AMD’s powerhouse Threadripper chips are back for desktop PCs. Despite declaring the end of consumer Threadripper chips last generation, AMD announced three new Ryzen Threadripper 7000-series chips on Thursday, with up to 64 cores and 128 threads — and the option of installing a “Pro”-class Threadripper 700 WX series for a massive 96 cores and 192 threads, too. PCWorld: Take a deep breath, though. The underlying message is the same as when AMD released the Threadripper 3970X back in 2019: these chips are for those who live and breathe video editing and content creation, and are optimized for such. Nevertheless, they almost certainly represent the most powerful CPU you can buy on a desktop, for whatever purpose.

The key differences between the older workstation-class Threadripper 5000 series and these new 7000-class processors are simple: AMD has brought forward its Zen 4 architecture into Threadripper alongside a higher core count, faster boost frequencies, and a generational leap ahead to PCI Express 5.0. Consumers will need new motherboards, though, as the new “TRX50” consumer Threadripper platform uses the new AMD TRX50 HEDT (high-end desktop) chipset and sTR5 socket. And did we mention they consume (gulp) 350W of power? In some ways, though, the new Threadripper 7980X, 7970X, and 7960X consumer Threadripper offerings are familiar. They stick with AMD’s tried-and-true 64-core configuration, the same as the Threadripper 5000 series, moving down to 24 cores. The 12- and 16-core configurations have been trimmed off from the prior generation.

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Source: Slashdot – AMD’s Monstrous Threadripper 7000 CPUs Aim For Desktop PC Dominance

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PC Gamer: Whether you think Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Activision Blizzard is a move toward a dry gaming monopoly or a financial windfall for Activision and Blizzard games both, it’s definitely happened. The UK’s CMA has given the thumbs up, Kotick’s on his way out — the deal’s closed, and now we get to see the impact ripples spread. It looks like there’s already some great news for fans of Activision Blizzard’s older catalogue, as confirmed by Xbox boss Phil Spencer himself in an official interview on the Xbox channel. “I do think with Game Pass that we have the ability to pick a couple franchises every year and almost do like a ‘revisited’ [version] — I just made up that term … when you look across the franchises that are part of our teams, there’s an opportunity to go back.”

“I wanna make sure that when we go back and visit something that we do it with our complete ability not just create something for financial gain (or a PR announcement), and not deliver.” Ultimately, while he’s got his own wishlist (the return of FPS classic Hexen is a running gag), Spencer says it’s important for these fresh coats of paint to be a result of developer passion: “If teams wanna go back and revisit some of the things we have, and do a full focus on it, I’m gonna be all in. I think there’s an amazing trove of [games] we can go and touch on again. I think about things like the Quake 2 remaster that just came out from [id Software], I thought that was awesome. They did a real good job revisiting a game, making it current, but not leaving its history behind. I’d love to see more things like that.”

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Source: Slashdot – Xbox Boss Is Open To Breaking the Seal On Some Forgotten Games

The government of India said on Tuesday that it plans to put an astronaut on the moon by 2040 and build an Earth-orbiting space station by 2035. Space.com reports: On Aug. 23, India became just the fourth nation ever to soft-land a spacecraft — its Chandrayaan-3 lander-rover duo — on the surface of the moon. In a recent meeting with the Indian government department that manages the country’s space program, Prime Minister Narendra Modi “directed that India should now aim for new and ambitious goals,” according to an official statement. India’s future moon exploration efforts will include a series of additional robotic Chandrayaan missions, a new launch pad and a heavy-lift launch vehicle, the statement added.

India’s delayed Gaganyaan human spaceflight program, now aiming to fly three astronauts to low Earth orbit in 2025, will feature 20 major tests, including three uncrewed missions to test the launch vehicle over the course of the remainder of this year and all of next. […] By the middle of the 2030s, India hopes to have a 20-ton space station in a fixed orbit 248 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth, with capabilities to host astronauts for 15 to 20 days at a time, K. Sivan, former chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), has previously said.

Further down the pipeline of missions, ISRO is planning a Venus orbiter called Shukrayaan-1 to study the surface of that hellishly hot planet. The payloads for that mission are currently being developed, current ISRO chairman S. Somanath had said last month. A second orbiter mission to Mars is also on the books, according to the latest statement. The nation’s first, the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), was launched in 2013 and studied the Red Planet’s atmosphere for eight years before it lost contact with Earth in April 2022. The follow-up mission, Mars Orbiter Mission 2 or MOM 2, will likely include cameras to study the planet’s crust and may also include a lander, although many of the mission plans are yet to be finalized.

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Source: Slashdot – India Plans To Land Astronauts On the Moon In 2040

The U.S. government is receiving dozens of reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) each month. “The office has received approximately 800 reports of unidentified objects to investigate as of this past April, up from 650 reports in August 2022, Sean Kirkpatrick, who heads the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office at the Pentagon told CNN.” From the report: The vast majority are benign objects, such as balloons or drones, but some may be the result of America’s adversaries trying to spy on the US, said Kirkpatrick. “There are some indicators that are concerning that may be attributed to foreign activity, and we are investigating those very hard,” said Kirkpatrick, speaking exclusively to CNN ahead of the release of the annual report on unidentified aerial phenomena.

A portion of the increase in reports comes from the Federal Aviation Administration, which monitors airspace around US airports starting to provide information to the Pentagon. About half of the reports contain enough data that they can be ruled out as “mundane things,” such as errant balloons or floating trash, Kirkpatrick said, but 2-4% are truly anomalous and require further investigation.

Asked if the Pentagon could definitively identify a sighting of an unidentified object as belonging to a foreign adversary, Kirkpatrick said that his office is “looking at some very interesting indicators of things, and that’s about all I can tell you.” But the office, which has more than 40 employees and is expected to grow, can’t say that for sure yet. “There are ways to hide in our noise that always concern me,” Kirkpatrick said, referring to the extraneous readings picked up by US radars and other sensors. “I am worried from a national security perspective.” “The Pentagon is preparing for a flood of new reports as it readies two new portals for submissions: one for historical sightings from current or former government employees and contractors and a second for public submissions of new reports,” notes CNN.

“It is the opening of the public portal, still several months away, that Kirkpatrick says could flood the system with ‘hundreds, if not thousands’ of new reports to sort through.”

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Source: Slashdot – US Is Receiving Dozens of UFO Reports a Month, Pentagon Official Says

An anonymous reader writes: Adobe has unveiled a sparkling, interactive dress — and got the research scientist who created it to model the high-tech couture. Video of the dress debut shows researcher Christine Dierk wearing the slinky strapless number that, upon first glance, looks like the average sequined cocktail dress. With the click of a handheld remote, however, the dress began to shift patterns like something out of a fashion-forward science fiction film. Created under Adobe’s “Project Primrose” initiative, this “digital dress,” as Dierk described it for the audience at Adobe’s MAX conference last week, “brings fabric to life.”

“Unlike traditional clothing, which is static, Primrose allows me to refresh my look in a moment,” the Adobe scientist said, demonstrating the clothing’s capabilities by having its colors go from light to dark in an instant. The digital dress patterns can also, as Dierks demonstrated, be animated, and will even respond to movement — though that last feature appeared glitchy and didn’t work at first. The researcher-turned-model also told the hosts of her portion of the convention that she not only designed the dress with the help of her team at Adobe, but also stitched it herself.

While the specs of this particular smart garment haven’t been published, the high-tech sequins used for smaller Project Primrose offerings, a handbag and a canvas, were described by Dierks and her co-researchers last year in an article presented at a tech conference. As the article explains, those “sequins” are actually “reflective light-diffuser modules” that use reflective-backed polymer-dispersed liquid crystals (PDLC), which are most often used in smart lighting. Technically, all those sequins are tiny screens.

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Source: Slashdot – Adobe Unveils Dress That Can Change Its Pattern On the Fly

Apple is taking a different approach to social with its Vision Pro headset: making apps social right out of the box. This, according to Road to VR’s Ben Lang, is what Meta should have done all along. Instead, it’s pioneered a social experience on the Quest platform that involves “jumping through a fragmented landscape of different apps and different ways to actually get into the same space with your friends.” From the report: Apple is taking a fundamentally different approach with Vision Pro by making social the expectation rather than the rule, and providing a common set of tools and guidelines for developers to build from in order to make social feel cohesive across the platform. Apple’s vision isn’t about creating a server full of a virtual strangers and user-generated experiences, but to make it easy to share the stuff you already like to do with the people you already know. This obviously leans into the company’s rich ecosystem of existing apps — and the social technologies the company has already battle-tested on its platforms.

SharePlay is the feature that’s already present on iOS and MacOS devices that lets people watch, listen, and experience apps together through FaceTime. And on Vision Pro, Apple intends to use its SharePlay tech to make many of its own first-party apps — like Apple TV, Apple Music, and Photos — social right out of the box, and it expects developers to do so too. In the company’s developer documentation, the company says it expects “most visionOS apps to support SharePlay.” […]

Perhaps most importantly, Apple is leaning on every user’s existing personal friend graph (ie: the people you already text, call, or email), rather than trying to create a bespoke friends list that lives only inside Vision Pro. Rather than launching an app and then figuring out how to get your friends into it, with SharePlay Apple is focused on getting together with your friends first, then letting the group seamlessly move from one app to the next as you decide what you want to do.

Even apps that don’t explicitly have multi-user experience built-in can be ‘social’ by default, by allowing one user to screen-share the app with others. Only the host will be able to interact with the content, but everyone else will be able to see and talk about it in real-time. It’s the emphasis on ‘social by default’, ‘things you already do’, and ‘people you already know’ that will make social on Vision Pro feel completely different than what Meta is building on Quest with Horizon Worlds and its ecosystem of fragmented social apps.

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Source: Slashdot – ‘Apple Is Approaching Social On Vision Pro the Way Meta Should Have All Along’

AlmaLinux is creating a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) without any Red Hat code. Instead, AlmaLinux OS will aim to be Application Binary Interface (ABI) compatible and use the CentOS Stream source code that Red Hat continues to offer. Additional code is pulled from Red Hat Universal Base Images, and upstream Linux code. Benny Vasquez, chairperson of the AlmaLinux OF Foundation, explained how all this works at the open-source community convention All Things Open. ZDNet’s Steven Vaughan-Nichols reports: The hardest part is Red Hat’s Linux kernel updates because, added Vasquez, “you can’t get those kernel updates without violating Red Hat’s licensing agreements.” Therefore, she continued, “What we do is we pull the security patches from various other sources, and, if nothing else, we can find them when Oracle releases them.” Vasquez did note one blessing from this change in production: “AlmaLinux, no longer bound to Red Hat’s releases, has been able to release upstream security fixes faster than Red Hat. “For example, the AMD microcode exploits were patched before Red Hat because they took a little bit of extra time to get out the door. We then pulled in, tested, and out the door about a week ahead of them.” The overall goal remains to maintain RHEL compatibility. “Any breaking changes between RHEL and AlmaLinux, any application that stops working, is a bug and must be fixed.”

That’s not to say AlmaLinux will be simply an excellent RHEL clone going forward. It plans to add features of its own. For instance, Red Hat users who want programs not bundled in RHEL often turn to Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL). These typically are programs included in Fedora Linux. Besides supporting EPEL software, AlmaLinux has its own extra software package — called Synergy — which holds programs that the AlmaLinux community wants but are not available in either EPEL or RHEL. If one such program is subsequently added to EPEL or RHEL, AlmaLinux drops it from Synergy to prevent confusion and duplication of effort.

This has not been an easy road for AlmaLinux. Even a 1% code difference is a lot to write and maintain. For example, when AlmaLinux tried to patch CentOS Stream code to fix a problem, Red Hat was downright grumpy about AlmaLinux’s attempt to fix a security hole. Vasquez acknowledged it was tough sledding at first, but noted: “The good news is that they have been improving the process, and things will look a little bit smoother.” AlmaLinux, she noted, is also not so much worried as aware that Red Hat may throw a monkey wrench into their efforts. Vasquez added: “Internally, we’re working on stopgap things we’d need to do to anticipate Red Hat changing everything terribly.” She doesn’t think Red Hat will do it, but “we want to be as prepared as possible.”

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Source: Slashdot – AlmaLinux Stays Red Hat Enterprise Linux Compatible Without Red Hat Code

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Today, Tesla released (PDF) its Q3 2023 financial results and as expected, there was an update about Cybertruck in there. In the quarterly presentation, Tesla mentioned that “pilot production” of the Cybertruck has begun: “At Gigafactory Texas, we began pilot production of the Cybertruck, which remains on track for initial deliveries this year.” While that doesn’t include any new information, in the photo section of the presentation, Tesla added a comment confirming that “deliveries will begin in November 2023.”

The previous official comment from CEO Elon Musk was that Tesla was aiming for the end of Q3, which ended last month. Interestingly, Tesla also updated its “installed annual vehicle capacity” and added capacity for the Cybertruck for the first time. Surprisingly, Tesla already claims a capacity of “over 125,000 Cybertrucks” at Gigafactory Texas. In a company post on X, Tesla specifies that its first Cybertruck deliveries are scheduled for November 30th at Giga Texas.

These are the highlights of Tesla’s Q3 shareholder update, as mentioned in the company’s X post: “Cybertruck production remains on track for later this year, with first deliveries scheduled for November 30th at Giga Texas.

Production of our higher density 4680 cell is progressing as planned & we continue building capacity for cathode production & lithium refining in the US.

In Europe, Model Y remains the best-selling vehicle of any kind (based on latest available data as of August) Thank you to our European owners!

We have more than doubled the size of our AI training compute, accommodating for both our growing data set & Optimus, which is currently being trained for simple tasks through AI rather than hardcoded software, while its hardware continues to improve.

All Hertz rentals in the US & Canada now allow Tesla app access, enabling renters to use keyless lock/unlock via phone key, remotely precondition the cabin & more.

In addition, we redesigned the in-app service experience for owners, making scheduling & tracking service appointments & loaner access much simpler.”

Energy deployments increased 90% YoY to 4GWh — our highest quarterly deployment ever!

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Source: Slashdot – Tesla Announces Cybertruck Deliveries In November, Claims 125K Production Capacity

Sandali Handagama reports via CoinDesk: Binance.US users can no longer withdraw dollars directly from the platform after the exchange updated its terms of use on Monday. “In the event that customers wish to withdraw U.S. dollar funds from their account, they may do so by converting U.S. dollar funds to stablecoin or other digital assets, which can subsequently be withdrawn,” the email said.

In early June, the firm suspended dollar deposits, saying the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) “extremely aggressive and intimidating tactics” against the crypto industry had left banking partners reluctant to engage with the sector. In the same message, Binance.US warned customers that its banking partners were preparing to pause dollar withdrawals as early as June 13.

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Source: Slashdot – Binance.US Halts Direct Dollar Withdrawals

Amazon announced today that it plans to expand its Prime Air drone delivery program to Italy and United Kingdom, as well as one more yet-to-be-named U.S. city. “The new Prime Air locations will be announced in the coming months, with an anticipated launch date of late 2024,” reports The Verge. From the report: Another step by Amazon today suggests it’s ready to make drones a more serious part of its actual delivery network. The company said it plans to add Prime Air delivery to its existing fulfillment network — specifically by adding delivery drones to some of its same-delivery sites. Prime Air drones currently only operate out of the two standalone sites in Texas and California, so expanding drones to other sites means a wider delivery range and closer integration with Amazon’s delivery network.

Amazon also gave us a sneak peek of its new Prime Air delivery drone that it claims flies twice as far as its current model. Even more critically, the drones will be able to operate in light rain and what Amazon calls more “diverse weather.” The company released photos of the MK30 drone today, which it said will replace its existing delivery drones by late 2024.

The MK30 is also smaller and quieter than the existing Prime Air model, Amazon claims. The new drone can deliver objects of up to five pounds, with a typical delivery time of “one hour or less.” The new drone includes a “sense and avoid” feature that can help it avoid pets, people, and property. The new design will hopefully result in smoother flights. “Not only will this help boost the economy, offering consumers even more choice while helping keep the environment clean with zero emission technology, but it will also build our understanding how to best use the new technology safely and securely,” said UK’s Aviation Minister Baroness Vere in a statement in Amazon’s announcement.

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Source: Slashdot – Amazon Plans To Deploy Delivery Drones In the UK and Italy Next Year

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The same hacker who leaked a trove of user data stolen from the genetic testing company 23andMe two weeks ago has now leaked millions of new user records. On Tuesday, a hacker who goes by Golem published a new dataset of 23andMe user information containing records of four million users on the known cybercrime forum BreachForums. TechCrunch has found that some of the newly leaked stolen data matches known and public 23andMe user and genetic information. Golem claimed the dataset contains information on people who come from Great Britain, including data from “the wealthiest people living in the U.S. and Western Europe on this list.”

On October 6, 23andMe announced that hackers had obtained some user data, claiming that to amass the stolen data the hackers used credential stuffing — a common technique where hackers try combinations of usernames or emails and corresponding passwords that are already public from other data breaches. In response to the incident, 23andMe prompted users to change their passwords and encouraged switching on multi-factor authentication. On its official page addressing the incident, 23andMe said it has launched an investigation with help from “third-party forensic experts.” 23andMe blamed the incident on its customers for reusing passwords, and an opt-in feature called DNA Relatives, which allows users to see the data of other opted-in users whose genetic data matches theirs. If a user had this feature turned on, in theory it would allow hackers to scrape data on more than one user by breaking into a single user’s account.

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Source: Slashdot – Hacker Leaks Millions More 23andMe User Records On Cybercrime Forum

Amazon says it’s testing two new technologies to increase automation in its warehouses, including a trial of a humanoid robot. From a report: The humanoid robot, called Digit, is bipedal and can squat, bend and grasp items using clasps that imitate hands, the company said in a blog post Wednesday. It’s built by Agility Robotics and will initially be used to help employees consolidate totes that have been emptied of items. Amazon invested in Agility Robotics last year.

[…] In addition to Digit, Amazon is testing a technology called Sequoia, which will identify and sort inventory into containers for employees, who will then pick the items customers have ordered, the company said. Remaining products are then consolidated in bins by a robotic arm called Sparrow, which the company revealed last year. The system is in use at an Amazon warehouse in Houston, the company said in a statement.

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Source: Slashdot – Amazon Tests Humanoid Robot in Warehouse Automation Push

The bar for taking a sick day is getting lower, and some bosses say that’s a problem. From a report: U.S. workers have long viewed an unwillingness to take sick days as a badge of honor. That’s a laurel workers care much less about these days. The number of sick days Americans take annually has soared since the pandemic, employee payroll data show. Covid-19 and a rise in illnesses such as RSV, which can require days away from work, are one reason. Managers and human-resources executives also attribute the jump to a bigger shift in the way many Americans relate to their jobs.

For one, more workers are using up sick time often for reasons such as mental health. And unlike older workers, who might have been loath to call in sick for fear of seeming weak or unreliable, younger workers feel more entitled to take full advantage of the benefits they’ve been given, executives and recruiters say. That confidence has only grown as record low unemployment persists. So far this year, 30% of white-collar workers with access to paid leave have taken sick time, up from 21% in 2019, according to data from payroll and benefits software company Gusto. Employees between ages 25 and 34 are taking sick days most often, with their use rates jumping 45% from before the pandemic.

[…] Younger workers used to follow the example of their older peers and come in even when under the weather, says Crystal Williams, chief human resources officer at global business payments company Fleetcor, which has around 5,000 U.S. employees. She suspects early-career employees aren’t taking cues from older co-workers in the same way now that five days a week at the office is no longer the norm. Prepandemic, Fleetcor workers in their 20s and 30s took one or two sick days a year, she says. Now, itâ(TM)s more like three to five.

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Source: Slashdot – American Employees Reinvent the Sick Day

Google is making a few changes to the way its search and address bar — known as the omnibox — works in the Chrome browser. The changes are individually pretty small, but there’s an important and somewhat unexpected trend in them all: Google is making it easier for you to move around the web without having to do so many Google searches. From a report: If you’re in Chrome on desktop or mobile, the browser will now try and correct your URL typos, so when you type thevrege.com or ninteendo.com, you’ll get autocomplete suggestions based on the right site and not whatever is behind those misspelled domains. The omnibox’s autocomplete will now be smarter in general, predicting the site you’re looking for based on keywords rather than just guessing what URL you’re typing. Chrome can also now search within your bookmarks for sites and files related to what you’re typing.

All those features are based on your own browsing history and bookmarks, so it’s just Chrome becoming slightly more personalized. But the last change is web-wide and is pretty off-brand for Google: when you start to type in the name of a popular website, the omnibox will show that site’s URL in the list of suggestions, and you can select it to go right to that site. (You might have seen this one already: it’s been rolling out for a couple of weeks and should be live to everyone now.)

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Source: Slashdot – Google is Tweaking Chrome’s Search Bar To Make It Easier To Navigate the Web

Acceptable levels of “forever chemicals” in drinking water should be reduced tenfold and a new national chemicals agency created to protect public health, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) has told the UK government. From a report: The chartered body wants to see a reduction in the cap on levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in tap water. PFAS are a family of about 10,000 widely used chemicals that do not break down easily in the environment. Some have been linked to cancers, liver and thyroid disease, immune and fertility problems, and developmental defects in unborn children.

The current limit in UK drinking water, which is a guideline and not a statutory cap, is 100 nanograms a litre for individual PFAS. The RSC wants this reduced to 10ng/l and a new overall limit introduced of 100ng/l for a wider range of PFAS in drinking water. “In the Drinking Water Inspectorate’s (DWI) own words, levels above 10ng/l pose a medium or high risk to public health,” said Stephanie Metzger, a policy adviser at the RSC. “We’re seeing more studies that link PFAS to a range of very serious medical conditions, and so we urgently need a new approach for the sake of public health.”

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Source: Slashdot – Scientists Call on Ministers To Cut Limits For ‘Forever Chemicals’ in UK Tap Water

Google security researchers say they have found evidence that government-backed hackers linked to Russia and China are exploiting a since-patched vulnerability in WinRAR, the popular shareware archiving tool for Windows. From a report: The WinRAR vulnerability, first discovered by cybersecurity company Group-IB earlier this year and tracked as CVE-2023-38831, allows attackers to hide malicious scripts in archive files that masquerade as seemingly innocuous images or text documents. Group-IB said the flaw was exploited as a zero-day — since the developer had zero time to fix the bug before it was exploited — as far back as April to compromise the devices of at least 130 traders.

Rarlab, which makes the archiving tool, released an updated version of WinRAR (version 6.23) on August 2 to patch the vulnerability. Despite this, Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) said this week that its researchers have observed multiple government-backed hacking groups exploiting the security flaw, noting that “many users” who have not updated the app remain vulnerable. In research shared with TechCrunch ahead of its publication, TAG says it has observed multiple campaigns exploiting the WinRAR zero-day bug, which it has tied to state-backed hacking groups with links to Russia and China.

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Source: Slashdot – Russia and China-backed Hackers Are Exploiting WinRAR Zero-Day Bug, Google Says

Amazon has started delivering prescription medications by drone in a Texas city, broadening its still-experimental effort to deliver goods by air. From a report: The online retailer recently began listing drone delivery as an option for Amazon Pharmacy customers who are participating in a test program in College Station, one of two US cities where Amazon is delivering products using its unmanned, riding-lawnmower-sized vehicles. The company made the effort public on Wednesday ahead of a logistics press event held at a warehouse near Amazon’s Seattle headquarters.

Quick delivery of medical supplies has emerged as one of the leading candidates for a viable delivery-by-drone business. Alphabet’s Wing, United Parcel Service and drone startup Zipline have all set out to deliver medical goods, sometimes in trial programs centered around hospital campuses or planned communities. In most places, drone use remains limited to narrowly prescribed tests as regulators hash out regulations to limit risk to other aircraft and people on the ground.

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Source: Slashdot – Amazon Starts Delivering Medications by Drone in Texas City

An anonymous reader shares a report: On May 4, 2022, NASA’s InSight lander detected the largest quake yet recorded on Mars, one with a 4.7 magnitude — fairly modest by Earth standards but strong for our planetary neighbor. Given Mars lacks the geological process called plate tectonics that generates earthquakes on our planet, scientists suspected a meteorite impact had caused this marsquake. But a search for an impact crater came up empty, leading scientists to conclude that this quake was caused by tectonic activity — rumbling in the planet’s interior — and giving them a deeper understanding about what makes Mars shake, rattle and roll.

“We concluded that the largest marsquake seen by InSight was tectonic, not an impact. This is important as it shows the faults on Mars can host hefty marsquakes,” said planetary scientist Ben Fernando of the University of Oxford in England, lead author of the research published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “We really thought that this event might be an impact.” “This represents a significant step forward in our understanding of Martian seismic activity and takes us one step closer to better unraveling the planet’s tectonic processes,” added Imperial College London planetary scientist and study co-author Constantinos Charalambous, co-chair of InSight’s Geology Working Group.

NASA retired InSight in 2022 after four years of operations. In all, InSight’s seismometer instrument detected 1,319 marsquakes. Earth’s crust – its outermost layer – is divided into immense plates that continually shift, triggering quakes. The Martian crust is a single solid plate. But that does not mean all is quiet on the Martian front. “There are still faults that are active on Mars. The planet is still slowly shrinking and cooling, and there is still motion within the crust even though there are no active plate tectonic processes going on anymore. These faults can trigger quakes,” Fernando said.

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Source: Slashdot – Scientists Surprised By Source of Largest Quake Detected on Mars

The Five Eyes countries’ intelligence chiefs came together on Tuesday to accuse China of intellectual property theft and using artificial intelligence for hacking and spying against the nations, in a rare joint statement by the allies. From a report: The officials from the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – known as the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network – made the comments following meetings with private companies in the U.S. innovation hub Silicon Valley. U.S. FBI Director Christopher Wray said the “unprecedented” joint call was meant to confront the “unprecedented threat” China poses to innovation across the world.

From quantum technology and robotics to biotechnology and artificial intelligence, China was stealing secrets in various sectors, the officials said. “China has long targeted businesses with a web of techniques all at once: cyber intrusions, human intelligence operations, seemingly innocuous corporate investments and transactions,” Wray said. “Every strand of that web had become more brazen, and more dangerous.” In response, Chinese government spokesman Liu Pengyu said the country was committed to intellectual property protection.

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Source: Slashdot – Five Eyes Intelligence Chiefs Warn on China’s ‘Theft’ of IP

AI will likely lead to seismic changes to the workforce, eliminating many professions and requiring a societal rethink of how people spend their time, prominent tech leaders said Tuesday. From a report: Speaking at The Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live conference on Tuesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that the changes could hit some people in the economy more seriously than others, even if society as a whole improves. This will likely be a hard sell for the most affected people, he said. “We are really going to have to do something about this transition,” said Altman, who added that society will have to confront the speed at which the change happens. “People need to have agency, the ability to influence. We need to jointly be architects of the future.” Artificial intelligence is expected to transform the global economy by driving gains in both productivity and growth. But economists and tech entrepreneurs are divided on how quickly this shift could — and should — happen.

Earlier Tuesday, Vinod Khosla, a prominent venture capitalist whose firm was one of OpenAI’s earliest backers, laid out a stark timeline for AI’s transformation of work. Within 10 years AI will be able to “do 80% of 80% of all jobs that we know of today,” said Khosla, a tech investor and entrepreneur for more than 40 years. He pointed to many types of physicians and accountants as examples of professions that AI could largely supplant because these systems can more easily access a broad array of knowledge. Khosla likened the extent of the workforce changes to the disappearance of agricultural jobs in the U.S. in the 20th Century — a transition that took place over generations, not years.

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Source: Slashdot – Tech Leaders Say AI Will Change What It Means To Have a Job