An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Network security appliances like firewalls are meant to keep hackers out. Instead, digital intruders are increasingly targeting them as the weak link that lets them pillage the very systems those devices are meant to protect. In the case of one hacking campaign over recent months, Cisco is now revealing that its firewalls served as beachheads for sophisticated hackers penetrating multiple government networks around the world. On Wednesday, Cisco warned that its so-called Adaptive Security Appliances -- devices that integrate a firewall and VPN with other security features -- had been targeted by state-sponsored spies who exploited two zero-day vulnerabilities in the networking giant's gear to compromise government targets globally in a hacking campaign it's calling ArcaneDoor.

The hackers behind the intrusions, which Cisco's security division Talos is calling UAT4356 and which Microsoft researchers who contributed to the investigation have named STORM-1849, couldn't be clearly tied to any previous intrusion incidents the companies had tracked. Based on the group's espionage focus and sophistication, however, Cisco says the hacking appeared to be state-sponsored. "This actor utilized bespoke tooling that demonstrated a clear focus on espionage and an in-depth knowledge of the devices that they targeted, hallmarks of a sophisticated state-sponsored actor," a blog post from Cisco's Talos researchers reads. Cisco declined to say which country it believed to be responsible for the intrusions, but sources familiar with the investigation tell WIRED the campaign appears to be aligned with China's state interests.

Cisco says the hacking campaign began as early as November 2023, with the majority of intrusions taking place between December and early January of this year, when it learned of the first victim. "The investigation that followed identified additional victims, all of which involved government networks globally," the company's report reads. In those intrusions, the hackers exploited two newly discovered vulnerabilities in Cisco's ASA products. One, which it's calling Line Dancer, let the hackers run their own malicious code in the memory of the network appliances, allowing them to issue commands to the devices, including the ability to spy on network traffic and steal data. A second vulnerability, which Cisco is calling Line Runner, would allow the hackers' malware to maintain its access to the target devices even when they were rebooted or updated. It's not yet clear if the vulnerabilities served as the initial access points to the victim networks, or how the hackers might have otherwise gained access before exploiting the Cisco appliances. Cisco advises that customers apply its new software updates to patch both vulnerabilities.

A separate advisory (PDF) from the UK's National Cybersecurity Center notes that physically unplugging an ASA device does disrupt the hackers' access. "A hard reboot by pulling the power plug from the Cisco ASA has been confirmed to prevent Line Runner from re-installing itself," the advisory reads.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Two researchers at the University of California, Davis -- Yanning Li and Alan Jenn -- have determined that nearly two-thirds of [California's] feeder lines don't have the capacity that will likely be needed for car charging. Updating to handle the rising demand might set its utilities back as much as 40 percent of the existing grid's capital cost. Li and Jenn aren't the first to look at how well existing grids can handle growing electric vehicle sales; other research has found various ways that different grids fall short. However, they have access to uniquely detailed data relevant to California's ability to distribute electricity (they do not concern themselves with generation). They have information on every substation, feeder line, and transformer that delivers electrons to customers of the state's three largest utilities, which collectively cover nearly 90 percent of the state's population. In total, they know the capacity that can be delivered through over 1,600 substations and 5,000 feeders.[...]

By 2025, only about 7 percent of the feeders will experience periods of overload. By 2030, that figure will grow to 27 percent, and by 2035 -- only about a decade away -- about half of the feeders will be overloaded. Problems grow a bit more slowly after that, with two-thirds of the feeders overloaded by 2045, a decade after all cars sold in California will be EVs. At that point, total electrical demand will be close to twice the existing capacity. The problems aren't evenly distributed, though. They appear first in high-population areas like the Bay Area. And throughout this period, most of the problems are in feeders that serve residential and mixed-use neighborhoods. The feeders that serve neighborhoods that are primarily business-focused don't see the same coordinated surge in demand that occurs as people get home from work and plug in; they're better able to serve the more erratic use of charging stations at office complexes and shopping centers. In terms of the grid, residential services will need to see their capacity expand by about 16 gigawatts by 2045. Public chargers will need nine gigawatts worth of added capacity by the same point. The one wild card is direct current fast charging. Eliminating fast chargers entirely would reduce the number of feeders that need upgrades by 12 percent. Converting all public stations to DC fast charging, in contrast, would boost that number by 15 percent. So the details of the upgrades that will be needed will be very sensitive to the impatience of EV drivers.

Paying for the necessary upgrades will be pricey, but there's a lot of uncertainty here. Li and Jenn came up with a range of anywhere between $6 billion and $20 billion. They put this in context in two ways. The total capital invested in the existing grid is estimated to be $51 billion, so the cost of updating it could be well over a third of its total value. At the same time, the costs will be spread out over decades and only total up to (at most) three times the grid's annual operation and maintenance costs. So in any one year, the costs shouldn't be crippling. All that might be expected to drive the cost of electricity up. But Li and Jenn suggest that the greater volume of electricity consumption will exert a downward pressure on prices (people will pay more overall but pay somewhat less per unit of electricity). Based on a few economic assumptions, the researchers conclude that this would roughly offset the costs of the necessary grid expansion, so the price per unit of electricity would be largely static. The findings have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Lenovo's latest ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 laptop is set to be the first to use the new LPCAMM2 memory form factor, the successor to SODIMM sticks. From a report: While Lenovo has largely focused on the AI performance of its new laptop, which is equipped with an Intel Core Ultra CPU and Nvidia RTX 3000 Ada GPU, the company also noted that its device was the first in the world to use the LPCAMM2 memory standard. LPCAMM2 uses 64 percent less space than SODIMM and 61 percent less active power, according to Lenovo. This is thanks to it being based on LPDDR5X memory instead of regular DDR5.

Designed specifically for laptops, the LPCAMM2 standard actually has its origins in tech developed by Dell. Simply termed CAMM (Compression Attached Memory Module), it first debuted as a proprietary type of memory in Dell's Precision 7670 in 2022. However, in 2023 the PC giant donated its intellectual property to JEDEC, the organization that standardizes memory technologies. CAMM became LPCAMM2 (Low-Power Compression Attached Memory Module) in September 2023 when JEDEC finally confirmed its specifications. Samsung promptly announced plans to produce LPCAMM2 sticks, and claimed they would have 50 percent more performance and 70 percent more efficiency than their SODIMM-based predecessors. Plus, LPCAMM2 can offer dual-channel memory without requiring a second module.

Glance, which operates a popular lockscreen platform targeting Android smartphones, is setting its sights on the U.S. market. From a report: The Indian startup recently commenced a pilot program in partnership with Motorola and Verizon in the U.S., with plans for a full launch in the country later this year, sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The Bengaluru-headquartered startup, backed by investors, including Google and Jio Platforms, has already made significant inroads in India, Southeast Asia, and Japan, where it expanded last year. According to a person familiar with the matter, Glance's lockscreen platform today reaches more than 450 million smartphones and is active on about 300 million of them, delivering those customers a customized feed of news, local events, sports updates, media content, and interactive games directly to their lockscreens without requiring them to install additional apps. The recently launched Moto G Power smartphone in the U.S. shipped with Glance's platform, the report says.

Further reading: Motorola Spoiled a Good Budget Phone With Bloatware.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Quantum dots are already moving in the premium display category, particularly through QD-OLED TVs and monitors. The next step could be QDEL, short for "quantum dot electroluminescent," also known as NanoLED, screens. Not to be confused with the QLED (quantum light emitting diode) tech already available in TVs, QDEL displays don't have a backlight. Instead, the quantum dots are the light source. The expected result is displays with wider color spaces than today's QD-OLEDs (quantum dot OLEDs) that are also brighter, more affordable, and resistant to burn-in. It seems like QDEL is being eyed as one of the most potentially influential developments for consumer displays over the next two years. If you're into high-end display tech, QDEL should be on your radar.

You may know QDEL as NanoLED because that's what Nanosys, a quantum dot supplier developing the technology, calls it. QDEL has gone by other names, such as QLED -- before Samsung claimed that acronym for LCD-LED TVs that use quantum dots. You may also see QDEL referred to as QD-EL, QD-LED, or EL-QD. As the alphabet soup suggests, there are still some things to finalize with this tech. This article will mostly use the term QDEL, with occasional references to NanoLED. If none of those names sound familiar, it's probably because you can't buy any QDEL products yet. Suppliers suggest that could change in the next few years; Nanosys is targeting 2026 for commercial availability. [...]

Today's OLED screens use OLED material as their light source, with QD-OLED specifically applying quantum dots to convert the light into color. In QLED, the light source is a white backlight; QDEL displays apply electricity directly to quantum dots, which then generate light. QDEL uses a layer of quantum dots sandwiched between an anode and cathode to facilitates the flow of electricity into the quantum dots. QDEL displays have pixels made of a red quantum dot subpixel, green quantum dot subpixel, and -- differing from today's QLED and QD-OLED displays -- blue quantum dot subpixel. QDEL displays use the same quantum dot cores that QD-OLED and QLED products use, [Jeff Yurek, Nanosys' VP of marketing] told me, adding, "The functionalization of the outer layer of the [quantum dots] needs to be changed to make it compatible with each display architecture, but the cores that do the heavy lifting are pretty much the same across all of these."

Because QDEL pixels make their own light and can therefore turn off completely, QDEL displays can deliver the same deep blacks and rich contrast that made OLED popular. But with the use of direct-view quantum dots, stakeholders are claiming the potential for wider color gamuts than we've seen in consumer displays before. With fewer layers and parts, there are also implications for QDEL product pricing, longevity, and even thinness. [...] The fact that quantum dots are already being successfully applied to LCD-LED and OLED screens is encouraging for future QDEL products. QDEL stakeholders claim that the tech could bring efficiencies like lower power consumption and higher brightness than OLED. (Research using a prototype device has recorded quantum dot light-emitting diodes reaching 614,000 nits. Of course, those aren't the type of results you should expect to see in a real-life consumer product.) There's also hope that QDEL could eventually last longer than OLED, especially since QDEL doesn't rely on organic materials that can cause burn-in.

Google has fired another 20 workers for participating in protests against its $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with the Israeli government, according to an activist group representing the workers. From a report: In total, the company has now fired around 50 employees over sit-in protests held in Google offices last week that were part of yearslong discontent among a group of Google and Amazon workers over claims that Israel is using the companies' services to harm Palestinians. Google has denied those claims, saying Project Nimbus, the cloud-computing contract, doesn't involve "highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services," and that Israeli government ministries that use its commercial cloud must agree to its terms of services and other policies.

No Tech For Apartheid, the group representing the workers, claimed in a statement that Google is attempting to "quash dissent, silence its workers, and reassert its power over them." "That's because Google values its profit, and its $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government and military, more than people. And it certainly values it over its own workers," it said. The group said it will continue organizing until Google cancels Project Nimbus. Further reading: Google To Employees: 'We Are a Workplace'.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: In sunny California, solar panels are everywhere. They sit in dry, desert landscapes in the Central Valley and are scattered over rooftops in Los Angeles's urban center. By last count, the state had nearly 47 gigawatts of solar power installed -- enough to power 13.9 million homes and provide over a quarter of the Golden State's electricity. But now, the state and its grid operator are grappling with a strange reality: There is so much solar on the grid that, on sunny spring days when there's not as much demand, electricity prices go negative. Gigawatts of solar are "curtailed" -- essentially, thrown away. In response, California has cut back incentives for rooftop solar and slowed the pace of installing panels. But the diminishing economic returns may slow the development of solar in a state that has tried to move to renewable energy. And as other states build more and more solar plants of their own, they may soon face the same problems.

Curtailing solar isn't technically difficult -- according to Paul Denholm, senior research fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, it's equivalent to flipping a switch for grid operators. But throwing away free power raises electricity prices. It has also undercut the benefits of installing rooftop solar. Since the 1990s, California has been paying owners of rooftop solar panels when they export their energy to the grid. That meant that rooftop solar owners got $0.20 to $0.30 for each kilowatt-hour of electricity that they dispatched. But a year ago, the state changed this system, known as "net-metering," and now only compensates new solar panel owners for how much their power is worth to the grid. In the spring, when the duck curve is deepest, that number can dip close to zero. Customers can get more money back if they install batteries and provide power to the grid in the early evening or morning.

The change has sparked a huge backlash from Californians and rooftop solar companies, which say that their businesses are flagging. Indeed, Wood Mackenzie predicts that California residential solar installations in 2024 will fall by around 40 percent. Some state politicians are now trying to reverse the rule. "Under the CPUC's leadership California is responsible for the largest loss of solar jobs in our nation's history," Bernadette del Chiaro, the executive director of the California Solar and Storage Association, said in a statement referring to California's public utility commission. But experts say that it reflects how the economics of solar are changing in a state that has gone all-in on the technology. [...] To cope, [California's grid operator, known as CAISO] is selling some excess power to nearby states; California is also planning to install additional storage and batteries to hold solar power until later in the afternoon. Transmission lines that can carry electricity to nearby regions will also help -- some of the lost power comes from regions where there simply aren't enough power lines to carry a sudden burst of solar. Denholm says the state is starting to take the steps needed to deal with the glut. "There are fundamental limits to how much solar we can put on the grid before you start needing a lot of storage," Denholm said. "You can't just sit around and do nothing." Further reading: The Energy Institute discusses this problem in a recent blog post.

Since 2020, the residential electricity rates in California have risen by as much as 40% after adjusting for inflation. While there's been "a lot of finger-pointing about the cause of these increases," the authors note that the impact on rates is multiplied when customers install their own generation and buy fewer kilowatts-hours from the grid because those households "contribute less towards all the fixed costs in the system." These fixed costs include: vegetation management, grid hardening, distribution line undergrounding, EV charging stations, subsidies for low income customers, energy efficiency programs, and the poles and wires that we all rely on whether we are taking electricity off the grid or putting it onto the grid from our rooftop PV systems.

"Since those fixed costs still need to be paid, rates go up, shifting costs onto the kWhs still being bought from the grid."

According to French business magazine Challenges, Apple has acquired Datakalab -- a Paris-based startup specializing in artificial intelligence compression and computer vision technology. 9to5Mac reports: Datakalab described itself as "experts in low power, runtime efficient, and deep learning algorithms" that work on device. On its LinkedIn page, Datakalab highlights "industry leading compression and adaptation to deploy embedded computer vision that is fast, cost-effective and precise." Prior to the Apple acquisition had between 10 and 20 employees.

From Datakalab's now-defunct website: "Datakalab is a French technology company that develops computer image analysis algorithms to measure flows in public space. The images are instantly transformed into anonymized statistical data processed locally in 100ms. Datakalab does not store any images or personal data and only keeps statistical data. Datakalab products are built according to the principle of 'Privacy by Design.'"

While neither Apple nor DatakaLab have acknowledged the acquisition, Challenges says that the deal was reported to the European Commission this month. The report says that Datakalab's two founders did not join Apple, but multiple other employees did make the jump. Datakalab also held multiple patents related to AI compression and vision technology. The acquisition makes perfect sense given Apple's rumored ambitions to run its upcoming AI-related features in iOS 18 "entirely on device."

President Joe Biden travels to Triangle, Virginia, Monday to mark Earth Day, where he'll unveil $7 billion in grant funding for solar power under the Inflation Reduction Act and announce new steps to stand up his administration's American Climate Corps -- a program popular with youth climate groups. From a report: The announcements come days after the Biden administration made several significant conservation announcements, including barring oil drilling on nearly half of the national petroleum reserve in Alaska. Under the Environmental Protection Agency's Solar for All program, the administration will announce funding awards to states territories, tribal governments, municipalities and nonprofits "to develop long-lasting solar programs that are targeted towards the communities and people who need them most," EPA Deputy Administrator Janet McCabe told reporters. Per McCabe, the funding will enable nearly one million households in low-income and disadvantaged communities to benefit from solar power, saving more than $350 million in electric costs annually and more than $8 billion over the life of the program for overburdened households.

An anonymous reader shares a report: To accommodate tech companies' pivots to artificial intelligence, tech companies are increasingly investing in ways to power AI's immense electricity needs. Most recently, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman invested in Exowatt, a company using solar power to feed data centers, according to the Wall Street Journal. That's on the heals of OpenAI partner, Microsoft, working on getting approval for nuclear energy to help power its AI operations. Last year Amazon, which is a major investor in AI company Anthropic, said it invested in more than 100 renewable energy projects, making it the "world's largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy for the fourth year in a row."

Bloomberg looks at America's biggest operator of private electrical vehicle charging infrastructure: Amazon. "In a little more than two years, Amazon has installed more than 17,000 chargers at about 120 warehouses around the U.S." — and had Rivian build 13,500 custom electric delivery vans. Amazon has a long way to go. The Seattle-based company says its operations emitted about 71 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2022, up by almost 40% since Jeff Bezos's 2019 vow that his company would eventually stop contributing to the emissions warming the planet. Many of Amazon's emissions come from activities — air freight, ocean shipping, construction and electronics manufacturing, to name a few — that lack a clear, carbon-free alternative, today or any time soon. The company has not made much progress on decarbonization of long-haul trucking, whose emissions tend to be concentrated in industrial and outlying areas rather than the big cities that served as the backdrop for Amazon's electric delivery vehicle rollout...

Another lesson Amazon learned is one the company isn't keen to talk about: Going green can be expensive, at least initially. Based on the type of chargers Amazon deploys — almost entirely midtier chargers called Level 2 in the industry — the hardware likely cost between $50 million and $90 million, according to Bloomberg estimates based on cost estimates supplied by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Factoring in costs beyond the plugs and related hardware — like digging through a parking lot to lay wires or set up electrical panels and cabinets — could double that sum. Amazon declined to comment on how much it spent on its EV charging push.
In addition to the expense of the chargers, electric vehicle-fleet operators are typically on the hook for utility upgrades. When companies request the sort of increases to electrical capacity that Amazon has — the Maple Valley warehouse has three megawatts of power for its chargers — they tend to pay for them, making the utility whole for work done on behalf of a single customer. Amazon says it pays upgrade costs as determined by utilities, but that in some locations the upgrades fit within the standard service power companies will handle out of their own pocket.
The article also includes this quote from Kellen Schefter, transportation director at the Edison Electric Institute trade group (which worked with Amazon on its electricity needs). "Amazon's scale matters. If Amazon can show that it meets their climate goals while also meeting their package-delivery goals, we can show this all actually works."

Two months ago the team behind NASA's Ingenuity Helicopter released a video reflecting on its historic explorations of Mars, flying 10.5 miles (17.0 kilometers) in 72 different flights over three years. It was the team's way of saying goodbye, according to NASA's video.

And this week, LiveScience reports, Ingenuity answered back: On April 16, Ingenuity beamed back its final signal to Earth, which included the remaining data it had stored in its memory bank and information about its final flight. Ingenuity mission scientists gathered in a control room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California to celebrate and analyze the helicopter's final message, which was received via NASA's Deep Space Network, made up of ground stations located across the globe.

In addition to the remaining data files, Ingenuity sent the team a goodbye message including the names of all the people who worked on the mission. This special message had been sent to Perseverance the day before and relayed to Ingenuity to send home.

The helicopter, which still has power, will now spend the rest of its days collecting data from its final landing spot in Valinor Hills, named after a location in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" books.

The chopper will wake up daily to test its equipment, collect a temperature reading and take a single photo of its surroundings. It will continue to do this until it loses power or fills up its remaining memory space, which could take 20 years. Such a long-term dataset could not only benefit future designs for Martian vehicles but also "provide a long-term perspective on Martian weather patterns and dust movement," researchers wrote in the statement. However, the data will be kept on board the helicopter and not beamed back to Earth, so it must be retrieved by future Martian vehicles or astronauts.

"Whenever humanity revisits Valinor Hills — either with a rover, a new aircraft, or future astronauts — Ingenuity will be waiting with her last gift of data," Teddy Tzanetos, an Ingenuity scientist at JPL, said in the statement.
Thursday NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory released another new video tracing the entire route of Ingenuity's expedition over the surface of Mars.

"Ingenuity's success could pave the way for more extensive aerial exploration of Mars down the road," adds Spacae.com: Mission team members are already working on designs for larger, more capable rotorcraft that could collect a variety of science data on the Red Planet, for example. And Mars isn't the only drone target: In 2028, NASA plans to launch Dragonfly, a $3.3 billion mission to Saturn's huge moon Titan, which hosts lakes, seas and rivers of liquid hydrocarbons on its frigid surface. The 1,000-pound (450 kg) Dragonfly will hop from spot to spot on Titan, characterizing the moon's various environments and assessing its habitability.

This week saw the release of the LXQt 2.0 desktop environment, reports 9to5Linux. And besides bringing Qt 6 support (and a new default application menu), it also brings support for the Wayland display protocol to more components: The LXQt development is confident that the next major release, LXQt 2.1, will be fully Wayland compatible. The components that need to be ported to Wayland include ScreenGrab, LXQt Global Shortcuts, LXQt Panel's task-bar and keyboard indicator, some input settings, and settings of monitor, power button, and screen locker.

"Wayland will be the main target for LXQt 2.1.0, as Qt6 was for LXQt 2.0.0" said the devs. "Most Wayland compositors have tools that can be used instead of them, such that an LXQt-Wayland session is already possible for advanced users."
The lightweight Linux distro Lubuntu uses LXQtplace in place of GNOME — and Lubuntu 24.04 LTS will include an optional Wayland session alongside its default Xorg one, according to 9to5Linux:

I said it before and I'll say it again, 2024 is the year of the Wayland desktop... The Lubuntu team plans to support the Xorg session until 2026 to aid users with older GPUs... However, the tables will be turned next year with the Lubuntu 24.10 release, which will be shipping with Wayland by default.

CNBC visited a small group of bitcoin miners who "set up shop at the site of an extinct volcano" near Kenya's Hell's Gate National Park.

Their mine "consists of a single 500-kilowatt mobile container that, from the outside, looks like a small residential trailer." But what's more interesting is it's operated by a startup called Gridless. (According to its web site Gridless "designs, builds, and operates bitcoin mining sites alongside small-scale renewable energy producers in rural Africa where excess energy is not utilized...") Backed by Jack Dorsey's Block, Gridless electrifies its machines with a mix of solar power and the stranded, wasted energy from a nearby geothermal site. It's one of six mines run by the company in Kenya, Malawi and Zambia, powered by a mix of renewable inputs and working toward a broader mission of securing and decentralizing the bitcoin network... In early 2022, [the three Gridless co-founders] began brainstorming creative solutions for the divide between power generation and capacity, and the lack of access to electricity in Africa. They landed on the idea of bitcoin mining, which could potentially solve a big problem for renewable energy developers by taking their stranded power and spreading it to other parts of the continent.

In Africa, 43% of the population, or roughly 600 million people, lack access to electricity.... Africa is home to an estimated 10 terawatts of solar capacity, 350 gigawatts of hydro and another 110 gigawatts of wind. Some of this renewable energy is being harnessed already, but a lot isn't because building the specialized infrastructure to capture it is expensive. Even with 60% of the best solar resources globally, Africa only has 1% of installed solar PV capacity.

Enter bitcoin miners.

Bitcoin gets a bad rap for the amount of energy it consumes, but it can also help unlock these trapped renewable sources of power. Miners are essentially energy buyers, and co-locating with renewables creates a financial incentive to bolster production. "As often happens, you'll have an overage of power during the day or even at night, and there's nobody to soak that power up," said Hersman. He said his company's 50-kilowatt mining container can "take up whatever is extra throughout the day...." Demand from bitcoin miners on these semi-stranded assets is making renewables in Africa economically viable. The power supplier benefits from selling energy that previously had been discarded, while the energy plants will sometimes lower costs for the customer. At one of the Gridless pilot sites in Kenya, the hydro plant dropped the price of power from 35 cents per kilowatt hour to 25 cents per kWh.

The buildout of capacity is also electrifying households. Gridless says its sites have powered 1,200 houses in Zambia, 1,800 in Malawi and 5,000 in Kenya. The company's mines also have delivered power for containerized cold storage for local farmers, battery charging stations for electric motorcycles and public WiFi points.

A large-screen IMAX documentary about the James Webb Space Telescope "has just opened in 300 theaters across North America," write an anonymous Slashdot reader, noting that it's playing for one week only. "And it gets a rave review in Forbes." Imagine venturing to the beginning of time and space, exploring cosmic landscapes so vast and beautiful that they've remained unseen by human eyes until now.

This is the promise of "Deep Sky," an extraordinary IMAX presentation that brings the universe's awe-inspiring mysteries closer than ever before. Directed by the Oscar®-nominated filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn and narrated by the equally acclaimed actress Michelle Williams, "Deep Sky" is a monumental journey through the cosmos, powered by the groundbreaking images captured by NASA's Webb Telescope... "Deep Sky" is more than a documentary about a space telescope; it's an immersive experience that invites audiences to see the universe as never before. Through the power of IMAX, viewers are transported across 13 billion years of cosmic history, to the very edges of the observable universe. Here, in stunning clarity, we witness the birth of stars, the formation of galaxies, and the eerie beauty of exoplanets — planets that orbit stars beyond our own Sun. These images, beamed back to Earth by JWST, reveal the universe's vast beauty on a scale that seems only the giant IMAX screen can begin to convey...

What makes "Deep Sky" particularly captivating is its ability to render the incomprehensible beauty and scale of the universe accessible. The IMAX® experience, known for its breathtaking visuals and sound, serves as the perfect medium to convey the majesty of the cosmos.
The review says the film celebrates the achieve of thousands of people working across decades, "aiming to answer some of humanity's oldest questions: Where did we come from? How did the universe begin? Are we alone in the vastness of space?"

The reviewer also spoke to JWST telescope scientist Matt Mountain — in another article applauding the film for "encapsulating the grandeur of space exploration on the IMAX canvas." In "Deep Sky," viewers are taken on a journey from the telescope's construction to its deployment and early operational phases. The documentary highlights the international collaboration and engineering marvels behind the JWST, featuring insights from key scientists and engineers who brought the telescope to life. The film aims to rekindle a sense of wonder about the universe and our place within it, emphasizing the human desire to explore and understand the cosmos.

The Washington Post reports on a new situation in Virginia: There, massive data centers with computers processing nearly 70 percent of global digital traffic are gobbling up electricity at a rate officials overseeing the power grid say is unsustainable unless two things happen: Several hundred miles of new transmission lines must be built, slicing through neighborhoods and farms in Virginia and three neighboring states. And antiquated coal-powered electricity plants that had been scheduled to go offline will need to keep running to fuel the increasing need for more power, undermining clean energy goals...

The $5.2 billion effort has fueled a backlash against data centers through the region, prompting officials in Virginia to begin studying the deeper impacts of an industry they've long cultivated for the hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue it brings to their communities. Critics say it will force residents near the [West Virginia] coal plants to continue living with toxic pollution, ironically to help a state — Virginia — that has fully embraced clean energy. And utility ratepayers in the affected areas will be forced to pay for the plan in the form of higher bills, those critics say. But PJM Interconnection, the regional grid operator, says the plan is necessary to maintain grid reliability amid a wave of fossil fuel plant closures in recent years, prompted by the nation's transition to cleaner power. Power lines will be built across four states in a $5.2 billion effort that, relying on coal plants that were meant to be shuttered, is designed to keep the electric grid from failing amid spiking energy demands. Cutting through farms and neighborhoods, the plan converges on Northern Virginia, where a growing data center industry will need enough extra energy to power 6 million homes by 2030...

There are nearly 300 data centers now in Virginia. With Amazon Web Services pursuing a $35 billion data center expansion in Virginia, rural portions of the state are the industry's newest target for development. The growth means big revenue for the localities that host the football-field-size buildings. Loudoun [County] collects $600 million in annual taxes on the computer equipment inside the buildings, making it easier to fund schools and other services. Prince William [County], the second-largest market, collects $100 million per year.
The article adds that one data center "can require 50 times the electricity of a typical office building, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. "Multiple-building data center complexes, which have become the norm, require as much as 14 to 20 times that amount."

One small power company even told the grid operator that data centers were already consuming 59% of the power they produce...

Ben Schoon reports via 9to5Google: Google's Arif Dikici confirmed on LinkedIn this week that Android is now using VideoLAN's (the makers of VLC) "dav1d" software decoder to allow AV1 to work on more devices. This is now available on all devices running Android 12 or higher via a software update. Mishaal Rahman points out that this started to roll out with the March 2024 Google Play system update.

Dikici says that "most" devices can at least support 720p at 30 frames per second, but that apps will need to opt in "for now" to support AV1 via software decoding. One app that has opted in is YouTube, which now uses AV1 on all compatible devices (though it may have reverted this). This may result in increased power usage depending on your device, though. Improvements on that front may be coming, though, says VideoLAN on Twitter/X.

Ashley Capoot reports via CNBC: Anne Wojcicki, the CEO of 23andMe, is considering a proposal to take the genetic testing company private after its stock price tumbled more than 95% from its 2021 highs. A late Wednesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission said Wojcicki is working with advisors and plans to speak with possible financing sources and partners. She "wishes to maintain control" of the company and will "not be willing to support any alternative transaction," the filing said. [...] In November, 23andMe received a deficiency letter from the Nasdaq Listing Qualifications Department, which said the company had 180 days to bring its share price back above $1. The company's board of directors formed a "Special Committee" in late March to help explore options that could juice the stock.

A press release on Thursday said the committee was made aware of Wojcicki's interest in acquiring all of 23andMe's outstanding shares. Wojcicki owns shares that make up more than 20% of those outstanding, which equates to about 49% of voting power, the release said. "The Special Committee will carefully review Ms. Wojcicki's proposal when and if it is made available and evaluate it in light of other available strategic alternatives, including continuing to operate as a publicly traded company," the committee said in the release. "The Special Committee is committed to acting in the best interests of 23andMe and its shareholders." The committee has engaged Wells Fargo as its financial advisor, and it said there is "no assurance" that Wojcicki's offer would result in the proposed outcome.

Microsoft Research Asia earlier this week unveiled VASA-1, an AI model that can create a synchronized animated video of a person talking or singing from a single photo and an existing audio track. ArsTechnica: In the future, it could power virtual avatars that render locally and don't require video feeds -- or allow anyone with similar tools to take a photo of a person found online and make them appear to say whatever they want. "It paves the way for real-time engagements with lifelike avatars that emulate human conversational behaviors," reads the abstract of the accompanying research paper titled, "VASA-1: Lifelike Audio-Driven Talking Faces Generated in Real Time." It's the work of Sicheng Xu, Guojun Chen, Yu-Xiao Guo, Jiaolong Yang, Chong Li, Zhenyu Zang, Yizhong Zhang, Xin Tong, and Baining Guo.

The VASA framework (short for "Visual Affective Skills Animator") uses machine learning to analyze a static image along with a speech audio clip. It is then able to generate a realistic video with precise facial expressions, head movements, and lip-syncing to the audio. It does not clone or simulate voices (like other Microsoft research) but relies on an existing audio input that could be specially recorded or spoken for a particular purpose.

AI's voracious need for computing power is threatening to overwhelm energy sources, requiring the industry to change its approach to the technology, according to Arm Chief Executive Officer Rene Haas. From a report: By 2030, the world's data centers are on course to use more electricity than India, the world's most populous country, Haas said. Finding ways to head off that projected tripling of energy use is paramount if artificial intelligence is going to achieve its promise, he said.

"We are still incredibly in the early days in terms of the capabilities," Haas said in an interview. For AI systems to get better, they will need more training -- a stage that involves bombarding the software with data -- and that's going to run up against the limits of energy capacity, he said.