Wikipedia defines youtube-dl as "a free and open source download manager for video and audio from YouTube and over 1,000 other video hosting websites." It was created in 2006, and "According to libraries.io, 308 other packages and 1.43k repositories depend on it." The project now has over 106,000 stars on GitHub, and by one calculation it's their fourth-most starred project that's written in Python.

A new issue today describes the project as "Under new management."

I hope that we'll be able to make a new release soon and subsequently keep the program more up-to-date than has been the case for the last few months.

The project has a fork https://github.com/yt-dlp that offers a lot of extra functions but demands an up-to-date Python version. This project will continue to target Python version 2.6, 2.7, or 3.2+, at least until no-one complains about 2.6 compatibility.

Pull Requests are very welcome, although there is a significant back-log to be handled. Back-ports of yt-dlp features are also welcome.

Finally, I'd encourage anyone else who is interested in sharing maintenance duties to establish a track record and make themselves known. We want to keep this popular project alive with a community of future maintainers.

"A race against time is under way for the U.S. Navy to reach one of its downed fighter jets — before the Chinese get there first," reports the BBC: The $100m (£74m) F-35C plane came down in the South China Sea after what the Navy describes as a "mishap" during take-off from the USS Carl Vinson. The jet is the Navy's newest, and crammed with classified equipment. As it is in international waters, it is technically fair game. Whoever gets there first, wins.

The prize? All the secrets behind this very expensive, leading-edge fighting force....

A U.S. salvage vessel looks to be at least 10 days away from the crash site. That's too late, says defence consultant Abi Austen, because the black box battery will die before then, making it harder to locate the aircraft. "It's vitally important the U.S. gets this back," she says. "The F-35 is basically like a flying computer. It's designed to link up other assets — what the Air Force calls 'linking sensors to shooters'."
The BBC describes the plane as the U.S. Navy's first "low observable" carrier-based aircraft, "which enables it to operate undetected in enemy airspace." And it's also "the most powerful fighter engine in the world," flying at speeds up to 1,200 mph, or Mach 1.6.

After the $100 million warplane crash-landed onto the deck of an aircraft carrier — and then tumbled into the water — images of the crash appeared on social media, reports CNN.

Thanks to Slashdot reader Thelasko for submitting the story!

`Long-time Slashdot reader shanen writes: If you're doing any web page programming for money, then I'm pretty sure you're paid to support Edge, too. Probably even required to test it. So this question is really directed to the relative amateur programmers among us.

As I think about the topic from my overly philosophic perspective, I even considered asking "Do you feel pressured or even blackmailed to support MS Edge?"
The original submission tells the story of a homegrown app involving "moderately complicated data structures embedded in JavaScript files that are loaded on the fly..." that might grow into an 800K re-write. "Since it's mostly for my own use, I don't care at all about Edge, but it got me to thinking and led to this question." So do others uses Edge to test their web pages? Long-time Slashdot reader Z00L00K has already answered, "I don't. If I test I avoid the quite erratic variations that Javascript can create as much as possible and resort to HTML and CSS Validators."

How about the rest of you? Use the comments to share your own thoughts, opinions, and experiences.

Do you test your web pages with Microsoft Edge?

America's Department of Defense "wants to clean up space...at least the increasingly polluted region in low Earth orbit, where thousands of bits of debris, spent rocket stages and dead satellites whiz uncontrollably," writes the Washington Post.

They're reporting that America's Space Force has now launched a program to give companies seed money to develop space-cleaning technology to eventually demo in space (starting with awards of $250,000 that rise as high as $1.5 million). The name of the program: Orbital Prime. The issue also has gotten the attention of the White House. Its Office of Science and Technology Policy recently held a meeting asking for input from space industry leaders about what to do about the problem. Speaker after speaker said that governments around the world need to fund these efforts to help create a market for companies to operate. They also said that it had become an imperative for the governments largely responsible for the problem in the first place. "If the U.S. Navy had had a derelict ship sitting in sovereign waters, creating a safety hazard, the U.S. Navy would go out and grab that ship," said Doug Loverro, a former top Pentagon and NASA space official. "And I'm not sure why we don't see the same responsibility for government for their derelict ships and their derelict bodies that are in space today."

Or as James Lowenthal, a professor of astronomy at Smith College in Michigan, put it: "Just as we rely on the government to protect the air we breathe and the water we drink, we have to rely on the government to protect the resource and the global commons of low Earth orbit."

Europe and Britain have also begun to work toward cleaning up debris — a move that's long overdue, space industry experts say. ClearSpace, a Swiss company, has a contract with the European Space Agency to remove a large piece of debris — a symbol that the issue is finally being addressed. It proposes using a spacecraft with large arms that would grapple the debris like a Venus' flytrap. "This is why we're here. Because we think change is possible," said Luc Piguet, ClearSpace's co-founder and CEO. "And we think we can build a space industry that operates with a different model, where maintenance is just a normal part of it."
"This debris and associated congestion threaten the longer sustainability of the space domain," said Space Force's vice chief of space operations, in a video advertising the seed-money program, adding that America's Department of Defense tracks 40,000 objects in orbit the size of a fist or larger, with at least 10 times as many smaller objects the Pentagon can't reliably track.

The Washington Post reports: Pope Francis denounced on Friday the "distortion of reality based on fear" that has ripped across the world during the coronavirus pandemic, but he also called for compassion, urging journalists to help those misled by coronavirus-related misinformation and fake news to better understand the scientific facts. "We can hardly fail to see that these days, in addition to the pandemic, an 'infodemic' is spreading: A distortion of reality based on fear, which in our global society leads to an explosion of commentary on falsified if not invented news," the leader of the world's Catholics said.

Meeting with members of the International Catholic Media Consortium on COVID-19 Vaccines — a fact-checking network that aims to combat misinformation — the pope said that being fully informed by scientific data was a human right. "To be properly informed, to be helped to understand situations based on scientific data and not fake news, is a human right. Correct information must be ensured above all to those who are less equipped, to the weakest and to those who are most vulnerable. Francis, 85, received the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus shot last year and has been vocal about the importance of vaccines.

"Fake news has to be refuted, but individual persons must always be respected, for they believe it often without full awareness or responsibility," he said Friday.

There may still be cabinets in rows with flashing lights and electronic sounds — but Polygon reports a historic change in the world of videogame arcades: Even though arcades all over the world have been in a steady decline over the past 20 years, owing to the ubiquity of console and PC gaming, they've kept a fairly major place in Japan's gaming culture. However, in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic, even Japan's arcades started to falter. In late 2020 Sega sold 85% of its shares in the company's arcades, which are run by the Sega Entertainment division, to Genda. Now, as new variants of COVID-19 crop up and the arcade business continues to struggle, Sega has sold the remaining shares to Genda as well, according to Eurogamer and Tojodojo.

Sega's arcades will be renamed GiGO throughout Japan, according to a tweet from Genda chief executive Takashi Kataoka.
"It's worth noting that although Sega's Entertainment business ran its arcade locations, the company manufactured and sold arcade machines themselves separately and will likely continue to do so," reports Video Games Chronicle.

And "While it is sad to see an era of Sega's history come to an end, this doesn't mean Sega will stop making actual arcade games," notes the Metro, which points out that Sega "has continued to supply arcades with new games right up to the present day."

But Syfy Wire notes the news comes "after a remarkable 56 years maintaining a coin-operated gaming presence from its native Japan." In memory Eurogamer shared it editor-in-chief's posts about visiting Tokyo's iconic arcade and anime district Akihabara.

CBS News reports that foreign cyberattackers aren't the only potential threat to America's electrical power grid: Domestic violent extremists have been planning to try to disrupt the U.S. power grid and will probably keep doing so, according to a Department of Homeland Security intelligence bulletin shared with law enforcement agencies and utility operators Monday and obtained by CBS News. "Domestic violent extremists have developed credible, specific plans to attack electricity infrastructure since at least 2020, identifying the electric grid as a particularly attractive target given its interdependency with other infrastructure sectors," the bulletin reads. It warns that extremists "adhering to a range of ideologies will likely continue to plot and encourage physical attacks against electrical infrastructure."

Still, the bulletin notes that, "Absent significant technical knowledge or insider assistance, small scale attacks are unlikely to cause widespread, multi-state power loss but may result in physical damage that poses risks to operations or personnel."

The nation of Chile "is in the midst of governmental changes," writes the Free Software Foundation, "and with these changes comes the opportunity for the people of Chile to make their voices heard for long-term benefits to their digital rights and freedoms.

"Chilean activists have submitted three constitutional proposals relating to free software and user freedom, but they need signatures in order to have these proposals submitted to the constitutional debate."

FSF community member Felix Freeman writes: Chile is living a historic moment. For the first time, it is drafting a constitution with constituents elected democratically, on a participatory basis, and with the participation of native peoples. 154 people are in charge of drafting the new fundamental charter of the country, and they have arranged a mechanism of popular participation based on the collection of support: 15,000 signatures are required to submit citizen proposals to the constitutional debate directly.

The opportunity to achieve substantive and long-term change for digital rights and freedom of software and other intellectual works is unique in Chile's history, and may not be repeated in our lifetime. This is why four communities historically related to the use and dissemination of free software in Chile got together to draft three of these proposals, which are:

- Access to knowledge
- Technological and digital sovereignty
- Internet privacy

These constitutional proposals explain principles of the nation, the rights of citizens, and the duties of the state concerning them. The inclusion of the constitutional articles will allow and promote the creation of laws that defend our freedoms and rights effectively. They are not the end of the road for intellectual freedoms and digital rights, but only the beginning....

People of any nationality can support us by spreading the word all over the Internet.

[A Spanish-language version is available HERE.]

NBC News analyzed data from 8,892 weather stations with records going back at least 30 years. 691 of them recorded their highest temperature ever in 2021.

And there's more cause for concern: Each January, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and the European Union Earth observation agency Copernicus publish reports on the previous year's temperature data. Copernicus ranked 2021 as the fifth-hottest year since 1850, while NOAA and NASA ranked it as the sixth-hottest since 1880...

In 2021, as Europe recorded its hottest summer, June's weather anomalies in North America were so significant that the continent recorded its hottest June in 171 years, according to the January Copernicus report. The record-breaking heat was even more notable, scientists say, given that 2021 was a La Niña year, in which climate patterns in the Pacific Ocean produce cooler temperatures across the globe.

An August 2021 United Nations International Panel on Climate Change report concluded that climate change caused by humans "is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe." Friederike Otto [senior lecturer in climate science at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment in London who helped write the report] said that last year's weather events proved 2021 was "a year that made the evidence unavoidable." Scientists say damaging spring frosts — such as the one that destroyed winemakers' crops in France last April — are an example of a weather event that is more likely in a warming world. Denis Lesgourgues, co-owner of ChÃteau Haut Selve, a vineyard in southwest France, lost 60 percent of his crop during last year's spring freeze. Warmer winters have caused grapevine buds to grow earlier in the year, leaving them vulnerable to previously harmless early spring frosts. Lesgourgues said that now if the buds are out when the frosts hit, they die and are unable to grow grapes....

In other parts of the world, the increased heat can become a matter of life or death. In Portland, the June heat wave sent temperatures up to 116 degrees, shattering heat records by as much as 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) and killing hundreds of people in the region.

Slashdot reader sciencehabit quotes Science magazine: Imagine using any object around you—a frying pan, a glass paperweight—as the central processor in a neural network, a type of artificial intelligence that loosely mimics the brain to perform complex tasks. That's the promise of new research that, in theory, could be used to recognize images or speech faster and more efficiently than computer programs that rely on silicon microchips.

To demonstrate the concept, the researchers built neural networks in three types of physical systems, which each contained up to five processing layers. In each layer of a mechanical system, they used a speaker to vibrate a small metal plate and recorded its output using a microphone. In an optical system, they passed light through crystals. And in an analog-electronic system, they ran current through tiny circuits.

In each case, the researchers encoded input data, such as unlabeled images, in sound, light, or voltage. For each processing layer, they also encoded numerical parameters telling the physical system how to manipulate the data. To train the system, they adjusted the parameters to reduce errors between the system's predicted image labels and the actual labels.

In one task, they trained the systems, which they call physical neural networks (PNNs), to recognize handwritten digits. In another, the PNNs recognized seven vowel sounds. Accuracy on these tasks ranged from 87% to 97%, they report in this week's issue of Nature. In the future, researchers might tune a system not by digitally tweaking its input parameters, but by adjusting the physical objects—warping the metal plate, say.

The team is most excited about PNNs' potential as smart sensors that can perform computation on the fly. A microscope's optics might help detect cancerous cells before the light even hits a digital sensor, or a smartphone's microphone membrane might listen for wake words. These "are applications in which you really don't think about them as performing a machine-learning computation," they say, but instead as being "functional machines."

Last week America's Internal Revenue Service announced a live-video-feed verification of taxpayer's faces would be required by this summer access online tax service. But now the Washington Post reports that "complaints of confusing instructions and long wait times to complete the sign-up have caused an unknown number to abandon the process in frustration."

"The $86 million ID.me contract with the IRS also has alarmed researchers and privacy advocates who say they worry about how Americans' facial images and personal data will be safeguarded in the years to come." There is no federal law regulating how the data can be used or shared. While the IRS couldn't say what percentage of taxpayers use the agency's website, internal data show it is one of the federal government's most-viewed websites, with more than 1.9 billion visits last year. The partnership with ID.me has drawn anger from some members of Congress, including Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who tweeted that he was "very disturbed" by the plan and would push the IRS for "greater transparency." Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) called it "a very, very bad idea by the IRS" that would "further weaken Americans' privacy." The Senate Finance Committee is working to schedule briefings with the IRS and ID.me on the issue, a committee aide said.... "No one should be forced to submit to facial recognition as a condition of accessing essential government services," Wyden said in a separate statement. "I'm continuing to seek more information about ID.me and other identity verification systems being used by federal agencies."

A Treasury official said Friday that the department was "looking into" alternatives to ID.me, saying Treasury and the IRS always are interested in improving "taxpayers experience...."

About 70 million Americans who have filed for unemployment insurance, pandemic assistance grants, child tax credit payments or other services already have been scanned by the McLean, Va.-based company, which says its client list includes 540 companies; 30 states, including California, Florida, New York and Texas; and 10 federal agencies, including Social Security, Labor and Veterans Affairs.... Equifax, the credit-reporting company that previously confirmed taxpayers' data for the IRS, had its $7 million contract suspended in 2017 after hackers exposed the personal information of 148 million people...

[ID.me] says 9 of 10 applicants can verify their identity through a self-service face scan in five minutes or less. Anyone who hits a snag is funneled into the backup video-chat verification process...But some who have tried to verify their identities through ID.me for other purposes have reported agonizing delays: cryptic glitches in Colorado, website errors in Arizona, five-hour waits in North Carolina, days-long waits in California and weeks-long benefit delays in New York. The security blogger Brian Krebs wrote last week that he faced a three-hour wait trying to confirm his IRS account, three months before the tax-filing deadline.... The company said it intends to expand its workforce beyond the 966 agents who now handle video-chat verification for the entire country. It has also opened hundreds of in-person identity-verification centers — replicating, in essence, what government offices have done for decades.
The article also points out that advertising is also a key part of ID.me's operation, with people signing up through their web site asked if they want to subscribe to "offers and discounts" — though the company stresses people do have to opt in. And in addition, the article adds, "If a person is using ID.me to confirm their identity with a government agency, the company will not use that verification information for 'marketing or promotional purposes,' the company's privacy policy says."

But a senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center complained to the Post that "We haven't even gone the step of putting regulations in place and deciding if facial recognition should even be used like this. We're just skipping right to the use of a technology that has clearly been shown to be dangerous and has issues with accuracy, disproportionate impact, privacy and civil liberties."

A spokesperson for the U.S. Treasury Department also told Bloomberg News "that any taxpayer who does not want to use ID.me can opt against filing his or her taxes online." "We believe in the importance of protecting the privacy of taxpayers, while also ensuring criminals are not able to gain access to taxpayer accounts," LaManna added, arguing that it's been "impossible" for the IRS to develop its own cutting-edge identification program because of "the lack of funding for IRS modernization."

On Monday, famed singer-songwriter Neil Young had his music removed from Spotify as a protest against the platform's distribution of Joe Rogan, who's been widely criticized for spreading misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines on his Spotify-exclusive podcast. Now, Neil's fans are taking their frustrations out on Spotify. Ars Technica reports: Though the loss of Young's music likely represents a small percentage of overall streams on Spotify, Young pointed out that "Spotify represents 60% of the streaming of my music to listeners around the world." For Young and his fans, the hit was palpable, and his fans are apparently taking their frustrations out on Spotify. The hashtag #SpotifyDeleted trended on Twitter yesterday, and fans seem to have inundated customer support with so many messages that Spotify has had to take it offline at times. "We're currently getting a lot of contacts so may be slow to respond," a large red banner has read on the support page. Options to message the company, which have previously included live chat with a customer support agent or a chat bot, are now limited to an email address link.

"When I left Spotify, I felt better," Young wrote on his website today. "I support free speech. I have never been in favor of censorship. Private companies have the right to choose what they profit from, just as I can choose not to have my music support a platform that disseminates harmful information. I am happy and proud to stand in solidarity with the front line health care workers who risk their lives every day to help others." The artist, who has long criticized audio quality on streaming services, and on Spotify in particular, closed with one last dig. "As an unexpected bonus, I sound better everywhere else," he wrote.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Investors are shaken after the co-founder of a multi-billion dollar cryptocurrency protocol was accused of being a serial scammer with a record of conviction and deportation, and the co-founder of a fraudulent Canadian exchange that imploded. On Thursday, a Twitter user who goes by zachxbt.eth "with a track record of unmasking crypto scams and nefarious behavior," according to CoinDesk, accused "Sifu," a core member of the founding team behind the popular Avalanche-based Wonderland DeFi (or decentralized finance) protocol and its TIME token, of actually being Michael Patryn.

Patryn, who changed his legal name twice, was the co-founder of QuadrigaCX, a Canadian exchange that shut down after Patryn's partner Gerald Cotten suddenly died in India in 2018 while owing users around $190 million in crypto at the time's exchange rate. Patryn and Cotten reportedly parted ways in 2016. Later, investigators determined that Cotten was operating QuadrigaCX as a Ponzi scheme near the end of its life. Patryn has been convicted of several crimes, including computer fraud and bank and credit fraud, as Bloomberg reported in 2019. After the original tweets that revealed Sifu is Patryn, Daniele Sestagalli, the founder of Wonderland, confirmed the allegation. Sestagalli is a prolific developer who is behind multiple DeFi projects, including Abracadabra's Magic Internet Money (MIM) token.

"I want everyone to know that I was aware of this and decided that the past of an individual doesn't determine their future. I choose to value the time we spent together without knowing his past more than anything," Sestagalli wrote on Twitter. He later posted a statement explaining that he found out about Sifu's real identity a month ago, and has now decided to ask Patryn to step down. "I am of the opinion of giving second chances, as I have mentioned on Twitter. I've seen the community very divided about my choice of maintaining him as the treasury manager after finding out who he was and his past," Sestagali wrote. "Regardless, what has happened has happened. Now having taken some time to reflect, I have decided that he needs to step down till a vote for his confirmation is in place. Wonderland has the say to who manages its treasury not me or the rest of the wonderland team."

Astronomers said this week that a piece of a Falcon 9 rocket that was launched in February 2015 is currently on a trajectory to collide with the moon in just a few weeks. CBS News reports: The rocket left from Florida's Cape Canaveral and launched NOAA's Deep Space Climate Observatory, a project that allows researchers to maintain real-time data for more accurate space weather alerts and forecasts. According to NOAA, having that data is "critical," as space weather events "have the potential to disrupt nearly every major public infrastructure system on Earth." During that deployment, Falcon 9's second stage, which provides it with a second boost to reach its desired orbit, ran out of fuel to return to Earth, according to meteorologist and Ars Technica space editor Eric Berger. The second stage has been orbiting Earth ever since, and now, according to data gathered by astronomers, it's on track to hit the moon.

Bill Gray, who writes the Project Pluto software that is used by both amateur and professional astronomers, gathered data from those space observers over the past few weeks to predict just when the impact will occur. Based on the information he gathered, there will be a "certain impact" with the far side of the moon on March 4, he said. The rocket stage is currently floating away from Earth and outside of the moon's orbit on a "chaotic" orbit, Gray said, but in the coming days, it's expected to turn around and head back towards Earth. It made a "close lunar flyby" on January 5, but March 4 is when its path and the moon's will cross. Thankfully, there's no cause for concern, says Gray, noting that it's the "first unintentional case" of space junk hitting the moon that he's aware of. It may actually help researchers learn more about the moon's makeup if lunar orbiters are able to observe the crash site.

"If we can tell the [lunar orbiter] folks exactly where the crater is, they'll eventually pass over that spot and be able to see a very fresh impact crater and probably learn something about the geology (well, selenology) of that part of the moon," Gray said.

"Former heads of nuclear regulatory bodies across Europe and the US put out a statement this week voicing their opposition to nuclear energy as a climate solution," reports The Verge's Justine Calma. The publication spoke with Gregory Jaczko, former chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to learn more about why some nuclear experts oppose the energy source as a climate fix. Slashdot reader Ol Olsoc shares an excerpt of the interview: Former NRC Chair Gregory Jaczko in an interview with the Verge notes: "I think there's been a lot of misinformation about the role that nuclear power can play in any climate strategy. A lot of attention has been put on nuclear as somehow the technology that's going to solve a lot of problems when it comes to dealing with climate change. I just think that's not true. And it's taking the debate and discussion away from the areas that can have a role and that do need focus and attention." He added: "I think it's money that's not well spent. Nuclear has shown time and time again that it cannot deliver on promises about deployment and costs. And that's really the most important factor when it comes to climate." Jaczko goes on to note how many of the nuclear plants when he was chairman were supposed to come online but have experienced delays and exceptional cost overruns. Two of the four new design reactors that were licensed when he was chairman, which were supposed to be starting production in 2016 and 2017, were canceled, "and that involved federal indictments for fraud among the heads of the company running that reactor development." The other two, he says, "continue to be pushed back and now are scheduled to start in 2022 or 2023" with a price tag that's over $30 billion.