First the Washington Post summarizes what scientists believed in the 1970s. Chlorofluorocarbons, or (CFCs, "could float up into the stratosphere and break down a protective layer of ozone, allowing more ultraviolet light to enter the atmosphere and harm humans, crops, and entire ecosystems. In fact, this had already happened: There was a hole in the ozone layer over the South Pole." Experts view the subsequent treaty to cut down on the use of CFCs — the 1987 Montreal Protocol — as a landmark environmental achievement. Scientists estimate that the pact has prevented millions of cases of skin cancer. Today, the ozone hole is recovering well. But a provocative scientific paper published Friday in the journal AGU Advances suggests that the link between the ozone layer and human health is more complicated than it seems. Under certain circumstances, the researchers write, small decreases in the ozone layer could now save lives...

The researchers initially were examining something else: what would happen to the chemistry of the atmosphere if humans injected sulfates into the stratosphere, a controversial strategy to cool the planet. But in the process, they found that the chemicals would alter the atmosphere's ozone content — with consequences for human health. Sulfate chemicals are known to deplete ozone high in the atmosphere, but, the paper shows, they could also decrease ground-level air pollution. Ozone, or O3, occurs in two forms in the atmosphere: what scientists call "good ozone" in the stratosphere, the layer of the atmosphere that sits 6 to 31 miles above the surface, and "bad ozone" in the troposphere, the atmospheric layer that reaches to the ground... an air pollutant in the troposphere that comes from power plants, cars, and industrial sites. It can be deadly, exacerbating respiratory diseases. According to one study, over 400,000 people died from long-term exposure to ozone in 2019 alone.

The new paper shows that "good ozone" and "bad ozone" can interact in unexpected ways. When good ozone is depleted, more UV light reaches the troposphere, which increases the rate of skin cancer. But UV light also catalyzes chemical reactions in the troposphere, including one in which hydroxide, or OH — which some scientists call the "Pac-Man of the atmosphere" — swallows up pollutants. The more UV light, the more OH eats up dangerous pollutants. This decrease in ground-level air pollution, according to the study, could actually outweigh the rise in skin cancer. A small decrease in stratospheric ozone, according to their study, could save between 33,000 and 86,000 lives every year.

Only a few papers have made this connection, including one in 2018 that similarly found that a small decrease in the ozone layer could save lives from air pollution... One way to read the study is as another warning of how dangerous ground-level air pollution is and how far the world still needs to go to clean it up. (Outdoor air pollution writ large is associated with an estimated 4.2 million premature deaths every year.)

A startup named OceanWell has partnered with southern California's Las Virgenes Municipal Water District "to study the feasibility of harvesting drinking water from desalination pods placed on the ocean floor," reports the Los Angeles Times: The company says that by combining desalination with off-shore energy technology, it can solve many of the challenges associated with traditional, land-based desalination, including high energy costs and salty byproducts that threaten marine life. The process could produce as much as 10 million gallons of fresh water per day — a significant gain for an inland district almost entirely reliant on imported supplies...

OceanWell says its technology can use up to 40% less energy by harvesting the water in pods placed at depths of about 1,400 feet, where naturally immense water pressure can help power the filtration process... Land-based facilities try to squeeze out as much freshwater as possible to help balance high energy costs, with typical targets of 50% freshwater and 50% brine from every gallon processed. But because OceanWell uses "free" pressure from the ocean, it can operate at a lower recovery rate of 10% to 15%, producing a much less salty byproduct that can be dissolved back into ambient conditions within seconds, she said...

The partnership with Las Virgenes will allow OceanWell to "stress test" the technology's capabilities in the reservoir and collect more data, said Kalyn Simon, OceanWell's director of engagement. The current goal is to be fully operational by 2028, producing an estimated 10 million gallons of freshwater per day.
Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the article.

The use of AI in the economy presents many unanswered questions for policymakers though there is some evidence that it could improve labor productivity, according to Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. From a report: "The impact of AI on the economy and monetary policy will depend on whether AI is just another app or something more profound," Cook said in remarks prepared for delivery at the National Bureau of Economic Research's conference on artificial intelligence in Toronto Friday. "Empirical evidence is still patchy, but there is work showing that generative AI improves productivity in a variety of settings."

Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the Fed's board, was among central bank officials who on Wednesday voted unanimously to hold rates steady in a range of 5.25% to 5.5%. President Joe Biden named Cook as a governor on the board last year. She was endorsed for a full 14-year term in a 51-47 Senate vote earlier this month. Cook predicted that greater use of AI will be similar to the spread of computation in the workplace and could present "a difficult transition for some workers. [...] Any large change in the labor force will generate disruptions and challenges that will need to be addressed to help workers adapt and thrive."

The U.S. Treasury Department and China's Ministry of Finance launched a pair of economic working groups on Friday in an effort to ease tensions and deepen ties between the nations. From a report: Led by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Vice Premier He Lifeng, the working groups will be divided into economic and financial segments. The working groups will "establish a durable channel of communication between the world's two largest economies," Yellen said in a series of tweets detailing the announcement. She said the groups will "serve as important forums to communicate America's interests and concerns, promote a healthy economic competition between our two countries with a level playing field for American workers and businesses."

The announcement follows a string of high-ranking administration officials' visits to China this year, which sets the stage for a possible meeting between President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in November at an Asia-Pacific economic conference in San Francisco. China is one of the United States' biggest trading partners, and economic competition between the two nations has increased in recent years. The two finance ministers have agreed to meet at a "regular cadence," the Treasury Department said in a news release.

In his first major public interview since the DMV cut their San Francisco fleet in half, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said "we cannot expect perfection" from the self-driving cars, and vaguely threatened to leave town if regulators curtail them any further. From a report: The self-driving robotaxis of GM subsidiary Cruise and Google-owned Waymo seemed like they were heading in a successful direction when they won approval from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) last month to run their self-driving robotaxis at all hours in SF without restrictions. But barely a week later, the California DMV demanded Cruise cut it SF fleet in half, following post-Outside Lands stalling incidents, a night of multiple accidents, and SF City Attorney David Chiu filing a motion to get the CPUC to reverse their decision.

Cruse CEO Kyle Vogt sat down for a (very friendly) 40-minute interview Wednesday at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, which can be seen in its entirety above. And he seems to be going on offense against the regulatory pushback his company is getting from SF and California lawmakers. "It's kind of fun as a society to poke at the differences between AVs (autonomous vehicles) and humans, but if we're serious about safety in our cities, we should be rolling out the red carpet for AVs," Vogt said, according to the SF Standard.

An anonymous reader shares a news story: A report by dappGambl based on data provided by NFT Scan and CoinMarketCap showed that out of 73,257 NFT collections the researchers looked at, 69,795 of them, or slightly over 95%, had a market cap of zero ether. By their estimates, almost 23 million people hold these worthless assets. "This daunting reality should serve as a sobering check on the euphoria that has often surrounded the NFT space," the researchers said. "Amid stories of digital art pieces selling for millions and overnight success stories, it is easy to overlook the fact that the market is fraught with pitfalls and potential losses."

NFTs are digital representations of art or collectibles tied to a blockchain, typically ethereum, and each one has a unique signature that cannot be duplicated. In 2021 and 2022, the NFT market saw a huge bull run, at one point leading to $2.8 billion in monthly trading volume. During that time, popular collections such as Bored Apes and CryptoPunks were selling for millions of dollars, and celebrities such as Stephen Curry and Snoop Dogg participated in the hype. The boom coincided with cryptocurrency's peak when bitcoin was trading close to $70,000. On Wednesday, the price of the crypto hovered just above $27,000. dappGambl's study shows 79% of all NFT collections currently remain unsold, and the surplus of supply over demand has created a buyer's market that isn't doing anything to revive enthusiasm.

Brazilian engineer Luiz Andre Barroso, who ripped up the rulebook at Google, has died. His radical ideas for data centers laid the foundations for cloud computing. Wired: Luiz Andre Barroso had never designed a data center before Google asked him to do it in the early 2000s. By the time he finished his first, he had overturned many conventions of the computing industry, laying the foundations for Silicon Valley's development of cloud computing.

Barroso, a 22-year veteran of Google who unexpectedly died on September 16 at age 59, built his data centers with low-cost components instead of expensive specialized hardware. He reimagined how they worked together to develop the concept of "the data center as a computer," which now underpins the web, mobile apps, and other internet services.

Jen Fitzpatrick, senior vice president of Google's infrastructure organization, says Barroso left an indelible imprint at the company whose contributions to the industry are countless. "We lost a beloved friend, colleague and respected leader," she writes in a statement on behalf of the company.

Rishi Sunak has vowed to press ahead with watering down key green measures despite intense criticism, because he still believes the UK will hit its net zero target in 2050. From a report: The prime minister defended defying the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee (CCC) and said he had "absolute confidence and belief" the country was on track to meet its end goal. In a BBC radio interview on Thursday morning, Sunak shrugged off suggestions he had ignored the view of the official body that advises governments on reducing emissions. He said: "I'm very happy to have opinions and advice from everybody, and everyone's entitled to their view. We're very confident -- being in government, with all the information at our disposal -- that we we are on track to hit all our targets."

Sunak told Radio 4's Today programme that Margaret Thatcher would have agreed with his rationale, and that it was not right for "working families" to face significant costs as part of the country's transition to net zero. But he struggled to provide an explanation for claims he had scrapped measures critics said had never seriously been mooted -- such as an alleged tax on meat, compulsory car sharing and forcing households to use seven recycling bins. "These are all things that have been raised by very credible people," he argued. When pressed, Sunak was unable to provide evidence that those specific measures had been suggested by anyone and instead said they had been euphemistically advocated for by bodies such as the CCC.

Rupert Murdoch is stepping down as chair of Fox and News Corp, after building a media empire over seven decades that revolutionized news and entertainment and made him one of the world's most influential and controversial tycoons. WSJ: Murdoch, 92 years old, will exit his roles atop each company as of November, when they hold annual meetings, the companies said. He will be appointed chairman emeritus of each company. His eldest son, Lachlan Murdoch, who has served as co-chair of News Corp, will become sole chair of that company and will continue as Fox Corp executive chair and CEO. "For my entire professional life, I have been engaged daily with news and ideas, and that will not change. But the time is right for me to take on different roles," Rupert Murdoch wrote in a memo to staff.

His decision to step back solidifies Lachlan Murdoch as his successor. He called Lachlan a "passionate, principled leader" who can take the companies into the future. Murdoch is one of a handful of media barons, along with the likes of John Malone, Ted Turner and Sumner Redstone, who shaped the modern era of media. He has wielded influence in political and financial capitals, earning credit from his boosters and blame from his critics. Murdoch has remained active in his later years, pursuing big deals to reshape his companies. Murdoch is stepping back at an important moment for both wings of his media empire, as they confront fundamental challenges in the media landscape. Fox, a relatively small player in an entertainment industry now dominated by titans, is wrestling with the profound implications of cable cord-cutting and the growth of streaming. News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, Times of London and other publications, is trying to find the right formula for digital growth amid a fierce battle for subscribers and online-ad dollars.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Computer Weekly: A doctoral thesis by American investigative journalist and post-doctoral researcher Jacob Appelbaum has now revealed unpublished information from the Snowden archive. These revelations go back a decade, but remain of indisputable public interest:

- The NSA listed Cavium, an American semiconductor company marketing Central Processing Units (CPUs) – the main processor in a computer which runs the operating system and applications -- as a successful example of a "SIGINT-enabled" CPU supplier. Cavium, now owned by Marvell, said it does not implement back doors for any government.
- The NSA compromised lawful Russian interception infrastructure, SORM. The NSA archive contains slides showing two Russian officers wearing jackets with a slogan written in Cyrillic: "You talk, we listen." The NSA and/or GCHQ has also compromised Key European LI [lawful interception] systems.
- Among example targets of its mass surveillance program, PRISM, the NSA listed the Tibetan government in exile.

These revelations have surfaced for the first time thanks to a doctoral thesis authored by Appelbaum towards earning a degree in applied cryptography from the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. Communication in a world of pervasive surveillance is a public document and has been downloaded over 18,000 times since March 2022 when it was first published. [...] We asked Jacob Appelbaum, currently a post-doctoral researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology, why he chose to publish those revelations in a technically written thesis rather than a mass-circulation newspaper. He replied: "As an academic, I see that the details included are in the public interest, and highly relevant for the topic covered in my thesis, as it covers the topic of large-scale adversaries engaging in targeted and mass surveillance." According to The Register, "Marvell (the owner of Cavium since 2018) denies the allegations that it or Cavium placed backdoors in products at the behest of the U.S. government.

Appelbaum's thesis wasn't given much attention until it was mentioned in Electrospaces.net's security blog last week.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: On the outskirts of the small town of Folschviller in eastern France stand three nondescript sheds. One of these temporary structures has recently become a hive of activity due to a continuous stream of visitors, including scientists, journalists, and the public. The shed sits above a borehole first drilled in 2006 and houses a gas measurement system called SysMoG, which was originally developed to determine the underground methane concentration. While the device did detect almost pure methane (99 percent) at a depth of 650 meters, probing further down, the borehole resulted in an unexpected and surprising discovery: hydrogen in high concentration. "At 1,100 meters, the concentration of dissolved hydrogen is 14 percent. At 3,000 meters, the estimated concentration could be as high as 90 percent," Jacques Pironon, director of research at GeoRessources lab at the University de Lorraine, said. Based on the estimates of methane resources and the concentration of hydrogen detected so far, scientists have conjectured that the Lorraine region in eastern France, of which Folschviller is a part, could contain 46 million tons of white -- or naturally produced -- hydrogen. That would make it one of the world's largest known hydrogen deposits.

This remarkable discovery was not the objective of the project, called Regalor. Instead, it aimed to determine the feasibility of methane production in the Lorraine region and to record the presence of traces of other gases. "Our original research was related to the study of carboniferous sediments in northeast France. This was important as Lorraine was one of France's largest coal-producing regions," Pironon said. [...] Soon, the researchers will start taking measurements in three other boreholes at similar depths to understand if the hydrogen concentration remains high as you move laterally from the site of the original borehole. "If the concentration is similar, the next step, which is being discussed with the authorities, would be to drill a hole 3,000 meters deep to validate the evolution of the hydrogen concentration with depth," he said. The deeper borehole could also throw up another surprise. "Besides knowing the level of hydrogen concentration, we will also know if hydrogen is present in dissolved form or in gaseous state at these depths," Pironon said.

This study could also shed light on the source of this hydrogen. According to Pironon, there are two hypotheses, one of which is related to the presence of the mineral siderite. "Hydrogen could be produced by the reaction between water and siderite, which is made of iron carbonates. We consider that the siderite could be oxidized by water molecules to produce hydrogen. The oxygen then combines with iron to produce iron oxide." According to Pironon, the other hypothesis relates its presence to the chemical processes that form coal, which, along with the release of methane, can also produce hydrogen.

Parents in the U.S. whose children purchased items in the popular game Fortnite without their permission will be able to claim a refund from today. The BBC reports: The U.S. regulator accused the game of tricking players into making unintended purchases and breaching privacy. Fortnite developer Epic Games agreed to pay $245 million in refunds in 2022. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has now begun the process of contacting 37 million people to alert them to the compensation.

The FTC said Epic Games duped players with "deceptive interfaces" that could trigger purchases while the game loaded, and accused it of having default settings that breached people's privacy. In total, it agreed to a settlement of $520 million with Epic Games over the concerns. This includes a $275 million fine relating to how Fortnite collects data on its users, including those aged under 13, without informing parents. It is the largest fine ever levied by the FTC for breaking a rule. The rest of the settlement will be paid out as refunds.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A suspicious phone company is on the verge of having all its calls blocked by US-based telcos after being accused of ignoring orders to investigate and block robocalls. One Owl Telecom is a US-based gateway provider that routes phone calls from outside the U.S. to consumer phone companies such as Verizon. "Robocalls on One Owl's network apparently bombarded consumers without their consent with prerecorded messages about fictitious orders," the Federal Communications Commission said yesterday.

On August 1, the FCC sent One Owl a Notification of Suspected Illegal Robocall Traffic (PDF) ordering it to investigate robocall traffic identified by USTelecom's Industry Traceback Group, block all of the identified traffic within 14 days, and "continue to block the identified gateway traffic as well as substantially similar traffic on an ongoing basis." One Owl apparently hasn't taken any of the required steps, the FCC said yesterday. "One Owl never responded, and the [FCC Enforcement] Bureau is not aware of any measures One Owl has taken to comply with the Notice," an FCC order said.

Blocking robocall traffic from companies like One Owl is a bit like playing whack-a-mole. The FCC said it previously took enforcement actions "against two other entities to whom One Owl is closely related: Illum Telecommunication Limited and One Eye LLC. While operating under different corporate names, these entities have shared personnel, IP addresses, customers, and a penchant for disregarding FCC rules." If One Owl doesn't provide an adequate response within 14 days, all phone companies receiving calls from it "will then be required to block and cease accepting all traffic received from One Owl beginning 30 days after release of the Final Determination Order," the FCC said. "One Owl faces a simple choice -- comply or lose access to U.S. communications networks," FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan Egal said in a press release.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: When HashiCorp announced it was changing its Terraform license in August, it set off a firestorm in the open source community, and actually represented an existential threat to startups that were built on top of the popular open source project. The community went into action and within weeks they had written a manifesto, and soon after that launched an official fork called OpenTF. Today, that group went a step further when the Linux Foundation announced OpenTofu, the official name for the Terraform fork, which will live forever under the auspices of the foundation as an open source project. At the same time, the project announced it would be applying for entry into the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

"OpenTofu is an open and community-driven response to Terraform's recently announced license change from a Mozilla Public License v2.0 (MPLv2) to a Business Source License v1.1 providing everyone with a reliable, open source alternative under a neutral governance model," the foundation said in a statement. The name is deliberately playful says Yevgeniy (Jim) Brikman from the OpenTofu founding team, who is also co-founder of Gruntwork. "I'm glad your reaction was to laugh. That's a good thing. We're trying to keep things a little more humorous," Brikman told TechCrunch, but the group is dead serious when it comes to building an open fork. [...]

"The first thing was to get an alpha release out there. So you can go to the OpenTofu website and download OpenTofu and start using it and trying it out," he said. "Then the next thing is a stable release. That's coming in the very near future, but there's work to do. Once you have a stable release, people can start using it. Then we can start growing adoption, and once we start growing adoption, some of the big players will start stepping in when some of the big players start stepping in other big players will start stepping in as well."

Europe is facing a "severe public health crisis," with almost everyone across the continent living in areas with dangerous levels of air pollution, an investigation by the Guardian has found. From the report: Analysis of data gathered using cutting-edge methodology -- including detailed satellite images and measurements from more than 1,400 ground monitoring stations -- reveals a dire picture of dirty air, with 98% of people living in areas with highly damaging fine particulate pollution that exceed World Health Organization guidelines. Almost two-thirds live in areas where air quality is more than double the WHO's guidelines.

The worst hit country in Europe is North Macedonia. Almost two-thirds of people across the country live in areas with more than four times the WHO guidelines for PM2.5, while four areas were found to have air pollution almost six times the figure, including in its capital, Skopje. Eastern Europe is significantly worse than western Europe, apart from Italy, where more than a third of those living in the Po valley and surrounding areas in the north of the country breath air that is four times the WHO figure for the most dangerous airborne particulates.

China accused the U.S. of infiltrating Huawei servers beginning in 2009, part of a broad-based effort to steal data that culminated in tens of thousands of cyber-attacks against Chinese targets last year. From a report: The Tailored Access Operations unit of the National Security Agency carried out the attacks in 2009, which then continuously monitored the servers, China's Ministry of State Security said in a post on its official WeChat account on Wednesday. It didn't provide details of attacks since 2009. Cyberattacks are a point of tension between Washington and Beijing, which has accused its political rival of orchestrating attacks against Chinese targets ever since Edward Snowden made explosive allegations about U.S. spying. Washington and cybersecurity researchers have said the Asian country has sponsored attacks against the West.

The ministry's accusations emerged as the two countries battle for technological supremacy. Huawei in particular has spurred alarm in Washington since the telecom leader unveiled a smartphone powered by an advanced chip it designed, which was made by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. That's in spite of years-long U.S. sanctions intended to cut Huawei off from the American technology it needs to design sophisticated chips and phones. The U.S. has been "over-stretching" the concept of national security with its clampdown on Chinese enterprises, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters at a regular press briefing in Beijing on Wednesday. "What we want to tell the US is that suppression and containing of China will not stop China's development. It will only make us more resolved in our development," Mao said.

After manufacturing crystals of an HIV drug in space, the first orbital factory is stuck in orbit after being denied reentry back to Earth due to safety concerns. Gizmodo reports: The U.S. Air Force denied a request from Varda Space Industries to land its in-space manufacturing capsule at a Utah training area, while the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) did not grant the company permission to reenter Earth's atmosphere, leaving its spacecraft hanging as the company scrambles to find a solution, TechCrunch first reported. A spokesperson from the FAA told TechCrunch in an emailed statement that the company's request was not granted at this time "due to the overall safety, risk and impact analysis."

Gizmodo reached out to Varda Space to ask which regulatory requirements have not been met, but the company responded with a two-word email that ominously read, "no comment." The California-startup did provide an update on its spacecraft through X (formerly Twitter). "We're pleased to report that our spacecraft is healthy across all systems. It was originally designed for a full year on orbit if needed," Varda Space wrote on X. "We look forward to continuing to collaborate w/ our gov partners to bring our capsule back to Earth as soon as possible." Varda Space Industries launched its first test mission on June 12, "successfully sending a 200-pound (90-kilogram) capsule designed to carry drug research into Earth's orbit," reported CNN. "The experiment, conducted in microgravity by simple onboard machines, aims to test whether it would be possible to manufacture pharmaceuticals in space remotely."

The majority of U.S. adults don't believe the benefits of artificial intelligence outweigh the risks, according to a new Mitre-Harris Poll released Tuesday. From a report: 54% of the 2,063 adults in a Mitre-Harris Poll survey in July said they were more concerned about the risks of AI than they were excited about the potential benefits. At the same time, 39% of adults said they believed today's AI technologies are safe and secure -- down 9 points from the previous survey in November 2022. AI operators and the tech industry are eyeing new regulations and policy changes to secure their models and mitigate the security and privacy risks associated with them.

The new survey data is some of the first to highlight the growing support for these regulatory efforts. "While the public has started to benefit from new AI capabilities such as ChatGPT, we've all watched as chatbots have spread political disinformation and shared dangerous medical advice," said Douglas Robbins, vice president of engineering and prototyping at the nonprofit security research and development firm Mitre, in a statement. "Strengthening existing government regulation and increasing public and private investments in AI assurance can play a critical role in addressing these concerns," he added.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Controversial UK legislation that brings in a new regime of content moderation rules for online platforms and services -- establishing the comms watchdog Ofcom as the main Internet regulator -- has been passed by parliament today, paving the way for Royal Assent and the Online Safety Bill becoming law in the coming days. Speaking during the bill's final stages in the House of Lords, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay reiterated that the government's intention for the legislation is "to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online, particularly for children." Following affirmative votes as peers considered some last stage amendments he added that attention now moves "very swiftly to Ofcom who stand ready to implement this -- and do so swiftly."

The legislation empowers Ofcom to levy fines of up to 10% (or up to 18 million pounds whichever is higher) of annual turnover for violations of the regime. The Online Safety (nee Harms) Bill has been years in the making as UK policymakers have grappled with how to response to a range of online safety concerns. In 2019 these efforts manifested as a white paper with a focus on rules for tackling illegal content (such as terrorism and CSAM) but also an ambition to address a broad sweep of online activity that might be considered harmful, such as violent content and the incitement of violence; encouraging suicide; disinformation; cyber bullying; and adult material being accessed by children. The effort then morphed into a bill that was finally published in May 2021. [...]

In a brief statement the UK's new web content sheriff gave no hint of the complex challenges that lie ahead -- merely welcoming the bill's passage through parliament and stating that it stands ready to implement the new rulebook. "Today is a major milestone in the mission to create a safer life online for children and adults in the UK. Everyone at Ofcom feels privileged to be entrusted with this important role, and we're ready to start implementing these new laws," said Dame Melanie Dawes, Ofcom's CEO. "Very soon after the Bill receives Royal Assent, we'll consult on the first set of standards that we'll expect tech firms to meet in tackling illegal online harms, including child sexual exploitation, fraud and terrorism." Beyond specific issues of concern, there is over-arching general worry over the scale of the regulatory burden the legislation will apply to the UK's digital economy -- since the rules apply not only to major social media platforms; scores of far smaller and less well resourced online services must also comply or risk big penalties.

The sea-ice surrounding Antarctica is well below any previous recorded winter level, satellite data shows, a worrying new benchmark for a region that once seemed resistant to global warming. BBC: "It's so far outside anything we've seen, it's almost mind-blowing," says Walter Meier, who monitors sea-ice with the National Snow and Ice Data Center. An unstable Antarctica could have far-reaching consequences, polar experts warn. Antarctica's huge ice expanse regulates the planet's temperature, as the white surface reflects the Sun's energy back into the atmosphere and also cools the water beneath and near it.

Without its ice cooling the planet, Antarctica could transform from Earth's refrigerator to a radiator, experts say. The ice that floats on the Antarctic Ocean's surface now measures less than 17 million sq km - that is 1.5 million sq km of sea-ice less than the September average, and well below previous winter record lows. That's an area of missing ice about five times the size of the British Isles. Dr Meier is not optimistic that the sea-ice will recover to a significant degree.

Scientists are still trying to identify all the factors that led to this year's low sea-ice - but studying trends in Antarctica has historically been challenging. In a year when several global heat and ocean temperature records have broken, some scientists insist the low sea-ice is the measure to pay attention to. "We can see how much more vulnerable it is," says Dr Robbie Mallett, of the University of Manitoba, who is based on the Antarctic peninsula. Already braving isolation, extreme cold and powerful winds, this year's thin sea-ice has made his team's work even more difficult. "There is a risk that it breaks off and drifts out to sea with us on it," Dr Mallett says.

U.S. News & World Report's 2024 college rankings features many of the usual prestigious institutions at the top of the list, but also vaults some schools much higher after the publisher revised its grading system to reward different criteria. From a report: U.S News' ranking algorithm now based more than 50% of an institution's score on what it describes as "success in enrolling and graduating students from all backgrounds with manageable debt and post-graduate success." The system also places greater emphasis on "social mobility," which generally refers to an individual making gains in education, income and other markers of socioeconomic status. Overall, more than a dozen public universities shot up 50 spots on the annual list of the U.S.' best colleges, while several elite private schools largely held their ground, the new report shows.

"The significant changes in this year's methodology are part of the ongoing evolution to make sure our rankings capture what is most important for students as they compare colleges and select the school that is right for them," U.S. News CEO Eric Gertler said in a statement. The change comes after a chorus of critics complained that the publication's rankings reinforce elitism and do little to help students find schools that suit their academic needs and financial circumstances. A growing number of schools, including elite institutions such as Columbia University and the Harvard and Yale law schools, also have stopped participating in the ranking and publicly criticized U.S. News' methodology.

The Department of Homeland Security wants Congress and other federal agencies to help it streamline 52 different cyber reporting requirements to protect critical infrastructure and ease regulatory burdens on hacking victims. On Tuesday, it released a 107-page report that it hopes will serve as a road map to smooth that process. From a report: More than 30 federal agencies and departments, including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Comptroller of the Currency and US Secret Service, have met since June 2022 to hammer out how to reduce regulatory overlap as the federal government grapples with the messy state of cyber reporting rules. They are among members of the Cybersecurity Incident Reporting Council, which was set up as part of a new cyber reporting law passed last year and developed the report recommendations.

"Everybody is desperate for some harmonization and standardization here," Robert Silvers, DHS's under secretary for strategy, policy and plans who chairs the council, told Bloomberg News in an interview. "This is a first-of-its-kind effort." Federal agencies know well that cyber reporting requirements have become "too much of a patchwork," Silvers added. There are already 45 existing reporting requirements administered by 22 federal agencies, spanning national and economic security concerns to consumer and privacy protections, according to the report. Seven more requirements are expected, including the reporting law that created the council, and a further five are under consideration, according to the report.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Earlier this year, the U.S. government indicted Russian hacker Mikhail Matveev, also known by his online monikers "Wazawaka" and "Boriselcin," accusing him of being "a prolific ransomware affiliate" who carried out "significant attacks" against companies and critical infrastructure in the U.S. and elsewhere. The feds also accused him of being a "central figure" in the development and deployment of the notorious ransomware variants like Hive, LockBit, and Babuk. Matveev is such a prominent cybercriminal that the FBI designated him as one of its most wanted hackers. Matveev, who the FBI believes he remains in Russia, is unlikely to face extradition to the United States.

For Matveev, however, life seems to go on so well that he is now taunting the feds by making a T-shirt with his own most wanted poster, and asking his Twitter followers if they want merch. When reached by TechCrunch on X, formerly Twitter, Matveev verified it was really him by showing a picture of his left hand, which has only four fingers, per Matveev's FBI's most wanted page. Matveev also sent a selfie holding a piece of paper with this reporter's name on it.

After he agreed to do an interview, we asked Matveev a dozen questions about his life as a most wanted hacker, but he didn't answer any of them. Instead, he complained that we used the word "hacker." "I don't like this designation -- hacker, we are a separate type of specialist, practical and using our knowledge and resources without water and writing articles," he wrote in an X direct message. "I was interested only in terms of financial motivation, roughly speaking, I was thinking about what to do, sell people or become. it, [sic] let me tell you how I lost my finger?" At that point, Matveev stopped answering messages.

A federal judge has granted a request to block the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act (CAADCA), a law that requires special data safeguards for underage users online. The Verge reports: In a ruling (PDF) issued today, Judge Beth Freeman granted a preliminary injunction for tech industry group NetChoice, saying the law likely violates the First Amendment. It's the latest of several state-level internet regulations to be blocked while a lawsuit against them proceeds, including some that are likely bound for the Supreme Court. The CAADCA is meant to expand on existing laws -- like the federal COPPA framework -- that govern how sites can collect data from children. But Judge Freeman objected to several of its provisions, saying they would unlawfully target legal speech. "Although the stated purpose of the Act -- protecting children when they are online -- clearly is important, NetChoice has shown that it is likely to succeed on the merits of its argument that the provisions of the CAADCA intended to achieve that purpose do not pass constitutional muster," wrote Freeman.

Freeman cites arguments made by legal writer Eric Goldman, who argued that the law would force sites to erect barriers for children and adults alike. Among other things, the ruling takes issue with the requirement that sites estimate visitors' ages to detect underage users. The provision is ostensibly meant to cut down on the amount of data collected about young users, but Freeman notes that it could involve invasive technology like face scans or analyzing biometric information -- ironically requiring users to provide more personal information.

The law offers sites an alternative of making data collection for all users follow the standards for minors, but Freeman found that this would also chill legal speech since part of the law's goal is to avoid targeted advertising that would show objectionable content to children. "Data and privacy protections intended to shield children from harmful content, if applied to adults, will also shield adults from that same content," Freeman concluded.

A group of publishers in the U.S. have filed a lawsuit against the "notorious" online database Library Genesis (Libgen), a website known for providing free access to scientific papers and books. The lawsuit accuses Libgen of facilitating the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted academic materials. The Register reports: The suit, filed in a New York federal court [PDF], asks for a legal order "requiring the transfer of the Libgen domain names to plaintiffs or, at plaintiffs' election, canceling or deleting the Libgen domain names," with the idea of frustrating visitors -- mostly students -- believed to number in their millions. The filing said that according to similarweb.com, the sites collectively were visited by 9 million people from the U.S. each month from March to May 2023. The suit alleges that several of the Libgen websites solicit "donations" from users. "These solicitations are in English and seek payments only in Bitcoin or [Monero]." It adds: "one Libgen Site reports that it has raised $182,540 from donations since January 1, 2023."

The publishers also claim the people who run LibGen -- named in the suit as Does 1-50 and whom it says "are believed to reside outside of the United States at unknown foreign locations" -- derive "revenue from interstate or international commerce, including through advertisements." It goes on to add: "Defendants compete directly with Plaintiffs by distributing infringing copies of their works for free, displacing legitimate sales. When a consumer obtains Plaintiffs' works from the Libgen Sites instead of through legitimate channels, no remuneration is provided to Plaintiffs or their authors for the substantial investments they have made to create and publish the works."

The textbook publishers claim that "through social media and from their peers, students are bombarded with messages to use the Libgen Sites instead of paying for legal copies of textbooks" -- thus depriving the publishers and the authors they represent of their income. The suit also asks for damages without detailing an amount, although it asks for "an accounting and disgorgement of Defendants' profits, gains, and advantages realized from their unlawful conduct." The complaint claims the ads are in English and for various "U.S. products, such as browser extensions and online games". The suit adds that some "also appear to be phishing attempts, which can result in users downloading a virus or other malicious program onto their computers."

The lawsuit also calls out Google and "other intermediaries," U.S. companies it claims help LibGen "conduct their unlawful operations" -- "NameCheap for domain registration services, Cloudflare for proxy services, and Google for search engine services." It goes on to include a screenshot of Google's "knowledge panel," which it says "describes Libgen as a site [that] enables free access to content that is otherwise paywalled or not digitized elsewhere."

Elad Gil, writing in a blog post: In most industries, regulation prevents competition. This famous chart of prices over time reflects how highly regulated industries (healthcare, education, energy) have their costs driven up over time, while less regulated industries (clothing, software, toys) drop costs dramatically over time. (Please note I do not believe these are inflation adjusted - so 60-70% may be "break even" pricing inflation adjusted.)

Regulation favors incumbents in two ways. First, it increase the cost of entering a market, in some cases dramatically. The high cost of clinical trials and the extra hurdles put in place to launch a drug are good examples of this. A must-watch video is this one with Paul Janssen, one of the giants of pharma, in which he states that the vast majority of drug development budgets are wasted on tests imposed by regulators which "has little to do with actual research or actual development." This is a partial explanation for why (outside of Moderna, an accident of COVID), no $40B+ market cap new biopharma company has been launched in almost 40 years (despite healthcare being 20% of US GDP).

Secondly, regulation favors incumbents via something known as "regulatory capture." In regulatory capture, the regulators become beholden to a specific industry lobby or group -- for example by receiving jobs in the industry after working as a regulator, or via specific forms of lobbying. There becomes a strong incentive to "play nice" with the incumbents by regulators and to bias regulations their way, in order to get favors later in life. Additional resource: All-In Summit: Bill Gurley Presents 2,851 Miles.

The United States' military is on the hunt for an F-35 fighter jet that has gone missing following an incident that forced the pilot to eject from the advanced stealth aircraft over South Carolina. Bloomberg News: Emergency response teams are trying to find what's left of the F-35B Lightning II jet, which suffered what the military called a "mishap" on Sunday afternoon, according to social media posts by Joint Base Charleston, an air base in South Carolina. The unidentified pilot ejected safely and was taken to a local hospital in a stable condition. Joint Base Charleston called on the public to cooperate with military and civilian authorities as the search for the F-35 jet continues. The air base said it was working with Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort to search for the plane north of North Charleston around Lake Moultrie and Lake Marion, based on its last-known location.

Lockheed Martin is the manufacturer behind the F-35, a single-seat fighter craft used by militaries around the world. The aircraft was a vertical take-off version used by in the US Marine Corps, and the jet is popular for its stealth qualities that make it difficult to detect by radar. The F-35 program, the most expensive US weapons program ever, is projected to cost $400 billion in development and acquisition, plus an additional $1.2 trillion to operate and maintain the fleet over more than 60 years. Each jet can cost more than $160 million, depending on the variant.

China appears to have suspended its global surveillance balloon program after a balloon was spotted drifting over the United States in February.

But now an anonymous reader shares this report from CBS News: Seven months later, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, tells "CBS News Sunday Morning" the balloon wasn't spying. "The intelligence community, their assessment — and it's a high-confidence assessment — [is] that there was no intelligence collection by that balloon," he said.

So, why was it over the United States? There are various theories, with at least one leading theory that it was blown off-track. The balloon had been headed toward Hawaii, but the winds at 60,000 feet apparently took over. "Those winds are very high," Milley said. "The particular motor on that aircraft can't go against those winds at that altitude..."

After the Navy raised the wreckage from the bottom of the Atlantic, technical experts discovered the balloon's sensors had never been activated while over the Continental United States. But by then, the damage to U.S.-China relations had been done.
On the CBS News show Sunday Morning, the host had this exchange with America's chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

CBS: "Bottom line, it was a spy balloon, but it wasn't spying?"

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: "I would say it was a spy balloon that we know with high degree of certainty got no intelligence, and didn't transmit any intelligence back to China."

"Chaos and Concern in Sin City," read this morning's headline on a video report from ABC News about "the massive cyberattack in Las Vegas crippling several hotels and casinos, and putting a damper on getaways for thousands of tourists there." "Today marks a week since that cyberattack hit Las Vegas, and MGM hotels and casinos are still working on getting systems back up and running.. The online reservation site for MGM is still down, ATMs not working, and those playing the slot machines or even video poker having to wait for attendants to pay them out in cash. All of this fiasco leading to long lines at check-in, and now a cyber investigation with the FBI...

Other gaming resorts also having issues. Caesar's entertainment says they too were a victim of a cyberattack, but their online operations were not impacted. Then this weekend at the Venetian, an outage shutting down some slots, but the resort says they're back up, and that at least thankfully was not due to a cyber attack.
They report MGM properties were affected as far away as Atlantic City, New Jersey.

An anonymous reader shared this report from TechCrunch: In March, WordPress.com owner Automattic made a commitment to the fediverse — the decentralized social networks that include the Twitter rival Mastodon and others — with the acquisition of an ActivityPub plug-in that allows WordPress blogs to reach readers on other federated platforms. Now, the company is announcing ActivityPub 1.0.0 for WordPress has been released allowing WordPress blogs to be followed by others on apps like Mastodon and others in the fediverse and then receive replies back as comments on their own sites.

Since the acquisition, the company has improved on the original software in a number of ways, including by now allowing the ability to add blog-wide catchall accounts instead of only per-author. It also introduced the ability to add a "follow me" block to help visitors follow your profile and a "followers" block to show off your followers, noted Automattic design engineer Matt Wiebe, in a post on X... For the time being, the software supports self-hosted WordPress blogs, but Wiebe teased that support for WordPress.com blogs was "coming soon."
Last year Automattic's CEO Matt Mullenweg announced Tumblr would add support for ActivityPub, the article adds. "But more recently, Mullenweg told us he's been investigating not only ActivityPub, but also other protocols like Nostr and Bluesky's AT Protocol."

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: Thursday America's Energy Department released an interactive map showing America's clean energy investments, "for tracking the industrial revitalization happening across the country, fostered by a clean energy transition..."

The map aims to show how both the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act "are leading to announcements of historic levels of private sector investments in the United States," which the head of America's Energy Department credited for "a manufacturing renaissance across the U.S." A senior White House energy advisor specifically described it as "a clean energy boom" and called the map "a great resource for understanding the widespread and important impact this boom is having on communities all across our nation."

The announcement notes 500 "planned investments in at least 450 new or expanded clean energy manufacturing facilities, totaling over $160 billion in announced private and public sector investments" in solar, battery, and offshore wind manufacturing projects — as well as in electric vehicle assembly, components, and chargers. Ford received over $12 billion for battery pack/cell projects and EV assembly, along with billions more for Ford's joint venture with BlueOval SK to build a battery plant. And six of the projects are Tesla — totalling over $2 billion for projects in battery materials, cells, packs, and EV assembly.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Guardian: ExxonMobil executives privately sought to undermine climate science even after the oil and gas giant publicly acknowledged the link between fossil fuel emissions and climate change, according to previously unreported documents revealed by the Wall Street Journal.

The new revelations are based on previously unreported documents subpoenaed by New York's attorney general as part of an investigation into the company announced in 2015. They add to a slew of documents that record a decades-long misinformation campaign waged by Exxon, which are cited in a growing number of state and municipal lawsuits against big oil... In 2008, Exxon pledged to stop funding climate-denier groups. But that very same year, company leadership said it would support the company in directing a scientist to help the nation's top oil and gas lobbying group write a paper about the "uncertainty" of measuring greenhouse gas emissions...

The documents could bolster legal efforts to hold oil companies accountable for their alleged attempts to sow doubt about climate science. More than two dozen U.S. cities and states are suing big oil, claiming the industry knew for decades about the dangers of burning coal, oil and gas but hid that information.
More context from NPR: Earlier investigations found Exxon worked for decades to sow confusion about climate change, even though its own scientists had begun warning executives as early as 1977 that carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels were warming the planet, posing dire risks to human beings. By the late 1980s, concern was growing domestically and overseas that fossil fuel use was heating the planet, increasing the risks of extreme weather. In response, the Journal reported, Exxon executive Frank Sprow sent a memo to colleagues warning that if there were a global consensus on addressing climate change, "substantial negative impacts on Exxon could occur." According to the Journal, Sprow wrote: "Any additional R&D efforts within Corporate Research on Greenhouse should have two primary purposes: 1. Protect the value of our resources (oil, gas, coal). 2. Preserve Exxon's business options."

Sprow told the Journal that the approach in his memo was adopted as policy, in "what would become a central pillar of Exxon's strategy," the paper said. A few years after the memo, Exxon became the architect of a highly effective strategy of climate change denial that succeeded for decades in politicizing climate policy and delaying meaningful action to cut heat-trapping pollution...

Last year, Exxon said it plans to spend about $17 billion on "lower emission initiatives" through 2027. That represents, at most, 17% of the total capital investments the company plans to make during that period. Exxon recently said it is buying a company called Denbury that specializes in capturing carbon dioxide emissions and injecting them into oil wells to boost production. It's also planning to build a hydrogen plant and a facility to capture and store carbon emissions in Texas.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space.com: Firefly Aerospace just set a new responsive-launch record. The company's Alpha rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Thursday (Sept. 14) at 10:28 p.m. EDT (7:28 p.m. local California time; 0228 GMT on Sept. 15), kicking off a mission for the U.S. Space Force called Victus Nox. The rocket roared off the pad just 27 hours after the U.S. Space Force gave the order -- less time than on any previous national security mission. The wheels for Victus Nox (Latin for "conquer the night") began turning in September 2022, when the Space Force awarded contracts to Texas-based Firefly and Millennium Space Systems, a Boeing subsidiary headquartered in the Los Angeles area that built the mission's payload.

On Aug. 30 of this year, Firefly and Millennium entered the mission's "hot standby" phase, a six-month period during which they could receive a launch-alert notice at any time. After receipt of that notice, Millennium and Firefly would have 60 hours to get the satellite from Millennium's Southern California facilities to Vandenberg, fuel it up and mate it to the Alpha rocket's payload adapter. The alert came through recently, and the mission teams hit their ambitious timeline. "Upon activation, the space vehicle was transported 165 miles [266 kilometers] from Millennium's El Segundo facility to Vandenberg Space Force Base where it was tested, fueled and mated to the launch adapter in just under 58 hours, significantly faster than the typical timeline of weeks or months," Space Force officials said in the emailed statement.

The teams then had to wait for the launch order, which would give them Victus Nox's orbital requirements. They would then have just 24 hours to update Alpha's trajectory and guidance software, encapsulate the satellite in its payload fairing, get the payload to the pad, mate it to Alpha and get the rocket ready to launch, Firefly wrote in a statement. The teams managed that task as well. They were ready to launch as soon as the first window opened, which was 27 hours after the Space Force gave the order. Victus Nox's speed goals didn't end with the successful liftoff. The teams now aim to get the satellite up and running within 48 hours of its deployment. The report notes that the previous response-launch record for a U.S. national security mission was 21 days, which was set in June 2021.

Thousands of people in Oregon have signed up to experience tripping on magic mushrooms at America's first license psilocybin service center. The Associated Press reports: Epic Healing Eugene -- America's first licensed psilocybin service center -- opened in June, marking Oregon's unprecedented step in offering the mind-bending drug to the public. The center now has a waitlist of more than 3,000 names, including people with depression, PTSD or end-of-life dread. No prescription or referral is needed, but proponents hope Oregon's legalization will spark a revolution in mental health care. The Oregon Psilocybin Services Section, charged with regulating the state's industry, has received "hundreds of thousands of inquiries from all over the world," Angela Allbee, the agency's manager, said in an interview. "So far, what we're hearing is that clients have had positive experiences," she said.

First, customers must have a preparation session with a licensed facilitator who stays with clients as they experience the drug. The facilitator can deny access to those who have active psychosis, thoughts of harming anyone, or who have taken lithium, which is used to treat mania, in the past month. The clients can't buy mushrooms to go, and they must stay at the service center until the drug wears off. Oregon Psilocybin Services spent two years establishing regulations and began accepting license applications in January. There are now 10 licensed service centers, four growers, two testing labs and dozens of facilitators. [...] The report notes that costs can be high, with some clients paying over $2,000 and annual licenses for service centers and growers costing $10,000, with a half-price discount for veterans.

As for doses, state regulations allow up to 50 milligrams but it will ultimately depend on the facility and client. One of the facility's first clients took 35 milligrams and described seeing a "kind of infinite-dimension fractal that just kept turning and twisting."

The cloud-based system the Air Force is co-developing with Canada to enable instantaneous combat data-sharing is just about ready for prime time, although the looming threat of a budget gap may slow its global deployment. The Drive reports: Cloud-based command-and-control (CBC2), a pillar of the service's Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS), will hit initial operating capability roughly on schedule next month, Brig. Gen. Luke Cropsey, integrating program officer for Command, Control, Communications and Battle Management, told The War Zone and other outlets this week at the Air, Space, and Cyber conference near Washington, D.C. It's headed to three unspecified base locations within the first half of 2024, Cropsey said, with others to follow at "more scale" as what's anticipated to be a five-year rollout plan gets underway. [...] CBC2 is designed to replace the hardware-based Battle Control System-Fixed, which provides command-and-control for Canada and the U.S., including Alaska and Hawaii. Officially made a program in 2022, CBC2 is "a set of microservice applications," according to an Air Force release, that can take in more than 750 radar feeds and deliver them to a single user interface. "The system then allows operators to create machine-generated courses of action to help shorten the tactical C2 kill chain and send a desired effect via machine-to-machine connections," the release adds.

In addition to delivering data faster and streamlining communication, CBC2 will build in new artificial intelligence elements. A January Government Accountability Office report states that it will build upon Pathfinder, an AI-empowered prototype that ingests "data that would in the past have been ... left on the cutting room floor," as North American Aerospace Defense Command chief Gen. Glen VanHerck put it in remarks reported by C4ISRNet. A September 2020 paper (PDF) from the Canada Institute described Pathfinder as "giving new life to old sensors" for NORAD's defense. "In a recent demonstration," the paper stated, "The Pathfinder system was tied to Federal Aviation Administration radars, and without any modification to the radars themselves, consistently demonstrated an ability to effectively detect and track very small unmanned aircraft, previously thought to be beyond the capability of the system."

Iranian hackers have hacked dozens of companies in the defense, satellite and pharmaceutical sectors this year using a fairly unsophisticated, blunt hacking technique, Microsoft warned in a new report. From a report: Many of these companies are based in the U.S., and the breaches come amid heavy U.S. sanctions targeting Iranian oil and petrochemical sales. Microsoft said Thursday that Iranian hacking group Peach Sandstorm -- which other firms also refer to as APT33, Elfin or Refined Kitten -- has been breaking into these companies by trying to guess multiple user accounts' passwords.

The password-spraying campaign took place between February and July this year, Microsoft found. In some cases, the hackers were able to exfiltrate data, and in others, they just lurked on the networks to see what intelligence they could gather. The Iranian group targeted thousands of companies as part of this monthslong campaign -- but was able to access only a small percentage of those organizations, Microsoft said.

Oil companies have been granted licences by the UK government that it hopes will enable them to store up to 10% of the UK's carbon emissions in old oil and gasfields beneath the seabed. From a report: The government awarded more than 20 North Sea licences covering an area the size of Yorkshire to 14 companies that plan to store carbon dioxide trapped from heavy industry in depleted oil and gasfields. The companies include the oil supermajor Shell, Italy's state-owned oil company ENI, and Harbour Energy, the largest independent oil and gas company operating in the UK's North Sea basin.

The industry's government-backed regulator, the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), claims the companies could help store up to 30m tonnes of CO2 a year by 2030, or approximately 10% of UK annual emissions. The plan to develop old oil and gasfields into vast repositories of CO2 is part of the government's plan to develop a carbon capture and storage (CCS) industry to reduce emissions from heavy industry entering the atmosphere and contributing to global heating. Stuart Payne, the NSTA's chief executive, said: "Carbon storage will play a crucial role in the energy transition, storing carbon dioxide deep under the seabed and playing a key role in hydrogen production and energy hubs."

A luxury cruise ship that had been stuck for three days after running aground off the coast of Greenland was pulled free on Thursday morning, the authorities said. From a report: The ship, the Ocean Explorer, had been carrying 206 passenger and crew members and was headed toward Alpefjord, in a remote corner of Greenland. The ship's destination was the Northeast Greenland National Park, the world's northernmost national park, which is home to icebergs, glaciers and high mountains. The Joint Arctic Command, which is part of Denmark's defense forces, and SunStone Maritime Group, the coordinators of the rescue operation, said in statements on Thursday that the ship had been pulled free by a vessel named Tarajoq.

There were no reported injuries on board the ship, and there was no threat to the environment. The ship's operator, Aurora Expeditions, a cruise company based in Australia, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The rescue came after an unsuccessful attempt on Wednesday, in which a fishing research vessel owned by the government of Greenland tried and failed to pull free the Ocean Explorer at high tide. Bad weather also slowed the government's rescue operations, officials said. Before the ship was freed, the Joint Arctic Command had said that "the crew and passengers are in a difficult situation, but after the circumstances, the atmosphere on the ship is good and everyone on board is fine."

California, the home to many of tech's biggest companies and the nation's most populous state, is pushing ahead with a right-to-repair bill for consumer electronics and appliances. From a report: After unanimous votes in the state Assembly and Senate, the bill passed yesterday is expected to move through a concurrence vote and be signed by Governor Gavin Newsom. "Since Right to Repair can pass here, expect it to be on its way to a backyard near you," said iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens in a statement. iFixit, a seller of repair parts and tools and advocate for right-to-repair laws, based in San Luis Obispo, California, was joined in its support for the California repair law by another California company with a history of opposing repair laws: Apple. The consumer tech giant's letter urging passage of the bill was surprising, to say the least, though Apple said that the bill's stipulations for "individual users' safety" and "product manufacturers' intellectual property" were satisfactory.

California's bill goes further than right-to-repair laws in other states. Rather than limiting its demand that companies provide parts, tools, repair manuals, and necessary software for devices that are still actively sold, California requires that vendors provide those items for products sold after July 1, 2021, starting in July 2024. Products costing $50 to $99.99 must be accompanied by those items for three years, and items $100 and more necessitate seven years. The bill also provides for stronger enforcement mechanisms, allowing for municipalities to bring superior court cases rather than contact the state attorney general.

The Justice Department will press its argument Thursday that Google sought to strike agreements with mobile carriers to win powerful default positions on smartphones to dominate search in an antitrust trial that could change the future of the internet. From a report: The government will wrap up questioning Thursday of Antonio Rangel, who teaches behavioral biology at the California Institute of Technology. Other witnesses will be James Kolotouros, for Google, and Brian Higgins, from Verizon Communications. The government says the Alphabet unit paid $10 billion annually to wireless companies like AT&T, device makers like Apple and browser makers like Mozilla to fend off rivals and keep its search engine market share near 90%. The government has also alleged that Google illegally took steps to protect communications about the payments.

The government called witnesses on Tuesday and Wednesday to show that Google, as far back as the mid-2000s, sought to attract a large number of search queries by winning default status on mobile devices. Another witness, Rangel, discussed how powerful default status was, although data he used to show this was largely redacted. Google's clout in search, the government alleges, has helped Google build monopolies in some aspects of online search advertising. Search is free so Google makes money through advertising.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Human actions have pushed the world into the danger zone on several key indicators of planetary health, threatening to trigger dramatic changes in conditions on Earth, according to a new analysis from 29 scientists in eight countries. The scientists analyzed nine interlinked "planetary boundaries," which they define as thresholds the world needs to stay within to ensure a stable, livable planet. These include climate change, biodiversity, freshwater and land use, and the impact of synthetic chemicals and aerosols. Human activities have breached safe levels for six of these boundaries and are pushing the world outside a "safe operating space" for humanity, according to the report, published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

The nine boundaries, first set out in a 2009 paper, aim to establish a set of defined "limits" on changes humans are making to the planet -- from pumping out planet-heating pollution to clearing forests for farming. Beyond these limits, the theory goes, the risk of destabilizing conditions on Earth increases dramatically. The limits are designed to be conservative, to enable society to solve the problems before reaching a "very high risk zone," said Katherine Richardson, a professor in biological oceanography at the University of Copenhagen and a co-author on the report. She pointed to the unprecedented summer of extreme weather the world has just experienced at 1.2 degrees Celsius of global warming. "We didn't think it was going to be like this at 1 degree [Celsius]" she said. "No human has experienced the conditions that we're experiencing right now," she added.

Of the three boundaries that scientists found are still within a safe space, two of them -- ocean acidification and the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere -- are moving in the wrong direction. There is some good news, however. The ozone layer was on the wrong side of the boundary in the 1990s, Richardson said. But thanks to international cooperation to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals, it is on track to recover completely. Crossing planetary boundaries does not mean the world has reached a disastrous tipping point. Hitting one does not mean "falling off a cliff," Richardson said. But it is a clear warning signal. The significance of the planetary boundaries model is that it doesn't analyze climate and biodiversity in isolation, the report authors said. Instead, it looks at the interaction of both, as well as a host of other ways humans are affecting the planet. Breaching one boundary is likely to have knock-on effects for others.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: As young children went back to school across Sweden last month, many of their teachers were putting a new emphasis on printed books, quiet reading time and handwriting practice and devoting less time to tablets, independent online research and keyboarding skills. The return to more traditional ways of learning is a response to politicians and experts questioning whether the country's hyper-digitalized approach to education, including the introduction of tablets in nursery schools, had led to a decline in basic skills. Swedish Minister for Schools Lotta Edholm, who took office 11 months ago as part of a new center-right coalition government, was one of the biggest critics of the all-out embrace of technology. "Sweden's students need more textbooks," Edholm said in March. "Physical books are important for student learning."

The minister announced last month in a statement that the government wants to reverse the decision by the National Agency for Education to make digital devices mandatory in preschools. It plans to go further and to completely end digital learning for children under age 6, the ministry also told The Associated Press. [...] "There's clear scientific evidence that digital tools impair rather than enhance student learning," Sweden's Karolinska Institute said in a statement last month on the country's national digitalization strategy in education. "We believe the focus should return to acquiring knowledge through printed textbooks and teacher expertise, rather than acquiring knowledge primarily from freely available digital sources that have not been vetted for accuracy," said the institute, a highly respected medical school focused on research. To counter Sweden's decline in 4th grade reading performance, the Swedish government announced an investment worth 685 million kronor (60 million euros or $64.7 million) in book purchases for the country's schools this year. Another 500 million kronor will be spent annually in 2024 and 2025 to speed up the return of textbooks to schools. "The Swedish government does have a valid point when saying that there is no evidence for technology improving learning, but I think that's because there is no straightforward evidence of what works with technology," said Neil Selwyn, a professor of education at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. "Technology is just one part of a really complex network of factors in education."

The Justice Department sought on Wednesday to show how Google did all it could to get people to use its search engine and build itself into a $1 trillion search and advertising giant on the second day of a once-in-a-generation antitrust trial. From a report: First out of the gate, the government questioned a former Google executive, Chris Barton, about billion-dollar deals with mobile carriers and others that helped make Google the default search engine. Barton, who was at Google from 2004 to 2011, said the number of Google executives working to win default status with mobile carriers grew dramatically when he was with the company, recognizing the potential growth of handheld devices and early versions of smartphones.

Google's clout in search, the government argues, has helped Google build monopolies in some aspects of online search advertising. Since search is free, Google makes money through advertising. The government says the Alphabet unit paid $10 billion annually to wireless companies like AT&T, device makers like Apple and browser makers like Mozilla to fend off rivals and keep its search engine market share near 90%. In revenue-sharing deals with mobile carriers and Android smartphone makers, Google pressed for its search to be the default and exclusive. If Microsoft's search engine Bing was the default on an Android phone, Barton said, then users would have a "difficult time finding or changing to Google."

Barton said on his LinkedIn profile that he was responsible for leading Google's partnerships with mobile carriers like Verizon and AT&T, estimating that the deals "drive hundreds of millions in revenue." Hal Varian, Google's chief economist, told the court that scale, or the number of search queries Google received, was important, but pushed back during questioning on how important. He also acknowledged giving a speech in which he said certain search queries, for instance for a tennis racquet, were important in effectively advertising to the person who made the query and to subsequent ad revenues.

The White House, weighing in for the first time on concerns about a Chinese backlash against Apple, said it is monitoring reports of a growing government ban of iPhones and believes the move is a reprisal against the US. From a report: "It seems to be of a piece of the kinds of aggressive and inappropriate retaliation to US companies that we've seen from the PRC in the past," said John Kirby, the council's spokesman, referring to the People's Republic of China. Bloomberg News reported this month that China plans to expand a ban on the use of iPhones to a plethora of state-backed companies and agencies, a sign of growing challenges for Apple in the country. Several Chinese agencies have begun instructing staff not to bring their iPhones to work.

But the situation grew more muddled Wednesday, when Beijing pushed back on reports about iPhone restrictions while also raising concerns about security problems with the device. "China has not issued laws and regulations to ban the purchase of Apple or foreign brands' phones," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a regular press briefing in Beijing on Wednesday. It marked the government's first comments on the issue, but didn't seem to refer directly to workplace bans of the device.

A journalist and researcher on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), or UFOs as they're better known, presented the remains of purported "non-human" beings to lawmakers in Mexico on Tuesday during the country's first public congressional hearing on the topic. From a report: Jamie Maussan brought two boxes containing what he said were the small, stuffed bodies of extraterrestrials recovered in Peru in 2017. He said carbon-14 dating carried out by the National Autonomous University of Mexico had determined the remains were 700 and 1,800 years old. Each of the figures has only three fingers on each hand and elongated heads, resembling, at least superficially, the Hollywood-born character ET.

"This is the first time it (extraterrestrial life) is presented in such a form and I think there is a clear demonstration that we are dealing with non-human specimens that are not related to any other species in our world," Maussan told the lawmakers, urging them to consider the topic, which he said should not be viewed as "a political topic -- it's a topic for humanity." He said DNA evidence could prove the specimens were not of this planet, but it wasn't clear if any such tests had been carried out. At least one previous claim by Maussan about purported "non-human" remains discovered in Peru has been debunked, though the specimens he presented Tuesday in Mexico City appeared different to the one he previously spoke about in 2015.

Mozilla has released emergency security updates to fix a critical zero-day vulnerability exploited in the wild, impacting its Firefox web browser and Thunderbird email client. From a report: Tracked as CVE-2023-4863, the security flaw is caused by a heap buffer overflow in the WebP code library (libwebp), whose impact spans from crashes to arbitrary code execution. "Opening a malicious WebP image could lead to a heap buffer overflow in the content process. We are aware of this issue being exploited in other products in the wild," Mozilla said in an advisory published on Tuesday. Mozilla addressed the exploited zero-day in Firefox 117.0.1, Firefox ESR 115.2.1, Firefox ESR 102.15.1, Thunderbird 102.15.1, and Thunderbird 115.2.2. Even though specific details regarding the WebP flaw's exploitation in attacks remain undisclosed, this critical vulnerability is being abused in real-world scenarios.

An unnamed CIA whistleblower has made the dramatic allegation that half a dozen analysts there were bribed to reject the theory that COVID-19 resulted from a research-related leak of a new coronavirus, according to a press release today from the office of the Republican leading a congressional investigation into the pandemic. The allegation was strongly rejected in a CIA statement released hours later. Science.org: A majority of U.S. intelligence agencies has so far concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic mostly likely started when SARS-CoV-2 jumped from an infected animal host into people; a wildlife market in Wuhan, China, has received intense attention from researchers as the potential source. But the Department of Energy and FBI so far have favored the so-called lab-leak hypothesis, even though none of the agencies has expressed high confidence in their conclusions on COVID-19's origin. CIA, for example, had reportedly said it was "unable to determine" whether SARS-CoV-2 made a direct jump from animals to humans -- or came from a lab.

Now, Representative Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), who chairs the House of Representatives's Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, says his panel and the House's Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have heard testimony from a whistleblower "who presents as a highly credible senior-level CIA officer." According to the press release, the whistleblower testified that only the most senior analyst of a seven-member CIA team investigating the origin of COVID-19 supported the zoonotic transmission theory. The whistleblower alleged the other six team members supporting the lab origin then received "a significant monetary incentive to change their position," wrote Wenstrup and Representative Mike Turner (R-OH), who chairs the intelligence panel.

In response to emailed questions from Science, CIA Director of Public Affairs Tammy Kupperman Thorp challenged the whistleblower's account: "At CIA we are committed to the highest standards of analytic rigor, integrity, and objectivity. We do not pay analysts to reach specific conclusions. We take these allegations extremely seriously and are looking into them. We will keep our Congressional oversight committees appropriately informed," she wrote in the agency's statement...

A few researchers have revealed how they cooperated with some of the intelligence agencies. Evolutionary biologist Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research and virologist Robert Garry of Tulane University, who have co-authored studies supporting the zoonotic origin and testified before Wenstrup's committee, both met with CIA agents probing the COVID-19 origin over the past few years. Andersen said that "several scientists were part of their team and they knew their stuff." He asserts that the new whistleblower allegation "obviously is bullshit."

An anonymous reader shares a report: The US accounts for more than a third of the expansion of global oil and gas production planned by mid-century, despite its claims of climate leadership, research has found. Canada and Russia have the next biggest expansion plans, calculated based on how much carbon dioxide is likely to be produced from new developments, followed by Iran, China and Brazil. The United Arab Emirates, which is to host the annual UN climate summit this year, Cop28 in Dubai in November, is seventh on the list.

The data, in a report from the campaign group Oil Change International, also showed that five "global north countries" -- the US, Canada, Australia, Norway and the UK -- will be responsible for just over half of all the planned expansion from new oil and gas fields to 2050. Greenhouse gas emissions from all of the oil and gas expansion that is planned in the next three decades would be more than enough to drive global temperatures well beyond the limit of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels that countries agreed in 2021 at Cop26 in Glasgow, the report found.

Companies choose Alphabet's Google as the default search engine for their browsers and smartphones because it is the best one, and not because of a lack of competition, a Google lawyer said Tuesday at the start of a high-stakes antitrust trial in Washington. From a report: Consumers use Google "because it delivers value to them, not because they have to," John Schmidtlein, a partner at Williams & Connolly LLP who is representing the company, said during his opening statements on the first day of the trial. "Users today have more search options and ways to access information online than ever before."

Schmidtlein pushed back on claims by US Justice Department antitrust enforcers that Google has used its market power -- and billions of dollars in exclusive deals with web browsers -- to illegally block rivals. Users have choices, and it's easy to switch, he said. For example, Microsoft pre-selects its own search engine, Bing, on Windows PCs, yet most PC users switch to Google because it's a better product, he said. Web browsers offered by Apple and Mozilla, which makes Firefox, have long chosen a default search engine in exchange for a revenue-share that helps pay for innovations, Schmidtlein said.

Major corporations from oil and gas companies to retail giants would have to disclose their direct greenhouse gas emissions as well as those that come from activities like employee business travel under legislation passed Monday by California lawmakers, the most sweeping mandate of its kind in the nation. From a report: The legislation would require thousands of public and private businesses that operate in California and make more than $1 billion annually to report their direct and indirect emissions. The goal is to increase transparency and nudge companies to evaluate how they can cut their emissions. "We are out of time on addressing the climate crisis," Democratic Assemblymember Chris Ward said. "This will absolutely help us take a leap forward to be able to hold ourselves accountable."

The legislation was one of the highest profile climate bills in California this year, racking support from major companies that include Patagonia and Apple, as well as Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the United Nations convention behind the 2015 Paris climate agreement. The bill would still need final approval by the state Senate before it can reach Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. Lawmakers backing the bill say a large number of companies in the state already disclose some of their own emissions. But the bill is a controversial proposal that many other businesses and groups in the state oppose and say will be too burdensome.