Alphabet is spinning out Taara, a laser-based internet company from its X "moonshot" incubator, securing backing from Series X Capital while retaining a minority stake.

Taara's technology transmits data at 20 gigabits per second over 20km by firing pencil-width light beams between traffic light-sized terminals, extending traditional fiber-optic networks with minimal construction costs.

Based in Sunnyvale, California, the company operates in 12 countries, including India and parts of Africa, where it created a 5km laser link over the Congo River between Brazzaville and Kinshasa. The two-dozen-strong team partners with telecommunications firms like Bharti Airtel and T-Mobile to extend core fiber-optic networks to remote locations or dense urban areas.

Taara originated from Project Loon, which was shut down in 2021 after facing regulatory challenges. The company is developing silicon photonic chips to replace mirrors and lenses in its terminals and potentially enable multiple connections from a single transmitter.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/17/0723230/alphabet-spins-off-laser-based-internet-project-taara-from-moonshot-unit?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

More than 80 signatories representing about 100 European tech organizations have urged EU leaders to take "radical action" to reduce reliance on foreign digital infrastructure, according to a letter sent to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

The coalition, including Airbus, Proton, and OVHCloud, warns Europe "will lose out on digital innovation" and become almost completely dependent on non-European technologies "in less than three years at current rates."

The group calls for public procurement requirements mandating European-made tech solutions, development of common standards, and creation of a "Sovereign Infrastructure Fund" for capital-intensive areas like chips and quantum computing. "Our reliance on non-European technologies will become almost complete in less than three years at current rates," the letter states, citing concerns over U.S. technological dominance following recent comments from Vice President JD Vance criticizing European regulations.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/03/17/0628241/european-tech-firms-push-eu-for-buy-european-tech-mandate?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Across high-income countries, humans' ability to reason and solve problems appears to have peaked in the early 2010s and declined since. Despite no changes in fundamental brain biology, test scores for both teenagers and adults show deteriorating performance in reading, mathematics and science. In an eye-opening statistic, 25% of adults in high-income countries now struggle to "use mathematical reasoning when reviewing statements" -- rising to 35% in the US.

This cognitive decline coincides with a fundamental shift in our relationship with information. Americans reading books has fallen below 50%, while difficulty thinking and concentrating among 18-year-olds has climbed sharply since the mid-2010s. The timing points to our changing digital habits: a transition from finite web pages to infinite feeds, from active browsing to passive consumption, and from focused attention to constant context-switching.

Research shows that intentional use of digital technologies can be beneficial, but the passive consumption dominating recent years impairs verbal processing, attention, working memory and self-regulation.

Some of the cited research in the story:
New PIAAC results show declining literacy and increasing inequality in many European countries â" Better adult learning is necessary;
Have attention spans been declining?;
Short- and long-term effects of passive and active screen time on young children's phonological memory;
Efficient, helpful, or distracting? A literature review of media multitasking in relation to academic performance.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/03/17/0954252/have-humans-passed-peak-brain-power?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Abstract of a paper published on National Bureau of Economic Research: This paper investigates self-reported wedges between how much people work and how much they want to work, at their current wage. More than two-thirds of full-time workers in German survey data are overworked -- actual hours exceed desired hours. We combine this evidence with a simple model of labor supply to assess the welfare consequences of tighter weekly hours limits via willingness-to-pay calculations. According to counterfactuals, the optimal length of the workweek in Germany is 37 hours. Introducing such a cap would raise welfare by .8-1.6% of GDP. The gains from a shortened workweek are largest for workers who are married, female, white collar, middle aged, and high income. An extended analysis integrates a non-constant wage-hours relationship, falling capital returns, and a shrinking tax base.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/03/17/0749239/should-friday-be-the-new-saturday?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Prolonged exposure to extreme heat accelerates biological aging in older adults, increasing the risk of age-related illnesses, according to research published in Science Advances.

In a nationally representative study of 3,686 U.S. adults over age 56, scientists found that long-term exposure to high heat days was associated with accelerated epigenetic aging - molecular changes that affect how genes function without altering DNA itself.

Researchers from the University of Southern California discovered that individuals living in areas where heat index values regularly exceed 90F showed signs of being biologically older than those in cooler regions, even after controlling for factors like wealth, education, and lifestyle habits. Six-year cumulative heat exposure linked to as much as 2.48 years of accelerated aging in one measurement.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/03/17/1435237/heat-can-age-you-as-much-as-smoking-a-new-study-finds?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

HR software provider Rippling has sued competitor Deel for allegedly planting a spy in its Dublin office to steal trade secrets, court documents [PDF] showed on Monday. Rippling claims the employee, identified as D.S., systematically searched internal Slack channels for competitor information, including sales leads and pitch decks.

The company discovered the alleged scheme through a "honeypot" trap -- a specially created Slack channel mentioned in a letter to Deel executives. When served with a court order to surrender his phone, D.S. locked himself in a bathroom before fleeing, according to the lawsuit. "We're all for healthy competition, but we won't tolerate when a competitor breaks the law," said Vanessa Wu, Rippling's general counsel. Both companies operate multibillion-dollar HR platforms, with Rippling valued at $13.5 billion and Deel at over $12 billion.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/03/17/146214/hr-tech-firm-rippling-sues-rival-deel-for-corporate-espionage?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

This week the Free Software Foundation published memorabilia items for an online silent auction — part of their big 40th anniversary celebration. "Starting March 17, the FSF will unlock items each day for bidding on the LibrePlanet wiki at 12:00 EDT.. Bidding on all items will conclude at 15:00 EDT on March 21, 2025...

"During the auction, the FSF welcomes everyone who supports user freedom to bid on historical and symbolic free software memorabilia," they annouced this week:

The auction is split into two parts: a silent auction hosted on the LibrePlanet wiki from March 17 through March 21 and a live auction held on the FSF's Galène videoconferencing server on March 23 from 14:00-17:00. The auction is only the opening act to a months-long itinerary celebrating forty years of free software activism...

Executive director Zoë Kooyman adds: "These items are valuable pieces of FSF history, and some of them are emblematic of the free software movement. We want to entrust these memorabilia in the hands of the free software community for preservation and would love to see some of these items displayed in exhibitions." All in all, there are twenty-five pieces that are either directly part of the FSF's history and/or representative of the free software movement that will be available in the silent auction.

Winning bidders can rest assured that all proceeds from this auction will go towards the FSF's continued work to promote computer user freedom worldwide.

Silent auction items include:
A print of the famous Gnu-with-Tux-as-superheroes poster signed by Richard Stallman and artist Lissanne Lake. Bids start at $300...

A mid-1980s VT220 terminal that "still works, and can be connected to your favorite free machine over the serial interface... This is the same terminal that was on the FSF reception desk for some time, introducing visitors to ASCII art, NetHack, and other free software lore." Bids start at $250... (with estimate shipping costs of $100)

An Amiga 3000UX donated to the GNU project "sometime in 1990." While it now has a damaged battery, "FSF staff programmers used it at MIT to help further some early development of the GNU operating system." Starting bid: $300 (with estimated shipping costs of $400). ... [>>>]

An anonymous reader shared this article from TechCrunch:

Social network Bluesky recently published a proposal on GitHub outlining new options it could give users to indicate whether they want their posts and data to be scraped for things like generative AI training and public archiving.

CEO Jay Graber discussed the proposal earlier this week, while on-stage at South by Southwest, but it attracted fresh attention on Friday night, after she posted about it on Bluesky. Some users reacted with alarm to the company's plans, which they saw as a reversal of Bluesky's previous insistence that it won't sell user data to advertisers and won't train AI on user posts.... Graber replied that generative AI companies are "already scraping public data from across the web," including from Bluesky, since "everything on Bluesky is public like a website is public." So she said Bluesky is trying to create a "new standard" to govern that scraping, similar to the robots.txt file that websites use to communicate their permissions to web crawlers...

If a user indicates that they don't want their data used to train generative AI, the proposal says, "Companies and research teams building AI training sets are expected to respect this intent when they see it, either when scraping websites, or doing bulk transfers using the protocol itself."

Over on Threads someone had a different wish for our AI-enabled future. "I want to be able to conversationally chat to my feed algorithm. To be able to explain to it the types of content I want to see, and what I don't want to see. I want this to be an ongoing conversation as it refines what it shows me, or my interests change."

"Yeah I want this too," posted top Instagram/Threads executive Adam Mosseri, who said he'd talked about the idea with VC Sam Lessin. "There's a ways to go before we can do this at scale, but I think it'll happen eventually."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/17/0434237/bluesky-proposes-new-standard-for-when-scraping-data-for-ai-training?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot. ... [>>>]

Google collaborated with Imperial College London and its "Fleming Initiative" partnership with Imperial NHS, giving their scientists "access to a powerful new AI designed" built with Gemini 2.0 "to make research faster and more efficient," according to an announcement from the school. And the results were surprising...

"José Penadés and his colleagues at Imperial College London spent 10 years figuring out how some superbugs gain resistance to antibiotics," writes LiveScience. "But when the team gave Google's 'co-scientist'' — an AI tool designed to collaborate with researchers — this question in a short prompt, the AI's response produced the same answer as their then-unpublished findings in just two days."

Astonished, Penadés emailed Google to check if they had access to his research. The company responded that it didn't. The researchers published their findings [about working with Google's AI] Feb. 19 on the preprint server bioRxiv...

"What our findings show is that AI has the potential to synthesise all the available evidence and direct us to the most important questions and experimental designs," co-author Tiago Dias da Costa, a lecturer in bacterial pathogenesis at Imperial College London, said in a statement. "If the system works as well as we hope it could, this could be game-changing; ruling out 'dead ends' and effectively enabling us to progress at an extraordinary pace...."

After two days, the AI returned suggestions, one being what they knew to be the correct answer. "This effectively meant that the algorithm was able to look at the available evidence, analyse the possibilities, ask questions, design experiments and propose the very same hypothesis that we arrived at through years of painstaking scientific research, but in a fraction of the time," Penadés, a professor of microbiology at Imperial College London, said in the statement. The researchers noted that using the AI from the start wouldn't have removed the need to conduct experiments but that it would have helped them come up with the hypothesis much sooner, thus saving them years of work. ... [>>>]

Long-time Slashdot reader chicksdaddy writes:
A group of U.S. consumer advocacy groups on Wednesday proposed legislation to address the growing epidemic of "zombie" Internet of Things (IoT) devices that have had software support cut off by their manufacturer, Fight To Repair News reports.

The Connected Consumer Product End of Life Disclosure Act is a collaboration between Consumer Reports, US PIRG, the Secure Resilient Future Foundation (SRFF) and the Center for Democracy and Technology. It requires manufacturers of connected consumer products to disclose for how long they will provide technical support, security updates, or bug fixes for the software and hardware that are necessary for the product to operate securely.

The groups proposed legal requirements that manufacturers "must notify consumers when their devices are nearing the end of life and provide guidance on how to handle the device's end of life," while end-of-life notifications "must include details about features that will be lost, and potential vulnerabilities and security risks that may arise." And when an ISP-provided device (like a router) reaches its end of life, the ISP must remove them.

"The organizations are working with legislators at the state and federal level to get the model legislation introduced," according to Fight To Repair News.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/03/17/0126204/consumer-groups-push-new-law-fighting-zombie-iot-devices?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman "recently told Entrepreneur magazine that almost five years of remote work has 'been fantastic for us,'" writes the Seattle Times.

Zillow shifted to allowing people to work fully remote during the pandemic. It's been a recruiting and retention tool for Zillow as they "now see four times the number of job applicants for every job we have versus what we did before the pandemic," Wacksman said.

While Zillow still lists its corporate headquarters as Seattle, the company bills itself as "cloud-headquartered," with remote workers and satellite offices. Wacksman's comments are backed by serious real estate moves the company has made over the past five years. An annual report detailing Zillow's financial results for 2024 shows its Seattle headquarters and offices across the country are shrinking. In 2019, Zillow had 386,275 square feet of office space in Seattle after steadily gobbling up floors of the Russell Investments Center downtown over the prior five years. The company reported it had 113,470 square feet in Seattle at the end of 2024... The company has drastically cut costs by shedding offices. Zillow's total leasing costs reached $54 million in 2022 and dropped to $34 million last year... It expects those costs to decrease even further, to $18 million by 2029. Zillow is also taking advantage of subleasing some of its office space and expects $26 million in sublease income between 2025 and 2030...
Zillow's financial results from last year suggest the workforce has been productive while logging in from home. The company reported Tuesday that it beat Wall Street expectations for the last three months of 2024 with a quarterly revenue of $554 million. Wacksman said in a news release Tuesday that 2024 was a "remarkable year for Zillow," as it reached its goal of double-digit revenue growth.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/03/16/2333228/remote-working-saved-zillow-money-helped-recruiting-and-maintained-productivity?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot. ... [>>>]

Intel's stock jumped nearly 19% this week. "However, in the past year through Wednesday's close, Intel stock had fallen 53%," notes Investor's Business Daily:

The appointment of Lip-Bu Tan as CEO is a "good start" but Intel has significant challenges, Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore said in a client note. Those challenges include delays in its server chip product line, a very competitive PC chip market, lack of a compelling AI chip offering, and over $10 billion in losses in its foundry business over the past 12 months. There is "no quick fix" for those issues, he said.

"There are things you can do," a Columbia business school associate professor tells the Wall Street Journal in a video interview, "but it's going to be incremental, and it's going to be extremely risky... They will try to be competitive in the foundry manufacturing space," but "It takes very aggressive investments."

Meanwhile, TSMC is exploring a joint venture where they'd operate Intel's factories, even pitching the idea to AMD, Nvidia, Broadcam, and Qualcomm, according to Reuters. (They add that Intel "reported a 2024 net loss of $18.8 billion, its first since 1986," and talked to multiple sources "familiar with" talks about Intel's future).
Multiple companies have expressed interest in buying parts of Intel, but two of the four sources said the U.S. company has rejected discussions about selling its chip design house separately from the foundry division. Qualcomm has exited earlier discussions to buy all or part of Intel, according to those people and a separate source. Intel board members have backed a deal and held negotiations with TSMC, while some executives are firmly opposed, according to two sources.

"They say Lip-Bu Tan is the best hope to fix Intel — if Intel can be fixed at all," writes the Wall Street Journal:
He brings two decades of semiconductor industry experience, relationships across the sector, a startup mindset and an obsession with AI...and basketball. He also comes with tricky China business relationships, underscoring Silicon Valley's inability to sever itself from one of America's top adversaries... [Intel's] stock has lost two-thirds of its value in four short years as Intel sat out the AI boom... ... [>>>]

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: Wall Street Journal K-12 education reporter Matt Barnum has a heads-up for parents: There's a Good Chance Your Kid Uses AI to Cheat. Barnum writes: "A high-school senior from New Jersey doesn't want the world to know that she cheated her way through English, math and history classes last year. Yet her experience, which the 17-year-old told The Wall Street Journal with her parent's permission, shows how generative AI has rooted in America's education system, allowing a generation of students to outsource their schoolwork to software with access to the world's knowledge. [...] The New Jersey student told the Journal why she used AI for dozens of assignments last year: Work was boring or difficult. She wanted a better grade. A few times, she procrastinated and ran out of time to complete assignments. The student turned to OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, to help spawn ideas and review concepts, which many teachers allow. More often, though, AI completed her work. Gemini solved math homework problems, she said, and aced a take-home test. ChatGPT did calculations for a science lab. It produced a tricky section of a history term paper, which she rewrote to avoid detection. The student was caught only once." Not surprisingly, AI companies play up the idea that AI will radically improve learning, while educators are more skeptical. "This is a gigantic public experiment that no one has asked for," said Marc Watkins, assistant director of academic innovation at the University of Mississippi.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/03/16/2119235/theres-a-good-chance-your-kid-uses-ai-to-cheat?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

America's Vice President "expressed confidence Friday that a deal to sell TikTok and keep the social media app running in the U.S. would largely be in place by an April deadline," reports NBC News. (Specifically the Vice President said "There will almost certainly be a high-level agreement that I think satisfies our national security concerns, allows there to be a distinct American TikTok enterprise.")

The article adds that TikTok owner ByteDance "has not publicly confirmed negotiations with any potential U.S. buyer, nor has it confirmed its willingness to sell TikTok to a U.S. bidder." But ByteDance "favors" a deal with Oracle, according to an X.com post on Thursday from tech-publication The Information.

And today Politico adds that Oracle "is accelerating talks with the White House on a deal to run TikTok, though significant concerns remain about what role the app's Chinese founders will play in its ongoing U.S. operation, according to three people familiar with the discussions."

[Oracle's discussions are happening] amid ongoing warnings from congressional Republicans and other China hawks that any new ownership deal — if it keeps TikTok's underlying technology in Chinese hands — could be only a surface-level fix to the security concerns that led to last year's sweeping bipartisan ban of the app. Key lawmakers, including concerned Republicans, are bringing in Oracle this week to discuss the possible deal and rising national security concerns, according to four people familiar with the meetings. One of the three people familiar with the discussions with Oracle said the deal would essentially require the U.S. government to depend on Oracle to oversee the data of American users and ensure the Chinese government doesn't have a backdoor to it — a promise the person warned would be impossible to keep.
"If the Oracle deal moves forward, you still have this [algorithm] controlled by the Chinese...."

The data security company HaystackID, which serves as independent security inspectors for TikTok U.S., said in February that it has found no indications of internal or external malicious activity — nor has it identified any protected U.S. user data that has been shared with China. ... [>>>]

After Meta convinced an arbitrator to temporarily prevent a whistleblower from promoting their book about the company (titled: Careless People), the book climbed to the top of Amazon's best-seller list. And the book's publisher Macmillan released a defiant statement that "The arbitration order has no impact on Macmillan... We will absolutely continue to support and promote it." (They added that they were "appalled by Meta's tactics to silence our author through the use of a non-disparagement clause in a severance agreement.")
Saturday the controversy was even covered by Rolling Stone:

[Whistleblower Sarah] Wynn-Williams is a diplomat, policy expert, and international lawyer, with previous roles including serving as the Chief Negotiator for the United Nations on biosafety liability, according to her bio on the World Economic Forum...
Since the book's announcement, Meta has forcefully responded to the book's allegations in a statement... "Eight years ago, Sarah Wynn-Williams was fired for poor performance and toxic behavior, and an investigation at the time determined she made misleading and unfounded allegations of harassment. Since then, she has been paid by anti-Facebook activists and this is simply a continuation of that work. Whistleblower status protects communications to the government, not disgruntled activists trying to sell books."
But the negative coverage continues, with the Observer Sunday highlighting it as their Book of the Week. "This account of working life at Mark Zuckerberg's tech giant organisation describes a 'diabolical cult' able to swing elections and profit at the expense of the world's vulnerable..."
Though ironically Wynn-Williams started their career with optimism about Facebook's role in the app internet.org.
. "Upon witnessing how the nascent Facebook kept Kiwis connected in the aftermath of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, she believed that Mark Zuckerberg's company could make a difference — but in a good way — to social bonds, and that she could be part of that utopian project... ... [>>>]

"The number of discrete GPU developers from the U.S. and Western Europe shrank to three companies in 2025," notes Tom's Hardware, "from around 10 in 2000." (Nvidia, AMD, and Intel...)
No company in the recent years — at least outside of China — was bold enough to engage into competition against these three contenders, so the very emergence of Bolt Graphics seems like a breakthrough. However, the major focuses of Bolt's Zeus are high-quality rendering for movie and scientific industries as well as high-performance supercomputer simulations. If Zeus delivers on its promises, it could establish itself as a serious alternative for scientific computing, path tracing, and offline rendering. But without strong software support, it risks struggling against dominant market leaders.

This week the Sunnyvale, California-based startup introduced its Zeus GPU platform designed for gaming, rendering, and supercomputer simulations, according to the article. "The company says that its Zeus GPU not only supports features like upgradeable memory and built-in Ethernet interfaces, but it can also beat Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5090 by around 10 times in path tracing workloads, according to slide published by technology news site ServeTheHome."

There is one catch: Zeus can only beat the RTX 5090 GPU in path tracing and FP64 compute workloads. It's not clear how well it will handle traditional rendering techniques, as that was less of a focus. In speaking with Bolt Graphics, the card does support rasterization, but there was less emphasis on that aspect of the GPU, and it may struggle to compete with the best graphics cards when it comes to gaming. And when it comes to data center options like Nvidia's Blackwell B200, it's an entirely different matter.
Unlike GPUs from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia that rely on proprietary instruction set architectures, Bolt's Zeus relies on the open-source RISC-V ISA, according to the published slides. The Zeus core relies on an open-source out-of-order general-purpose RVA23 scalar core mated with FP64 ALUs and the RVV 1.0 (RISC-V Vector Extension Version 1.0) that can handle 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, and 64-bit data types as well as Bolt's additional proprietary extensions designed for acceleration of scientific workloads... Like many processors these days, Zeus relies on a multi-chiplet design... Unlike high-end GPUs that prioritize bandwidth, Bolt is evidently focusing on greater memory size to handle larger datasets for rendering and simulations. Also, built-in 400GbE and 800GbE ports to enable faster data transfer across networked GPUs indicates the data center focus of Zeus. ... [>>>]

Slashdot reader rikfarrow summarizes an article they wrote for Usenix.org about the Open Source Python compiler Codon:

In 2023 I tried out Codon. At the time I had difficulty compiling the scripts I most commonly used, but was excited by the prospect. Python is essentially single threaded and checks the shape (type) of each variable as it interprets scripts. Codon fixes types and compiles Python into compact, executable binaries that execute much faster.

Several things have changed with their latest release: I have successful compiles, the committers have added a compiled version of NumPy (high performance math algorithms), and changed their open source license to Apache 2.

"The other big news is that Exaloop, the company that is behind Codon, has changed their license to Apache 2..." according to the article, so "commercial use and derivations of Codon are now permitted without licensing."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://developers.slashdot.org/story/25/03/16/003225/codon-python-compiler-gets-faster---and-changes-to-apache-2-license?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

A ransomware-as-a-service variant called "Medusa" has claimed over 300 victims in "critical infrastructure sectors" (including medical), according to an joint alert from CISA, the FBI, and the Multi-State Information Sharing Analysis Center.

And that alert reminds us that Medusa is a globe-spanning operation that recruits third-party affiliates to plant ransomware and negotiate with victims, notes the Register. "Even organizations that have good ransomware recovery regimes, meaning they don't need to unscramble encrypted data as they have good backups and fall-back plans, may consider paying to prevent the release of their stolen data, given the unpleasant consequences that follow information leaks.

Medusa actors also set a deadline for victims to pay ransoms and provide a countdown timer that makes it plain when stolen info will be sprayed across the internet. If victims cough up $10,000 in cryptocurrency, the crims push the deadline forward by 24 hours.

The advisory reveals one Medusa actor has taken things a step further. "FBI investigations identified that after paying the ransom, one victim was contacted by a separate Medusa actor who claimed the negotiator had stolen the ransom amount already paid," the advisory states. That separate actor then "requested half of the payment be made again to provide the 'true decryptor'," the advisory states, describing this incident as "potentially indicating a triple extortion scheme."

The security groups' advisory stresses that they "do not encourage paying ransoms as payment does not guarantee victim files will be recovered. Furthermore, payment may also embolden adversaries to target additional organizations..." (But "Regardless of whether you or your organization have decided to pay the ransom, FBI, CISA, and MS-ISAC urge you to promptly report ransomware incidents...)

Besides updating software and operating systems, the alert makes these recommendations for organizations:

Require VPNs (or jump hosts) for remote network access ... [>>>]

The Washington Post reports:
Oceans last year reached their highest levels in three decades — with the rate of global sea level rise increasing around 35% higher than expected, according to a NASA-led analysis published Thursday... Last year's rate of average global sea level rise was 0.23 inches per year, higher than the expected 0.17 inches per year, NASA said in a news release.

The rate of global sea level rise follows a trend of rapidly increasing rates over the past 30 years. From 1993 to 2023, the rate of global sea level rise doubled, increasing from 0.08 inches per year to 0.18 inches, another NASA-led study showed. Overall, the global sea level has climbed by 4 inches since 1993.

More details from ABC News:

Climate change was a major driver to an unexpected level of sea level rise in 2024, according to a new NASA analysis... The majority of the difference between predicted and actual sea level rise was attributed to thermal expansion — or the ocean waters expanding as they warm, researchers said. An unusual amount of ocean warming, combined with meltwater from land-based ice such as glaciers, led to the increase of sea level rise last year, according to NASA.

About two-thirds of sea level rise in recent years has resulted from the melting of ice sheets and glaciers, with a third coming from thermal expansion, according to NASA. In 2024, those metrics flipped, with two-thirds of the rise attributed to expanding ocean water and one-third attributed to contributions from melting ice. "With 2024 as the warmest year on record, Earth's expanding oceans are following suit, reaching their highest levels in three decades," said Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, head of physical oceanography programs and the Integrated Earth System Observatory at NASA... Human-amplified climate change is the primary cause for present-day rising sea levels, climate research shows.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/03/15/0426222/ocean-levels-rise-to-a-30-year-high---and-faster-than-expected?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot. ... [>>>]

"A new four-lane highway cutting through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest is being built for the COP30 climate summit," reports the BBC, "in the Brazilian city of Belém."
The highway will ease traffic into the city, which will host over 50,000 people at the conference this November:
The state government touts the highway's "sustainable" credentials, but some locals and conservationists are outraged at the environmental impact... Along the partially built road, lush rainforest towers on either side — a reminder of what was once there. Logs are piled high in the cleared land which stretches more than 13km (8 miles) through the rainforest into Belém.

Diggers and machines carve through the forest floor, paving over wetland to surface the road which will cut through a protected area... The road leaves two disconnected areas of protected forest. Scientists are concerned it will fragment the ecosystem and disrupt the movement of wildlife...

The state government of Pará had touted the idea of this highway, known as Avenida Liberdade, as early as 2012, but it had repeatedly been shelved because of environmental concerns. Now a host of infrastructure projects have been resurrected or approved to prepare the city for the COP summit.
But on the bright side, Adler Silveira, the state government's infrastructure secretary, said the highway would have wildlife crossings for animals to pass over, as well as climate-friendly bike lanes and solar-powered lighting...

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/03/16/0136229/amazon-forest-felled-to-build-road-for-climate-summit?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

"Why can't we each have our own AI software that runs locally," asks long-time Slashdot reader BrendaEM — and that doesn't steal the work of others.

Imagine a powerful-but-locally-hosted LLM that "doesn't spy... and no one else owns it."
We download it, from souce-code if you like, install it, if we want. And it assists: us... No one gate-keeps it. It's not out to get us...

And this is important: because no one owns it, the AI software is ours and leaks no data anywhere — to no one, no company, for no political nor financial purpose. No one profits — but you!

Their longer original submission also asks a series of related questions — like why can't we have software without AI? (Along with "Why is AMD stamping AI on local-processors?" and "Should AI be crowned the ultimate hype?") But this question seems to be at the heart of their concern. "What future will anyone have if anything they really wanted to do — could be mimicked and sold by the ill-gotten work of others...?"

"Could local, open-source, AI software be the only answer to dishearten billionaire companies from taking and selling back to their customers — everything we have done? Could we not...instead — steal their dream?!"

Share your own thoughts and answers in the comments. Where are the open-source, local-only AI solutions?

[ Read more of this story ]( https://ask.slashdot.org/story/25/03/16/015209/ask-slashdot-where-are-the-open-source-local-only-ai-solutions?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

"For the first time in history, a privately operated lunar lander has captured images of a total eclipse from the Moon's surface," reports Daily Galaxy.

While the Athena lunar lander tipped over and ended its mission, elsewhere on the moon Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander "continues to beam home incredible imagery," writes Space.com, and since its landing on March 2 "has been sending us stunning photos and videos..." A new video of Blue Ghost's moon-side view captures the eerie red light on the moon (caused by sunlight refracting through the atmosphere over the edges of the earth). "Blue Ghost turns red!" Firefly writes on their mission updates page.

A SpaceX photographer also captured the eclipse as it happened over a Falcon 9 rocket waiting to launch to the International Space Station, in a remarkable time-lapse photograph.

And Space.com collects more interesting lunar-eclipse photos taken from around the world, including Appin, Scotland; Canberra, Australia; and Palm Springs, California...

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/03/15/2217247/fireflys-athena-lander-watched-fridays-eclipse---from-the-moon?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader BenFenner writes: For the third time in recent memory, CloudFlare has blocked large swaths of niche browsers and their users from accessing web sites that CloudFlare gate-keeps. In the past these issues have been resolved quickly (within a week) and apologies issued with promises to do better. (See 2024-03-11, 2024-07-08, and 2025-01-30.)

This time around it has been over six weeks and CloudFlare has been unable or unwilling to fix the problem on their end, effectively stalling any progress on the matter with various tactics including asking browser developers to sign overarching NDAs.

That last link is an update posted today by Pale Moon's main developer:

Our current situation remains unchanged: CloudFlare is still blocking our access to websites through the challenges, and the captcha/turnstile continues to hang the browser until our watchdog terminates the hung script after which it reloads and hangs again after a short pause (but allowing users to close the tab in that pause, at least). To say that this upsets me is an understatement. Other than deliberate intent or absolute incompetence, I see no reason for this to endure. Neither of those options are very flattering for CloudFlare.

I wish I had better news.

In a comment, Slashdot reader BenFenner shares a list posted by Pale Moon's developer of reportedly affected browsers:

Pale MoonBasiliskWaterfoxFalkonSeaMonkeyVarious Firefox ESR flavorsThorium (on some systems)Ungoogled ChromiumK-MeleonLibreWolfMyPal 68Otter browser
Slashdot reader Z00L00K speculates that "this is some kind of anti-bot measure that fails. I suspect that the reason for them wanting a NDA to be signed is to prevent ways to circumvent the anti-bot measures..."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/15/236215/cloudflare-accused-of-blocking-niche-browsers?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot. ... [>>>]

Cities in Europe "are dramatically scaling back their relationship with the car," reports the Washington Post:

They are removing parking spaces and creating dedicated bike lanes. They are installing cameras at the perimeter of urban centers and either charging the most-polluting vehicles or preventing them from entering. Some are going so far as to put entire neighborhoods off-limits to vehicles. In Norway, Oslo promotes "car-free livability." Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo touts the "end of car dependence." And while those ideas might sound radical to car-loving Americans, they are fast becoming the norm across the Atlantic, where 340 European cities and towns — home to more than 150 million people — have implemented some kind of restrictions on personal car usage...

[V]irtually every major European city is imposing some kind of rule. Milan has a system similar to New York's, charging for access to the city core — while entirely banning older, highly polluting vehicles. London charges vehicles that don't meet emissions standards, in what it calls the "largest clean-air zone in the world." The programs are not just the purview of liberal Western Europe: Warsaw, Poland, and Sofia, Bulgaria, recently adopted similar schemes. Even little Italian villages have added vehicle restrictions to reinforce their historic feel. And the Netherlands just broke ground on a 12,000-person neighborhood that will be entirely car-free. The neighborhood, known as Merwede, will be connected by public transport to Utrecht, a medium-size city that — perhaps no surprise — has a low-emissions zone of its own...

Perhaps the most elaborate and transformative effort has come in Paris, where Anne Hidalgo was elected mayor in 2014. Since then, Paris has banned the most-polluting vehicles from the city, eliminated 50,000 parking spaces and added hundreds of miles of bike lanes. It turned a bank of the Seine from a busy artery into a pedestrian zone, and closed off the famed Rue de Rivoli to traffic... Journeys by car in Paris have dropped by about 45 percent since 1990. The city has now become a source for striking before-and-after photos: of clogged streets that have transitioned into tree-lined areas where people can walk and play. ... [>>>]

"SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said his Starship rocket will head to Mars by the end of next year," writes the BBC, "as the company investigates several recent explosions in flight tests."

Human landings could begin as early as 2029 if initial missions go well, though "2031 was more likely", he added in a post on his social media platform X...

The billionaire said in 2020 that he remained confident that his company would land humans on Mars six years later. In 2024, he said he would launch the first Starships to Mars in 2026, with plans to send crewed flights in four years.
Musk has said that the coming Mars mission would carry the Tesla humanoid robot "Optimus", which was shown to the public last year.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/03/15/1947252/elon-musk-says-spacexs-first-mission-to-mars-will-launch-next-year?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

"Is everything we see around us is sealed within a black hole?" asks Space.com.

Because here's the thing. The $10 billion James Webb Space telescope (in operation since 2022) "has found that the vast majority of deep space and, thus the early galaxies it has so far observed, are rotating in the same direction. While around two-thirds of galaxies spin clockwise, the other third rotates counter-clockwise."

In a random universe, scientists would expect to find 50% of galaxies rotating one way, while the other 50% rotate the other way. This new research suggests there is a preferred direction for galactic rotation... "It is still not clear what causes this to happen, but there are two primary possible explanations," team leader Lior Shamir, associate professor of computer science at the Carl R. Ice College of Engineering, said in a statement. "One explanation is that the universe was born rotating.

"That explanation agrees with theories such as black hole cosmology, which postulates that the entire universe is the interior of a black hole.

"But if the universe was indeed born rotating, it means that the existing theories about the cosmos are incomplete." Black hole cosmology, also known as "Schwarzschild cosmology," suggests that our observable universe might be the interior of a black hole itself within a larger parent universe. The idea was first introduced by theoretical physicist Raj Kumar Pathria and by mathematician I. J. Good. It presents the idea that the "Schwarzchild radius," better known as the "event horizon," (the boundary from within which nothing can escape a black hole, not even light) is also the horizon of the visible universe.
The article cites a theory by Polish theoretical physicist Nikodem Poplawski of the University of New Haven that ultimately black holes don't compress indefinitely into a singularity. "The matter instead reaches a state of finite, extremely large density, stops collapsing, undergoes a bounce like a compressed spring, and starts rapidly expanding," Poplawski explained to Space.com... ... [>>>]

"Alphabet's Waymo autonomous vehicles are programmed to follow the rules of the road..." notes the Washington Post. But while the cars obey speed limits and properly use their turn signals — they also "routinely violate parking rules."

Waymo vehicles driving themselves received 589 tickets for parking violations in 2024, according to records from San Francisco's Municipal Transportation Agency... The robots incurred $65,065 in fines for violations such as obstructing traffic, disobeying street cleaning restrictions and parking in prohibited areas... [Waymo is responsible for 0.05% of the city's fines, according to statistics from the article.]

Parking violations are one of the few ways to quantify how often self-driving companies' vehicles break the rules of the road... Some parking violations, such as overstaying in a paid spot, cause inconvenience but do not directly endanger other people. Others increase the risk of crashes, said Michael Brooks, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety. Anytime a vehicle is obstructing the flow of traffic, other drivers might be forced to brake suddenly or change lanes, he said, creating risks for drivers, pedestrians or other road users...

San Francisco transit operators lost 2 hours and 12 minutes of service time in 2024 because of Waymo vehicles blocking or colliding with transit vehicles, according to San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency records. Autonomous vehicles have obstructed firefighters responding to emergency scenes in San Francisco, triggering city officials to ask for tougher oversight from state regulators.

The article adds that driverless Waymo vehicles in Los Angeles received 75 more tickets in 2024 — "with $543 in fines still outstanding, according to records from the Los Angeles Department of Transportation."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/15/0546205/last-year-waymos-autonomous-vehicles-got-589-parking-tickets-in-san-francisco?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot. ... [>>>]

Slashdot has run nearly a dozen stories about Michael Mann, one of America's most prominent climate scientists and a co-creator of the famous "hockey stick" graph of spiking temperatures. In 2012 Mann sued two bloggers for defamation — and last year Mann finally won more than $1 million, reports the Washington Post. "A jury found that two conservative commentators had defamed him by alleging that he was like a child molester in the way he had 'molested and tortured' climate data."

But "Now, a year after that ruling, the case has taken a turn that leaves Mann in the position of the one who owes money."

On Wednesday, a judge sanctioned Mann's legal team for "bad-faith trial misconduct" for overstating how much the scientist lost in potential grant funding as a result of reputational harm. The lawyers had shown jurors a chart that listed one grant amount Mann didn't get at $9.7 million, though in other testimony Mann said it was worth $112,000. And when comparing Mann's grant income before and after the negative commentary, the lawyers cited a disparity of $2.8 million, but an amended calculation pegged it at $2.37 million.

The climate scientist's legal team said it was preparing to fight the setbacks in court. Peter J. Fontaine, one of Mann's attorneys, wrote in an email that Mann "believes that the court committed errors of fact and law and will pursue these matters further." Fontaine emphasized that the original decision — that Mann was defamed by the commentary — still stands. "We have reviewed the recent rulings by the D.C. Superior Court and are pleased to note that the court has upheld the jury's verdict," he said.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/03/15/0351230/climatologist-michael-mann-finally-won-a-1m-defamation-suit---but-then-a-judge-threw-it-out?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot. ... [>>>]

"Cuba's power grid collapsed Friday night," reports CNN, "triggering a nationwide power outage and plunging its more than 10 million people into darkness."

Video filmed by CNN in the capital Havana showed streets and buildings shrouded in total darkness, as people used electric torches to navigate the streets. By Saturday morning, the Cuban government officials said that "microsystems" — pockets of electricity — had been restored in some cities. However, it remains unclear when the island's power system would be fully online again and most people remained in the dark...

It marks the latest in a series of failures on the Caribbean island struggling with creaking infrastructure, natural disasters and economic turmoil... For nearly a week in October, most of Cuba suffered near-total blackouts, the worst energy outages in decades. While Cubans are used to frequent power outages, to have another nationwide backcourt — the fourth in six months — was unsettling for many people who need electricity to cook and refrigerate food that otherwise spoils quickly in the tropical heat.
"Many residents posted on online sites looking for propane, charcoal, and fuel for generators..."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/03/15/1616223/10-million-cubans-suffer-nationwide-power-outage?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Tuesday Microsoft "surprised everyone," writes Neowin, "by announcing a new change that will radically improve TypeScript performance" — porting TypeScript to Go.

InfoWorld writes that "The initiative promises dramatic improvements in editor startup speed, build times, and memory usage, making it easier to scale TypeScript to large code bases, Microsoft said."

Microsoft's TypeScript team expects to be able to preview command-line type-checking in Go-based tsc by mid-2025, and to deliver a feature-complete Go implementation of TypeScript by the end of the year. [You can build and run the Go code now from Microsoft's new working repository.]
Developers who use Go-based TypeScript in the Visual Studio Code editor will feel the increased speed in the editor, Microsoft said. The company promises an 8x improvement in project load times, instant comprehensive error listings across entire projects, and greater responsiveness for all language service operations including completion lists, quick information, go to definition, and find all references. The new TypeScript will also support more advanced refactoring and deeper insights that were previously too expensive to compute, the company said.

Microsoft believes native Go implementations reduce build times by up to 10x, notes Neowin. But "Developers can expect TypeScript 6.0 to have some deprecations and breaking changes to support the upcoming Go-based version."

Later this year, Microsoft will be releasing this new native Go implementation as TypeScript 7.0. The current JS-based TypeScript codebase will continue development into the 6.x series until TypeScript 7+ reaches sufficient maturity and adoption, since some projects may depend on certain API features, legacy configurations, or other things that are not supported by TypeScript 7+.
TypeScript's original creator Anders Hejlsberg recorded an announcement video — and also shared his thoughts in a GitHub discussion titled simply... "Why Go?"
The TypeScript compiler's move to Go was influenced by specific technical requirements, such as the need for structural compatibility with the existing JavaScript-based codebase, ease of memory management, and the ability to handle complex graph processing efficiently. After evaluating numerous languages and making multiple prototypes — including in C# — Go emerged as the optimal choice... ... [>>>]

"Wind and solar energy generated more electricity in the U.S. than coal for the first time last year," reports the Wall Street Journal, "according to analysis from clean-energy think tank Ember.

"The two renewable energy sources accounted for 17% of the country's power mix while coal fell to a low of 15%, it said."

Solar was the fastest-growing energy source, according to Ember's analysis of data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, increasing 27% from the year before, while wind rose 7%... Natural gas generation increased 3.3% in 2024, according to Ember, and remains by far the largest source of electricity in the U.S., accounting for 43% of the mix...
California and Nevada both surpassed 30% annual share of solar in their electricity mix for the first time last year (32% and 30%, respectively). California's battery growth was key to its solar success. It installed 20% more battery capacity than it did solar capacity, which helped it transfer a significant share of its daytime solar to the evening. Texas installed more solar and battery capacity than even California.

Yet the growth of solar was uneven — 28 states generated less than 5% of their electricity from solar in 2024, highlighting significant untapped potential — even before adding battery storage.
The article includes this observation from Dave Jones, chief analyst at Ember. "The fall in battery costs is a gamechanger for how much solar the U.S. electricity grid could integrate in the near future."

Electrek notes that "After being stagnant for 14 years, electricity demand started rising in recent years and saw a 3% increase in 2024, marking the fifth-highest level of rise this century..."

Natural gas grew three times more than the decline in coal, increasing power sector CO2 emissions slightly (0.7%). Coal fell by the second smallest amount since 2014, as gas and clean energy growth met rising electricity demand, whereas historically, they have replaced coal. Despite growing emissions, the carbon intensity of electricity continued to decline. The rise in power demand was much faster than the rise in power sector CO2 emissions, making each unit of electricity likely the cleanest it has ever been. ... [>>>]

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Broadband TV News: The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) urging the agency to establish a clear, industry-wide transition plan for the full deployment of Next Gen TV (ATSC 3.0). The proposal outlines a two-phased transition while modernizing regulatory requirements to support consumer access and innovation. [...] Under the plan, stations in the top 55 markets, covering 70% of the US population, would transition by February 2028, with all remaining full-power and Class A stations following in or before February 2030. The petition also calls for updates to FCC rules to ensure television reception devices support Next Gen TV, maintain existing MVPD carriage obligations and eliminate regulatory hurdles that could slow adoption. To clarify, ATSC 1.0 is the current standard for free over-the-air (OTA) TV. While ATSC 3.0 (also called NextGen TV) is its intended replacement, it's not backward-compatible, meaning consumers need new equipment to receive it. NAB's petition is to allow a complete shutdown of ATSC 1.0 to accelerate the transition to ATSC 3.0, meaning older TV setups relying on free OTA signals would stop working unless consumers upgrade their equipment. Their argument is that ATSC 3.0 adoption has been slow, and networks would benefit more from shifting away from OTA broadcasting entirely.

Reddit user bshensky argues that shutting down OTA TV would benefit large media corporations and harm independent stations. It's also worth noting that OTA TV operates on valuable spectrum, which could be repurposed for mobile broadband (this has happened before), benefiting cellular providers.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/03/15/0515234/nab-calls-for-end-of-atsc-10?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot. ... [>>>]

Astronomers using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope have discovered 128 new moons around Saturn, bringing its total to 274 -- more than all the other planets combined. CBC News reports: Jupiter and Saturn have been locked in a battle for the most moons for years -- with Saturn stealing the crown from Jupiter only two years ago when the same group of researchers found 64 additional moons orbiting it. But scientists say this discovery likely settles the score once and for all. [...] He and the other scientists working on the project made the discovery using the Canada France Hawaii Telescope, a 3.6-meter optical telescope on the summit of the dormant volcano Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Scientists have been capturing pictures of the moons using the telescope since 2019. The researchers aligned and layered 44 of those images on top of one another in order to enhance the appearance of the moons and determine what they were. These moons are nothing like Earth's very own, however. Sara Mazrouei, a planetary scientist and educational developer at Humber Polytechnic, says that while we tend to think of a spherical shape when we hear the word moon, anything that orbits a planet, or another body in space that is not a sun, is considered a moon. Mazrouei says many of the moons surrounding other planets in our solar system -- including the ones observed here -- are in fact only a few kilometers across in size and oddly shaped, like an asteroid.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/03/15/0457249/saturn-solidifies-its-title-as-moon-king-with-discovery-of-128-new-moons?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

From a Space.com article: Athena, the second lunar lander from Houston company Intuitive Machines, tipped over during its touchdown on March 6, ending up on its side within a small crater near the moon's south pole. This orientation prevented the lander's solar panels from capturing enough sunlight, and Intuitive Machines declared Athena dead on March 7. (The company's first moon lander, named Odysseus, also tipped over during its historic February 2024 touchdown but was able to operate for longer on the lunar surface.)

Athena beamed home a few shots of its surroundings before giving up the ghost. And we now have views of the lander and its crater grave from on high, courtesy of NASA's sharp-eyed Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). On March 7, LRO captured a gorgeous oblique photo of Athena and its landing site -- the Mons Mouton region, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the lunar south pole. Then, three days later, the probe snapped another pic, which provided a closer look at Athena on the shadowed floor of a 65-foot-wide (20 meters) crater.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/03/15/0447257/dead-athena-moon-lander-seen-inside-its-crater-grave-from-lunar-orbit?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Something very strange is happening inside Super Nintendo (SNES) consoles as they age: a component you've probably never heard of is running ever so slightly faster as we get further and further away from the time the consoles first hit the market in the early '90s. The discovery started a mild panic in the speedrunning community in late February since one theoretical consequence of a faster-running console is that it could impact how fast games are running and therefore how long they take to complete. This could potentially wreak havoc on decades of speedrunning leaderboards and make tracking the fastest times in the speedrunning scene much more difficult, but that outcome now seems very unlikely. However, the obscure discovery does highlight the fact that old consoles' performance is not frozen at the time of their release date, and that they are made of sensitive components that can age and degrade, or even 'upgrade', over time. The idea that SNESs are running faster in a way that could impact speedrunning started with a Bluesky post from Alan Cecil, known online as dwangoAC and the administrator of TASBot (short for tool-assisted speedrun robot), a robot that's programmed to play games faster and better than a human ever could.

[...] So what's going on here? The SNES has an audio processing unit (APU) called the SPC700, a coprocessor made by Sony for Nintendo. Documentation given to game developers at the time the SNES was released says that the SPC700 should have a digital signal processing (DSP) rate of 32,000hz, which is set by a ceramic resonator that runs 24.576Mhz on that coprocessor. We're getting pretty technical here as you can see, but basically the composition of this ceramic component and how it resonates when connected to an electronic circuit generates the frequency for the audio processing unit, or how much data it processes in a second. It's well documented that these types of ceramic resonators are sensitive and can run at higher frequencies when subject to heat and other external conditions. For example, the chart [here], taken from an application manual for Murata ceramic resonators, shows changes in the resonators' oscillation under different physical conditions. ... [>>>]

With Microsoft ending free security updates for Windows 10 in October, millions of PCs that don't meet Windows 11's hardware requirements face an uncertain fate... Charities that refurbish and distribute computers to low-income individuals must choose between providing soon-to-be-insecure Windows 10 machines, transitioning to Linux -- despite usability challenges for non-tech-savvy users -- or recycling the hardware, contributing to ewaste. Tom's Hardware reports: So how bad will it really be to run an end-of-lifed Windows 10? Should people worry? [Chester Wisniewski, who serves as Director and Global Field CISO for Sophos, a major security services company] and other experts I talked to are unequivocal. You're at risk. "To put this in perspective, today [the day we talked] was Patch Tuesday," he said. "There were 57 vulnerabilities, 6 of which have already been abused by criminals before the fixes were available. There were also 57 in February and 159 in January. Windows 10 and Windows 11 largely have a shared codebase, meaning most, if not all, vulnerabilities each month are exploitable on both OSs. These will be actively turned into digital weapons by criminals and nation-states alike and Windows 10 users will be somewhat defenseless against them."

So, in short, even though Windows 10 has been around since 2015, there are still massive security holes being patched. Even within the past few weeks, dozens of vulnerabilities were fixed by Microsoft. So what's a charity to do when these updates are running out and clients will be left vulnerable? "What we decided to do is one year ahead of the cutoff, we discontinued Windows 10," said Casey Sorensen, CEO of PCs for People, one of the U.S.'s largest non-profit computer refurbishers. "We will distribute Linux laptops that are 6th or 7th gen. If we distribute a Windows laptop, it will be 8th gen or newer." Sorensen said that any PC that's fifth gen or older will be sent to an ewaste recycler.

[...] Sorensen, who founded the company in 1998, told us that he's comfortable giving clients computers that run Linux Mint, a free OS that's based on Ubuntu. The latest version of Mint, version 22.1, will be supported until 2029. "Ten years ago if we distributed Linux, they would be like what is it," he said. But today, he notes that many view their computers as windows to the Internet and, for that, a user-friendly version of Linux is acceptable. Further reading: Is 2025 the Year of the Linux Desktop? ... [>>>]

A leaked Apple meeting reveals significant internal struggles with Siri's development, as AI-powered features announced last June have been delayed and may not make it into iOS 19. The Verge reports: Bloomberg (paywalled) has the full scoop on what happened at a Siri team meeting led by senior director Robby Walker, who oversees the division. He called the delay an "ugly" situation and sympathized with employees who might be feeling burned out or frustrated by Apple's decisions and Siri's still-lackluster reputation. He also said it's not a given that the missing Siri features will make it into iOS 19 this year; that's the company's current target, but "doesn't mean that we're shipping then," he told employees. "We have other commitments across Apple to other projects," Walker said, according to Bloomberg's report. "We want to keep our commitments to those, and we understand those are now potentially more timeline-urgent than the features that have been deferred."

The meeting also hinted at tension between Apple's Siri unit and the marketing division. Walker said the communications team wanted to highlight features like Siri understanding personal context and being able to take action based on what's currently on a user's screen -- even though they were nowhere near ready. Those WWDC teases and the resulting customer expectations only made matters worse, Walker acknowledged. Apple has since pulled an iPhone 16 ad that showcased the features and has added disclaimers to several areas of its website noting they've all been punted to a TBD date. They were held back in part due to quality issues "that resulted in them not working properly up to a third of the time," according to Mark Gurman.

[...] Walker told his staff that senior executives like software chief Craig Federighi and AI boss John Giannandrea are taking "intense personal accountability" for a predicament that's drawing fierce criticism as the months pass by with little to show for it beyond a prettier Siri animation. "Customers are not expecting only these new features but they also want a more fully rounded-out Siri," Walker said. "We're going to ship these features and more as soon as they are ready." He praised the team for its "incredibly impressive" work so far. "These are not quite ready to go to the general public, even though our competitors might have launched them in this state or worse," he said of the delayed features. ... [>>>]

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched a four-member crew to the International Space Station on Friday night, paving the way for NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to return to Earth after being there for nine months due to issues with Boeing's Starliner capsule. Arrival is set for late Saturday night. The Associated Press reports: NASA wants overlap between the two crews so Wilmore and Williams can fill in the newcomers on happenings aboard the orbiting lab. That would put them on course for an undocking next week and a splashdown off the Florida coast, weather permitting. The duo will be escorted back by astronauts who flew up on a rescue mission on SpaceX last September alongside two empty seats reserved for Wilmore and Williams on the return leg.

Reaching orbit from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, the newest crew includes NASA's Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, both military pilots; and Japan's Takuya Onishi and Russia's Kirill Peskov, both former airline pilots. They will spend the next six months at the space station, considered the normal stint, after springing Wilmore and Williams free. "Spaceflight is tough, but humans are tougher," McClain said minutes into the flight. You can watch a recording of the launch here.

Wilmore and Williams aren't stranded on the International Space Station, and they weren't abandoned, the astronauts reminded CNN in a rare space-to-earth interview last month. "That's been the rhetoric. That's been the narrative from day one: stranded, abandoned, stuck -- and I get it. We both get it," [NASA astronaut Butch] Wilmore said. "But that is, again, not what our human spaceflight program is about. We don't feel abandoned, we don't feel stuck, we don't feel stranded." Wilmore added a request: "If you'll help us change the rhetoric, help us change the narrative. Let's change it to 'prepared and committed.' That's what we prefer..."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/03/15/0033233/spacex-launches-nasas-crew-10-mission-to-iss?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot. ... [>>>]

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: Younger Americans don't have enough saved to cover a single month of spending, showcasing their vulnerability should the economy head into a downturn. Members of the Gen Z generation -- people born after 1995 -- were spending twice the amount they had in savings on average in February, according to Bank of America Institute analysis of internal account and card data released Friday. The ratio has increased in the past two years, and is much higher than for other generations. In part that's because Gen Z consumers, many of whom still hold entry-level positions and make less than their older peers, tend to spend a bigger share of their incomes on necessities including rent and utilities. But they're also more likely to shell out on discretionary categories like travel and entertainment. Spending in non-essentials among that cohort is up more than 25% from a year ago -- substantially above the overall rate.

While the report noted that Gen Z workers are still garnering robust pay gains compared to older groups, it showcases a point of vulnerability as households' views of the economy dim. [...] The Bank of America report also pointed to a worsening labor market for younger Americans. The number of Gen Z households receiving unemployment benefits rose by nearly a third in the past year -- the most of any generation. It also noted that, with underemployment on the rise, that could have long-term career effects for that cohort.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/03/14/2136247/gen-z-americans-dont-have-enough-saved-to-cover-a-single-month-of-spending?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The IRS is pausing its technology modernization efforts to reassess its strategy in light of AI advancements. Reuters reports: The agency will review a number of technology modernization initiatives that have been taken in recent years, including a new direct free filing system for tax returns that was launched last year under the Biden administration, the official told reporters. The official said the IRS did not have a specific number of staff cuts in mind as a result of the technology pause, but said there would be an opportunity to "realign the workforce to those new ways of doing business."

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Google announced today that Gemini will replace Google Assistant on Android phones later in 2025. "[T]he classic Google Assistant will no longer be accessible on most mobile devices or available for new downloads on mobile app stores," says Google in a blog post. "Additionally, we'll be upgrading tablets, cars and devices that connect to your phone, such as headphones and watches, to Gemini. We're also bringing a new experience, powered by Gemini, to home devices like speakers, displays and TVs." 9to5Google reports: There will be an exception for phones running Android 9 or earlier and don't have at least 2 GB of RAM, with the existing Assistant experience remaining in place for those users. Google replacing Assistant follows new Android phones, including Pixel, Samsung, OnePlus, and Motorola, launched in the past year making Gemini the default experience. Meanwhile, the company says "millions of people have already made the switch."

Before Assistant's sunset, Google is "continuing to focus on improving the quality of the day-to-day Gemini experience, especially for those who have come to rely on Google Assistant." In winding down Google Assistant, the company notes how "natural language processing and voice recognition technology unlocked a more natural way to get help from Google" in 2016.
Further reading: Google's Gemini AI Can Now See Your Search History

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In an email sent to customers today, Amazon said that Echo users will no longer be able to set their devices to process Alexa requests locally and, therefore, avoid sending voice recordings to Amazon's cloud. Amazon apparently sent the email to users with "Do Not Send Voice Recordings" enabled on their Echo. Starting on March 28, recordings of everything spoken to the Alexa living in Echo speakers and smart displays will automatically be sent to Amazon and processed in the cloud.

Attempting to rationalize the change, Amazon's email said: "As we continue to expand Alexa's capabilities with generative AI features that rely on the processing power of Amazon's secure cloud, we have decided to no longer support this feature." One of the most marketed features of Alexa+ is its more advanced ability to recognize who is speaking to it, a feature known as Alexa Voice ID. To accommodate this feature, Amazon is eliminating a privacy-focused capability for all Echo users, even those who aren't interested in the subscription-based version of Alexa or want to use Alexa+ but not its ability to recognize different voices.
[...] Amazon said in its email today that by default, it will delete recordings of users' Alexa requests after processing. However, anyone with their Echo device set to "Don't save recordings" will see their already-purchased devices' Voice ID feature bricked. Voice ID enables Alexa to do things like share user-specified calendar events, reminders, music, and more. Previously, Amazon has said that "if you choose not to save any voice recordings, Voice ID may not work." As of March 28, broken Voice ID is a guarantee for people who don't let Amazon store their voice recordings. Amazon's email continues: "Alexa voice requests are always encrypted in transit to Amazon's secure cloud, which was designed with layers of security protections to keep customer information safe. Customers can continue to choose from a robust set of controls by visiting the Alexa Privacy dashboard online or navigating to More - Alexa Privacy in the Alexa app." ... [>>>]

Fitness tracking platform Strava has terminated user accounts for uploading running activities recorded in North Korea, citing U.S. sanctions that prohibit offering online services to the country. A doctoral student researching North Korea had her account deleted after uploading a run recorded during a visit to the country. Another user was banned for a virtual treadmill workout set in North Korea, though their account was later reinstated.

"In accordance with mandatory U.S. sanctions and export controls, Strava does not allow users to post activities occurring there," the company told technology blogger Ray Maker in a statement. Unlike Strava, other major tech platforms including YouTube, Facebook and Apple do not appear to restrict content created in North Korea from being uploaded once users return home.

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way2trivial shares a report: Microsoft is testing AI-powered summaries in Notepad. In an update rolling out to Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev channels, you'll be able to summarize information in Notepad by highlighting a chunk of text, right-clicking it, and selecting Summarize.

Notepad will then generate a summary of the text, as well as provide an option to change its length. You can also generate summaries by selecting text and using the Ctrl + M shortcut or choosing Summarize from the Copilot menu.

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Tens of thousands of JPMorgan Chase software engineers increased their productivity 10% to 20% by using a coding assistant tool developed by the bank, its global chief information officer Lori Beer said. From a report: The gains present "a great opportunity" for the lender to assign its engineers to other projects, Beer told Reuters ahead of DevUp, an internal conference hosted by JPMorgan, bringing together its top engineers in India this year. The largest lender in the U.S. had a technology budget of $17 billion for 2024. Its tech workforce of 63,000 employees, with a third of them based in India, represents about 21% of its global headcount. The efficiency gains from the coding assistant will also allow JPMorgan's engineers to devote more time to high-value projects focusing on artificial intelligence and data, Beer said.

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A controversial VAR (Video Assistant Referee) decision helped eliminate Atletico Madrid from the Champions League after Julian Alvarez's penalty was disallowed for a near-microscopic double touch. Despite referee Szymon Marciniak standing just feet away and missing the infraction, VAR officials intervened without the typically required "clear and obvious error" standard.

This incident has exemplified the paradox of video review technology in football: introduced to reduce controversies, VAR has instead multiplied them. Technical implementation varies significantly across competitions -- some MLS stadiums have fewer cameras available for review than others -- creating inconsistent application. The Premier League claims VAR increased correct decisions from 82% to 96%, yet the remaining errors dominate match-day discourse. The Guardian adds: VAR incidents are now so endemic that Norway's clubs were compelled to vote on whether use of the technology should be scrapped two weeks ago. Ultimately, they decided to stick with VAR, even though most of the country's professional clubs want rid of it.

In the Norwegian league, the use of VAR has become so unpopular that fans felt they had no choice but to pelt the field with fishcakes in protest, which may or may not be A Norwegian Thing. Ultimately, the decision on whether to keep or scrap VAR devolved into a power struggle of a sort between Norway's 32 top professional clubs and the federation. Whereas the vote to introduce VAR -- which Norway didn't adopt until 2023, years later than most European countries -- was conducted by those pro teams alone, the decision to scrap it was voted on by every club in the country.

Several amateur clubs told the Guardian they felt conflicted about being dragged into a fight about a technology not in use at their level. Had it been left up to the pros, VAR would have been scrapped, by a 19-13 margin. Instead, the federation orchestrated a vote among all the country's clubs to force the retention of VAR -- and avoid becoming the first nation to scrap it -- prevailing by 321 votes to 129. ... [>>>]

China has introduced regulations requiring service providers to label AI-generated content, joining similar efforts by the European Union and United States to combat disinformation. The Cyberspace Administration of China and three other agencies announced Friday that AI-generated material must be labeled explicitly or via metadata, with implementation beginning September 1.

"The Labeling Law will help users identify disinformation and hold service suppliers responsible for labeling their content," the CAC said. App store operators must verify whether applications provide AI-generated content and review their labeling mechanisms. Platforms can still offer unlabeled AI content if they comply with relevant regulations and respond to user demand.

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Major technology companies are heavily promoting AI agents as transformative tools for work, but industry insiders say no one can agree on what these systems actually are, according to TechCrunch. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said agents will "join the workforce" this year, while Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella predicted they will replace certain knowledge work. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff declared his company's goal to become "the number one provider of digital labor in the world."

The definition problem has worsened recently. OpenAI published a blog post defining agents as "automated systems that can independently accomplish tasks," but its developer documentation described them as "LLMs equipped with instructions and tools." Microsoft distinguishes between agents and AI assistants, while Salesforce lists six different categories of agents.
"I think that our industry overuses the term 'agent' to the point where it is almost nonsensical," said Ryan Salva, senior director of product at Google, told TechCrunch. Andrew Ng, founder of DeepLearning.ai, blamed marketing: "The concepts of AI 'agents' and 'agentic' workflows used to have a technical meaning, but about a year ago, marketers and a few big companies got a hold of them." Analysts say this ambiguity threatens to create misaligned expectations as companies build product lineups around agents.

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Apple is planning a new AirPods feature that allows the earbuds to live-translate an in-person conversation into another language, Bloomberg reports, citing people with knowledge of the matter. From the report: The capability will be offered as part of an AirPods software upgrade due later this year, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the effort is private. It will be tied to iOS 19, the upcoming update to Apple's mobile-device operating system.

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The US government's tariff announcements have become a "big headache" for technology companies such as iPhone maker Apple and cloud service provider Amazon, their manufacturing partner Foxconn said on Friday, in a rare public admission of the disruption caused by President Donald Trump's erratic trade policy. Financial Times: "The issue of tariffs is something that is giving the CEOs of our customers a big headache now," chief executive Young Liu told investors on an earnings call. "Judging by the attitude and the approach we see the US government taking towards tariffs, it is very, very hard to predict how things will develop over the next year. So we can only concentrate on doing well what we can control."

Liu said the company's customers were "one after another" hatching plans for co-operating with Foxconn on manufacturing in the US. He declined to give details as those plans were not yet finalised, but said there should be "more and more" manufacturing in the US.

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