An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The US Postal Service is facing lawsuits from 16 states and several environmental groups challenging its decision to buy tens of thousands of gasoline-powered delivery vehicles instead of electric vehicles. As previously reported, the Environmental Protection Agency says the gas-powered trucks being ordered by the USPS "are expected to achieve only 8.6 miles per gallon (mpg), barely improving over the decades-old long-life vehicles that achieve 8.2 mpg." The USPS countered that the vehicles get 14.7 mpg when air conditioning isn't being used and that the trucks' size will make it possible to deliver the same amount of mail in fewer trips. The USPS plan is to buy 50,000 to 165,000 vehicles over 10 years. Of those, at least 10 percent are slated to be battery-electric vehicles (BEV). [...]

A lawsuit filed by California and 15 other states on Thursday said the USPS failed "to follow a process mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)," continuing: "Instead, the Postal Service first chose a manufacturer with minimal experience in producing electric vehicles, signed a contract, and made a substantial down payment for new vehicles. Only then did the Postal Service publish a cursory environmental review to justify the decision to replace 90 percent of its delivery fleet with fossil-fuel-powered, internal combustion engine vehicles, despite other available, environmentally preferable alternatives. In doing so, the Postal Service failed to comply with even the most basic requirements of NEPA."

The lawsuit seeks an injunction forcing the USPS to stop the vehicle purchases "until it has complied with NEPA." It was filed against the USPS and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who was appointed by the USPS Board of Governors in 2020 under then-President Donald Trump. All 16 states involved in the lawsuit have Democratic attorneys general. They allege that the USPS "violated well-established legal precedent prohibiting 'an irreversible and irretrievable commitment of resources' before completing the NEPA process by signing contracts with a defense company (Oshkosh Defense, LLC) to procure vehicles six months before even releasing its draft environmental review and a year prior to issuing the Final Environmental Impact Statement ('Final EIS') and Record of Decision." The states also claim the USPS failed to consider and evaluate reasonable alternatives. "Specifically, the Postal Service did not properly evaluate several environmental impacts of its action, including air quality, environmental justice, and climate harms, by simply assuming that any upgrade to its vehicle fleet would have positive impacts on the environment," the complaint said. States also alleged the USPS "failed to ensure the scientific integrity of its analysis by relying on unfounded assumptions regarding the costs and performance of electric vehicles, infrastructure, and gas prices, and refusing to identify the source of the data relied upon in the Final EIS." "The Postal Service conducted a robust and thorough review and fully complied with all of our obligations under NEPA," a USPS spokesperson told Ars.

The statement continues: "The Postal Service is fully committed to the inclusion of electric vehicles as a significant part of our delivery fleet even though the investment will cost more than an internal combustion engine vehicle. That said, as we have stated repeatedly, we must make fiscally prudent decisions in the needed introduction of a new vehicle fleet. We will continue to look for opportunities to increase the electrification of our delivery fleet in a responsible manner, consistent with our operating strategy, the deployment of appropriate infrastructure, and our financial condition, which we expect to continue to improve as we pursue our plan."

New submitter Mononymous writes: Created by Graham Nelson, Inform 7 compiles a powerful object-oriented language resembling English into a working text adventure. Friendly GUIs for various platforms have been open source for many years, but the core compiler remained proprietary. Now, 16 years after its initial freeware release, Nelson has released the source code under the Artistic License 2.0 in a public GitHub repo. Inform 7 is one of the largest "literate programs" ever released.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The FBI searched emails, texts and other electronic communications of as many as 3.4 million U.S. residents without a warrant over a year, the nation's top spy chief said in a report. The "queries" were made between December 2020 and November 2021 by Federal Bureau of Investigation personnel as they looked for signs of threats and terrorists within electronic data legally collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, according to an annual transparency report issued Friday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The surge came as the FBI made a push to stop hacking attacks.

The authority the FBI used in this case was under Section 702 of FISA, which is set to expire at the end of next year unless it's renewed by Congress. The report doesn't say the activity was illegal or even wrong. But the revelation could renew congressional and public debates over the power U.S. agencies have to collect and review intelligence information, especially data concerning individuals. In comparison, fewer than 1.3 million queries involving Americans' data were conducted between December 2019 and November 2020, according to the 38-page report. The report sought to provide a justification for the increase in queries during the last year.

"In the first half of the year, there were a number of large batch queries related to attempts to compromise U.S. critical infrastructure by foreign cyber actors," according to the report. "These queries, which included approximately 1.9 million query terms related to potential victims -- including U.S. persons -- accounted for the vast majority of the increase in U.S. person queries conducted by FBI over the prior year." The exact number of U.S. residents who potentially had their information reviewed isn't known because there's no precise way to measure the data, according to the report. "Today's report sheds light on the extent of these unconstitutional 'backdoor searches,' and underscores the urgency of the problem," said senior staff attorney with the ACLU. "It's past time for Congress to step in to protect Americans' Fourth Amendment rights."

An anonymous reader shares a report: C onstance Chioma calls her son every morning to check that he is safe while studying in northeast Nigeria, a region plagued by deadly attacks by Islamist insurgents and armed kidnappings. Earlier this month, she could not get through. She later realised her SIM card was one of about 73 million - more than a third of the 198 million in Nigeria - which have been barred from making outgoing calls because they have not been registered in the national digital identity database.

[...] Nigeria is among dozens of African countries including Ghana, Egypt and Kenya with SIM registration laws that authorities say are necessary for security purposes, but digital rights experts here say increase surveillance and hurts privacy. Nigeria has been rolling out 11-digit electronic national identity cards for almost a decade, which record an individual's personal and biometric data, including fingerprints and photo. The National Identity Number (NIN) is required to open a bank account, apply for a driver's license, vote, get health insurance, and file tax returns. In 2020, Nigeria's telecommunications regulator said every active mobile phone number must be linked to the user's NIN. It repeatedly extended the deadline until March 31 this year. The government said outgoing calls were being barred from April 4 here from any mobile phone numbers that had not complied.

Walter Orthmann started working at a textile company in Brazil as a teenager. Now, after turning 100 this month, he's shattered the Guinness World Record for the longest career at the same company. From a report: For 84 years and nine days, as verified in January, Orthmann has been working at what is now known as ReneauxView, according to the Guinness World Records. In those eight decades, he's collected pay in nine different currencies. Orthmann was born in Santa Catarina, Brazil -- an area that had a large German population -- on April 19, 1922, according to Guinness. As a teenager, his family hit hard times financially, and he applied to work at a weaving mill. Thanks to his proficiency in German, the young Orthmann got a job there as a shipping assistant. Soon after, he was promoted to a position in sales before becoming a sales manager. "I was given the opportunity to work as a salesperson," he said in a release. "I traveled to Sao Paulo and in less than one week I filled the production with orders equivalent of three month of work." In the 1950s, he started traveling across the country, establishing relationships with clients who became his friends. To Orthmann, having a job means a sense of "purpose, commitment and a routine," according to the release.

Salesforce just became the latest tech giant to commit to limiting the scope of its non-disclosure agreements, freeing workers up to talk about instances of harassment or discrimination they experience on the job. From a report: Salesforce and all California employers are already required to make these changes for workers in the state under California's Silenced No More Act. But the new policy extends those protections to all Salesforce employees across the country. "Our employees are key stakeholders, and it's critical that we offer them the support to ensure they're happy, healthy and protected," the company wrote in a blog post Friday. Salesforce plans to implement the changes by the end of 2022.

A good deal of the credit for this shift goes to the so-called Transparency in Employment Agreements Coalition, a group of advocates and investors that has been using shareholder proposals to encourage tech giants, including Salesforce, Meta, Alphabet and Apple, to extend the policies enshrined in the Silenced No More Act to all of their employees. One of the leaders of that coalition, former Pinterest employee Ifeoma Ozoma, was instrumental in pushing that law forward in California. Another version of the law also recently passed in Washington state.

Amazon shares are tumbling on Friday, with the e-commerce company seeing its biggest intraday percentage drop since October 2011, after it gave an outlook that was seen as disappointing. From a report: Shares fell as much as 13%, taking them to their lowest since June 2020. The selloff erased more than $178 billion off the company's market valuation. Amazon shares are down more than 20% for the month, their biggest one-month percentage drop since December 2018. The slump represents the latest hit to Wall Street's biggest names, which have come under heavy pressure in April amid a tumultuous earnings season and concerns over Federal Reserve policy. The Nasdaq 100 Index has dropped 11% this month, erasing $1.75 trillion off the tech-heavy index's market capitalization.

An enzyme variant created by engineers and scientists at The University of Texas at Austin can break down environment-throttling plastics that typically take centuries to degrade in just a matter of hours to days. Phys.Org reports: This discovery, published today in Nature, could help solve one of the world's most pressing environmental problems: what to do with the billions of tons of plastic waste piling up in landfills and polluting our natural lands and water. The enzyme has the potential to supercharge recycling on a large scale that would allow major industries to reduce their environmental impact by recovering and reusing plastics at the molecular level. [...] The project focuses on polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a significant polymer found in most consumer packaging, including cookie containers, soda bottles, fruit and salad packaging, and certain fibers and textiles. It makes up 12% of all global waste. The enzyme was able to complete a "circular process" of breaking down the plastic into smaller parts (depolymerization) and then chemically putting it back together (repolymerization). In some cases, these plastics can be fully broken down to monomers in as little as 24 hours.

Researchers at the Cockrell School of Engineering and College of Natural Sciences used a machine learning model to generate novel mutations to a natural enzyme called PETase that allows bacteria to degrade PET plastics. The model predicts which mutations in these enzymes would accomplish the goal of quickly depolymerizing post-consumer waste plastic at low temperatures. Through this process, which included studying 51 different post-consumer plastic containers, five different polyester fibers and fabrics and water bottles all made from PET, the researchers proved the effectiveness of the enzyme, which they are calling FAST-PETase (functional, active, stable and tolerant PETase). [...] Up next, the team plans to work on scaling up enzyme production to prepare for industrial and environmental application. The researchers have filed a patent application for the technology and are eying several different uses. Cleaning up landfills and greening high waste-producing industries are the most obvious. But another key potential use is environmental remediation. The team is looking at a number of ways to get the enzymes out into the field to clean up polluted sites.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Smithsonian Magazine: The sea changes are already happening. Earth's oceans are warmer than they were a century ago, sea levels are rising, and ocean waters are more acidic than they used to be, all because of human-created climate change. Global temperatures are expected rise even further in the coming decades, leaving researchers to wonder how these alterations will affect life on Earth -- and especially in the seas. But the oceans have been through major crises before -- including at least five mass extinctions -- and those events in the deep past can help outline what might happen in our near future. To better understand what trends to expect, Princeton University oceanographers Justin Penn and Curtis Deutsch applied a scientific model used to predict the extent of a past mass extinction to estimate the consequences of current global warming. Their research, published today in Science, warns that failing to reduce fossil fuel emissions will set Earth's oceans on track for a mass extinction within the next 300 years. This potential disaster will have uneven consequences across the seas. While the temperatures of both the global climate and the oceans are rising, the consequences will differ from place to place. How ocean life at the North and South poles respond will be different than species in the tropics.

Under the worst-case scenarios, the researchers found, extinctions in the oceans will likely mimic the die offs that have occurred during Earth's five mass extinctions as organisms struggle to find suitable habitat in warmer, likely oxygen-depleted waters. Ecosystems where oxygen levels in the water are already low, like in the tropical seas of the Indo-Pacific Ocean, are likely to be hit especially hard as seawater may lack the oxygen required to support the diverse creatures that live there. Polar seas, too, will likely see die offs as waters become too warm for cold-adapted species.

The study does have some limitations, [...] including that it does not consider other factors affecting ocean biodiversity such as overfishing and pollution. Researchers also need more information about the metabolic requirements of many different ocean organisms. Nevertheless, the study makes a solid case that many marine species can't simply move to another place and changes in ocean warmth will make it much more difficult for many species to survive. The long view is especially needed. [...] Looking centuries into the future, the new study emphasizes that now is the time to forestall some of these possible consequences for our oceans. The global climate is expected to get about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer by 2100. If emissions can be curbed and warming kept around this minimum, then these mass extinction scenarios can be avoided. [...] The study outlines two possible scenarios. Continued and unmitigated fossil fuel emissions will eventually recreate conditions of some of Earth's worst biological crises. If emission trends can be reversed, however, there is greater hope for the future of the ocean's ecosystems and biodiversity.

According to Breaking Defense, the head of machine learning at Lyft, Craig Martell, has been named the Pentagon's Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer. From the report: The hiring of a Silicon Valley persona for the CDAO role is likely to be cheered by those in the defense community who have been calling for more technically-minded individuals to take leadership roles in the department. At the same time, Martell's lack of Pentagon experience -- he was a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School for over a decade studying AI for the military, but has never worked in the department's bureaucracy -- may pose challenges as he works to lead an office only months old. In an exclusive interview with Breaking Defense, Martell, who also worked as head of machine learning at Dropbox and led several AI teams at LinkedIn, acknowledged both the benefits and risks of bringing in someone with his background. [...]

As CDAO, Martell will be responsible for scaling up DoD's data, analytics and AI to enable quicker and more accurate decision-making and will also play an important role in the Pentagon's Joint All-Domain Command and Control efforts to connect sensors and shooters. "If we're going to be successful in achieving the goals, if we're going to be successful in being competitive with China, we have to figure out where the best mission value can be found first and that's going to have to drive what we build, what we design, the policies we come up with," Martell said. "I just want to guard against making sure that we don't do this in a vacuum, but we do it with real mission goals, real mission objectives in mind."

His first order of business? Figuring out what needs to be done, and how to best use the $600 million in fiscal year 2023 dollars the CDAO's office was marked for in the Pentagon's most recent budget request. "So whenever I tackle a problem, whenever I go into a new organization, the first questions that I ask are: Do we have the right people? Do we have the right processes? Do we have the right tools to solve the visions [and] goals?" Martell said. To tackle that, Martell wants to identify the office's "marquee customers" and figure out what's "broken in terms of... people, platform, processes and tools" -- a process that could take anywhere from three to six months, he added. "We really want to be customer-driven here," Martell said. "We don't want to walk in and say if we build it, they'll come."

Khan Academy, a non-profit educational organization that offers free online tools to help students learn, is opening an online global high school in August 2022. "This full-time online school will combine the expertise of Khan Lab School, Schoolhouse.world, and ASU Prep Digital in a unique model based on the principles of the [...] founder of Khan Academy," says the company in a press release. "The core principles include mastery-based learning, personalization of each student's experience and learning together as a community." From the report: Each day will include a seminar where small student peer groups will have the opportunity to interact online and actively dive deep into society's most challenging questions with support from mentors and world-class learning guides. This inaugural class of 9th graders will work together solving real-world problems in a unique virtual school model that rewards curiosity, empowers agency and provides them with the skills and confidence needed to excel in college and careers. The organization is partnering with Arizona State University to make this initiative possible. Out-of-state students will need to pay tuition to attend, but Arizona residents will be able to attend for free.

"Interested students will need to apply through ASU Prep Digital, the full-time online school," notes the press release. "The 2022-23 class is open to incoming 9th grade students with plans to expand the program to grades 9-12 the following year."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: More than 55 countries and the United States announced their commitment Thursday to defending a free and open internet, agreeing to uphold digital human rights in response to rising authoritarianism in cyberspace. The agreement (PDF), known as the Declaration for the Future of the Internet, aims to forestall an emerging "splinternet" characterized by the growing repression of internet users in closed regimes such as Russia and China -- and the divergence of those countries from the internet's founding principles of universal access and unfettered information flow. Concerns about the internet's long-term trajectory have been amplified by the war in Ukraine, according to senior Biden administration officials, as Russia has moved to block western social media services and penalized the sharing of accurate information about the conflict.

Many of the commitments outlined in the agreement reflect existing US policy initiatives, and the administration officials described the declaration as a way to organize and harmonize those efforts internationally. Under the agreement, countries have pledged not to abuse internet technologies for illegal surveillance; block content or websites in violation of so-called net neutrality principles; or use digital tools to undermine trust in elections. They agreed to support multilateral efforts against cybercrime, an issue that's grown in significance as businesses and governments alike have reeled in the face of devastating ransomware attacks. They committed to using only "trustworthy" network equipment, a nod to the spying risks the US and its allies have said are associated with Chinese vendors such as Huawei. And they joined together in reaffirming support for the decentralized, consensus-driven approach that for decades has underpinned decisions about how the internet should work.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Was you or were you having your tea, dinner or supper last night? Before it, were you feeling clammish, clemmed, starving, hungry, leary or just plain clempt? Are you still whanging in Yorkshire? Haining in Somerset? Hocksing in Cambridgeshire? Hoying in Durham? Pegging in Cheshire? Pelting in Northamptonshire? Yarking in Leicestershire? Or do you throw now? How do you pronounce scone? Researchers from the University of Leeds are interested in answers to all such questions as they embark on a heritage project to help explore and preserve England's dialects. Details have been announced of how the university plans to use its prized archive of English life and language that was gathered by Leeds University fieldworkers in the 1950s and 1960s. The results remain the most famous and complete survey of dialects in England. The university said it was making its extensive library of English dialects accessible to the public through the launch of The Great Big Dialect Hunt. It said researchers would be searching for "new phrases and expressions to bring the archive into the 21st century and preserve today's language for future generations."

UK households could save an average of $183 per year by switching off so-called vampire devices, British Gas research suggests. From a report: These are electronics that drain power even when they are on standby. The figures are based on research conducted on appliances in 2019 but have been updated by British Gas to reflect recent price increases. The Energy Saving Trust (EST) said consumers need to consider which devices they leave switched on. It estimates households would save around $68.5 per year by switching off all their devices when not in use. The organisation, which promotes sustainability and energy efficiency, did not give exact details of how it came to this figure. "Stats or prices related to individual appliances depend on several factors, including model, functionality and individual usage," it said.

Earlier this month, demolition began on the Nakagin Capsule Tower, an iconic building designed by Kisho Kurokawa. Still, in many ways, Kurokawa's dynamic vision is woven into the fabric of our architectural present. From a report: The building at the time was in a conspicuous state of disrepair. Its concrete surface was pockmarked; many of the circular windows were papered over. Last year, after more than a decade of back-and-forth over the building's fate, the owners' association agreed to sell the towers to a consortium of real-estate firms, and earlier this month news came that demolition of the structure had finally begun. Recent photos posted by a preservationist initiative on Facebook show that its base now half gone; the hundred and forty-four capsules float above the construction, bereft and doomed. The future that Kurokawa and the Metabolism movement imagined didn't come to pass, yet in many ways their dynamic vision is woven into the fabric of our architectural present.

Metabolism officially launched with a manifesto, in 1960, as Japanese cities were being reconceptualized after the destruction of the Second World War. Part of a new postwar generation of architects, Metabolism's founders -- among them Kurokawa, Kiyonori Kikutake, and Fumihiko Maki -- were driven, as Kurokawa wrote in his 1977 book, "Metabolism in Architecture," by "traumatic images of events that took place when we were in our formative childhood years." Born in 1934, in Aichi Prefecture, Kurokawa was the son of an architect whose style he described as "ultra-nationalistic." In his own studies, he was drawn first to Kyoto University, for its sociological approach to architecture, then to Tokyo University, where he studied under the modernist architect Kenzo Tange, who worked after the war on the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. But Kurokawa was more interested in looking forward. "I felt that it was important to let the destroyed be and to create a new Japan," he wrote.

[...] The Nakagin capsules suggest a kind of utopian urban life style. Their paucity of space and equipment meant that activities typically done at home, like eating and socializing, would instead be conducted out on the street. The Nakagin capsules were not full-time residences but pieds-a-terre for suburban businessmen or miniature studios for artists and designers. The individual capsules were pre-assembled, then transported to the site and plugged in to the towers' central cores. Each unit -- two and a half metres by four metres by two and a half metres, dimensions that, Kurokawa noted, are the same as those of a traditional teahouse -- contained a corner bathroom fit for an airplane, a fold-down desk, integrated lamps, and a bed stretching from wall to wall. Televisions, stereos, and tape decks could also be included at the buyer's discretion. [...] In some ways, Kurokawa's vision of a domestic architecture that prioritized mobility and flexibility proved prophetic. The capsules were the original micro-apartments, an ancestor to today's capsule hotels, and a forebear of the shared, temporary spaces of Airbnb.

The U.S. National Security Agency has re-awarded a $10 billion cloud computing contract to Amazon Web Services after it was forced to review the contract. From a report: Code-named WildandStormy, the contract was initially awarded to AWS in August. Because the deal concerns national security, the full details are not known but it's believed to be part of the NSA's attempt to modernize its primary classified data repository. The repository itself is thought to be a data fusion environment into which the agency aggregates much of the intelligence information it collects. The stumbling block to AWS being awarded the contract came in October when the Government Accountability Office called on the NSA to reevaluate the proposals submitted by AWS and Microsoft Corp. after Microsoft challenged the awarding of the contract to AWS. The GAO said at the time that it "found certain aspects of the agency's evaluation to be unreasonable and, in light thereof, recommended that NSA reevaluate the proposals consistent with the decision and make a new source selection determination." In December, it was revealed that the GAO had ruled that the NSA improperly assessed technical proposals from Microsoft "in a way that was inconsistent with the terms of the solicitation." The GAO also recommended that the NSA reevaluate the proposal and potentially make a new source selection. The NSA did reevaluate the proposals and decided to re-award the contract to AWS anyway.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: For most of the world, the common practice of "rooting" or "jailbreaking" a phone allows the device's owner to install apps and software tweaks that break the restrictions of Apple's or Google's operating systems. For a growing number of North Koreans, on the other hand, the same form of hacking allows them to break out of a far more expansive system of control -- one that seeks to extend to every aspect of their lives and minds. On Wednesday, the North Korea-focused human rights organization Lumen and Martyn Williams, a researcher at the Stimson Center think tank's North Korea -- focused 38 North project, together released a report on the state of smartphones and telecommunications in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, a country that restricts its citizens' access to information and the internet more tightly than any other in the world. The report details how millions of government-approved, Android-based smartphones now permeate North Korean society, though with digital restrictions that prevent their users from downloading any app or even any file not officially sanctioned by the state. But within that regime of digital repression, the report also offers a glimpse of an unlikely new group: North Korean jailbreakers capable of hacking those smartphones to secretly regain control of them and unlock a world of forbidden foreign content.

Learning anything about the details of subversive activity in North Korea -- digital or otherwise -- is notoriously difficult, given the Hermit Kingdom's nearly airtight information controls. Lumen's findings on North Korean jailbreaking are based on interviews with just two defectors from the country. But Williams says the two escapees both independently described hacking their phones and those of other North Koreans, roughly corroborating each others' telling. Other North Korea -- focused researchers who have interviewed defectors say they've heard similar stories. Both jailbreakers interviewed by Lumen and Williams said they hacked their phones -- government-approved, Chinese-made, midrange Android phones known as the Pyongyang 2423 and 2413 -- primarily so that they could use the devices to watch foreign media and install apps that weren't approved by the government. Their hacking was designed to circumvent a government-created version of Android on those phones, which has for years included a certificate system that requires any file downloaded to the device to be "signed" with a cryptographic signature from government authorities, or else it's immediately and automatically deleted. Both jailbreakers say they were able to remove that certificate authentication scheme from phones, allowing them to install forbidden apps, such as games, as well as foreign media like South Korean films, TV shows, and ebooks that North Koreans have sought to access for decades despite draconian government bans.

In another Orwellian measure, Pyongyang phones' government-created operating system takes screenshots of the device at random intervals, the two defectors say -- a surveillance feature designed to instill a sense that the user is always being monitored. The images from those screenshots are then kept in an inaccessible portion of the phone's storage, where they can't be viewed or deleted. Jailbreaking the phones also allowed the two defectors to access and wipe those surveillance screenshots, they say. The two hackers told Lumen they used their jailbreaking skills to remove restrictions from friends' phones, as well. They said they also knew of people who would jailbreak phones as a commercial service, though often for purposes that had less to do with information freedom than more mundane motives. Some users wanted to install a certain screensaver on their phone, for instance, or wipe the phone's surveillance screenshots merely to free up storage before selling the phone secondhand. As for how the jailbreaking was done, the report says both jailbreakers "described attaching phones to a Windows PC via a USB cable to install a jailbreaking tool."

"One mentioned that the Pyongyang 2423's software included a vulnerability that allowed programs to be installed in a hidden directory. The hacker says they exploited that quirk to install a jailbreaking program they'd downloaded while working abroad in China and then smuggled back into North Korea." The other hacker might've obtained his jailbreaking tool in a computer science group at Pyongyang's elite Kim Il Sung University where he attended.

On Monday, the world's largest plant for making silicon carbide chips was opened in central New York. Nikkei Asia reports: The $1 billion, 63,000 sq. meter fabrication plant, or "fab," will be the first of its kind to make 200mm silicon carbide wafers, according to [North Carolina-based Wolfspeed]. Silicon carbide, or SiC, is an alternative to traditional silicon that is gaining popularity due to its energy efficiency when transferring power, something especially useful in electric vehicle manufacturing. Ahead of the fab opening, Wolfspeed announced a partnership with luxury EV maker Lucid Motors. It also has agreements with General Motors and China's Yutong Group to supply silicon carbide chips for their electric vehicles.

The U.S. share of modern semiconductor manufacturing capacity has declined to 12% from 37% in 1990, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association, a group that has lobbied for the CHIPS Act. This trend, the group says, is largely due to a lack of government investment compared to other nations. [...] In New York, there are hopes that other plants will cluster around the Wolfspeed fab. Wolfspeed received $500 million in construction subsidies from New York as the state seeks to expand its semiconductor manufacturing industry, which has generated nearly $6 billion a year in economic impact and over 34,000 jobs, according to [New York Gov. Kathy Hochul].

The grand opening of a modern manufacturing facility has a special resonance in central New York. The fab stands in the Mohawk Valley, an area along the Erie Canal that was once filled with traditional industry but long ago slid into an economic decline that has defined the region in recent times. So far the Wolfspeed facility has created 265 jobs, with a goal of over 600 new jobs by 2029, according to the company. The site sits directly across from a campus of SUNY Polytechnic Institute, New York's public polytechnic college, and Wolfspeed has given the school $250,000 to help train potential future employees.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Social media platform Mastodon, often seen as an alternative to Twitter, gained nearly 30,000 new users on the day that Elon Musk bought Twitter. On Tuesday a Mastodon domain became unresponsive. Eugen Rochko, Mastodon's CEO, later told Motherboard in an email that there were performance issues. "I'm sorry I couldn't have responded sooner," he wrote. "I was working all day on fixing performance issues on the Mastodon servers I operate due to the influx of new and returning users following Twitter's acquisition by Elon Musk." Rochko added that Mastodon has seen an increase of 41,287 active users, including both returning users and new users. When breaking that figure down by just new users, 28,391 new people have joined Mastodon in the past day, Rochko said.

Mastodon is a piece of open-source software that people can use as a base to create their own social networks. Although its appearance is similar to Twitter, it also differs from Twitter in the sense that Twitter is a single social network people sign up for. When it comes to the social network side of things, Mastodon holds more similarities with Discord, in that users have to find specific Mastodon instances to join. Those looking to create their own Mastodon instance also have to host it themselves, a step that may alienate many non-technical users. Donald Trump's social media site, Truth Social, is based on Mastodon and was recently called out by the company for failing to provide the source code for the site built on top of it. Two weeks later, the social media site quietly acknowledged Mastodon in a dedicated section labeled "open source."

In regard to the matter, Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko said: "Compliance with our AGPLv3 license is very important to me as that is the sole basis upon which I and other developers are willing to give away years of work for free."

Twitter did confirm some fluctuations in follower counts after Musk's deal was made official, although they said they were organic in nature.

The US Army could end up wasting much as $22 billion in taxpayer cash if soldiers aren't actually interested in using, or able to use as intended, the Microsoft HoloLens headsets it said it would purchase, a government watchdog has warned. The Register reports: In 2018, the American military splashed $480 million on 100,000 prototype augmented-reality goggles from Redmond to see how they could help soldiers train for and fight in combat. The Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) project was expanded when the Army decided it wanted the Windows giant to make custom, battle-ready AR headsets in a ten-year deal worth up to $22 billion. The project was delayed and is reportedly scheduled to roll out some time this year. But the US Dept of Defense's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) cast some doubt on whether it was worth it at all.

"Procuring IVAS without attaining user acceptance could result in wasting up to $21.88 billion in taxpayer funds to field a system that soldiers may not want to use or use as intended," the Pentagon oversight body wrote in an audit [PDF] report this month. In other words, the Army hasn't yet fully determined if or how service members will find these HoloLens headsets valuable in the field. Although the heavily redacted report did not reveal soldiers' responses to the prototype testing, it said feedback from surveys showed "both positive and negative user acceptance." The Army plans to purchase 121,500 IVAS units from Microsoft while admitting that "if soldiers do not love IVAS and do not find it greatly enhances accomplishing the mission, then soldiers will not use it," the report disclosed.

PayPal is shuttering its San Francisco office as it evaluates its global office footprint. TechCrunch reports: Multiple sources say the payments giant is closing its San Francisco office on 425 Market St. which housed its Xoom business unit. PayPal acquired Xoom, which is focused on online money transfer technology and services, in 2015. A person familiar with internal happenings at the company said the employees that worked out of that office will work virtually with the ability to work from the company's headquarters office in San Jose. It is unclear how many employees are affected by the decision.

An individual who commented on a post on the topic on the anonymous professional network, Blind, speculated that the reason behind the move could be San Francisco's Prop C, which levied a tax upon any San Francisco business that earns more than $50 million in gross receipts. Proceeds are to be directed toward housing and services in an attempt to address the city's challenges with homelessness.

Cryptocurrency companies said they remain unsure of U.S. regulations governing products that allow customers to earn interest on holdings instead of trading them, months after such an interest-bearing product drew a $100 million fine from a federal regulator and state governments. From a report: In February, New Jersey crypto company BlockFi agreed to pay $100 million in a landmark settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and state authorities who said its interest-bearing product qualifies as a security and should have been registered. Still, many digital asset companies providing such products said this month the rules remain unclear to them and they are uncertain when they should register such offerings, which are growing more popular and which many firms launched within the last year. Most firms have tried to structure the interest-bearing products to avoid the need to register them with the SEC, a process that takes time and entails ongoing disclosure and reporting obligations. That effort might set them up for a clash with the agency as it increases scrutiny of the crypto industry. BlockFi plans to offer an alternative yield product, which it said it would register first. The company and the SEC said the deal should provide a roadmap for other companies.

At least six different Kremlin-linked hacking groups have conducted nearly 240 cyber operations against Ukrainian targets, Microsoft said Wednesday, in data reveal a broader scope of alleged Russian cyberattacks during the war on Ukraine than previously documented. From a report: "Russia's use of cyberattacks appears to be strongly correlated and sometimes directly timed with its kinetic military operations," said Tom Burt, a Microsoft vice president.

The Microsoft report is the most comprehensive public record yet of Russian hacking efforts related to the war in Ukraine. It fills in some gaps in public understanding of where Russia's vaunted cyber capabilities have been deployed during the war. Burt cited a cyberattack on a Ukrainian broadcast company on March 1, the same day as a Russian missile strike against a TV tower in Kyiv, and malicious emails sent to Ukrainians falsely claiming the Ukrainian government was "abandoning" them amid the Russian siege of the city of Mariupol. Suspected Russian hackers "are working to compromise organizations in regions across Ukraine," and may have been collecting intelligence on Ukrainian military partnerships many months before the full-scale invasion in February, the Microsoft report says.

YouTube is testing advertisements on Shorts, its short-form video feature that competes with TikTok and Instagram, Google's chief business officer told investors on Tuesday. From a report: The video-sharing site introduced Shorts in 2020 and has been slow to add commercials, which it runs on the rest of its content. But the company has begun experimenting with app-install ads and other promotions, according to Philipp Schindler. "While it's still early days, we're encouraged by initial advertiser feedback and results," he said on the earnings call for Alphabet, Google's parent company.

A record-breaking heat wave in India exposing hundreds of millions to dangerous temperatures is damaging the country's wheat harvest, which experts say could hit countries seeking to make up imports of the food staple from conflict-riven Ukraine. NBC News reports: With some states in India's breadbasket northern and central regions seeing forecasts with highs of 120 Fahrenheit this week, observers fear a range of lasting impacts, both local and international, from the hot spell. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told U.S. President Joe Biden earlier this month that India could step in to ease the shortfall created by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The two countries account for nearly a third of all global wheat exports, and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has warned that the conflict could leave an additional 8 million to 13 million people undernourished by next year.

India's wheat exports hit 8.7 million tons in the fiscal year ending in March, with the government predicting record production levels -- some 122 million tons -- in 2022. But the country has just endured its hottest March since records began, according to the India Meteorological Department, and the heat wave is dragging well into harvest time. The heat wave is hitting India's main wheat-growing regions particularly hard, with temperatures this week set to hit 112 F in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh; 120 F in Chandigarh, Punjab; and 109 F in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. Devendra Singh Chauhan, a farmer from Uttar Pradesh's Etawah district, told NBC News that his wheat crop was down 60 percent compared to normal harvests.

Maine is closer to launching its space program after Gov. Janet Mills signed a bill to create the Maine Space Port, a law aimed at growing the state's aerospace industry. From a report: Mills signed the bill into law on April 19, creating a public-private partnership that would build launch sites, data networks and operations to send satellites into space, The Portland Press Herald reported Sunday. Most of the work accomplished at the program will be through the creation of the Maine Space Complex which will be built at the former Brunswick Naval Air Station within the next decade. The complex will oversee three entities including a computer center and satellite launch and operations sites. Terry Shehata, director of the Maine Space Grant Consortium, said the spaceport would be one of the first in the U.S. to launch satellites, conduct data analysis and provide education to students. The consortium is the NASA-funded nonprofit spearheading the spaceport complex.

World military spending continued to grow in 2021, reaching an all-time high of $2.1 trillion. This was the seventh consecutive year that spending increased. From a report: "Even amid the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, world military spending hit record levels," said Dr Diego Lopes da Silva, Senior Researcher with SIPRI's Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme. "There was a slowdown in the rate of real-terms growth due to inflation. In nominal terms, however, military spending grew by 6.1 per cent." As a result of a sharp economic recovery in 2021, the global military burden -- world military expenditure as a share of world gross domestic product (GDP) -- fell by 0.1 percentage points, from 2.3 per cent in 2020 to 2.2 per cent in 2021. US military spending amounted to $801 billion in 2021, a drop of 1.4 per cent from 2020. The US military burden decreased slightly from 3.7 per cent of GDP in 2020 to 3.5 per cent in 2021. US funding for military research and development rose by 24 per cent between 2012 and 2021, while arms procurement funding fell by 6.4 per cent over the same period. In 2021 spending on both decreased. However, the drop in R&D spending (-1.2 per cent) was smaller than that in arms procurement spending (-5.4 per cent).

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Scientific experiments on crabs and lobsters could be curbed when the animal sentience bill becomes law, the Guardian has learned. There are few restrictions on how crustaceans and decapods can be treated in scientific studies, in contrast with mice and other mammals, for which there are strict welfare laws. Because scientists do not have to register how many crustaceans and decapods they experiment on, there are no numbers for how many are used. But because they breed quickly and are sensitive to pollutants, they are frequently used in experiments, especially those that look into how different types of pollution affect the body. But this could be about to change, Home Office sources said after crabs and lobsters were recognized as sentient beings which could feel pain.

The new legislation, which is awaiting royal consent after being approved by parliament this month, means ministers must consider the sentience of animals when implementing policy. This could result in restrictions on how crabs and lobsters can be treated when experimented on. They are not included in the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, unlike mice, octopuses and various other animals. This means that no licenses or training are required before they can be used in procedures that can cause pain, suffering or distress.

Robert Ellwood, professor emeritus at the school of biological science at Queen's University Belfast, authored the research that found crabs and lobsters feel pain. He welcomed the potential legislative development, but said it must be applied to the commercial fishing industry as well as scientists. "This is a step forward and if people are happy to accept that decapods are sentient and experience pain, then they should be given some protection. But I would see this ... as a problem if they still leave millions of animals in commercial practices that are treated the same as before," said Ellwood, who has worked with crustaceans for 30 years. He added: "To ask scientists to go through all sorts of regulations that affect their work but allow these animals to be boiled alive at will would be unfair. "It is asking for more rules, regulations and red tape, it will take longer to conduct an experiment, but that is a good thing, if it is applied across the board."

The Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) is counteracting a ban on certain books by letting anyone in the US aged 13 to 21 apply for a digital library card. This gives teens and young adults, regardless of their location in the United States, access to the library's entire ebook collection. From a report: The initiative, called Books Unbanned, is fighting what the BPL describes as an "increasingly coordinated and effective effort to remove books tackling a wide range of topics from library shelves." According to the American Library Association (ALA), a total of 729 books were challenged in 2021, meaning a person or group attempted to ban these titles from public libraries.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The Biden administration is calling on Congress to expand authority for federal and local governments to take action to counter the nefarious use in the U.S. of drones, which are becoming a growing security concern and nuisance. The White House on Monday released an action plan that calls for expanding the number of agencies that can track and monitor drones flying in their airspace. It calls for establishing a list of U.S. government-authorized detection equipment that federal and local authorities can purchase, and creating a national training center on countering the malicious use of drones. The White House in a statement said it was critical that Congress "adopt legislation to close critical gaps in existing law and policy that currently impede government and law enforcement from protecting the American people and our vital security interests."

The federal-government-wide focus comes as the Federal Aviation Administration projects that more than 2 million drones will be in circulation in the U.S. by 2024 and as availability of detection and mitigation technologies -- including jamming systems -- are limited under current law. The White House plan calls for expanding existing counter-drone authorities for the departments of Homeland Security, Justice, Defense, Energy, as well as the Central Intelligence Agency and NASA in limited situations. The proposal also seeks to expand drone detection authorities for state, local, territorial and tribal law enforcement agencies and critical infrastructure owners and operators. The proposal also calls for establishing a six-year pilot program for a small number of state, local, territorial and tribal law enforcement agencies to take part in a drone detection and mitigation operations under supervision of the Justice Department and Homeland Security. Currently, no state or local agencies have such authorization.

Thousands of potentially harmful chemicals could soon be prohibited in Europe under new restrictions, which campaigners have hailed as the strongest yet. From a report: Earlier this year, scientists said chemical pollution had crossed a "planetary boundary" beyond which lies the breakdown of global ecosystems. The synthetic blight is thought to be pushing whale species to the brink of extinction and has been blamed for declining human fertility rates, and 2 million deaths a year. The EU's "restrictions roadmap" published on Monday was conceived as a first step to transforming this picture by using existing laws to outlaw toxic substances linked to cancers, hormonal disruption, reprotoxic disorders, obesity, diabetes and other illnesses.

Industry groups say that up to 12,000 substances could ultimately fall within the scope of the new proposal, which would constitute the world's "largest ever ban of toxic chemicals," according to the European Environmental Bureau (EEB). Tatiana Santos, the bureau's chemicals policy manager, said: "EU chemical controls are usually achingly slow but the EU is planning the boldest detox we have ever seen. Petrochemical industry lobbyists are shocked at what is now on the table. It promises to improve the safety of almost all manufactured products and rapidly lower the chemical intensity of our schools, homes and workplaces."

Sam Bankman-Fried, chief executive and founder of Bahama-based crypto-exchange FTX and one of the most influential people in crypto, offered his insights into yield farming, projects that deliver tokens to buyers for staking. An excerpt from the podcast: Bloomberg's Levine: Can you give me an intuitive understanding of farming? I mean, like to me, farming is like you sell some structured puts and collect premium, but perhaps there's a more sophisticated understanding than that.

Sam Bankman-Fried: Let me give you sort of like a really toy model of it, which I actually think has a surprising amount of legitimacy for what farming could mean. You know, where do you start? You start with a company that builds a box and in practice this box, they probably dress it up to look like a life-changing, you know, world-altering protocol that's gonna replace all the big banks in 38 days or whatever. Maybe for now actually ignore what it does or pretend it does literally nothing. It's just a box. So what this protocol is, it's called 'Protocol X,' it's a box, and you take a token. You can take ethereum, you can put it in the box and you take it out of the box. Alright so, you put it into the box and you get like, you know, an IOU for having put it in the box and then you can redeem that IOU back out for the token.

So far what we've described is the world's dumbest ETF or ADR or something like that. It doesn't do anything but let you put things in it if you so choose. And then this protocol issues a token, we'll call it whatever, 'X token.' And X token promises that anything cool that happens because of this box is going to ultimately be usable by, you know, governance vote of holders of the X tokens. They can vote on what to do with any proceeds or other cool things that happen from this box. And of course, so far, we haven't exactly given a compelling reason for why there ever would be any proceeds from this box, but I don't know, you know, maybe there will be, so that's sort of where you start.

And then you say, alright, well, you've got this box and you've got X token and the box protocol declares, or maybe votes by on-chain governance, or, you know, something like that, that what they're gonna do is they are going to take half of all the X tokens that were re-minted. Maybe two thirds will, two thirds will offer X tokens, and they're going to give them away for free to whoever uses the box. So anyone who goes, takes some money, puts in the box, each day they're gonna airdrop, you know, 1% of the X token pro rata amongst everyone who's put money in the box. That's for now, what X token does, it gets given away to the box people. And now what happens? Well, X token has some market cap, right? It's probably not zero. Let say it's, you know, a $20 million market.

Levine: Wait, wait, wait, from like first principles, it should be zero, but okay.

SBF: Uh, sure. Okay. Completely reasonable comments. [...] Describe it this way, you might think, for instance, that in like five minutes with an internet connection, you could create such a box and such a token, and that it should reflect like, you know, it should be worth like $180 or something market cap for like that, you know, that effort that you put into it. In the world that we're in, if you do this, everyone's gonna be like, 'Ooh, box token. Maybe it's cool. If you buy in box token,' you know, that's gonna appear on Twitter and it'll have a $20 million market cap. And of course, one thing that you could do is you could like make the float very low and whatever, you know, maybe there haven't been $20 million dollars that have flowed into it yet. Maybe that's sort of like, is it, you know, mark to market fully diluted valuation or something, but I acknowledge that it's not totally clear that this thing should have market cap, but empirically I claim it would have market cap.

As Netflix shares plunge to their lowest point in five years, the company risks losing its most valuable resource: its star employees. From a report: Working at Netflix has been one of the most desirable jobs in Hollywood, if not all of corporate America. The company ranks as one of the most beloved brands, pays well and offers a chance to work with the people that changed the way we watch TV. But a record decline in Netflix's share price, precipitated by its poor financial results, has shaken employees' confidence in the company's long-term trajectory. It has also erased the value of many employees' options. People who were sitting on tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars are left with nothing. More people are looking to leave Netflix right now than at any point in recent memory, current and former employees said this past week. Netflix employees also asked leadership to issue new stock grants to make them whole for the losses this past week, per The Information.

theodp writes: The University of Washington's Strategic Plan for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Access (DEIA) relies on "a set of objective measurements that will enable us to assess our progress." So, what might those look like? Well, for Goal O.3 "have effective pipelines for students to enter the Allen School as Ph.D. students with a focus on increasing diversity," the UW's 5-Year Strategic Plan for DEIA (PDF) specifies these 'Objective Measurements':

1. Measure the percentage of women at the Ph.D. level and, by year 5, evaluate whether the percentage is at least 40%.
2. Measure the percentage of domestic Black, Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaska Native, Hawaiian/Pacific Islander Ph.D students and, by year 5, evaluate whether the percentage is at least 12% (the UW-Seattle average for Ph.D. students).
3. Measure the percentage of Ph.D. students with disabilities (measured based on DRS use) and, by year 5, evaluate whether the percentage is at least 8% (the UW-Seattle average).

But with an Allen School Incoming Ph.D. Class of only 54 students -- of which 63% are International -- that suggests race/ethnicity success for an incoming PhD class could be just one Black student and one Hispanic student, if my UW DEIA math is correct.

Even if it falls short, at least UW attempted to publicly quantify what their overall DEI race/ethnicity goals are, which is more than what Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft have done. That the UW felt compelled to break out U.S. and International students separately in an effort to facilitate more meaningful comparisons also suggests another way that the tech giants' self-reported race/ethnicity percentages and EEO-1 raw numbers for their U.S.-based tech workforce (which presumably includes International students and other visa workers) may be misleading, as well as a possible explanation for tech's puzzling diversity trends.

"We have worked on Overgrowth for 14 years," begins their new announcement. Development first began in 2008, and the game runs on Windows, macOS and Linux platforms. Overgrowth's page on Wikipedia describes the realistic 3D third-person action game as "set in a pre-industrial world of anthropomorphic fighter rabbits, wolves, dogs, cats and rats."

And now, "Just like they did with some earlier games, Wolfire Games have now open sourced the game code for Overgrowth," reports GamingOnLinux. "[J]ump, kick, throw, and slash your way to victory.... The source code is available on GitHub. You can buy it on Humble Store and Steam."

The Overwatch site adds as a bonus that "we're also permanently reducing the game's price by a third worldwide" (so U.S. prices drop from $29.99 to $19.99).

"Only the code is getting open sourced," the announcement notes, "not the art assets or levels, the reason is that we don't want someone to build and sell Overgrowth as their own." Wolfire CEO Max Danielsson explains in a video that "you'll still have to own the game to play and mod it." "What it does mean, however, is that everyone will have full and free access to all our source code, including the engine, project files, scripts, and shaders.

"We'll be releasing it under the Apache 2.0 license, which allows you to do whatever you want with the code, including relicensing and selling it, with very few obligations. We tried to keep this easy...

"This isn't the next big engine. We don't intend to compete with any other great open source game engines like Godot, which is a great option if you're looking for a general-purpose game engine. But if you're interested in looking at what shipped game code can look like, want to look at specific code, like the procedural animation system, or if you're an Overgrowth modder who wants to make an involved total conversion mod, then this is for you.
"We have wanted to open source Overgrowth for a long time," says the announcement on Wolfire's site, "and we are incredibly grateful to our team and community for making this happen.

"We are excited to see what people do with this code and we look forward to the spirit of Overgrowth living on for another 14 years."

The governor of Michigan has announced America's first "public wireless in-road charging system," which would allow electric vehicles (EV) to charge — both while in motion and when stationary.

The GreenBiz site takes a look at this "inductive vehicle charging pilot program." There's perhaps no place more fitting for this pilot than Detroit. The city that led the nation's first wave of automobile technology is helping lead its second, as the Michigan Department of Transportation has awarded a $1.9 million contract to Electreon to install one mile of in-road EV charging in Motor City.

"Wireless is the future for this technology," said Stefan Tongur, vice president of business development for Electreon in the U.S. The wireless charging company is already building out the tech across Europe, where it has pilots in Germany, Italy and Sweden. The Michigan project is expected to be operational in 2023.

"We've always, for the past century, stopped to fuel the car, and we're thinking the same with EVs," Tongur said. But that creates many challenges when it comes to large-scale batteries and fleets especially, Tongur noted... So Electreon and others envision a network of strategic corridors with wireless, in-road charging that could gradually power vehicles along a route, rather than all at once at the destination. Fleet operators could either pay a subscription to use the chargers or integrate the costs into highway tolling, depending on the situation, Tongur said.

He described Electreon's business model as "charging as a service."
Alex Gruzen, CEO of wireless charging company WiTricity, tells the site this technology ultimately could accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles. "The company's own research indicates that wireless charging can increase a consumer's intent to purchase an EV by 68%, according to Gruzen, which could help move EVs beyond the early adopter stage."

Or, as Gruzen puts it, "What we want to do is show that the EV ownership experience can be better than any experience you've ever had with a car before."

Thanks to Slashdot reader doyouwantahotpocket for submitting the story.

78-year-old rancher Ed Butcher has, for 60 years, lived with a nuclear missile as his closest neighbor — an active U.S. government nuclear missile, buried just beneath his cow pasture.

"Do you think they'll ever shoot it up into the sky?" asks his wife Pam, during a visit from the Washington Post.

"I used to say, 'No way,' " Ed said. "Now it's more like, 'Please God, don't let us be here to see it.' " The missile was called a Minuteman III, and the launch site had been on their property since the Cold War, when the Air Force paid $150 for one acre of their land as it installed an arsenal of nuclear weapons across the rural West. About 400 of those missiles remain active and ready to launch at a few seconds notice in Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Colorado and Nebraska. They are located on bison preserves and Indian reservations. They sit across from a national forest, behind a rodeo grandstand, down the road from a one-room schoolhouse, and on dozens of private farms like the one belonging to the Butchers, who have lived for 60 years with a nuclear missile as their closest neighbor.

It's buried behind a chain-link fence and beneath a 110-ton door of concrete and steel. It's 60 feet long. It weighs 79,432 pounds. It has an explosive power at least 20 times greater than the atomic bomb that killed 140,000 people in Hiroshima. An Air Force team is stationed in an underground bunker a few miles away, ready to fire the missile at any moment if the order comes. It would tear out of the silo in about 3.4 seconds and climb above the ranch at 10,000 feet per second. It was designed to rise 70 miles above Earth, fly across the world in 25 minutes and detonate within a few hundred yards of its target. The ensuing fireball would vaporize every person and every structure within a half-mile. The blast would flatten buildings across a five-mile radius. Secondary fires and fatal doses of radiation would spread over dozens more miles, resulting in what U.S. military experts have referred to as "total nuclear annihilation."

"I bet it would fly right over our living room," Ed said. "I wonder if we'd even see it."

"We'd hear it. We'd feel it," Pam said. "The whole house would be shaking."

"And if we're shooting off missiles, you can bet some are headed back toward us," Ed said... "I guess we'd head for the storage room," Ed said.

"Make a few goodbye calls," Pam said. "Hold hands. Pray."

Ed got up to clear his plate. "Good thing it's all hypothetical. It's really only there for deterrence. It'll never actually explode."

"You're right," Pam said. "It won't happen. Almost definitely not."

CNN profiles Bellingcat, a Netherlands-based investigative group specializing in "open-source intelligence". And investigator Christo Grozev tells CNN that authoritarian governments make their work easier, because "they love to gather data, comprehensive data, on ... what they consider to be their subjects, and therefore there's a lot of centralized data."

"And second, there's a lot of petty corruption ... within the law enforcement system, and this data market thrives on that." Billions have been spent on creating sophisticated encrypted communications for the military in Russia. But most of that money has been stolen in corrupt kickbacks, and the result is they didn't have that functioning system... It is shocking how incompetent they are. But it was to be expected, because it's a reflection of 23 years of corrupt government.
Interestingly there's apparently less corruption in China — though more whistleblowers. But Bellingcat's first investigation involved the 2014 downing of a Boeing 777 over eastern Ukraine that killed 283 passengers. (The Dutch Safety Board later concluded it was downed by a surface-to-air missile launched from pro-Russian separatist-controlled territory in Ukraine.) "At that time, a lot of public data was available on Russian soldiers, Russian spies, and so on and so forth — because they still hadn't caught up with the times, so they kept a lot of digital traces, social media, posting selfies in front of weapons that shoot down airliners. That's where we kind of perfected the art of reconstructing a crime based on digital breadcrumbs..."

"By 2016, it was no longer possible to find soldiers leaving status selfies on the internet because a new law had been passed in Russia, for example, banning the use of mobile phones by secret services and by soldiers. So we had to develop a new way to get data on government crime. We found our way into this gray market of data in Russia, which is comprised of many, many gigabytes of leaked databases, car registration databases, passport databases. Most of these are available for free, completely freely downloadable from torrent sites or from forums and the internet." And for some of them, they're more current. You actually can buy the data through a broker, so we decided that in cases when we have a strong enough hypothesis that a government has committed the crime, we should probably drop our ethical boundaries from using such data — as long as it is verifiable, as long as it is not coming from one source only but corroborated by at least two or three other sources of data. That's how we develop it. And the first big use case for this approach was the ... poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in 2018 (in the United Kingdom), when we used this combination of open source and data bought from the gray market in Russia to piece together who exactly the two poisoners were. And that worked tremendously....

It has been what I best describe as a multilevel computer game.... [W]hen we first learned that we can get private data, passport files and residence files on Russian spies who go around killing people, they closed the files on those people. So every spy suddenly had a missing passport file in the central password database. But that opened up a completely new way for us to identify spies, because we were just able to compare older versions of the database to newer versions. So that allowed us to find a bad group of spies that we didn't even know existed before.

The Russian government did realize that that's maybe a bad idea to hide them from us, so they reopened those files but just started poisoning data. They started changing the photographs of some of these people to similar looking, like lookalikes of the people, so that they confused us or embarrass us if we publish a finding but it's for the wrong guy. And then we'll learn how to beat that.
When asked about having dropped some ethical boundaries about data use, Grozev replies "everything changes. Therefore, the rules of journalism should change with the changing times." "And it's not common that journalism was investigating governments conducting government-sanctioned crimes, but now it's happening." With a country's ruler proclaiming perpetual supreme power, "This is not a model that traditional journalism can investigate properly. It's not even a model that traditional law enforcement can investigate properly." I'll give an example. When the British police asked, by international agreement, for cooperation from the Russian government to provide evidence on who exactly these guys were who were hanging around the Skripals' house in 2018, they got completely fraudulent, fake data from the Russian government....

So the only way to counter that as a journalist is to get the data that the Russian government is refusing to hand over. And if this is the only way to get it, and if you can be sure that you can prove that this is valid data and authentic data — I think it is incumbent on journalists to find the truth. And especially when law enforcement refuses to find the truth because of honoring the sovereign system of respecting other governments.
It was Bellingcat that identified the spies who's poisoned Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny. CNN suggests that for more details on their investigation, and "to understand Vladimir Putin's stranglehold on power in Russia, watch the new film Navalny which premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on CNN."

The movie's tagline? "Poison always leaves a trail."

Thoughtworks is a technology consultancy/distributed agile software design company. The principle technologist in its CTO's office warns that managers of IT assets "need to keep up" with the changing economics of open source: Early 2022 has brought with it an unusually high level of commotion in the open-source community, largely focused on the economics of who — and how we — should pay for "free" software. But this isn't just some geeky flame war. What's at stake is critical for vast swaths of the business world....

We know of many open-source enthusiasts who maintain their software personally while leading busy professional lives — the last thing they want is the responsibility of a service-level agreement because someone paid them for their creation. So, is this the end of the road for the open-source dream? Certainly, many of the open-source naysayers will view the recent upheavals as proof of a failed approach. They couldn't be more wrong. What we're seeing today is a direct result of the success of open-source software. That success means there isn't a one-size-fits-all description to define open-source software, nor one economic model for how it can succeed.

For internet giants like Facebook or Netflix, the popularity, or otherwise, of their respective JavaScript library and software tool — React and Chaos Monkey — is beside the point. For such companies, open-source releases are almost a matter of employer branding — a way to show off their engineering chops to potential employees. The likelihood of them altering licensing models to create new revenue streams is small enough that most enterprises need not lose sleep over it. Nonetheless, if these open-source tools form a critical part of your software stack or development process, you might want some form of contingency plan — you're likely to have very little sway over future developments, so understanding your risks helps.

For companies that have built platforms containing open-source software, the risks are more uncertain. This is in line with Thoughtworks' view that all businesses can benefit from a greater awareness of what software is running in their various systems. In such cases, we advise companies to consider the extent to which they're reliant on that piece of software: are there viable alternatives? In extreme circumstances, could you fork the code and maintain it internally?

Once you start looking at crucial parts of your software stack where you're reliant on hobbyists, your choices begin to dwindle. But if Log4J's case has taught us anything, it's this: auditing what goes into the software that runs your business puts you in a better place than being completely caught by surprise.

On April 15th Americans filed their taxes with the Internal Revenue Service (or IRS). But on the same day ProPublica was reporting a difference between "the rich and the rest of us" — that their wealth just isn't easily defined: For one, wages make up only a small part of their earnings. And they have broad latitude in how they account for their businesses and investments. Their incomes aren't defined by a tax form. Instead, they represent the triumph of careful planning by skilled professionals who strive to deliver the most-advantageous-yet-still-plausible answers to their clients. For them, a tax return is an opening bid to the IRS. It's a kind of theory....

We counted at least 16 other billionaires (along with hundreds of other ultrawealthy people, including hedge fund managers and former CEOs) among the stimulus check recipients. This is just how our system works. It's why, in 2011, Jeff Bezos, then worth $18 billion, qualified for $4,000 in refundable child tax credits. (Bezos didn't respond to our questions.) A recent study by the Brookings Institution set out with a simple aim: to compare what owners of privately held businesses say they earn with the income that appears on the owners' tax returns. The findings were stark: "More than half of economic income generated by closely held businesses does not appear on tax returns and that ratio has declined significantly over the past 25 years."

That doesn't mean business owners are illegally hiding income from the IRS, though it's certainly a possible contributor. There are plenty of ways to make income vanish legally. Tax perks like depreciation allow owners to create tax losses even as they expand their businesses... "Losses" from one business can also be used to wipe out income from another. Sometimes spilling red ink can be lots of fun: For billionaires, owning sports teams and thoroughbred racehorses are exciting loss-makers. Congress larded the tax code with these sorts of provisions on the logic that what's good for businesses is good for the economy. Often, the evidence for this broader effect is thin or nonexistent, but you can be sure all this is great for business owners. The Brookings study found that households worth $10 million or more benefited the most from being able to make income disappear....

In the tax system we have, billionaires who'd really rather not pay income taxes can usually find a way not to. They can bank their accumulating gains tax-free and deploy tax losses to wipe out whatever taxable income they might have. They can even look forward to a few thousand dollars here and there from the government to help them raise their kids or get through a national emergency.
This system also means it's much harder to catch underreported income on the tax returns of the wealthy, the article points out. And with so many legal deductions, it's also hard to prove the low incomes really exceed what the law allows. Even then, the wealthy can still hire an army of the best tax lawyers to make their case in court.

And now thousands of auditors have left the agency — and have not been replaced. The end result? "Audits of the wealthy have plummeted.

"Business owners have still more reason to be bold...."

If you ranked all U.S. companies by annual revenue, Occidental Petroleum comes in at #183.

But Wednesday this massive "hydrocarbon exploration" company "outlined plans to advance its clean energy transition business," reports Reuters, "including spending between $800 million and $1 billion on a facility to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air." The proposed facility, the world's largest direct air capture (DAC) project, is set to begin construction in the second half of this year in the Permian basin, the largest U.S. oilfield, with a start in 2024. The U.S. oil and gas producer is aiming to build a profitable business from providing services and technologies that pull CO2 out of the air and burying it underground to advance government and business climate mitigation goals. This year's investments in the low carbon business will total $275 million, and the company plans to develop over time three carbon sequestration hubs that will be online by 2025 and another 69 smaller DAC facilities by 2035, it told investors....

Occidental's first DAC facility has a goal of removing 1 million tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere per year — 100 times bigger than all 19 DAC plants currently operating worldwide combined, according to the International Energy Agency.

"There's just not going to be enough other alternatives for CO2 offsets," said Occidental Chief Executive Vicki Hollub. "So this is a sure opportunity." Executives did not say when they expect the business to turn a profit. DAC is currently not commercial on a large scale. "We expect that to play out over the next five to 10 years as we develop plants," Richard Jackson, Occidental's head of U.S. onshore resources and carbon management operations, told Reuters by phone. "The commerciality of those plants will be determined by mainly the market".
Last month Occidental announced that Airbus had already pre-purchased "400,000 tonnes of carbon removal credits from [Occidental's] planned first Direct Air Capture facility," specifically, "the capture and permanent sequestration of 100,000 tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere each year for four years — with an option to secure more volume in the future."

Occidental called the deal "indicative of the availability of a feasible, affordable, and scalable decarbonization solution for aviation and other hard-to-abate industries."

Dirk Hohndel gets frequently mentioned on Slashdot. He was a very early contributor to Linux (and for the last five years the chief open source officer and vice president at VMware). But he's also the guy who interviews Linus Torvalds in the keynote sessions of Open Source Summits.

Hohndel "has a well known track record with Linux going back to the 1990's," reports Phoronix, and was even a member of the Linux Foundation Board of Directors.

But they add that now Hohndel has "somewhat surprisingly has moved on to promoting a blockchain effort."

Dirk Hohndel was CTO at SUSE going back to the mid-90's before joining Intel for a fifteen year run that ended in 2016 where he was Intel's Chief Linux and Open-Source Technologist...

When Dirk left VMware unexpectedly at the beginning of the year, he wrote on LinkedIn that he felt he completed his job at the company in driving open-source transformation. He was leaving to go "look for the next opportunity, the next step in my career" and now it apparently is with blockchain. The surprising news today is that he's joined the Cardano Foundation. The Cardano Foundation is a Swiss-based foundation built around the Cardano public blockchain platform. Cardano is open-source and is the most notable proof-of-stake blockchain that was started by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson. Cardano has its own cryptocurrency, ADA....

Dirk will be serving as the Cardano Foundation's Chief Open-Source Officer.
Interestingly, Linus Torvalds appears to be less enthralled with blockchain technologies. Last year ZDNet reported on the reaction when Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin suggested Torvalds sell an NFT of the 1991 email that first announced Linux to the world.

"An amused and appalled Torvalds replied, "I'm staying out of the whole craziness with crypto and NFTs. Those people are cuckoo!"

The U.S. government "is launching a $6 billion effort to rescue nuclear power plants at risk of closing," reports the Associated Press, "citing the need to continue nuclear energy as a carbon-free source of power that helps to combat climate change." A certification and bidding process opened Tuesday for a civil nuclear credit program that is intended to bail out financially distressed owners or operators of nuclear power reactors, the U.S. Department of Energy told The Associated Press exclusively, shortly before the official announcement. It's the largest federal investment in saving financially distressed nuclear reactors... "U.S. nuclear power plants contribute more than half of our carbon-free electricity, and President Biden is committed to keeping these plants active to reach our clean energy goals," Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement. "We're using every tool available to get this country powered by clean energy by 2035, and that includes prioritizing our existing nuclear fleet to allow for continued emissions-free electricity generation and economic stability for the communities leading this important work...."

A dozen U.S. commercial nuclear power reactors have closed in the past decade before their licenses expired, largely due to competition from cheaper natural gas, massive operating losses due to low electricity prices and escalating costs, or the cost of major repairs. This has led to a rise in emissions in those regions, poorer air quality and the loss of thousands of high-paying jobs, dealing an economic blow to local communities, according to the Department of Energy. A quarter or more of the fleet is at risk, the Department of Energy added. The owners of seven currently operating reactors have already announced plans to retire them through 2025.... Twenty more reactors faced closure in the last decade before states stepped in to save them, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute , the industry's trade association.... Low electricity prices are the main cause of this trend, though federal and state policies to boost wind and solar have contributed as well, the NEI added.

There are 55 commercial nuclear power plants with 93 nuclear reactors in 28 U.S. states. Nuclear power already provides about 20% of electricity in the U.S., or about half the nation's carbon-free energy. If reactors do close before their licenses expire, fossil fuel plants will likely fill the void and emissions will increase, which would be a substantial setback, said Andrew Griffith, acting assistant secretary for nuclear energy at DOE. While natural gas may be cheaper, nuclear power hasn't been given credit for its carbon-free contribution to the grid and that has caused nuclear plants to struggle financially, Griffith added....

David Schlissel, at the Ohio-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said he wishes the federal government, before it allocated the $6 billion, had analyzed whether that money might have been better spent on ramping up renewables, battery storage and energy efficiency projects, which can be done quickly and cheaply to displace fossil fuels.

Librarians say Holocaust deniers, antivaxxers, and other conspiracy theorists are being featured in the catalogs of a popular ebook lending service. From a report: In February, a group of librarians in Massachusetts identified a number of Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic books on Hoopla, including titles like "Debating The Holocaust" and "A New Nobility of Blood and Soil" -- the latter referring to the infamous Nazi slogan for nationalist racial purity. After public outcry from library and information professionals, Hoopla removed a handful of titles from its digital collection.

In an email obtained by the Library Freedom Project last month, Hoopla CEO Jeff Jankowski explained that the titles came from the company's network of more than 18,000 publishers: "[The titles] were added within the most recent twelve months and, unfortunately, they made it through our protocols that include both human and system-driven reviews and screening." However, quick Hoopla keyword searches for ebooks about "homosexuality" and "abortion" turn up dozens of top results that contain largely self-published religious texts categorized as "nonfiction," including several titles like "Can Homosexuality Be Healed" which promote conversion therapy and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. This prompted a group of librarians to start asking how these titles are appearing in public library catalogs and why they are ranked so high.

People using self-driving cars will be allowed to watch television on built-in screens under proposed updates to the Highway Code. From a report: The changes will say drivers must be ready to take back control of vehicles when prompted, the government said. The first use of self-driving technology is likely to be when travelling at slow speeds on motorways, such as in congested traffic. However, using mobile phones while driving will remain illegal.

No self-driving cars are currently allowed on UK roads, but the first vehicles capable of driving themselves could be ready for use later this year, the Department for Transport (DfT) said. The planned changes to the code are expected to come in over the summer. The updates, proposed following public consultation, were described as an interim measure to support the early adoption of the technology and a full regulatory framework is planned to be implemented by 2025.

Russia on Thursday expanded an entry ban on U.S. officials to include U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris and 28 other American officials, businesspeople and journalists. From a report: The sanctions list, published by the Russian foreign ministry, included Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Deputy Defence Secretary Kathleen Hicks and Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby, among others. "These individuals are denied entry into the Russian Federation indefinitely," the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement.

The Federal Aviation Administration has found that Trevor Jacob, a daredevil YouTuber who posted a video of himself last year parachuting out of a plane that he claimed had malfunctioned, purposely abandoned the aircraft and allowed it to crash into the Los Padres National Forest in Southern California. From a report: In a letter to Mr. Jacob on April 11, the F.A.A. said he had violated federal aviation regulations and operated his single-engine plane in a "careless or reckless manner so as to endanger the life or property of another." The agency said it would immediately revoke Mr. Jacob's private pilot certificate, effectively ending his permission to operate any aircraft. Reached by email on Wednesday, Mr. Jacob appeared unaware of the F.A.A.'s ruling and replied, "Where'd you get that information?"

In a video posted on his YouTube channel last week, Mr. Jacob, a former snowboarding Olympian turned YouTuber with more than 100,000 subscribers, briefly addressed the airplane controversy, saying, "I can't talk about it, per my attorney." "But the truth of that situation will come out with time," he added, "and I'll leave that at that." The F.A.A. does not have the ability to prosecute; it can only revoke and suspend certificates and issue fines. The agency ordered Mr. Jacob to surrender his private pilot certificate and said he could face "further legal enforcement action" if he did not do so, including a civil penalty of up to $1,644 for each day that he did not return it.

New parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, decided to pull the plug on the streaming service after a slow first month. From a report: On March 29, CNN took a step into the future of media, launching a new streaming service called CNN Plus that aimed to modernize its traditional television business and place a bet on the future of digital news consumption. But after a slow start, new parent company Warner Bros. Discovery has already decided to already shut down the service at the end of April, new CNN chief executive Chris Licht announced in a memo to employees on Thursday afternoon that was obtained by The Washington Post.

However, the network found difficulty convincing enough customers to pay the $5.99 monthly cost for the service, which offers a mixture of live and on-demand programming, including a large library of old shows from hosts like the late Anthony Bourdain. The network has not released any data on the number of people who have subscribed, but early media reports suggested that the number was lower than to be expected for a service that has cost more than $100 million to create.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The saga of Ubuntu-maker Canonical's IPO efforts now stretches back quite a few years. I think the first time I talked to the company's founder Mark Shuttleworth about going public was in 2018, though there had already been some chatter about it in previous years. But the timing never quite worked out for Canonical. In a press briefing ahead of today's launch of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Shuttleworth noted he now expects it to go public next year. "We are on track to float the business. And now I'm pretty confident that we will do that in 2023," said Shuttleworth, who was calling in from an undisclosed island off the coast of West Africa. "And so we're taking active steps at the board level and in our finance operation -- various other parts of the business -- to be prepared for that. We're now effectively on a very clear program to a flotation of the business next year."

He stressed that Canonical is not in a situation where it has to raise outside money and that going public for him is not about fundraising. He noted that Canonical's revenue last year was $175 million and that the company's biggest challenge right now is that demand is bigger that the company's ability to service it, in large part because there isn't enough talent on the market for the company to hire.

Elon Musk is exploring whether to commence a tender offer for Twitter, according to a new securities filing. From a report: The updated filing published on Thursday says Musk has received commitments for $46.5 billion to help finance the potential deal. Musk has not yet determined he will make a tender offer for Twitter or whether he will take other steps to further the proposal, the filing states.