A piece of space debris being monitored by the European Space Agency as part of a mission to remove trash from space was hit by another piece of debris, splintering the object into more pieces. From a report: ESA confirmed Tuesday that the US's 18th Space Defense Squadron, which tracks objects in orbit, spotted a number of new pieces in the vicinity of a payload adapter named VESPA that the agency had planned to pluck from space. The most likely cause of those new fragments is "the hypervelocity impact of a small, untracked object" ramming into VESPA, according to ESA. VESPA was left over from the launch of a European Vega rocket that took off from South America in 2013. It was part of a cone-shaped attachment used to deploy the rocket's satellite into orbit, and has been in Earth's orbit ever since. ESA said its new fragments don't pose much of a risk to any other spacecraft at the moment.

The UK government will spend $127m to try to win a toe-hold for the nation in the global race to produce computer chips used to power artificial intelligence. From a report: Taxpayer money will be used as part of a drive to build a national AI resource in Britain, similar to those under development in the US and elsewhere. It is understood that the funds will be used to order key components from major chipmakers Nvidia, AMD and Intel. But an official briefed on the plans told the Guardian that the $127m offered by the government is far too low relative to investment by peers in the EU, US and China. The official confirmed, in a move first reported by the Telegraph, which also revealed the investment, that the government is in advanced stages of an order of up to 5,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) from Nvidia. The company, which started out building processing capacity for computer games, has seen a sharp increase in its value as the AI race has heated up. Its chips can run language learning models such as ChatGPT.

"Italian producers of parmesan cheese have been fighting against imitations for years," writes the Wall Street Journal, adding "Their latest trick to beat counterfeiters is edible microchips.

"Now, makers of Parmigiano-Reggiano, as the original parmesan cheese is officially called, are slapping the microchips on their 90-pound cheese wheels as part of an endless cat-and-mouse game between makers of authentic and fake products." New methods to guarantee the origin of products are being used across the EU. Some wineries are putting serial numbers, invisible ink and holograms on their bottles. So-called DNA fingerprinting of milk bacteria pioneered in Switzerland, which isn't in the EU, is now being tested inside the bloc as a method for identifying cheese. QR codes are also proliferating, including on individual portions of pre-sliced Prosciutto di San Daniele, a raw ham similar to Prosciutto di Parma. A smartphone can be used to show information such as how long the prosciutto has been aged and when it was sliced... The new silicon chips, made by Chicago-based p-Chip, use blockchain technology to authenticate data that can trace the cheese as far back as the producer of the milk used.

The chips have been in advanced testing on more than 100,000 Parmigiano wheels for more than a year. The consortium of producers wants to be sure the chips can stand up to Parmigiano's aging requirement, which is a minimum of one year and can exceed three years for some varieties... The p-Chips can withstand extreme heat or cold, can be read through ice and can withstand years of storage in liquid nitrogen. They have outperformed RFID chips, which are larger, can be more difficult to attach to products, are more fragile and can't survive extreme temperatures, according to p-Chip Chief Technology Officer Bill Eibon. Parmigiano producers also use QR codes, but the codes are easily copied and degrade during the cheese's aging process.

A robot heats the Parmigiano wheel's casein label — a small plaque made of milk protein that is widely used in the cheese industry — and then inserts the chip on top. A hand-held reader can grab the data from the chips, which cost a few cents each and are similar to the ones that some people have inserted under the skin of their pets. The chips can't be read remotely. In lab tests, the chips sat for three weeks in a mock-up of stomach acid without leaking any dangerous material. Eibon went a step further, eating one without suffering any ill effects, but he isn't touting that lest p-Chip face accusations it is tracking people, something that isn't possible because the chips can't be read remotely and can't be read once they are ingested.

"We don't want to be known as the company accused of tracking people," said Eibon. "I ate one of the chips and nobody is tracking me, except my wife, and she uses a different method."
Merck KGaA will soon be using the same chips, the article points out, and the chips "are also being tested in the automotive industry to guarantee the authenticity of car parts.

"The chips could eventually be used on livestock, crops or medicine stored in liquid nitrogen."

"It was difficult to maintain a poker face when the leader of a big US tech firm I was chatting to said there was a definite tipping point at which the firm would exit the UK," writes a BBC technology editor: Many of these companies are increasingly fed up. Their "tipping point" is UK regulation — and it's coming at them thick and fast. The Online Safety Bill is due to pass in the autumn. Aimed at protecting children, it lays down strict rules around policing social media content, with high financial penalties and prison time for individual tech execs if the firms fail to comply. One clause that has proved particularly controversial is a proposal that encrypted messages, which includes those sent on WhatsApp, can be read and handed over to law enforcement by the platforms they are sent on, if there is deemed to be a national security or child protection risk...

Currently messaging apps like WhatsApp, Proton and Signal, which offer this encryption, cannot see the content of these messages themselves. WhatsApp and Signal have both threatened to quit the UK market over this demand.

The Digital Markets Bill is also making its way through Parliament. It proposes that the UK's competition watchdog selects large companies like Amazon and Microsoft, gives them rules to comply with and sets punishments if they don't. Several firms have told me they feel this gives an unprecedented amount of power to a single body. Microsoft reacted furiously when the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) chose to block its acquisition of the video game giant Activision Blizzard. "There's a clear message here — the European Union is a more attractive place to start a business than the United Kingdom," raged chief executive Brad Smith. The CMA has since re-opened negotiations with Microsoft. This is especially damning because the EU is also introducing strict rules in the same vein — but it is collectively a much larger and therefore more valuable market.

In the UK, proposed amendments to the Investigatory Powers Act, which included tech firms getting Home Office approval for new security features before worldwide release, incensed Apple so much that it threatened to remove Facetime and iMessage from the UK if they go through. Clearly the UK cannot, and should not, be held to ransom by US tech giants. But the services they provide are widely used by millions of people. And rightly or wrongly, there is no UK-based alternative to those services.
The article concludes that "It's a difficult line to tread. Big Tech hasn't exactly covered itself in glory with past behaviours — and lots of people feel regulation and accountability is long overdue."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: The founder and former CEO of Russia's largest internet company, Arkady Volozh, has slammed Vladimir Putin's "barbaric" war in Ukraine, becoming one of the most prominent Russian businessmen to express criticism of what Russia still calls euphemistically its "special military operation." "I've been asked a lot of questions over the past year, and especially a lot of them came up this week. I would like to clarify my position," he said in a statement released to the media. "I am totally against Russia's barbaric invasion of Ukraine, where I, like many, have friends and relatives. I am horrified by the fact that every day bombs fly into the homes of Ukrainians," said Volozh, describing himself "as a "Kazakhstan-born, Israeli tech entrepreneur, computer scientist, investor, and philanthropist." "Despite the fact that I have not lived in Russia since 2014, I understand that I also have a share of responsibility for the actions of the country," he added. "There were many reasons why I had to remain silent. You can argue about the timeliness of my statement, but not about its substance. I am against war."

In June 2022, Volozh quit as CEO of Yandex (YNDX), which also operates Russia's most popular search engine, after he was sanctioned by the European Union over Russia's actions in Ukraine. "Volozh is a leading businessperson involved in economic sectors providing a substantial source of revenue to the Government of the Russian Federation, which is responsible for the annexation of Crimea and the destabilization of Ukraine," the EU said. "Yandex is also responsible for promoting State media and narratives in its search results, and de-ranking and removing content critical of the Kremlin, such as content related to Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine." In his statement, Volozh said after moving to Israel in 2014, he has been working on developing Yandex's international projects. "But in February 2022, the world changed, and I realized that my story with Yandex was over."

"After the outbreak of the war, I focused on supporting talented Russian engineers who decided to leave the country and start a new life. It turned out to be a difficult task that required a lot of effort, attention and caution," he said. "Now these people are outside of Russia and can start doing something new in the most advanced areas of technology. They will be of great benefit to the countries where they remain," he added. Volozh went on to say that when Yandex was created, "We believed that we were building a new Russia -- an open, progressive, integrated into the global economy, known in the world not only for its raw materials." However, "over time, it became clear that Russia was in no hurry to become part of the global world. At the same time, the pressure on the company grew," he said. "But we did not give up, we did our best despite the external conditions. Has it always been possible to find the right balance? Now, looking back, it is clear that something could have been done differently."

Floods, fires and heavy rains have landed more blows across Europe this week, with the authorities on the continent scrambling to respond to the extreme weather that has become increasingly common in the past few years. From a report: The most recent events have destroyed large amounts of land, left dozens of people injured, forced thousands to evacuate and, in some cases, caused deaths, and they come on the heels of scorching temperatures that have engulfed much of Southern Europe this summer. Climate change has made extreme heat a fixture of the warmer months in Europe, but experts say that the continent has failed to significantly adapt to the hotter conditions. Governments in many countries are now struggling to address the devastating effects.

"The extreme weather conditions across Europe continue to be of concern," Roberta Metsola, the president of the European Parliament, wrote on Twitter. "The EU is showing solidarity with all those in need." Heavy rains in recent days have led rivers to overflow across Slovenia in what the authorities there said was the worst natural disaster since the country's independence in 1991. At least six people have died, according to the Slovenian news agency STA, and thousands have been forced to flee their homes to escape the floods. Several countries have tried to help, with France and Germany sending equipment such as prefabricated bridges, and even Ukraine, in the middle of a war with Russia, promising to send a helicopter.

Is natural gas really a cleaner alternative to coal and oil? That claim "is facing increasing scrutiny," writes Slashdot reader sonlas: One significant concern with natural gas is the release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, during its extraction, production, transportation, and processing. Methane is approximately 30 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO2 over a 100-year period. (And methane leaks can occur at various stages of the gas supply chain, from wellhead emissions during drilling and extraction to leakage during transportation and distribution.) Additionally, intentional venting or flaring of methane also contributes to the problem.

An article published in Environmental Research Letters challenges the assumption that natural gas is a cleaner energy source compared to coal or oil. Their study takes into account the full lifecycle emissions of natural gas, including methane leakage rates, and arrives at a different conclusion. With a methane leakage rate of 7.5% and other relevant factors considered, the greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas can be on par with or even exceed those of coal. Even a lower methane leakage rate of 2% can diminish the environmental advantage of natural gas significantly.

A key aspect of this study is its focus on real-world methane leakage rates. Aerial measurements conducted in various oil and gas production regions in the U.S. revealed substantial methane leak rates ranging from 0.65% to a staggering 66.2%. (Similar leakage rates have been identified in other parts of the world.) These findings raise serious concerns about the climate impact of natural gas and cast doubt on its role as a so-called "transition energy" in the quest for cleaner and more sustainable energy sources, especially liquefied natural gas...

This complicates the search for sustainable energy solutions, especially in Europe where gas was included in the green taxonomy following a push from Germany.

TikTok users in Europe will be able to switch off the personalized algorithm behind its For You and Live feeds as the company makes changes to comply with the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA). The Verge reports: According to TikTok, disabling this function will show users "popular videos from both the places where they live and around the world" instead of content based on their personal interests. These changes relate to DSA rules that require very large online platforms to allow their users to opt out of receiving personalized content -- which typically relies on tracking and profiling user activity -- when viewing content recommendations. To comply, TikTok's search feature will also show content that's popular in the user's region, and videos under the "Following" and "Friends" feeds will be displayed in chronological order when a non-personalized view is selected.

Another change is that European users between the ages of 13 and 17 automatically won't be targeted with personalized ads based on their online activities, rather than having to opt out with a toggle.

Airbus is forming a joint venture with US start-up Voyager to compete to build a replacement for the International Space Station, an internationally funded laboratory in space that is due to be decommissioned by the end of the decade. From a report: The deal announced on Wednesday formalises the partnership unveiled in January on Voyager's Starlab project and will see Airbus replace US defence company Lockheed Martin as its main industrial partner. Starlab is one of the frontrunners in a race launched by Nasa four years ago to develop commercial alternatives to the ISS, which was launched 23 years ago and orbits some 420 kms above the earth.

The ISS is an international collaboration, funded by national space agencies from the US, EU, Canada, Japan and Russia. Since its launch it has hosted 258 astronauts and cosmonauts from 20 countries. Among the other contenders in the race trying to build a replacement is Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, which is leading a consortium offering a 30,000 sq ft "ecosystem" of different habitats and services for industry, research and tourism. Nasa has allocated $550mn to four consortiums in the first phase of the competition, which will examine the spacecraft design and the business cases of each contender. The US agency has insisted each be commercially viable.

According to the Financial Times, Meta is preparing to launch AI-enabled chatbots with unique personalities, such as a surfer personality and a chatbot based on Abraham Lincoln. Engadget reports: This is an attempt to boost engagement across Meta's social media platforms, as human-like discussions tend to be more interesting than droll robotic responses. The company hasn't announced which of these platforms would host Abe Lincoln and his pals, though previous reports indicated Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp would be recipients of this new technology. Meta staffers are calling these chatbots "personas" and they could launch as soon as September. These personas will provide a new way to search and they'll even offer recommendations, similar to how current chatbots work, though ChatGPT and the rest don't have Abraham Lincoln on the payroll (just don't ask him about the best local opera houses.)

FT notes that the chatbots could also collect vast amounts of personal data, something Meta has never shied away from. After all, you'll likely share more personal details with a human-like companion than one devoid of personality. The vast majority of Meta's yearly revenue comes from advertising, so go ahead and tell your good friend Abe all about your likes and dislikes. What's the worst that could happen?

Meta intends to ask users in the European Union for their consent before allowing businesses to target advertising based on what they view on its services such as Facebook and Instagram, the social media giant said on Tuesday. From a report: Meta said the change is to address a number of evolving regulatory requirements in the region and stems from an order in January by Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner, Meta's lead EU regulator, to reassess the legal basis on how it targets ads.

Facebook and Instagram users had effectively agreed to allow their data to be used in targeted advertising when they signed up to the services' terms and conditions, until the regulator ruled it could not process personal information in that way. "Today, we are announcing our intention to change the legal basis that we use to process certain data for behavioural advertising for people in the EU, EEA (European Economic Area) and Switzerland from 'Legitimate Interests' to 'Consent'," Meta said in a blog post.

Saleforce's chief impact officer, writing in Forbes: Code and computer programming — the backbone of modern business — has a long way to go before it can be called "green..." According to a recent report from the science journal Patterns, the information and communication technology sector accounts for up to 3.9% of global emissions... So far, the focus has been on reducing energy consumption in data centers and moving electrical grids away from fossil fuels. Now, coders and designers are ready for a similar push in software, crypto proof of work and AI compute power...

Our research revealed that 75% of UX designers, software developers and IT operations managers want software to do less damage to the environment. Yet nearly one in two don't know how to take action. Half of these technologists admit to not knowing how to mitigate environmental harm in their work, leading to 34% acknowledging that they "rarely or never" consider carbon emissions while typing a new line of code... Earlier this year, Salesforce launched a sustainability guide for technology that provides practical recommendations for aligning climate goals with software development.
In the article the Salesforce executive makes four recommendations, urging coders to design sites in ways that reduce the energy needed to display them. ("Even small changes to image size, color and type options can scale to large impacts.") They also recommend writing application code that uses less energy, which "can lead to significant emissions reductions, particularly when deployed at scale. Leaders can seek out apps that are coded to run natively in browsers which can lead to improvement in performance and a reduction in energy use."

Their article includes links to the energy-saving hackathon GreenHack and the non-profit Green Software Foundation. (Their site recently described how the IT company AVEVA used a Raspberry Pi in back of a hardware cluster as part of a system to measure software's energy consumption.)

But their first recommendation for fighting the climate crisis is "Adopt new technology like AI" to "make the software development cycle more energy efficient." ("At Salesforce, we're starting to see tremendous potential in using generative AI to optimize code and are excited to release this to customers in the future.")

A coalition of a half-dozen open-source AI stakeholders -- Hugging Face, GitHub, EleutherAI, Creative Commons, LAION and Open Future -- are calling on EU policymakers to protect open source innovation as they finalize the EU AI Act, which will be the world's first comprehensive AI law. From a report: In a policy paper released this week, "Supporting Open Source and Open Science in the EU AI Act," the open-source AI leaders offered recommendations âoefor how to ensure the AI Act works for open source" -- with the "aim to ensure that open AI development practices are not confronted with obligations that are structurally impractical to comply with or that would be otherwise counterproductive."

According to the paper, "overbroad obligations" that favor closed and proprietary AI development -- like models from top AI companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google -- "threaten to disadvantage the open AI ecosystem." The paper was released as the European Commission, Council and Parliament debate the final EU AI Act in what is known as the "trilogue," which began after the European Parliament passed its version of the bill on June 14. The goal is to finish and pass the AI Act by the end of 2023 before the next European Parliament elections.

Worldcoin (WLD), the eyeball-scanning crypto project launched by OpenAI's Sam Altman, is being investigated by French data protection regulator CNI for "questionable" practises, the regulator told CoinDesk. From a report: "The legality of this [data] collection seems questionable, as do the conditions for preservation of biometric data," a CNIL spokesperson said in a written statement, referring to Worldcoin's practise of scanning retinas to ensure that no single person can claim crypto rewards twice.

"CNIL has initiated investigations," supporting the work of Bavarian privacy regulators who have primary responsibility under EU law, the spokesperson added. Worldcoin went live on Monday and its cheerleaders say it could spread crypto wider than bitcoin (BTC), but it has drawn the ire of privacy watchdogs in the U.K., where the Information Commissioner's Office has warned that people must freely give consent to the processing of their personal data, and be able to withdraw it without detriment.

The era of global warming has ended and "the era of global boiling has arrived," the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, has said after scientists confirmed July was on track to be the world's hottest month on record. From a report: "Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning," Guterres said. "It is still possible to limit global temperature rise to 1.5C [above pre-industrial levels], and avoid the very worst of climate change. But only with dramatic, immediate climate action." Guterres's comments came after scientists confirmed on Thursday that the past three weeks have been the hottest since records began and July is on track to be the hottest month ever recorded.

Global temperatures this month have shattered records, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the EU's Copernicus Earth observation programme, stoked by the burning of fossil fuels and spurring violent weather. The steady rise in global average temperatures, driven by pollution that traps sunlight and acts like a greenhouse around the Earth, has made weather extremes worse. "Humanity is in the hot seat," Guterres told a press conference on Thursday. "For vast parts of North America, Asia, Africa and Europe, it is a cruel summer. For the entire planet, it is a disaster. And for scientists, it is unequivocal -- humans are to blame. All this is entirely consistent with predictions and repeated warnings. The only surprise is the speed of the change. Climate change is here, it is terrifying, and it is just the beginning. The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived."

European Union regulators on Thursday opened an antitrust investigation into Microsoft's bundling of its video and chat app Teams with other Office products. From a report: The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, said that these practices may constitute anti-competitive behavior. It is the first antitrust investigation by the EU into Microsoft in over a decade. "The Commission is concerned that Microsoft may grant Teams a distribution advantage by not giving customers the choice on whether or not to include access to that product when they subscribe to their productivity suites and may have limited the interoperability between its productivity suites and competing offerings," the EU regulators said on Thursday in a press release. In other words, the EU is concerned Microsoft is not giving customers the choice to not buy Teams when they subscribe to the company's Office 365 product. In doing so, Microsoft might be stopping other companies from competing in the workplace messaging and video app space.

The Council of the EU has adopted new rules intended to make it much easier for EV owners to travel across Europe, while simultaneously helping to reduce the output of harmful greenhouse gases. From a report: The new regulation is set to benefit owners of electric cars and vans in three ways: It reduces range anxiety by expanding the EV charging infrastructure along Europe's main highways, it makes payments "at the pump" easier without requiring an app or subscription, and ensures pricing and availability is clearly communicated to avoid surprises. From 2025 onward, the new regulation requires fast charging stations offering at least 150kW of power to be installed every 60km (37mi) along the EU's Trans-European Transport Network, or (TEN-T) system of highways, the bloc's main transport corridor. The fast charging network along European highways is already pretty robust, I discovered on a recent 3,000km (2,000 mile) roadtrip with a VW ID Buzz. This new law could all but eliminate range anxiety for those sticking to TEN-T roads.

The European Union's plan to bolster domestic semiconductor production will become law after ministers completed the final approval on Tuesday. From a report: The EU's Chips Act, which was approved by the European Parliament earlier this month, will take effect once it's published in the bloc's Official Journal. The European Commission first proposed the $47.5 billion Chips Act as part of an ambitious goal of producing 20% of the world's semiconductors by 2030. Numerous companies, including Intel and STMicroelectronics, have already announced new sites in Europe.

The European Union is lobbying Asian countries to follow its lead on artificial intelligence in adopting new rules for tech firms that include disclosure of copyrighted and AI-generated content, according to senior officials from the EU and Asia. From a report: The EU and its member states have dispatched officials for talks on governing the use of AI with at least 10 Asian countries including India, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and the Philippines, they said. The bloc aims for its proposed AI Act to become a global benchmark on the booming technology the way its data protection laws have helped shape global privacy standards.

However, the effort to convince Asian governments of the need for stringent new rules is being met with a lukewarm reception, seven people close to the discussions told Reuters. Many countries favour a "wait and see" approach or are leaning towards a more flexible regulatory regime. Singapore, one of Asia's leading tech centres, prefers to see how the technology evolves before adapting local regulations, an official for the city-state told Reuters. Officials from Singapore and the Philippines expressed concern that moving overly hasty regulation might stifle AI innovation.

Norway's data protection regulator has accused Meta of violating user privacy by tracking their activities, threatening to fine the company $100,000 per day if it fails to take corrective action. "It is so clear that this is illegal that we need to intervene now and immediately," said Tobias Judin, head of Norway's privacy commission, Datatilsynet. Engadget reports: The move follows a European court ruling banning Meta from harvesting user data like location, behavior and more for advertising. Datatilsynet has referred its actions to Europe's Data Protection Board, which could widen the fine across Europe. The aim is to put "additional pressure" on Meta, Judin said. (Norway is a member of the European single market, but not technically an EU member.)

Meta told Reuters that it's reviewing Datatilsynet's decision and that the decision wouldn't immediately impact its services. "We continue to constructively engage with the Irish DPC, our lead regulator in the EU, regarding our compliance with its decision," a spokesperson said. "The debate around legal bases has been ongoing for some time and businesses continue to face a lack of regulatory certainty in this area."