VMware Makes Workstation and Fusion Free For Everyone

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: VMware has announced that its VMware Fusion and VMware Workstation desktop hypervisors are now free to everyone for commercial, educational, and personal use. In May, the company also made VMware Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro free for personal use, allowing students and home users to set up virtualized test labs and experiment with other OSs by running virtual machines and Kubernetes clusters on Windows, Linux, and macOS devices. Starting this week, the Pro versions and the two products will no longer be available under a paid subscription model.

"Effective immediately, both VMware Fusion and VMware Workstation will transition away from the paid subscription model, meaning you can now utilize these tools without any cost. The paid versions of these offerings -- Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro -- are no longer available for purchase," said Broadcom product marketing director Himanshu Singh. "If you're currently under a commercial contract, you can rest easy knowing that your agreement will remain in effect until the end of your term. You will continue to receive the full level of service and enterprise-grade support as per your contract."

While the free versions will include all the features available in the paid products, Broadcom will no longer provide users with support ticketing for troubleshooting. Broadcom plans to continue developing new features and improvements and ensure that updates are rolled out promptly. "We're actively investing in new features, usability improvements, and other valuable enhancements," Singh added. "Our engineering teams are committed to maintaining our high standards for stability, with timely updates and reliable performance." You can download VMware Fusion and VMware Workstation here (sign-in required).

https://slashdot.org/story/24/11/12/2152228/vmware-makes-workstation-and-fusion-free-for-everyone?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/11/12/2152228/vmware-makes-workstation-and-fusion-free-for-everyone?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Microsoft Edge Is Trying To Forcefully Get Your Chrome Tabs Again

A new update is rolling out that automatically starts Microsoft's Edge browser and prompts users to import their Chrome tabs -- a move that has sparked criticism over its invasive tactics to encourage Edge adoption. The Verge's Tom Warren reports: My colleague Richard Lawler noticed that Edge started automatically on his PC last week at boot and offered up a new prompt to "enhance your browsing experience." The pop-up has a "bring over your data from other browsers regularly" option ticked by default, and encourages people to confirm and continue with a big blue button. If you want to dismiss this prompt there's a tiny white X button that looks similar to the sparkles Microsoft is using in the background of the prompt.

If you simply hit confirm and continue then Microsoft Edge will import your Chrome data and continually import your tabs if you have Chrome set as default. The prompt seems to mainly appear on PCs with Chrome installed, suggesting that Microsoft is once again targeting Chrome users. Microsoft confirmed the new "feature" to The Verge. "This is a notification giving people the choice to import data from other browsers," explains Microsoft spokesperson Caitlin Roulston. "There is an option to turn it off."

https://slashdot.org/story/24/11/12/2130236/microsoft-edge-is-trying-to-forcefully-get-your-chrome-tabs-again?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/11/12/2130236/microsoft-edge-is-trying-to-forcefully-get-your-chrome-tabs-again?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Open Source Project DeFlock Is Mapping License Plate Surveillance Cameras All Over the World

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Flock is one of the largest vendors of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) in the country. The company markets itself as having the goal to fully "eliminate crime" with the use of ALPRs and other connected surveillance cameras, a target experts say is impossible. [...] Flock and automated license plate reader cameras owned by other companies are now in thousands of neighborhoods around the country. Many of these systems talk to each other and plug into other surveillance systems, making it possible to track people all over the country.

"It went from me seeing 10 license plate readers to probably seeing 50 or 60 in a few days of driving around," [said Alabama resident and developer Will Freeman]. "I wanted to make a record of these things. I thought, 'Can I make a database of these license plate readers?'" And so he made a map, and called it DeFlock. DeFlock runs on Open Street Map, an open source, editable mapping software. He began posting signs for DeFlock (PDF) to the posts holding up Huntsville's ALPR cameras, and made a post about the project to the Huntsville subreddit, which got good attention from people who lived there. People have been plotting not just Flock ALPRs, but all sorts of ALPRs, all over the world. [...]

When I first talked to Freeman, DeFlock had a few dozen cameras mapped in Huntsville and a handful mapped in Southern California and in the Seattle suburbs. A week later, as I write this, DeFlock has crowdsourced the locations of thousands of cameras in dozens of cities across the United States and the world. He said so far more than 1,700 cameras have been reported in the United States and more than 5,600 have been reported around the world. He has also begun scraping parts of Flock's website to give people a better idea of where to look to map them. For example, Flock says that Colton, California, a city with just over 50,000 people outside of San Bernardino, has 677 cameras.
People who submit cameras to DeFlock have the ability to note the direction that they are pointing in, which can help people understand how these cameras are being positioned and the strategies that companies and police departments are using when deploying them. For example, all of the cameras in downtown Huntsville are pointing away from the downtown core, meaning they are primarily focused on detecting cars that are entering downtown Huntsville from other areas.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/11/12/2115209/open-source-project-deflock-is-mapping-license-plate-surveillance-cameras-all-over-the-world?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/11/12/2115209/open-source-project-deflock-is-mapping-license-plate-surveillance-cameras-all-over-the-world?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


US Senate To Revive Software Patents With PERA Bill Vote On Thursday

zoobab writes: The US Senate to set to revive Software Patents with the PERA Bill, with a vote on Thursday, November 14, 2024.

A crucial Senate Committee is on the cusp of voting on two bills that would resurrect some of the most egregious software patents and embolden patent trolls. The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA), S. 2140, would dismantle vital safeguards that prohibit software patents on overly broad concepts. If passed, courts would be compelled to approve software patents on mundane activities like mobile food ordering or basic online financial transactions. This would unleash a torrent of vague and overbroad software patents, which would be wielded by patent trolls to extort small businesses and individuals. The EFF is inviting members of the public to contact their Senators.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/11/12/1724203/us-senate-to-revive-software-patents-with-pera-bill-vote-on-thursday?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/11/12/1724203/us-senate-to-revive-software-patents-with-pera-bill-vote-on-thursday?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Pakistan Limits Outdoor Activities, Market Hours To Curb Air Pollution-Related Illness

Pakistan's Punjab province banned most outdoor activities and ordered shops, markets and malls in some areas to close early from Monday to curb illnesses caused by intense air pollution. From a report: The province has closed educational institutions and public spaces like parks and zoos until Nov. 17 in places including Lahore, the world's most polluted city in terms of air quality, according to Swiss group IQAir's live ratings.

The districts of Lahore, Multan, Faisalabad and Gujranwala have seen an unprecedented rise in patients with respiratory diseases, eye and throat irritation, and pink eye disease, the Punjab government said in an order issued late on Sunday. The new restrictions will also remain in force until Nov. 17. "The spread of conjunctivitis/ pink eye disease due to bacterial or viral infection, smoke, dust or chemical exposure is posing a serious and imminent threat to public health," the Punjab government said.

While outdoor activities including sports events, exhibitions and festivals, and dining at restaurants have been prohibited, "unavoidable religious rites" are exempt from this direction, the order said.
Outlets like pharmacies, oil depots, dairy shops and fruit and vegetable shops have similarly been exempted from the directions to close by 8 p.m. local time. Lahore's air quality remained hazardous on Monday, with an index score of more than 600, according to IQAir, but this was significantly lower than the 1,900 that it touched in places earlier this month. A score of 0-50 is considered good.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/11/12/1538253/pakistan-limits-outdoor-activities-market-hours-to-curb-air-pollution-related-illness?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/11/12/1538253/pakistan-limits-outdoor-activities-market-hours-to-curb-air-pollution-related-illness?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


LG's New Stretchable Display Can Grow By 50%

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: LG Display, one of the global leaders in display technologies, unveiled a new stretchable display prototype that can expand by up to 50%. This makes it the most stretchable display in the industry, more than doubling the previous record of 20% elongation. [...] The prototype being flexed in [this image] is a 12-inch screen with a 100-pixel-per-inch resolution and full RGB color that expands to 18-inches when pulled. LG Display said that it based the stretchable display on a "special silicon material substrate used in contact lenses" and then improved its properties for better "stretchability and flexibility." It also used a new wiring design structure and a micro-LED light source, allowing users to repeatedly stretch the screen over 10,000 times with no effect on image quality.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/11/12/0215255/lgs-new-stretchable-display-can-grow-by-50?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/11/12/0215255/lgs-new-stretchable-display-can-grow-by-50?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


SpaceX To Attempt Daring Orbital Refueling Test of Starship

SpaceX plans an ambitious in-orbit refueling test between two Starships in March 2025. "The orbital demonstration is a major step for Starship, and a crucial part of SpaceX's capability of delivering NASA's Artemis mission to the Moon," reports Gizmodo. The plans were unveiled during Spaceflight Now's recent interview (source: YouTube) with Kent Chojnacki, the deputy manager for NASA's Human Landing System program. Gizmodo reports: SpaceX is under a $53.2 million contract with NASA, signed in 2020, to use Starship tankers for in-orbit propellant transfer. During its third test flight, SpaceX transferred around 10 metric tons of liquid oxygen from Starship's header tank to its main tank while it was in space. The upcoming demonstration, however, requires a lot more of the launch vehicle. Two Starships will launch to low Earth orbit around three to four weeks apart, the spacecraft will meet and dock in orbit, and one will transfer propellant to another. After the demonstration, the two Starships will undock from one another and deorbit.

"Once you've done that, you've really cracked open the opportunity to move massive amounts of payload and cargo outside of the Earth's sphere," Chojnacki said during the interview. The in-flight propellant transfer tests are set to conclude in the summer. With in-flight refueling, NASA is aiming to develop technologies to "enable long-term cryogenic fluid management, which is essential for establishing a sustainable presence on the Moon and enabling crewed missions to Mars," the space agency stated when the contract was signed.

SpaceX is developing a version of Starship to land humans on the Moon in September 2026 as part of NASA's Artemis 3 mission. To prepare for the Moon mission, SpaceX is expected to launch between eight and 16 propellant tanker Starships into low Earth orbit in rapid succession. Each of the tankers will carry around 100 to 150 tons of liquid oxygen and liquid methane and will dock with a larger fuel depot. The orbiting depot will then connect with the Human Landing System Starship, filling its massive 1,200-ton fuel tanks. Once refueled, the Starship lander will continue its journey toward the Moon.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/11/12/0211208/spacex-to-attempt-daring-orbital-refueling-test-of-starship?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/11/12/0211208/spacex-to-attempt-daring-orbital-refueling-test-of-starship?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Somebody Moved UK's Oldest Satellite, No-One Knows Who or Why

The UK's oldest satellite, Skynet-1A, mysteriously shifted from its original orbit above East Africa to a new position over the Americas, likely due to a mid-1970s command whose origins remain unknown. "The question is who that was and with what authority and purpose?" asks the BBC. From the report: "It's still relevant because whoever did move Skynet-1A did us few favours," says space consultant Dr Stuart Eves. "It's now in what we call a 'gravity well' at 105 degrees West longitude, wandering backwards and forwards like a marble at the bottom of a bowl. And unfortunately this brings it close to other satellite traffic on a regular basis. "Because it's dead, the risk is it might bump into something, and because it's 'our' satellite we're still responsible for it," he explains.

Dr Eves has looked through old satellite catalogues, the National Archives and spoken to satellite experts worldwide, but he can find no clues to the end-of-life behaviour of Britain's oldest spacecraft. It might be tempting to reach for a conspiracy theory or two, not least because it's hard to hear the name "Skynet" without thinking of the malevolent, self-aware artificial intelligence (AI) system in The Terminator movie franchise. But there's no connection other than the name and, in any case, real life is always more prosaic.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/11/12/0159222/somebody-moved-uks-oldest-satellite-no-one-knows-who-or-why?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/11/12/0159222/somebody-moved-uks-oldest-satellite-no-one-knows-who-or-why?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


SpaceX Alums Find Traction On Earth With Their Mars-Inspired CO2-To-Fuel Tech

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A trend has emerged among a small group of climate tech founders who start with their eyes fixed on space and soon realize their technology would do a lot more good here on Earth. Halen Mattison and Luke Neise fit the bill. Mattison spent time at SpaceX, while Neise worked at Vanderbilt Aerospace Design Laboratory and Varda Space Industries. The pair originally wanted to sell reactors to SpaceX that could turn carbon dioxide into methane for use on Mars. Today, they're building them to replace natural gas that's pumped from underground. Their company, General Galactic, which emerged from stealth in April, has built a pilot system that can produce 2,000 liters of methane per day. Neise, General Galactic's CTO, told TechCrunch that he expects that figure to rise as the company replaces off-the-shelf components with versions designed in-house.

"We think that's a big missing piece in the energy mix right now," said Mattison, the startup's CEO. "Being able to own our supply chains, to be able to fully control all of the parameters, to challenge the requirements between components, all of that unlocks some real elegance in the engineering solution." At commercial scale, the company's reactors will be assembled using mass production techniques. It's a contrast to how most petrochemical and energy facilities are built today. General Galactic is focused on producing methane. However, Mattison said the company isn't necessarily looking to displace the fuel from heating and energy. "Those are generally going toward electrification," he said. Instead, it intends to sell its methane to companies that use it as an ingredient or to power a process, like in chemical or plastic manufacturing. The company isn't ruling out transportation entirely either. Mattison hinted that General Galactic is working on other hydrocarbons that could be used for transportation, like jet fuel. "Stay tuned," he said. General Galactic plans to deploy its first modules next year. The startup "hopes its modules will be able to plug into existing infrastructure, speeding its adoption relative to other fuels like hydrogen," notes TechCrunch.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/11/12/0150243/spacex-alums-find-traction-on-earth-with-their-mars-inspired-co2-to-fuel-tech?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/11/12/0150243/spacex-alums-find-traction-on-earth-with-their-mars-inspired-co2-to-fuel-tech?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


'Punctuation Is Dead Because the iPhone Keyboard Killed It'

Android Authority's Rita El Khoury argues that the decline in punctuation use and capitalization in social media writing, especially among younger generations, can largely be attributed to the iPhone keyboard. "By hiding the comma and period behind a symbol switch, the iPhone keyboard encourages the biggest grammar fiends to be lazy and skip punctuation," writes El Khoury. She continues: Pundits will say that it's just an extra tap to add a period (double-tap the space bar) or a comma (switch to the characters layout and tap comma), but it's one extra tap too many. When you're firing off replies and messages at a rapid rate, the jarring pause while the keyboard switches to symbols and then switches back to letters is just too annoying, especially if you're doing it multiple times in one message. I hate pausing mid-sentence so much that I will sacrifice a comma at the altar of speed. [...]

The real problem, at the end of the day, is that iPhones -- not Android phones -- are popular among Gen Z buyers, especially in the US -- a market with a huge online presence and influence. Add that most smartphone users tend to stick to default apps on their phones, so most of them end up with the default iPhone keyboard instead of looking at better (albeit often even slower) alternatives. And it's that same keyboard that's encouraging them to be lazy instead of making it easier to add punctuation.

So yes, I blame the iPhone for killing the period and slaughtering the comma, and I think both of those are great offenders in the death of the capital letter. But trends are cyclical, and if the cassette player can make a comeback, so can the comma. Who knows, maybe in a year or two, writing like a five-year-old will be passe, too, and it'll be trendy to use proper grammar again.

https://apple.slashdot.org/story/24/11/11/225255/punctuation-is-dead-because-the-iphone-keyboard-killed-it?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://apple.slashdot.org/story/24/11/11/225255/punctuation-is-dead-because-the-iphone-keyboard-killed-it?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


A New Streaming Customer Emerges: The Subscription Pauser

Customers have formed new habits of regularly pausing subscriptions and returning to them within a year. From a report: As subscription prices rise and streaming-centric home entertainment becomes the norm, families are establishing their own hierarchies of always-on services versus those that come and go with seasons of hit shows or sports. New data from subscription analytics provider Antenna offer a deeper look at the subscription pausing habits customers are developing as services like Netflix, Disney+ and Apple TV+ become the go-to way of watching TV in many households, instead of cable.

The monthly median percentage of premium streaming video subscribers who rejoined the same service they had canceled within the prior year was 34.2% in the first nine months of 2024, up from 29.8% in 2022. The habit of pausing and resuming service means that the industrywide rate of customer defections, which has risen over the past year, is less pronounced than it appears. The average rate of U.S. customer cancellations among premium streaming video services reached 5.2% in August, but after factoring in re-subscribers, the rate of defections was lower at 3.5%.

The increasingly ingrained habit underscores the importance of streamers regularly delivering hit shows and films as well as live fare such as sporting events. Streaming services are trying to use a mix of bundles, promotions, well-timed marketing emails and lower-cost ad-supported plans to lure customers back faster or help them feel they are getting enough value to stick around longer.

https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/24/11/11/2138233/a-new-streaming-customer-emerges-the-subscription-pauser?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/24/11/11/2138233/a-new-streaming-customer-emerges-the-subscription-pauser?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


D-Link Won't Fix Critical Flaw Affecting 60,000 Older NAS Devices

D-Link confirmed no fix will be issued for the over 60,000 D-Link NAS devices that are vulnerable to a critical command injection flaw (CVE-2024-10914), allowing unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary commands through unsanitized HTTP requests. The networking company advises users to retire or isolate the affected devices from public internet access. BleepingComputer reports: The flaw impacts multiple models of D-Link network-attached storage (NAS) devices that are commonly used by small businesses: DNS-320 Version 1.00; DNS-320LW Version 1.01.0914.2012; DNS-325 Version 1.01, Version 1.02; and DNS-340L Version 1.08. [...] A search that Netsecfish conducted on the FOFA platform returned 61,147 results at 41,097 unique IP addresses for D-Link devices vulnerable to CVE-2024-10914.

In a security bulletin today, D-Link has confirmed that a fix for CVE-2024-10914 is not coming and the vendor recommends that users retire vulnerable products. If that is not possible at the moment, users should at least isolate them from the public internet or place them under stricter access conditions. The same researcher discovered in April this year an arbitrary command injection and hardcoded backdoor flaw, tracked as CVE-2024-3273, impacting mostly the same D-Link NAS models as the latest flaw.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/11/11/2158210/d-link-wont-fix-critical-flaw-affecting-60000-older-nas-devices?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/11/11/2158210/d-link-wont-fix-critical-flaw-affecting-60000-older-nas-devices?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Beatles' 'Now and Then' Makes History As First AI-Assisted Song To Earn Grammy Nomination

"Now and Then" by the Beatles has been nominated for Record of the Year and Best Rock Performance at the 2025 Grammy Awards -- marking the first time a song created with the assistance of AI has earned a Grammy nomination. From a report: When "Now and Then" first came out in late 2023, the disclosure that it was finalized utilizing AI caused an uproar. At the time, many fans assumed that the remaining Fab Four members -- Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr -- must have used generative AI to deepfake the late John Lennon. That was not actually the case. Instead, the Beatles used a form of AI known as "stem separation" to help them clean up a 60-year-old, low-fidelity demo recorded by Lennon during his lifetime and to make it useable in a finished master recording.

With stem separation, the Beatles could isolate Lennon's vocal and get rid of excess noise. Proponents of this form of technology say it has major benefits for remastering and cleaning up older catalogs. Recently, AudioShake, a leading company in this space, struck a partnership with Disney Music Group to help the media giant clean up its older catalog to "unlock new listening and fan engagement experiences" like lyric videos, film/TV licensing opportunities, re-mastering and more.

https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/24/11/11/2132242/beatles-now-and-then-makes-history-as-first-ai-assisted-song-to-earn-grammy-nomination?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/24/11/11/2132242/beatles-now-and-then-makes-history-as-first-ai-assisted-song-to-earn-grammy-nomination?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


GIMP 3.0 Enters RC Testing After 20 Years

GIMP 3.0, the long-awaited upgrade from the popular open-source image editor, has entered the release candidate phase, signaling that a stable version may be available by the end of this year or early 2025. Tom's Hardware reports: So, what has changed with the debut of GIMP 3? The new interface is still quite recognizable to classic GIMP users but has been considerably smoothed out and is far more scalable to high-resolution displays than it used to be. Several familiar icons have been carefully converted to SVGs or Scalable Vector Graphics, enabling supremely high-quality, scalable assets.

While PNGs, or Portable Network Graphics, are also known to be high-quality due to their lack of compression, they are still suboptimal compared to SVGs when SVGs are applicable. The work of converting GIMP's tool icons to SVG is still in progress per the original blog post, but it's good that developer Denis Rangelov has already started on the work.

Many aspects of the GIMP 3.0 update are almost wholly on the backend for ensuring project and plugin compatibility with past projects made with previous versions of GIMP. To summarize: a public GIMP API is being stabilized to make it easier to port GIMP 2.10-based plugins and scripts to GIMP 3.0. Several bugs related to color accuracy have been fixed to improve color management while still maintaining compatibility with past GIMP projects. You can read the GIMP team's blog post here.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/11/11/2144232/gimp-30-enters-rc-testing-after-20-years?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/11/11/2144232/gimp-30-enters-rc-testing-after-20-years?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Apple Will Let You Share AirTag Locations With a Link

With iOS 18.2, Apple will allow you to share the location of a lost AirTag with other people and with more than 15 different airlines. The Verge reports: When using the feature, you can generate a Share Item Location link within the Find My app on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Once you share the link with someone, they can click on it to view an interactive map with the location of your lost item. Apple will update the website automatically when the lost item moves, and it will also display a timestamp when it moved last. Apple will turn off the feature once you find your lost item. You can also manually stop sharing the location of an AirTag at any time, or the link will "automatically expire after seven days." [...]

As part of the rollout, Apple is partnering with over 15 airlines, including Delta, United, Virgin Atlantic, Lufthansa, Air Canada, and more. All of these airlines will be able to "privately and securely" accept links to lost items, as "access to each link will be limited to a small number of people, and recipients will be required to authenticate in order to view the link through either their Apple Account or partner email address." This feature will be available to airlines in the "coming months." Additionally, SITA, a baggage tracing solution, will also implement Share Item Location into its luggage tracker.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/11/11/2129223/apple-will-let-you-share-airtag-locations-with-a-link?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/11/11/2129223/apple-will-let-you-share-airtag-locations-with-a-link?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Amazon Confirms Employee Data Stolen After Hacker Claims MOVEit Breach

Amazon has confirmed that employee data was compromised after a "security event" at a third-party vendor. From a report: In a statement given to TechCrunch on Monday, Amazon spokesperson Adam Montgomery confirmed that employee information had been involved in a data breach. "Amazon and AWS systems remain secure, and we have not experienced a security event. We were notified about a security event at one of our property management vendors that impacted several of its customers including Amazon. The only Amazon information involved was employee work contact information, for example work email addresses, desk phone numbers, and building locations," Montgomery said.

Amazon declined to say how many employees were impacted by the breach. It noted that the unnamed third-party vendor doesn't have access to sensitive data such as Social Security numbers or financial information and said the vendor had fixed the security vulnerability responsible for the data breach. The confirmation comes after a threat actor claimed to have published data stolen from Amazon on notorious hacking site BreachForums. The individual claims to have more than 2.8 million lines of data, which they say was stolen during last year's mass-exploitation of MOVEit Transfer.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/11/11/2124251/amazon-confirms-employee-data-stolen-after-hacker-claims-moveit-breach?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/11/11/2124251/amazon-confirms-employee-data-stolen-after-hacker-claims-moveit-breach?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Are America's Courts Going After Digital Libraries?

A new article at Reason.com argues that U.S. courts "are coming for digital libraries."

In September, a federal appeals court dealt a major blow to the Internet Archive — one of the largest online repositories of free books, media, and software — in a copyright case with significant implications for publishers, libraries, and readers. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that found the Internet Archive's huge, digitized lending library of copyrighted books was not covered by the "fair use" doctrine and infringed on the rights of publishers. Agreeing with the Archive's interpretation of fair use "would significantly narrow — if not entirely eviscerate — copyright owners' exclusive right to prepare derivative works," the 2nd Circuit ruled. "Were we to approve [Internet Archive's] use of the works, there would be little reason for consumers or libraries to pay publishers for content they could access for free."

Others disagree, according to some links shared in a recent email from the Internet Archive. Public Knowledge CEO Chris Lewis argues the court's logic renders the fair use doctrine "almost unusuable". And that's just the beginning...

This decision harms libraries. It locks them into an e-book ecosystem designed to extract as much money as possible while harvesting (and reselling) reader data en masse. It leaves local communities' reading habits at the mercy of curatorial decisions made by four dominant publishing companies thousands of miles away. It steers Americans away from one of the few remaining bastions of privacy protection and funnels them into a surveillance ecosystem that, like Big Tech, becomes more dangerous with each passing data breach.

But lawyer/librarian Kyle K. Courtney writes that the case "is specific only to the parties, and does not impact the other existing versions of controlled digital lending."
 Additionally, this decision is limited to the 2nd Circuit and is not binding anywhere else — in other words, it does not apply to the 47 states outside the 2nd Circuit's jurisdiction. In talking with colleagues in the U.S. this week and last, many are continuing their programs because they believe their digital loaning programs fall outside the scope of this ruling... Moreover, the court's opinion focuses on digital books that the court said "are commercially available for sale or license in any electronic text format." Therefore, there remains a significant number of materials in library collections that have not made the jump to digital, nor are likely to, meaning that there is no ebook market to harm — nor is one likely to emerge for certain works, such as those that are no longer commercially viable...
This case represents just one instance in an ongoing conversation about library lending in the digital age, and the possibility of appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court means the final outcome is far from settled.

Some more quotes from links shared by Internet Archive:

"It was clear that the only reason all the big publishers sued the Internet Archive was to put another nail in the coffin of libraries and push to keep this ebook licensing scheme grift going. Now the courts have helped." — TechDirt
"The case against the Internet Archive is not just a story about the ruination of an online library, but a grander narrative of our times: how money facilitates the transference of knowledge away from the public, back towards the few." — blogger Hannah Williams
Thanks to Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the news.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/11/11/0112229/are-americas-courts-going-after-digital-libraries?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/11/11/0112229/are-americas-courts-going-after-digital-libraries?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Cuba's Power Grid Collapses Again After Second Hurricane.  And Then an Earthquake Hit

Wednesday Cuba was hit by a major hurricane which took down its entire power grid again, this time for about 24 hours, according to CNN:

Videos of the aftermath showed power infrastructure turned into a mangled mess and power poles down on streets. Hundreds of technicians were mobilized Thursday to reestablish power connections, according to state media... Operations at two electrical plants were partially restored and parts of eastern and central Cuba had electricity back up by Thursday afternoon, state media reported... The country's power grid has collapsed multiple times, including when Hurricane Oscar hit in October and killed at least 7 people.
In the capital of Havana, where 2 million people live, power had been restored to less than 20% of the city by late Friday afternoon, . "Authorities had not yet given an estimate for when power would be fully restored..."
Then tonight, CNN reported:

A 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of eastern Cuba on Sunday, causing material damage in several regions as the island continues to recover from widespread blackouts and the impact of two hurricanes over the past few weeks. The earthquake was reported about 39 km (24 miles) south of Bartolomé Masó before noon local time, about an hour after a 5.9 magnitude quake rocked the area, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said.
"There have been landslides, damage to homes and power lines," Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said, adding that authorities are evaluating the situation to start recovery efforts.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/11/11/0243251/cubas-power-grid-collapses-again-after-second-hurricane-and-then-an-earthquake-hit?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/11/11/0243251/cubas-power-grid-collapses-again-after-second-hurricane-and-then-an-earthquake-hit?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


How Gophers Restored Plant Life to a Volcano-Ravage Mountain - in One Day.

When a volcano erupted in 1980 about 70 miles from Portland, "lava incinerated anything living for miles around," remembers an announcement from the University of California at Riverside. But "As an experiment, scientists later dropped gophers onto parts of the scorched mountain for only 24 hours.

"The benefits from that single day were undeniable — and still visible 40 years later."

Once the blistering blast of ash and debris cooled, scientists theorized that, by digging up beneficial bacteria and fungi, gophers might be able to help regenerate lost plant and animal life on the mountain. Two years after the eruption, they tested this theory. "They're often considered pests, but we thought they would take old soil, move it to the surface, and that would be where recovery would occur," said UC Riverside microbiologist Michael Allen.

They were right. But the scientists did not expect the benefits of this experiment would still be visible in the soil today, in 2024. A paper out this week in the journal Frontiers in Microbiomes details an enduring change in the communities of fungi and bacteria where gophers had been, versus nearby land where they were never introduced. "In the 1980s, we were just testing the short-term reaction," said Allen. "Who would have predicted you could toss a gopher in for a day and see a residual effect 40 years later?"

In 1983, Allen and Utah State University's James McMahon helicoptered to an area where the lava had turned the land into collapsing slabs of porous pumice. At that time, there were only about a dozen plants that had learned to live on these slabs. A few seeds had been dropped by birds, but the resulting seedlings struggled. After scientists dropped a few local gophers on two pumice plots for a day, the land exploded again with new life. Six years post-experiment, there were 40,000 plants thriving on the gopher plots. The untouched land remained mostly barren.

All this was possible because of what isn't always visible to the naked eye. Mycorrhizal fungi penetrate into plant root cells to exchange nutrients and resources. They can help protect plants from pathogens in the soil, and critically, by providing nutrients in barren places, they help plants establish themselves and survive.
Mycorrhizal fungi also helped an old-growth forest survive, accoridng to the researchers — even after volcano ash had caused them to drop their needles...

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/11/10/2326249/how-gophers-restored-plant-life-to-a-volcano-ravage-mountain---in-one-day?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/11/10/2326249/how-gophers-restored-plant-life-to-a-volcano-ravage-mountain---in-one-day?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Java Proposals Would Boost Resistance to Quantum Computing Attacks

"Java application security would be enhanced through two proposals aimed at resisting quantum computing attacks," reports InfoWorld, "one plan involving digital signatures and the other key encapsulation."

The two proposals reside in the OpenJDK JEP (JDK Enhancement Proposal) index.

The Quantum-Resistant Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Algorithm proposal calls for enhancing the security of Java applications by providing an implementation of the quantum-resistant module-latticed-based digital signature algorithm (ML-DSA). ML-DSA would secure against future quantum computing attacks by using digital signatures to detect unauthorized modifications to data and to authenticate the identity of signatories. ML-DSA was standardized by the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in FIPS 204.

The Quantum-Resistant Module-Lattice-Based Key Encapsulation Mechanism proposal calls for enhancing application security by providing an implementation of the quantum-resistant module-lattice-based key encapsulation mechanism (ML-KEM). KEMs are used to secure symmetric keys over insecure communication channels using public key cryptography. ML-KEM is designed to be secure against future quantum computing attacks and was standardized by NIST in FIPS 203.

https://developers.slashdot.org/story/24/11/10/1853200/java-proposals-would-boost-resistance-to-quantum-computing-attacks?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://developers.slashdot.org/story/24/11/10/1853200/java-proposals-would-boost-resistance-to-quantum-computing-attacks?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


This Elephant Learned To Use a Hose As a Shower. Then Her Rival Sought Revenge

Slashdot reader sciencehabit shared this report from Science magazine: Elephants love showering to cool off, and most do so by sucking water into their trunks and spitting it over their bodies. But an elderly pachyderm named Mary has perfected the technique by using a hose as a showerhead, much in the way humans do. The behavior is a remarkable example of sophisticated tool use in the animal kingdom. But the story doesn't end there. Mary's long, luxurious baths have drawn so much attention that an envious elephant at the Berlin Zoo has figured out how to shut the water off on her supersoaking rival—a type of sabotage rarely seen among animals. Both behaviors, reported today in Current Biology, further cement elephants as complex thinkers, says Lucy Bates, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Portsmouth not involved in the study. The work, she says, 'suggests problem solving or even 'insight.''

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/11/10/1830235/this-elephant-learned-to-use-a-hose-as-a-shower-then-her-rival-sought-revenge?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/11/10/1830235/this-elephant-learned-to-use-a-hose-as-a-shower-then-her-rival-sought-revenge?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Salesforce to Hire 1,000 People for Big AI Product Sales Push

Salesforce "plans to hire more than 1,000 workers to sell its new generative AI agent product," reports Bloomberg:

The hiring surge is aimed at capitalizing on "amazing momentum" for the new artificial intelligence product, Chief Executive Marc Benioff said in a message. "Agentforce became available just two weeks ago and we're already hearing incredible feedback from our customers."

The top seller of customer relations management software, Salesforce pivoted its AI strategy this year to focus on agents — tools that can complete tasks such as customer support or sales development without human supervision. It launched the product, dubbed Agentforce, last month, with initial pricing of about $2 per agent conversation.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/11/10/1819213/salesforce-to-hire-1000-people-for-big-ai-product-sales-push?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/11/10/1819213/salesforce-to-hire-1000-people-for-big-ai-product-sales-push?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Free Software Foundation Plans Year of Celebrations For Its 40th Anniversary

The Free Software Foundation turns forty on October 4, 2025 "and we will end our thirties on a high note!" they announced this week:

 We wish we were celebrating the achievement of software freedom for all computer users, but we're not there yet. Until our mission becomes reality and we can retire, instead, we are celebrating forty years of activism, and all that we have achieved.

Since our founding in 1985, we laid out many stepping stones on the road to software freedom, and we're eager to continue building the road ahead. We will celebrate our fortieth in the spirit of bringing the international free software community together, discussing what we can do next to make the world freer, and celebrating how far we've come. We're aiming for a libre planet! Sounds familiar? Instead of hosting one LibrePlanet conference in 2025, we're planning a jam-packed anniversary year, filled with several new and exciting activities!

We'll begin the anniversary year with an unprecedented memorabilia auction, starting as a silent auction on March 17, and culminating in a virtual live auction on March 23. By moving out of the FSF office, we got to sort through all the fun and historically important memorabilia and selected the best ones. This is your chance to get your very own personal souvenir of the FSF, from original GNU art to a famous katana and the very same VT220 that was standing on the FSF's front desk, and which people used to display ASCII art or to play free software games.

Let's claim the month of May as libre planet (or libre local) month! We're inviting free software supporters like you anywhere in the world, to organize an in-person community meetup in your area to bring people together. We're setting up a small fund for these local gatherings, can send stickers, flyers, ideas and tips, and you can invite an FSF staff member to give a talk or workshop during your event and of course, we'll help promote it...

Then, on the actual birthday of the FSF on October 4, 2025, there will be a big celebration in Boston, MA, and the entire free software community is invited... These are just some of the big ticket items we have worked out, but there is more! Keep an eye out on the FSF's pages, we'll be posting exact information on everything upcoming.

They're looking for volunteers — and they also suggest organizing a community meetup in your area. Plus, there's also an FSF Anniversary Logo Contest. "We would like to source the fortieth anniversary logo design directly from a free software supporter. Everyone is welcome to submit a design (or even multiple designs) no matter your previous experience in design."

The winning design "will be chosen by the community and ultimately immortalized in the history of the FSF," according to the announcement — displayed on the FSF homepage, printed on all celebration materials, "and possibly even stamped on some merchandise." But of course, the contest's requirements include respecting everyone's freedoms:

- The logo must be produced using exclusively free software editing tools, such as GIMP, Krita, or Inkscape;
- Any fonts used in the design must be under the SIL Open Font license or another free license...

"The final logo will be released under CC BY, attributed to the FSF."

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/11/09/0642203/free-software-foundation-plans-year-of-celebrations-for-its-40th-anniversary?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/11/09/0642203/free-software-foundation-plans-year-of-celebrations-for-its-40th-anniversary?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


NASA Investigates Laser-Beam Welding in a Vacuum for In-Space Manufacturing

NASA hopes to stimulate in-space manufacturing through a multi-year "laser beam welding collaboration" with Ohio State University. The project "seeks to understand the physical processes of welding on the lunar surface," according to NASA.gov, "such as investigating the effects of laser beam welding in a combined vacuum and reduced gravity environment."

The goal is to increase the capabilities of manufacturing in space to potentially assemble large structures or make repairs on the Moon, which will inform humanity's next giant leap of sending astronauts to Mars and beyond. "For a long time, we've used fasteners, rivets, or other mechanical means to keep structures that we assemble together in space," said Andrew O'Connor, a Marshall materials scientist who is helping coordinate the collaborative effort and is NASA's technical lead for the project. "But we're starting to realize that if we really want strong joints and if we want structures to stay together when assembled on the lunar surface, we may need in-space welding."

The ability to weld structures in space would also eliminate the need to transport rivets and other materials, reducing payloads for space travel. That means learning how welds will perform in space. To turn the effort into reality, researchers are gathering data on welding under simulated space conditions, such as temperature and heat transfer in a vacuum; the size and shape of the molten area under a laser beam; how the weld cross-section looks after it solidifies; and how mechanical properties change for welds performed in environmental conditions mimicking the lunar surface. "Once you leave Earth, it becomes more difficult to test how the weld performs, so we are leveraging both experiments and computer modeling to predict welding in space while we're still on the ground," said O'Connor.

In August 2024, a joint team from Ohio State's Welding Engineering and Multidisciplinary Capstone Programs and Marshall's Materials & Processes Laboratory performed high-powered fiber laser beam welding aboard a commercial aircraft that simulated reduced gravity. The aircraft performed parabolic flight maneuvers that began in level flight, pulled up to add 8,000 feet in altitude, and pushed over at the top of a parabolic arc, resulting in approximately 20 seconds of reduced gravity to the passengers and experiments. While floating in this weightless environment, team members performed laser welding experiments in a simulated environment similar to that of both low Earth orbit and lunar gravity. Analysis of data collected by a network of sensors during the tests will help researchers understand the effects of space environments on the welding process and welded material.

They performed that laser-beam welding in a vacuum chamber during the parabolic flight (on a Boeing 727), according to the article — and successfully completed 69 out of 70 welds in microgravity and lunar gravity conditions. "The last time NASA performed welding in space was during the Skylab mission in 1973...

"Practical welding and joining methods and allied processes, including additive manufacturing, will be required to develop the in-space economy."

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/11/10/0120249/nasa-investigates-laser-beam-welding-in-a-vacuum-for-in-space-manufacturing?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/11/10/0120249/nasa-investigates-laser-beam-welding-in-a-vacuum-for-in-space-manufacturing?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


The Team Behind GitHub's 'Atom' IDE Build a Cross-Platform, AI-Optional 'Zed Editor'

Nathan Sobo "joined GitHub in late 2011 to build the Atom text editor," according to an online biography, "and he led the Atom team until 2018." Max Brunsfeld joined the Atom team in 2013, and "While driving Atom towards its 1.0 launch during the day, Max spent nights and weekends building Tree-sitter, a blazing-fast and expressive incremental parsing framework that currently powers all code analysis at GitHub."

Last year they teamed up with Antonio Scandurra (another Atom alumnus) to launch a new startup called Zed (which in 2023 raised $10 million, according to TechCrunch). And today the open source blog It's FOSS checks in on their open-source code editor — "Zed Editor". Mainly written in Rust, it supports running in CLI, diagnosing project-wide errors, split panes, and markdown previews:

By default, any added content is treated as plain text. I used the language switcher to change it to Rust so that I would get proper syntax highlighting, indentation, error detection, and other useful language-specific functions. The switch highlighted all the Rust elements correctly, and I then focused on Zed Editor's user interface. The overall feel of the editor was minimal, with all the important options being laid out nicely.
[Its status bar] had some interesting panels. The first one I checked was the Terminal Panel, which, as the name suggests, lets you run commands, scripts, and facilitates interaction with system files or processes directly from within the editor. I then moved to the Assistant Panel, which is home to various large language models that can be integrated into Zed Editor. There are options like Anthropic, GitHub Copilot Chat, Ollama, OpenAI, and Google AI... The Zed Editor team has also recently introduced Zed AI in collaboration with Anthropic for assisting with coding, allowing for code generation, advanced context-powered interactions, and more...

The real-time collaboration features on Zed Editor are quite appealing too. To check them out, I had to log in with my GitHub account. After logging in, the Collab Panel opened up, and I could see many channels from the official Zed community. I could chat with others, add collaborators to existing projects, join a call with the option to share my screen and track other collaborators' cursors, add new contacts, and carry out many other collaborative tasks.
One can also use extensions and themes to extend what Zed Editor can do. There are some nice pre-installed themes as well.

https://developers.slashdot.org/story/24/11/10/0314256/the-team-behind-githubs-atom-ide-build-a-cross-platform-ai-optional-zed-editor?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://developers.slashdot.org/story/24/11/10/0314256/the-team-behind-githubs-atom-ide-build-a-cross-platform-ai-optional-zed-editor?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Aaron Swartz Day Commemorated With 'Those Carrying on the Work'

Friday "would have been his 38th birthday," writes the EFF, remembering Aaron Swartz as "a digital rights champion who believed deeply in keeping the internet open..." And they add that today the official web site for Aaron Swartz Day honored his memory with a special podcast "featuring those carrying on the work around issues close to his heart," including an appearance by Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive.
The first speaker is Ryan Shapiro, FOIA expert and co-founder of the national security transparency non-profit Property of the People. The Aaron Swartz Day site calls him "the researcher who discovered why the FBI had such an interest in Aaron in the years right before the JSTOR fiasco." (That web page calls it an "Al Qaeda phishing expedition that left Aaron with an 'International Terrorism Investigation' code in his FBI database file forever," as reported by Gizmodo.)

Other speakers on the podcast include:

 Nathan Dyer of SecureDrop, Newsroom Support Engineer for the Freedom of the Press Foundation with an update on SecureDrop
 Tracey Jaquith, Founding Coder and TV Architect at the Internet Archive, discussing "Microservices, Monoliths, and Operational Security — The Internet Archive in 2024."
 Tracy Rosenberg, co-founder of the Aaron Swartz Day Police Surveillance Project and Oakland Privacy, with "an update on the latest crop of surveillance battles."
 Ryan Sternlicht, VR developer, educator, researcher, advisor, and maker, on "The Next Layer of Reality: Social Identity and the New Creator Economy."
 Grant Smith Ellis, Chairperson of the Board, MassCann and Legal Intern at the Parabola Center, on "Jury Trials in the Age of Social Media."
 Michael "Mek" Karpeles, Open Library, Internet Archive, on "When it Rains at the Archive, Build an Ark — Book bans, Lawsuits, & Breaches."
The site also seeks to showcase SecureDrop and Open Library, projects started by Aaron before his death, as well as new projects "directly inspired by Aaron and his work."

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/11/10/0242215/aaron-swartz-day-commemorated-with-those-carrying-on-the-work?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/11/10/0242215/aaron-swartz-day-commemorated-with-those-carrying-on-the-work?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Is There New Evidence for a 9th Planet - Planet X?

This week Discover magazine looks at evidence — both old and new — for a ninth planet in our solar system:

"Orbits of the most distant small bodies — comets or asteroids — seem to be clustered on one half or one side of the solar system," says Amir Siraj [an astrophysicist with Princeton University]. "That's very weird and something that can't be explained by our current understanding of the solar system." A 2014 study in Nature first noted these orbits. A 2021 study in The Astronomical Journal examined the clustering in the orbit and concluded that "Planet Nine" was likely closer and brighter than expected.

Astrophysicists don't agree whether the clustering in the orbit is a real effect. Some have argued it is biased because the view that scientists currently have is limited, Siraj says. "This debate for the last decade has a lot of scientists confused, including myself. I decided to look at the problem from scratch," he says.

In a 2024 paper, Siraj and his co-authors ran simulations of the solar system, including an extra planet beyond Neptune. "We did it 300 times, about 2.5 times more than what was done previously," Siraj says. "In each simulation, you try different parameters for the extra planet. A different mass, a different tilt, a different shape of the orbit. You run these for millions of years, and then you compare the distribution to what we see in our solar system...." They found that the perimeters for this possible planet were different than what has been previously discussed in the scientific literature, and they supported the possibility of an unseen planet beyond Neptune.

Scientists hope a new telescope will have the potential to see deeper into the solar system. In 2025, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory on Cerro Pachón — a mountain in Chile, is expected to go online. The observatory boasts that in the time it takes a person to open up their phone and pose for a selfie, their new telescope will be able to snap an image of 100,000 galaxies, many of which have never been seen by scientists. The telescope will have the largest digital camera ever built, the LSST. Siraj says he expects it will take "the deepest, all-sky survey that humanity has ever conducted." So, what might the Rubin Observatory find past Neptune? Based on the current literature, Siraj sees a few possibilities. One is that the Rubin Observatory, with its increased capabilities, might be able to see a planet beyond Neptune... "Next year is going to be an enormous year for solar system science," he says.

NASA points out that the Hawaii-based Keck and Subaru telescopes are also searching for Planet X, while "a NASA-funded citizen science project called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, encourages the public to help search using images captured by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission.

And starting next year the Rubin observatory will also "search for more Kuiper Belt objects. If the orbits of these objects are systematically aligned with each other, it may give more evidence for the existence of Planet X (Planet Nine), or at least help astronomers know where to search for it.

"Another possibility is that Planet X (Planet Nine) does not exist at all. Some researchers suggest the unusual orbit of those Kuiper Belt objects can be explained by their random distribution."

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

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/11/09/067233/is-there-new-evidence-for-a-9th-planet---planet-x?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/11/09/067233/is-there-new-evidence-for-a-9th-planet---planet-x?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Behind the Scenes at a Minuteman ICBM Test Launch

Tuesday at California's Vandenberg Space Force base, the U.S. launched a Minuteman III missile, "in an important test of the weapon's ability to strike its targets with multiple warheads," according to Air and Space Forces magazine:

The Minuteman III missiles that form a critical leg of the U.S. nuclear triad each carry one nuclear-armed reentry vehicle. But the missile that was tested carried three test warheads... The intercontinental ballastic missile (ICBM) test was controlled by an airborne command post in a test of the U.S. ability to launch its nuclear deterrent from a survivable platform.... Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere, the commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, said in a release: "An airborne launch validates the survivability of our ICBMs, which serve as the strategic backstop of our nation's defense and defense of allies and partners...."

The three test reentry vehicles — one high-fidelity Joint Test Assembly, which carries non-nuclear explosives, and two telemetry Joint Test Assembly objects — struck the Reagan Test Site near the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands roughly 30 minutes later after launch, a flight of about 4,200 miles. "They make up essentially a mock warhead," Col. Dustin Harmon, the commander of the 377th Test and Evaluation Group, the nation's operational ICBM test unit, said in an interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine. "There's two different types. One is telemetered, so it's got a radio transmitter in it, it's got antennas, gyroscopes, accelerometers — all the things that can sense motion and movement. And we fly those or we can put one in there that's called a high-fidelity. That is assembled much like an actual weapon would be, except we use surrogate materials, and so we want it to fly similarly to an actual weapon. ... It has the explosives in it that a normal warhead would to drive a detonation, but there's nothing to drive...."

The U.S. government formally notified Russia in advance of the launch in accordance with a 1988 bilateral agreement. More than 145 countries were also provided with advance notice of the launch under the Hague Code of Conduct — an international understanding on launch notifications. The U.S. also provided advance notice to China, a DOD spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine. China notified the U.S. of an ICBM launch over the Pacific Ocean in September. There is no formal agreement between Washington and Beijing that requires such notifications, but each side provided them to avoid miscalculations.
Test launches happen three times a year, according to the article, yielding "several gigabytes of data" about reentry vehicles, subsystems, and payloads. "There are 400 Minuteman III missiles currently in service across Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike for sharing the article.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/11/09/2135243/behind-the-scenes-at-a-minuteman-icbm-test-launch?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/11/09/2135243/behind-the-scenes-at-a-minuteman-icbm-test-launch?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Retrocomputing Enthusiast Repairs Mattel's 48-Year-Old Handheld Videogame

Back in 1976, Mattel Electronics Auto Race became the very first handheld game to use only solid-state electronics, according to Wikipedia. (Its only mechanical elements were its on/off switch and hand-operated controls...) Nearly half a century goes by — until the ancient and broken gizmo reaches long-time Slashdot reader Shayde, who "dove into disassembling the unit and figuring out the problem."

Ironically, at one point his voltimeter stopped working, because...its batteries were dead. But a tri-wing screwdriver reveals the game's beautiful 1976 circuitboard — before the video fast forwards through "an almost comical attempt by me, a systems software engineer, to sauter the connections back onto this 48-year-old connector." (Instead he ends up replacing the machine's 9-volt battery connector...) On his Patreon page, he writes that filming the video "took a stupidly long time to put together." But their Slashdot submission acknowledges that in the end, "Taking it apart and debugging it was fun. (Slight spoiler: I figured out what was wrong, was an easy fix), and the game plays great now!"

Any Slashdot readers have memories of playing Mattel Electronics Auto Race? My one experience felt like that time that a gaming magazine had nine children (ages 9 to 12) try to play old 1970s-era videogames like Pong. ("Wow. The score is tied. It's so exhilarating..." "My line is so beating the heck out of your stupid line...")

https://games.slashdot.org/story/24/11/09/2049218/retrocomputing-enthusiast-repairs-mattels-48-year-old-handheld-videogame?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://games.slashdot.org/story/24/11/09/2049218/retrocomputing-enthusiast-repairs-mattels-48-year-old-handheld-videogame?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


ChatGPT's Monthly Usage May Now Rival Google Chrome

An anonymous reader shared this report from Digital Trends:

A number of popular generative AI platforms are seeing consistent growth as users are figuring out how they want to use the tools â" and ChatGPT is at the top of the list with the most visits, at 3.7 billion worldwide. So many people are visiting the AI chatbot, its figures are rivaling browser market share. It can only be compared to Google Chrome figures in terms of monthly users, which is estimated to be around 3.45 billion.

Statistics from [web analytics company] Similarweb indicate that ChatGPT saw a 17.2% month-over-month (MoM) growth and a 115.9% year-over-year (YoY) traffic growth... Googleâ(TM)s Chrome browser has a solid market share of 35.4 billion users in 2024. It has seen minimal growth YoY but has grown 45.35% in the last 5 years, according to Statscounter.

The article notes ChatGPT saw a jump in traffic when it changed its dowmain from chat.openai.com to just chatgpt.com -- and that OpenAI recently purchased the domain Chat.com (though "there is no word on what the company plans to do...")

Meanwhile, other AI tools continue to see traffic and growth, despite not being at the same level as ChatGPT. Despite recent plagiarism claims, the Perplexity chatbot has seen 90.8 million visits in October, a 25.5% MoM growth and 199.2% YoY growth. Googleâ(TM)s Gemini Chatbot saw 291.6 million visits in October, a 6.2% MoM growth and 19% YoY growth after the company introduced a new ChromeOS update that brought new AI features to its Chromebooks. Anthropicâ(TM)s Claude chatbot has seen 84.1 million visits in October, a 25.5% MoM growth and 394.9% YoY growth, after recently rolling out a desktop application for Windows and macOS. Microsoftâ(TM)s web-based Copilot website saw 69.4 million visits in October, an 87.6% MoM growth.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/11/09/1939240/chatgpts-monthly-usage-may-now-rival-google-chrome?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
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https://slashdot.org/story/24/11/09/1939240/chatgpts-monthly-usage-may-now-rival-google-chrome?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


How Samsung Fell Behind in the AI Boom - and Lost $126 Billion in Market Value

After missing a chance to capitalize on the AI boom, "Samsung's profit has plunged," reports CNBC, and "around $126 billion has been wiped off its market value, according to data from S&P Capital IQ."

It's gotten so bad that "an executive issued a rare public apology about the company's recent financial performance."

[A]s AI applications such as OpenAI's ChatGPT rose in popularity, the underlying infrastructure required to train the huge models they rely on became a bigger focus. Nvidia has emerged as the top player in this space with its graphics processing units (GPUs) that have become the gold standard used by tech giants for AI training. A crucial part of that semiconductor architecture is high-bandwidth memory, or HBM. This next generation of memory involves stacking multiple dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips, but it had a small market before the AI boom. That's where Samsung got caught out and failed to invest...

SK Hynix saw this opportunity. The company aggressively launched HBM chips which were approved for use in Nvidia architecture and, in the process, the South Korean firm established a close relationship with the U.S. giant. Nvidia's CEO even asked the company to speed up supply of its next generation chip, underscoring the importance of HBM to its products. SK Hynix posted record quarterly operating profit in the September quarter...
Analysts said that Samsung is lagging behind competitors for a number of reasons, including underinvestment in HBM and the fact that it is not a first-mover. "It is fair to say that Samsung has not been able to close the gap with SK Hynix on the HBM development roadmap," said Kazunori Ito [director of equity research at Morningstar]. Samsung's ability to make a comeback in the short term appears to be closely linked to Nvidia. A company must pass a strict qualification process before Nvidia approves it as a HBM supplier — and Samsung has not yet completed this verification. But a green light from Nvidia could open the door for Samsung to return to growth and compete more effectively with SK Hynix, according to analysts.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/11/09/1853256/how-samsung-fell-behind-in-the-ai-boom---and-lost-126-billion-in-market-value?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

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20 Years Ago Today:  'Firefox Browser Takes on Microsoft'

A 2002 Slashdot post informed the world that "Recently Blake Ross, a developer of the Phoenix web browser, has made a post on the Mozillazine forums looking for a new name for the project. Apparently the people over at Phoenix Technologies decided that the name interferes with their trademark since they make an 'internet access device..."

And then, on November 9 of 2004, the BBC reported that "Microsoft's Internet Explorer has a serious rival in the long-awaited Firefox 1.0 web browser, which has just been released." Their headline? "Firefox Browser Takes on Microsoft."

Fans of the software have banded together to raise cash to pay for an advert in the New York Times announcing that version 1.0 of the browser is available. ["Are you fed up with your browser? You're not alone...."] The release of Firefox 1.0 on 9 November might even cause a few heads to turn at Microsoft because the program is steadily winning people away from the software giant's Internet Explorer browser.

Firefox has been created by the Mozilla Foundation which was started by former browser maker Netscape back in 1998... Earlier incarnations, but which had the same core technology, were called Phoenix and Firebird. Since then the software has been gaining praise and converts, not least because of the large number of security problems that have come to light in Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Rivals to IE got a boost in late June when two US computer security organisations warned people to avoid the Microsoft program to avoid falling victim to a serious vulnerability.

Internet monitoring firm WebSideStory has charted the growing population of people using the Firefox browser and says it is responsible for slowly eroding the stranglehold of IE. Before July this year, according to WebSideStory, Internet Explorer was used by about 95% of web surfers. That figure had remained static for years. In July the IE using population dropped to 94.7% and by the end of October stood at 92.9%. The Mozilla Foundation claims that Firefox has been downloaded almost eight million times and has publicly said it would be happy to garner 10% of the Windows- using, net-browsing population.

Firefox is proving popular because, at the moment, it has far fewer security holes than Internet Explorer and has some innovations lacking in Microsoft's program. For instance, Firefox allows the pages of different websites to be arranged as tabs so users can switch easily between them. It blocks pop-ups, has a neat way of finding text on a page and lets you search through the pages you have browsed...
Firefox celebrated its 20th anniversary with a special video touting new and upcoming features like tab previews, marking up PDFs, and tab grouping.

And upgrading to the latest version of Firefox mpw displays this message on a "What's New" page. "Whether you just downloaded Firefox or have been with us since the beginning, you are a vital part of helping us make the internet a better place.
"We can't wait to show you what's coming next." ("Check out our special edition wallpapers — open a new tab and click the gear icon at the top right corner...")

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/11/09/0531257/20-years-ago-today-firefox-browser-takes-on-microsoft?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/11/09/0531257/20-years-ago-today-firefox-browser-takes-on-microsoft?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Police Freak Out at iPhones Mysteriously Rebooting Themselves, Locking Cops Out

Law enforcement officers are warning other officials and forensic experts that iPhones which have been stored securely for forensic examination are somehow rebooting themselves, returning the devices to a state that makes them much harder to unlock, 404 Media is reporting, citing a law enforcement document it obtained. From the report: The exact reason for the reboots is unclear, but the document authors, who appear to be law enforcement officials in Detroit, Michigan, hypothesize that Apple may have introduced a new security feature in iOS 18 that tells nearby iPhones to reboot if they have been disconnected from a cellular network for some time. After being rebooted, iPhones are generally more secure against tools that aim to crack the password of and take data from the phone.

"The purpose of this notice is to spread awareness of a situation involving iPhones, which is causing iPhone devices to reboot in a short amount of time (observations are possibly within 24 hours) when removed from a cellular network," the document reads. Apple did not provide a response on whether it introduced such an update in time for publication.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/11/09/0240202/police-freak-out-at-iphones-mysteriously-rebooting-themselves-locking-cops-out?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
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https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/11/09/0240202/police-freak-out-at-iphones-mysteriously-rebooting-themselves-locking-cops-out?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Google Rolls Out Its Gemini AI-powered Video Presentation App

Google is generally rolling out its Gemini AI-powered Vids app that lets you create video presentations using a prompt. From a report: Some of Vids' key features include letting Gemini auto-insert stock footage for you, generating a script, and making AI voiceovers so you don't have to speak. Google advertises that the tool can help turn customer support articles into videos, make training videos, share company announcements, create meeting recaps, and more. Vids will be available by default for Workspace organizations with access, but Google notes possible usage limits may apply to features like "Help me create" and AI voiceovers starting in 2026.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/11/09/0147217/google-rolls-out-its-gemini-ai-powered-video-presentation-app?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/11/09/0147217/google-rolls-out-its-gemini-ai-powered-video-presentation-app?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Forty-Three Monkeys Escape From US Research Lab

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Police are on the hunt for 43 monkeys who escaped from a research facility in South Carolina, after a keeper left their pen open. The rhesus macaque fugitives broke out of Alpha Genesis, a company that breeds primates for medical testing and research, and are on the loose in a part of the state known as the Lowcountry.
Authorities have urged residents to keep their doors and windows securely closed and to report any sightings immediately. The escaped monkeys are young females, weighing about 7lbs (3.2kg) each, according to the Yemassee Police Department. Police said on Thursday that the company had located the "skittish" group, and "are working to entice them with food."

"Please do not attempt to approach these animals under any circumstances," police said. The statement added that traps had been set in the area, and police were on-site "utilizing thermal-imaging cameras in an attempt to locate the animals". Police say the research company has told them that because of their size, the monkeys have not yet been tested on and "are too young to carry disease." In an update Friday, the local police department said the monkeys are still staying around the perimeter of the facility. "The primates are exhibiting calm and playful behavior, which is a positive indication," the department noted.

"They're just being goofy monkeys jumping back and forth playing with each other," Alpha Genesis CEO Greg Westergaard told CBS News Thursday. "It's kind of like a playground situation here."

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/11/08/2345225/forty-three-monkeys-escape-from-us-research-lab?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/11/08/2345225/forty-three-monkeys-escape-from-us-research-lab?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Matter 1.4 Tries To Set the Smart Home Standard Back On Track

Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from The Verge: It's been two long years since the launch of Matter -- the one smart home standard designed to rule them all -- and there's been a fair amount of disappointment around a sometimes buggy rollout, slow adoption by companies like Apple, Amazon, and Google, and frustrating setup experiences. However, the launch of the Matter 1.4 specification this week shows some signs that the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA, the organization behind Matter) is using more sticks and fewer carrots to get the smart home industry coalition to cooperate.

The new spec introduces 'enhanced multi-admin,' an improvement on multi-admin -- the much-touted interoperability feature that means your Matter smart light can work in multiple ecosystems simultaneously. It brings a solution for making Thread border routers from different companies play nicely together and introduces a potentially easier way to add Matter infrastructure to homes through Wi-Fi routers and access points. Matter 1.4 also brings some big updates to energy management support, including adding heat pumps, home batteries, and solar panels as Matter device types.

https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/24/11/08/2337229/matter-14-tries-to-set-the-smart-home-standard-back-on-track?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/24/11/08/2337229/matter-14-tries-to-set-the-smart-home-standard-back-on-track?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Hackers Are Sending Fraudulent Police Data Requests To Tech Giants To Steal People's Private Information

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The FBI is warning that hackers are obtaining private user information — including emails and phone numbers — from U.S.-based tech companies by compromising government and police email addresses to submit "emergency" data requests. The FBI's public notice filed this week is a rare admission from the federal government about the threat from fraudulent emergency data requests, a legal process designed to help police and federal authorities obtain information from companies to respond to immediate threats affecting someone's life or property. The abuse of emergency data requests is not new, and has been widely reported in recent years. Now, the FBI warns that it saw an "uptick" around August in criminal posts online advertising access to or conducting fraudulent emergency data requests, and that it was going public for awareness.

"Cyber-criminals are likely gaining access to compromised US and foreign government email addresses and using them to conduct fraudulent emergency data requests to US based companies, exposing the personal information of customers to further use for criminal purposes," reads the FBI's advisory. [...] The FBI said in its advisory that it had seen several public posts made by known cybercriminals over 2023 and 2024, claiming access to email addresses used by U.S. law enforcement and some foreign governments. The FBI says this access was ultimately used to send fraudulent subpoenas and other legal demands to U.S. companies seeking private user data stored on their systems. The advisory said that the cybercriminals were successful in masquerading as law enforcement by using compromised police accounts to send emails to companies requesting user data. In some cases, the requests cited false threats, like claims of human trafficking and, in one case, that an individual would "suffer greatly or die" unless the company in question returns the requested information.

The FBI said the compromised access to law enforcement accounts allowed the hackers to generate legitimate-looking subpoenas that resulted in companies turning over usernames, emails, phone numbers, and other private information about their users. But not all fraudulent attempts to file emergency data requests were successful, the FBI said. The FBI said in its advisory that law enforcement organizations should take steps to improve their cybersecurity posture to prevent intrusions, including stronger passwords and multi-factor authentication. The FBI said that private companies "should apply critical thinking to any emergency data requests received," given that cybercriminals "understand the need for exigency."

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/11/08/231226/hackers-are-sending-fraudulent-police-data-requests-to-tech-giants-to-steal-peoples-private-information?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/11/08/231226/hackers-are-sending-fraudulent-police-data-requests-to-tech-giants-to-steal-peoples-private-information?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


TSMC Halts Advanced Chip Shipments To Chinese AI Companies

Starting November 11, TSMC plans to stop supplying 7 nm and smaller chips to Chinese companies working on AI processors and GPUs. "The move is reportedly to ensure it remains compliant with US export restrictions," reports The Register. From the report: This will not affect Chinese customers wanting 7 nm chips from TSMC for other applications such as mobile and communications, according to Nikkei, which said the overall impact on the chipmaker's revenue is likely to be minimal. TrendForce further cites another China-based source who claims the move was at the behest of the US Department of Commerce, which informed TSMC that any such shipments should not proceed unless approved and licensed by its BIS (Bureau of Industry and Security). We asked the agency for confirmation.

Any moves by the silicon supremo is likely to be out of caution to pre-empt accusations from Washington that it isn't doing enough to prevent advanced technology from getting into the hands of Chinese entities that have been sanctioned. As TrendForce notes, it "highlights the foundry giant's delicate position in the global semiconductor supply chain amid the heating chip war between the world's two superpowers."

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/11/08/2248227/tsmc-halts-advanced-chip-shipments-to-chinese-ai-companies?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/11/08/2248227/tsmc-halts-advanced-chip-shipments-to-chinese-ai-companies?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


New Mac Mini Has Modular Storage, 256GB Model Will Have Faster SSD

According to a partial teardown video of Apple's new Mac mini, the new machine features modular storage that can be removed. "As we saw with the Mac Studio, however, replacing the modular storage is complicated," notes MacRumors. The teardown also reveals two 128GB storage chips in the 256GB model, enabling faster SSD speeds comparable to higher-capacity versions. From the report: The criticism surrounding Apple's decision to use a single 256GB chip in some base-model Macs a few years ago primarily came from a vocal contingent of tech enthusiasts, and the average customer is unlikely to even notice the slower speeds in common day-to-day tasks. Nevertheless, it appears that customers who do want the fastest SSD speeds do not need to worry about which storage capacity they choose when ordering the new Mac mini.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/11/08/2240254/new-mac-mini-has-modular-storage-256gb-model-will-have-faster-ssd?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/11/08/2240254/new-mac-mini-has-modular-storage-256gb-model-will-have-faster-ssd?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Scalpers Are Struggling To Resell the PlayStation 5 Pro Because It's in Stock at Most Retailers

Scalpers attempting to profit from Sony's new PlayStation 5 Pro are struggling to sell units above retail price, as widespread availability dampens resale prospects. The $699 console, launched this week with enhanced graphics capabilities, remains in stock at major retailers across the United States and Europe. eBay listings show PS5 Pro units selling below the manufacturer's suggested retail price, with some auctions starting at $640.

While isolated listings reach $2,300, most hover near retail value. UK scalpers face similar challenges, offering units at or below the $900 retail price. Even in Sony's home market of Japan, where availability is tighter, resellers on Mercari barely break even after platform fees and shipping costs. The situation marks a sharp contrast to the original PS5's 2020 launch, when widespread shortages led to significant markups. Only the console's external disc drive, priced at $79.99, commands premiums up to $130 on secondary markets.

https://games.slashdot.org/story/24/11/08/1944205/scalpers-are-struggling-to-resell-the-playstation-5-pro-because-its-in-stock-at-most-retailers?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

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'PS5 Pro Signposts a Disc-Less Future That Few Actually Want'

From an opinion piece on GamesIndustry.biz about the recently launched PS5 Pro that went on sale this week: What I'd argue is actually more interesting about PS5 Pro in a wider perspective isn't what Sony has done to the chips in the system -- it's what they've chosen not to include, and what it tells us about the decision-making process that's likely occurring for the company's future hardware. PS5 Pro doesn't have a disc drive. Anyone who wants to play disc-based games on the system will need to buy one of the add-on drives Sony started selling when the PS5 Slim model was released, adding further to the cost of the already very expensive device.

To add insult to injury, Sony doesn't seem to have made any effort whatsoever to ensure that those drives are actually well-stocked for the launch of the Pro. I can only speak directly to the situation in Japan, where they've been out of stock at most major retailers for months and even second-hand units are being sold at three to four times SRP by scalpers. But asking around suggests that the situation isn't much better in other regions. That's a very rough welcome to PS5 Pro ownership for anyone upgrading who has a collection of games on disc.

It's possible, of course, that Sony excluded the drive simply because its cost would push the Pro's price tag even higher. However, the incongruity of Sony's "Pro" console lacking the basic ability to play the games Sony sells at retailers all around the world is striking, and it's difficult to see the decision to accept that incongruity -- and the inconvenience it would inevitably cause for customers -- as anything other than strategic.

Digital sales make up a bigger and bigger portion of the industry's revenues every year, but physical game sales are still a very big deal -- and physical games are products that fall outside the control of publishers and platform holders in a way that they have found increasingly irritating in recent years. People who buy physical games can sell them second-hand or lend them to their friends, retailers with physical games in stock can discount them or include them in bundles as they see fit.

https://games.slashdot.org/story/24/11/08/163202/ps5-pro-signposts-a-disc-less-future-that-few-actually-want?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://games.slashdot.org/story/24/11/08/163202/ps5-pro-signposts-a-disc-less-future-that-few-actually-want?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Intel Brings Back Workers' Free Coffee To Boost Morale

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Oregon Live: Intel told employees this week that it will bring back free coffee and tea at its work sites, one of many benefits the chipmaker eliminated last summer as it sought to slash $10 billion from its annual budget. "Although Intel still faces cost challenges, we understand that small comforts play a significant role in our daily routines," Intel wrote on its internal messaging forum, called Circuit. "We know this is a small step, but we hope it is a meaningful one in supporting our workplace culture." Intel declined comment. The company did not resume offering free fruit, another perk eliminated last summer. Employees say privately that morale has been devastated by Intel's poor financial performance and by cutbacks aimed at returning the business to profitability.

[...] Christy Pambianchi, Intel's chief people officer, told employees that Intel had been spending $100 million annually on free and discounted food and beverages and couldn't afford to keep doing that. "Until we get into a better financial health position, we need to be suspending those," Pambianchi said, according to an account of the meeting reviewed by The Oregonian/OregonLive. By Wednesday the company had reversed itself, committing to keep its employees caffeinated. In August, Intel announced plans to lay off over 16,000 employees, representing more than 15% of its global workforce. Its stock dropped to a 50-year low following the announcement. Starting November 8, Nvidia will replace the chipmaker on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

https://developers.slashdot.org/story/24/11/08/0654257/intel-brings-back-workers-free-coffee-to-boost-morale?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://developers.slashdot.org/story/24/11/08/0654257/intel-brings-back-workers-free-coffee-to-boost-morale?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


New 'Star Wars' Trilogy In the Works

According to Deadline's Mike Fleming Jr, Lucasfilm is developing a new Star Wars trilogy. It will be written by Simon Kinberg, who will also produce the films alongside Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy. From the report: I heard this will comprise Episodes 10-12 of The Skywalker Saga that began with George Lucas's 1977 first film, which, along with Steven Spielberg's Jaws, reshaped the global blockbuster game. Insiders disputed my intel that Kinberg will continue that storyline, saying this instead will begin a new saga, and sit alongside percolating Star Wars projects with James Mangold, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, Taika Waititi and Donald Glover. As usual, Lucasfilm and Disney are not commenting.

Kinberg previously worked with Lucasfilm in co-creating with Dave Filoni and Carrie Beck the Emmy-nominated animated series Star Wars Rebels that ran for four seasons from 2014-2018. He was also a consultant on Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, the J.J. Abrams-directed film that revived the franchise in 2015. He has also been heavily involved in other franchises as writer and/or producer.

https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/24/11/08/0641215/new-star-wars-trilogy-in-the-works?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/24/11/08/0641215/new-star-wars-trilogy-in-the-works?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


IBM Sued Again In Storm Over Weather Channel Data Sharing

IBM is facing a new lawsuit alleging that its Weather Channel website shared users' personal data with third-party ad partners without consent, violating the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA). The Register reports: In the absence of a comprehensive federal privacy law, the complaint [PDF] claims Big Blue violated America's Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), enacted in 1988 in response to the disclosure of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's videotape rental records. IBM was sued in 2019 (PDF) by then Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer over similar allegations: That its Weather Channel mobile app collected and shared location data without disclosure. The IT titan settled that claim in 2020. A separate civil action against IBM's Weather Channel was filed in 2020 and settled in 2023 (PDF).

This latest legal salvo against alleged Weather Channel-enabled data collection takes issue with the sensitive information made available through the company's website to third-party ad partners mParticle and AppNexus/Xandr (acquired by Microsoft in 2022). The former provides customer analytics, and the latter is an advertising and marketing platform. The complaint, filed on behalf of California plaintiff Ed Penning, contends that by watching videos on the Weather Channel website, those two marketing firms received Penning's full name, gender, email address, precise geolocation, the name, and the URLs of videos he watched, without his permission or knowledge.

It explains that the plaintiff's counsel retained a private research firm last year to analyze browser network traffic during video sessions on the Weather Channel website. The research firm is said to have confirmed that the website provided the third-party ad firms with information that could be used to identify people and the videos that they watched. The VPPA prohibits video providers from sharing "personally identifiable information" about clients without their consent. [...] The lawsuit aspires to be certified as a class action. Under the VPPA, a successful claim allows for actual damages (if any) and statutory damages of $2,500 for each violation of the law, as well as attorney's fees.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/11/08/0632236/ibm-sued-again-in-storm-over-weather-channel-data-sharing?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/11/08/0632236/ibm-sued-again-in-storm-over-weather-channel-data-sharing?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


'Mass Effect' TV Series Is In the Works At Amazon

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Variety: A "Mass Effect" TV series is officially in development at Amazon MGM Studios, Variety has learned exclusively. Daniel Casey is set to write and executive produce the adaptation. Karim Zreik will executive produce under his Cedar Tree Productions banner, with Ari Arad and EA's Michael Gamble also executive producing. Cedar Tree is currently under an overall deal at Amazon MGM Studios. Exact plot details are being kept under wraps. [...]

The first "Mass Effect" game launched to rave reviews in 2007. Since then, there have been three more games in the main series, with "Mass Effect: Andromeda" debuting in 2017. There have also been multiple mobile games in the franchise, as well as an animated film, novels, comic books, and other media. The story of the first three "Mass Effect" games revolves around Commander Shepard, a human soldier in the 22nd century trying to save humanity from a race of aliens known as the Reapers. "Andromeda" moved the games much further into the future with a new protagonist, with a fifth game also in the works. The franchise is developed by BioWare and are now published by EA. In 2010, EA announced plans to turn Mass Effect into a movie, but the project was later canceled. However, Ari Arad (known for co-founding Marvel Studios) led the initial effort and is now working to bring the film to life in this latest attempt.

https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/24/11/08/0024209/mass-effect-tv-series-is-in-the-works-at-amazon?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/24/11/08/0024209/mass-effect-tv-series-is-in-the-works-at-amazon?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Max Is Getting Ready For Its Own Password-Sharing Crackdown

Max will begin a gradual password-sharing crackdown with "soft messaging" over the next few months, with a potential price increase to follow. The Verge reports: During Warner Bros. Discovery's Q3 earnings call on Thursday, chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels said this initial rollout would be followed by more progress in 2025 and 2026. Wiedenfels called password sharing "a form of price rises," as the company is "asking members who have not signed up, or multi-household members to pay a little bit more." This isn't the first time we've heard about Max's interest in password sharing, but now we have more details about when -- and how -- it will all begin. [...]

Wiedenfels didn't rule out the possibility of a Max price increase, either. He said that the "premium nature" of the service leaves "a fair amount of room to continue to push a price we've been judicious about." Max last raised prices across its ad-free plans in June.

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