AMD

T2 Linux Discovers (Now Patched) AMD Zen 4 Invalid Opcode Speculation Bug (youtube.com) 13

T2 SDE is not just a Linux distribution, but "a flexible Open Source System Development Environment or Distribution Build Kit," according to a 2022 announcement of its support for 25 CPU architectures, variants, and C libraries. ("Others might even name it Meta Distribution. T2 allows the creation of custom distributions with state of the art technology, up-to-date packages and integrated support for cross compilation.")

And while working on it, Berlin-based T2 Linux developer René Rebe (long-time Slashdot reader ReneR) discovered random illegal instruction speculation on AMD Ryzen 7000-Series and Epyc Zen 4 CPU.

ReneR writes: Merged to Linux 6.6 Git is a fix for the bug now known at AMD as Erratum 1485.

The discovery was possible through continued high CPU load cross-compiling the T2 Linux distribution with support for all CPU architectures from ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, RISC-V to x86 (and more) for 33 build variants. With sustained high CPU load and various instruction sequences being compiled, pseudo random illegal instruction errors were observed and subsequently analyzed.

ExactCODE Research GmbH CTO René Rebe is thrilled that working with AMD engineers lead to a timely mitigation to increase system stability of the still new and highest performance Zen4 platform.

"I found real-world code that might be similar or actually trigger the same bugs in the CPU that are also used for all the Spectre Meltdown and other side-channel security vulnerability mitigations," Rebe says in a video announcement on YouTube.

It took Rebe a tremendous amount of research, and he says now that "all the excessive work changed my mind. Mitigations equals considered harmful... If you want stable, reliable computational results — no, you can't do this. Because as Spectre Meltdown and all the other security issues have proven, the CPUs are nowadays as complex as complex software systems..."
Music

Musicians Are Angry About Venues Taking T-shirt Money (marketwatch.com) 89

The singer known as Tomberlin says their first five years in the music industry may have been a net loss, according to MarketWatch. Selling "merch[andise]" like t-shirts "is what really is covering your costs and hopefully helping you make, like, an actual profit."

And then... After being told she would have to hand over more than 40% of the money she collected from selling T-shirts and other items, Tomberlin refused to sell her merchandise at the venue and publicly spoke about a practice she calls robbery — venues taking cuts from bands' merchandise sales... Other musicians are also speaking out about the practice, and their complaints seem to be having an effect. Industry giant Live Nation Entertainment Inc. announced recently that it would stop collecting merch fees at nearly 80 of the smaller clubs it owns and operates and provide all bands that play at those venues with an additional $1,500 in gas cards and cash.

Musicians who spoke with MarketWatch remain unsatisfied, however. Because of the way the announcement is phrased, many think merch fees at Live Nation clubs are only being paused until the end of the year. The musicians said they also wonder about the roughly 250 other Live Nation concert facilities, as well as the hundreds of venues owned by other companies. A Live Nation spokesperson told MarketWatch the change is "open-ended."

[...] As Tomberlin continues on her current tour, she wonders if she will be able to make a profitable career in music. Of all her ways of earning money, streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music provide "the least amount of money," she said, and with tours not leaving her with any cash at the end, she feels that even modest ambitions are out of reach.

Musician Laura Jane Grace is even soliciting signers for an online petition demanding venues stop taking cuts of the musicians' merchandise sales...

Thanks to Slashdot reader quonset for sharing the news.
Government

Biden Awards $7 Billion For 7 Hydrogen Hubs In Climate Fight Plan (reuters.com) 96

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: U.S. President Joe Biden traveled to Philadelphia on Friday to announce the recipients of $7 billion in federal grants across 16 states for the development of seven regional hydrogen hubs, advancing a key part of a plan to decarbonize the U.S. economy. The announcement of the funding to boost manufacturing and blue-collar jobs was held in Pennsylvania -- a state that could decide the 2024 presidential election -- underscoring the power Biden wields as he spends the upcoming months doling out money flowing from his landmark pieces of legislation that remain largely unknown to large swaths of the American public.

The seven proposed hubs involving companies ranging from Exxon Mobil to Amazon were selected, with their projects spanning 16 states from Pennsylvania to California. The program is intended to jump-start the production of "clean hydrogen" along with the infrastructure needed to get it to industrial users like steelmakers and cement plants. "I'm here to announce one of the largest advanced manufacturing investments in the history of this nation," Biden said," He noted that the total investment will reach $50 billion when taking into account additional investments from private companies.

The hub selections will now kick off a long process that includes multiple phases, from design and development to permitting, financing and construction. "It's not guaranteed that someone selected is even going to make it through negotiations and get awarded the money," said Jason Munster, who was involved in analyzing the projects for the Department of Energy and is now a hydrogen consultant at CleanEpic. The hubs selected will serve the Middle Atlantic, Appalachian, Midwest, Minnesota and Plains states, the Gulf Coast, Pacific Northwest and California. The two largest projects include $1.2 billion each for Texas and California -- the former an oil giant and the other a green energy leader.

Python

OpenAI to Release Its Python SDK (analyticsindiamag.com) 5

"OpenAI has unveiled the Beta version of its Python SDK," reports Analytics India Magazine, "marking a significant step towards enhancing access to the OpenAI API for Python developers." The OpenAI Python library offers a simplified way for Python-based applications to interact with the OpenAI API, while providing an opportunity for early testing and feedback before the official launch of version 1.0. It streamlines the integration process by providing pre-defined classes for API resources, dynamically initialising from API responses, ensuring compatibility across various OpenAI API versions...

Developers can find comprehensive documentation and code examples in the OpenAI Cookbook for various tasks, including classification, clustering, code search, customising embeddings, question answering, recommendations, visualisation of embeddings, and more...

This comes just weeks before OpenAI's first developer conference, OpenAI DevDay.

More details in OpenAI's official announcement at PyPi.org.
Medicine

MIT Creates an Implantable Device That Produces Insulin (mit.edu) 18

An announcement from MIT News: One promising approach to treating Type 1 diabetes is implanting pancreatic islet cells that can produce insulin when needed, which can free patients from giving themselves frequent insulin injections. However, one major obstacle to this approach is that once the cells are implanted, they eventually run out of oxygen and stop producing insulin.

To overcome that hurdle, MIT engineers have designed a new implantable device that not only carries hundreds of thousands of insulin-producing islet cells, but also has its own on-board oxygen factory, which generates oxygen by splitting water vapor found in the body. The researchers showed that when implanted into diabetic mice, this device could keep the mice's blood glucose levels stable for at least a month. The researchers now hope to create a larger version of the device, about the size of a stick of chewing gum, that could eventually be tested in people with Type 1 diabetes.

"You can think of this as a living medical device that is made from human cells that secrete insulin, along with an electronic life support-system," says Daniel Anderson, a professor in MIT's Department of Chemical Engineering, a member of MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, and the senior author of the study.

While the researchers' main focus is on diabetes treatment, they say that this kind of device could also be adapted to treat other diseases that require repeated delivery of therapeutic proteins.

Thanks to Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.
Google

Chromebook Plus is Google's New Certification for Premium Chromebooks (theverge.com) 17

Google has introduced Chromebook Plus, a new certification that's meant to help shoppers identify high-quality Chromebooks to buy. From a report: Much like Intel's Evo program for Windows PCs, the Chromebook Plus branding will be awarded to laptops that meet a set of minimum requirements. The idea is that even a shopper who's not familiar with PC specs can see the "Chromebook Plus" label on a product and be assured that Google thinks it's a good product. Chromebook Plus devices must have:

An Intel Core (i3 or higher) or AMD Ryzen 7000 CPU
An IPS panel with at least 1080p resolution
A 1080p webcam
8GB of RAM
128GB of storage

There's an interesting absence here: battery life. In fact, the phrase "battery life" does not appear once in Google's press release. Curious! I asked Google spokesperson Peter Du about this, and he provided the following statement: "All Chromebooks are required to meet a 10 hours battery life requirement based on internal testing standards. While not a new requirement for Chromebook Plus like the 1080p screen or 8GB of RAM, Chromebook Plus laptops must also adhere to this."

Medicine

'Cancer Moonshot' Projects Funded Include Implant to Sense and Treat Cancer, Tumor-Targetting Bacteria (arpa-h.gov) 42

Researchers from several U.S. institutions are collaborating "to develop and test an implantable device able to sense signs of the kind of inflammation associated with cancer," reports CBS News, "and delivery therapy when needed." Northwestern said the implant could significantly improve outcomes for patients with ovarian, pancreatic and other difficult-to-treat cancers — potentially cutting cancer-related deaths in the U.S. in half. "Instead of tethering patients to hospital beds, IV bags and external monitors, we'll use a minimally invasive procedure to implant a small device that continuously monitors their cancer and adjusts their immunotherapy dose in real time," said Rice University bioengineer Omid Veiseh. "This kind of 'closed-loop therapy' has been used for managing diabetes, where you have a glucose monitor that continuously talks to an insulin pump. But for cancer immunotherapy, it's revolutionary."
The project and team are named THOR, an acronym for "targeted hybrid oncotherapeutic regulation..." explains an announcement from Johns Hopkins. "THOR's proposed implant, or 'hybrid advanced molecular manufacturing regulator,' goes by the acronym HAMMR..."

The project will take five and a half years, and includes funding for a first-phase clinical trial treating recurrent ovarian cancer slated to begin in the fourth year. The research is funded by America's newly-established Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), according to a statement from the agency, representing its "commitment to supporting Cancer Moonshot goals of decreasing cancer deaths and improving the quality of life for patients..."

And they're also funding two more projects: The Synthetic Programmable bacteria for Immune-directed Killing in tumor Environments (SPIKEs) project, led by a team at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, aims to develop an inexpensive and safe therapy using bacteria specifically selected for tumor-targeting. Through SPIKEs, researchers intend to engineer bacteria that can recruit and regulate tumor-targeting immune cells, boosting the body's ability to fight off cancer without side-effects from traditional medications. Up to $19 million is allocated towards SPIKEs.

An additional project, with up to $50 million in potential funding inclusive of options, seeks to map cancer cell biomarkers to drastically improve multi-cancer early detection (MCED) and streamline clinical intervention when tumors are still small. Led by the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, the Cancer and Organ Degradome Atlas (CODA) project aims to understand the cellular profiles unique to diseased cancer cells. The CODA platform intends to develop a suite of biosensor tools that can reliably recognize a range of cancer-specific markers and, ultimately, produce a highly precise, accurate, and cost-effective MCED test that can identify common cancers when they are most treatable.

In a statement, ARPA-H's director said that "With these awards, we hope to see crucial advancements in patient-tailored therapies, better and earlier tumor detection methods, and cell therapies that can help the immune system target cancer cells for destruction."
Google

Web Sites Can Now Choose to Opt Out of Google Bard and Future AI Models (mashable.com) 35

"We're committed to developing AI responsibly," says Google's VP of Trust, "guided by our AI principles and in line with our consumer privacy commitment. However, we've also heard from web publishers that they want greater choice and control over how their content is used for emerging generative AI use cases."

And so, Mashable reports, "Websites can now choose to opt out of Google Bard, or any other future AI models that Google makes." Google made the announcement on Thursday introducing a new tool called Google-Extended that will allow sites to be indexed by crawlers (or a bot creating entries for search engines), while simultaneously not having their data accessed to train future AI models. For website administrators, this will be an easy fix, available through robots.txt — or the text file that allows web crawlers to access sites...

OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, recently launched a web crawler of its own, but included instructions on how to block it. Publications like Medium, the New York Times, CNN and Reuters have notably done so.

As Google's blog post explains, "By using Google-Extended to control access to content on a site, a website administrator can choose whether to help these AI models become more accurate and capable over time..."
GNU is Not Unix

GNU Celebrates Its 40th Anniversary (fsf.org) 49

Wednesday the Free Software Foundation celebrated "the 40th anniversary of the GNU operating system and the launch of the free software movement," with an announcement calling it "a turning point in the history of computing.

"Forty years later, GNU and free software are even more relevant. While software has become deeply ingrained into everyday life, the vast majority of users do not have full control over it... " On September 27, 1983, a computer scientist named Richard Stallman announced the plan to develop a free software Unix-like operating system called GNU, for "GNU's not Unix." GNU is the only operating system developed specifically for the sake of users' freedom, and has remained true to its founding ideals for forty years. Since 1983, the GNU Project has provided a full, ethical replacement for proprietary operating systems. This is thanks to the forty years of tireless work from volunteer GNU developers around the world.

When describing GNU's history and the background behind its initial announcement, Stallman (often known simply as "RMS") stated, "with a free operating system, we could again have a community of cooperating hackers — and invite anyone to join. And anyone would be able to use a computer without starting out by conspiring to deprive his or her friends."

"When we look back at the history of the free software movement — or the idea that users should be in control of their own computing — it starts with GNU," said Zoë Kooyman, executive director of the FSF, which sponsors GNU's development. "The GNU System isn't just the most widely used operating system that is based on free software. GNU is also at the core of a philosophy that has guided the free software movement for forty years."

Usually combined with the kernel Linux, GNU forms the backbone of the Internet and powers millions of servers, desktops, and embedded computing devices. Aside from its technical advancements, GNU pioneered the concept of "copyleft," the approach to software licensing that requires the same rights to be preserved in derivative works, and is best exemplified by the GNU General Public License (GPL). As Stallman stated, "The goal of GNU was to give users freedom, not just to be popular. So we needed to use distribution terms that would prevent GNU software from being turned into proprietary software. The method we use is called 'copyleft.'"

The free software community has held strong for forty years and continues to grow, as exemplified by the FSF's annual LibrePlanet conference on software freedom and digital ethics.

Kooyman continues, "We hope that the fortieth anniversary will inspire hackers, both old and new, to join GNU in its goal to create, improve, and share free software around the world. Software is controlling our world these days, and GNU is a critique and solution to the status quo that we desperately need in order to not have our technology control us."

"In honor of GNU's fortieth anniversary, its organizational sponsor the FSF is organizing a hackday for families, students, and anyone interested in celebrating GNU's anniversary. It will be held at the FSF's offices in Boston, MA on October 1."
The Courts

Supreme Court To Decide If State Laws Limiting Social Media Platforms Violate Constitution (apnews.com) 42

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide whether state laws that seek to regulate Facebook, TikTok, X and other social media platforms violate the Constitution. The justices will review laws enacted by Republican-dominated legislatures and signed by Republican governors in Florida and Texas. While the details vary, both laws aim to prevent the social media companies from censoring users based on their viewpoints. The court's announcement, three days before the start of its new term, comes as the justices continue to grapple with how laws written at the dawn of the digital age, or earlier, apply to the online world.

The justices had already agreed to decide whether public officials can block critics from commenting on their social media accounts [...]. Separately, the high court also could consider a lower-court order limiting executive branch officials' communications with social media companies about controversial online posts. The new social media cases follow conflicting rulings by two appeals courts, one of which upheld the Texas law, while the other struck down Florida's statute. By a 5-4 vote, the justices kept the Texas law on hold while litigation over it continues.

Transportation

Nissan To Go All-Electric By 2030 Despite UK's Petrol Ban Delay (bbc.com) 240

"Nissan will make the switch to full electric by 2030 in Europe. We believe it is the right thing to do for our business, our customers and for the planet," said Nissan's chief executive Makoto Uchida. The announcement comes despite the UK postponing its 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars to 2035. The BBC reports: In an interview with the BBC, Mr Uchida said the company was aiming to bring down the cost of electric vehicles for customers, so that they were no more expensive than petrol and diesel cars. "It may take a bit of time, but we are looking at the next few years," he said. "We are looking at it from the point of view of the technology, from the point of view of cooperating with suppliers, and of course working with the government on how we can deliver that kind of cost competitiveness to the consumer," Mr Uchida added. Will that price parity happen by 2030? "That's what we're aiming for," confirmed Mr Uchida.

Mr Uchida also said that the company was fast-tracking a different kind of battery technology, known as all-solid-state batteries (ASSB), which are lighter, cheaper, and quicker to charge. "We are going to have a pilot plant for ASSB in Japan from next year, and we want to ensure they can be mass produced by 2028," he said. "There are a lot of challenges with this, but we do have a solution, and we are on track [to meet that target]", he added.

Media

Disney's Password-Sharing Crackdown Has Begun (theverge.com) 34

Starting on November 1st, Disney Plus will begin restricting password sharing in Canada. The Verge reports: Disney has not provided many details on how it plans to enforce this policy -- its email merely states that "we're implementing restrictions on your ability to share your account or login credentials outside of your household." The announcement reads more like a strong finger wag than anything else. "You may not share your subscription outside of your household," reads the company's updated Help Center.

A new "account sharing" section in the Canadian subscriber agreement also notes that the company may "analyze the use of your account" and that failing to comply with the agreement could lead to account limits or termination.
After Netflix started cracking down on password sharing in the U.S., it resulted in the "four single largest days of U.S. user sign-ups since January 2019," according to Variety. The streaming giant later went on to add 2.6 million U.S. subscribers in July.
Education

'Code.org In Farsi' To Bring Tech-Backed Nonprofit's K-12 CS Curricula To Iran 34

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: Today, there are over 110 million Farsi speakers worldwide," explained tech-backed nonprofit Code.org in Tuesday's announcement of its new multi-year 'Code.org in Farsi' initiative. "While the majority of native speakers live in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan, there are millions living as immigrants, migrants, and refugees around the world. With the Code.org in Farsi initiative, Farsi-speaking students will have the same access to our curricula that is already available to students in all other major languages of the world."

The announcement closes with a statement regarding Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) compliance considerations: "As a U.S. nonprofit, Code.org is subject to laws regarding sanctions with Iran. After consulting with U.S. legal counsel experienced in the Iranian Sanctions and Translations Regulations (ITSR), Code.org believes that it may fund, prepare, and distribute the Farsi Translations of CS Curriculum in the United States and elsewhere around the world, including within Iran. The ITSR provides an exemption for "information and informational materials" (the IIM Exemption) and Code.org believes that this exemption will fully shield its funding, preparation, and distribution of the Farsi Translations and thus enable its Farsi Translations effort to proceed in full compliance with U.S. economic sanctions requirements.
AI

ChatGPT Can Now Browse the Internet 63

OpenAI says ChatGPT is "no longer limited to data before September 2021." It can now browse the internet to provide you with up-to-date information, "complete with direct links to sources." From the announcement: Since the original launch of browsing in May, we received useful feedback. Updates include following robots.txt and identifying user agents so sites can control how ChatGPT interacts with them. Browsing is particularly useful for tasks that require up-to-date information, such as helping you with technical research, trying to choose a bike, or planning a vacation.

Browsing is available to Plus and Enterprise users today, and we'll expand to all users soon. To enable, choose Browse with Bing in the selector under GPT-4.
Cloud

Xbox Cloud Gaming is Coming To Meta Quest 3 in December (techcrunch.com) 13

The next-generation of Meta Quest hardware is here, and Meta announced a bunch of software news alongside the Quest 3 VR headset hardware reveal at its Connect conference. One such announcement was the debut of Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming service on Meta Quest 3, which is actually a huge boon for fans of the Facebook owner's mixed reality gear. From a report: The Xbox Cloud Gaming implementation in Quest resembles a lot of how Apple showed its own vision for mixed reality with the Vision Pro headset: It's primarily a virtual screen that can float in either a virtual or mixed reality space, which appears to be reposition-able and resizable, but which basically works exactly as you'd expect an Xbox game to work with a large TV. This is a key acknowledgement on the part of Meta that while immersive, native gaming is undoubtedly a draw for users, so too is a more traditional gaming experience that basically just benefits from taking place in your own private face-mounted theater.
Communications

Walmart To Roll Out New Prepaid Phone Service From Boost Founder (bloomberg.com) 16

Walmart is expanding its offerings of prepaid phone plans with MobileX, a wireless service launched earlier this year by Boost cofounder Peter Adderton. Walmart will be MobileX's first and exclusive retail partner, the companies said in an announcement Tuesday. From a report: MobileX, which uses Verizon's network through a wholesale agreement, will be available on Walmart's website and in stores starting Tuesday, the companies said. It will offer unlimited pay-as-you go plans starting at $14.88 per month, and a lower-cost plan with customizable offerings starting at $4.08 a month. An artificial intelligence-powered guide that can anticipate a customer's data needs can customize plans tailored to their usage, the company said in a statement. [...] Walmart gives MobileX, which launched online in February, more visibility as a low-cost alternative to more expensive monthly plans from the big three wireless carriers. Still, cheap mobile services have had a difficult time dislodging people from more expensive plans. Many subscribers are locked into two and three-year phone payment plans and even those that could switch say the hassle is not worth the savings.
Hardware

The First Foldable PC Era is Unfolding (arstechnica.com) 47

Lenovo launched the first foldable laptop in 2020, but the first real era of foldable PCs is only starting to unfold now. From a report: Today, LG became the latest OEM to announce a foldable-screen laptop, right after HP announced its first attempt, the Spectre Foldable PC, earlier this month. LG only announced the Gram Fold in South Korea thus far. A Google translation of LG's Korean announcement said the laptop is 9.4-mm (0.37-inches) thick when unfolded and used like a 17-inch tablet. Alternatively, the OLED PC can be folded in half to use like an approximately 12.2-inch laptop. In the latter form, a virtual keyboard can appear on the bottom screen, and you can dock a Bluetooth keyboard to the bottom screen or pair a keyboard with the system wirelessly. The screen has 1920Ã--2560 pixels for a pixel density of 188.2 pixels per inch.

One draw of foldable PCs is supposed to be portability. The Gram Fold weighs 2.76 pounds (1,250g), which is even lighter than LG's latest Gram clamshell laptop (2.9 pounds). According to Android Authority, LG's laptop will have an Intel Core i5-1335U, which has 8 Efficient cores (E-cores) at up to 3.4 GHz, two Performance cores (P-cores) at up to 4.6 GHz, 12 threads, and 12MB of cache. The PC is also supposed to have 16GB of RAM, a 512GB NVMe SSD, a 72 Wh battery, Wi-Fi 6E, and two USB-C ports. LG is claiming 99.5 percent DCI-P3 color coverage with the laptop.

[...] It's also possible we'll see similar designs from other laptop brands, as panel supplier LG Display announced today that it will start mass production of 17-inch foldable OLED laptop panels. The foldable OLED is made with what LG Display calls a Tandem OLED structure, using two-stack OLED technology, "which adds an extra organic emitting layer to deliver brighter screens while effectively dispersing energy across OLED components for optimal stability and longer lifespans," LG Display's announcement said. LG Display first entered mass production of foldable (13.3-inch) laptop panels in 2020. However, foldable PCs didn't immediately take off then, despite the panel being used in Lenovo's 2020 ThinkPad X1 Fold. Foldable PCs lacked the software support that Windows 11 now affords with its Snap windows layouts that make organizing windows across dual or folded screens more intuitive.

Power

US Defense Department Funds Design Analysis for a Transportable Micro Nuclear Reactor (defense.gov) 120

America's Department of Defense recently exercised a contract option with X-energy, a private nuclear reactor engineering company, seeking "a thorough analysis of design options" for a transportable micro nuclear reactor. The Department says its ultimate goal is "a reactor design which is ready for licensing by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for both commercial ventures and military resiliency."

Their announcement also notes that additional work is already underway by another company, BWX Technologies, on a prototype micro reactor: "Due to their extraordinary energy density, nuclear reactors have the potential to serve multiple critical functions for meeting resiliency needs in contested logistical environments," said Dr. Jeff Waksman, Project Pele program manager. "By developing two unique designs, we will provide the Services with a broad range of options as they consider potential uses of nuclear power for both Installation and Operational energy applications in the near future."

The Defense Department uses approximately 30 Terawatt-hours of electricity per year and more than 10 million gallons of fuel per day — levels that are only expected to increase due to anticipated electrification of the vehicle fleet and maturation of future energy-intensive capabilities. A safe, small, transportable nuclear reactor would address this growing demand with a resilient, carbon-free energy source that does not add to the Defense Department's fuel needs, while supporting mission-critical operations in remote and austere environments...

"The Strategic Capabilities Office specializes in adapting commercial technology for military purposes," said Jay Dryer, director. "By nurturing and developing multiple micro reactor designs, SCO will not just provide options for the military Services, but will also help jumpstart a truly competitive commercial marketplace for micro reactors."

Cellphones

Google Offers Genuine 'Pixel Fold' Repair Parts on iFixit. But Inner Screen Repairs Cost $900 (arstechnica.com) 31

"Since 2022, Google has worked with iFixit to offer official repair parts and guides for virtually all of the company's Pixel releases," according to the blog 9to5Google, which in June confirmed this would continue with Google's Pixel Fold. (They called the announcement "notable, as it will be the first foldable to date with support for DIY repair options.")

But Ars Technica has a warning about Google's "biggest and most expensive phone." The good news is Google has indeed started offering OEM replacement parts for the $1,800 phone on the repair site iFixit.

The bad news is a repair kit for the phone's inner display, a 7.6-inch flexible OLED screen, "will cost you a whopping $900." Even the "part only" option for $900 is the entire top half of the Pixel Fold. We're talking the display, the bezels around it, the entire metal frame and sides of the phone, the all-important hinge, side buttons, fingerprint sensor, and a whole bunch of wires. You wouldn't buy this and connect it to your original phone; you would part out your original phone and move a few pieces over into this, like the motherboard, batteries, cameras, and back plate...

The outer screen is a much more reasonable $160, while the rear glass cover and camera bump is $70. The batteries — there are two, remember — will run you $50 each...

Once you get the parts you need, it really feels like iFixit went all out in the guide department, with 32 different guides and "techniques" detailing how to disassemble the Pixel Fold.

Games

Unity To Roll Back Some Key Aspects of Runtime Fee Policy (ign.com) 55

Unity has announced some key changes to its widely panned Runtime Fee policy, which spawned both derision and confusion from developers and the gaming community at large when it was unveiled earlier this month. From a report: It's easing up on some big aspects of the previously announced charges, removing the fee from the Unity Personal tier entirely, although it still remains in a revised form on the Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise tiers. In short, as originally announced, starting on Jan. 1, 2024, Unity would start charging developers a small fee every time someone downloads a game built on Unity's game engine after a certain threshold for minimum revenue and install count.

The different tiers of Unity plans - Unity Personal/Unity Plus, Unity Pro, and Unity Enterprise - had different thresholds and, per the original announcement, smaller developers using Unity Personal/Unity Plus would have to pay Unity $0.20 per install once their game passes $200,000 in revenue over the last 12 months and 200,000 life-to-date installs. Unity announced today, however, that there will be no Runtime Fee on games built on Unity Personal, which will remain free. They will also be increasing financial theshold of Unity Personal from $100,000 to $200,000 and will remove the requirement to use the Made with Unity splash screen.

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