**US Sues eBay Over Sale of Harmful Products**

The U.S. government on Wednesday sued eBay, accusing the online platform of violating the Clean Air Act and other environmental laws by allowing the sale of several harmful products, including devices that defeat automobile pollution controls. From a report: EBay could face billions of dollars in penalties, including up to $5,580 for each Clean Air Act violation, according to the government's complaint filed in the federal court in Brooklyn, New York. The Department of Justice said eBay illegally allowed the sale of at least 343,011 aftermarket "defeat" devices that help vehicles generate more power and get better fuel economy by evading emissions controls.

EBay was also accused of allowing the sale of at least 23,000 unregistered, misbranded or restricted-use pesticides, violating a 2020 "stop sale" order from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The San Jose, California-based company also allegedly distributed 5,614 paint and coating removal products containing methylene chloride, a potentially lethal chemical linked to brain and liver cancer and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. "EBay has the power, the authority, and the resources to stop the sale of these illegal, harmful products on its website," the complaint said. "It has chosen not to; instead, it has chosen to engage in these illegal transactions."

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**Xbox Cloud Gaming is Coming To Meta Quest 3 in December**

The next-generation of Meta Quest hardware is here, and Meta announced a bunch of software news alongside the Quest 3 VR headset hardware reveal at its Connect conference. One such announcement was the debut of Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming service on Meta Quest 3, which is actually a huge boon for fans of the Facebook owner's mixed reality gear. From a report: The Xbox Cloud Gaming implementation in Quest resembles a lot of how Apple showed its own vision for mixed reality with the Vision Pro headset: It's primarily a virtual screen that can float in either a virtual or mixed reality space, which appears to be reposition-able and resizable, but which basically works exactly as you'd expect an Xbox game to work with a large TV. This is a key acknowledgement on the part of Meta that while immersive, native gaming is undoubtedly a draw for users, so too is a more traditional gaming experience that basically just benefits from taking place in your own private face-mounted theater.

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**Nothing's the Matter With Antimatter, New Experiment Confirms**

Many readers shared this report: Antimatter just lost a little more pizazz. Physicists know that for every fundamental particle in nature there is an antiparticle -- an evil twin of identical mass but endowed with equal and opposite characteristics like charge and spin. When these twins meet, they obliterate each other, releasing a flash of energy on contact. In science fiction, antiparticles provide the power for warp drives. Some physicists have speculated that antiparticles are being repelled by gravity or even traveling backward in time.

A new experiment at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, brings some of that speculation back down to Earth. In a gravitational field, it turns out, antiparticles fall just like the rest of us. "The bottom line is that there's no free lunch, and we're not going to be able to levitate using antimatter," said Joel Fajans of the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Fajans was part of an international team known as ALPHA, the Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus collaboration, which is based at CERN and led by Jeffrey Hangst, a particle physicist at Aarhus University in Denmark.

Dr. Fajans and his colleagues assembled about 100 hundred anti-atoms of hydrogen and suspended them in a magnetic field. When the field was slowly ramped down, the anti-hydrogen atoms drifted down like maple leaves in October and at the same rate of downward acceleration, or g force, as regular atoms: about 32 feet per second per second. They published their result on Wednesday in the journal Nature. Few physicists were surprised by the result. According to Einstein's theory of general relativity, all forms of matter and energy respond equally to gravity.

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**Meta Rolls Out Higher-Priced Quest 3 Headset, Just Ahead of Apple's Vision Pro**

Meta introduced its latest lineup of head-worn devices, staking fresh claim to the virtual- and augmented-reality industry just ahead of Apple pushing into the market. From a report: The company officially unveiled the Quest 3 headset on Wednesday, raising the price by $200 to $500, at its annual Connect developers conference. It also introduced second-generation smart glasses that it developed with luxury sunglass maker Ray-Ban. The Quest 3, which was previewed by Meta earlier this year after Bloomberg published a hands-on review of the device, offers improved performance over the Quest 2 from 2020. It also marks a pivot from VR to mixed reality, which melds virtual and augmented reality.

It's a high-stakes moment for Meta's hardware business. Though the company has dominated VR goggles for years, Apple is poised to release its Vision Pro headset in the coming months, setting up a showdown. Like the Quest 3, the Vision Pro is a mixed-reality headset -- though one with exclusive Apple technology and content. The Vision Pro will have Apple's marketing muscle behind it, but also a much higher price: $3,499. In addition to the competitive pressure, Meta also has struggled to sell consumers on the metaverse -- a collection of interlocking online worlds that make use of its headsets.

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**Microsoft Says Apple Used Bing Offer as Google 'Bargaining Chip'**

A Microsoft executive said the company has tried for years to displace Alphabet's Google as the default web browser on iPhones, but that Apple never seriously considered switching to Microsoft's Bing and was content to use it as a "bargaining chip" with the search giant. From a report: "Apple is making more money on Bing existing than Bing does," Mikhail Parakhin, the head of Microsoft's advertising and web services, testified during the US government's antitrust trial against Google in Washington. "We are always trying to convince Apple to use our search engine." Parakhin, who joined Microsoft in 2019 from Russian search engine Yandex NV, said Microsoft met with Apple as recently as 2021 to discuss a potential switch to Bing, but didn't make any progress.

In response to Google's lawyers, Parakhin said it was "uneconomical for Microsoft to invest more" in technology for the mobile search market. "Unless Microsoft gets a more significant, or firmer guarantee of distribution, it makes it uneconomical to invest." Apple has used Google as the default search engine in its Safari browser since 2003 in exchange for a share of the advertising revenue earned through searches made on its devices.

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**As The EA Sports FC Era Dawns, FIFA 23 Removed From Digital Platforms**

EA has suddenly removed downloadable versions of FIFA 23 from multiple digital storefronts. The delisting comes earlier than expected for the title and coincides with the company's launch of the newly FIFA-license-free EA Sports FC 24. From a report: While many reports suggest there has been a recent mass purge of all legacy FIFA games from online stores, EA has a history of delisting older sports titles at a pretty regular cadence. FIFA 22, for instance, was delisted from digital storefronts in May, roughly seven months after the launch of the subsequent FIFA 23. And FIFA 21 wasn't taken down from Steam until June 2022, about eight months after FIFA 22's launch.

FIFA 23, on the other hand, has been delisted less than a year from its October 2022 launch. SteamDB tracking data suggests that the delisting came on September 21, the day before the new EA Sports FC became available for a 10-hour early access trial for EA Play members. The Steam store page for FIFA 23 now notes that the delisting comes "at the request of the publisher" and that the game "will not appear in search." The game also no longer appears on Steam's EA publisher page. FIFA 23's earlier-than-expected delisting could have something to do with the dissolution of EA's 30-year licensing relationship with FIFA. That ending came amid reports that EA was dissatisfied with gameplay restrictions and licensing costs demanded by FIFA.

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**Russian Zero-Day Seller Offers $20 Million for Hacking Android and iPhones**

A company that acquires and sells zero-day exploits -- flaws in software that are unknown to the affected developer -- is now offering to pay researchers $20 million for hacking tools that would allow its customers to hack iPhones and Android devices. From a report: On Wednesday, Operation Zero announced on its Telegram accounts and on its official account on X, formerly Twitter, that it was increasing payments for zero-days in those platforms tenfold, from $200,000 to $20 million. "By increasing the premium and providing competitive plans and bonuses for contract works, we encourage the developer teams to work with our platform," the company wrote.

Operation Zero, which is based in Russia and launched in 2021, also added that "as always, the end user is a non-NATO country." On its official website, the company says that "our clients are Russian private and government organizations only." When asked why they only sell to non-NATO countries, Operation Zero CEO Sergey Zelenyuk declined to say. "No reasons other than obvious ones," he said. Zelenyuk also said that the bounties Operation Zero offer right now may be temporary, and a reflection of a particular time in the market, and the difficulty of hacking iOS and Android.

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**US FTC Revives Microsoft-Activision Deal Challenge**

The US Federal Trade Commission is reviving its challenge against Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of video game company Activision, a move which may seek to unwind the deal after it closes. From a report: The agency will move forward with its in-house trial against the acquisition after pausing it over the summer, according to an order the agency issued Wednesday. The move means the FTC will continue challenging the deal even after it has closed this year. "The commission has determined that the public interest warrants that this matter be resolved fully and expeditiously," the agency wrote in a filing. "Therefore, the commission is returning this matter to adjudication." The decision comes months after a US appeals court denied the FTC's bid to pause the Microsoft-Activision acquisition in July. The FTC typically drops challenges to deals when they lose in federal court.

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**The Band of Debunkers Busting Bad Scientists**

Stanford's president and a high-profile physicist are among those taken down by a growing wave of volunteers who expose faulty or fraudulent research papers. WSJ: An award-winning Harvard Business School professor and researcher spent years exploring the reasons people lie and cheat. A trio of behavioral scientists examining a handful of her academic papers concluded her own findings were drawn from falsified data. It was a routine takedown for the three scientists -- Joe Simmons, Leif Nelson and Uri Simonsohn -- who have gained academic renown for debunking published studies built on faulty or fraudulent data. They use tips, number crunching and gut instincts to uncover deception. Over the past decade, they have come to their own finding: Numbers don't lie but people do.

"Once you see the pattern across many different papers, it becomes like a one in quadrillion chance that there's some benign explanation," said Simmons, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the trio who report their work on a blog called Data Colada. Simmons and his two colleagues are among a growing number of scientists in various fields around the world who moonlight as data detectives, sifting through studies published in scholarly journals for evidence of fraud. At least 5,500 faulty papers were retracted in 2022, compared with 119 in 2002, according to Retraction Watch, a website that keeps a tally. The jump largely reflects the investigative work of the Data Colada scientists and many other academic volunteers, said Dr. Ivan Oransky, the site's co-founder. Their discoveries have led to embarrassing retractions, upended careers and retaliatory lawsuits.

Neuroscientist Marc Tessier-Lavigne stepped down last month as president of Stanford University, following years of criticism about data in his published studies. Posts on PubPeer, a website where scientists dissect published studies, triggered scrutiny by the Stanford Daily. A university investigation followed, and three studies he co-wrote were retracted. Stanford concluded that although Tessier-Lavigne didn't personally engage in research misconduct or know about misconduct by others, he "failed to decisively and forthrightly correct mistakes in the scientific record."

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**Hollywood Studios Can Train AI Models on Writers' Work Under Tentative Deal**

Hollywood studios are expected to retain the right to train artificial-intelligence models based on writers' work under the terms of a tentative labor agreement between the two sides, WSJ reported, citing people familiar with the situation. From the report: The writers would also walk away with an important win, a guarantee that they will receive credit and compensation for work they do on scripts, even if studios partially rely on AI tools, one of the people said. That provision had been in an earlier offer from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the group representing studios, streamers and networks. The Writers Guild of America said Sunday it had reached a tentative agreement with the AMPTP to end a nearly five-month strike. Neither side has released the details of the agreement. The WGA said it plans to release the terms once its leadership votes on the deal, which could happen as soon as Tuesday.

The two sides have battled over issues ranging from wage increases to whether writers' rooms should have minimum staffing requirements. The use of generative AI by studios became a major issue, as advanced versions of the technology -- such as OpenAI's ChatGPT -- were released for public use over the past year. AI bots, which provide sophisticated, humanlike responses to user questions, are "trained" on large amounts of data. Entertainment executives didn't want to relinquish the right to train their own AI tools based on TV and movie scripts, since their understanding is that AI tech platforms already are training their own models on such materials, people familiar with the matter said.

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**China Lists Mobile App Stores That Comply With New Rule, But Apple Missing**

China's cyberspace regulator released on Wednesday names of the first batch of mobile app stores that have completed filing business details to regulators, signalling it has begun to enforce new rules that expand its oversight of mobile apps. From a report: A total of 26 app stores operated by companies including Tencent, Huawei, Ant Group, Baidu, Xiaomi and Samsung have submitted filings to the authority, according to the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). Apple's App Store is not among the app stores on the list. Beijing has been expanding oversight of smartphone and mobile app usage over the past several years. The country now requires mobile app stores and mobile apps to submit business details to the government. These rules are causing consternation in the industry that publishing apps in the world's second largest economy will become very difficult and many apps may need to be taken down.

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**Google Search Caught Publicly Indexing Users' Conversations With Bard AI**

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: SEO consultant Gagan Ghotra observed that Google Search had begun to index shared Bard conversational links into its search results pages, potentially exposing information users meant to be kept contained or confidential. This means that if a person used Bard to ask it a question -- possibly even a question related to the contents of their private emails -- then shared the link with a designated third-party, say, their spouse, friend or business partner, the conversation accessible at that link could in turn be scraped by Google's crawler and show up publicly, to the entire world, in its Search Results.

Google Brain research scientist Peter J. Liu replied to Ghotra on X by noting that the Google Search indexing only occurred for those conversations that users had elected to click the share link on, not all Bard conversations, to which Ghotra patiently explained: "Most users wouldn't be aware of the fact that shared conversation mean it would be indexed by Google and then show up in SERP, most people even I was thinking of it as a feature to share conversation with some friend or colleague & it being just visible to people who have conversation URL."

Ultimately, Google's Search Liaison account on X, which provides "insights on how Google Search works," wrote back to Ghotra to say "Bard allows people to share chats, if they choose. We also don't intend for these shared chats to be indexed by Google Search. We're working on blocking them from being indexed now."

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**Is the Philips Hue Ecosystem 'Collapsing Into Stupidity'?**

The Philips Hue ecosystem of home automation devices is "collapsing into stupidity," writes Rachel Kroll, veteran sysadmin and former production engineer at Facebook. "Unfortunately, the idiot C-suite phenomenon has happened here too, and they have been slowly walking down the road to full-on enshittification." From her blog post: I figured something was up a few years ago when their iOS app would block entry until you pushed an upgrade to the hub box. That kind of behavior would never fly with any product team that gives a damn about their users -- want to control something, so you start up the app? Forget it, we are making you placate us first! How is that user-focused, you ask? It isn't.

Their latest round of stupidity pops up a new EULA and forces you to take it or, again, you can't access your stuff. But that's just more unenforceable garbage, so who cares, right? Well, it's getting worse.

It seems they are planning on dropping an update which will force you to log in. Yep, no longer will your stuff Just Work across the local network. Now it will have yet another garbage "cloud" "integration" involved, and they certainly will find a way to make things suck even worse for you. If you have just the lights and smart outlets, Kroll recommends deleting the units from the Hue Hub and adding them to an IKEA Dirigera hub. "It'll run them just fine, and will also export them to HomeKit so that much will keep working as well." That said, it's not a perfect solution. You will lose motion sensor data, the light level, the temperature of that room, and the ability to set custom behaviors with those buttons.

"Also, there's no guarantee that IKEA won't hop on the train to sketchville and start screwing over their users as well," adds Kroll.

What has your experience been with the Philips Hue ecosystem? Do you have any alternatives you recommend?

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**Chinese Astronauts May Build a Base Inside a Lunar Lava Tube**

According to Universe Today, China may utilize lunar caves as potential habitats for astronauts on the Moon, offering defense against hazards like radiation, meteorites, and temperature variations. From the report: Different teams of scientists from different countries and agencies have studied the idea of using lava tubes as shelter. At a recent conference in China, Zhang Chongfeng from the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology presented a study into the underground world of lava tubes. Chinese researchers did fieldwork in Chinese lava tubes to understand how to use them on the Moon. According to Zhang, there's enough similarity between lunar and Earthly lava tubes for one to be an analogue of the other. It starts with their two types of entrances, vertical and sloped. Both worlds have both types.

Most of what we've found on the Moon are vertical-opening tubes, but that may be because of our overhead view. The openings are called skylights, where the ceiling has collapsed and left a debris accumulation on the floor of the tube directly below it. Entering through these requires either flight or some type of vertical lift equipment. Sloped entrances make entry and exit much easier. It's possible that rovers could simply drive into them, though some debris would probably need to be cleared. According to Zhang, this is the preferred entrance that makes exploration easier. China is prioritizing lunar lava tubes at Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility) and Mare Fecunditatis (Sea of Fecundity) for exploration.

China is planning a robotic system that can explore caves like the one in Mare Tranquillitatis. The primary probe will have either wheels or feet and will be built to adapt to challenging terrain and to overcome obstacles. It'll also have a scientific payload. Auxiliary vehicles can separate from the main probe to perform more reconnaissance and help with communications and "energy support." They could be diversified so the mission can meet different challenges. They might include multi-legged crawling probes, rolling probes, and even bouncing probes. These auxiliary vehicles would also have science instruments to study the lunar dust, radiation, and the presence of water ice in the tubes. China is also planning a flight-capable robot that could find its way through lava tubes autonomously using microwave and laser radars. "China's future plan, after successful exploration, is a crewed base," the report adds. "It would be a long-term underground research base in one of the lunar lava tubes, with a support center for energy and communication at the tube's entrance. The terrain would be landscaped, and the base would include both residential and research facilities inside the tube."

"\[R\]egardless of when they start, China seems committed to the idea. Ding Lieyun, a top scientist at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, told the China Science Daily that 'Eventually, building habitation beyond the Earth is essential not only for all humanity's quest for space exploration but also for China's strategic needs as a space power.'"

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**Burkey Belser, Designer of Ubiquitous Nutrition Facts Label, Dies At 76**

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: Burkey Belser, a graphic designer who created the ubiquitous nutrition facts label -- a stark rectangle listing calories, fat, sodium and other content information -- that adorns the packaging of nearly every digestible product in grocery stores, died Sept. 25 at his home in Bethesda, Md. He was 76. The cause was bladder cancer, said his wife Donna Greenfield, with whom he founded the Washington, D.C., design firm Greenfield/Belser.

Mr. Belser's nutrition facts label -- rendered in bold and light Helvetica type -- was celebrated as a triumph of public health and graphic design when it debuted in 1994 following passage of the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act. Although some products had previously included nutritional information, there was no set standard, and the information was of little public health value in helping consumers make better food choices. The new law, drafted as obesity and other diet-related illnesses were surging, required mandatory food labels with nutrients presented in the context of a healthy 2,000-calorie-a-day diet.

Writing in a journal published by the Professional Association for Design, Massimo Vignelli, the renowned Italian designer, called Mr. Belser's creation a "clean testimonial of civilization, a statement of social responsibility, and a masterpiece of graphic design." The Food and Drug Administration chose Mr. Belser to design the nutrition label following his success creating the black and yellow energy guide label for appliances. Once dubbed the "Steve Jobs of information design," Mr. Belser's fondness for exceedingly simple design perfectly suited him for a job that required stripping down nutritional facts to the bare essentials. The report proceeds to tell the tale of how Mr. Belser worked pro bono with his team to labor through three dozen iterations of the label, ultimately settling on "simplicity in itself."

"There's a harmony about it, and the presentation has no extraneous components to it," Belser told The Washington Post. "The words are left and right justified, which gave it a kind of balance. There was no grammatical punctuation like commas or periods or parentheses that would slow the reader down."

He compared the finished product -- which he later adapted to over-the-counter drugs -- to the Apple iPod. "The detail is so important that you wouldn't even notice it and if you didn't notice it's a sign that it succeeded," he said. "I don't know if anybody's heart beats faster when they see nutrition facts, but they sense a pleasure that they get the information they need."

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**World's First Drug To Regrow Teeth Enters Clinical Trials**

Michelle Butterfield writes via Global News: A team of scientists, led by a Japanese pharmaceutical startup, are getting set to start human trials on a new drug that has successfully grown new teeth in animal test subjects. Toregem Biopharma is slated to begin clinical trials in July of next year after it succeeded growing new teeth in mice five years ago, the Japan Times reports. Dr. Katsu Takahashi, a lead researcher on the project and head of the dentistry and oral surgery department at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital, says "the idea of growing new teeth is every dentist's dream."

In his research, which he's been conducting at Kyoto University since 2005, Takahashi learned of a particular gene in mice that affects the growth of their teeth. The antibody for this gene, USAG-1, can help stimulate tooth growth if it is suppressed -- and scientists have since worked to develop a "neutralizing antibody medicine" that is able to block USAG-1. Now, his team has been testing the theory that "blocking" this protein could grow more teeth. After their successful tests on mice, the team went on to perform similarly positive trials on ferrets -- animals who have a similar dental pattern to humans.

Now, testing will turn to healthy adult humans and, if all goes well, the team plans to hold a clinical trial for the drug from 2025 for children between two and six years old with anodontia -- a rare genetic disorder that results in the absence of six or more baby and/or adult teeth. According to the Japan Times, the children involved in the clinical trial will be injected with one dose of the drug to see if it induces teeth growth. If successful, the medicine could be available for regulatory approval by 2030.

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**Unity Dev Group Dissolves After 13 Years Over 'Completely Eroded' Company Trust**

Kyle Orland writes via Ars Technica: The "first official Unity user group in the world" has announced that it is dissolving after 13 years because "the trust we used to have in the company has been completely eroded." The move comes as many developers are saying they will continue to stay away from the company's products even after last week's partial rollback of some of the most controversial parts of its fee structure plans.

Since its founding in 2010, the Boston Unity Group (BUG) has attracted thousands of members to regular gatherings, talks, and networking events, including many technical lectures archived on YouTube. But the group says it will be hosting its last meeting Wednesday evening via Zoom because the Unity of today is very different from the Dave Helgason-led company that BUG says "enthusiastically sanctioned and supported" the group at its founding.

"Over the past few years, Unity has unfortunately shifted its focus away from the games industry and away from supporting developer communities," the group leadership wrote in a departure note. "Following the IPO, the company has seemingly put profit over all else, with several acquisitions and layoffs of core personnel. Many key systems that developers need are still left in a confusing and often incomplete state, with the messaging that advertising and revenue matter more to Unity than the functionality game developers care about."

BUG says the install-fee terms Unity first announced earlier this month were "unthinkably hostile" to users and that even the "new concessions" in an updated pricing model offered late last week "disproportionately affect the success of indie studios in our community." But it's the fact that such "resounding, unequivocal condemnation from the games industry" was necessary to get those changes in the first place that has really shaken the community to its core. "We've seen how easily and flippantly an executive-led business decision can risk bankrupting the studios we've worked so hard to build, threaten our livelihoods as professionals, and challenge the longevity of our industry," BUG wrote. "The Unity of today isn't the same company that it was when the group was founded, and the trust we used to have in the company has been completely eroded."

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**Windows 11's New 'Never Combine' Icons Feature Is Almost Unusable**

Lawrence Abrams writes via BleepingComputer: After almost three years, Microsoft has finally added the 'Never combine taskbar button' back to Windows, and it still doesn't work correctly. The combine taskbar items feature in Windows 10 allows you to show an icon for every open application in Windows, even if they are multiple instances of the same application. For example, if you have ten instances of Notepad or a few browser windows open, the feature will allow you to see an icon on the taskbar for each open Windows rather than combining it into a single application icon.

For me and many others, removing this feature made it impossible to upgrade to Windows 11, as switching between the myriad open windows became a nightmare. This frustration is reflected in the Windows 11 Feedback Hub, where a suggestion to never combine app icons and show labels has received 17,527 upvotes, making it the 10th most requested feature. Today, those users who have been holding off on upgrading to Windows 11 because of this missing feature "may" finally be able to do so. This is because Microsoft finally released the "never combine" feature as part of its Windows 11 22H2 Moment 4 update released today.

However, even with this feature added, it is still subpar to Windows 10, as, unlike the previous version of Windows, it continues to show the windows titles next to the icon, taking up a lot of space. It's baffling that Microsoft can't get this feature right after three years with it being one of the most highly requested features. A simple toggle to disable the showing of Windows titles could have been added, or Microsoft could have replicated the Windows 10 feature many of us requested.

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**Air Force Receives Its First Electric Air Taxi**

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The Air Force said on Monday that it had received its first electric passenger aircraft capable of taking off and landing vertically, a milestone for the companies that hope to one day sell thousands of such vehicles to serve as air taxis. Joby Aviation, an air taxi start-up, delivered the aircraft to Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California, where the first supersonic flight took place. Air taxis are typically powered by batteries and designed to lift off and land like helicopters, but include wings to fly like airplanes. Joby, which is based in Santa Cruz, Calif., said that its electric aircraft is substantially quieter than helicopters or planes. Each can carry one pilot and four passengers and travel as fast as 200 miles per hour and as far as 100 miles, according to the company.

The delivery is the first under an Air Force contract that Joby said was valued at up to $131 million and gives the government the option to receive up to nine aircraft. The Air Force and Joby will operate the vehicle, but Joby will still own the aircraft and receive both fixed and variable payments for hours flown. NASA, which has a facility at the base, will also conduct research on the vehicle. The Air Force has signed similar contracts with other air taxi companies under a program called Agility Prime, part of a broader effort to promote innovation. Agility Prime's mission is to support development of air taxis and similar technology, giving the Air Force a head start in exploring how it might use such aircraft while also providing financial and testing support to the air taxi companies.

At Edwards Air Force Base, Joby's aircraft will be tested as a means to transport cargo and people. The vehicles could also be used to monitor the expansive base or tested to conduct medical evacuations, for example. All told, the Air Force has more than 100 performance measures it wants to evaluate, said Beau Griffith, the deputy lead of Agility Prime. "Bearing out the promise of these vehicles is the program's goal," he said. NASA will work closely with the military and Joby in testing the aircraft, with the aim of using its research to guide air taxi development and support the F.A.A. Starting next year, NASA pilots and researchers will explore how Joby's vehicle would operate in a typical city environment, examining flight procedures and how it could interact with air traffic control and local infrastructure. Joby's aircraft is expected to remain at the base for at least a year, and the company has plans to deliver another in 2024.

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**Meta Pays a Lot of Money To Break Lease On London Office Building**

"As a result of the move to working from home, Meta has walked away from one of its offices in London at the cost of 149 million pounds," writes Slashdot reader Bruce66423. The London Evening Standard reports: Meta paid the FTSE 250 developer 149 million pounds on Monday in order to break the lease on the building, 1 Triton Square. The tech firm, which also owns Instagram, let the space from 2021 following a refurbishment but never moved into the space. Meta has three open London sites including a neighbouring building in Regent's Place, near Warren Street in central London.

Analysts at BNP Paribas Exane claimed Meta has another 18 years on its lease at the site. British Land said it will receive the one-off payment to end the lease but the agreement would also reduce its earnings per share by 0.6% over the six months to next March.

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**Google Podcasts Shutting Down In 2024 For YouTube Music**

Google Podcasts is shutting down in 2024 after YouTube Music picks up full global availability of podcasts, which is expected before the end of 2023. As 9to5Google reports, YouTube Music "will be Google's one podcasting app and service going forward." From the report: The big advantage of Google Podcasts was its simplicity and wide availability on Android (through the Google Search app). A "simple migration tool" will move your existing subscriptions from Google Podcasts. Notably, there will be the ability in YouTube Music to add podcasts via RSS feeds, "including shows not currently hosted by YouTube." Google will also provide a non-YTM export option via "OPML file of their show subscriptions" that will work with other podcast players.

On the podcaster front, YouTube will allow for RSS uploads instead of requiring a video version. The next step over the coming weeks and months will see Google "gather feedback to make the migration process from Google Podcasts to YouTube Music as simple and easy as possible." "For now, nothing is changing and fans will continue to have access to YouTube, YouTube Music and Google Podcasts," says YouTube. "We're committed to being transparent in communicating future changes with our users and podcasters and will have more to share about this process in the coming months."

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**GPUs From All Major Suppliers Are Vulnerable To New Pixel-Stealing Attack**

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: GPUs from all six of the major suppliers are vulnerable to a newly discovered attack that allows malicious websites to read the usernames, passwords, and other sensitive visual data displayed by other websites, researchers have demonstrated in a paper (PDF) published Tuesday. The cross-origin attack allows a malicious website from one domain -- say, example.com -- to effectively read the pixels displayed by a website from example.org, or another different domain. Attackers can then reconstruct them in a way that allows them to view the words or images displayed by the latter site. This leakage violates a critical security principle that forms one of the most fundamental security boundaries safeguarding the Internet. Known as the same origin policy, it mandates that content hosted on one website domain be isolated from all other website domains. \[...\]

GPU.zip works only when the malicious attacker website is loaded into Chrome or Edge. The reason: For the attack to work, the browser must:

1\. allow cross-origin iframes to be loaded with cookies
2\. allow rendering SVG filters on iframes and
3\. delegate rendering tasks to the GPU

For now, GPU.zip is more of a curiosity than a real threat, but that assumes that Web developers properly restrict sensitive pages from being embedded by cross-origin websites. End users who want to check if a page has such restrictions in place should look for the X-Frame-Options or Content-Security-Policy headers in the source. "This is impactful research on how hardware works," a Google representative said in a statement. "Widely adopted headers can prevent sites from being embedded, which prevents this attack, and sites using the default SameSite=Lax cookie behavior receive significant mitigation against personalized data being leaked. These protections, along with the difficulty and time required to exploit this behavior, significantly mitigate the threat to everyday users. We are in communication and are actively engaging with the reporting researchers. We are always looking to further improve protections for Chrome users."

An Intel representative, meanwhile, said that the chipmaker has "assessed the researcher findings that were provided and determined the root cause is not in our GPUs but in third-party software." A Qualcomm representative said "the issue isn't in our threat model as it more directly affects the browser and can be resolved by the browser application if warranted, so no changes are currently planned." Apple, Nvidia, AMD, and ARM didn't comment on the findings.

An informational write-up of the findings can be found here.

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**Chase UK To Ban Cryptocurrency Purchases Over Fraud Fears**

An anonymous reader writes: Chase UK, JPMorgan's UK Bank, has told its customers that it will not carry out transactions related to crypto assets.
 The Financial Times writes: JPMorgan's UK bank will stop customers buying cryptocurrencies from next month to combat rising numbers of criminals using digital assets to target victims.
 The ban by Chase UK, which notified customers by email on Tuesday, marks a step up as British lenders try to stop their networks being used for scams and frauds.
 While several banks, including HSBC and NatWest, have set restrictions on their customers' purchases for crypto, outright bans are rare.
 Chase said its UK block, which will come into effect from October 16, had been informed by data showing the high rate of crypto scams and fraud in the UK, including fake investments and false celebrity endorsements.

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**Walmart To Roll Out New Prepaid Phone Service From Boost Founder**

Walmart is expanding its offerings of prepaid phone plans with MobileX, a wireless service launched earlier this year by Boost cofounder Peter Adderton. Walmart will be MobileX's first and exclusive retail partner, the companies said in an announcement Tuesday. From a report: MobileX, which uses Verizon's network through a wholesale agreement, will be available on Walmart's website and in stores starting Tuesday, the companies said. It will offer unlimited pay-as-you go plans starting at $14.88 per month, and a lower-cost plan with customizable offerings starting at $4.08 a month. An artificial intelligence-powered guide that can anticipate a customer's data needs can customize plans tailored to their usage, the company said in a statement. \[...\] Walmart gives MobileX, which launched online in February, more visibility as a low-cost alternative to more expensive monthly plans from the big three wireless carriers. Still, cheap mobile services have had a difficult time dislodging people from more expensive plans. Many subscribers are locked into two and three-year phone payment plans and even those that could switch say the hassle is not worth the savings.

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**Windows 11's Next Big Update Now Available With Copilot, AI-powered Paint**

Microsoft is releasing one of its biggest updates to Windows 11 today. It includes access to the new Windows Copilot, AI-powered updates to Paint, Snipping Tool, and Photos, RGB lighting support, a modernized File Explorer, and much more. From a report: Windows Copilot is the big new feature for this Windows 11 update, bringing the same Bing Chat feature straight to the Windows 11 desktop. It appears as a sidebar in Windows 11, allowing you to control settings on a PC, launch apps, or simply answer queries. Microsoft is integrating Copilot into many parts of Windows, too. Copilot will essentially exist as an AI-powered digital assistant, much like Microsoft's vision for Cortana. While Microsoft shut down the Cortana app inside Windows 11 last month, Copilot looks like it's very much Microsoft's big push into AI.

Microsoft is also adding AI-powered features to Paint, Snipping Tool, and Windows 11's Photos app. Microsoft Paint is getting Photoshop-like features, with support for transparency and layers. \[...\] File Explorer is getting a more modern look with this Windows 11 update. The updated File Explorer UI includes a modern home interface with large file thumbnails and a carousel interface that can surface recent files and favorited ones. These changes make File Explorer blend in better with the overall Windows 11 design.

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**Microsoft is Trying To Lessen Its Addiction To OpenAI as AI Costs Soar**

Microsoft's push to put artificial intelligence into its software has hinged almost entirely on OpenAI, the startup Microsoft funded in exchange for the right to use its cutting-edge technology. But as the costs of running advanced AI models rise, Microsoft researchers and product teams are working on a plan B. The Information: In recent weeks, Peter Lee, who oversees Microsoft's 1,500 researchers, directed many of them to develop conversational AI that may not perform as well as OpenAI's but that is smaller in size and costs far less to operate, according to a current employee and another person who recently left the company. Microsoft's product teams are already working on incorporating some of that Microsoft-made AI software, powered by large language models, in existing products, such as a chatbot within Bing search that is similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT, these people said.

\[...\] Microsoft's research group doesn't have illusions about developing a large AI like GPT-4. The team doesn't have the same computing resources as OpenAI, nor does it have armies of human reviewers to give feedback about how well their LLMs answer questions so engineers can improve them. Undeniably, OpenAI and other developers -- including Google and Anthropic, which on Monday received $4 billion from Amazon Web Services -- are firmly ahead of Microsoft when it comes to developing advanced LLMs. But Microsoft may be able to compete in a race to build AI models that mimic the quality of OpenAI software at a fraction of the cost, as Microsoft showed in June with the release of one in-house model it calls Orca.

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**OpenAI Seeks New Valuation of Up To $90 Billion in Sale of Existing Shares**

OpenAI is talking to investors about a possible share sale that would value the artificial-intelligence startup behind ChatGPT at between $80 billion to $90 billion, almost triple its level earlier this year, WSJ reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the discussions. From the report: The startup, which is 49% owned by Microsoft, has told investors that it expects to reach $1 billion in revenue this year and generate many billions more in 2024. OpenAI generates revenue mainly by charging individuals for access to a powerful version of ChatGPT and licensing the large language models behind that AI bot to businesses.

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**Clorox Products In Short Supply After Cyberattack**

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: A cyberattack at Clorox is causing wide-scale disruption of the company's operations, hampering its ability to make its cleaning materials, Clorox said Monday. Clorox said some of its products are now in short supply as it has struggled to meet consumer demand during the disruption. Clorox didn't specify which of its products are affected.

The company on Monday revealed in a regulatory filing that it detected unauthorized activity in some of its information technology systems in August. Clorox said it immediately took action to stop the attack, including reducing its operations. It now believes the attack has been contained. Still, Clorox has not been able to get its manufacturing operations back up to full speed. The company said it is fulfilling and processing orders manually. The company doesn't expect to begin the process of returning to normal operations until next week.

"Clorox has already resumed production at the vast majority of its manufacturing sites and expects the ramp up to full production to occur over time," the company said. "At this time, the company cannot estimate how long it will take to resume fully normalized operations." The company said the cyberattack and the delays will hurt its current-quarter financial results materially, although Clorox said determining any longer-term impact would be premature, "given the ongoing recovery."

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**China's Spy Balloon Program Appears to Have Been Suspended, US Officials Say**

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN:

China appears to have suspended its surveillance balloon program following a major diplomatic incident earlier this year, when one of the country's high-altitude spy balloons transited the United States, multiple sources familiar with US intelligence assessments told CNN. US officials believe that Chinese leaders have made a deliberate decision not to launch additional balloons since the one over the US was shot down by American fighter jets in February, the sources said. The US has not observed any new launches since the episode occurred... The US intelligence community believes that Chinese Communist Party leaders did not intend for the balloon to cross over the United States, and even reprimanded the operators of the surveillance program over the incident, one of the sources said...

The US assessed at the time that the spy balloon was part of an extensive surveillance program run by the Chinese military, CNN has previously reported. The balloon fleet had conducted at least two dozen missions over at least five continents in recent years, according to US officials. The suspension of the program is likely China's way of trying to stabilize its relations with the United States in the run-up to a potential meeting between President Biden and Xi in November at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco, said Christopher Johnson, a former senior China analyst at the CIA and now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Although China is unlikely to publicly acknowledge that the balloon was part of an espionage program or announce it will no longer conduct such surveillance on the United States, Johnson said, quietly suspending the program is "a positive step" and likely Beijing's way of showing the US it is trying to address some of the friction points in the relationship...

The FBI concluded its analysis of the balloon's remnants earlier this year, and the Pentagon announced in June that the US government assessed that the balloon did not collect intelligence while flying over the country...In the wake of the incident, the US widened the aperture of its radar systems so that they could better detect objects traveling above a certain altitude and at certain speeds. The aim was to fix a "domain awareness gap" that had allowed three other suspected Chinese spy balloons to transit the continental United States undetected under the Trump administration, Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, said at the time. The more sensitive radar systems led the US military to spot more unidentified objects in US airspace, however, leading to three additional shootdowns of unidentified high-altitude objects in the weeks following the Chinese balloon incident.

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**'Linux Mint Debian Edition' Begins Public Beta Testing**

This week saw the public beta-testing release of "Linux Mint Debian Edition". Besides listing download locations, its release notes also list out the project's three goals:
\- Ensure Linux Mint would be able to continue to deliver the same user experience
\- See how much work would be involved if Ubuntu was ever to disappear.
\- Guarantee the software we develop is compatible outside of Ubuntu.

9to5Linux reports:
Based on the Debian GNU/Linux 12 "Bookworm" operating system series, Linux Mint Debian Edition 6 is powered by the long-term supported Linux 6.1 LTS kernel series and features the latest Cinnamon 5.8 desktop environment that was introduced with the Linux Mint 21.2 "Victoria" release in July 2023â¦ \[T\]his release comes with a new look and feel thanks to newly added folder icons with different color variants, improved consistency of tooltips to look the same across different apps and desktops, support for symbolic icons that adapt to their background, and full support for HEIF and AVIF

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**'Feedback' Is Now Too Harsh. The New Word is 'Feedforward'**

The Wall Street Journal reports that more companies are phasing out "feedback" bosses give to workers — and replacing it with "feedforward."
"The idea is that 'feedforward' gives people less anxiety," the Journal's reporter said in a video interview. "It's a little bit gentler. When people hear 'feedback', they think immediately, 'What have I done wrong? What are the bad things my boss is going to tell me to fix?'"

And another reason that we're hearing "feedforward" at these companies over and over is employees are younger. Younger employees make up a larger percentage of the workforce today, and a number of experts with whom we spoke said that younger employees are more comfortable with gentler terms like "feedforward"...

Q: So they're trying to appeal to the younger employees who are sensitive to harsher reviews, feedback or criticism. But do the employees need to learn how to better receive this type of constructive criticism, regardless of what you call it?

A: Some experts say that younger employees do need to be prepared for negative feedback. And just the rebranding or replacing of a word could have a negative effect, and perhaps managers won't be as comfortable providing negative feedback if they're just thinking about this as a way to tell an employee what they've done well...
Certain companies are really revamping their entire review process, trying to make it so that employees and managers are more communicative and really addressing any issues or concerns, so that they can work more productively. In some cases if companies are just rebranding "feedback" with "feedforward" or other terms, people with whom I spoke were concerned that this is just a hollow effort.

And there is a possibility that younger generations won't learn about what they're doing wrong and how to improve... \[W\]e did speak with an expert who said that baby boomers learned to suck it up and perform. And this trend really is generational.
From the Journal's article:

 At Microsoft, managers are encouraged to use the word "perspectives" instead of traditional feedback, according to current and former employees. Reviews, meanwhile, have been branded as "connect" conversations. The company also recently stopped including anonymous comments from peers in employee reviews, instead showing the names of the colleagues in question... Jennifer Solomon-Baum, a former Microsoft marketing director who left early this year, says she understands why the company chose to rethink its approach to feedback, which she feels may have made employees more open to giving feedback. On the other hand, she says Microsoft's recent decision to put an end to anonymous peer feedback in reviews completely backfired. In the wake of the change, "we didn't get the richness of constructive criticism," says Solomon-Baum, who is now consulting and leading marketing for a new ballet company in Los Angeles. "It became a praise festival...."

 The divide on the issue is partially generational, several HR specialists say... Many younger employees entered the workforce while managers had loosened expectations on productivity and performance, and may have had less stringent grading in college amid remote classes, making the postpandemic adjustment more difficult. "It's the first time that they have not just gotten professional feedback, but it might be the first time in quite a while that somebody said, 'You know, this isn't good enough,'" says Megan Gerhardt, a management professor at Miami University and the author of a book on leading intergenerational workforces.
"I refuse to believe this is true," writes Apple blogger John Gruber, "and if it is true, my feedback is that any company that encounters an employee who bristles at the word feedback should fire them on the spot."

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**What Will the Next Tech Rebellion Look Like? Ask the Luddites**

In 1811 working men felt threatened by the arrival of wooden, waterâpowered looms. And yet "The Luddite rebellion came at a time when the working class was beset by a confluence of crises that today seem all too familiar..." writes Los Angeles Times technology columnist Brian Merchant. In an upcoming book called Blood in the Machine, he writes that "amid it all, entrepreneurs and industrialists pushing for new, dubiously legal, highly automated and laborâsaving modes of production."

Fast Company has an excerpt from the book asking whether history is now repeating itself. Its headline? "A new tech rebellion is taking shape. What we can learn from the Luddites."

The reason that there are so many similarities between today and the time of the Luddites is that little has fundamentally changed about our attitudes toward entrepreneurs and innovation, how our economies are organized, or the means through which technologies are introduced into our lives and societies. A constant tension exists between employers with access to productive technologies, and the workers at their whims...

The biggest reason that the last two hundred years have seen a series of conflicts between the employers who deploy technology and workers forced to navigate that technology is that we are still subject to what is, ultimately, a profoundly undemocratic means of developing, introducing, and integrating technology into society. Individual entrepreneurs and large corporations and nextâwave Frankensteins are allowed, even encouraged, to dictate the terms of that deployment, with the profit motive as their guide. Venture capital may be the radical apotheosis of this mode of technological development, capable as it is of funneling enormous sums of money into tech companies that can decide how they would like to build and unleash the products and services that shape society.

Take the rise of generative AI...

Among other things, the author argues that the unending writer's strike in Hollywood illustrates "the hunger that executives have for automating even creative work, and the lengths to which their workers will go to have some say in that disruption."

And they ultimately conclude that in the end the "disrupted lives" will include more than gig workers...
Thanks to Slashdot reader tedlistens for sharing the article.

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**How Exxon Tried to Undermine Climate Change Science**

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Guardian:
ExxonMobil executives privately sought to undermine climate science even after the oil and gas giant publicly acknowledged the link between fossil fuel emissions and climate change, according to previously unreported documents revealed by the Wall Street Journal.

The new revelations are based on previously unreported documents subpoenaed by New York's attorney general as part of an investigation into the company announced in 2015. They add to a slew of documents that record a decades-long misinformation campaign waged by Exxon, which are cited in a growing number of state and municipal lawsuits against big oil... In 2008, Exxon pledged to stop funding climate-denier groups. But that very same year, company leadership said it would support the company in directing a scientist to help the nation's top oil and gas lobbying group write a paper about the "uncertainty" of measuring greenhouse gas emissions...

The documents could bolster legal efforts to hold oil companies accountable for their alleged attempts to sow doubt about climate science. More than two dozen U.S. cities and states are suing big oil, claiming the industry knew for decades about the dangers of burning coal, oil and gas but hid that information.

More context from NPR:
 Earlier investigations found Exxon worked for decades to sow confusion about climate change, even though its own scientists had begun warning executives as early as 1977 that carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels were warming the planet, posing dire risks to human beings. By the late 1980s, concern was growing domestically and overseas that fossil fuel use was heating the planet, increasing the risks of extreme weather. In response, the Journal reported, Exxon executive Frank Sprow sent a memo to colleagues warning that if there were a global consensus on addressing climate change, "substantial negative impacts on Exxon could occur." According to the Journal, Sprow wrote: "Any additional R&D efforts within Corporate Research on Greenhouse should have two primary purposes: 1. Protect the value of our resources (oil, gas, coal). 2. Preserve Exxon's business options."

Sprow told the Journal that the approach in his memo was adopted as policy, in "what would become a central pillar of Exxon's strategy," the paper said. A few years after the memo, Exxon became the architect of a highly effective strategy of climate change denial that succeeded for decades in politicizing climate policy and delaying meaningful action to cut heat-trapping pollution...

Last year, Exxon said it plans to spend about $17 billion on "lower emission initiatives" through 2027. That represents, at most, 17% of the total capital investments the company plans to make during that period. Exxon recently said it is buying a company called Denbury that specializes in capturing carbon dioxide emissions and injecting them into oil wells to boost production. It's also planning to build a hydrogen plant and a facility to capture and store carbon emissions in Texas.

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**KSMBD Finally Reaches 'Stable' State in Release Candidate for Linux Kernel 6.6**

When Linus Torvalds announced Linux kernel 6.6's first release candidate, it included a newly-stable version of KSMBD, which is Samsung's in-kernel server for the SMB protocol (for sharing files/folders/printers over a network).

An announcement in 2021 had said that "For many cases the current userspace server choices were suboptimal either due to memory footprint, performance or difficulty integrating well with advanced Linux features."

LWN noted at the time that Linux has been using "the user-space Samba solution since shortly after the beginning."
 In a sense, ksmbd is not meant to compete with Samba; indeed, it has been developed in cooperation with the Samba project. It is, however, meant to be a more performant and focused solution than Samba is; at this point, Samba includes a great deal of functionality beyond simple file serving. Ksmbd claims significant performance improvements on a wide range of benchmarks...One other reason — which tends to be spoken rather more quietly — is that a new implementation can be licensed under GPLv2, while Samba is GPLv3.
The Register notes that when Samba switched to GPL 3, "one result was that Apple dropped Samba from Mac OS X and replaced it with its own, in-house server called SMBX." And they also remember that a month after its debut in 2021, "Linux sysadmins got to enjoy KSMBD's first security exploit."

What's changed now is that it has faced considerable security testing and as a result it is no longer marked as experimental. It's been developed with the assistance of the Samba team, which itself documents how to use it. It's compatible with existing Samba configuration files. As the team says, "It is not meant to replace the existing Samba fileserver 'smbd', but rather be an extension and will integrate with Samba in the future...."

 KSMBD is also important in that placing such core server functionality right inside the kernel represents a significant potential attack surface for crackers... The new bcachefs file system will not be going into kernel 6.6, and its developer is not happy.

"It's taken some time to get KSMBD to a state that was considered stable," points out Linux magazine. That time has come, and KSMBD is planned for Linux kernel 6.6.:

But why is KSMBD important? First off, it promises considerable performance gains and better support for modern features such as Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA)... KSMBD also adds enhanced security, considerably better performance for both single and multi-thread read/write, better stability, and higher compatibility. In the end, hopefully, this KSMBD will also mean easier share setups in Linux without having to jump through the same hoops one must with the traditional Samba setup.

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**EFF Recognizes Signal, Library Freedom Project for Protecting Privacy**

For over 30 years the EFF has presented awards recognizing those "advancing innovation and championing digital rights," according to its web site, celebrating "the accomplishments of people working toward a better future... both in the public eye and behind the scenes."

This year's ceremony — hosted by Cory Doctorow — didn't just recognize Sci-Hub's founder. The EFF also gave its award for "Communications Policy" to the Signal Foundation — and its "Information Democracy" award to the Library Freedom Project.

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation web site:
Since 2013, with the release of the unified app and the game-changing Signal Protocol, Signal has set the bar for private digital communications. With its flagship product, Signal Messenger, Signal provides real communications privacy, offering easy-to-use technology that refuses the surveillance business model on which the tech industry is built. To ensure that the public doesn't have to take Signal's word for it, Signal publishes their code and documentation openly, and licenses their core privacy technology to allow others to add privacy to their own products. Signal is also a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, ensuring that investors and market pressure never provides an incentive to weaken privacy in the name of money and growth. This allows Signal to stand firm against growing international legislative pressure to weaken online privacy, making it clear that end-to-end encryption either works for everyone or is broken for everyone — there is no half measure.

The Library Freedom Project (LFP) is radically rethinking the library professional organization by creating a network of values-driven librarian-activists taking action together to build information democracy. LFP offers trainings, resources, and community building for librarians on issues of privacy, surveillance, intellectual freedom, labor rights, power, technology, and more — helping create safer, more private spaces for library patrons to feed their minds and express themselves. Their work is informed by a social justice, feminist, anti-racist approach, and they believe in the combined power of long-term collective organizing and short-term, immediate harm reduction.

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**California Passes Strongest Right-to-Repair Bill Yet, Requiring 7 Years of Parts**

California, the home to many of tech's biggest companies and the nation's most populous state, is pushing ahead with a right-to-repair bill for consumer electronics and appliances. From a report: After unanimous votes in the state Assembly and Senate, the bill passed yesterday is expected to move through a concurrence vote and be signed by Governor Gavin Newsom. "Since Right to Repair can pass here, expect it to be on its way to a backyard near you," said iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens in a statement. iFixit, a seller of repair parts and tools and advocate for right-to-repair laws, based in San Luis Obispo, California, was joined in its support for the California repair law by another California company with a history of opposing repair laws: Apple. The consumer tech giant's letter urging passage of the bill was surprising, to say the least, though Apple said that the bill's stipulations for "individual users' safety" and "product manufacturers' intellectual property" were satisfactory.

California's bill goes further than right-to-repair laws in other states. Rather than limiting its demand that companies provide parts, tools, repair manuals, and necessary software for devices that are still actively sold, California requires that vendors provide those items for products sold after July 1, 2021, starting in July 2024. Products costing $50 to $99.99 must be accompanied by those items for three years, and items $100 and more necessitate seven years. The bill also provides for stronger enforcement mechanisms, allowing for municipalities to bring superior court cases rather than contact the state attorney general.

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**Video-Game Company Unity Closes Offices Following Death Threat**

Unity canceled a planned town hall and closed two offices Thursday after receiving what it said was a credible death threat in the wake of a controversial pricing decision earlier this week, Bloomberg News reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: Unity, the maker of tools and technology for video games, set off a firestorm on Sept. 12 by announcing it will begin charging developers a new fee for games made using its software, called the Unity Engine. Beginning Jan. 1, makers of Unity games will have to pay per user installation after a certain threshold is reached. Some video-game makers accused Unity of violating its own terms of service and lamented that the new charges could threaten their livelihoods. Many game studios put out harshly worded statements urging the technology company to reconsider.

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