 Can Windows 11 Run on a 2006-Era Pentium 4 Chip?
"Microsoft has been mainly telling consumers that Windows 11 is meant for newer PCs," reports PC Magazine.
"However, an internet user has uploaded a video that shows the OS can actually run on a 15-year-old Pentium 4 chip from Intel."
Last week, Twitter user "Carlos S.M." posted screenshots of his Pentium 4-powered PC running Windows 11. He then followed that up with a video and benchmarks to verify that his machine was running the one-core Pentium chip with only 4GB of DDR2 RAM.
To ins
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Systemd-Free Devuan 4.0 'Chimaera' Officially Released
Luna (Slashdot reader #20,969) quotes the Devuan web site.
"Dear Friends and Software Freedom Lovers," its announcement begins:
"Devuan Developers are delighted to announce the release of Devuan Chimaera 4.0 as the project's new stable release. This is the result of many months of painstaking work by the Team and detailed testing by the wider Devuan community."
This release is Based on Debian Bullseye (11.1) with Linux kernel 5.10, according to the announcement, and lets you choos
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Visual Studio for Browsers: Microsoft Unveils 'VSCode for the Web'
"Bringing VS Code to the browser is the realization of the original vision for the product," Microsoft said in a blog post. "It is also the start of a completely new one. An ephemeral editor that is available to anyone with a browser and an internet connection is the foundation for a future where we can truly edit anything from anywhere."
Or, as Mike Melanson describes it in his "This Week in Programming" column, "Microsoft continued its march toward developer dominance this week with the
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AmigaOS Is Still Getting Updates and Upgrades
Mike Bouma (Slashdot reader #85,252) writes: A-EON Technology Ltd has released Enhancer Software Release 2.1 for AmigaOS4.1 FE update 2, which itself was released on 23 December 2020. It's an OS enhancement package with large amounts of updated and upgraded OS components.
Also earlier this year Hyperion released AmigaOS 3.2 for all classic Amigas. Here's a roundup of new features by The Guru Meditation on YouTube.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Facebook Accused of Tolerating Dangerous and Criminal Behavior to Preserve Profitability
A new whistleblower affidavit submitted by a former Facebook employee "alleges that the company prizes growth and profits over combating hate speech, misinformation and other threats to the public," reports the Washington Post:
The SEC affidavit goes on to allege that Facebook officials routinely undermined efforts to fight misinformation, hate speech and other problematic content out of fear of angering then-President Donald Trump and his political allies, or out of concern about potentially
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Facebook Fined Record £50m By UK Competition Watchdog
"The BBC is reporting that Facebook has been fined a record £50 million by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority," writes long-time Slashdot reader Hope Thelps, "for deliberately failing to provide required information" (pertaining to Facebook's 2020 acquisition of Gif-sharing service Giphy).
The BBC reports:
The £50m fine the CMA handed Facebook is more than 150 times higher than the previous record handed down for similar offences, at £325,000.
Speaking ab
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Sinclair Workers Say TV Channels Are In 'Pandemonium' After Ransomware Attack
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: In the early hours of Sunday morning, hackers took down the corporate servers and systems of Sinclair Broadcast Group, a giant U.S. TV conglomerate that owns or operates more than 600 channels across the country. Days later, inside the company, "it's pandemonium and chaos," as one current employee, who asked to remain anonymous as they were not authorized to speak to the press, told Motherboard. Sinclair has released very few details about th
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Audio Tape Interface Revives Microcassettes As Storage Medium
Zack Nelson decided to go back in time and add a suitably classic storage medium to a retrocomputing project, in the form of a cassette interface. Hackaday reports: The cassette player he had available was a Pearlcorder L400, which uses the smaller microcassette instead of the familiar audio tapes used in your Walkman or boombox. [Zack] designed the entire thing from the ground up: first he decided to use differential Manchester encoding, which provides immunity against common disturbances like
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Hear Sounds From Mars Captured By NASA's Perseverance Rover
NASA's Perseverance rover has recorded up to five hours of sounds on the Mars, giving engineers a sense of how the Red Planet sounds different from Earth. Space.com reports: NASA now has a Perseverance rover website filling up with Martian audio, ranging from wind gusts to the sounds of rover driving as it seeks spots to hunt for the signs of life on the Red Planet. In March, we even heard its laser "snapping" (sadly, no pew-pew noise was evident.)
"It's like you're really standing there," B
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Intel's Future Now Depends On Making Everyone Else's Chips
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Tim De Chant: Over the last year and a half, as the pandemic has everyone turned to their screens, demand has surged for devices (phones and laptops) and cloud services (Netflix and Zoom), all powered by a range of advanced semiconductors. Manufacturers have raced to squeeze more chips out of their fabs, but many were running near their limits before the pandemic. Still, Intel and its competitors didn't rush to build new fabs -- f
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NATO Launches AI Strategy and $1 Billion Fund As Defense Race Heats Up
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the military alliance of 30 countries that border the North Atlantic Ocean, this week announced that it would adopt its first AI strategy and launch a "future-proofing" fund with the goal of investing around $1 billion. VentureBeat reports: Military.com reports that U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will join other NATO members in Brussels, Belgium, the alliance's headquarters, to formally approve the plans over two days of talks. Speaking at a ne
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Apple Updates App Store Guidelines To Permit Devs To Contact Customers About Other Payment Methods
TechCrunch's Sarah Perez writes about the new set of App Store Guidelines that Apple introduced today: One of the changes is the result of a previously announced settlement agreement with a class of U.S. app developers. It clarifies that developers are allowed to communicate with their customers about other payment methods available outside their app. Related to this, another new guideline explains that apps may request customer information like name and email, but the request must be optional f
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Huawei, SMIC Suppliers Received Billions Worth of Licenses For US Goods
Suppliers to Chinese telecoms giant Huawei and China's top chipmaker SMIC got billions of dollars worth of licenses from November through April to sell them goods and technology despite their being on a U.S. trade blacklist, documents released by Congress showed on Thursday. Reuters reports: According to the documents, first obtained by Reuters, 113 export licenses worth $61 billion were approved for suppliers to ship products to Huawei while another 188 licenses valued at nearly $42 billion wer
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Bitcoin's Price Crashed 87% On Binance.US Thanks To a Bug
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Bitcoin is on a tear, reaching an all time high price of $67,000 for 1 BTC on Wednesday, buoyed by a series of approvals for Bitcoin futures funds on the stock market. But on one major U.S. exchange, the price flash-crashed 87 percent to roughly $8,200 on Thursday due to a bug in a trading algorithm. The crash occurred during a massive sell-off on the Binance.US exchange that occurred around 7:42 a.m. ET, Bloomberg reported. Binance is the la
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Amazon's Alexa Collects More of Your Data Than Any Other Smart Assistant
According to a survey from Reviews.org, Amazon's Alexa collects more data from users than any of the other digital assistants analyzed, which included the Google Assistant, Siri, Bixby, and Cortana. PCMag reports: All five services collect your name, phone number, device location, and IP address; the names and numbers of your contacts; your interaction history; and the apps you use. If you don't like that information being stored, you probably shouldn't use a voice assistant. In the survey, 60%
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Leaked Email Allegedly Shows That Google Did Ask Roku For Special Treatment For YouTube
Yesterday, Roku told customers that it's unable to strike a deal to bring YouTube and YouTube TV apps to its channel store, citing anti-competitive demands in carriage agreements. These included "asking Roku to create a dedicated search results row for YouTube within the Roku smart TV interface and demanding certain features on Roku that they don't insist on getting from other streaming platforms," reports Axios. Now, a leaked email has surfaced allegedly showing that Google did in fact ask Roku
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John Carmack Pushes Out Unlocked OS For Defunct Oculus Go Headset
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Oculus may have officially discontinued its low-end Oculus Go headset last year, but the company has one more "official" update to help future-proof the hardware. On Thursday, Oculus released an unlocked build of the Oculus Go operating system, allowing for "full root access" on more than 2 million existing units. Oculus "Consulting CTO" (and former id Software co-founder) John Carmack announced his plans for this update last month, saying i
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A Math Teacher is Putting Calculus Lessons on Pornhub
An anonymous reader shares a report: It's safe to assume that few Pornhub visitors are looking for hour-long calculus videos (by a fully-clothed instructor), but Taiwanese math teacher Changhsu puts them there anyway. His channel is filled with over 200 decidedly unsexy chalkboard lessons about topics like differential equations. The 34-year-old math tutor found the YouTube market for math explainers to be saturated, so he decided to expand his reach into Pornhub. He told Mel Magazine that he wa
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Intel Open-sources AI-powered Tool To Spot Bugs in Code
Intel has open-sourced ControlFlag , a tool that uses machine learning to detect problems in computer code -- ideally to reduce the time required to debug apps and software. From a report: In tests, the company's machine programming research team says that ControlFlag has found hundreds of defects in proprietary, "production-quality" software, demonstrating its usefulness. "Last year, ControlFlag identified a code anomaly in Client URL (cURL), a computer software project transferring data using
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Memes About COVID-19 Helped Us Cope With Life in a Pandemic, a New Study Finds
Does a meme a day keep the doctor away? Not quite, but it looks like it might help, according to one recent study. From a report: Researchers with Pennsylvania State University and the University of California Santa Barbara found that memes helped people cope with life during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a study published this week in the Psychology of Popular Media journal. Researchers found that those who viewed memes -- a type of humor they described as funny or cute pictures that refe
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China Conducted Two Hypersonic Weapons Tests this Summer
The Chinese military conducted two hypersonic weapons tests over the summer, raising US concerns that Beijing is gaining ground in the race to develop a new generation of arms. Financial Times: On July 27 the Chinese military launched a rocket that used a "fractional orbital bombardment" system to propel a nuclear-capable "hypersonic glide vehicle" around the earth for the first time, according to four people familiar with US intelligence assessments. The Financial Times this week reported that
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ISPs Want More Money Because So Many People Are Streaming Squid Game
ISPs around the world claim the unprecedented bandwidth demands Netflix's Squid Game is placing on their broadband networks means they should be getting more money. From a report: But experts say that's not how telecom networks work, suggesting that already cash-flush telecom giants are just positioning themselves for an underserved hand out. The popular South Korean thriller, a not so thinly-veiled critique of late-stage capitalism, tracks a group of indebted people who compete in deadly childr
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Epic Games Ends Alternate-Friday Vacation Policy, Angering Staff
Epic Games is ending a pandemic-inspired policy of granting every other Friday off, sparking an uproar among staff. From a report: An internal Slack channel was filled with pleas from employees for the game publisher to reconsider. Several people said the extra vacation days had helped their mental health, allowed them to be better parents and even improved their productivity while working on updates for Fortnite, which is one of world's most popular games. Epic said the policy was always meant
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Internet Service Providers Collect, Sell Horrifying Amount of Sensitive Data, Government Study Concludes
An anonymous reader shares a report: Over the last few years the justified fixation on the bad behavior of Google, Amazon, Facebook and other Silicon Valley giants has let the abuses of the telecom sector fly under the radar. But a new FTC report showcases how when it comes to consumer privacy, broadband providers are every bit as terrible as you thought they were. The new FTC report studied the privacy practices of six unnamed broadband ISPs and their advertising arms, and found that the compan
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Walmart Shoppers Can Now Buy Bitcoin at 200 Kiosks in Its Stores
Walmart has started a pilot program in which shoppers can buy Bitcoin at Coinstar kiosks in some of its U.S. stores. From a report: The test with Coinstar, which is known for the machines that let customers exchange U.S. coins for paper bills or gift cards, began earlier this month, Walmart spokeswoman Molly Blakeman said Thursday. The pilot includes 200 kiosks in Walmart stores. That's part of a broader initiative by Coinstar, which has teamed up with a cryptocurrency cash exchange called Coinm
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Police Can't Demand You Reveal Your Phone Passcode and Then Tell a Jury You Refused
EFF: The Utah Supreme Court is the latest stop in EFF's roving campaign to establish your Fifth Amendment right to refuse to provide your password to law enforcement. Yesterday, along with the ACLU, we filed an amicus brief in State v. Valdez, arguing that the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination prevents the police from forcing suspects to reveal the contents of their minds. That includes revealing a memorized passcode or directly entering the passcode to unlock a device.
In
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India Crosses the Milestone of 1 Billion COVID-19 Vaccinations
India has administered 1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine, officials said Thursday, passing a milestone for the South Asian country where the delta variant fueled its first crushing surge earlier this year. From a report: About 75% of India's total eligible adult population have received at least one dose, while around 30% are fully immunized. The country of nearly 1.4 billion people is the second to exceed a billion cumulative doses after the most populous country China did so in June. Coronav
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With Coercion and Black Boxes, Russia Installs a Digital Iron Curtain
Russia's boldest moves to censor the internet began in the most mundane of ways -- with a series of bureaucratic emails and forms. From a report: The messages, sent by Russia's powerful internet regulator, demanded technical details -- like traffic numbers, equipment specifications and connection speeds -- from companies that provide internet and telecommunications services across the country. Then the black boxes arrived. The telecom companies had no choice but to step aside as government-appro
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Apple's Safari Browser Runs the Risk of Becoming the New Internet Explorer -- Holding the Web Back for everyone
Scott Gilbertson, writing for The Register: The legacy of Internet Explorer 6 haunts web developer nightmares to this day. Microsoft's browser of yore made their lives miserable and it's only slightly hyperbolic to say it very nearly destroyed the entire internet. It really was that bad, kids. It made us walk to school in the snow. Uphill. Both ways. You wouldn't understand. Or maybe you would. Today developers who want to use "cutting-edge" web APIs find themselves resorting to the same kind of
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Governments Turn Tables On Ransomware Gang REvil By Pushing It Offline
An anonymous reader shares a report from Reuters: The ransomware group REvil was itself hacked and forced offline this week by a multi-country operation, according to three private sector cyber experts working with the United States and one former official. Former partners and associates of the Russian-led criminal gang were responsible for a May cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline that led to widespread gas shortages on the U.S. East Coast. REvil's direct victims include top meatpacker JBS. Th
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New 16-Inch MacBook Pro With M1 Max to Feature 'High Power Mode' for Intensive Workloads
The new 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Max Apple Silicon chip will feature a new High Power Mode for intensive, sustained workloads, according to Apple. MacRumors reports: This new setting is the opposite of "Low Power Mode," which aims to decrease system performance to prolong battery life. The new mode will only be available on the 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Max chip, not the 14-inch model or models with the M1 Pro. Text within the macOS Monterey beta reads, "Your Mac will optimize perfo
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Meet Starlab: Private Space Station Planned To Fly In 2027
Nanoracks, Voyager Space and Lockheed Martin announced today (Oct. 21) that they plan to get a free-flying private space station up and running in low Earth orbit (LEO) by 2027. Space.com reports: The outpost, called Starlab, is envisioned to be a tourist destination as well as a research and manufacturing hub that helps foster the growth of an off-Earth economy. "To meet U.S. government, international space agency and commercial needs in space, these industry leaders will develop Starlab specif
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Trump's TRUTH Social May Violate Terms of Open-Source Code It's Built On
ISayWeOnlyToBePolite writes: The new social network founded by former President Trump may violate the terms of use of the software on which it is based. On Wednesday night, after Trump revealed the TRUTH social app, Twitter users began to note that the network appeared to be based on an open-source social networking software called Mastodon, which allows people to modify the underlying code so long as they abide by its license. But the Trump network appears to have taken the publicly available c
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Vinyl Is Selling So Well That It's Getting Hard To Sell Vinyl
"Vinyl was nearly at death's door not that long ago. After CDs came out, the predictions of vinyl's demise were an every day occurrence," writes Slashdot reader smooth wombat. "And for a time it looked like the vinyl record, something which had been around since the 1930s, would meet its end as so many other yesteryear products have. Except the COVID-19 pandemic changed all that. Now, with the sudden resurgence and demand for vinyl records, the few remaining manufacturers are struggling to meet
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Steak Knife Made From Hardened Wood Is Three Times Sharper Than Steel
Scientists have used a new form of hardened wood to create a steak knife that is nearly three times sharper than a stainless steel dinner table knife. It can even be washed in the dishwasher! New Atlas reports: This hardy new form of wood is the handiwork of scientists at the University of Maryland, who set out to supercharge the material's natural strength, which lies in the cellulose packed inside. Cellulose is the primary component of wood, accounting for 40 to 50 percent of the material, and
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GPSD Bug Will Switch Your Time-Keeping Systems To March 2002 This Weekend, Unless You Update
"Apparently a bug in GPSD, the daemon responsible for deriving time from the GPS system, is going to trigger on October 24, 2021, jumping the time back to March of 2002," writes Slashdot reader suutar. "There's a fix that's been committed since August, but of course not everything is up to date." ZDNet's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes: This will be ugly. Or, as Stephen Williams, who uncovered the bug put it, "I have a feeling that there will be some 'interesting moments' in the early morning w
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PS3 Emulator Will Now Boot Every Game Ever Released On the Console
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Kotaku, written by Luke Plunkett: RPCS3, an emulator I've been writing about since 2016, but which first began in 2011, has come along way since it made its first tentative steps towards making PS3 games playable on a PC. From those humble beginnings, the team behind it have just announced a huge milestone: everything ever released on the PS3 will now boot up. Earlier today the RPCS3 team tweeted: "We're delighted to announce that RPCS3 now has a total of
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Wireless Carriers Just Can't Quit the Free-Phone Offers
Just when some wireless carriers were trying to move away from phone giveways, T-Mobile upped the ante on Thursday with a deal offering new customers as much as $1,000 if they switch. From a report: The second-largest U.S. wireless carrier said that starting Friday consumers who bring a bill from their current provider to a T-Mobile store can get a prepaid debit card for any remaining amount owed on their phone, up to $1,000. Rivals AT&T and Verizon reported stronger-than-expected subscriber
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AMD and Microsoft Issue Fixes For Ryzen CPU Slowdowns On Windows 11
AMD and Microsoft have issued patches to address the slowdowns reported with Ryzen processors when Windows 11 launched. Engadget reports: The latest chipset driver (version 3.10.08.506) should take care of the UEFI CPPC2 issue, which in some cases didn't "preferentially schedule threads on a processor's fastest core," AMD said. That could have slowed down apps that are sensitive to CPU thread performance. AMD noted that the problem was likely more noticeable in more powerful processors with more
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Paintmakers Are Running Out of the Color Blue
Dutch paint maker Akzo is running out of ingredients to make some shades of blue, the latest fallout from the global supply-chain disruptions that are spreading across manufacturers. From a report: "There is one basic color tint that is extremely difficult to get," Chief Executive Officer Thierry Vanlancker said in an interview Wednesday after publishing third-quarter earnings. "It's creating complete chaos." In addition to the bluish hue, Akzo Nobel is having trouble sourcing the tinplate used
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VR Treatment For Lazy Eye In Children Gets FDA Approval
The Food and Drug Administration approved a virtual reality-based treatment for children with the visual disorder amblyopia, or lazy eye, the company behind the therapy announced today. The Verge reports: Luminopia's approach uses TV and movies to develop the weaker eye and train the eyes to work together. Patients watch the show or movie through a headset that shows the images to each eye separately. The images shown to the stronger eye have a lower contrast, and the images are presented with o
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Fed To Ban Policymakers From Owning Individual Stocks
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Responding to a growing controversy over investing practices, the Federal Reserve announced Thursday a wide-ranging ban on officials owning individual stocks and bonds and limits on other activities as well. The ban includes top policymakers such as those who sit on the Federal Open Market Committee, along with senior staff. Future investments will have to be confined to diversified assets such as mutual funds.
Fed officials can no longer have h
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Google Unmasks Two-year-old Phishing and Malware Campaign Targeting YouTube Users
Almost two years after a wave of complaints flooded Google's support forums about YouTube accounts getting hijacked even if users had two-factor authentication enabled, Google's security team has finally tracked down the root cause of these attacks. From a report: In a report published today, the Google Threat Analysis Group (TAG) attributed these incidents to "a group of hackers recruited in a Russian-speaking forum." TAG said the hackers operated by reaching out to victims via email with vario
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Twitter Algorithms Amplify Right-leaning Political Content More Than Left-leaning, Company Says Citing Own Research
Twitter is publicly sharing research findings today that show that the platform's algorithms amplify tweets from right-wing politicians and content from right-leaning news outlets more than people and content from the political left. From a report: The research did not identify whether or not the algorithms that run Twitter's Home feed are actually biased toward conservative political content, because the conclusions only show bias in amplification, not what caused it. Rumman Chowdhury, the head
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Amazon is Now a Bigger Shipper in the US than FedEx
Amazon is not primarily known as a logistics company, but in 2020 the company shipped more parcels than FedEx. From a report: Logistics is a $1.5 trillion business -- and it has long been controlled by a handful of key players, like FedEx, UPS and the U.S. Postal Service. Now Amazon is poised to conquer it. Amazon has 21% of the U.S. shipping market -- right behind UPS (24%) and ahead of FedEx (16%). The USPS remains dominant with 38%, and all other shippers account for just 1% of the market, ac
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Gov. Parson Doubles Down on Push To Prosecute Reporter Who Found Security Flaw in State Site
Gov. Mike Parson escalated his war with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Wednesday when his political operation published a video doubling down on his attack against a reporter who informed the state that a state website revealed teacher Social Security numbers. From a report: The video is produced by Uniting Missouri, a political action committee created by Parson supporters to back his 2020 election campaign. The PAC continues to raise and spend large sums of money to promote Parsonâ(TM)s p
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Google Stadia's Salvaged Future as a Back-end Cloud Service is Here
Quick Google Stadia recap: Things have not been great. From a report: Google's AAA cloud gaming service launched in 2019 to middling reviews and since then has severely undershot Google's sales and usage estimates by hundreds of thousands of users. The company shut down its first-party studio, "Stadia Games & Entertainment (SG&E)," before it could ever develop a game, and it did so one week after lead executive Phil Harrison gave the division a positive progress report. Several key execu
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Google Lowers Play Store Fees To 15% on Subscription Apps, as Low as 10% for Media Apps
Google is lowering commissions on all subscription-based businesses on the Google Play Store, the company announced today. From a report: Previously, the company had followed Apple's move by reducing commissions from 30% to 15% on the first $1 million of developer earnings. Now, it will lower the fees specifically for app makers who generate revenue through recurring subscriptions. Instead of charging them 30% in the first year, which lowers to 15% in year two and beyond, Google says developers
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Sam Altman's Worldcoin Wants To Scan Eyeballs in Exchange for Crypto
As investors race to capitalize on surging interest in cryptocurrencies, startups are getting creative in how they onboard a generation of crypto users to their first wallets. From a report: Worldcoin is perhaps one of the most audacious efforts to bribe the world to embrace their currency. The startup, founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Alex Blania, wants to put a crypto wallet (and some of their currency) onto every human's smartphone, but in order to do so they have to build a way to determ
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Roku Tells Customers it is Unable To Strike a Deal With YouTube
Roku on Thursday told customers via a post on its corporate blog that it has still not been able to strike a distribution agreement with YouTube TV, which has been removed from Roku's channel store for five months. From a report: It's the first time Roku has directly acknowledged the issue to its customers. Roku says YouTube TV parent Google has made anti-competitive demands in distribution negotiations, which still haven't been resolved. In the blog post, Roku says Google has made anti-competit
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Apple's Product Design Has Improved Since Jony Ive Left
Bloomberg: There was a sense that, without the moderating influence of the late Steve Jobs, perhaps Jony Ive started to prioritize aesthetics a little too much. Since he stepped down as chief designer at the end of 2019, Apple seems to have reemphasized function. From the iPhone to Apple TV to the Macbook, gone are the days of "The user be damned, we think this looks cool." Monday's unveiling of a new Macbook Pro lineup of laptops provides evidence of the shift. Headline features released five y
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Nvidia GeForce Now's RTX 3080 Plan Upgrades You To 1440p and 120fps at $100 for 6 Months
Nvidia's new RTX 3080 plan for GeForce Now is probably the biggest upgrade for its cloud-streaming service since it turned on RTX ray tracing for subscribers over two years ago. From a report: The new plan is targeted at more traditional gamers for whom 60fps simply doesn't cut it, and it'll cost $100 for every six months you're signed up. In addition to the RTX ray tracing of the Priority plan, it offers 8-hour sessions, up to 1440p and 120fps gaming on PC and Mac (1600p on MacBooks), 4K HDR 60
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Donald Trump To Launch Social Media Platform Called Truth Social
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Donald Trump has announced plans to launch a social media platform called TRUTH Social that will rolled be out early next year. The former president, who was banned from Facebook and Twitter earlier this year, says his goal is to rival the tech companies that have denied him the megaphone that was paramount to his rise. "I'm excited to soon begin sharing my thoughts on TRUTH social and to fight back against big tech," Trump said in a stateme
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Indianapolis Motor Speedway To Host Autonomous Car Race On Saturday
New submitter Motard writes: Dallara Indy Lights racing cars outfitted as autonomous vehicles by Clemson University and programmed by various international collegiate teams will participate in a 20-lap race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Saturday, Oct. 23rd 2021. The event will be livestreamed by the Indy Autonomous Challenge website. Nine teams representing 21 universities from 9 different countries will compete for a $1 million prize. [The second and third-placed teams will receive $250
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Sony Patent Lets Viewers Vote and Pay To Boot Players From Games
Sony has been granted a patent that would allow livestream spectators and participants to remove players from a game. "Besides removing unskilled players, the system would allow spectators to pay for the privilege of removing players," reports Kotaku. From the report: In the patent document, Sony outlined a system in which spectators to a livestream can vote to remove a player from an ongoing game. The player would have no veto power over this decision, and they may be reassigned to a different
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TV Prices Are the Highest They've Been In At Least Nine Years
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Pricing right now on TVs is the highest since at least 2012," says Stephen Baker, vice president of Industry Analysis at NPD group. "Holiday pricing overall is likely to be at least $100 above normal. Last year the average price of a TV was $363 during the fourth quarter, which is fairly typical over the last few years. This year our forecast is for the average price to be approximately $500." For a lot of shoppers a $500 TV sounds pretty affordable
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Elon Musk's Boring Company Gets Green Light For Las Vegas Tunnel System
Elon Musk's Boring Company just won approval from local officials to move forward with building a network of vehicle tunnels underneath Las Vegas. The Verge reports: Elon Musk's Boring Company just won approval from local officials to move forward with building a network of vehicle tunnels underneath Las Vegas. The Boring Company already operates a small version of this "Teslas in Tunnels" system underneath the Las Vegas Convention Center, which opened earlier this year and involves two 0.8-mile
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Fossil Fuel Drilling Plans Undermine Climate Pledges, UN Report Warns
Even as world leaders vow to take stronger action on climate change, many countries are still planning to dramatically increase their production of oil, gas and coal in the decades ahead, potentially undermining those lofty pledges, according to a United Nations-backed report released Tuesday. From a report: The report looked at future mining and drilling plans in 15 major fossil fuel producing countries, including the United States, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Canada, China, India and Norway. Taken t
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Raspberry Pi Suffers First Ever Price Increase
For the first time, the price of a Raspberry Pi single-board computer is increasing and we have the global supply chain shortages to thank for it. PCMag reports: Eben Upton, chief executive of Raspberry Pi Trading, made the announcement today, but also made it clear the price increase is only temporary and only impacts one model of the Raspberry Pi 4. In February last year, the price of the Raspberry Pi 4 2GB dropped from $45 to $35 "permanently" and the 1GB model was discontinued. The 2GB model
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WHO Asks South African Startup To Replicate Moderna's mRNA Vaccine
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The World Health Organization has hired the company, called Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines, as part of a $100 million plan to figure out how to make an mRNA vaccine against COVID that is as close as possible to the version produced by Moderna. Until recently, Afrigen specialized in developing veterinary vaccines using fairly traditional methods. Now, says Afrigen's managing director, Petro Treblanche, the company's labs are a hive of research into th
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A Drone Will Rescue Three Dogs Trapped By La Palma Volcanic Eruption
Three dogs that are trapped near the erupting Cumbre Vieja volcano on the Canary Islands may soon be saved by a drone. Gizmodo reports: The poor, emaciated pups have been stuck in a yard surrounded by lava for a month. The volcano began erupting in September for the first time in 50 years, forcing thousands of people to evacuate, and the eruption is still ongoing. Spanish drone operator Aerocamaras said last Thursday that it had a plan to rescue the dogs. It could fly drones over to the yard wit
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Investors Use AI To Analyze CEOs' Language Patterns and Tone
CEOs and other managers are increasingly under the microscope as some investors use artificial intelligence to learn and analyze their language patterns and tone, opening up a new frontier of opportunities to slip up. Reuters reports: In late 2020, according to language pattern software specialist Evan Schnidman, some executives in the IT industry were playing down the possibility of semiconductor chip shortages while discussing supply-chain disruptions. All was fine, they said. Yet the tone of
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Man Arrested For Uncensoring Japanese Porn With AI In First Deepfake Case
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Japanese police on Monday arrested a 43-year-old man for using artificial intelligence to effectively unblur pixelated porn videos, in the first criminal case in the country involving the exploitative use of the powerful technology. Masayuki Nakamoto, who runs his own website in the southern prefecture of Hyogo, lifted images of porn stars from Japanese adult videos and doctored them with the same method used to create realistic face swaps in
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FDA Approves Mixing COVID Vaccines
U.S. regulators on Wednesday signed off on extending COVID-19 boosters to Americans who got the Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccine and said anyone eligible for an extra dose can get a brand different from the one they received initially. The Associated Press reports: The Food and Drug Administration's decisions mark a big step toward expanding the U.S. booster campaign, which began with extra doses of the Pfizer vaccine last month. But before more people roll up their sleeves, the Centers
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Google Removes Support for FTP and Old-gen U2F Security Keys in Chrome 95
Google today released Chrome v95, the latest version of its popular web browser and a version that contains several changes that will likely cause problems for a considerable part of its users. The problematic changes include: removing support for File Transfer Protocol (FTP) URLs -- ftp://
removing support for the Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) standard, used in old-generation security keys (Chrome will only support FIDO2/WebAuth security keys going forward)
adding file size limits for browser co
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Facebook is Planning To Rebrand the Company With a New Name
Facebook is planning to change its company name next week to reflect its focus on building the metaverse, The Verge reports, citing an unnamed source. From the report: The coming name change, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to talk about at the company's annual Connect conference on October 28th, but could unveil sooner, is meant to signal the tech giant's ambition to be known for more than social media and all the ills that entail. The rebrand would likely position the blue Facebook app as one
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Giant Retailers Pledge To Leave Fossil-fueled Ships Behind
Major retailers, including Amazon and Ikea, are beginning to clean up their shipping pollution. From a report: A group of companies pledged yesterday that by 2040, they'll only contract ships using zero-carbon fuels to move their goods. Both Ikea and Amazon were among the 15 companies responsible for the most maritime import pollution in 2019, according to one recent analysis. Joining Amazon and Ikea in the commitment are Unilever, Michelin, and clothing retailer Inditex, which owns Zara and oth
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Eco-friendly, Lab-grown Coffee is On the Way, But It Comes With a Catch
Beanless brews can cut deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions dramatically -- but what will happen to workers in traditional coffee-growing regions? From a report: Heiko Rischer isn't quite sure how to describe the taste of lab-grown coffee. This summer he sampled one of the first batches in the world produced from cell cultures rather than coffee beans. "To describe it is difficult but, for me, it was in between a coffee and a black tea," said Rischer, head of plant biotechnology at the VTT
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China's VPN Market Now Open To Foreign Investment
The central government of China in Beijing has announced a decision to allow foreign entities to invest in the ownership of VPN (virtual private network) services in the country. From a report: Under this new policy, foreign investors can only own up to 50% of China-based VPN companies. This allows China to retain state control over local and approved products while still offering a significant incentive for investment. Apart from VPNs, the policy update also includes changes in the investment c
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Mark Zuckerberg Has Been Added To a DC Lawsuit Over the Cambridge Analytica Scandal
District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine is adding Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to a lawsuit over the Cambridge Analytica data-mining scandal. From a report: Racine announced the addition on Twitter this morning, saying his investigation had revealed that Zuckerberg was "personally involved in decisions related to Cambridge Analytica and Facebook's failure to protect user data." The 2018 lawsuit accuses Facebook (and now Zuckerberg) of misrepresenting its policies around third-party dat
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Sinclair Broadcast Hack Linked To Notorious Russian Cybergang
A weekend cyberattack against Sinclair Broadcast Group was linked to one of the most infamous Russian cybergangs, called Evil Corp, Bloomberg reports. From the report: The Sinclair hackers used malware called Macaw, a variant of ransomware known as WastedLocker. Both Macaw and WastedLocker were created by Evil Corp., according to the two people, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential matters. Evil Corp. was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2019. Since then, it has been accu
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PayPal Exploring a Purchase of Pinterest, Valuing Social Media Firm at $39 Billion
PayPal is exploring an acquisition of social media company Pinterest, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday. From a report: San Jose, California-based PayPal has recently approached Pinterest about a potential deal, the people said, asking not to be identified because the talks are private. The companies have discussed a potential price of around $70 a share, which would value Pinterest at roughly $39 billion, one of the people said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Micron To Build $7 Billion Plant in Japan To Expand DRAM Production
U.S. memory chip maker Micron Technology will build a new factory at its Japanese production site in Hiroshima at a cost of 800 billion yen ($7.0 billion), the Nikkan Kogyo newspaper reported on Wednesday. Reuters: The new facility will make DRAM chips, which are widely used in data centres, with production set to begin in 2024, the report said, without citing sources. COVID-19 pandemic stay-at-home demand for electronic devices is causing shortages of non-memory chips that has forced some manuf
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Bitcoin Hits New All-Time High Above $65K
Bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has hit a new all-time high above $65,000. From a report: The crypto broke above its previous high of $64,889 reached in April. Bitcoin is currently changing hands for around $65,607, up 4.2% over the past 24 hours. The latest rally pushed bitcoin's year-to-date terms to 122%, according to CoinDesk data. The largest cryptocurrency appears to have gotten a push on Tuesday from the launch of the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF, t
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The Royal Mint To Extract Gold From Old Phones
Gold and precious metals are to be extracted from old phones and laptops by Britain's coin-maker. From a report: The Royal Mint plans to introduce a world-first technology to the UK to recycle gold from electronic waste. Fewer than one fifth of electronic waste ends up being recycled, estimates show. The mint's chief executive Anne Jessopp said the technology would help to "make a genuine impact on one of the world's greatest environmental challenges." The Royal Mint has signed an agreement with
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New FCC Rules Could Force Wireless Carriers To Block Spam Texts
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Under Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, the Federal Communications Commission is seeking to create new rules targeting spam text messages. Like another recent proposed rulemaking from the agency, the policy would push wireless carriers and telephone companies to block the spam before it ever gets to your phone.
"We've seen a rise in scammers trying to take advantage of our trust of text messages by sending bogus robotexts that try to tr
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Recycled Lithium Batteries As Good As Newly Mined, Study Finds
A new study by Wang and a team including researchers from the US Advanced Battery Consortium (USABC), and battery company A123 Systems, [...] shows that batteries with recycled cathodes can be as good as, or even better than those using new state-of-the-art materials. The findings have been published in the journal Joule. IEEE Spectrum reports: The team tested batteries with recycled NMC111 cathodes, the most common flavor of cathode containing a third each of nickel, manganese, and cobalt. The
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Before the New Version, Let's Revisit 1984's Dune
Thelasko shares a report from Ars Technica, written by Peter Opaskar: Frank Herbert's 1965 sci-fi novel Dune gets a new film adaptation -- this one helmed by Denis Villeneuve (Arrival, Blade Runner 2049) -- later this month. But before Ars Technica reviews the movie, there's the matter of its predecessor: 1984's Dune, made by a then up-and-coming filmmaker named David Lynch. Detractors call Lynch's saga -- a tale of two noble space families 8,000 years in the future, fighting over the most valua
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US Surgeons Successfully Test Pig Kidney Transplant In Human Patient
For the first time, a pig kidney has been transplanted into a human without triggering immediate rejection by the recipient's immune system, a potentially major advance that could eventually help alleviate a dire shortage of human organs for transplant. Reuters reports: The procedure done at NYU Langone Health in New York City involved use of a pig whose genes had been altered so that its tissues no longer contained a molecule known to trigger almost immediate rejection. The recipient was a brai
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Boris Johnson Strikes Deal With Bill Gates To Boost Green Technology
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The UK government has announced plans to launch a $551 million (400 million pounds) package of investment alongside the US billionaire Bill Gates to boost the development of new green technologies. Boris Johnson said the deal would help power a "green industrial revolution" and develop emerging technologies that were currently too expensive to be commercially successful but were essential to hitting the government's climate goals. Speaking a
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Netflix Drops Action-Packed Teaser For 'Cowboy Bebop' Series
Netflix just released an action-packed teaser for its live-action adaptation of the 1998 Japanese anime series "Cowboy Bebop." From a report: A 10-episode series -- which chronicles a group of cosmos-hopping bounty-hunters and is based on the cartoon of the same name -- will premiere on Netflix next month [...]. The 2 1/2-minute trailer, titled "The Lost Session," featured characters Spike Spiegel (voiced by John Cho), Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir) and Faye Valentine (Daniella Pineda) running after
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Microsoft Officially Deprecates UWP
Microsoft continues to baby-step around the obvious, but it has officially deprecated the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) as it pushes the desktop-focused Windows App SDK (formerly called Project Reunion) and WinUI 3 as the future of Windows application development. Paul Thurrott reports: For those unclear on the matter, the Windows App SDK basically takes key UWP technologies and new technologies like WinUI 3 that will not be backported to UWP and makes them available to developers in a way th
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About 26% of All Malicious JavaScript Threats Are Obfuscated
Akamai researchers have analyzed 10,000 JavaScript samples including malware droppers, phishing pages, scamming tools, Magecart snippets, cryptominers, etc. At least 26% of them use some form of obfuscation to evade detection, indicating an uptick in the adoption of this basic yet effective technique. BleepingComputer reports: Obfuscation is when easy-to-understand source code is converted into a hard to understand and confusing code that still operates as intended. Threat actors commonly use ob
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The New MacBook Pro Seems To Have an HDMI 2.0 Port, Not 2.1
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The newly announced 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models have HDMI ports, but they have a limitation that could be frustrating for many users over the long term, according to Apple's specs page for both machines and as noted by Paul Haddad on Twitter. The page says the HDMI port has "support for one display with up to 4K resolution at 60 Hz." That means users with 4K displays at 120 Hz (or less likely, 8K displays at 60 Hz) won't be able t
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Brave Removes Google as its Default Search Engine
As Paul Thurrott reports, Brave is removing Google Search as its default search engine. From the report: Going forward, the Brave web browser will default to Brave Search. "Brave Search has grown significantly since its release last June, with nearly 80 million queries per month," Brave CEO and co-founder Brendan Eich says. "Our users are pleased with the comprehensive privacy solution that Brave Search provides against Big Tech by being integrated into our browser. As we know from experience in
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Android 12 Is Now Available For Pixel Phones
Today, Google has officially launched Android 12 for select Pixel devices. The Verge reports: It's available to install right now on Pixel 3 and up, including the Pixel 3A, Pixel 4, Pixel 4A, Pixel 4A 5G, the Pixel 5, and the Pixel 5A. It'll launch on the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, as well. Android 12 will be coming later this year to Samsung Galaxy, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Tecno, Vivo, and Xiaomi devices.
The most noticeable feature in Android 12 is the new Material You design, which lets you
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Doctors Blame TikTok For Surge In Teen Girls Experiencing Tics
An anonymous reader quotes a report from People: Doctors around the world are seeing a rise in cases of tic-like behaviors in teen girls, which they believe could be caused by watching TikTok videos about Tourette syndrome. Pediatric hospitals have reported an increase in teen girls coming in after developing tics, sudden twitches or noises that are a common symptom of Tourette syndrome, during the pandemic. The sudden rise is unusual, with tics typically occurring in boys, not girls. Experts in
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Google Makes Calling Businesses Less Painful With Features for Seeing Wait Times, Phone Tree Options
Alongside today's release of the new Pixel 6 smartphones, Google has again upgraded one of the device's most basic -- but often overlooked -- functions: the ability to make phone calls. From a report: In previous years, Google Assistant learned to screen your calls and make your reservations by phone via a technology called Duplex. Last year, it learned how to wait on hold for you, too. Today, Google is expanding some of these existing features and adding new ones -- including a tool that shows
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Software Freedom Conservancy Sues Vizio for GPL Violations
Jeremy Allison - Sam writes: Software Freedom Conservancy, a non-profit organization that promotes open-source software and defends the free software General Public License (GPL), announced today it has filed a lawsuit against Vizio for what it calls repeated failures to fulfill even the basic requirements of the GPL. The lawsuit alleges that Vizio's TV products, built on its SmartCast system, contain software that Vizio unfairly appropriated from a community of developers who intended consumers
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How Much Dell Pays Engineers, Analysts and Salespeople
With over 158,000 employees, Dell is one of the largest employers in tech -- and it's expanding its ranks. To find out how much Dell is paying new hires, Business Insider analyzed salaries of approved H-1B visas published by the US Office of Foreign Labor Certification. From a report: This data is drawn from 381 approved visa applications for Dell workers hired in the last 12 months. The roles include US salespeople, engineers, analysts, project managers, and consultants across the company. Most
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Homeopathy Doesn't Work. So Why Do So Many Germans Believe in It?
How Natalie Grams, who once abandoned her medical education to study alternative therapies, became Germany's most prominent homeopathy skeptic. From a report: The pseudoscience of homeopathy was invented in Germany in the 18th century by a maverick physician named Samuel Hahnemann. His theory was based on the ancient principle of like cures like -- akin to the mechanism behind vaccines. The remedies Hahnemann developed, meant to help the body heal on its own, originate as substances that with ex
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The FDA Wants You To Be Able To Buy a Hearing Aid Without a Prescription
People with mild or moderate hearing loss could soon be able to buy hearing aids without a medical exam or special fitting, under a new rule being proposed by the Food and Drug Administration. The agency says 37.5 million American adults have difficulties hearing. From a report: "Today's move by FDA takes us one step closer to the goal of making hearing aids more accessible and affordable for the tens of millions of people who experience mild to moderate hearing loss," Health and Human Services
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Google Revamps Its Smartphone Line With the Pixel 6
This morning, at the company's virtual hardware event, Google is finally showing us what it means to pick up and start over again. From a report: In many ways, the Pixel 6 marks the most radical departure in the history of Google's flagship devices -- and its most serious attempt to take the fight to Samsung and Apple. The company gave us our first glimpse of the device back in August. It was a surprisingly complete look at a device it would take another three and a half months to announce. Hard
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Hacker Steals Government ID Database for Argentina's Entire Population
A hacker has breached the Argentinian government's IT network and stolen ID card details for the country's entire population, data that is now being sold in private circles. The hack, which took place last month, targeted RENAPER, which stands for Registro Nacional de las Personas, translated as National Registry of Persons. From a report: The agency is a crucial cog inside the Argentinian Interior Ministry, where it is tasked with issuing national ID cards to all citizens, data that it also sto
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99.9% of Scientists Agree Climate Emergency Caused by Humans
knaapie writes: It may still be fuel for hot debate on social media, but 99.9% of scientist actually agree on the fact that humans are altering the climate. The Guardian reports that the degree of scientific certainty about the impact of greenhouse gases is now similar to the level of agreement on evolution and plate tectonics, the authors say, based on a survey by Cornell University of nearly 90,000 climate-related studies. This means there is practically no doubt among experts that burning fos
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MacOS Monterey Will Have the Old Safari Tab Design
An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple debuted a controversial new Safari tab design this summer at WWDC 2021, and since then, it has tweaked that look and even let you turn off many of the changes. With macOS Monterey, however, the company is going back to the way tabs looked before. On Apple's official page for the upcoming software update, if you scroll down to the section titled "Access Tab Groups anywhere," you can just barely see Safari's older (and arguably better) design in the examp
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Why a Former Netflix Exec Facing 7 Years in Prison for Bribery is a Cautionary Tale for Startups
A contract with a tech giant can put a startup on the map with venture capitalists and the market at large. That's what happened for Netskope, a cloud-based data security provider. Founded in 2012, the company was able to quickly scale up and secure multiple rounds of funding -- in part because it had a top-tier customer right out of the gate: Netflix. From a report: There was just one catch to landing that deal: It had to hire the streaming company's vice president of IT operations, Michael Kai
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Star's Strange Path Around Black Hole Proves Einstein Right -- Again
Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity has aced another test. From a report: Following nearly 3 decades of monitoring, researchers have detected a subtle shift in the orbit of the closest known star to the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way -- and the movement matches Einstein's theory precisely. The star, known as S2, follows an elliptical 16-year orbit. It made a close approach -- within 20 billion kilometers -- to our black hole, Sagittarius A*, last year. If Isaac
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Facebook's Novi Set To Launch Pilot With Paxos's Stablecoin as Uncertainty Hangs Over Diem
Facebook's crypto wallet Novi is inching forward with a "small pilot" in the U.S. and Guatemala, according to a tweet thread by David Marcus. From a report: The wallet project, which gatecrashed the crypto world in 2019 alongside a digital token dubbed Libra (now Diem), represents one of Facebook's attempts to lean into the fast-growing crypto market as well as the market for payments and remittances. As uncertainty hangs over Diem, Novi moved ahead with Pax Dollar for the pilot. The Block first
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Give Us Your Biometric Data To Get Your Lunch In 5 Seconds, UK Schools Tell Children
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: In North Ayrshire Council, a Scottish authority encompassing the Isle of Arran, nine schools are set to begin processing meal payments for school lunches using facial scanning technology. The authority and the company implementing the technology, CRB Cunninghams, claim the system will help reduce queues and is less likely to spread COVID-19 than card payments and fingerprint scanners, according to the Financial Times. Speaking to the publica
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