NASA’s Psyche Hits 25 Mbps From 140 Miles Away
Richard Speed reports via The Register: NASA’s optical communications demonstration has hit 25 Mbps in a test transmitting engineering data back to Earth from 140 million miles (226 million kilometers) away. The payload is riding aboard the Psyche probe, which is headed for an asteroid of the same name. On December 11, when the spacecraft was 19 million miles (30 million kilometers) … ⌘ Read more

Russia Clones Wikipedia, Censors It, Bans Original
Jules Roscoe reports via 404 Media: Russia has replaced Wikipedia with a state-sponsored encyclopedia that is a clone of the original Russian Wikipedia but which conveniently has been edited to omit things that could cast the Russian government in poor light. Real Russian Wikipedia editors used to refer to the real Wikipedia as Ruwiki; the new one is called Ruviki, has “ruwik … ⌘ Read more

G7 Reaches Deal To Exit From Coal By 2035
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Energy ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) major democracies reached a deal to shut down their coal-fired power plants in the first half of the 2030s, in a significant step towards the transition away from fossil fuels. “There is a technical agreement, we will seal the final political deal on Tuesday,” said Italian energy minister Gilberto … ⌘ Read more

Tether Buys $200 Million Majority Stake In Brain-Computer Interface Company
Crypto company Tether announced Monday that it has invested $200 million to acquire a majority stake in brain-computer interface company Blackrock Neurotech via its venture capital division Tether Evo. [The firm is not related to the asset management giant BlackRock.] CoinDesk reports: Blackrock Neurotech develops medical … ⌘ Read more

T2 Linux 24.5 Released
ReneR writes: A major T2 Linux milestone has been released, shipping with full support for 25 CPU architectures and several C libraries, as well as restored support for Intel IA-64 Itanium. Additionally, many vintage X.org DDX drivers were fixed and tested to work again, as well as complete support for the latest KDE 6 and GNOME 46.

T2 is known for its sophisticated cross compile support and support for nearly all existing CPU a … ⌘ Read more

The EU Will Force Apple To Open Up iPadOS
As reported by Bloomberg (paywalled), Apple’s iPadOS will need to abide by EU’s DMA rules, as it is now designated as a gatekeeper alongside the Safari web browser, iOS operating system and the App Store. “Apple now has six months to ensure full compliance of iPadOS with the DMA obligations,” reads the EU’s blog post about the change. Engadget reports: What does Apple have to do to ensure iP … ⌘ Read more

WeWork Rejects Adam Neumann’s Acquisition Bid, Unveils Restructuring
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: WeWork has a new plan to get out of bankruptcy – and it doesn’t involve Adam Neumann, who wants to acquire the flexible office provider he created. WeWork announced Monday that it has raised $450 million in equity funding, which it could use to emerge from Chapter 11. The company a … ⌘ Read more

Russia Issues Arrest Warrant For Ex-Chess Champion Garry Kasparov
Longtime Slashdot reader ArchieBunker shares a report from The Mirror: The city court in Syktyvkar, the largest city in Russia’s northwestern Komi region, announced it had arrested [former world chess champion Garry Kasparov] in absentia alongside former Russian parliament member Gennady Gudkov, Ivan Tyutrin co-founder of the Free Russia Forum - … ⌘ Read more

Google Lays Off Staff From Flutter, Dart and Python Teams
Ahead of its annual I/O developer conference in May, Google has decided to lay off staff across key teams like Flutter, Dart, Python and others. “As we’ve said, we’re responsibly investing in our company’s biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead,” said a Google spokesperson. “To best position us for these opportunities, throughout the s … ⌘ Read more

Roku Wants To Use Home Screen For New Types of Ads
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Streamable: Roku wants to take the term “ad-supported” to another level. The company held its quarterly earnings conference call on Thursday, and revealed that 81.6 million households used a Roku device or smart TV to stream video in the first three months of the year. As part of the report, company CEO Anthony Wood laid … ⌘ Read more

In Race To Build AI, Tech Plans a Big Plumbing Upgrade
If 2023 was the tech industry’s year of the A.I. chatbot, 2024 is turning out to be the year of A.I. plumbing. From a report: It may not sound as exciting, but tens of billions of dollars are quickly being spent on behind-the-scenes technology for the industry’s A.I. boom. Companies from Amazon to Meta are revamping their data centers to support artificial intelligen … ⌘ Read more

Canceling Your Credit Card May Not Stop Netflix’s Recurring Charges
Millions of Americans pay for Netflix, doling out anywhere from $6.99 to $22.99 a month. It’s a common belief that you can get out of recurring charges like this by canceling your credit card. Netflix won’t be able to find you, and your account will just go away, right? You wouldn’t be crazy for believing it, but it’s a myth that canceling a cred … ⌘ Read more

FCC Fines Wireless Carriers $200 Million For Sharing Customer Data
The Federal Communications Commission has fined the nation’s largest wireless carriers for illegally sharing access to customers’ location information without consent and without taking reasonable measures to protect that information against unauthorized disclosure. From a report: Sprint and T-Mobile – which have merged since the investigatio … ⌘ Read more

Sales of Samsung’s Foldable Phones Have Nosedived in China
The latest figures from IDC shows that Samsung’s share in China’s foldable smartphone market was 5.9% in Q1 2024. At one point, Samsung was pulling in a quarterly foldable market share of nearly 30% in China. From a report: It essentially came in dead last, as Samsung finds itself comprehensively beaten by the handful of companies that make foldable phones. This i … ⌘ Read more

Walmart and Roblox Are Teaming Up To Make Virtual E-commerce a Reality
As of today, Walmart is able to sell physical goods directly to users inside Roblox. Digiday adds: The introduction of real-life e-commerce could be a watershed moment for the company’s ambitions to become an all-encompassing destination for virtual life. Walmart’s Roblox e-commerce experience launches later today, with users inside the pr … ⌘ Read more

‘The Apple Vision Pro’s eBay Prices Are Making Me Sad’
An anonymous reader shares a report: I paid a lot of money for the privilege of getting an Apple Vision Pro brand-new in February. All-in, with optical inserts and taxes, I financed a little over $3,900 for the 256GB version of the headset. A day or so ago, I made a mistake that I’m sure many early adopters are familiar with: I looked up how much it’s been selling for … ⌘ Read more

Motherboard Makers Apparently To Blame For High-end Intel Core i9 CPU Failures
An anonymous reader shares a report: Earlier this month, we wrote that some of Intel’s recent high-end Core i9 and Core i7 processors had been crashing and exhibiting other weird issues in some games and that Intel was investigating the cause. An Intel statement obtained by Igor’s Lab suggests that Intel’s investig … ⌘ Read more

Razer Made a Million Dollars Selling a Mask With RGB, And the FTC is Not Pleased
Razer will have to fork over $1.1 million in refunds to customers who purchased its RGB-clad Zephyr face mask, according to a proposed settlement announced by the Federal Trade Commission on Monday. From a report: The company claimed the face mask used N95-grade filters, but the FTC alleges Razer never submitted the … ⌘ Read more

Countries Consider Pact To Reduce Plastic Production By 40% in 15 Years
Countries are for the first time considering restrictions on the global production of plastic – to reduce it by 40% in 15 years – in an attempt to protect human health and the environment. From a report: As the world attempts to make a treaty to cut plastic waste at UN talks in Ottawa, Canada, two countries have put forward the fir … ⌘ Read more

Amazon Says Its Prime Deliveries Are Getting Even Faster
Amazon says its deliveries are getting even faster, announcing that it delivered over 2 billion items the same or next day to Prime members during the first three months of 2024, breaking its record for 2023. From a report: The company says it delivered almost 60 percent of Prime orders the same or next day in 60 of the biggest metropolitan areas in the US.

[![](htt … ⌘ Read more

Austria Calls For Rapid Regulation as It Hosts Meeting on ‘Killer Robots’
Austria called on Monday for fresh efforts to regulate the use of AI in weapons systems that could create so-called ‘killer robots’, as it hosted a conference aimed at reviving largely stalled discussions on the issue. From a report: With AI technology advancing rapidly, weapons systems that could kill without human interventi … ⌘ Read more

UK Becomes First Country To Ban Default Bad Passwords on IoT Devices
The United Kingdom has become the first country in the world to ban default guessable usernames and passwords from these IoT devices. Unique passwords installed by default are still permitted. From a report: The Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act 2022 (PSTI) introduces new minimum-security standards for manufacturer … ⌘ Read more

America’s First Big-Rig Hydrogen Fuel Station Opens in California
Oakland, California is now home to “the first commercial hydrogen fuel station for big-rig trucks in the United States,” according to the Los Angeles Times — serving 30 hydrogen fuel-cell trucks.
The newspaper says the facility “could mark the start of a nationwide network for fuel-cell truck refueling. It could also flop.”

Hydrogen fuel is exp … ⌘ Read more

The Naked-Eye Sky Will (Briefly) Host a New Star
RockDoctor (Slashdot reader #15,477) wants to tell you about a “new” star that will be visible to the naked eye — without a telescope — sometime before September:
By “star”, I do not mean “comet”, “meteorite” or “firefly”, but genuine [star] photons arriving here after about 3000 years in flight, causing your eyes to see a bright point on the nighttime sky. When it happens, the … ⌘ Read more

Airline Ticketing System Keeps Mistaking a 101-Year-Old Woman for a 1-Year-Old
Though it’s long past Y2K, another date-related bug is still with us, writes Slashdot reader Bruce66423, sharing this report from the BBC.

“A 101-year-old woman keeps getting mistaken for a baby, because of an error with an airline’s booking system.”

The problem occurs because American Airlines’ systems apparently ca … ⌘ Read more

A Coal Billionaire is Building the World’s Biggest Clean Energy Plant - Five Times the Size of Paris
An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN:

Five times the size of Paris. Visible from space. The world’s biggest energy plant. Enough electricity to power Switzerland. The scale of the project transforming swathes of barren salt desert on the edge of western India in … ⌘ Read more

America’s Commerce Department is Reviewing China’s Use of RISC-V Chips
An anonymous reader shared a report this week from Reuters:

The U.S. Department of Commerce is reviewing the national security implications of China’s work in open-source RISC-V chip technology, according to a letter sent to U.S. lawmakers…

The technology is being used by major Chinese tech firms such as Alibaba Group Holding and has … ⌘ Read more

Bezos, Other Amazon Execs Used Signal - a Problem for FTC Investigators
Pursuing an unfair business practices case against Amazon, America’s Federal Trade Commission has now “accused” Amazon of using Signal, reports the Seattle Times:

The newspaper notes that the app “can be set to automatically delete messages, to hide information related to the FTC’s ongoing antitrust investigation into the company.”
… ⌘ Read more

How Einstein Lost the Battle To Explain Quantum Reality
Long-time Slashdot reader lee1 shares “an interesting essay on the history of orthodoxy in quantum mechanics,” published this week in Nature.

Its title? “‘Shut up and calculate’: how Einstein lost the battle to explain quantum reality.”
[T]he views of Danish physicist Niels Bohr came to dominate. Albert Einstein famously disagreed with him and, in the 1920s an … ⌘ Read more

Plunge in Storage Battery Costs Will Speed Shift to Renewable Energy, Says IEA
“In less than 15 years, battery costs have fallen by more than 90%,” according to a new report from the International Energy Agency, “one of the fastest declines ever seen in clean energy technologies.”

And it’s expected to get even cheaper, reports Reuters:

An expected sharp fall in battery costs for energy storag … ⌘ Read more

Why Are Laptops Moving to Soldered RAM?
This year Dell moved to soldered RAM for its XPS 14 and 16, writes Digital Trends, which “makes it impossible to upgrade, or even repair.”

“This was a big change from the past, where the XPS 15 and 17 were both celebrated for their upgradability.”

Of course, Dell isn’t the first to make the transition. In fact, they’re one of the last, which is what makes the decision so much tougher to swa … ⌘ Read more

How Space Telescopes Spotted an Exoplanet With a Possible Hydrogen-Rich Atmosphere
In September NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope investigated an exoplanet 8.6 times as massive as Earth, and “revealed the presence of carbon-bearing molecules including methane and carbon dioxide.”

Webb’s discovery adds to recent studies suggesting that [planet] K2-18 b could be a Hycean exoplanet, one whi … ⌘ Read more

Pegasus Spyware Used on Hundreds of People, Says Poland’s Prosecutor General
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press:

Poland’s prosecutor general told the parliament on Wednesday that powerful Pegasus spyware was used against hundreds of people during the former government in Poland, among them elected officials. Adam Bodnar told lawmakers that he found the scale of the surve … ⌘ Read more

Behold the World’s Largest 3D Printer
They’re calling it “the world’s largest 3D printer,” but also “the factory of the future” — not just a 3D printer, but a manufacturing system.

It’s the succcessor to a 3D printer that could create an entire house, cutting construction time and labor, according to the Associated Press. And this one “may one day create entire neighborhoods.”

It has a voracious appetite, consuming as much as 500 p … ⌘ Read more

Why is South Korea’s Military Set To Ban IPhones Over ‘Security’ Concerns?
“South Korea is considering prohibiting the use of iPhones and smart wearable devices inside military buildings,” reports the Defense Post, “due to increasing security concerns.”

But the blog Apple Insider argues the move “has less to do with security and more to do with a poorly crafted mobile device management suite coupled wi … ⌘ Read more

How Good is the Rabbit R1 Handheld AI Assistant?
It’s another speech-recognizing, AI-powered handheld device “about half the size of a phone,” writes CNET. (Though the $199 device comes with a keyboard and a tiny 2.8-inch screen.) “The Rabbit R1 can identify items in its environment. Point it at a plant, and it can tell you what kind it is. Aim it at your lunch, and it can tell you what’s in it.

“it also feels a bit like a … ⌘ Read more

Japan’s Lunar Lander Made It Through Another Lunar Night
Japan’s moon lander “has woken up again,” reports the Register, “having survived three lunar nights.”

A post on social media from the lander’s X account confirmed that once more, Japan’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) had defied the odds and snapped a picture of the lunar surface using its navigation camera.
SLIM was revived a few weeks ago, after … ⌘ Read more

What Happened After India Banned TikTok?
What happened after India banned TikTok? The move “mostly drew widespread support” notes the Associated Press, in a country “where protesters had been calling for a boycott of Chinese goods since the deadly confrontation in the remote Karakoram mountain border region.”

“There was a clamour leading up to this, and the popular narrative was how can we allow Chinese companies to do business in In … ⌘ Read more

Cisco Joins Microsoft, IBM in Vatican Pledge For Ethical AI Use and Development
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press:

Tech giant Cisco Systems on Wednesday joined Microsoft and IBM in signing onto a Vatican-sponsored pledge to ensure artificial intelligence is developed and used ethically and to benefit the common good… The pledge outlines key pillars of ethical and resp … ⌘ Read more

Apple ID Lock-Out Affects Macs, iPhones, iPads, and iCloud Services
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Times of India:

Several Apple customers were inexplicably locked out of their Apple ID accounts Friday evening in a major service disruption, forcing them to reset their passwords across all devices and services. According to user reports on social media, the widespread outage began around 8 p. … ⌘ Read more

Russia Vetoes U.N. Resolution On Nuclear Weapons In Space
This week Russia vetoed a UN resolution that proposed banning nuclear weapons in space, CNN reports.

But it all happened “amid U.S. intelligence-backed concerns that Moscow is trying to develop a nuclear device capable of destroying satellites.”

In February, President Joe Biden confirmed the US has intelligence that Russia is developing a nuclear anti-satel … ⌘ Read more

A School Principal Was Framed With an AI-Generated Rant
“A former high school athletic director was arrested Thursday morning,” reports CBS News, “after allegedly using artificial intelligence to impersonate the school principal in a recording…”

One-time Pikesville High School employee Dazhon Darien is facing charges that include theft, stalking, disruption of school operations and retaliation against a witness. Inve … ⌘ Read more

Boeing Accused of Retaliating Against Two Engineers in 2022
Reuters reports that America’s Federal Aviation Administration “is investigating a union’s claims that Boeing retaliated against two employees who in 2022 insisted the planemaker re-evaluate prior engineering work on 777 and 787 jets.”

The employees’ union “said the two unidentified engineers were representatives of the FAA, which delegates some of its ove … ⌘ Read more

$5.6 Million in Refunds Sent to Ring Customers, Settling Unauthorized Access and Privacy Violations
America’s Federal Trade Commission “is sending more than $5.6 million in refunds to consumers,” reports the Associated Press, “as part of a settlement with Amazon-owned Ring, which was charged with failing to protect private video footage from outside access.”

In a 2023 complaint, … ⌘ Read more

The ‘Ceph’ Community Now Stores 1,000 Petabytes in Its Open Source Storage Solution
1,000 petabytes.
A million terabytes.
One quintillion bytes (or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000).

That’s the amount of storage reported by users of the Ceph storage solution (across more than 3,000 Ceph clusters).

The Ceph Foundation is a “directed fund” of the Linux Foundation, providing a neutral home for Ceph, … ⌘ Read more

Two Lifeforms Merge Into One Organism For First Time In a Billion Years
“For the first time in at least a billion years, two lifeforms have merged into a single organism,” reports the Independent:

The process, called primary endosymbiosis, has only happened twice in the history of the Earth, with the first time giving rise to all complex life as we know it through mitochondria. The second time that … ⌘ Read more

Intel’s Stock Drops 9%. Are They Struggling to Remain Relevant?
“Intel used to dominate the U.S. chip industry,” writes CNBC. But now “it’s struggling to stay relevant.”

Intel’s long-awaited turnaround looks farther away than ever after the company reported dismal first-quarter earnings. Investors pushed the shares down 9% on Friday to their lowest level of the year. Although Intel’s revenue is no longer shrinking and … ⌘ Read more

A Windows Vulnerability Reported by the NSA Was Exploited To Install Russian Malware
“Kremlin-backed hackers have been exploiting a critical Microsoft vulnerability for four years,” Ars Technica reported this week, “in attacks that targeted a vast array of organizations with a previously undocumented tool, the software maker disclosed Monday.

“When Microsoft patched the vulnerability in Octo … ⌘ Read more

EyeEm Will License Users’ Photos To Train AI If They Don’t Delete Them
Sarah Perez reports via TechCrunch: EyeEm, the Berlin-based photo-sharing community that exited last year to Spanish company Freepik after going bankrupt, is now licensing its users’ photos to train AI models. Earlier this month, the company informed users via email that it was adding a new clause to its Terms & Conditions that would gra … ⌘ Read more

China Reveals Most Detailed Geological Map of the Moon Ever Created
Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from Nature: The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has released the highest-resolution geological maps of the Moon yet. The Geologic Atlas of the Lunar Globe, which took more than 100 researchers over a decade to compile, reveals a total of 12,341 craters, 81 basins and 17 rock types, alon … ⌘ Read more