Force is now tracking "around 20 associated pieces" of the satellite in space. The agency said that there are "no immediate threats" and routine assessments to ensure safety are ongoing. Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, said it had recorded "more than 80 fragments" of the destroyed satellite. Analysis of the pieces' trajectory determined that the destruction of the satellite was "instantaneous and high-energy," Roscosmos said.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/24/0142204/boeing-made-satellite-explodes-in-space?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/24/0142204/boeing-made-satellite-explodes-in-space?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Foreign Disinformation Is Hitting the US Election From All Directions

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: As November 5 draws closer, the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) warned on Wednesday that malicious foreign influence operations launched by Russia, China, and Iran against the US presidential election are continuing to evolve and should not be ignored even though they have come to feel inevitable. In the group's fifth report, researchers emphasize the range of ongoing activities (source may be paywalled; alternative source) as well as the inevitability that attackers will work to stoke doubts about the integrity of the election in its aftermath.

In spite of escalating conflict in the Middle East, Microsoft says that Iran has been able to keep up its operations targeting the US election, particularly targeting the Trump campaign and attempting to foment anti-Israel sentiment. Russian actors, meanwhile, have been focused on targeting the Harris campaign with character attacks and AI-generated content, including deepfakes. And China has shifted its focus in recent weeks, researchers say, to target down-ballot Republican candidates as well as sitting members of Congress who promote policies adversarial to China or in conflict with its interests.

Crucially, MTAC says it is all but certain that these actors will attempt to stoke division and mistrust in vote security on Election Day and in its immediate aftermath. "As MTAC observed during the 2020 presidential cycle, foreign adversaries will amplify claims of election rigging, voter fraud, or other election integrity issues to sow chaos among the US electorate and undermine international confidence in US political stability," the researchers wrote in their report. As the 2024 campaign season enters its final phase, the researchers say that they expect to see AI-generated media continuing to show up in new campaigns, particularly because content can spread so rapidly in the charged period immediately around Election Day. The report also notes that Microsoft has detected Iranian actors probing election-related websites and media outlets, "suggesting preparations for more direct influence operations as Election Day nears." "History has shown that the ability of foreign actors to rapidly distribute deceptive content can significantly impact public perception and electoral outcomes," wrote MTAC general manager Clint Watts. "With a particular focus on the 48 hours before and after Election Day, voters, government institutions, candidates and parties must remain vigilant to deceptive and suspicious activity online."

https://politics.slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/2234246/foreign-disinformation-is-hitting-the-us-election-from-all-directions?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://politics.slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/2234246/foreign-disinformation-is-hitting-the-us-election-from-all-directions?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Norway To Increase Minimum Age Limit On Social Media To 15 To Protect Children

Norway plans to enforce a strict minimum social media age of 15 to protect children from harmful content and the influence of algorithms. The Guardian reports: The Scandinavian country already has a minimum age limit of 13 in place. Despite this, more than half of nine-year-olds, 58% of 10-year-olds and 72% of 11-year-olds are on social media, according to research by the Norwegian media authority. The government has pledged to introduce more safeguards to prevent children from getting around the age restrictions -- including amending the Personal Data Act so that social media users must be 15 years old to agree that the platform can handle their personal data, and developing an age verification barrier for social media.

"It sends quite a strong signal," the prime minister told the newspaper VG on Wednesday. "Children must be protected from harmful content on social media. These are big tech giants pitted against small children's brains. We know that this is an uphill battle, because there are strong forces here, but it is also where politics is needed." While he said he understood that social media could offer lonely children a community, self-expression must not be in the power of algorithms. "On the contrary, it can cause you to become single-minded and pacified, because everything happens so fast on this screen," he added. "It is also about giving parents the security to say no," said Kjersti Toppe, the minister for children and families. "We know that many people really want to say no, but don't feel they can."

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/2228202/norway-to-increase-minimum-age-limit-on-social-media-to-15-to-protect-children?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/2228202/norway-to-increase-minimum-age-limit-on-social-media-to-15-to-protect-children?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Huawei Makes Divorce From Android Official With HarmonyOS NEXT Launch

The Register's Laura Dobberstein reports: Huawei formally launched its home-brewed operating system, HarmonyOS NEXT, on Wednesday, marking its official separation from the Android ecosystem. Huawei declared it released and "officially started public beta testing" of the OS for some of its smartphones and tablets that run its own Kirin and Kunpeng chips.

Unlike previous iterations of HarmonyOS, HarmonyOS NEXT no longer supports Android apps. Huawei maintains top Chinese outfits aren't deterred by that. It cited Meituan, Douyin, Taobao, Xiaohongshu, Alipay, and JD.com as among those who have developed native apps for the OS. In case you're not familiar, they're China's top shopping, payment, and social media apps.

Huawei also claimed that at the time of its announcement, over 15,000 HarmonyOS native applications and meta-services were also launched. That's a nice number, but well short of the millions of apps found on the Google Play Store and Apple's App Store. The Chinese tech player also revealed that the operating system has 110 million lines of code and claimed it improves the overall performance of mobile devices running it by 30 percent. It also purportedly increases battery life by 56 minutes and leaves an average of 1.5GB of memory for purposes other than running the OS.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/2221234/huawei-makes-divorce-from-android-official-with-harmonyos-next-launch?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/2221234/huawei-makes-divorce-from-android-official-with-harmonyos-next-launch?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Linus Torvalds Comments On The Russian Linux Maintainers Being Delisted

Ancient Slashdot reader szo shares a report from Phoronix: Quietly merged into this week's Linux 6.12-rc4 kernel was a patch that removes a number of kernel maintainers from being noted in the official MAINTAINERS file that recognizes all of the driver and subsystem maintainers. [...] [Greg Kroah-Hartman who authored the patch] simply commented in there: "Remove some entries due to various compliance requirements. They can come back in the future if sufficient documentation is provided." [...] The commonality of all these maintainers being dropped? They appear to all be Russian or associated with Russia. Most of them with .ru email addresses. Linux creator Linus Torvalds has since commented on the situation: Ok, lots of Russian trolls out and about. It's entirely clear why the change was done, it's not getting reverted, and using multiple random anonymous accounts to try to "grass root" it by Russian troll factories isn't going to change anything. And FYI for the actual innocent bystanders who aren't troll farm accounts - the "various compliance requirements" are not just a US thing.

If you haven't heard of Russian sanctions yet, you should try to read the news some day. And by "news," I don't mean Russian state-sponsored spam. As to sending me a revert patch - please use whatever mush you call brains. I'm Finnish. Did you think I'd be *supporting* Russian aggression? Apparently it's not just lack of real news, it's lack of history knowledge too.

https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/2035248/linus-torvalds-comments-on-the-russian-linux-maintainers-being-delisted?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/2035248/linus-torvalds-comments-on-the-russian-linux-maintainers-being-delisted?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Adobe Made Its Painting App Completely Free To Take On Procreate

Adobe's Fresco painting app is now free for everyone, in an attempt to lure illustrators to join its creative software suite. The Verge reports: Fresco is essentially Adobe's answer to apps like Procreate and Clip Studio Paint, which all provide a variety of tools for both digital art and simulating real-world materials like sketching pencils and watercolor paints. Adobe Fresco is designed for touch and stylus-supported devices, and is available on iPad, iPhone, and Windows PCs. The app already had a free-to-use tier, but premium features like access to the full Adobe Fonts library, a much wider brush selection, and the ability to import custom brushes previously required a $9.99 annual subscription. That's pretty affordable for an Adobe subscription, but still couldn't compete with Procreate's $12.99 one-time purchase model.

Starting today, all of Fresco's premium features are no longer locked behind a paywall. The app first launched in 2019 and isn't particularly well-known compared to more established Adobe apps like Photoshop and Illustrator that feature more complex, professional design tools. Fresco still has some interesting features of its own, like reflective and rotation symmetry (which mirror artwork as you draw) and the ability to quickly animate drawings with motion presets like "bounce" and "breathe."

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/2019208/adobe-made-its-painting-app-completely-free-to-take-on-procreate?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/2019208/adobe-made-its-painting-app-completely-free-to-take-on-procreate?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Pollution-Free Environment a 'Fundamental Right', India's Top Court Says

Living in a pollution-free environment is a fundamental right, India's Supreme Court said on Wednesday as it urged authorities to address deteriorating air quality in the north of the country. From a report: India's capital Delhi recorded a "very poor" air quality index of 364 on Wednesday, according to the Central Pollution Control Board, which considers readings below 50 to be good. Swiss group IQAir rated Delhi the world's most polluted city in its live rankings. The city battles toxic air every winter and authorities say much of the smoke comes from farmers illegally burning paddy stubble to clear their fields in the neighbouring breadbasket states of Punjab and Haryana. The Supreme Court pulled up the governments of both states for taking "selective action" against stubble burning, saying penal provisions were not being properly implemented.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/137215/pollution-free-environment-a-fundamental-right-indias-top-court-says?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/137215/pollution-free-environment-a-fundamental-right-indias-top-court-says?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Disney and Apple Are Splitting Over App Store Fees

If you want to sign up for a subscription to Hulu or Disney+, don't bother taking out your iPhone. Disney is now telling would-be customers to pay for subscriptions on Disney's own site, instead of on Apple's App Store -- though people who've already started paying for either service via Apple can keep doing that. From a report: The two companies are still working together on some projects. But the App Store split does represent a rift between two longtime partners, so it's definitely worth noting.

Disney's rationale is clear here: When customers sign up for Disney subscription services via Apple, Apple takes up to 15% of the monthly fees those services generate. And Disney CEO Bob Iger has made it clear that he doesn't want to pay that anymore. "We have to look at the way we're distributing," Iger said at an investor conference in May. "Unlike Netflix, we distribute largely through third-party app stores. There's obviously an advantage to that to some extent, but there's a cost to that, too. And we're looking at that."

https://apple.slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/1318203/disney-and-apple-are-splitting-over-app-store-fees?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://apple.slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/1318203/disney-and-apple-are-splitting-over-app-store-fees?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Users Say T-Mobile Must Pay For Killing 'Lifetime' Price Lock

An anonymous reader shares a report: T-Mobile promised users who bought certain mobile plans that it would never raise their prices for as long as they lived -- but then raised their prices this year. So it's no surprise that 2,000 T-Mobile customers complained to the government about a price hike on plans that were advertised as having a lifetime price lock. "I am still alive and T-Mobile is increasing the price for service by $5 per line. How is this a lifetime price lock?" one customer in Connecticut asked the Federal Communications Commission in a complaint that we obtained through a public records request.

"I am not dead yet," a customer in New York wrote bluntly, saying they had bought a plan with a "guarantee for life." Both of those customers said they purchased T-Mobile's senior plan marketed to people aged 55 and up. While the price hikes apply to customers on various plans regardless of their age, many of the complaints to the FCC came from people in the 55+ age group. Some pointed out that if T-Mobile simply waits long enough, the carrier won't have to serve 55-and-up customers forever.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/1312230/users-say-t-mobile-must-pay-for-killing-lifetime-price-lock?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/1312230/users-say-t-mobile-must-pay-for-killing-lifetime-price-lock?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Arm To Cancel Qualcomm's Chip Design License As Tech Feud Deepens

Arm has moved to cancel Qualcomm's architectural license agreement, escalating a legal battle that threatens to upend the global smartphone and PC chip markets. The British chip designer issued Qualcomm a 60-day termination notice for the license that allows the U.S. chipmaker to design custom processors using Arm's intellectual property. The cancellation could force Qualcomm to halt sales of products that generate much of its $39 billion annual revenue, Bloomberg reports.

The dispute stems from Qualcomm's $1.4 billion acquisition of chip startup Nuvia in 2021. Arm claims Qualcomm breached contract terms by using Nuvia's designs without permission, while Qualcomm maintains its existing agreement covers the acquired technology. The companies are set for a December trial to resolve Arm's 2022 breach-of-contract lawsuit and Qualcomm's countersuit. Arm is demanding Qualcomm destroy Nuvia designs created before the acquisition.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/133246/arm-to-cancel-qualcomms-chip-design-license-as-tech-feud-deepens?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/133246/arm-to-cancel-qualcomms-chip-design-license-as-tech-feud-deepens?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Physicist Reveals Why You Should Run in The Rain

Theoretical Physicist Jacques Treiner, from the University of Paris Cite, explains why you should run in the rain: ... Let p represent the number of drops per unit volume, and let a denote their vertical velocity. We'll denote Sh as the horizontal surface area of the individual (e.g., the head and shoulders) and Sv as the vertical surface area (e.g., the body). When you're standing still, the rain only falls on the horizontal surface, Sh. This is the amount of water you'll receive on these areas. Even if the rain falls vertically, from the perspective of a walker moving at speed v, it appears to fall obliquely, with the angle of the drops' trajectory depending on your speed. During a time period T, a raindrop travels a distance of aT. Therefore, all raindrops within a shorter distance will reach the surface: these are the drops inside a cylinder with a base of Sh and a height of aT, which gives:
p.Sh.a.T.

As we have seen, as we move forward, the drops appear to be animated by an oblique velocity that results from the composition of velocity a and velocity v. The number of drops reaching Sh remains unchanged, since velocity v is horizontal and therefore parallel to Sh. However, the number of drops reaching surface Sv -- which was previously zero when the walker was stationary -- has now increased. This is equal to the number of drops contained within a horizontal cylinder with a base area of Sv and a length of v.T. This length represents the horizontal distance the drops travel during this time interval. In total, the walker receives a number of drops given by the expression:
p.(Sh.a + Sv.v). T

Now we need to take into account the time interval during which the walker is exposed to the rain. If you're covering a distance d at constant speed v, the time you spend walking is d/v. Plugging this into the equation, the total amount of water you encounter is:
p.(Sh.a + Sv.v). d/v = p.(Sh.a/v + Sv). d

This equation proves that the faster you move, the less water hits your head and shoulders, but the amount of water hitting the vertical part of your body remains constant. To stay drier, it's best to move quickly and lean forward. However, you'll have to increase your speed to offset the exposed surface area caused by leaning.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/0150203/physicist-reveals-why-you-should-run-in-the-rain?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/0150203/physicist-reveals-why-you-should-run-in-the-rain?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


'Electric Plastic' Could Unleash Next-Gen Implants and Wearable Tech

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Magazine: Imagine a thin wristband that monitors your steps and heartbeat like an Apple Watch. Or clothing that keeps you cool with built-in air conditioning. Or even a flexible implant that could help your heart better than a bulky pacemaker. That's the promise of a new, electrically active material researchers have created by combining short chains of amino acids called peptides with snippets of a polymer plastic. This "electric plastic," reported this month in Nature, can store energy or record information, opening the door to self-powered wearables, real-time neural interfaces, and medical implants that merge with bodies better than current tech. [...]

Samuel Stupp, a materials scientist at Northwestern University, and his colleagues thought they could improve on polyvinylidene fluoride's (PVDF) properties. The team connected peptides with small PVDF segments, which naturally assembled into long, flexible ribbons. The molecules then coalesced into bundles and aligned to form an electro-active material. "Remarkably," Stupp says, "the self-assembly process is triggered by adding water." The new material overcomes PVDF's limitations. It requires 100 times less voltage to switch polarization compared with other ferroelectric materials, making it ideal for low-power applications. And it retains its ferroelectric properties at temperatures of 110C -- about 40C higher than other PVDF materials.

Stupp's new material can store energy or information by electrically switching the polarity of each ribbon. And because the peptide on the end of each ribbon can be connected to proteins on neurons or other cells, the molecules can record the signals from the brain, heart, or other organs -- or electrically stimulate them. By using low-power techniques like ultrasound to "charge" the molecules, the material could be used to stimulate neurons as a treatment for chronic paralysis, Stupp says. Study co-author Yang Yang, an electrical power engineer at Northwestern, notes that PVDF is biocompatible, making the material a promising candidate for soft implants that could be wirelessly controlled from outside the body. Stupp's team has conducted small-scale evaluations of molecules, but scaling up will require placing water-suspended structures onto devices without altering them -- a challenge noted by chemist Frank Leibfarth. Even with this hurdle, "This advance has enabled a number of attractive properties compared to other organic polymers," he says.

Stupp added: "This paper has a much broader concept than just vinylidene fluoride. There probably are other possibilities ... that don't have fluorine."

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/0029218/electric-plastic-could-unleash-next-gen-implants-and-wearable-tech?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/0029218/electric-plastic-could-unleash-next-gen-implants-and-wearable-tech?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


UK-Based Dissident Can Sue Saudi Arabia For Alleged Spyware, Court Rules

A judge has allowed Saudi dissident Yahya Assiri to sue the kingdom for allegedly targeting his devices with Pegasus spyware and other Israeli-made surveillance tools. Reuters reports: Yahya Assiri, a founder of the opposition National Assembly Party (NAAS) who lives in exile in Britain, alleges his electronic devices were targeted with surveillance software between 2018 and 2020. He is suing Saudi Arabia at London's High Court, saying the country used Pegasus - made by Israeli company NSO Group and sold only to nation states - and other spyware made by lesser-known Israeli firm QuaDream because of his work with dissidents.

Earlier this month, Roger Eastman, a judge in the High Court, gave Assiri permission to serve his lawsuit on the Saudi government, a step that required the court to find Assiri has an arguable case. The decision announced on Monday to allow the case to be served on Saudi Arabia in Riyadh was made on Oct. 11. Assiri said in a statement: "I am fully aware that the authorities will want to target me. However, it is outrageous for them also to target individuals such as the victims of rights abuses and their families in Saudi Arabia simply because these people have been in contact with me."

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/0020230/uk-based-dissident-can-sue-saudi-arabia-for-alleged-spyware-court-rules?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/0020230/uk-based-dissident-can-sue-saudi-arabia-for-alleged-spyware-court-rules?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


San Francisco Muni's Rail System Will Spend $212 Million To Upgrade From Floppy Disks

San Francisco's Municipal Transportation Agency approved a $212 million contract with Hitachi Rail to modernize the Muni Metro system's outdated train control system, which currently uses floppy disks and wire loops. Government Technology reports: The software that runs the system is stored on floppy disks that are loaded each morning and an outdated type of communication using wire loops that are easily disrupted. It was expected to last for 20 to 25 years, according to Muni officials. It moves data more slowly than a wireless modem, they said. By late 2027 and into 2028, a new communications-based system, which employs Wi-Fi and cell signals to precisely track the locations of trains, will be installed by Hitachi, which will provide support services for 20 years under the agreement.

While the current train control system operates only on the Market Street subway and Central Subway, the new system will control Metro light rail trains on the system's surface lines as well. The Hitachi system is said to be five generations ahead of the current system, said Muni Director of Transit Julie Kirschbaum, who described it as the best train control system on the market.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/10/22/2349258/san-francisco-munis-rail-system-will-spend-212-million-to-upgrade-from-floppy-disks?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/10/22/2349258/san-francisco-munis-rail-system-will-spend-212-million-to-upgrade-from-floppy-disks?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Lawsuit Argues Warrantless Use of Flock Surveillance Cameras Is Unconstitutional

A civil liberties group has filed a lawsuit in Virginia arguing that the widespread use of Flock's automated license plate readers violates the Fourth Amendment's protections against warrantless searches. 404 Media reports: "The City of Norfolk, Virginia, has installed a network of cameras that make it functionally impossible for people to drive anywhere without having their movements tracked, photographed, and stored in an AI-assisted database that enables the warrantless surveillance of their every move. This civil rights lawsuit seeks to end this dragnet surveillance program," the lawsuit notes (PDF). "In Norfolk, no one can escape the government's 172 unblinking eyes," it continues, referring to the 172 Flock cameras currently operational in Norfolk. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures and has been ruled in many cases to protect against warrantless government surveillance, and the lawsuit specifically says Norfolk's installation violates that. [...]

The lawsuit in Norfolk is being filed by the Institute for Justice, a civil liberties organization that has filed a series of privacy and government overreach lawsuits over the last few years. Two Virginia residents, Lee Schmidt and Crystal Arrington, are listed as plaintiffs in the case. Schmidt is a Navy veteran who alleges in the lawsuit that the cops can easily infer where he is going based on Flock data. "Just outside his neighborhood, there are four Flock Cameras. Lee drives by these cameras (and others he sees around town) nearly every day, and the Norfolk Police Department [NPD] can use the information they record to build a picture of his daily habits and routines," the lawsuit reads. "If the Flock Cameras record Lee going straight through the intersection outside his neighborhood, for example, the NPD can infer that he is going to his daughter's school. If the cameras capture him turning right, the NPD can infer that he is going to the shooting range. If the cameras capture him turning left, the NPD can infer that he is going to the grocery store. The Flock Cameras capture the start of nearly every trip Lee makes in his car, so he effectively cannot leave his neighborhood without the NPD knowing about it." Arrington is a healthcare worker who makes home visits to clients in Norfolk. The lawsuit alleges that it would be trivial for the government to identify her clients. "Fourth Amendment case law overwhelmingly shows that license plate readers do not constitute a warrantless search because they take photos of cars in public and cannot continuously track the movements of any individual," a Flock spokesperson said. "Appellate and federal district courts in at least fourteen states have upheld the use of evidence from license plate readers as Constitutional without requiring a warrant, as well as the 9th and 11th circuits. Since the Bell case, four judges in Virginia have ruled the opposite way -- that ALPR evidence is admissible in court without a warrant."

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/10/22/2342258/lawsuit-argues-warrantless-use-of-flock-surveillance-cameras-is-unconstitutional?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/10/22/2342258/lawsuit-argues-warrantless-use-of-flock-surveillance-cameras-is-unconstitutional?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


OpenAI, Microsoft Funding $10 Million In Grants For AI-Powered Journalism

OpenAI and Microsoft will give grants of up to $10 million to bring more AI tools into the newsroom. The grants will go to Chicago Public Media, the Minnesota Star Tribune, Newsday (in Long Island, NY), The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Seattle Times. "Each of the publications will hire a two-year AI fellow to develop projects for implementing the technology and improving business sustainability," reports Engadget. "Three more outlets are expected to receive fellowship grants in a second round." From the report: OpenAI and Microsoft are each contributing $2.5 million in direct funding as well as $2.5 million in software and enterprise credits. The Lenfest Institute of Journalism is collaborating with OpenAI and Microsoft on the project, and announced the news today.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/22/2045216/openai-microsoft-funding-10-million-in-grants-for-ai-powered-journalism?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/22/2045216/openai-microsoft-funding-10-million-in-grants-for-ai-powered-journalism?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Air Taxis and Other Electric-Powered Aircraft Cleared For Takeoff

The FAA has released final regulations for electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicles, introducing a new category of aircraft for the first time in nearly 80 years. These rules provide a framework for pilot training and operational requirements, addressing industry concerns while aiming to support the future of advanced air mobility. The Verge reports: The FAA says these âoepowered-liftâ vehicles will be the first completely new category of aircraft since helicopters were introduced in 1940. These aircraft will be used for a variety of services, including air taxis, cargo delivery, and rescue and retrieval operations. The final rules published today contain guidelines for pilot training as well as operational requirements regarding minimum safe altitudes and visibility. [...] Powered lift includes aircraft described by industry watchers as electric vertical takeoff and landing, or eVTOL. Using tilt rotors, eVTOL aircraft are designed to take off and land vertically like a helicopter and then transition into forward flight on fixed wings like a plane.

[...] A new pilot training and qualifications rule was needed because âoeexisting regulations did not address this new category of aircraft, which can take off and land vertically like a helicopter and fly like an airplane during cruise flight,â the FAA said. The rule also provides a âoecomprehensive frameworkâ for certifying the initial group of powered-lift instructors and pilots. According to the agency, the rule would: "Makes changes to numerous existing regulations and establishes a Special Federal Aviation Regulation (SFAR) with new requirements to facilitate instructor and pilot certification and training. Applies helicopter operating requirements to some phases of flight and adopts a performance-based approach to certain operating rules. Allows pilots to train in powered-lift with a single set of flight controls; legacy rules require two flight controls -- one for the student and one for the instructor." "The regulation published today will ensure the U.S. continues to play a global leadership role in the development and adoption of clean flight," said JoeBen Bevirt, founder and CEO of Joby, in a statement. "Delivering the rules ahead of schedule is testament to the dedication, coordination and hard work of the rulemaking team."

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/22/2038234/air-taxis-and-other-electric-powered-aircraft-cleared-for-takeoff?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/22/2038234/air-taxis-and-other-electric-powered-aircraft-cleared-for-takeoff?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Comic Sans Got the Last Laugh

On July 4, 2012, CERN physicist Fabiola Gianotti announced a major quantum field theory discovery using a PowerPoint presentation in Comic Sans, sparking both mockery and debate. The font, created by Vincent Connare for Microsoft Bob in 1994, featured deliberately imperfect letters inspired by comic books. Comic Sans shipped with Windows 95 and exploded in popularity as personal computing democratized typography. A backlash emerged as the font appeared on everything from funeral notices to museum signs, culminating in Dave and Holly Combs's "Ban Comic Sans" campaign.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/22/1913222/comic-sans-got-the-last-laugh?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/22/1913222/comic-sans-got-the-last-laugh?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


More Than 10,500 Artists Unite in Fight Against AI Companies' 'Unjust' Use of Creative Works

More than 10,500 artists and creators -- including ABBA's Bjorn Ulvaeus, actress Julianne Moore, actors Kevin Bacon and F. Murray Abraham, as well as former Saturday Night Live star Kate McKinnon, author James Patterson and Radiohead's Thom Yorke -- signed a statement condemning AI companies' unauthorized use of creative works for training their models. The initiative, led by former AI executive Ed Newton-Rex, demands an end to unlicensed training data collection amid mounting legal challenges against tech firms. "The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted," reads the statement.

The protest comes as major artists and publishers battle AI developers in court. Authors John Grisham and George R.R. Martin are suing OpenAI, while record labels Universal, Sony and Warner have filed lawsuits against AI music creators Suno and Udio. The signatories reject proposed "opt-out" schemes for content scraping, calling instead for explicit creator consent.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/22/194248/more-than-10500-artists-unite-in-fight-against-ai-companies-unjust-use-of-creative-works?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/22/194248/more-than-10500-artists-unite-in-fight-against-ai-companies-unjust-use-of-creative-works?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Netflix Closes AAA Game Studio Before It Ever Released a Game

The first cracks are starting to show in Netflix's push into gaming. The Verge: First reported in Game File and confirmed by Netflix, the streaming company has quietly closed of one of its studios, the first in the three years since the company began its foray into gaming.

According to Game File, the shuttered studio was known as Blue. In 2022, Netflix announced it hired former Overwatch executive producer Chacko Sonny to run the studio. Since then, Blue had brought on a number of game industry veterans with experience working on high profile franchises including Halo and God of War. Reportedly, Blue was developing a multi-platform AAA game for an original IP but was closed before the game could be announced or released.

https://games.slashdot.org/story/24/10/22/1829256/netflix-closes-aaa-game-studio-before-it-ever-released-a-game?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://games.slashdot.org/story/24/10/22/1829256/netflix-closes-aaa-game-studio-before-it-ever-released-a-game?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Anthropic's AI Model Gains Computer Control in New Upgrade

Anthropic has released an upgraded version of its AI model Claude 3.5 Sonnet and announced a new model, Claude 3.5 Haiku, alongside a public beta feature enabling AI to operate computers like humans. The enhanced Sonnet model improved its coding capabilities, scoring 49% on the SWEbench Verified benchmark, surpassing OpenAI and other competitors. The Haiku model matches the performance of Anthropic's previous flagship Claude 3 Opus while maintaining lower costs and faster speeds.

The computer use feature, available through Anthropic's API and cloud partners, allows Claude to perform tasks like navigating web browsers, filling forms, and manipulating data. Early adopters include Asana, DoorDash, and Replit, though Anthropic -- backed by investors including Google and Amazon -- acknowledges the feature remains experimental and error-prone. Claude 3.5 Haiku will launch later this month, initially supporting text-only inputs with image capabilities to follow.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/10/22/168256/anthropics-ai-model-gains-computer-control-in-new-upgrade?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/10/22/168256/anthropics-ai-model-gains-computer-control-in-new-upgrade?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


NASA Further Delays First Operational Starliner Flight

NASA will rely on SpaceX's Crew Dragon for two crewed missions to the ISS in 2025 while evaluating whether Boeing's Starliner requires another test flight for certification. SpaceNews reports: In an Oct. 15 statement, NASA said it will use Crew Dragon for both the Crew-10 mission to the ISS, scheduled for no earlier than February 2025, and the Crew-11 mission scheduled for no earlier than July. Crew-10 will fly NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers along with astronaut Takuya Onishi from the Japanese space agency JAXA and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov. NASA has not yet announced the crew for the Crew-11 mission.

Earlier this year, NASA had hoped that Boeing's CST-100 Starliner would be certified in time to fly the early 2025 mission. Problems with the Crew Flight Test mission, which launched in June with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board, led NASA to conclude in July that the spacecraft would not be certified in time. It delayed that Starliner-1 mission from February to August 2025, moving up Crew-10 to February. NASA also announced then that it would prepare Crew-11 in parallel with Starliner-1 for launch in that August 2025 slot. "The timing and configuration of Starliner's next flight will be determined once a better understanding of Boeing's path to system certification is established," NASA said in its statement about the 2025 missions. "NASA is keeping options on the table for how best to achieve system certification, including windows of opportunity for a potential Starliner flight in 2025."

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/22/0356253/nasa-further-delays-first-operational-starliner-flight?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/22/0356253/nasa-further-delays-first-operational-starliner-flight?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Amazon Ditches Plastic Air Pillows

Amazon has reached its goal set earlier this year to completely get rid of plastic air pillows at its warehouses by the end of the year. "As of October 2024, we've removed all plastic air pillows from our delivery packaging used at our global fulfillment centers," the e-commerce giant said in an October 9th blog post. The Verge reports: It's a welcome change following years of pressure from environmental groups to stop plastic pollution flooding into oceans. The company is still working to reduce the use of single-use plastics more broadly in its packaging. The most prolific type of plastic litter near coastlines is plastic film -- a material that makes up those once ubiquitous air pillows, according to Oceana. That film also happens to be the "deadliest" type of plastic pollution for large mammals like whales and dolphins that might ingest it, Oceana says.

The company swapped out plastic air pillows and single-use delivery bags for paper and cardboard alternatives in Europe in 2022. It also ditched plastic film packaging at its facilities in India in 2020. The US is Amazon's largest market, and the company hasn't managed to fully eliminate plastic packaging in North America just yet. It says it plans to reduce the amount of deliveries containing "Amazon-added plastic delivery packaging" in North America to just one-third of shipments by December, down from two-thirds in December 2023.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/21/233222/amazon-ditches-plastic-air-pillows?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/21/233222/amazon-ditches-plastic-air-pillows?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


One-Third of DHS's Border Surveillance Cameras Are Broken, Memo Says

According to an internal Border Patrol memo, nearly one-third of the surveillance cameras along the U.S.-Mexico border don't work. "The nationwide issue is having significant impacts on [Border Patrol] operations," reads the memo. NBC News reports: The large-scale outage affects roughly 150 of the 500 cameras perched on surveillance towers along the U.S.-Mexico border. It was due to "several technical problems," according to the memo. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue, blamed outdated equipment and outstanding repair issues.

The camera systems, known as Remote Video Surveillance Systems, have been used since 2011 to "survey large areas without having to commit hundreds of agents in vehicles to perform the same function." But according to the internal memo, 30% were inoperable. It is not clear when the cameras stopped working.Two Customs and Border Protections officials said that some repairs have been made this month but that there are still over 150 outstanding requests for camera repairs. The officials said there are some areas that are not visible to Border Patrol because of broken cameras.

A Customs and Border Protection spokesperson said the agency has installed roughly 300 new towers that use more advanced technology. "CBP continues to install newer, more advanced technology that embrace artificial intelligence and machine learning to replace outdated systems, reducing the need to have agents working non-interdiction functions," the spokesperson said. The agency points the finger at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which is responsible for servicing the systems and repairing the cameras. "The FAA, which services the systems and repairs the cameras, has had internal problems meeting the needs of the Border Patrol, the memo says, without elaborating on what those problems are," reports NBC News. While the FAA is sending personnel to work on the cameras, Border Patrol leaders are considering replacing them with a contractor that can provide "adequate technical support for the cameras."

Further reading: U.S. Border Surveillance Towers Have Always Been Broken (EFF)

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/21/2258227/one-third-of-dhss-border-surveillance-cameras-are-broken-memo-says?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/21/2258227/one-third-of-dhss-border-surveillance-cameras-are-broken-memo-says?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


T-Mobile, AT&T Oppose Unlocking Rule, Claim Locked Phones Are Good For Users

An anonymous reader writes: T-Mobile and AT&T say US regulators should drop a plan to require unlocking of phones within 60 days of activation, claiming that locking phones to a carrier's network makes it possible to provide cheaper handsets to consumers. "If the Commission mandates a uniform unlocking policy, it is consumers -- not providers -- who stand to lose the most," T-Mobile alleged in an October 17 filing with the Federal Communications Commission. The proposed rule has support from consumer advocacy groups who say it will give users more choice and lower their costs.

T-Mobile has been criticized for locking phones for up to a year, which makes it impossible to use a phone on a rival's network. T-Mobile claims that with a 60-day unlocking rule, "consumers risk losing access to the benefits of free or heavily subsidized handsets because the proposal would force providers to reduce the line-up of their most compelling handset offers." If the proposed rule is enacted, "T-Mobile estimates that its prepaid customers, for example, would see subsidies reduced by 40 percent to 70 percent for both its lower and higher-end devices, such as the Moto G, Samsung A15, and iPhone 12," the carrier said. "A handset unlocking mandate would also leave providers little choice but to limit their handset offers to lower cost and often lesser performing handsets." In July, the FCC approved a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for the unlocking policy in a 5-0 vote.

The FCC is proposing "to require all mobile wireless service providers to unlock handsets 60 days after a consumer's handset is activated with the provider, unless within the 60-day period the service provider determines the handset was purchased through fraud."

https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/24/10/21/2153237/t-mobile-att-oppose-unlocking-rule-claim-locked-phones-are-good-for-users?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/24/10/21/2153237/t-mobile-att-oppose-unlocking-rule-claim-locked-phones-are-good-for-users?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


iFixit's Meta Quest 3S Teardown Reveals a Quest 2 'Hiding Inside'

In a new teardown video published last week, iFixit reveals a Quest 2 headset "hiding inside" the cheaper yet enhanced Quest 3S. The Verge reports: The first hint of that is the headset's Fresnel lenses, which iFixit's Shahram Mokhtari writes in a blog post are "100% compatible" with those used by the Quest 2. The headset has the older headset's IPD adjustment mechanism, as well; and it shares the same single LCD panel, rather than using one panel per eye, like the Meta Quest 3.

Legacy parts aside, iFixit found that the 3S uses two IR sensors for depth mapping instead of a single depth sensor. That "rare iterative improvement over the Quest 3" performed "exceptionally well in unlit spaces," Mokhtari writes in the blog. And of course, it uses the same Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 SoC as the Quest 3, and works with Meta's newer Touch Plus controllers, which are sold separately. The Quest 3S "costs $299.99, while the Quest 3 is $499.99," notes The Verge. So, not only is the 3S cheaper but replacement parts should be easier to find since the Quest 2 "has already been around for four years."

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/10/21/2130238/ifixits-meta-quest-3s-teardown-reveals-a-quest-2-hiding-inside?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/10/21/2130238/ifixits-meta-quest-3s-teardown-reveals-a-quest-2-hiding-inside?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Nicolas Cage Urges Young Actors To Protect Themselves From AI

Actor Nicolas Cage warned young performers about the dangers of AI in film production during his speech at the Newport Beach Film Festival on Sunday. Cage urged actors to protect their craft from employment-based digital replica (EBDR) technology, which allows studios to manipulate performances post-filming. "This technology wants to take your instrument," Cage said. He explained that EBDR enables studios to alter actors' faces, voices, and body language after shooting, potentially compromising artistic integrity. Cage cited his cameo in "The Flash" as an example of EBDR use. He advised actors to consider their rights when approached with contracts permitting EBDR, coining the phrase "MVMFMBMI: my voice, my face, my body, my imagination."

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/21/1551249/nicolas-cage-urges-young-actors-to-protect-themselves-from-ai?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/21/1551249/nicolas-cage-urges-young-actors-to-protect-themselves-from-ai?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


AI 'Bubble' Will Burst 99% of Players, Says Baidu CEO

Baidu CEO Robin Li has proclaimed that hallucinations produced by large language models are no longer a problem, and predicted a massive wipeout of AI startups when the "bubble" bursts. From a report: "The most significant change we're seeing over the past 18 to 20 months is the accuracy of those answers from the large language models," gushed the CEO at last week's Harvard Business Review Future of Business Conference. "I think over the past 18 months, that problem has pretty much been solved â" meaning when you talk to a chatbot, a frontier model-based chatbot, you can basically trust the answer," he added.

Li also described the AI sector as in an "inevitable bubble," similar to the dot-com bubble in the '90s. "Probably one percent of the companies will stand out and become huge and will create a lot of value or will create tremendous value for the people, for the society. And I think we are just going through this kind of process," stated Li. The CEO also guesstimated it will be another 10 to 30 years before human jobs are displaced by the technology. "Companies, organizations, governments and ordinary people all need to prepare for that kind of paradigm shift," he warned.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/21/1616200/ai-bubble-will-burst-99-of-players-says-baidu-ceo?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/21/1616200/ai-bubble-will-burst-99-of-players-says-baidu-ceo?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed