Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Updates To Earth
quonset writes: Just over two weeks ago, NASA figured out why its Voyager 1 spacecraft stopped sending useful data. They suspected corrupted memory in its flight data system (FDS) was the culprit. Today, for the first time since November, Voyager 1 is sending useful data about its health and the status of its onboard systems back to NASA. How did NASA accomplish this feat of long distan … ⌘ Read more

California Is Grappling With a Growing Problem: Too Much Solar
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: In sunny California, solar panels are everywhere. They sit in dry, desert landscapes in the Central Valley and are scattered over rooftops in Los Angeles’s urban center. By last count, the state had nearly 47 gigawatts of solar power installed – enough to power 13.9 million homes and p … ⌘ Read more

Pareto’s Economic Theories Used To Find the Best Mario Kart 8 Racer
Data scientist Antoine Mayerowitz, PhD, applied Vilfredo Pareto’s (the early 20th-century Italian economist) theories to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe to determine the best racer combinations. “When you break down the build options (including driver stats and various vehicle details) in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, there are over 700,000 possible combination … ⌘ Read more

Apple Acquires Datakalab, a French Startup Behind AI and Computer Vision Tech
According to French business magazine Challenges, Apple has acquired Datakalab – a Paris-based startup specializing in artificial intelligence compression and computer vision technology. 9to5Mac reports: Datakalab described itself as “experts in low power, runtime efficient, and deep learning algorithms” that work on de … ⌘ Read more

Huawei Wants To Take Homegrown HarmonyOS Phone Platform Worldwide
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Huawei plans to expand its native HarmonyOS smartphone platform worldwide, despite coming under US-led sanctions that have deprived it of access to key technologies. “We will work hard to build up the HarmonyOS app ecosystem in the China market first, then, from country to country, we will … ⌘ Read more

Gaming Giant Embracer Group Is Splitting Into Three Companies
Jess Weatherbed reports via The Verge: Swedish gaming conglomerate Embracer Group announced plans on Monday to split itself into three distinct games and entertainment companies: Asmodee Group, Coffee Stain & Friends, and Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends. These will be separate, publicly listed companies, according to Embracer, which says the move w … ⌘ Read more

EU Opens Probe of TikTok Lite, Citing Concerns About Addictive Design
The European Union has opened a second formal investigation into TikTok under its Digital Services Act (DSA), an online governance and content moderation framework. The investigation centers around TikTok Lite’s “Task and Reward” feature that may harm mental health, especially among minors, by promoting addictive behavior. TechCrunch rep … ⌘ Read more

Home Assistant Has a New Foundation, Goal To Become a Consumer Brand
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Home Assistant, until recently, has been a wide-ranging and hard-to-define project. The open smart home platform is an open source OS you can run anywhere that aims to connect all your devices together. But it’s also bespoke Raspberry Pi hardware, in Yellow and Green. It’s entirely fre … ⌘ Read more

Europe Baked in ‘Extreme Heat Stress’ Pushing Temperatures To Record Highs
Scorching weather has baked Europe in more days of “extreme heat stress” than its scientists have ever seen. The Guardian: Heat-trapping pollutants that clog the atmosphere helped push temperatures in Europe last year to the highest or second-highest levels ever recorded, according to the EU’s Earth-watching service Copernicus a … ⌘ Read more

Study: Alphabetical Order of Surnames May Affect Grading
AmiMoJo writes: Knowing your ABCs is essential to academic success, but having a last name starting with A, B or C might also help make the grade. An analysis by University of Michigan researchers of more than 30 million grading records from U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades. This is due to sequential grading biases … ⌘ Read more

Amazon Ends California Drone Deliveries
Amazon confirmed it is ending Prime Air drone delivery operations in Lockeford, California. The Central California town of 3,500 was the company’s second U.S. drone delivery site, after College Station, Texas. Operations were announced in June 2022. From a report: The retail giant is not offering details around the setback, only noting, “We’ll offer all current employees opportunities at other s … ⌘ Read more

Meta Opens Quest OS To Third Parties, Including ASUS and Lenovo
In a huge move for the mixed reality industry, Meta announced today that it’s opening the Quest’s operating system to third-party companies, allowing them to build headsets of their own. From a report: Think of it like moving the Quest’s ecosystem from an Apple model, where one company builds both the hardware and software, to more of a hardware fre … ⌘ Read more

Chinese Flying Taxi Sector Claims Global Lead Thanks To Regulatory Support
A Shanghai flying taxi company says that China’s “low altitude” industry is edging ahead of western rivals, thanks to more supportive regulators, technological breakthroughs and cut-throat competition in the Chinese logistics sector. From a report: The total market created by electric vertical take-off and landing, or eVTOL, a … ⌘ Read more

Europol Becomes Latest Law Enforcement Group To Plead With Big Tech To Ditch E2EE
Yet another international cop shop has come out swinging against end-to-end encryption - this time it’s Europol which is urging an end to implementation of the tech for fear police investigations will be hampered by protected DMs. The Register: In a joint declaration of European police chiefs published over the wee … ⌘ Read more

Apple Reportedly Stops Production of FineWoven Accessories
Apple has stopped production of FineWoven accessories, according to reliable Apple leaker and prototype collector known as “Kosutami.” From a report: In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Kosutami explained that Apple has stopped production of FineWoven accessories due to its poor durability. The company may move to another non-leather material for its premium … ⌘ Read more

Biden Marks Earth Day by Announcing $7 Billion in Solar Power Grants
President Joe Biden travels to Triangle, Virginia, Monday to mark Earth Day, where he’ll unveil $7 billion in grant funding for solar power under the Inflation Reduction Act and announce new steps to stand up his administration’s American Climate Corps – a program popular with youth climate groups. From a report: The announcements come da … ⌘ Read more

AI Needs So Much Electricity That Tech Companies Are Getting Into Energy Business
An anonymous reader shares a report: To accommodate tech companies’ pivots to artificial intelligence, tech companies are increasingly investing in ways to power AI’s immense electricity needs. Most recently, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman invested in Exowatt, a company using solar power to feed data centers, accordin … ⌘ Read more

Russian Court Sentences Meta Spokesperson To Six Years in Absentia, Calls Meta ‘Extremist Organisation’
A military court in Moscow on Monday sentenced Meta spokesperson Andy Stone to six years in prison for “publicly defending terrorism,” a verdict handed down in absentia, RIA news agency reported. Reuters: Meta itself is designated an extremist organisation in Russia and its … ⌘ Read more

Marketing Cancer Drugs To Physicians Increases Prescribing Without Improving Mortality
Abstract of a paper on National Bureau of Economic Research: Physicians commonly receive marketing-related transfers from drug firms. We examine the impact of these relationships on the prescribing of physician-administered cancer drugs in Medicare. We find that prescribing of the associated drug inc … ⌘ Read more

North Koreans Secretly Animated Amazon and Max Shows, Researchers Say
North Korean animators have been secretly working on major international TV shows, including an Amazon superhero series and an upcoming HBO Max children’s anime, according to a report by cybersecurity researchers. The findings, detailed in a report by the Stimson Center think tank’s 38 North Project and Google-owned security firm Mandiant, … ⌘ Read more

How CP/M Launched the Next 50 Years of Operating Systems
50 years ago this week, PC software pioneer Gary Kildall “demonstrated CP/M, the first commercially successful personal computer operating system in Pacific Grove, California,” according to a blog post from Silicon Valley’s Computer History Museum. It tells the story of “how his company, Digital Research Inc., established CP/M as an industry standard and its subs … ⌘ Read more

What Happened After Amazon Electrified Its Delivery Fleet?
Bloomberg looks at America’s biggest operator of private electrical vehicle charging infrastructure: Amazon. “In a little more than two years, Amazon has installed more than 17,000 chargers at about 120 warehouses around the U.S.” — and had Rivian build 13,500 custom electric delivery vans.

Amazon has a long way to go. The Seattle-based company says its … ⌘ Read more

Ex-White House Cyber Policy Director: Microsoft is a National Security Risk
This week the Register spoke to former senior White House cyber policy director A.J. Grotto — who complained it was hard to get even slight concessions from Microsoft:
“If you go back to the SolarWinds episode from a few years ago … [Microsoft] was essentially up-selling logging capability to federal agencies” instead of ma … ⌘ Read more

Startup is Building the World’s Largest Ocean-Based Carbon Plant - and It’s Scalable
An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN:
On a slice of the ocean front in west Singapore, a startup is building a plant to turn carbon dioxide from air and seawater into the same material as seashells, in a process that will also produce “green” hydrogen — a much-hyped clean fuel.

The cluster of low-s … ⌘ Read more

The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Just Sent Its Last Message Home
Two months ago the team behind NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter released a video reflecting on its historic explorations of Mars, flying 10.5 miles (17.0 kilometers) in 72 different flights over three years. It was the team’s way of saying goodbye, according to NASA’s video.

And this week, LiveScience reports, Ingenuity answered back:

On April 16, Inge … ⌘ Read more

GPT-4 Can Exploit Real Vulnerabilities By Reading Security Advisories
Long-time Slashdot reader tippen shared this report from the Register:

AI agents, which combine large language models with automation software, can successfully exploit real world security vulnerabilities by reading security advisories, academics have claimed.

In a newly released paper, four University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC … ⌘ Read more

Is Rivos Building an RISC-V AI Chip?
Remember when Apple filed a lawsuit against chip startup Rivos (saying that in one year Rivos hired more than 40 former Apple employees to work on competing system-on-a-chip technology)? Apple settled that suit in February.

And now Tuesday Rivos announced that it raised $250 million, according to Reuters, “in a funding round that will enable it to manufacture its first server chip geared for artif … ⌘ Read more

Lying to Investors? Co-Founder of Startup ‘HeadSpin’ Gets 18-Month Prison Sentence for Fraud
The co-founder of Silicon Valley-based software testing startup HeadSpin was sentenced Friday to 18 months in prison and a $1 million fine, reports SFGate — for defrauding investors.

Lachwani pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud and a count of securities fraud in April 2023, after federal … ⌘ Read more

Should Automakers Feel Threatened by China’s Exports of Electric Cars?
The Los Angeles Times reports that the U.S.-China rivalry “has a new flashpoint in the battle for technology supremacy: electric cars.”

“So far, the U.S. is losing.”

Last year, China became the world’s foremost auto exporter, according to the China Passenger Car Assn., surpassing Japan with more than 5 million sales overseas. New energ … ⌘ Read more

LXQt 2.0 Released: Lightweight Desktop is Almost Wayland Compatible
This week saw the release of the LXQt 2.0 desktop environment, reports 9to5Linux. And besides bringing Qt 6 support (and a new default application menu), it also brings support for the Wayland display protocol to more components:

The LXQt development is confident that the next major release, LXQt 2.1, will be fully Wayland compatible. The co … ⌘ Read more

How a Renewable Energy-Powered Bitcoin Startup Helps Electrify Rural Africa
CNBC visited a small group of bitcoin miners who “set up shop at the site of an extinct volcano” near Kenya’s Hell’s Gate National Park.

Their mine “consists of a single 500-kilowatt mobile container that, from the outside, looks like a small residential trailer.” But what’s more interesting is it’s operated by a startup ca … ⌘ Read more

EU: Meta Cannot Rely On ‘Pay Or Okay’
The EU’s European Data Protection Board oversees its privacy-protecting GDPR policies.

Earlier this week, TechCrunch reported that nearly two dozen civil society groups and nonprofits wrote the Board an open letter “urging it not to endorse a strategy used by Meta that they say is intended to bypass the EU’s privacy protections for commercial gain.”

Meta’s strategy is sometimes called “Pay or Okay,” w … ⌘ Read more

Ziplines Drones Complete Their 1 Millionth Delivery, Flying Over 70 Million Miles
San Francisco-based drone-delivery service Zipline “said Friday that it hit its 1 millionth delivery to customers,” reports CNBC, “and that it’s eyeing restaurant partnerships in its next phase of growth.”

Zipline’s clients already include more than 4,700 hospitals, according to the article, as well as major brand … ⌘ Read more

Some Astronomers Will Re-Examine a 102-Year-Old Theory About the Universe’s Expansion
Several “high-profile astronomers” will meet at London’s Royal Society (the UK’s national academy of sciences), “to question some of the most fundamental aspects of our understanding of the universe.reports Futurism:

As The Guardian reports, the luminaries of cosmology will be re-examining some basic a … ⌘ Read more

Insufficient Redundancy? Light-Pole Installation Cut Fiber Line, Triggered Three-State 911 Outage
“Workers installing a light pole in Missouri cut into a fiber line,” reports the Associated Press, knocking out 911 phone service “for emergency agencies in Nebraska, Nevada and South Dakota, an official with the company that operates the line said Thursday.”

In Kansas City, Missou … ⌘ Read more

Volla Successfully Crowdfunds a Privacy-Focused Tablet on Kickstarter
It’s “the new generation of Tablet for simplicity and privacy…” according to its Kickstarter page. “Top-tier performance, lightweight design and completely Google-free.” And it’s already reached its funding goal of $53,312 — climbing to over $75,000 from 115 backers with another 26 days still to go.

9to5Linux reports:

Volla, the … ⌘ Read more

Could the Earth’s Record Hot Streak Signal a New Climate Era?
South America’s Amazon River has reached its lowest level since measurements began, according to the Washington Post, while temperatures “hovered above 110 degrees Fahrenheit” for nearly a week as April began in the capital of Mali. “Nights offered little relief, with temperatures often staying above 90 degrees…”

“An overtaxed electrical grid sputtere … ⌘ Read more

JWST Gets an IMAX Documentary: ‘Deep Sky’
A large-screen IMAX documentary about the James Webb Space Telescope “has just opened in 300 theaters across North America,” write an anonymous Slashdot reader, noting that it’s playing for one week only. “And it gets a rave review in Forbes.”

Imagine venturing to the beginning of time and space, exploring cosmic landscapes so vast and beautiful that they’ve remained unseen by human eyes unt … ⌘ Read more

The Legendary Zilog Z80 CPU Is Being Discontinued After Nearly 50 Years
Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares an article from TechSpot: Zilog is retiring the Z80 after 48 years on the market. Originally developed as a project stemming from the Intel 8080, it eventually rose to become one of the most popular and widely used 8-bit CPUs in both gaming and general computing devices.

The iconic IC d … ⌘ Read more

Sell or Be Banned: Anti-TikTok Bill Passed by US Representatives
The U.S. House of Representatives just passed its long-delayed Ukraine aid bill. But along with it they also approved a bill banning TikTok “if its Chinese owner does not sell the video app,” according to NPR:

While lawmakers in the House advanced a similar bill last month, this effort is different for two reasons: It is attached to a sweeping f … ⌘ Read more

Data Centers Are Turning to an Old Source of Power: Coal
The Washington Post reports on a new situation in Virginia:

There, massive data centers with computers processing nearly 70 percent of global digital traffic are gobbling up electricity at a rate officials overseeing the power grid say is unsustainable unless two things happen: Several hundred miles of new transmission lines must be built, slicing through n … ⌘ Read more

Red Hat Upgrades Its Pipeline-Securing (and Verification-Automating) Tools
SiliconANGLE reports that to help organizations detect vulnerabilities earlier, Red Hat has “announced updates to its Trusted Software Supply Chain that enable organizations to shift security ‘left’ in the software supply chain.”

Red Hat announced Trusted Software Supply Chain in May 2023, pitching it as a way to address the r … ⌘ Read more

Ocean Spray Emits More PFAS Than Industrial Polluters, Study Finds
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Ocean waves crashing on the world’s shores emit more PFAS into the air than the world’s industrial polluters, new research has found, raising concerns about environmental contamination and human exposure along coastlines. The study measured levels of PFAS released from the bubbles that bur … ⌘ Read more

‘Record Store Day’ 2024 Includes Talking Heads, Daft Punk, Cheech & Chong, Beatles
Today is Record Store Day, which according to Wikipedia is happening in the U.S., the UK, Ireland, Mexico, Europe, Japan and Australia.

An anonymous reader shared this report from The Los Angeles Times:
420 isn’t just for stoners. This year, Record Store Day — the worldwide celebration for independent re … ⌘ Read more

British Columbia Bans Level 3 and Above Autonomous Cars
New submitter Baloo Uriza writes: In a rare display of sanity in the automotive space, British Columbia has banned autonomous cars from its highways after years of watching autonomous cars hamper emergency response efforts in California and outright kill a pedestrian in Arizona. Let’s hope this regulatory trend continues and moves into the human space by pulling l … ⌘ Read more

openSUSE Factory Achieves Bit-By-Bit Reproducible Builds
Michael Larabel reports via Phoronix: While Fedora 41 in late 2024 is aiming to have more reproducible package builds, openSUSE Factory has already achieved a significant milestone in bit-by-bit reproducible builds. Since last month openSUSE Factory has been producing bit-by-bit reproducible builds sans the likes of embedded signatures. OpenSUSE Tumbleweed pack … ⌘ Read more

NASA Veteran Behind Propellantless Propulsion Drive Announces Major Discovery
Longtime Slashdot reader garyisabusyguy shares a report from The Debrief: Dr. Charles Buhler, a NASA engineer and the co-founder of Exodus Propulsion Technologies, has revealed that his company’s propellantless propulsion drive, which appears to defy the known laws of physics, has produced enough thrust to counteract E … ⌘ Read more

Two Major ISPs Threaten They’ll Stop Complying With US FISA Orders
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post:

U.S. government officials were scrambling Friday night to prevent what they fear could be a significant loss of access to critical national security information, after two major U.S. communications providers said they would stop complying with orders under a controversial survei … ⌘ Read more

Netflix Doc Accused of Using AI To Manipulate True Crime Story
Earlier this week, Netflix found itself embroiled in an AI scandal when Futurism spotted AI-generated images used in the Netflix documentary What Jennifer Did.. The movie’s credits do not mention any uses of AI, causing critics to call out the filmmakers for “potentially embellishing a movie that’s supposed to be based on real-life events,” … ⌘ Read more

Android Gets a New Software-Based AV1 Decoder
Ben Schoon reports via 9to5Google: Google’s Arif Dikici confirmed on LinkedIn this week that Android is now using VideoLAN’s (the makers of VLC) “dav1d” software decoder to allow AV1 to work on more devices. This is now available on all devices running Android 12 or higher via a software update. Mishaal Rahman points out that this started to roll out with the March 2024 Google Play s … ⌘ Read more