Following moves by [1]both the European Union and India to implement USB-C as the default charging port for all consumer devices, the British government has now [2]begun a consultation on whether it should follow suit and implement a common standard for charging, and if this should be USB-C. From a report:

> The consultation has been started by the Office for Product Safety and Standards which sits within the Department for Business and Trade, and it calls for manufacturers, importers, distributors, and trade associations to provide their input on the matter. Of course, should the UK decide against adopting USB-C and implement a separate standard, expect that device manufacturers just provide dongles to support this rather than having unique device versions.

>

> The Office for Product Safety and Standards stated the following on this topic: "We consider that it would potentially help businesses and deliver consumer and environmental benefits if we were to introduce standardized requirements for chargers for certain portable electrical/electronic devices across the whole UK. We are seeking views from manufacturers, importers, distributors, and trade associations as to whether it would be helpful to do so and, if so, whether this should be based on USB-C â" as adopted by the EU."



[1] https://apple.slashdot.org/story/22/10/04/1119248/apple-will-be-forced-to-use-new-charger-after-eu-votes-for-usb-c

[2] https://www.neowin.net/news/uk-considering-making-usb-c-the-common-charging-standard-following-the-eu/

[1]schwit1 writes:

> Chinese scientists have mounted what they say is the world's first effective [2]attack on a widely used encryption method using a quantum computer . The breakthrough poses a "real and substantial threat" to the long-standing password-protection mechanism employed across critical sectors, including banking and the military, according to the researchers.

>

> Despite the slow progress in general-purpose quantum computing, which currently poses no threat to modern cryptography, scientists have been exploring various attack approaches on specialised quantum computers. In the latest work led by Wang Chao, of Shanghai University, the team said it used a quantum computer produced by Canada's D-Wave Systems to successfully breach cryptographic algorithms.

>

> Using the D-Wave Advantage, they successfully attacked the Present, Gift-64 and Rectangle algorithms -- all representative of the SPN (Substitution-Permutation Network) structure, which forms part of the foundation for advanced encryption standard (AES) widely used in the military and finance. AES-256, for instance, is considered the best encryption available and often referred to as military-grade encryption. While the exact passcode is not immediately available yet, it is closer than ever before, according to the study. "This is the first time that a real quantum computer has posed a real and substantial threat to multiple full-scale SPN structured algorithms in use today," they said in the peer-reviewed paper.



[1] https://slashdot.org/~schwit1

[2] https://thequantuminsider.com/2024/10/11/chinese-scientists-report-using-quantum-computer-to-hack-military-grade-encryption/

An anonymous reader shares a report:

> A Florida data broker that [1]lost hundreds of millions of Social Security numbers and other personally identifiable information in a data breach earlier this year, has [2]filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as the company faces a wave of litigation.

>

> Jericho Pictures, the parent company of the hacked data broker National Public Data, told a Florida bankruptcy court that it was unlikely to be able to repay its debtors or address its anticipated liabilities and class-action lawsuits, including paying "for credit monitoring for hundreds of millions of potentially impacted individuals." In its initial filing, Jericho Pictures' owner, Salvatore Verini, said the company "faces substantial uncertainty facing regulatory challenges by the Federal Trade Commission and more than 20 states with civil penalties for data breaches."



[1] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/08/17/0024202/national-public-data-confirms-breach-exposing-social-security-numbers

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/14/national-public-data-the-hacked-data-broker-that-lost-millions-of-social-security-numbers-and-more-files-for-bankruptcy/

NASA's Europa Clipper mission [1]lifted off successfully on Monday , marking the agency's first mission to Jupiter in over a decade. The $5.2 billion spacecraft aims to investigate whether Europa, Jupiter's fourth-largest moon, could harbor conditions suitable for life. A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:06 p.m. Eastern time, lifting the Europa Clipper spacecraft into orbit around Earth.

Europa Clipper, NASA's largest-ever interplanetary craft, weighs 12,500 pounds and boasts solar panels spanning 100 feet. Its nine scientific instruments will study Europa's surface and interior in unprecedented detail. After a 1.8 billion-mile journey, the spacecraft will reach Jupiter in April 2030. It will then conduct 49 flybys of Europa over four years, coming within 16 miles of the moon's surface.

Scientists believe Europa's subsurface ocean could contain twice as much water as Earth's oceans. The mission will measure ocean depth, analyze surface compounds, and map Europa's magnetic field to gather clues about its internal composition. Instruments will search for warm spots indicating thin ice, potential cryovolcanoes, and plumes of water vapor. The spacecraft will also attempt to identify carbon-based molecules that could serve as building blocks for life. "Europa is certainly the most likely place for life beyond Earth in our solar system," Robert Pappalardo, Europa Clipper project scientist, told the New York Times.



[1] https://blogs.nasa.gov/europaclipper/

WordPress.org has seized control of WP Engine's Advanced Custom Fields plugin, renaming it "Secure Custom Fields" and removing commercial elements, according to WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. The move, justified by alleged security concerns and linked to [1]ongoing litigation between WP Engine and Automattic , marks an unprecedented forcible takeover in the WordPress ecosystem.

David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails and co-founder and chief technology officer of Basecamp-maker 37signals, [2]opines on the situation :

> For a dispute that started with a claim of " [3]trademark confusion ", there's an incredible irony in the fact that Automattic is now hijacking users looking for ACF onto their own plugin. And providing as rational for this unprecedented breach of open source norms that ACF needs maintenance, and since WPE is no longer able to provide that (given that they were blocked!), Automattic has to step in to do so. I mean, what?!

>

> Imagine this happening on npm? Imagine Meta getting into a legal dispute with Microsoft (the owners of GitHub, who in turn own npm), and Microsoft responding by directing GitHub to ban all Meta employees from accessing their repositories. And then Microsoft just takes over the official React repository, pointing it to their own Super React fork. This is the kind of crazy we're talking about.

>

> Weaponizing open source code registries is something we simply cannot allow to form precedence. They must remain neutral territory. Little Switzerlands in a world of constant commercial skirmishes.

>

> And that's really the main reason I care to comment on this whole sordid ordeal. If this fight was just one between two billion-dollar companies, as Automattic and WPE both are, I would not have cared to wade in. But the principles at stake extend far beyond the two of them.

>

> Using an open source project like WordPress as leverage in this contract dispute, and weaponizing its plugin registry, is an endangerment of an open source peace that has reigned decades, with peace-time dividends for all. Not since [4]the SCO-Linux nonsense of the early 2000s have we faced such a potential explosion in fear, doubt, and uncertainty in the open source realm on basic matters everyone thought they could take for granted.



[1] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/10/03/1354214/wp-engine-sues-wordpress-for-libel-extortion

[2] https://world.hey.com/dhh/open-source-royalty-and-mad-kings-a8f79d16

[3] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/04/1925239/matt-mullenweg-wordpressorg-just-belongs-to-me

[4] https://linux.slashdot.org/story/04/07/20/2024215/sco-claims-linux-lifted-elf

The growing use of AI and machine learning in financial services globally can [1]lead to financial stability risks and warrants adequate risk mitigation practices by banks, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India said on Monday. From a report:

> "The heavy reliance of AI can lead to concentration risks, especially when a small number of technology providers dominate the market," Shaktikanta Das said at an event in New Delhi. This could amplify systemic risks as failures or disruptions in these systems may cascade across the financial sector, Das added.

>

> India's financial service providers are using AI to enhance customer experience, reduce costs, manage risks and drive growth through chatbots and personalised banking. The growing use of AI introduces new vulnerabilities like increased susceptibility to cyber attacks and data breaches, Das said. AI's "opacity" makes it difficult to audit and interpret algorithms which drive lender's decisions and could potentially lead to "unpredictable consequences in the market," he warned.



[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/india-cenbank-chief-warns-against-financial-stability-risks-growing-use-ai-2024-10-14/

The [1]Internet Archive has resumed operations in a read-only state following a cyberattack that took the digital library offline on October 9, coupled with the [2]theft of 31 million user authentication records . "Safe to resume but might need further maintenance, in which case it will be suspended again," [3]said Brewster Kahle, Internet Archive's founder. The website is currently now allowing users to save pages.



[1] https://web.archive.org/

[2] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/10/09/2247234/internet-archive-suffers-catastrophic-breach-impacting-31-million-users

[3] https://x.com/brewster_kahle/status/1845688309085065571

"Google is [1]developing a Linux terminal app for Android ," reports the blog Android Authority . "The Terminal app can be enabled via developer options and will install Debian in a virtual machine.

"This app is likely intended for Chromebooks but might also be available for mobile devices, too."

> While there are ways to run some Linux apps on Android devices, all of those methods have some limitations and aren't officially supported by Google. Fortunately, though, Google is finally working on an official way to run Linux apps on Android... This Terminal app is part of the Android Virtualization Framework (AVF) and contains a WebView that connects to a Linux virtual machine via a local IP address, allowing you to run Linux commands from the Android host...

>

> A set of patches under the tag "ferrochrome-dev-option" was recently submitted to the [2]Android Open Source Project that adds a new developer option called Linux terminal under Settings > System > Developer options. This new option will enable a "Linux terminal app that runs inside the VM," according to its proposed description. Toggling this option enables the Terminal app that's bundled with AVF...

>

> Google is still working on improving the Terminal app as well as AVF before shipping this feature... What's particularly interesting about the patch that adds these settings is that it was tested on "tangorpro" and "komodo," the codenames for the Pixel Tablet and Pixel 9 Pro XL respectively. This suggests that the Terminal app won't be limited to Chromebooks like the new desktop versions of Chrome for Android.



[1] https://www.androidauthority.com/android-linux-terminal-app-3489887/

[2] https://www.androidauthority.com/aosp-explained-1093505/

Bobby Renfro spent $1,200 to buy a gas-powered electricity generator for a community resource hub he set up in a former church near hurricane-struck Asheville, North Carolina. He's spending thousands more on fuel, [1]reports the Associated Press — though he's just one of many. Right now over 500,000 people are without power in Florida, according to the [2]PowerOutage.us project — with more than 9,000 in Georgia, and over 17,000 in North Carolina"

> Without it, they can't keep medicines cold or power medical equipment or pump well water. They can't recharge their phones or apply for federal disaster aid... Residents who can get their hands on gas and diesel-powered generators are depending on them, but that is not easy. Fuel is expensive and can be a long drive away. Generator fumes pollute and [3]can be deadly . Small home generators are designed to run for hours or days, not weeks and months.

>

> Now, more help is arriving. Renfro received a new power source this week, one that will be cleaner, quieter and free to operate. Volunteers with the nonprofit Footprint Project and a local solar installation company delivered a solar generator with six 245-watt solar panels, a 24-volt battery and an AC power inverter. The panels now rest on a grassy hill outside the community building. Renfro hopes his community can draw some comfort and security, "seeing and knowing that they have a little electricity." The Footprint Project is scaling up its response to this disaster with sustainable mobile infrastructure. It has deployed dozens of larger solar microgrids, solar generators and machines that can pull water from the air to 33 sites so far, along with dozens of smaller portable batteries.

>

> With donations from solar equipment and installation companies as well as equipment purchased through donated funds, the nonprofit is sourcing hundreds more small batteries and dozens of other larger systems and even industrial-scale solar generators known as "Dragon Wings."



[1] https://apnews.com/article/hurricane-helene-solar-power-north-carolina-095b6ff5f1290ac7439f12b555f9845d

[2] https://poweroutage.us/

[3] https://apnews.com/article/1ec281863a874347ba0cb92360591f0b

"Some prominent [1]privacy [2]advocates are encouraging customers to [3]pull their data " from 23andMe, [4]reports SFGate .

But can you actually do that?

> 23andMe makes it easy to feel like you've protected your genetic footprint. In their account settings, customers can download versions of their data to a computer and choose to delete the data attached to their 23andMe profile. An email then arrives with a big pink button: "Permanently Delete All Records." Doing so, it promises, will "terminate your relationship with 23andMe and irreversibly delete your account and Personal Information."

>

> But there's another clause in the email that conflicts with that "terminate" promise. It says 23andMe and whichever contracted genotyping laboratory worked on a customer's samples will still hold on to the customer's sex, date of birth and genetic information, even after they're "deleted." The reason? The company cites "legal obligations," including federal laboratory regulations and California lab rules. The [5]federal program , which sets quality standards for laboratories, requires that labs hold on to patient test records for at least two years; the California [6]rule , part of the state's Business and Professions Code, requires three. When SFGATE asked 23andMe vice president of communications Katie Watson about the retention mandates, she said 23andMe does delete the genetic data after the three-year period, where applicable...

>

> Before it's finally deleted, the data remains 23andMe property and is held under the same rules as the company's privacy policy, Watson added. If that policy changes, customers are supposed to be informed and asked for their consent. In the meantime, a hack is unfortunately always possible. Another 23andMe spokesperson, Andy Kill, told SFGATE that [CEO Anne] Wojcicki is "committed to customers' privacy and pledges to retain the current privacy policy in force for the foreseeable future, including after the acquisition she is currently pursuing."

An Electronic Frontier Foundation privacy lawyer tells SFGate there's no information more personal than your DNA. "It is like a Social Security number, it can't be changed. But it's not just a piece of paper, it's kind of you."

He urged 23andMe to leave customers' data out of any acquisition deals, and promise customers they'd avoid takeover attempts from companies with bad security — or with ties to law enforcement.



[1] https://x.com/mer__edith/status/1842133914585817536

[2] https://x.com/evacide/status/1841916600196464667

[3] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/10/what-do-if-youre-concerned-about-23andme-breach

[4] https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/california-dna-delete-23andme-bankruptcy-19830420.php

[5] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-42/chapter-IV/subchapter-G/part-493

[6] https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/business-and-professions-code/bpc-sect-1265/

America's electric vehicle subsidies brought a 2-to-1 return on investment, according to a paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research. "That includes environmental benefits, but mostly reflects a shift of profits to the United States," [1]reports the New York Times . "Before the climate law, tax credits were mainly used to buy foreign-made cars."

> "What the [subsidy legislation] did was swing the pendulum the other way, and heavily subsidized American carmakers," said Felix Tintelnot, an associate professor of economics at Duke University who was a co-author of the paper. Those benefits were undermined, however, by a loophole allowing dealers to apply the subsidy to leases of foreign-made electric vehicles. The provision sends profits to non-American companies, and since those foreign-made vehicles are on average heavier and less efficient, they impose more environmental and road-safety costs. Also, the researchers estimated that for every additional electric vehicle the new tax credits put on the road, about three other electric vehicle buyers would have made the purchases even without a $7,500 credit. That dilutes the effectiveness of the subsidies, which are forecast to cost as much as $390 billion through 2031.

The chief economist at Cox Automotive (which provided some of the data) tells the Times that "we could do better", but adds that the subsidies were "worth the money invested". But of course, that depends partly on how benefits were calculated:

> [U]ing the Environmental Protection Agency's "social cost of carbon" metric, they calculated the dollar cost of each model's lifetime carbon emissions from both manufacturing and driving. On average, emissions by gas-powered vehicles impose 57% greater costs than electric vehicles. The study then calculated harms from air pollution other than greenhouse gases — smog, for example. That's where electric vehicles start to perform relatively poorly, since generating the electricity for them still creates pollution. Those harms will probably fade as more wind and solar energy comes online, but they are significant. Finally, the authors added the road deaths associated with heavier cars. Batteries are heavy, so electric vehicles — especially the largest — are likelier to kill people in crashes.

>

> Totaling these costs and then subtracting fiscal benefits through gas taxes and electricity bills, electric vehicles impose $16,003 in net harms, the authors said, while gas vehicles impose $19,239. But the range is wide, with the largest electric vehicles far outpacing many internal combustion cars.

By this methodology, a large electric pickup like the Rivian imposes three times the harms of a Prius, according to one of the study's co-authors (a Stanford professor of global environmental). And yet "we are subsidizing the Rivian and not the Prius..."



[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/e-v-tax-credits-are-a-plus-but-flaws-remain-study-finds/ar-AA1rPfuA

To avoid overloading local electric grids, Britain's most productive windfarm "is paid to turn off," [1]reports the Guardian — and across the industry these so-called "constraint payments" amount to billions every year.

"Government officials are hoping to correct the clear inefficiencies in the market by overhauling the market itself."

> Greg Jackson, the founder of Octopus Energy, told the Guardian: "It's grotesque that energy costs are rising again this winter, whilst we literally pay windfarms these extortionate prices not to generate. Locational pricing would instead mean that local people got cheap power when it's windy. Scotland would have the cheapest power in Europe, instead of among the most expensive, and every region would be cheaper than today. Companies would invest in infrastructure where we need it — not where they get the highest subsidies."

>

> The changes could catalyse an economic osmosis of high energy users — such as [2]datacentres and factories — into areas of the country with low energy prices, creating new job opportunities beyond the south-east. It could also spur the development of new energy projects — particularly rooftop solar — across buildings in urban areas where energy demand is high. This rebalancing of the energy market could save the UK nearly £49bn in accumulated network costs by 2040, according to a study commissioned by the energy regulator from FTI Consulting.

>

> But others fear the changes could come at a deeper cost to Britain's climate goals — and bill payers too. The clean energy companies preparing to spend billions on building new wind and solar farms are concerned that a redrawing of the market boundaries could [3]radically change the economics of new renewable energy projects — which would ultimately raise the costs, which would be passed on to consumers, or see the projects scrapped altogether... With stiff competition in the international markets for investment in clean energy, Renewable UK [the industry's trade group] fears that companies and their investors will simply choose to build new clean energy projects elsewhere.

"The debate has driven deep rifts across the industry," the article concludes, "between modernisers who believe the new price signals would give rise to a new, rational market and those who fear the changes risk unravelling Britain's low-carbon agenda...

"The government is expected to make a decision on how to proceed in the coming months, but the fierce debate between warring factions of the energy industry is likely to continue for far longer."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader [4]AmiMoJo for sharing the news.



[1] https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/oct/07/ive-fallen-out-with-people-the-bruising-debate-over-uk-zonal-energy-pricing

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/23/ireland-datacentres-overtake-electricity-use-of-all-homes-combined-figures-show

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/07/zonal-energy-pricing-plan-uk-industry-trade-groups-ed-miliband

[4] https://www.slashdot.org/~AmiMoJo

Meta senior research Yann LeCun (also a professor at New York University) told the Wall Street Journal that worries about AI threatening humanity [1]are "complete B.S. "

> When a departing OpenAI researcher in May talked up the need to learn how to control ultra-intelligent AI, LeCun pounced. "It seems to me that before 'urgently figuring out how to control AI systems much smarter than us' we need to have the beginning of a hint of a design for a system smarter than a house cat," he [2]replied on X . He likes the cat metaphor. Felines, after all, have a mental model of the physical world, persistent memory, some reasoning ability and a capacity for planning, he says. None of these qualities are present in today's "frontier" AIs, including those made by Meta itself.

LeCun shared a Turing Award with [3]Geoffrey Hinton and Hoshua Bengio (who hopes LeCun is right, but adds "I don't think we should leave it to the competition between companies and the profit motive alone to protect the public and democracy. That is why I think we need governments involved.")

But LeCun still believes AI is a very powerful tool — even as Meta joins the quest for artificial general intelligence:

> Throughout our interview, he cites many examples of how AI has become enormously important at Meta, and has driven its scale and revenue to the point that it's now valued at around $1.5 trillion. AI is integral to everything from real-time translation to content moderation at Meta, which in addition to its Fundamental AI Research team, known as FAIR, has a product-focused AI group called GenAI that is pursuing ever-better versions of its large language models. "The impact on Meta has been really enormous," he says.

>

> At the same time, he is convinced that today's AIs aren't, in any meaningful sense, intelligent — and that many others in the field, especially at AI startups, are ready to extrapolate its recent development in ways that he finds ridiculous... OpenAI's Sam Altman last month said we could have Artificial General Intelligence within "a few thousand days...." But creating an AI this capable could easily take decades, [LeCun] says — and today's dominant approach won't get us there.... His bet is that research on AIs that work in a fundamentally different way will set us on a path to human-level intelligence. These hypothetical future AIs could take many forms, but work being done at FAIR to digest video from the real world is among the projects that currently excite LeCun. The idea is to create models that learn in a way that's analogous to how a baby animal does, by building a world model from the visual information it takes in.

In contrast, today's AI models "are really just predicting the next word in a text, he says... And because of their enormous memory capacity, they can seem to be reasoning, when in fact they're merely regurgitating information they've already been trained on."



[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/this-ai-pioneer-thinks-ai-is-dumber-than-a-cat/ar-AA1s7O1F

[2] https://x.com/ylecun/status/1791890883425570823

[3] https://slashdot.org/story/24/10/09/1949256/after-winning-nobel-prize-geoffrey-hinton-said-he-was-proud-ilya-sutskever-fired-sam-altman

Slashdot reader [1]Rick Schumann shared this [2]report from the blog AppleInsider :

> A new paper from Apple's artificial intelligence scientists has found that engines based on large language models, such as those from Meta and OpenAI, still lack basic reasoning skills.

>

> The group [3]has proposed a new benchmark, GSM-Symbolic, to help others measure the reasoning capabilities of various large language models (LLMs). Their initial testing reveals that slight changes in the wording of queries can result in significantly different answers, undermining the reliability of the models. The group investigated the "fragility" of mathematical reasoning by adding contextual information to their queries that a human could understand, but which should not affect the fundamental mathematics of the solution. This resulted in varying answers, which shouldn't happen...

>

> The study found that adding even a single sentence that appears to offer relevant information to a given math question can reduce the accuracy of the final answer by up to 65 percent. "There is just no way you can build reliable agents on this foundation, where changing a word or two in irrelevant ways or adding a few bit of irrelevant info can give you a different answer," the study concluded... "We found no evidence of formal reasoning in language models," the new study concluded. The behavior of LLMS "is better explained by sophisticated pattern matching" which the study found to be "so fragile, in fact, that [simply] changing names can alter results."



[1] https://www.slashdot.org/~Rick+Schumann

[2] https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/10/12/apples-study-proves-that-llm-based-ai-models-are-flawed-because-they-cannot-reason?utm_medium=rss

[3] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.05229

"Technical outerwear brand Arc'teryx and wearable technology startup Skip have teamed up to create exoskeleton hiking pants, powered by AI..." [1]reports CNN . After four years of collaboration and testing, the two companies plan to start selling the battery-powered pants in 2025 for $5,000 — but they're also "available to rent and try out now," according to CNN's video report:

> "You can think of it like an e-bike for walking..." says Skip's co-founder and chief product officer Anna Roumiantseva. "On the way up, it really kind of offloads some of those big muscle groups that are working their hardest. We like to say it gives you about 40% more power in your legs on the way up with every step." ("And then supports their knees on the way down," says Cam Stuart, Arc'Teryx's advanced concepts team manager for research and engineering.)

>

> Kathryn Zealand, Skip Co-founder and CEO adds, "There's a lot of artificial intelligence built into these pants," with Roumiantseva explaining that technology "understands how you move, predicts how you're going to want to move next — and then assists you in doing that, so that the assistant doesn't feel like you're walking to the beat of the robot or is moving independently..."

>

> Stuart: I think when people think of what an exoskeleton is, they think of this big bionic frame or they think it's like Avatar or something like that. The challenge for us really was how do we put that in a pair of pants...?"

>

> Co-founder Roumiantseva: We've done a lot of work to make a lot of the complicated and sophisticated technology that goes into it look and feel as approachable and as similar to a garment as possible.

>

> Co-founder Zealand: And so maybe you think about them like a pair of pants.

CNN points out it isn't the only "recreational exoskeleton." (Companies like Dnsys and Hypershell have even "developed their own lightweight exoskeletons — through Kickstarter campaigns.")

But beyond recreation, this also has applications for people with disabilities. "Movement and mobility, it's such a huge driver of quality of life, it's such a huge driver of joy," says Skip's co-founder and chief product officer. "It does become a luxury — and that's a huge part of why we're building what we're building. Is we don't think it should be."



[1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/08/style/video/arcteryx-skip-exoskeleton-hiking-pants-digvid

The Wall Street Journal reports on [1]a "suspicious fleet of unidentified aircraft ... as many as a dozen or more" that appeared in Virginia 10 months ago "over an area that includes the home base for the Navy's SEAL Team Six and Naval Station Norfolk, the world's largest naval port." The article notes this was just 10 months after the U.S. [2]shot down a Chinese spy balloon ...

After watching the drones — some "roughly 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles an hour" — there were weeks of meetings where "Officials from agencies including the Defense Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Pentagon's UFO office joined outside experts to throw out possible explanations as well as ideas about how to respond..."

> Federal law prohibits the military from shooting down drones near military bases in the U.S. unless they pose an imminent threat. Aerial snooping doesn't qualify, though some lawmakers hope to give the military greater leeway...

>

> Drone incursions into restricted airspace was already worrying national-security officials. Two months earlier, in October 2023, five drones flew over a government site used for nuclear-weapons experiments. The Energy Department's Nevada Nuclear Security Site outside Las Vegas detected four of the drones over three days. Employees spotted a fifth. U.S. officials said they didn't know who operated the drones in Nevada, a previously unreported incursion, or for what reason. A spokeswoman said the facility has since upgraded a system to detect and counter drones...

>

> Over 17 days, the [Virginia] drones arrived at dusk, flew off and circled back... They also were nearly impossible to track, vanishing each night despite a wealth of resources deployed to catch them. Gen. Glen VanHerck, at the time commander of the U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said drones had for years been spotted flying around defense installations. But the nightly drone swarms over Langley [Air Force base], he said, were unlike any past incursion...

>

> Analysts learned that the smaller quadcopters didn't use the usual frequency band available for off-the-shelf commercial drones — more evidence that the drone operators weren't hobbyists.

"Langley officials canceled nighttime training missions, worried about potential collisions with the drone swarm, and moved the F-22 jet fighters to another base... On December 23, the drones made their last visit."

But toward the end of the article, it notes that "In January, authorities found a clue they hoped would crack the case." It was a student at the University of Minnesota named Fengyun Shi — who was reported flying a drone on a rainy morning near a Virginia shipyard that builds nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. Their drone got stuck in a tree, and ended up with federal investigators who found "Shi had photographed Navy vessels in dry dock, including shots taken around midnight. Some were under construction at the nearby shipyard."

> On Jan. 18, federal agents arrested Shi as he was about to board a flight to China on a one-way ticket. Shi told FBI agents he was a ship enthusiast and hadn't realized his drone crossed into restricted airspace. Investigators weren't convinced. but found no evidence linking him to the Chinese government. They learned he had bought the drone on sale at a Costco in San Francisco the day before he traveled to Norfolk. U.S. prosecutors charged Shi with unlawfully taking photos of classified naval installations, the first case involving a drone under a provision of U.S. espionage law. The 26-year-old Chinese national pleaded guilty and appeared in federal court in Norfolk on Oct. 2 for sentencing. Magistrate Judge Lawrence Leonard said he didn't believe Shi's story — that he had been on vacation and was flying drones in the middle of the night for fun. "There's significant holes," the judge said in court.

>

> "If he was a foreign agent, he would be the worst spy ever known," said Shi's attorney, Shaoming Cheng. "I'm sorry about what happened in Norfolk," Shi said before he was sentenced to six months in federal prison.

But "U.S. officials have yet to determine who flew the Langley drones or why..."

"U.S. officials confirmed this month that more unidentified drone swarms were spotted in recent months near Edwards Air Force Base, north of Los Angeles."



[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/mystery-drones-swarmed-a-u-s-military-base-for-17-days-the-pentagon-is-stumped/ar-AA1saqAu

[2] https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/02/04/2227235/us-fighter-jets-shoot-down-spy-balloon-with-a-single-missile

Early this morning SpaceX successfully launched its Starship rocket on its fifth test flight. But more importantly, [1]CNBC points out , SpaceX "made a dramatic first catch of the rocket's more than 20-story tall booster."

[2]Watch the footage here. It's pretty exciting ...

> The achievement marks a major milestone toward SpaceX's goal of making Starship a fully reusable rocket system... The rocket's "Super Heavy" booster returned to land on the arms of the company's launch tower nearly seven minutes after launch.

>

> "Are you kidding me?" SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot said on the company's webcast. "What we just saw, that looked like magic," Huot added...

>

> Starship separated and continued on to space, traveling halfway around the Earth before reentering the atmosphere and splashing down in the Indian Ocean as intended to complete the test. There were no people on board the fifth Starship flight. The company's leadership has said SpaceX expects to fly hundreds of Starship missions before the rocket launches with any crew...

>

> With the booster catch, SpaceX has surpassed the fourth test flight's milestones... The company sees the ambitious catch approach as critical to its goal of making the rocket fully reusable. "SpaceX engineers have spent years preparing and months testing for the booster catch attempt, with technicians pouring tens of thousands of hours into building the infrastructure to maximize our chances for success," the company wrote on its website.



[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/13/spacex-starship-rocket-launch-flight-5-booster-catch-attempt.html

[2] https://youtu.be/OuUgLKK_S5k?t=901

Last month [1]C dropped from 3rd to 4th in TIOBE's ranking of programming language popularity (which tries to calculate [2]each language's share of search engine results ). Java moved up into the #3 position in September, [3]reports TechRepublic , which notes that by comparison October "saw relatively little change" — though percentages of search results increased slightly. "At number one, Python jumped from 20.17% in September to 21.9% in October. In second place, C++ rose from 10.75% in September to 11.6%. In third, Java ascended from 9.45% to 10.51%..."

Is there a larger trend? TIOBE CEO Paul Jansen [4]writes that the need to harvest more data increases demand for fast data manipulation languages. But they also need to be easy to learn ("because the resource pool of skilled software engineers is drying up") and secure ("because of continuous cyber threats.")

> King of all, Python, is easy to learn and secure, but not fast. Hence, engineers are frantically looking for fast alternatives for Python. C++ is an obvious candidate, but it is considered "not secure" because of its explicit memory management. Rust is another candidate, although not easy to learn. Rust is, thanks to its emphasis on security and speed, making its way to the TIOBE index top 10 now. [It's #13 — up from #20 a year ago]

>

> The cry for fast, data crunching languages is also visible elsewhere in the TIOBE index. [5]The language Mojo [a faster superset of Python [6]designed for accelerated hardware like GPUs ]... enters the top 50 for the first time. The fact that this language is only 1 year old and already showing up, makes it a very promising language.

In the last 12 months three languages also fell from the top ten:

PHP (dropping from #8 to #15)

SQL (dropping from #9 to #11)

Assembly language (dropping from #10 to #16)



[1] https://www.techrepublic.com/article/tiobe-index-sep-24/

[2] https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/programminglanguages_definition/

[3] https://www.techrepublic.com/article/tiobe-index-oct-24/

[4] https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

[5] https://developers.slashdot.org/story/23/05/17/034204/mojo-may-be-the-biggest-programming-language-advance-in-decades

[6] https://thenewstack.io/mojos-chris-lattner-on-making-programming-languages-evolve/

Zambia has the largest man-made lake in the world, [1]reports the Associated Press — but [2]a severe drought has left the lake's 128-meter-high (420-feet) dam wall "almost completely exposed". This leaves Kariba dam without enough water to run most of its hydroelectric turbines — meaning millions of people in Zambia now face "a climate-induced energy crisis..."

> The water level is so low that only one of the six turbines on Zambia's side of the dam is able to operate, cutting generation to less than 10% of normal output. Zambia relies on the dam for more than 80% of its national electricity supply, and the result is Zambians have barely a few hours of power a day at the best of times. Often, areas are going without electricity for days... The power crisis is a bigger blow to the economy and the battle against poverty than the lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Zambia Association of Manufacturers president Ashu Sagar.

>

> Africa contributes the least to global warming but is [3]the most vulnerable continent to extreme weather events and climate change as poor countries can't meet the high financials costs of adapting. This year's drought in southern Africa is the worst in decades and has parched crops and left millions hungry, causing [4]Zambia and others to already declare national disasters and ask for aid...

>

> Zambia is not alone in that hydroelectric power makes up over 80% of the energy mix in Mozambique, Malawi, Uganda, Ethiopia and Congo, even as experts warn it will become more unreliable. "Extreme weather patterns, including prolonged droughts, make it clear that overreliance on hydro is no longer sustainable," said Carlos Lopes, a professor at the Mandela School of Public Governance at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

While the lake's water level normally rises six meters after it rains, "It moved by less than 30 centimeters after the last rainy season barely materialized, authorities said...

"Experts say there's also no guarantee those rains will come and it's dangerous to rely on [5]a changing climate given Zambia has had drought-induced power problems before, and the trend is they are getting worse."



[1] https://apnews.com/article/climate-power-electricity-drought-environment-6e3e746566b0831491e72de380f4079d

[2] https://apnews.com/article/southern-africa-drought-hunger-food-climate-2ef702abc386f7182dbc5f8f4192be3c

[3] https://apnews.com/article/africa-climate-change-flooding-droughts-af5beebf70f414098ad2a4a73a19b76c

[4] https://apnews.com/article/malawi-africa-drought-disaster-el-nino-ccdb755b84133d0e2796da3296410edf

[5] https://apnews.com/article/water-united-nations-world-meteorological-organization-86183afa4d917fe9777f730159849c8f

Thursday [1]the Associated Press reported :

> One of the two companies that manufacture high-purity quartz used for making semiconductors and other high-tech products from mines in a western North Carolina community severely damaged by Hurricane Helene is operating again. Sibelco announced on Thursday that production has restarted at its mining and processing operations in Spruce Pine, located 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of Asheville. [ [2]Per Wikipedia , its pre-hurricane population was 2,175.] Production and shipments are progressively ramping up to full capacity, the company said in [3]a news release .

>

> "While the road to full recovery for our communities will be long, restarting our operations and resuming shipments to customers are important contributors to rebuilding the local economy," Sibelco CEO Hilmar Rode said... A Spruce Pine council member said recently that an estimated three-quarters of the town has a direct connection to the mines, whether through a job, a job that relies on the mines or a family member who works at the facilities.

An [4]announcement last week from Sibelco attributed its resilience to their long-standing commitment to sustainability, "which includes measures to mitigate the impact of extreme weather events such as Hurricane Helene." Initial assessments indicated their operating facilities sustained only minor damage.

And "the company previously announced that all its employees are safe," Sibelco reaffirmed [5]in its announcement Thursday :

> Sibelco, with support from its contractors, has been [6]contributing to the local recovery efforts by clearing debris, repairing roads, providing road building materials to the North Carolina Department of Transportation, installing temporary power generators for emergency shelters and local businesses, and working with the town of Spruce Pine to restart water supply to residents.

>

> Additionally, Sibelco has incorporated the Sibelco Spruce Pine Foundation to further support the community's recovery. The company [7]previously announced that it is making an immediate $1 million donation as seed money for the foundation. Anyone interested in learning more or contributing to this initiative should contact the foundation by [8]email or by visiting [9]our website for additional information and donation opportunities.



[1] https://apnews.com/article/north-carolina-helene-quartz-production-b977148e2b3fd0ada7e7ae4d300a0a6a

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spruce_Pine,_North_Carolina

[3] https://www.sibelco.com/en/news/sibelco-restarts-production-and-customer-shipments-at-spruce-pine-following-hurricane-helene

[4] https://www.sibelco.com/en/news/progress-with-spruce-pine-recovery-activities

[5] https://www.sibelco.com/en/news/sibelco-restarts-production-and-customer-shipments-at-spruce-pine-following-hurricane-helene

[6] https://www.sibelco.com/en/news/progress-with-spruce-pine-recovery-activities

[7] https://www.sibelco.com/en/news/sibelco-announces-1-million-donation-to-spruce-pine-recovery-and-establishes-foundation-for-ongoing-community-support

[8] mailto:SibelcoSprucePineFoundation@sibelco.com

[9] https://www.sibelco.com/en/sibelco-spruce-pine-foundation