Steam has [1]broken its record for the most PC players online , with 38,366,479 concurrent gamers. As IGN notes, that figure is a million more than the previous record, set last month. From the report:

> So, what helped propel Steam to new heights over the weekend? All the usual suspects were in the top 10 most-played games on Valve's platform, including Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, Banana (yes, Banana has yet to split), and PUBG, with this year's Black Myth: Wukong, Satisfactory 1.0, Space Marine 2, and Valve's own Deadlock putting in work. Last week saw PlayStation exclusives God of War Ragnarok and Final Fantasy 16 both launch on Steam for the first time, which will have provided a modest boost, too.

>

> The popularity of Steam is gradually increasing as Valve's vice-like grip on the PC market tightens ever further. Competitors such as the Epic Games Store and CD Projekt's GOG occupy a relatively small piece of the PC gaming pie, with Steam continuing to enjoy record-breaking success even amid perceived downturns in the video game industry. The release of Steam Deck is yet another platform on which Steam operates.



[1] https://www.ign.com/articles/steam-breaks-its-record-for-pc-players-online-once-again

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch:

> With the perennial tensions between proprietary and open source software (OSS) unlikely to end anytime soon, a $3 billion startup is throwing its weight behind a new licensing paradigm -- one that's [1]designed to bridge the open and proprietary worlds , replete with new definition, terminology, and governance model. Developer software company Sentry recently [2]introduced a new license category dubbed " [3]fair source ." Sentry is an initial adopter, as are some half dozen others, including [4]GitButler , a developer tooling company from one of GitHub's founders. The [5]fair source concept is designed to help companies align themselves with the "open" software development sphere, without encroaching into existing licensing landscapes, be that open source, open core, or source-available, and while avoiding any negative associations that exist with "proprietary." However, fair source is also a response to the growing sense that open source isn't working out commercially.

>

> "Open source isn't a business model -- open source is a distribution model, it's a software development model, primarily," Chad Whitacre, Sentry's head of open source, told TechCrunch. "And in fact, it places severe limits on what business models are available, because of the licensing terms." Sure, there are hugely successful open source projects, but they are generally components of larger proprietary products. Businesses that have flown the open source flag have mostly retreated to protect their hard work, moving either from fully permissive to a more restrictive "copyleft" license, as the likes of [6]Element did last year and [7]Grafana before it , or ditched open source altogether as HashiCorp did with Terraform. "Most of the world's software is still closed source," Whitacre added. "Kubernetes is open source, but Google Search is closed. React is open source, but Facebook Newsfeed is closed. With fair source, we're carving a space for companies to safely share not just these lower-level infrastructure components, but share access to their core product."

Further reading: [8]As Companies Try 'Open Source Rug Pull', Open Source Foundations Considered Helpful



[1] https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/22/some-startups-are-going-fair-source-to-avoid-the-pitfalls-of-open-source-licensing/

[2] https://blog.sentry.io/sentry-is-now-fair-source/

[3] https://fair.io/

[4] https://gitbutler.com/

[5] https://fair.io/about/

[6] https://grafana.com/blog/2021/04/20/grafana-loki-tempo-relicensing-to-agplv3/

[7] https://grafana.com/blog/2021/04/20/grafana-loki-tempo-relicensing-to-agplv3/

[8] https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/21/0530234/as-companies-try-open-source-rug-pull-open-source-foundations-considered-helpful

Ars Technica's Dan Goodin reports:

> Five years ago, researchers made a grim discovery -- a legitimate Android app in the Google Play market that was [1]surreptitiously made malicious by a library the developers used to earn advertising revenue. With that, the app was infected with code that caused 100 million infected devices to connect to attacker-controlled servers and download secret payloads. Now, history is repeating itself. Researchers from the same Moscow, Russia-based security firm [2]reported Monday that they found two new apps, [3]downloaded from Play 11 million times , that were infected with the same malware family. The researchers, from Kaspersky, believe a malicious software developer kit for integrating advertising capabilities is once again responsible. [...]

>

> The researchers found Necro in two Google Play apps. One was Wuta Camera, an app with 10 million downloads to date. Wuta Camera versions 6.3.2.148 through 6.3.6.148 contained the malicious SDK that infects apps. The app has since been updated to remove the malicious component. A separate app with roughly 1 million downloads -- known as Max Browser -- was also infected. That app is no longer available in Google Play. The researchers also found Necro infecting a variety of Android apps available in alternative marketplaces. Those apps typically billed themselves as modified versions of legitimate apps such as Spotify, Minecraft, WhatsApp, Stumble Guys, Car Parking Multiplayer, and Melon Sandbox. People who are concerned they may be infected by Necro should check their devices for the presence of indicators of compromise listed at the end of [4]this writeup .



[1] https://it.slashdot.org/story/19/08/27/2031240/trojan-dropper-malware-found-in-camscanner-android-app-with-100-million-downloads

[2] https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/necro-infects-android-users/52201/

[3] https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/09/11-million-devices-infected-with-botnet-malware-hosted-in-google-play/

[4] https://securelist.com/necro-trojan-is-back-on-google-play/113881/

Amazon, Meta, and Tesla were named by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) as [1]some of the worst corporate underminers of democracy . These companies were accused of union busting, monopolizing media and technology, violating human rights, contributing to climate change, and fostering political movements that threaten democratic institutions. The full list of "corporate underminers of democracy for 2024" is Amazon, Blackstone Group, ExxonMobil, Glencore, Meta, Tesla and the Vanguard Group. The Register reports:

> The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) today [2]published a list of seven companies it said were "emblematic" of the ways large international corporations have begun tossing their weight around to influence global affairs. Those businesses, ITUC noted, violate trade union and alleged human rights, monopolize media and technology, exacerbate the climate catastrophe and try to privatize public services in a way that "protects and expands [their] own profits by undermining democracy." "These companies deploy complex lobbying operations to undermine popular will and disrupt existing or nascent global policy that could hold them accountable," ITUC wrote. The desire for greater corporate power, the Confederation added, invariably puts corporate interests in bed with anti-democratic political movements like the modern far-right. Right-wing politicians, ITUC noted, tend to lower taxes, undercut higher wages for workers, crack down on trade unions, and the like - all things sure to please the likes of corporations like Amazon, Tesla, and Meta as evidenced by plenty of prior reporting and research.

For Amazon, the ITUC criticized the company for becoming "notorious for its union busting and low wages, monopoly in e-commerce, egregious carbon emissions through its AWS [datacenters], corporate tax evasion and lobbying."

Meta was accused of exploiting user data, undermining privacy laws, manipulating global information, and failing to regulate harmful content on its platforms. "Meta's algorithms can quite literally alter humanity's perceptions of reality," ITUC said. "Its revenue model exploits trillions of personalized data points to deliver highly effective advertising." Some have referred to the company as "a foreign state, populated by people without sovereignty, ruled by a leader with absolute power."

As for Tesla, it was condemned for poor labor practices, anti-union politics, unsafe working conditions, human rights violations, and environmental damage in its supply chain. "The world's most highly-valued automaker has quickly become known as one of its most belligerent employers. Tesla's rapid market success has been outpaced only by the descent of its corporate leaders into anti-democratic, anti-union politics."



[1] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/23/amazon_tesla_meta_democracy/

[2] https://www.ituc-csi.org/corporate-underminers-of-democracy-en

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch:

> Cloudflare [1]announced plans on Monday to launch a marketplace in the next year where website owners [2]can sell AI model providers access to scrape their site's content . The marketplace is the final step of Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince's larger plan to give publishers greater control over how and when AI bots scrape their websites. "If you don't compensate creators one way or another, then they stop creating, and that's the bit which has to get solved," said Prince in an interview with TechCrunch.

>

> As the first step in its new plan, on Monday, Cloudflare launched free observability tools for customers, called AI Audit. Website owners will get a dashboard to view analytics on why, when, and how often AI models are crawling their sites for information. Cloudflare will also let customers block AI bots from their sites with the click of a button. Website owners can block all web scrapers using AI Audit, or let certain web scrapers through if they have deals or find their scraping beneficial. A demo of AI Audit shared with TechCrunch showed how website owners can use the tool, which is able to see where each scraper that visits your site comes from, and offers selective windows to see how many times scrapers from OpenAI, Meta, Amazon, and other AI model providers are visiting your site. [...]



[1] https://www.cloudflare.com/press-releases/2024/cloudflare-helps-content-creators-regain-control-of-content-from-ai/

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/23/cloudflares-new-marketplace-will-let-websites-charge-ai-bots-for-scraping/

[1]joshuark shares a report:

> Microsoft has officially announced that Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) is [2]now deprecated , but plans to maintain current functionality and continue publishing updates through the channel. This move isn't surprising, as Microsoft first listed WSUS as one of the "features removed or no longer developed starting with Windows Server 2025" [3]on August 13 . In June, the company also revealed that it would also soon deprecate WSUS driver synchronization.

>

> While new features and development for WSUS will cease, Microsoft said today that it plans to continue supporting the service's existing functionality and updates, which will still be distributed, even after deprecation. "Specifically, this means that we are no longer investing in new capabilities, nor are we accepting new feature requests for WSUS," Microsoft's Nir Froimovici said on Friday. "However, we are preserving current functionality and will continue to publish updates through the WSUS channel. We will also support any content already published through the WSUS channel."



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

[2] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-officially-deprecates-windows-server-update-services-wsus/

[3] https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/windowsserverdocs/commit/b9de39a7a50e881d725ba5af90ca179d20ecd2ca

Customers of [1]Kaspersky antivirus in the United States found out in the last few days that their cybersecurity software was automatically replaced with a new one called UltraAV, according to several customers. And while Kaspersky [2]said earlier this month that its U.S. customers would be transitioned to UltraAV , many of its customers said they had no idea this was going to happen and that it would [3]automatically be forced upon them . From a report:

> "Woke up to Kasperky [sic] completely gone from my system with Ultra AV and Ultra VPN freshly installed (not by me, just automatically while I slept)," a user on Reddit wrote. Others reported having the same experience in the same Reddit thread, as well as in other threads. A reseller, who until recently sold Kaspersky products prior to the recent sales ban, told TechCrunch that he was left "annoyed" by the move to automatically remove Kaspersky software and replace it with an entirely different antivirus. A former senior U.S. government cybersecurity official said that this was an example of the "huge risk" posed by the access granted by Kaspersky software. It's worth noting that, on the other hand, other customers did report receiving an email from Kaspersky about the transition to UltraAV.



[1] https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/06/20/1322221/biden-to-ban-us-sales-of-kaspersky-software-over-ties-to-russia

[2] https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/09/06/1855245/kaspersky-to-transfer-us-customers-to-ultraav-after-ban

[3] https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/23/some-kaspersky-customers-receive-surprise-forced-update-to-new-antivirus-software/

The government of Bhutan is currently [1]holding over $828 million in bitcoin , according to onchain data by Arkham Intelligence. From a report:

> "Unlike most governments, Bhutan's BTC does not come from law enforcement asset seizures, but from bitcoin mining operations, which have ramped up dramatically since early 2023," the crypto intelligence firm explained. Crypto intelligence firm Arkham highlighted the Kingdom of Bhutan's bitcoin holdings on social media platform X last week. Bhutan is a small, landlocked kingdom located in the eastern Himalayas, bordered by China to the north and India to the south. The country currently has a population of less than 800,000 people.

We learned last year that Bhutan had been [2]secretly mining bitcoin using its abundant hydroelectric resources since around 2019 . The operation, which began when bitcoin was priced at approximately $5,000, aims to harness the country's vast renewable energy reserves to power mining rigs.

Hydroelectricity already accounts for 30% of Bhutan's GDP and powers nearly all of its 800,000 residents. The government claimed last year that mining profits are used to subsidize power and hardware costs. This revelation makes Bhutan one of the few countries globally to run a state-owned bitcoin mine, alongside El Salvador.

At over $800 million in Bitcoin holdings, the reserve accounts for nearly a third of Bhutan's 2022-calculated GDP.



[1] https://news.bitcoin.com/government-of-bhutan-holds-828m-in-bitcoin-arkham-data-shows/

[2] https://slashdot.org/story/23/05/01/0840251/the-kingdom-of-bhutan-has-been-quietly-mining-bitcoin-for-years

Industrial civilisation is close to [1]breaching a seventh planetary boundary , and may already have crossed it, according to scientists who have compiled the latest report on the state of the world's life-support systems. From a report:

> "Ocean acidification is approaching a critical threshold," particularly in higher-latitude regions, says the latest report on planetary boundaries. "The growing acidification poses an increasing threat to marine ecosystems." The report, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), builds on years of research showing there are nine systems and processes -- the planetary boundaries -- that contribute to the stability of the planet's life-support functions.

>

> Thresholds beyond which they can no longer properly function have already been breached in six. Climate change, the introduction of novel entities, change in biosphere integrity and modification of biogeochemical flows are judged to be in high-risk zones, while planetary boundaries are also transgressed in land system change and freshwater change but to a lesser extent. All have worsened, according to the data. Stratospheric ozone depletion has remained stable, however, and there has been a slight improvement in atmospheric aerosol loading, the research says. At a briefing outlining the findings, Levke Caesar, a climate physicist at PIK and co-author of the report, said there were two reasons the levels of ocean acidification were concerning.



[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/23/earth-breach-planetary-boundaries-health-check-oceans

Microsoft [1]unveiled detailed security reforms Monday , five months after CEO Satya Nadella pledged to prioritize cybersecurity following major breaches. The [2]25-page Secure Future Initiative report [PDF] outlines technical and governance changes addressing criticisms in an April 2024 Cyber Safety Review Board report that [3]deemed Microsoft's security culture "inadequate."

Microsoft said it implemented significant security upgrades to its Entra ID and Microsoft Account systems, introducing Azure-managed hardware security modules for access token signing keys. The company has also purged 5.75 million inactive tenants to minimize potential attack vectors and adopted a new testing system with secure defaults to prevent legacy-related security issues. Concurrently, Microsoft has enhanced its network tracking capabilities, now monitoring over 99 percent of its physical network through a centralized inventory system, which aids in firmware compliance and logging.

Internal security measures have been tightened, with engineering teams facing stricter access controls. Personal access tokens are now limited to seven days, SSH access has been disabled for internal engineering repositories, and access to critical engineering systems has been restricted to fewer groups. Additionally, Microsoft has extended its audit log retention period to a minimum of two years, bolstering its ability to investigate and respond to potential security incidents.



[1] https://www.geekwire.com/2024/microsoft-details-largest-cybersecurity-engineering-effort-in-history-securing-its-own-code/

[2] https://cdn-dynmedia-1.microsoft.com/is/content/microsoftcorp/microsoft/final/en-us/microsoft-brand/documents/SFI_September_2024_progress_report.pdf

[3] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/04/13/0443217/us-government-says-recent-microsoft-breach-exposed-federal-agencies-to-hacking

Marc Benioff said Microsoft's Copilot AI [1]hasn't lived up to the hype . The Salesforce CEO said on the company's second-quarter earnings call that its own AI is nothing like [2]Copilot , which he said was unimpressive. From a report:

> "So many customers are so disappointed in what they bought from Microsoft Copilot because they're not getting the accuracy and the response that they want," Benioff said. "Microsoft has disappointed so many customers with AI."

>

> Microsoft Copilot integrates OpenAI's ChatGPT tech into the company's existing suite of business software like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint that comes with Microsoft 365. Launched last year, Copilot is meant to help companies boost productivity by responding to employee prompts and helping them with daily tasks like scheduling meetings, writing up product announcements, and creating presentations. In response to Benioff's comments, Jared Spataro, Microsoft's corporate vice president for AI at work, said in a statement to Fortune that the company was "hearing something quite different" from its customers.



[1] https://fortune.com/2024/08/30/salesforce-ceo-marc-benioff-agentforce-microsoft-copilot-ai-chatbot-openai/

[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/11/08/1925259/microsoft-plans-to-bring-its-ai-copilot-to-1-billion-windows-10-users

An anonymous reader shares a report:

> YouTube Premium users around the world woke up to bad news today. In over a dozen countries, the price of YouTube Premium individual and family plans [1]increased significantly . This is only the most recent sweep of price increases from Google, as many countries saw price jumps only months ago, with the United States being one of them last summer.

Impacted countries include Ireland, Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, UAE, Switzerland, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Colombia, Thailand, Singapore, Norway, Sweden, Czech Republic, and Denmark. The prices have gone up by as early as 40%.



[1] https://www.androidauthority.com/youtube-premium-price-increases-sept-2024-3483892/

Messaging app Telegram will [1]provide users' IP addresses and phone numbers to relevant authorities in response to valid legal requests, according to Chief Executive Officer Pavel Durov. From a report:

> The platform changed its terms of service to deter criminals from abusing it, Durov said in a post on Telegram Monday. The move comes less than a month after his arrest in France, where he faces charges of alleged complicity in the spread of child sexual abuse materials.

>

> The move represents a marked difference from Telegram's approach to government requests for data and its reputation for lax moderation. The United Arab Emirates-based platform has been notoriously non-responsive to takedown requests from governments around the world, and often ignored requests for information about suspected criminals.



[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-23/telegram-ceo-durov-says-app-to-provide-more-data-to-governments

SpaceX plans to launch about five uncrewed Starship missions to Mars [1]in two years , CEO Elon Musk said on Sunday. From a report:

> Earlier this month, Musk had said that the first Starships to Mars would launch in two years "when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens."

>

> The CEO on Sunday said that the first crewed mission timeline will depend upon the success of the uncrewed flights. If the uncrewed missions land safely, crewed missions will be launched in four years. However, in case of challenges, crewed missions will be postponed by another two years, Musk said.



[1] https://www.reuters.com/science/musk-says-spacex-plans-launch-about-five-uncrewed-starships-mars-two-years-2024-09-22/

Sonos launched [1]a disastrous app update in May , prompting CEO Patrick Spence to commission an internal investigation led by chief counsel Eddie Lazarus. The software release, plagued with missing features and bugs, has sparked widespread customer outrage and led to a $200 million revenue shortfall. Sonos shares have plummeted 25% this year. Lazarus interviewed about two dozen employees and reviewed meeting recordings before presenting his findings to the board in late July. Bloomberg:

> What has happened to Sonos is at its heart a cautionary tale of company leadership [2]ignoring the perils of "technical debt," the term used by software engineers to describe the compounding threat of outdated code and infrastructure on security, usability and stability.

>

> For two decades, Sonos had allowed its tech debt to pile high. When it undertook in earnest its effort to revamp its app in mid-2022, the company knew it was sitting on infrastructure and code written in languages that were pretty much obsolete. The Sonos app had been adapted and spliced and tinkered with so often, the vast majority of work being performed for the new app was less about introducing new functionality than sorting out the existing mess.

>

> The company could have tackled its tech debt sooner but appears to have lacked a crucial element: urgency. It finally came in the form of the Sonos Ace headphones, the first product in the Sonos range to be fully mobile rather than using home or office Wi-Fi. The app needed to be rebuilt, as did the cloud computing setup underpinning it.

>

> Ace is a critical product for Sonos. Now that Sonos' pandemic sales boom has subsided, Wall Street has started to question where revenue growth will come from. Sonos Ace is a big part of the answer. Despite the company's lofty and well-earned reputation, Sonos' share of the $100 billion audio market is only around 2% because it has not gone toe-to-toe in the headphones category with Apple, Sennheiser, Bose and the rest.



[1] https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/05/18/0125202/facing-angry-users-sonos-promises-to-fix-flaws-and-restore-removed-features

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-09-23/how-sonos-botched-an-app-and-infuriated-its-customers

Automattic CEO and WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg unleashed a scathing attack on a rival firm this week, calling WP Engine -- a managed WordPress hosting provider that has raised nearly $300 million in funding over its 14-year history -- [1]a "cancer to WordPress." From a report:

> Mullenweg criticized the company -- which has been commercializing the open source WordPress project since 2010 -- for profiteering without giving much back, while also disabling key features that make WordPress such a powerful platform in the first place.

>

> [...] But speaking last week at WordCamp US 2024, a WordPress-focused conference held in Portland, Oregon, Mullenweg pulled no punches in his criticism of WP Engine. Taking to the stage, Mullenweg read out a post he had just published to his personal blog, where he points to the distinct "five for the future" investment pledges made by Automattic and WP Engine to contribute resources to support the sustained growth of WordPress, with Automattic contributing 3,900 hours per week, an WP Engine contributing just 40 hours.

>

> While he acknowledged that these figures are just a "proxy," and might not be perfectly accurate, Mullenweg said that this disparity in contributions is notable, as both Automattic and WP Engine "are roughly the same size, with revenue in the ballpark of half-a-billion [dollars]." [...] Mullenweg published a follow up blog post, where he calls WP Engine a "cancer" to WordPress. "It's important to remember that unchecked, cancer will spread," he wrote. "WP Engine is setting a poor standard that others may look at and think is ok to replicate."



[1] https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/22/matt-mullenweg-calls-wp-engine-a-cancer-to-wordpress-and-urges-community-to-switch-providers/

The US Commerce Department on Monday will propose [1]a ban on the sale or import of smart vehicles that use specific Chinese or Russian technology because of national security concerns, according to US officials. From a report:

> A US government investigation that began in February found a range of national security risks from embedded software and hardware from China and Russia in US vehicles, including the possibility of remote sabotage by hacking and the collection of personal data on drivers, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo told reporters Sunday in a conference call.

>

> "In extreme situations, a foreign adversary could shut down or take control of all their vehicles operating in the United States, all at the same time, causing crashes (or) blocking roads," she said. The rule would not apply to cars already on the road in the US that already have Chinese software installed, a senior administration official told CNN. The software ban would take effect for vehicles for "model year" 2027 and the hardware ban for "model year" 2030, according to the Commerce Department. The proposed regulatory action is part of a much broader struggle between the United States and China, the world's two biggest economies, to secure the supply chains of the key computing technology of the future, from semiconductors to AI software. China, in particular, has invested heavily in the connected car market, and inroads made by Chinese manufacturers in Europe have worried US officials.



[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/23/tech/us-car-software-ban-china-russia/

Nature [1]published an introduction to running an LLM locally , starting with the example of a bioinformatician who's using AI to generate readable summaries for his database of immune-system protein structures. "But he doesn't use ChatGPT, or any other web-based LLM." He just runs the AI on his Mac...

> Two more recent trends have blossomed. First, organizations are making 'open weights' versions of LLMs, in which the weights and biases used to train a model are publicly available, so that users can download and run them locally, if they have the computing power. Second, technology firms are making scaled-down versions that can be run on consumer hardware — and that rival the performance of older, larger models. Researchers might use such tools to save money, protect the confidentiality of patients or corporations, or ensure reproducibility... As computers get faster and models become more efficient, people will increasingly have AIs running on their laptops or mobile devices for all but the most intensive needs. Scientists will finally have AI assistants at their fingertips — but the actual algorithms, not just remote access to them.

The article's list of small open-weights models includes Meta's Llama, Google DeepMind's Gemma, Alibaba's Qwen, Apple's DCLM, Mistral's NeMo, and OLMo from the Allen Institute for AI. And then there's Microsoft:

> Although the California tech firm OpenAI hasn't open-weighted its current GPT models, its partner Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, has been on a spree, releasing the small language models Phi-1, Phi-1.5 and Phi-2 in 2023, then four versions of Phi-3 and three versions of Phi-3.5 this year. The Phi-3 and Phi-3.5 models have between 3.8 billion and 14 billion active parameters, and two models (Phi-3-vision and Phi-3.5-vision) handle images1. By some benchmarks, even the smallest Phi model outperforms OpenAI's GPT-3.5 Turbo from 2023, rumoured to have 20 billion parameters... Microsoft used LLMs to write millions of short stories and textbooks in which one thing builds on another. The result of training on this text, says Sébastien Bubeck, Microsoft's vice-president for generative AI, is a model that fits on a mobile phone but has the power of the initial 2022 version of ChatGPT. "If you are able to craft a data set that is very rich in those reasoning tokens, then the signal will be much richer," he says...

>

> Sharon Machlis, a former editor at the website InfoWorld, who lives in Framingham, Massachusetts, wrote [2]a guide to using LLMs locally , covering a dozen options.

The bioinformatician shares another benefit: you don't have to worry about the company updating their models (leading to different outputs). "In most of science, you want things that are reproducible. And it's always a worry if you're not in control of the reproducibility of what you're generating."

And finally, the article reminds readers that "Researchers can build on these tools to create custom applications..."

> Whichever approach you choose, local LLMs should soon be good enough for most applications, says Stephen Hood, who heads open-source AI at the tech firm Mozilla in San Francisco. "The rate of progress on those over the past year has been astounding," he says. As for what those applications might be, that's for users to decide. "Don't be afraid to get your hands dirty," Zakka says. "You might be pleasantly surprised by the results."



[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02998-y

[2] https://www.infoworld.com/article/2338922/5-easy-ways-to-run-an-llm-locally.html

First released on July 11th, the Firefox-based [1]Zen browser is "taking a different approach to the user interface," [2]according to the blog It's FOSS .

The Register [3]says the project "reminds us strongly [4]of Arc , a radical Chromium-based web browser... to modernize the standard web browser UI by revising some fundamental assumptions."

> [Arc] removes the URL bar from front and center, gets rid of the simple flat list of tabs, and so on. Zen is trying to do some similar things, but in a slightly more moderate way — and it's doing it on the basis of Mozilla's Firefox codebase... Instead of the tired old horizontal tab bar you'll see in both Firefox and Chrome, Zen implements its own tab bar... By default, this tab bar is narrow and just shows page icons — but there are some extra controls at the bottom of the sidebar, one of which expands the sidebar to show page titles too. For us, it worked better than Vivaldi's fancier sidebar.

The article concludes it's "a new effort to modernize web browsing by bringing tiling, workspaces, and so on — and it's blissfully free of Google code." One [5]Reddit comment swooned over Zen's "extraordinary" implementation of a distraction-free "Compact Mode" (hiding things like the sidebar and top bar). And It's Foss described it as a "tranquil," browser, "written using CSS, C++, JavaScript, and a few other programming languages, with a community of over 30 people contributing to it."

> The layout of the interface felt quite clean to me; there were handy buttons on the top to control the webpage, manage extensions, and a menu with additional options... The split-view functionality allows you to open up two different tabs on the same screen, allowing for easy multitasking when working across different webpages... I split two tabs, but in my testing, I could split over 10+ tabs... If you have a larger monitor, then you are in for a treat...

>

> The Zen Sidebar feature... can run web apps alongside any open tabs. This can be helpful in situations where you need to quickly access a service like a note-taking app, Wikipedia, Telegram, and others.

>

> On the customization side of things, you will find that Zen Browser supports everything that Firefox does, be it the settings, adding new extensions/themes/plugins, etc.

The Register points out it's easy to give it a try. "Being based on Firefox means that as well as running existing extensions, it can connect to Mozilla's Sync service and pick up not just your bookmarks, but also your tabs from other instances."

And beyond all that, "There's just something satisfying about switching browsers every now and again..." [6]argues the tech site Pocket-Lint :

> Zen Browser's vertical tabs layout is superb and feels much better than anything available in standard Firefox. [Firefox recently offered vertical tabs and a new sidebar experience [7]in Nightly/Firefox Labs 131 .] The tab bar can be set to automatically hide and show up whenever you hover near it, and it also contains quick access buttons to bookmarks, settings, and browsing history. The tab bar also contains a profile switcher...

>

> One of the greatest parts of the Zen Browser is the community that has popped up around it. At its heart, Zen Browser is a community-driven project... [8]Zen Browser themes are aesthetic and functional tweaks to the UI. While there aren't a ton available right now, the ones that are show a lot of promise for the browser's future... I've personally gotten great use out of the Super URL Bar theme, which makes your URL bar expand and become the focus of your screen while typing in it... There's a lot you can do to make Zen Browser feel nearly exactly like what you want it to feel like.

The "Business Standard calls it " [9]an open-source alternative to Chromium-based browsers ," adding "Where Zen truly shines is it offers a range of customisation, tab management, and workspace management..."

> Their theme store offers a range of options, including modifications to the bookmark toolbar, a floating URL bar, private mode theming, and removal of browser padding. In addition to these, users can also choose from custom colour schemes and built-in theming options... The Sidebar is another neat feature which allows you to open tabs in a smaller, smartphone-sized window. You can view websites in mobile layout by using this panel.

It's "focused on being always at the latest version of Firefox," according to its [10]official site , noting that Firefox is known for its security features. But then, "We also have additional security features like https only built into Zen Browser to help keep you safe online." And it also promises automated Releases "to ensure security."

It's FOSS adds that you can get Zen Browser for Linux, Windows, and macOS from its [11]official website (adding "They also offer it on the [12]Flathub store for further accessibility on Linux.")

And its source code [13]is available on GitHub .



[1] https://zen-browser.app/

[2] https://news.itsfoss.com/zen-browser/

[3] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/02/zen_firefox_fork_alpha/

[4] https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/31/arc_a_radical_new_browser/

[5] https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/1exjjjq/zen_browser_might_be_the_greatest_browser_i_have/

[6] https://www.pocket-lint.com/i-used-zen-browser-for-a-week-heres-how-it-went/

[7] https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2024/08/07/firefox-sidebar-and-vertical-tabs-try-them-out-in-nightly-firefox-labs-131/

[8] https://zen-browser.app/themes

[9] https://www.tbsnews.net/tech/zen-browser-open-source-alternative-chromium-based-browsers-946036

[10] https://zen-browser.app/

[11] https://zen-browser.app/download

[12] https://flathub.org/apps/io.github.zen_browser.zen

[13] https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop

In 2022 about [1]346,000 electric cars were reportedly sold in California. But the same year its greenhouse gas emissions dropped a whopping 9.3 million metric tons — the amount produced by 2.2 million gas-powered cars — lowering emissions 2.4% from the year before. "The biggest drop came from transportation, due largely to the increased use of renewable fuels," [2]according to the state's Air Resources Board , touting a newly-released report. (And electricity sector emissions also fell by 2.6 million metric tons, or 4.1%, "even as electricity usage rose," [3]according to The Hill — "a dichotomy that the regulators attributed to an increase in solar and wind power generation.")

So despite a growing economy, "the latest data underscores a continued trend of steady emissions decline..." according to a statement from the Board. "Between 2000 to 2022, emissions fell by 20% while California's gross domestic product increased by 78%, pointing to the effectiveness of the state's climate change and air quality programs." And the amount of carbon dioxide equivalent emitted per unit of economic output ("carbon intensity") has also dropped 55% in the last 20 years:

> [In 2022] the electricity sector had its lowest carbon intensity since 2000. Wind and solar now represent 30% of generation and in-state solar increased by 15% from 2021, driven by requirements under the state's [4]Cap-and-Trade Program and [5]Renewables Portfolio Standard . Furthermore, California [6]increased its battery storage by 757% from 2019 through 2023, bolstering its renewable energy efforts. The storage capacity is enough to power 6.6 million homes for up to four hours.

>

> Industrial emissions declined by 2%, also falling to the lowest level in 22 years. While refinery emissions remained essentially flat, emissions from oil and gas extraction declined, as did emissions from other fuel use, cement manufacturing, and cogeneration facilities. [The Hill says 2022's industrial emissions were 21.7% below year-2000 levels, according to the report.]

>

> Livestock emissions, which are responsible for 70% of agriculture's greenhouse gas emissions, peaked in 2012 and once again saw reductions in 2022. The decrease is driven by the use of methane digesters funded by the [7]California Climate Investments and incentivized by the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which capture emissions at the source and convert them to clean fuel.

>

> Landfill methane emissions also continued to decline in 2022. This decline can be attributed in part to the state's efforts to reduce disposal of organic waste, as well as the California [8]Landfill Methane Regulation , which requires landfill operators to monitor and capture emissions escaping from their facilities.

One local news site calls the drop in emissions "shocking," but adds that "the trend is expected to continue. In the second quarter of 2024, 118,181 zero-emission vehicles [9]were purchased in the state , good for about one-quarter of all new car sales."

California governor Gavin Newsom said his state "is proving that climate action goes hand-in-hand with economic growth. We've slashed carbon pollution by a whopping 20% since the turn of the century all while building the world's fifth largest economy. Cleaner air, more good jobs — that's the California way."



[1] https://www.sacbee.com/news/business/article285045582.html

[2] https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/news/california-greenhouse-gas-emissions-decline-across-most-sectors

[3] https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/4890647-california-greenhouse-gas-emissions-drop/

[4] https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/cap-and-trade-program

[5] https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/rps/

[6] https://www.energy.ca.gov/news/2023-10/california-sees-unprecedented-growth-energy-storage-key-component-states-clean

[7] https://www.caclimateinvestments.ca.gov/annual-report

[8] https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/landfill-methane-regulation

[9] https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/08/06/california-just-notched-one-of-its-best-quarters-ever-for-new-zero-emission-vehicle-sales/