An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Deadly with extreme weather now, climate change is about to get so much worse. It is likely going to make the world sicker, hungrier, poorer, gloomier and way more dangerous in the next 18 years with an "unavoidable" increase in risks, a new United Nations science report says. And after that watch out. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report said Monday if human-caused global warming isn't limited to just another couple tenths of a degree, an Earth now struck regularly by deadly heat, fires, floods and drought in future decades will degrade in 127 ways with some being "potentially irreversible."

Today's children who may still be alive in the year 2100 are going to experience four times more climate extremes than they do now even with only a few more tenths of a degree of warming over today's heat. But if temperatures increase nearly 2 more degrees Celsius from now (3.4 degrees Fahrenheit) they would feel five times the floods, storms, drought and heat waves, according to the collection of scientists at the IPCC. Already at least 3.3 billion people's daily lives "are highly vulnerable to climate change" and 15 times more likely to die from extreme weather, the report says. Large numbers of people are being displaced by worsening weather extremes. And the world's poor are being hit by far the hardest, it says.

More people are going to die each year from heat waves, diseases, extreme weather, air pollution and starvation because of global warming, the report says. Just how many people die depends on how much heat-trapping gas from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas gets spewed into the air and how the world adapts to an ever-hotter world, scientists say. The report lists mounting dangers to people, plants, animals, ecosystems and economies, with people at risk in the millions and billions and potential damages in the trillions of dollars. The report highlights people being displaced from homes, places becoming uninhabitable, the number of species dwindling, coral disappearing, ice shrinking and rising and increasingly oxygen-depleted and acidic oceans. Some of these risks can still be prevented or lessened with prompt action. "Today's IPCC report is an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership," United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement. "With fact upon fact, this report reveals how people and the planet are getting clobbered by climate change."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CoinTelegraph: As the West continues to impose more sanctions against Russian banks following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, one Ukrainian official has called for sanctions on Russians' cryptocurrency holdings as well. Mykhailo Fedorov, minister of digital transformation of Ukraine, took to Twitter on Sunday to urge the global cryptocurrency exchanges to block addresses of Russian users. He emphasized that exchanges should freeze not only the addresses tied to Russia and Belarus officially but also to "sabotage ordinary users." Fedorov subsequently pointed out that some industry-related services have already moved to freeze assets from Russia and Belarus, including the nonfungible token platform DMarket. "Funds from these accounts could be donated to the war effort. Nowadays Robin Hoods. Bravo," Fedorov stated. He also cited the ongoing measures taken by the social media giant Meta regarding Russia's attack on Ukraine. Fedorov's appeals could potentially be catastrophic for the Russian cryptocurrency market, as Russians were estimated to hold more than $200 billion in crypto as of early February.

Binance does not plan to freeze assets by Russians because this would contradict cryptocurrency's main principles of financial freedom, a spokesperson for the firm told Cointelegraph on Monday: "We are not going to unilaterally freeze millions of innocent users' accounts. Crypto is meant to provide greater financial freedom for people across the globe." The representative added that the exchange is taking measures to ensure that sanctions are against sanctioned entities in Russia while "minimizing the impact to innocent users." "Should the international community widen those sanctions further, we will apply those aggressively as well," the spokesperson added.

Some crypto executives believe that sanctions against Russia are eventually inevitable. However, they should target only select persons as the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control usually does. "We think that the sanctions will be inevitable by naming new sanctioned persons as US/OFAC has done in the past. However, banning all crypto companies from offering services to ordinary Russians would not make sense and would cause more harm for everyday people than good," LocalBitcoins chief marketing officer Jukka Blomberg told Cointelegraph. Kraken CEO Jesse Powell also said that the Kraken exchange will not be able to freeze the accounts of the exchange's Russian clients without a legal requirement. "Russians should be aware that such a requirement could be imminent," he added. Powell previously recommended Kraken users move their crypto assets out of the exchanges, referring to Canada's Emergency Act freezing the crypto of dissidents.

Security researchers with U.S. cybersecurity firm Symantec said they have discovered a "highly sophisticated" Chinese hacking tool that has been able to escape public attention for more than a decade. Reuters reports: The discovery was shared with the U.S. government in recent months, who have shared the information with foreign partners, said a U.S. official. Symantec, a division of chipmaker Broadcom, published its research about the tool, which it calls Daxin, on Monday. "It's something we haven't seen before," said Clayton Romans, associate director with the U.S. Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). "This is the exact type of information we're hoping to receive."

CISA highlighted Symantec's membership in a joint public-private cybersecurity information sharing partnership, known as the JCDC, alongside the new research paper. The JCDC, or Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative, is a collective of government defense agencies, including the FBI and National Security Agency, and 22 U.S. technology companies that share intelligence about active cyberattacks with one another. Symantec's attribution to China is based on instances where components of Daxin were combined with other known, Chinese-linked computer hacker infrastructure or cyberattacks, said Vikram Thakur, a technical director with Symantec. [...] "Daxin can be controlled from anywhere in the world once a computer is actually infected," said Thakur. "That's what raises the bar from malware that we see coming out of groups operating from China."

It'll cost $52 for you to enter, but you could take home thousands -- at least. This is the latest project from art collective MSCHF: a one-off, winner-takes-all, massively multiplayer version of the SATs named the MSAT. From a report: The SAT -- for non-US readers -- is a multiple-choice test taken across the United States for college admissions. Because it's so widely taken, it's something of an object of cultural horror. "I actually took the ACT, but as 95 percent of my friends took the SAT, I remember them being out of their minds stressed and spending almost a full 12 months preparing with private tutors and study classes," MSCHF founder Daniel Greenberg tells The Verge. So, Greenberg and his colleagues made the MSAT. Registration is open for the rest of the week, and the test itself will take place at noon ET on Saturday, March 5th, with all entrants playing live against one another from their computers. The winner will take home all the entrance fees, and here's the kicker: cheating is encouraged.

British science is facing the threat of a highly damaging brain drain that could see scores of top young researchers leaving the UK. In addition, the futures of several major British-led international projects are also now in jeopardy following a delay in funding by the European Union. From a report: Senior scientists say the UK's scientific standing is at serious risk while others have warned that major programmes -- including medical projects aimed at tackling global scourges such as malaria -- face cancellation. "There is a real prospect that bright young scientists will decide it will be best for their careers if they leave the UK," said Martin Smith, head of policy at the Wellcome Trust. "At the same time, if research partnerships involving the UK break down, Britain will no longer be seen as a reliable scientific partner. UK science will suffer."

The U.S. is far behind its global rivals in the race for energy supremacy in a low-carbon world. To catch up, it is pinning its hopes on companies such as Ion Storage Systems, a next-generation battery company started in a University of Maryland chemistry lab with a $574,275 federal grant. WSJ: At a new factory outside of Washington, D.C., Ion Storage will be among the first companies in the U.S. to produce a new kind of faster-charging, longer-lasting battery. The company's batteries also don't catch fire; combustibility is a problem that has bedeviled the industry's batteries for years. The U.S. government and private investors have poured cash into battery startups hoping to catch up to the Chinese, Japanese and South Korean companies that dominate battery manufacturing. The goal is to leapfrog their rivals with better technology.

There is an urgency for U.S. battery makers to get products to market because big customers such as auto makers are lining up long-term suppliers. If there are no U.S. options, the buyers will go abroad. "This is our last chance to get it right" in the U.S., said Ricky Hanna, Ion Storage's chief executive and the former executive director of battery operations at Apple. [...] The company is one of several startups focusing on solid-state lithium-ion batteries. These batteries differ from most lithium-ion batteries today because the electrolyte that conducts a charge between cathode and anode is solid, rather than a flammable liquid. That allows faster charging, less risk of fire and longer battery life. Ion Storage scientists demonstrate their batteries' durability by cutting them open with scissors or putting them before an open flame.

In the most important environmental case in more than a decade, the Supreme Court on Monday will hear arguments in a dispute that could restrict or even eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to control the pollution that is heating the planet. From a report: A decision by the high court, with its conservative supermajority, could shred President Biden's plans to halve the nation's greenhouse emissions by the end of the decade, which scientists have said is necessary to avert the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. "They could handcuff the federal government's ability to affordably reduce greenhouse gases from power plants," said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University. But the outcome could also have repercussions that stretch well beyond air pollution, restricting the ability of federal agencies to regulate health care, workplace safety, telecommunications, the financial sector and more.

[...] At issue is a federal regulation that broadly governs emissions from power plants. But in a curious twist, the regulation actually never took effect and does not currently exist. The legal wrangling began in 2015 when President Barack Obama announced the Clean Power Plan, his chief strategy to fight climate change. Citing its authority under the Clean Air Act, the Obama administration planned to require each state to lower carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity sector -- primarily by replacing coal-fired power plants with wind, solar and other clean sources. Electricity generation is the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, behind transportation.

This week the governors of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming announced plans for a "hydrogen hub," reports the Associated Press.

The states hope to use $8 billion in recently approved federal infrastructure funding to make hydrogen — the most abundant element in the universe — "more available and useful as clean-burning fuel for cars, trucks and trains." Hydrogen can be derived from water using an electric current and when burned emits only water vapor as a byproduct. The fuel could theoretically reduce greenhouse emissions and air pollution, depending on how it's obtained. As with electric vehicles, however, hydrogen's potential has been limited by infrastructure. Lack of fueling stations limits the market for hydrogen-fueled vehicles. Few hydrogen-fueled vehicles limits investment in producing and moving hydrogen....

Critics point out that as it's now produced, hydrogen isn't green, carbon-free or unlimited. Currently nearly all hydrogen commercially produced in the U.S. comes not from water but natural gas, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. While advocates say using fossil fuels to produce hydrogen now can help to develop a clean industry later, environmentalists are skeptical. "It's essentially a push for expanded oil and gas development. More oil and gas development is completely at odds with the need to confront the climate crisis and drastically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels," Jeremy Nichols with the Santa Fe, New Mexico-based environmental group WildEarth Guardians said by email.

Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming rank seventh, eighth and ninth, respectively, for U.S. onshore gas production. Utah also is significant gas-producing state, according to the Energy Information Administration.

GitHub's Copilot is an AI-powered autocompletion tool for coders, but the FSF has come up with a new way to describe it:

Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS).

But they also feel the service "immediately raised serious questions for the free software movement and our ability to safeguard user and developer freedom" — which is why last July they'd put out a call for papers from the free software community. And they're now announcing the results: [W]e concluded there were five papers that would be best suited to inform the community and foster critical conversations to help guide our actions in the search for solutions.... The papers contain opinions with which the Free Software Foundation (FSF) may or may not agree, and any views expressed by the authors do not necessarily represent the FSF. They were selected because we thought they advanced discussion of important questions, and did so clearly....
The five papers are:

• Copilot, copying, commons, community, culture

• Copyright implications of the use of code repositories to train a machine learning model

• If software is my copilot, who programmed my software?

• Interpreting docstrings without common sense

• On the nature of AI code copilots

The FSF adds:

"If this subject is of interest to you, we recommend you read this selection of papers and share your thoughts and feedback. Several of the authors have agreed to participate in follow-up discussions which will be held via IRC, LibrePlanet Wiki, and LibrePlanet Discuss mailing list.... Whether or not you are able to attend any of the live events, we encourage you to contribute to the discussion on the wiki and mailing list. As stakeholders in free software, the preservation of user freedom and copyleft, we would like to engage the community in any possible actions that must be taken."