The European Union has fined Meta $840 million for unfairly tying its Facebook Marketplace classified ads service to its social network, marking the company's first EU antitrust penalty.

The European Commission ruled Meta must stop bundling Marketplace with Facebook's social platform and cease imposing unfair conditions on competing classified ads services. Regulators found Meta exploited Facebook's massive user base to disadvantage rivals and used competitors' advertising data to enhance Marketplace. ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: U.K. consumer rights group 'Which?' is filing a legal claim against Apple under competition law on behalf of some 40 million users of iCloud, its cloud storage service. The collective proceeding lawsuit, which is seeking 3 billion pounds in compensation damages (around $3.8 billion at current exchange rates), alleges that Apple has broken competition rules by giving its own cloud storage service preferential treatment and effectively locking people into paying for iCloud at "rip-off" prices. "iOS has a monopoly and is in control of Apple's operating systems and it is incumbent on Apple not to use that dominance to gain an unfair advantage in related markets, like the cloud storage market. But that is exactly what has happened," Which wrote in a press release announcing filing the claim with the U.K.'s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT).... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: U.K. consumer rights group 'Which?' is filing a legal claim against Apple under competition law on behalf of some 40 million users of iCloud, its cloud storage service. The collective proceeding lawsuit, which is seeking 3 billion pounds in compensation damages (around $3.8 billion at current exchange rates), alleges that Apple has broken competition rules by giving its own cloud storage service preferential treatment and effectively locking people into paying for iCloud at "rip-off" prices. "iOS has a monopoly and is in control of Apple's operating systems and it is incumbent on Apple not to use that dominance to gain an unfair advantage in related markets, like the cloud storage market. But that is exactly what has happened," Which wrote in a press release announcing filing the claim with the U.K.'s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT).... [ Read it >> ]

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A new study reveals that late work is judged more negatively than on-time submissions, even if delays are minimal or pre-communicated. "The findings suggest that, while you might be tempted to take the maximum allotted time to put the finishing touches to a report, submission or piece of work, the extra effort might not be appreciated by colleagues if it comes at the expense of punctual delivery," reports The Guardian. From the report: The study surveyed thousands of people in the US and UK, including managers, executives, human resources personnel and others whose jobs included an element of evaluating others. Participants were asked to rate pieces of work, such as advertising flyers, art, business proposals, product pitches, photography and news articles. But first, they were told it was either submitted early, on deadline or late. "Late" work was consistently rated as worse in quality than when people were told the same work was completed early or on time. The difference was equivalent to including an objective shortcoming such as not meeting a word count.... [ Read it >> ]

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During a public joint hearing today titled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth," four experts testified that the U.S. is running secret UAP programs, including crash retrieval and reverse-engineering programs for advanced nonhuman technology. Although the Pentagon maintains there's no evidence of alien spacecraft, witnesses like Luis Elizondo and Michael Gold argue that UAPs represent an intelligence enigma and call for open, stigma-free study to address potential security concerns and unknown scientific possibilities. NPR reports: Tim Gallaudet, retired rear admiral, U.S. Navy; CEO of Ocean STL Consulting, LLC... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: There's a general consensus that we won't be able to consistently perform sophisticated quantum calculations without the development of error-corrected quantum computing, which is unlikely to arrive until the end of the decade. It's still an open question, however, whether we could perform limited but useful calculations at an earlier point. IBM is one of the companies that's betting the answer is yes, and on Wednesday, it announced a series of developments aimed at making that possible. On their own, none of the changes being announced are revolutionary. But collectively, changes across the hardware and software stacks have produced much more efficient and less error-prone operations. The net result is a system that supports the most complicated calculations yet on IBM's hardware, leaving the company optimistic that its users will find some calculations where quantum hardware provides an advantage. [...]... [ Read it >> ]

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Wi-Fi 8 (also known as IEEE 802.11bn Ultra High Reliability) is expected to arrive around 2028, prioritizing an enhanced user experience over speed by optimizing interactions between devices and access points. While it retains similar bandwidth specifications as the previous standard, Wi-Fi 8 aims to improve network efficiency, reducing interference and congestion for a more reliable and adaptive connection. PCWorld's Mark Hachman reports: As of Nov. 2024, MediaTek believes that Wi-Fi 8 will look virtually identical to Wi-Fi 7 in several key areas: The maximum physical layer (PHY) rate will be the same at 2,880Mbps x 8, or 23Gbits/s. It will also use the same four frequency bands (2, 4, 5, and 6GHz) and the same 4096 QAM modulation across a maximum channel bandwidth of 320MHz. (A Wi-Fi 8 router won't get 23Gbps of bandwidth, of course. According to MediaTek, the actual peak throughput in a "clean," or laboratory, environment is just 80 percent or so of the hypothetical peak throughput, and actual, real-world results can be far less.)... [ Read it >> ]

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The FBI raided Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan's Manhattan apartment, seizing his phone and electronic devices. A source close to the matter told The New York Post it was politically motivated due to Polymarket's successful prediction of Trump's election win. It's "grand political theater at its worst," the source said. "They could have asked his lawyer for any of these things. Instead, they staged a so-called raid so they can leak it to the media and use it for obvious political reasons."... [ Read it >> ]

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Bluesky has reached 15 million users, driven by a recent surge in U.S. signups following the presidential election. It's currently the top free app on iOS. The Verge reports: The platform, which rests on the decentralized AT Protocol, added about a million new users in the last week. Bluesky COO Rose Wang recently told The Verge that the "majority" of new users flocking to the platform have been from the US. Meta's Threads is still outpacing Bluesky, having recently hit 275 million monthly users and growing at a rate of over a million signups per day. But Bluesky offers a very different experience. Both are ad-free (for now), but whereas Threads uses a single Meta-made algorithmic feed, Bluesky offers user-created algorithmic feeds in addition to its "Discover" and "Popular With Friends" ones.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The classic PC games market is "in a sorry state," according to DRM-free and classic-minded storefront GOG. Small games that aren't currently selling get abandoned, and compatibility issues arise as technology moves forward or as one-off development ideas age like milk. Classic games are only 20 percent of GOG's catalog, and the firm hasn't actually called itself "Good Old Games" in 12 years. And yet, today, GOG announces that it is making "a significant commitment of resources" toward a new GOG Preservation Program. It starts with 100 games for which GOG's own developers are working to create current and future compatibility, keeping them DRM-free and giving them ongoing tech support, along with granting them a "Good Old Game: Preserved by GOG" stamp.... [ Read it >> ]

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Amazon has discontinued its secretive "Encore" project to develop an at-home fertility tracker, resulting in layoffs for around 100 employees. The project, part of Amazon's Grand Challenge division, aimed to launch a device and app that would predict fertility through saliva testing but was ultimately terminated to control costs. CNBC reports: The project was born out of the company's 2020 acquisition of Wisconsin-based startup bluDiagnostics, the sources said. BluDiagnostics was founded in 2015 by Weibel, Katie Brenner and Jodi Schroll, all of whom joined Grand Challenge. The startup had developed a thermometer-like device, called FertilityFinder, to help women track their fertility from home by testing their saliva and measuring two key hormones, estradiol and progesterone. The results of the test were viewable through a corresponding app. Business Insider reported on aspects of the fertility device in 2022, when its codename was Project Tiberius.... [ Read it >> ]

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Meta said it plans to introduce advertisements on Threads starting in early 2025, according to a report by The Information (paywalled). GuruFocus reports: Leading the effort -- which is still in its early phases -- is a team inside Instagram's advertising division. One source said Threads is anticipated to let a small number of marketers produce and post material on the platform in January. Threads had about 275 million monthly active users as late as October. During the company's third-quarter earnings call, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg observed that Threads daily sign-up count was about one million, each day.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: OpenAI is preparing to launch a new artificial intelligence agent codenamed "Operator" that can use a computer to take actions on a person's behalf (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), such as writing code or booking travel [...]. In a staff meeting on Wednesday, OpenAI's leadership announced plans to release the tool in January as a research preview and through the company's application programming interface for developers [...]. The one nearest completion will be a general-purpose tool that executes tasks in a web browser, one of the people said.... [ Read it >> ]

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Microsoft's gaming division is developing prototypes for a handheld gaming device that won't launch for "a few years," gaming chief Phil Spencer said Wednesday. In an interview with Bloomberg, Spencer said that while Microsoft is actively working on prototypes, the company will first focus on improving its Xbox app performance on existing portable devices and establishing hardware partnerships. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Italy has emerged as a major global spyware hub alongside Israel and India, with at least six major vendors operating in the country with limited oversight, The Record reported this week, citing researchers and Italian experts. Companies like RCS Labs, which has operated since 1992, sell surveillance tools to both domestic law enforcement and foreign governments including Kazakhstan, Syria, and several Asian nations. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Leading AI systems are solving less than 2% of problems in a new advanced mathematics benchmark, revealing significant limitations in their reasoning capabilities, research group Epoch AI reported this week.

The benchmark, called FrontierMath, consists of hundreds of original research-level mathematics problems developed in collaboration with over 60 mathematicians, including Fields Medalists Terence Tao and Timothy Gowers. While top AI models like GPT-4 and Gemini 1.5 Pro achieve over 90% accuracy on traditional math tests, they struggle with FrontierMath's problems, which span computational number theory to algebraic geometry and require complex reasoning. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Dutch publisher Veen Bosch & Keuning has announced plans to use AI for translating commercial fiction, drawing sharp criticism from literary professionals despite promises of human oversight and author consent.

Award-winning translator Michele Hutchison, who won the 2020 International Booker Prize, argues that translation extends beyond word conversion. "We build bridges between cultures, taking into account the target readership every step of the way," she said, noting that translators convey rhythm, poetry, and cultural nuances while conducting precise terminology research.... [ Read it >> ]

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Microsoft seems set to rebrand the AI-powered features in Windows to "Windows Intelligence" even if some of the more controversial elements, such as Recall, are to remain as they are. The Register: Word of Windows Intelligence has circulated for a while, although Microsoft has yet to issue any official confirmation. In October, Tero Alhonen posted what appeared to be options for apps that use AI services. Over the weekend, X user Albacore turned up a placeholder page in a Windows 24H2 build for Windows Intelligence settings. Although Microsoft has made substantial investments in artificial intelligence, AI as part of a brand is a little generic. ... [ Read it >> ]

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AmiMoJo writes: The climate-damaging vapors left behind by jet planes could be easily tackled, aviation experts say, with a new study suggesting they could be eliminated for a few pounds per flight. Jet condensation trails, or contrails, have spawned wild conspiracy theories alleging mind control and the spreading of disease, but scientists say the real problem is their warming effect. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Mark Rainey: Engineers are currently debugging why the Voyager 1 spacecraft, which is 15 billions miles away, turned off its main radio and switched to a backup radio that hasn't been used in over forty years!

I've had some tricky debugging issues in the past, including finding compiler bugs and debugging code with no debugger that had been burnt into prom packs for terminals, however I have huge admiration for the engineers maintaining the operation of Voyager 1. ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Officials inside the Secret Service clashed over whether they needed a warrant to use location data harvested from ordinary apps installed on smartphones, with some arguing that citizens have agreed to be tracked with such data by accepting app terms of service, despite those apps often not saying their data may end up with the authorities, according to hundreds of pages of internal Secret Service emails obtained by 404 Media. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Paul Kinlan, who leads the Chrome and the Open Web Developer Relations team at Google, asks and answers the question (with a no.): Frameworks are abstractions over a platform designed for people and teams to accelerate their teams new work and maintenance while improving the consistency and quality of the projects. They also frequently force a certain type of structure and architecture to your code base. This isn't a bad thing, team productivity is an important aspect of any software. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Apple executives have defended the relocation of the power button to the bottom of its new M4 Mac mini, citing the computer's significantly reduced size as the driving factor behind the design change.

In a Bilibili video interview, Apple's Greg Joswiak and John Ternus explained that the Mac mini's form factor, now half the size of its predecessor, necessitated finding a new position for the power button. The executives said that the bottom placement allows for convenient access despite initial user criticism.... [ Read it >> ]

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OpenAI's latest large language model, known internally as Orion, has fallen short of performance targets, marking a broader slowdown in AI advancement across the industry's leading companies, according to Bloomberg, corroborating similar media stories in recent days. The model, which completed initial training in September, showed particular weakness in novel coding tasks and failed to demonstrate the same magnitude of improvement over its predecessor as GPT-4 achieved over GPT-3.5, the publication reported Wednesday. ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Royal assent was granted to two right to repair bills last week that amend Canada's Copyright Act to allow the circumvention of technological protection measures (TPMs) if this is done for the purposes of "maintaining or repairing a product, including any related diagnosing," and "to make the program or a device in which it is embedded interoperable with any other computer program, device or component." The pair of bills allow device owners to not only repair their own stuff regardless of how a program is written to prevent such non-OEM measures, but said owners can also make their devices work with third-party components without needing to go through the manufacturer to do so.... [ Read it >> ]

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A new analysis of data from NASA's Voyager 2 mission reveals that the planet Uranus and its five largest moons might harbor subsurface oceans and potential conditions for life. The BBC reports: Much of what we know about them was gathered by Nasa's Voyager 2 spacecraft which visited nearly 40 years ago. But a new analysis shows that Voyager's visit coincided with a powerful solar storm, which led to a misleading idea of what the Uranian system is really like. [...] So, for 40 years we have had an incorrect view of what Uranus and its five largest moons are normally like, according to Dr William Dunn of University College London. "These results suggest that the Uranian system could be much more exciting than previously thought. There could be moons there that could have the conditions that are necessary for life, they might have oceans below the surface that could be teeming with fish!".... [ Read it >> ]

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Longtime Slashdot reader thephydes writes: The hearing will go ahead on November 13 at 11:30 ET (16:30 GMT). Apparently, it will "further pull back the curtain on secret UAP research programs conducted by the U.S. government, and undisclosed findings they have yielded," according to a House statement. It's driven by two republicans, Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) and Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.), who say: "Americans deserve to understand what the government has learned about UAP sightings, and the nature of any potential threats these phenomena pose. We can only ensure that understanding by providing consistent, systemic transparency. We look forward to hearing from expert witnesses on ways to shed more light and bring greater accountability to this issue." "Expert witnesses in the hearing will include Luis Elizondo, a decorated former counterintelligence officer who has claimed for years that the U.S. government is hiding knowledge of UAP, including materials recovered from crashed flying saucers," reports Space.com. "The House hearing will also include Tim Gallaudet, a retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral who unidentified submersible objects, arguing that 'these underwater anomalies jeopardize US maritime security.'"... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: Former Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira was sentenced Tuesday to 15 years for stealing classified information from the Pentagon and sharing it online, the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts announced. Teixeira received the sentence before Judge Indira Talwani in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. In March, the national guardsman pleaded guilty to six counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information under the Espionage Act. He was arrested by the FBI in North Dighton, Massachusetts, in April 2023 and has been in federal custody since mid-May 2023.... [ Read it >> ]

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"Researchers at the University of Texas have unveiled a new thermal interface material that could revolutionize cooling, outperforming top liquid metal solutions by up to 72% in heat dissipation," writes Slashdot reader jjslash. "This breakthrough not only improves energy efficiency but also enables higher-density data center setups, cutting cooling costs and energy usage significantly." TechSpot reports: Thanks to a mechanochemically engineered combination of the liquid metal alloy Galinstan and ceramic aluminum nitride, this thermal interface material, or TIM, outperformed the best commercial liquid metal cooling products by a staggering 56-72% in lab tests. It allowed dissipation of up to 2,760 watts of heat from just a 16 square centimeter area. The material pulls this off by bridging the gap between the theoretical heat transfer limits of these materials and what's achieved in real products. Through mechanochemistry, the liquid metal and ceramic ingredients are mixed in an extremely controlled way, creating gradient interfaces that heat can flow across much more easily.... [ Read it >> ]

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If you have Spotify's soon-to-be-bricked Car Thing, there are a few ways you can give it a new lease on life. YouTuber Dammit Jeff has showcased modifications to Car Thing that makes the device useful as a desktop music controller, customizable shortcut tool, or a simple digital clock. Ars Technica's Kevin Purdy reports: Spotify had previously posted the code for its uboot and kernel to GitHub, under the very unassuming name "spsgsb" and with no announcement (as discovered by Josh Hendrickson). Jeff has one idea why the streaming giant might not have made much noise about it: "The truth is, this thing isn't really great at running anything." It has half a gigabyte of memory, 4GB of internal storage, and a "really crappy processor" (Amlogic S905D2 SoC) and is mostly good for controlling music.... [ Read it >> ]

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

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

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The genetic testing company 23andMe announced it will cut 40% of its workforce, or 200 jobs, and halt the work on therapies it was developing. As the BBC notes, the company is fighting for survival after hackers gained access to personal information of millions of its users, causing the stock to crater by more than 70%. All seven of its independent directors also resigned in September, following a protracted negotiation with founder and Chief Executive Anne Wojcicki over her plan to take the company private. The BBC reports: On Tuesday, the company warned investors of "substantial doubt" about its ability to continue operating, as it reported that revenue had fallen to $44 million between July and September compared to $50 million in the same period last year. Losses fell to $59 million from $75 million. The job cuts are expected to lead to one-off costs of $12 million, including severance pay, for the plan that will result in savings of $35 million. "We are taking these difficult but necessary actions as we restructure 23andMe and focus on the long-term success of our core consumer business and research partnerships," Ms Wojcicki said.... [ Read it >> ]

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

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After setting a record high yesterday, Bitcoin continued its remarkable rally, briefly surging past the $90,000 mark. Since Election Day, the cryptocurrency has gained nearly 30%, adding approximately $20,000 to its value. From a previous report: Bitcoin hit a peak of $90,000 on Coinbase at 12:56 PST on Nov. 12 and is up 11% over the past day, per TradingView data. The cryptocurrency is now just over 11% away from reaching $100,000.... [ Read it >> ]

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Red Hat, the IBM-owned open source software firm, is acquiring Neural Magic, a startup that optimizes AI models to run faster on commodity processors and GPUs. From a report: The terms of the deal weren't disclosed. MIT research scientist Alex Matveev and professor Nir Shavit founded Somerville, Massachusetts-based Neural Magic in 2018, inspired by their work in high-performance execution engines for AI. Neural Magic's software aims to process AI workloads on processors and GPUs at speeds equivalent to specialized AI chips (e.g. TPUs). By running models on off-the-shelf processors, which usually have more available memory, the company's software can realize these performance gains. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Federal authorities are grappling with the aftermath of an illegal sheep cloning operation that has scattered hundreds of contraband hybrid animals across multiple states, following the sentencing of the scheme's mastermind. Montana rancher Arthur Schubarth received a six-month prison term for cloning a near-threatened Marco Polo argali sheep from tissue illegally imported from Kyrgyzstan. ... [ Read it >> ]

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The percentage of workers in the U.S. who say they are using AI at work has remained largely flat over the last three months, according to a new study commissioned by Slack. From a report: If AI's rapid adoption curve slows or flattens, a lot of very rosy assumptions about the technology -- and very high market valuations tied to them -- could change. Slack said its most recent survey found 33% of U.S. workers say they are using AI at work, an increase of just a single percentage point. That represents a significant flattening of the rapid growth noted in prior surveys. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Microsoft is planning to no longer support the Windows Mail, Calendar, and People apps later this year. The Verge: The software giant has been moving existing users of these apps over to the new Outlook for Windows app in recent months, and now it has set an end of support date for the Mail, Calendar, and People apps of December 31st. ... [ Read it >> ]

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40% of AI data centers will face operational constraints due to power shortages by 2027 as AI drives unprecedented energy consumption, research firm Gartner said on Tuesday.

Data center power requirements for AI-optimized servers are projected to reach 500 terawatt-hours annually by 2027, more than double 2023 levels, as companies rapidly expand facilities to handle large language model training and implementation. ... [ Read it >> ]

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

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

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Apple was notified by the European Union that its geo-blocking practices are potentially in breach of consumer protection rules, adding to the iPhone maker's regulatory issues in the bloc. From a report: Apple's App Store, iTunes Store and other media services unlawfully discriminate against European customers based on their place of residence, according to a European Commission statement on Tuesday. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Major retailers are considering embedding radio-emitting threads into clothing as a novel anti-theft measure amid soaring retail crime rates, according to Bloomberg, citing industry sources. The technology, developed by Spanish firm Myruns, uses conductive ink derived from cellulose to create threads five times thinner than human hair that can trigger security alarms. ... [ Read it >> ]

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

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Qwant, France's privacy-focused search engine, and Ecosia, a Berlin-based not-for-profit search engine that uses ad revenue to fund tree planting and other climate-focused initiatives, are joining forces on a joint venture to develop their own European search index. TechCrunch: The pair hopes this move will help drive innovation in their respective search engines -- including and especially around generative AI -- as well as reducing dependence on search indexes provided by tech giants Microsoft (Bing) and Google. Both currently rely on Bing's search APIs while Ecosia also uses Google's search results. Rising API costs are one clear motivator for the move to shrink this Big Tech dependency, with Microsoft massively hiking prices for Bing's search APIs last year. ... [ Read it >> ]

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China's air force showcased a suite of new armaments this week, including a new stealth fighter and an attack drone, demonstrating its advancing ability to challenge the U.S. military presence in the Asia Pacific. From a report: The public debut of the J-35A stealth fighter and other weapons systems at China's premier airshow, which started Tuesday, represent the centerpiece in the Chinese air force's celebrations of its 75th anniversary -- a milestone in Chinese leader Xi Jinping's sweeping campaign to modernize the People's Liberation Army. ... [ Read it >> ]

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

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

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

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

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