Last week 50 people were injured when a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner experienced a sudden mid-air drop — raising concerns about the possibility of a new safety issue. But the Wall Street Journal offers a follow-up report.

"A flight attendant hit a switch on the pilot's seat while serving a meal, leading a motorized feature to push the pilot into the controls and push down the plane's nose, according to U.S. industry officials briefed on preliminary evidence from an investigation." The switch, on the back of the chair, is usually covered and isn't supposed to be used when a pilot is in the seat. Boeing issued a memo late Thursday to operators of 787 jets recommending that they inspect the cockpit chairs for loose covers on the switches and instructing them how to turn off power to the pilot seat motor if needed. Boeing said it is considering updates to flight crew manuals. "Closing the spring-loaded seat back switch guard onto a loose/detached rocker switch cap can potentially jam the rocker switch, resulting in unintended seat movement," according to the memo, which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal. The memo says this was a known issue and that Boeing had issued a related service notice in 2017....

American Airlines issued a notice to 787 captains advising them of the potential hazard. It asked them to instruct the crew not to use the switch while the chair is occupied and said that its maintenance teams would check that the switches are properly secured.
Ipeco, the cockpit seat supplier, didn't respond to the Journal's request for a comment. But in a new CNN video, a pilot demonstrates the location of the button — and speculates that a seat pushing a pilot forward could abruptly override the plane's auto-pilot system.

"It would be good news for Boeing if it is cleared of any fault in the Latam flight," adds another CNN report. "The company is facing multiple investigations by both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board..."

The Journal's article includes footage from inside the plane just moments after the incident and notes that some passengers had been "pinned to the ceiling as the airplane suddenly descended."

"A pet company has twice sent back dog breed results for human swab samples," reports the Guardian, "prompting doubts surrounding the accuracy of dog breed tests." On Wednesday, WBZ News reported its investigations team receiving dog breed results from the company DNA My Dog after one of its reporters sent in a swab sample — from her own cheek. According to the results from the Toronto-based company, WBZ News reporter Christina Hager is 40% Alaskan malamute, 35% shar-pei and 25% labrador.

Hager also sent her samples to two other pet genetic testing companies. The Melbourne, Australia- and Florida-based company Orivet reported that the sample "failed to provide the data necessary to perform the breed ID analysis". Meanwhile, Washington-based company Wisdom Panel said that the sample "didn't provide ... enough DNA to produce a reliable result"...

The global dog DNA test market, which was valued at $235m in 2022, is projected to grow to $723m by 2030, according to Zion Market Research. The industry's main players include DNA My Dog, Orivet and Wisdom Panel, among others.

But faulty results have cast doubt on the accuracy of the DNA tests.
Thanks to jd (Slashdot reader #1,658) for sharing the article.

When it comes to TikTok, "The Chinese government is signaling that it won't allow a forced sale..." reported the Wall Street Journal Friday, "limiting options for the app's owners as buyers begin lining up to bid for its U.S. operations..."

"They have also sent signals to TikTok's owner, Beijing-based ByteDance, that company executives have interpreted as meaning the government would rather the app be banned in the U.S. than be sold, according to people familiar with the matter."

But that's not always how it plays out. McClatchy notes that in 2019 the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. ordered Grindr's Chinese owners to relinquish control of Grindr. "A year later, the Chinese owners voluntarily complied and sold the company to San Vicente Acquisition, incorporated in Delaware, for around $608 million, according to Forbes."

And CNN reminds us that the world's most-populous country already banned TikTok more than three years ago: In June 2020, after a violent clash on the India-China border that left at least 20 Indian soldiers dead, the government in New Delhi suddenly banned TikTok and several other well-known Chinese apps. "It's important to remember that when India banned TikTok and multiple Chinese apps, the US was the first to praise the decision," said Nikhil Pahwa, the Delhi-based founder of tech website MediaNama. "[Former] US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had welcomed the ban, saying it 'will boost India's sovereignty.'"

While India's abrupt decision shocked the country's 200 million TikTok users, in the four years since, many have found other suitable alternatives. "The ban on Tiktok led to the creation of a multibillion dollar opportunity ... A 200 million user base needed somewhere to go," said Pahwa, adding that it was ultimately American tech companies that seized the moment with their new offerings... Within a week of the ban, Meta-owned Instagram cashed in by launching its TikTok copycat, Instagram Reels, in India. Google introduced its own short video offering, YouTube Shorts. Homegrown alternatives such as MX Taka Tak and Moj also began seeing a rise in popularity and an infux in funding. Those local startups soon fizzled out, however, unable to match the reach and financial firepower of the American firms, which are flourishing.
In fact, at the time India "announced a ban on more than 50 Chinese apps," remembers the Washington Post, adding that Nepal also announced a ban on TikTok late last year.

Their article points out that TikTok has also been banned by top EU policymaking bodies, while "Government staff in some of the bloc's 27 member states, including Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands, have also been told not to use TikTok on their work phones." Canada banned TikTok from all government-issued phones in February 2023, after similar steps in the United States and the European Union.... Britain announced a TikTok ban on government ministers' and civil servants' devices last year, with officials citing the security of state information. Australia banned TikTok from all federal government-owned devices last year after seeking advice from intelligence and security agencies.
A new EFF web page warns that America's new proposed ban on TikTok could also apply to apps like WeChat...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: McDonald's restaurants are suffering global IT outages that prevent employees from taking orders and accepting payments, causing some stores to close for the day. The outages started overnight and are impacting restaurants globally, including those in the USA, Japan, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Italy, New Zealand, and the UK. "We are aware of a technology outage, which impacted our restaurants; the issue is now being resolved," McDonald's said in a statement to BleepingComputer. "We thank customers for their patience and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Notably, the issue is not related to a cybersecurity event." In an updated statement, McDonald's says that the outage was caused by a third-party provider during a configuration change. "Many markets are back online, and the rest are in the process of coming back online. This issue was not directly caused by a cybersecurity event; rather, it was caused by a third-party provider during a configuration change."

Dozens of people have been injured by what officials described as a "strong movement" on a Chilean flight from Australia to New Zealand. From a report: In a statement on Monday, Chilean LATAM Airlines blamed the injuries on "a technical event during the flight which caused a strong movement." It is just the latest in a series of safety-related incidents to feature a Boeing plane. Passengers were met by paramedics when the LATAM Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner touched down in Auckland. It was not immediately clear what caused the incident.

About 50 people were treated at the scene, mostly for mild injuries. Twelve were taken to hospital, an ambulance spokesperson said, with one believed to be in serious condition. It is been a turbulent week for Boeing, with the US plane maker suffering a series of safety-related issues. Further reading: Justice Department Opens Criminal Investigation Into Boeing's Window Blowout Incident.

Remember Avi Loeb, the Harvard professor who claims fragments of alien technology turned up in a high-speed meteor he retrieved from the waters off of Papua, New Guinea?

"Reanalysis of seismic data now suggests Loeb may have been looking for the meteor remnants in the wrong place," writes the Washington Post: The analysis, led by seismologist Benjamin Fernando of Johns Hopkins University, contends that sound waves purportedly from the meteor exploding in the atmosphere, and cited by Loeb as helping to locate the meteor's debris field, were most likely from a truck driving on a road near the seismometer.
"Interstellar signal linked to aliens was actually just a truck," reads the headline on an announcement from Johns Hopkins University. "The fireball location was actually very far away from where the oceanographic expedition went to retrieve these meteor fragments," Fernando says in the announcement. "Not only did they use the wrong signal, they were looking in the wrong place." Using data from stations in Australia and Palau designed to detect sound waves from nuclear testing, Fernando's team identified a more likely location for the meteor, more than 100 miles from the area initially investigated. They concluded the materials recovered from the ocean bottom were tiny, ordinary meteorites — or particles produced from other meteorites hitting Earth's surface mixed with terrestrial contamination.
"There are hundreds of signals that look just like this on that seismometer in Papua New Guinea in the days before and the days after," Fernando told the Washington Post.

But the newspaper adds that "Loeb, however, stands his ground." "The seismic data is completely irrelevant to the location of the meteor," Loeb told The Washington Post. He said his team based its search coordinates primarily on satellite data from the United States military. A three-year analysis by the United States Space Command supported the hypothesis that the meteor's extreme velocity indicated an origin outside our solar system, Loeb said...

[Fernando] said his team believes the purported velocity of the meteor is the result of a measurement error by a sensor. "We think the most likely case is it's a natural meteor from within our solar system," he said.

In any case, Loeb is not done with the search. When he gets sufficient funding, he told The Post, he's going back to the Pacific in search of larger pieces of whatever splashed into the sea.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: The Earth just observed its warmest February, setting a monthly record for the ninth time in a row, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service announced Wednesday.

The unrelenting and exceptional global warmth — fueled by a combination of human-caused warming and the El Niño climate pattern — has spanned both land and ocean areas since June. It has scientists worried about the planet crossing a critical climate threshold and prospects for an active Atlantic hurricane season. The month's average global air temperature of 13.5 degrees Celsius (56.3 degrees Fahrenheit) was 0.12 degrees (0.22 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the previous warmest February in 2016.

The warmth of the last 12-month period is unprecedented in modern records, coming in at 1.56 degrees (2.8 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than preindustrial levels... Scientists fear that tipping points, such as those that could lead to catastrophic sea level rises or the collapse of critical ocean circulations, will become more likely to be reached if the Earth's temperature remains near or above that threshold for multiple years.
Axios adds: This is significant, since these 12 months exceeded the Paris Agreement's 1.5-degree target for a full year. However, the pact is aimed at averting multiple decades above that level, meaning the target hasn't yet been officially breached. Europe was especially warm compared to average during February, along with central and northwest North America, much of South America, Africa and western Australia, Copernicus found.
The Washington Post notes that in the United States, "more than 200 locations in the Midwest and Northeast set records for winter warmth."

They also quote a weather historian who posted on social media that "We are witnessing something extraordinary and unprecedented. Several thousands of records pulverized all over the world in a matter of hours, with margins never seen before."

Trust in AI technology and the companies that develop it is dropping, in both the U.S. and around the world, according to new data from Edelman shared first with Axios. Axios reports: Globally, trust in AI companies has dropped to 53%, down from 61% five years ago. In the U.S., trust has dropped 15 percentage points (from 50% to 35%) over the same period. Trust in AI is low across political lines. Democrats trust in AI companies is 38%, independents are at 25% and Republicans at 24%. Tech is losing its lead as the most trusted sector. Eight years ago, technology was the leading industry in trust in 90% of the countries Edelman studies. Today, it is the most trusted in only half of countries.

People in developing countries are more likely to embrace AI than those in developed ones. Respondents in France, Canada, Ireland, UK, U.S., Germany, Australia, the Netherlands and Sweden reject the growing use of AI by a three-to-one margin, Edelman said. By contrast, acceptance outpaces resistance by a wide margin in developing markets such as Saudi Arabia, India, China, Kenya, Nigeria and Thailand. "When it comes to AI regulation, the public's response is pretty clear: 'What regulation?'," said Edelman global technology chair Justin Westcott. "There's a clear and urgent call for regulators to meet the public's expectations head on."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The average toddler is missing out on hearing more than 1,000 words spoken by an adult each day due to screen time, setting back their language skills, a first-of-its kind study has found. The research, published on Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Jama) Pediatrics, tracked 220 Australian families over two years to measure the relationship between family screen use and children's language environment. Families recorded all the audio around their child using advanced speech recognition technology over a 16-hour period on an average day at home. They repeated this process every six months between the ages of 12 and 36 months. The lead researcher, Dr Mary Brushe from the Telethon Kids Institute, said: "The technology we use is essentially like a Fitbit, but instead of counting the number of steps, this device counts the number of words spoken by, to and around the child." The device also picked up electronic noise, which the researchers analyzed to calculate screen time.

The researchers found young children's exposure to screens including TVs and phones was interfering with their language opportunities, with the association most pronounced at three years of age. For every extra minute of screen time, the three-year-olds in the study were hearing seven fewer words, speaking five fewer words themselves and engaging in one less conversation. The study found the average three-year-old in the study was exposed to two hours and 52 minutes of screen time a day. Researchers estimated this led to those children being exposed to 1,139 fewer adult words, 843 fewer child words and 194 fewer conversations. Because the study couldn't capture parents' silent phone use, including reading emails, texting or quietly scrolling through websites or social media, Brushe said they might have underestimated how much screen usage is affecting children.

A language-rich home environment was critical in supporting infants and toddlers' language development, Brushe said. While some educational children's shows were designed to help children's language skills, very young kids in the age group of the study could struggle to translate television shows into their own life, she said. This study did not differentiate between whether children were watching high- or low-quality screen content.

Eating ultraprocessed foods raises the risk of developing or dying from dozens of adverse health conditions, according to a new review of 45 meta-analyses on almost 10 million people. From a report: "We found consistent evidence linking higher intakes of ultra-processed foods with over 70% of the 45 different health outcomes we assessed," said senior author Wolfgang Marx, a senior research fellow at the Food & Mood Centre at Deakin University in Geelong, Australia, in an email. A higher intake was considered about one serving or about 10% more ultraprocessed foods per day, said Heinz Freisling, a scientist in the nutrition and metabolism branch of the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer, in an email.

"This proportion can be regarded as 'baseline' and for people consuming more than this baseline, the risk might increase," said Freisling, who was not involved in the study. Researchers graded each study as having credible or strong, highly suggestive, suggestive, weak or no evidence. All the studies in the review were published in the past three years, and none was funded by companies involved in the production of ultraprocessed foods, the authors said. "Strong evidence shows that a higher intake of ultra-processed foods was associated with approximately 50% higher risk of cardiovascular disease-related death and common mental disorders," said lead author Dr. Melissa Lane, a postdoctoral research fellow at Deakin, in an email. Cardiovascular disease encompasses heart attacks, stroke, clogged arteries and peripheral artery disease. The study: Ultra-processed food exposure and adverse health outcomes: umbrella review of epidemiological meta-analyses (BMJ)

The U.S. and several international partners endorsed shared principles for developing 6G wireless communication systems, the White House said Monday. From a report: A battle is underway to influence the standards of 6G amid concerns by Western countries and their allies that authoritarian regimes could gain further control over Internet in their countries. Policies around wireless communications influence economic-growth and national security, fueling the race between the U.S. and China -- which claimed earlier this month that it had launched the world's first satellite "to test 6G architecture," per state media.

The governments of the U.S., Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Japan, South Korea, Sweden and the U.K. released a joint statement saying that by working together, "we can support open, free, global, interoperable, reliable, resilient, and secure connectivity." They laid out principles including using systematic approaches to cybersecurity, being protective of privacy and creating technologies that are widely available and accessible to developing nations.

According to the Wall Street Journal (paywalled), Canada has proposed new rules that would compel digital platforms to remove online content that features the sexual exploitation of children or intimate images without consent of the individuals involved. From a report: The rules were years in the making, and represent the third and possibly final installment of measures aimed at regulating digital platforms. Measures introduced since 2022 aim to increase the amount of domestic, Canadian-made content on streaming services, such as Netflix, and require digital platforms to help Canadian news-media outlets finance their newsroom operations. The legislation needs to be approved by Canada's Parliament before it takes effect.

Canada said its rules are based on concepts introduced by the European Union, the U.K. and Australia. Canadian officials say the proposed measures would apply to social-media platforms, adult-entertainment sites where users can upload content, and live-streaming services. These services, officials said, are expected to expeditiously remove two categories of content: That which sexually exploits a child or an abuse survivor, and intimate content broadcast without an individual's consent. The latter incorporates so-called revenge porn, or the nonconsensual posting or dissemination of intimate images, often after the end of a romantic relationship. Officials said private and encrypted messaging services are excluded from the proposed regulations.

Canadian officials said platforms will have a duty to either ensure the material is not published, or take it down once notified. Canada also intends to set up a new agency, the Digital Safety Commission, to enforce the rules, order harmful content taken down, and hold digital services accountable. Platforms that violate the rules could face a maximum penalty of up to 25 million Canadian dollars, or the equivalent of $18.5 million, officials said.

The FBI is "laser focused" on Chinese efforts to insert malicious software code into computer networks in ways that could disrupt critical US infrastructure, according to the agency's director Christopher Wray. From a report: Wray said he was acutely concerned about "pre-positioning" of malware. He said the US recently disrupted a Chinese hacking network known as Volt Typhoon that targeted American infrastructure including the electricity grid and water supply, and other targets around the world. "We're laser focused on this as a real threat and we're working with a lot of partners to try to identify it, anticipate it and disrupt it," Wray said on Sunday after attending the Munich Security Conference.

"I'm sober and clear minded about what we're up against...We're always going to have to be kind of on the balls of our feet." Wray said Volt Typhoon was just the tip of the iceberg and was one of many such efforts by the Chinese government. The US has been tracking Chinese pre-positioning operations for well over a decade, but Wray told the security conference that they had reached "fever pitch." He said China was increasingly inserting "offensive weapons within our critical infrastructure poised to attack whenever Beijing decides the time is right."

His comments are the latest FBI effort to raise awareness about Chinese espionage that ranges from traditional spying and intellectual property theft to hacking designed to prepare for possible future conflict. Last October, Wray and his counterparts from the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network that includes the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand held their first public meeting in an effort to focus the spotlight on Chinese espionage. Wray said the US campaign was having an impact and that people were increasingly attuned to the threat, particularly compared with several years ago when he sometimes met scepticism.

Dumping chemicals in the ocean? Spraying saltwater into clouds? Injecting reflective particles into the sky? Scientists are resorting to once unthinkable techniques to cool the planet because global efforts to check greenhouse gas emissions are failing. From a report: These geoengineering approaches were once considered taboo by scientists and regulators who feared that tinkering with the environment could have unintended consequences, but now researchers are receiving taxpayer funds and private investments to get out of the lab and test these methods outdoors. The shift reflects growing concern that efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions aren't moving fast enough to prevent the destructive effects of heat waves, storms and floods made worse by climate change. Geoengineering isn't a substitute for reducing emissions, according to scientists and business leaders involved in the projects. Rather, it is a way to slow climate warming in the next few years while buying time to switch to a carbon-free economy in the longer term.

Three field experiments are under way in the U.S. and overseas. This month, researchers aboard a ship off the northeastern coast of Australia near the Whitsunday Islands are spraying a briny mixture through high-pressure nozzles into the air in an attempt to brighten low-altitude clouds that form over the ocean. Scientists hope bigger, brighter clouds will reflect sunlight away from the Earth, shade the ocean surface and cool the waters around the Great Barrier Reef, where warming ocean temperatures have contributed to massive coral die-offs. The research project, known as marine cloud brightening, is led by Southern Cross University as part of the $64.55 million, or 100 million Australian dollars, Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program. The program is funded by the partnership between the Australian government's Reef Trust and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation and includes conservation organizations and several academic institutions.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the New York Times When it's after hours, and the boss is on the line, Australian workers — already among the world's best-rested and most personally fulfilled employees — can soon press "decline" in favor of the seductive call of the beach. In yet another buttress against the scourge of overwork, Australia's Senate on Thursday passed a bill giving workers the right to ignore calls and messages outside of working hours without fear of repercussion. It will now return to the House of Representatives for final approval.

The bill, expected to pass in the House with ease, will let Australian workers refuse "unreasonable" professional communication outside of the workday. Workplaces that punish employees for not responding to such demands could be fined. "Someone who is not being paid 24 hours a day shouldn't be penalized if they're not online and available 24 hours a day," Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said at a news conference Wednesday...

Australia follows in the footsteps of European nations such as France, which in 2017 introduced the right of workers to disconnect from employers while off duty, a move later emulated by Germany, Italy and Belgium. The European Parliament has also called for a law across the European Union that would alleviate the pressure on workers to answer communications off the clock...

Australians already enjoy a host of standardized benefits, including 20 days of paid annual leave, mandatory paid sick leave, "long service" leave of six weeks for those who have remained at an employer for at least seven years, 18 weeks of paid maternity leave and a nationwide minimum wage of about $15 an hour.

Mozilla, which manages the open-source Firefox browser, announced today that Mitchell Baker is stepping down as CEO to focus on AI and internet safety as chair of the nonprofit foundation. Laura Chambers, a Mozilla board member and entrepreneur with experience at Airbnb, PayPal, and eBay, will step in as interim CEO to run operations until a permanent replacement is found. Fortune: Baker, a Silicon Valley pioneer who co-founded the Mozilla Project, says it was her decision to step down as CEO, adding that the move is motivated by a sense of urgency over the current state of the internet and public trust. "We want to offer an alternative for people to have better products," says Baker, who wants to draw more attention to policies, products and processes to challenge business models built on fueling outrage. "What are the connections between this global malaise and how humans are engaging with each other and technology?"

Chambers says she plans to focus on building out new products that address growing privacy concerns while actively looking for a full-time CEO. Prior to being recruited to the Mozilla board three years ago, Chambers says she was feeling "pretty disillusioned" about society because of the influence of money in politics and the growing power of the tech giants. "I was confused about what to do and this felt like a genuine way to make an impact." Chambers says she won't be seeking a permanent CEO role because she plans to move back to Australia later this year for family reasons. "I think this is an example of Mozilla doing the right role modelling in how to manage a succession," says Chambers.

The Chinese state-sponsored hacking group known as Volt Typhoon has been living in the networks of some critical industries for "at least five years," (non-paywalled link) according to a joint cybersecurity advisory issued by the US and its allies on Wednesday. From a report: The compromised environments are in the continental US and elsewhere, including Guam, the advisory said. It was published by US agencies and their security counterparts in Australia, Canada, the UK and New Zealand. The report comes a week after US officials announced an operation to disrupt Volt Typhoon by deleting malware from thousands of internet-connected devices the group had hijacked to gain access to the networks in critical parts of the economy. Among the sectors targeted were communications, energy, transportation and water systems.

In an effort to boost tourism and innovation, Japan will launch a new visa program for digital nomads, allowing remote workers to work in the country for up to six months while enjoying sightseeing trips. Tech Times reports: Starting from the end of March, Japan will introduce a unique visa status aimed at IT engineers and remote workers employed by overseas companies. The program is designed to cater to the evolving work landscape, recognizing the surge in digital nomads-individuals who can seamlessly work from anywhere in the world. Nikkei Asia (paywalled) tells us that to be eligible for this digital nomad visa, applicants must boast an annual income of at least 10 million yen ($68,000).

Citizens from 50 countries and regions, including the U.S., Australia, and Singapore, which have existing visa waiver agreements with Japan, can apply. Private health insurance is a prerequisite, ensuring the well-being of the visa holders during their stay. Self-employed individuals engaged in overseas business can also benefit from this innovative program. Moreover, they have the option to bring their family members along, provided they are covered by private health insurance.

While the program offers the freedom to explore Japan, it has unique conditions. Digital nomads under this visa will not receive a residence card or certificate, limiting access to specific government benefits. The visa is non-renewable, requiring reapplication after a six-month interval, and applicants must spend that time outside the country. Japan joins the ranks of over 50 countries issuing digital nomad visas. Notably, South Korea allows up to two years, while Taiwan offers a three-year stay, with the possibility of permanent residency. The diverse offerings cater to digital nomads' varied needs and preferences, seeking a balance between work and exploration.

"Companies that once serviced the boom in cryptocurrency mining are pivoting to take advantage of the latest data gold rush," reports the Guardian. Canadian company Hive Blockchain changed its name in July to Hive Digital Technologies and announced it was pivoting to AI. "Hive has been a pioneering force in the cryptocurrency mining sector since 2017. The adoption of a new name signals a significant strategic shift to harness the potential of GPU Cloud compute technology, a vital tool in the world of AI, machine learning and advanced data analysis, allowing us to expand our revenue channels with our Nvidia GPU fleet," the company said in its announcement at the time. The company's executive chairman, Frank Holmes, told Guardian Australia the transition required a lot of work. "Moving from mining Ethereum to hosting GPU cloud services involves buying powerful new servers for our GPUs, upgrading networking equipment and moving to higher tier data centres," he said.

"The only commonality is that GPUs are the workhorses in both cases. GPU cloud requires higher end supporting hardware and a more secure, faster data centre environment. There's a steep learning curve in the GPU cloud business, but our team is adapting well and learning fast."

For others, like Iris Energy, a datacentre company operating out of Canada and Texas, and co-founded by Australian Daniel Roberts, it has been the plan all along. Iris did not require any changes to the way the company operated when the AI boom came along, Roberts told Guardian Australia. "Our strategy really has been about bootstrapping the datacentre platform with bitcoin mining, and then just preserve optionality on the whole digital world. The distinction with us and crypto-miners is we're not really miners, we're datacentre people." The company still trumpets its bitcoin mining capability but in the most recent results Iris said it was well positioned for "power dense computing" with 100% renewable energy. Roberts said it wasn't an either-or situation between bitcoin mining and AI.

"I think when you look at bitcoin versus AI, the market will just reach equilibrium based on the market-based demands for each product," he said... Holmes said Hive also saw the two industries operating in parallel. "We love the bitcoin mining business, but its revenue is rather unpredictable. GPU cloud services should complement it well," he said.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader mspohr for sharing the article.

"Researchers at the University of Sydney Nano Institute have developed a small silicon semiconductor chip that combines electronic and photonic (light-based) elements," reports SciTechDaily.

"This innovation greatly enhances radio-frequency (RF) bandwidth and the ability to accurately control information flowing through the unit." Expanded bandwidth means more information can flow through the chip and the inclusion of photonics allows for advanced filter controls, creating a versatile new semiconductor device. Researchers expect the chip will have applications in advanced radar, satellite systems, wireless networks, and the roll-out of 6G and 7G telecommunications and also open the door to advanced sovereign manufacturing. It could also assist in the creation of high-tech value-add factories at places like Western Sydney's Aerotropolis precinct.

The chip is built using an emerging technology in silicon photonics that allows the integration of diverse systems on semiconductors less than 5 millimeters wide. Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Ben Eggleton, who guides the research team, likened it to fitting together Lego building blocks, where new materials are integrated through advanced packaging of components, using electronic 'chiplets'.... Dr Alvaro Casas Bedoya, Associate Director for Photonic Integration in the School of Physics, who led the chip design, said the unique method of heterogeneous materials integration has been 10 years in the making. "The combined use of overseas semiconductor foundries to make the basic chip wafer with local research infrastructure and manufacturing has been vital in developing this photonic integrated circuit," he said. "This architecture means Australia could develop its own sovereign chip manufacturing without exclusively relying on international foundries for the value-add process...."

The photonic circuit in the chip means a device with an impressive 15 gigahertz bandwidth of tunable frequencies with spectral resolution down to just 37 megahertz, which is less than a quarter of one percent of the total bandwidth.