Welding problems will require a further six-month delay for France's next-generation nuclear reactor at Flamanville, the latest setback for the flagship technology the country hopes to sell worldwide, state-owned electricity group EDF said Friday. Barron's reports: The delay will also add 500 million euros to a project whose total cost is now estimated at around 13 billion euros ($13.8 billion), blowing past the initial projection of 3.3 billion euros when construction began in 2007. It comes as EDF is already struggling to restart dozens of nuclear reactors taken down for maintenance or safety work that has proved more challenging than originally thought.

EDF also said Friday that one of the two conventional reactors at Flamanville would not be brought back online until February 19 instead of next week as planned, while one at Penly in northwest Farnce would be restarted on March 20 instead of in January. EDF said the latest problems at Flamanville, on the English Channel in Normandy, emerged last summer when engineers discovered that welds in cooling pipes for the new pressurized water reactor, called EPR, were not tolerating extreme heat as expected. As a result, the new reactor will be start generating power only in mid-2024.

Longtime williamyf writes: Both ArsTechnica and The Register report that Amazon, Vertigo, and Games Worksop have entered a preliminary deal for the movie, TV, and merchandising rights of the Warhammer 40K franchise. The deal also brings Henry Cavill -- longtime Warhammer 40K fan, actor who played Geralt in Netflix's The Witcher series and Superman in the Zack Snyder DC superhero films -- as both executive producer and actor.

While this is only a memorandum of understanding, it's highly likely that the deal will pass. What is still not clear is if this will be handled by MGM (meaning a higher probability of theatrical releases and physical media) or if it will go to Amazon Studios (increasing the probability of a streaming-only affaire), or both.

What is your opinion? Let us know in the comments. "Warhammer 40K is set in the very distant future (the 40K roughly refers to the years when it takes place) that is analogous in some ways to what historians used to refer to as Europe's Dark Ages," reports Ars. "The franchise is the definition of 'grimdark,' painting a picture of a universe in which billions toil to serve a God-Emperor and vast, brutal warfare."

"The universe is much more expansive than its politics, though, with countless threats to humanity, including Starship Troopers-like insect hordes and space orks, among other beings." It started as a tabletop game and has gone on to spawn numerous popular video games and books over the almost 40 years it's been around.

Three top Democratic campaign arms said Friday that they would set aside more than $1 million in contributions from former crypto golden boy FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, as first reported by The Washington Post. The groups plan to return the money to FTX customers as part of ongoing legal proceedings. The Verge reports: The Democratic National Committee and two top Democratic campaign groups announced the moves days after Bankman-Fried was arrested and charged with eight counts, including wire fraud and campaign finance violations. "Given the allegations around potential campaign finance violations by Bankman-Fried, we are setting aside funds in order to return the $815,000 in contributions since 2020," a DNC spokesperson confirmed in a statement to The Verge on Friday. "We will return as soon as we receive proper direction in the legal proceedings."

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee have also pledged to set aside the $103,000 and $250,000 each received from Bankman-Fried, respectively, according to The Post. Over the last two years, Bankman-Fried became one of the most prolific political megadonors in the US, contributing more than $40 million in personal donations to mostly Democratic campaigns and organizations. But shortly after FTX went bankrupt in November, Bankman-Fried told crypto reporter Tiffany Fong that he donated a similar amount of money to Republican groups as well.

While the extent of Bankman-Fried's GOP contributions has yet to be uncovered, Democratic candidates have been pressured to return any money they received from the crypto mogul. CBS News reported Thursday that most Democratic campaigns that received publicly disclosed contributions from Bankman-Fried have pledged to either return or donate the money to charity. Newly elected Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) confirmed Wednesday that he would donate Bankman-Fried's contributions to his campaign to the Zebra Coalition, a Florida-based group servicing homeless LGBTQ+ youth. [...] Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Tina Smith (D-MN), Alex Padilla (D-CA), and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) all received $5,800 from Bankman-Fried since last year and have either already donated or plan to donate the funds, according to CBS News.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Residents of The Dalles, Oregon, are learning how much of their water Google's data centers have been using to cool the computers inside the cavernous buildings -- information that previously was deemed a trade secret. A lawsuit by the city on behalf of Google -- against Oregon's biggest newspaper, The Oregonian/OregonLive -- that sought to keep the water-use information confidential was dropped, the newspaper reported Thursday. City officials abandoned the 13-month legal fight and committed to release the company's water consumption in future years.

In an email, Google confirmed Thursday that its water use numbers would no longer be a trade secret. "It is one example of the importance of transparency, which we are aiming to increase ... which includes site-level water usage numbers for all our U.S. data center sites, including The Dalles," Google spokesperson Devon Smiley said. Google says (PDF) its data centers in the Oregon town consumed 274.5 million gallons (1 billion liters) of water last year. In a Nov. 21 blog posting, Google said that all of its global data centers consumed approximately 4.3 billion gallons (16.3 billion liters) of water in 2021, which it said is comparable to the water needed to irrigate and maintain 29 golf courses in the southwest U.S. each year. The Dalles Mayor Richard Mays said Google had previously insisted its water usage was a trade secret because the company was concerned about competitors knowing how it cools its servers, but then changed its position and agreed to release the water records. "That's why we backed off (the lawsuit)," Mays told The Oregonian/OregonLive.

The Oregonian/OregonLive, which had requested Google's records last year, said the case represents a major test of Oregon public records law. "This seemed to be a perfect example of a clash of two important storylines, both the expansion of big businesses and the public resource that they need to use," Therese Bottomly, editor of The Oregonian/OregonLive, was quoted as saying.

Microsoft has quietly banned cryptocurrency mining from its online services, and says it did so to protect all customers of its clouds. The Register reports: The Windows and Azure titan slipped the prohibition into an update of its Universal License Terms for Online Services that came into effect on December 1. That document covers any "Microsoft-hosted service to which Customer subscribes under a Microsoft volume licensing agreement," and on The Register's reading, mostly concerns itself with Azure. Microsoft's Summary of Changes to the license states: "Updated Acceptable Use Policy to clarify that mining cryptocurrency is prohibited without prior Microsoft approval." Within the license itself there's hardly any more info.

A section headed "Acceptable Use Policy" states: "Neither Customer, nor those that access an Online Service through Customer, may use an Online Service: to mine cryptocurrency without Microsoft's prior written approval." Microsoft appears not to have publicized this decision beyond the Summary of Changes page and, in recent hours, in an advisory to partners titled: "Important actions partners need to take to secure the partner ecosystem." That document states "the Acceptable Use Policy has been updated to explicitly prohibit mining for cryptocurrencies across all Microsoft Online Services unless written pre-approval is granted by Microsoft," and adds: "We suggest seeking written pre-approval from Microsoft before using Microsoft Online Services for mining cryptocurrencies, regardless of the term of a subscription." Microsoft told The Register it made the change because "crypto currency mining can cause disruption or even impairment to Online Services and its users and can often be linked to cyber fraud and abuse attacks such as unauthorized access to and use of customer resources."

"We made this change to further protect our customers and mitigate the risk of disrupting or impairing services in the Microsoft Cloud." Permission to mine crypto "may be considered for Testing and Research for security detections."

Today, application security provider Promon released the results of a survey of 311 cybersecurity professionals taken at this year's Black Hat Europe expo earlier this month. Sixty-six percent of the respondents claim to have experienced burnout this year. The survey also found that 51% reported working more than four hours per week over their contracted hours. VentureBeat reports: Over 50% responded that workload was the biggest source of stress in their positions, followed by 19% who cited management issues, 12% pointing to difficult relationships with colleagues, and 11% suggesting it was due to inadequate access to the required tools. Just 7% attributed stress to being underpaid. Above all, the research highlights that cybersecurity analysts are expected to manage an unmanageable workload to keep up with threat actors, which forces them to work overtime and adversely effects their mental health.

This research comes not only as the cyber skills gap continues to grow, but also as organizations continue to single out individuals and teams as responsible for breaches. Most (88%) security professionals report they believe a blame culture exists somewhat in the industry, with 38% in the U.S. seeing such a culture as "heavily prevalent." With so many security professionals being held responsible for breaches, it's no surprise that many resort to working overtime to try and keep their organizations safe -- at great cost to their own mental health.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A freestanding cylindrical aquarium housing about 1,500 exotic fish burst in Berlin on Friday morning, causing a wave of devastation in and around the tourist attraction. Glass, chairs, tables and other debris were swept out of the DomAquaree complex, which includes a Radisson hotel, a museum, shops and restaurants, as 1 million liters of water poured out of the 14-meter-high (46ft) tank shortly before 6am.

Police said two people sustained injuries from falling shards of glass and had to be taken to hospital. None of the animals inside the saltwater aquarium, which contained clownfish, teira batfish and palette surgeonfish, survived. [...] Material fatigue was the likeliest cause of the incident, Berlin's interior minister said on Friday afternoon. "Investigations are of course not yet complete, but first signs suggest we are dealing with material fatigue," Iris Spranger told the DPA news agency.

First opened in 2003, the aquarium was overhauled as recently as 2020. A spokesperson for the company that owns the structure said additional insulation was added and the glass cylinder polished as part of the maintenance works. Earlier in the day, there had been speculation that overnight temperatures of as low as -10C (14F) had caused a crack in the glass, which is 18cm (7in) thick at the top and 22cm at the bottom of the cylindrical structure. Operators said the aquarium was the biggest cylindrical tank in the world, containing 1,500 tropical fish of 80 different species before the incident. One of the highlights of the attraction was a 10-minute elevator ride through the tank, which would have taken place at 10am. According to the city's fire department, only about 30 of the roughly 1,500 fish were saved after the incident. Berlin's zoo has offered to take them in.

A raft of lawsuits from the games industry seeks to crack down on cheating in some popular online games, arguing that making cheats for games and even using them might be illegal. From a report: Cheating is a scourge of many online games, inspiring increasingly bold legal counteroffensives by some of the companies who make them. Those lawsuits are largely aimed against makers of cheat software, but they don't let players who use the cheats fully off the hook.Cheat-makers "induce and enable individual Destiny 2 players to create an unauthorized and infringing derivative work each time they deploy the cheat software," states one lawsuit from Sony-owned Bungie Studios that's still winding its way through the courts.

The kinds of cheats in play aren't the ones old-school gamers might have applied by inputting a developer-programmed invincibility code. Rather, they involve premium cheats that let players see through walls to get an advantage in multiplayer combat games such as Destiny 2 or Call of Duty. Game companies, many of which are banning tens and hundreds of thousands of accounts, say cheating scares off honest players and is costly to fight. Bungie estimated in one suit that it spends "roughly $1,250,000 per year on its anti-cheating measures," not including legal costs.

Waymo is sending its fully driverless cars to handle some of the trickiest types of passenger pickups you can muster: airport trips. From a report: The company announced that customers flying in and out of Phoenix's Sky Harbor Airport will now be able to hail one of the company's "rider only" vehicles, a sign that the Alphabet company is willing to take on more risk as it seeks to bolster the case for a fully autonomous taxi service. Waymo is also expanding the size of its service area in both Phoenix and San Francisco as it seeks to send the message that despite all the recent dour headlines about the future of autonomous vehicles, its robotaxi business is still going strong.

"No waitlist, no NDAs, no hours restriction, 24/7 service," said Waymo product chief Saswat Panigrahi in a briefing with reporters. (Panigrahi's references to hours restrictions is a subtle swipe at rival robotaxi service Cruise, which is restricted to operating its fully driverless cars in San Francisco only at night.) Of course, Waymo is not without its own restrictions. The company is still waiting to get the final approval from the California Public Utilities Commission before it can begin to charge for rides in its rider-only vehicles in San Francisco. As such, Waymo is only offering unpaid rides to certain members of the public, as well as employees and their guests, in its driverless vehicles.

Plastic packaging waste from the online retail giant Amazon ballooned to 709 million pounds globally in 2021 -- equivalent to the weight of some 70,000 killer whales -- according to a new report published Thursday by the nonprofit Oceana. From a report: That's an 18 percent increase over Oceana's estimate of Amazon's plastic packaging for 2020, indicating a growing problem that environmental advocates -- and even Amazon's own shareholders -- say the company is doing too little to address. Amazon's plastic packaging "is a problem for the world's waterways and oceans, and it's an issue they need to be prioritizing," said Dana Miller, Oceana's director of strategic initiatives and an author of the report.

If all the company's plastic from 2021 were converted into plastic air pillows -- the inflated pouches inserted in some Amazon packages to reduce shifting during transit -- and laid side by side, Miller said it would circle the globe more than 800 times. As the largest retailer on the planet, Amazon goes through a lot of plastic. It ships 7.7 billion packages around the world each year, often using plastic air pillows, bags, and protective sleeves to cushion products during transit. Environmental advocates say these are some of the worst kinds of plastics: They can't be recycled, and their light weight makes them prone to drifting into the oceans, where they kill more large marine mammals than any other kind of ocean debris. As the plastics break down, they not only leach harmful chemicals but can also bind with new ones in the environment, posing toxicity risks to the mussels, oysters, whales, and other animals that unintentionally ingest them.

Trade groups that represent Meta and Alphabet's Google said they asked the US Supreme Court to overturn a Texas law that would sharply restrict the editorial discretion of social media companies. From a report: The appeal by NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association contends the Texas law violates the First Amendment by forcing social media companies to disseminate what they see as harmful speech and putting platforms at risk of being overrun by spam and bullying. The law "would wreak havoc by requiring transformational change to websites' operations," the groups argued. The New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law in September but left the measure on hold to allow time for an appeal to the Supreme Court.

The Texas law bars social media platforms with more than 50 million users from discriminating on the basis of viewpoint. Texas Governor Greg Abbott and other Republicans say the law is needed to protect conservative voices from being silenced. The appeal adds a new layer to a Supreme Court term that could reshape the legal rules for online content. The justices are already considering opening social media companies to lawsuits over the targeted recommendations they make to users.

A California startup is pursuing a novel, if simple, plan for ensuring that dead trees keep carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere for thousands of years: burying their remains underground. From a report: Kodama Systems, a forest management company based in the Sierra Nevada foothills town of Sonora, has been operating in stealth mode since it was founded last summer. But MIT Technology Review can now report the company has raised around $6.6 million from Bill Gates's climate fund Breakthrough Energy Ventures, as well as Congruent Ventures and other investors.

In addition, the payments company Stripe will reveal on Thursday that it's provided a $250,000 research grant to the company and its research partner, the Yale Carbon Containment Lab, as part of a broader carbon removal announcement. That grant will support a pilot effort to bury waste biomass harvested from California forests in the Nevada desert and study how well it prevents the release of greenhouse gases that drive climate change. It also agreed to purchase about 415 tons of carbon dioxide eventually sequestered by the company for another $250,000, if that proof-of-concept project achieves certain benchmarks. "Biomass burial has the potential to become a low-cost, high-scale approach for carbon removal, though there is a need for further investigation into its long-term durability," said Joanna Klitzke, procurement and ecosystem strategy lead for Stripe.

Stability AI has announced it would allow artists to remove their work from the training dataset for an upcoming Stable Diffusion 3.0 release. From a report: The move comes as an artist advocacy group called Spawning tweeted that Stability AI would honor opt-out requests collected on its Have I Been Trained website. The details of how the plan will be implemented remain incomplete and unclear, however. As a brief recap, Stable Diffusion, an AI image synthesis model, gained its ability to generate images by "learning" from a large dataset of images scraped from the Internet without consulting any rights holders for permission. Some artists are upset about it because Stable Diffusion generates images that can potentially rival human artists in an unlimited quantity.

IBM has quietly announced it's planning a 24-core Power 10 processor, seemingly to make one of its servers capable of running Oracle's database in a cost-effective fashion. From a report: A hardware announcement dated December 13 revealed the chip in the following "statement of general direction" about Big Blue's Power S1014 technology-based server: "IBM intends to announce a high-density 24-core processor for the IBM Power S1014 system (MTM 9105-41B) to address application environments utilizing an Oracle Database with the Standard Edition 2 (SE2) licensing model. It intends to combine a robust compute throughput with the superior reliability and availability features of the IBM Power platform while complying with Oracle Database SE2 licensing guidelines."

The Tokyo metropolitan government has said that it will introduce a system requiring newly built homes to be fitted with solar panels from fiscal 2025 in a bid to reduce carbon emissions from the household sector. From a report: The first mandate of its kind in Japan comes as a revised ordinance on environmental security to introduce the system was passed Thursday by a majority vote on the final day of a regular Tokyo metropolitan assembly session.

According to the metropolitan government, major housing construction firms will be required to install solar panels on buildings with a total floor area of less than 2,000 square meters. Home buyers will also be required to cooperate, and those privately contracting the construction of a residence 2,000 square meters or more will be obligated to fit it with solar panels. The system will take effect in April 2025 after residents have been informed and preparations have been made with relevant businesses. The metropolitan government estimates that the 980,000 yen ($7,200) initial cost for installation of the 4-kilowatt panels can be covered within 10 years from electricity sales revenue and can be further reduced down to six years with subsidies it will provide. Subsidies for the initial costs will also be provided to leasing firms to reduce the burden on home buyers, the metropolitan government said.