Google has confirmed plans to acquire cybersecurity company Mandiant in an all-cash deal worth $5.4 billion. From a report: The move comes exactly a month after reports emerged that Microsoft was in early discussions to buy Mandiant, meaning that Google is essentially getting one over its big cloud rival. Mandiant works with customers including InfoSys, OlyFed, and the Bank of Thailand, providing threat intelligence and consulting services, and automated tools for investigating security alerts. Mandiant is perhaps better known under its former name FireEye, a U.S. cybersecurity firm that shot to prominence for detecting major cyber attacks through the years. FireEye had acquired Mandiant for $1 billion in 2013, but last year it revealed plans to sell off the FireEye brand and products business and focus on its Mandiant cyber forensics business instead./i?

People who have a rosy outlook on the world may live healthier, longer lives because they have fewer stressful events to cope with, new research suggests. From a report: Scientists found that while optimists reacted to, and recovered from, stressful situations in much the same way as pessimists, the optimists fared better emotionally because they had fewer stressful events in their daily lives. How optimists minimise their dose of stress is unclear, but the researchers believe they either avoid arguments, lost keys, traffic jams and other irritations, or simply fail to perceive them as stressful in the first place. Previous studies have found evidence that optimists live longer and healthier lives, but researchers do not fully understand why having a glass-half-full attitude might contribute to healthy ageing. "Given prior work linking optimism to longevity, healthy ageing, and lower risks of major diseases, it seemed like a logical next step to study whether optimism might protect against the effects of stress among older adults," said Dr Lewina Lee, a clinical psychologist at the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System and assistant professor of psychiatry at Boston University.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: New research, published in the journal Physiological Entomology, suggests that the palm-sized Joro spider, which swarmed North Georgia by the millions last September, has a special resilience to the cold. This has led scientists to suggest that the 3-inch (7.6 centimeters) bright-yellow-striped spiders -- whose hatchlings disperse by fashioning web parachutes to fly as far as 100 miles (161 kilometers) -- could soon dominate the Eastern Seaboard. Since the spider hitchhiked its way to the northeast of Atlanta, Georgia, inside a shipping container in 2014, its numbers and range have expanded steadily across Georgia, culminating in an astonishing population boom last year that saw millions of the arachnids drape porches, power lines, mailboxes and vegetable patches across more than 25 state counties with webs as thick as 10 feet (3 meters) deep, Live Science previously reported.

Common to China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea, the Joro spider is part of a group of spiders known as "orb weavers" because of their highly symmetrical, circular webs. The spider gets its name from Jorgumo, a Japanese spirit, or Ykai, that is said to disguise itself as a beautiful woman to prey upon gullible men. True to its mythical reputation, the Joro spider is stunning to look at, with a large, round, jet-black body cut across with bright yellow stripes, and flecked on its underside with intense red markings. But despite its threatening appearance and its fearsome standing in folklore, the Joro spider's bite is rarely strong enough to break through the skin, and its venom poses no threat to humans, dogs or cats unless they are allergic. That's perhaps good news, as the spiders are destined to spread far and wide across the continental U.S., researchers say.

The scientists came to this conclusion after comparing the Joro spider to a close cousin, the golden silk spider, which migrated from tropical climates 160 years ago to establish an eight-legged foothold in the southern United States. By tracking the spiders' locations in the wild and monitoring their vitals as they subjected caught specimens to freezing temperatures, the researchers found that the Joro spider has about double the metabolic rate of its cousin, along with a 77% higher heart rate and a much better survival rate in cold temperatures. Additionally, Joro spiders exist in most parts of their native Japan -- warm and cold -- which has a very similar climate to the U.S. and sits across roughly the same latitude. [...] While most invasive species tend to destabilize the ecosystems they colonize, entomologists are so far optimistic that the Joro spider could actually be beneficial, especially in Georgia where, instead of lovesick men, they kill off mosquitos, biting flies and another invasive species -- the brown marmorated stink bug, which damages crops and has no natural predators. In fact, the researchers say that the Joro is much more likely to be a nuisance than a danger, and that it should be left to its own devices.

For the last two years, Unified Patents, an international organization of over 200 businesses, has been winning the battle against patent trolls "to keep them from stealing from the companies and organizations that actually use patents' intellectual property (IP)," writes ZDNet's Steven Vaughan Nichols. "This is their story to date." From the report: Unified Patents brings the fight to the trolls. It deters patent trolls from attacking its members by making it too expensive for the troll to win. The group does this by examining troll patents and their activities in various technology sectors (Zones). The United Patents Open Source Software Zone (OSS Zone) is the newest of these Zones. [...] Even before OSS Zone was formally launched, Unified Patents along with the Open Invention Network (OIN), the world's largest patent non-aggression group, launched legal cases against poor quality PAE-owned (Patent Assertion Entities) patents. The Linux Foundation and Microsoft have also joined the OSS Zone to battle these bad patents. [...]

Together, United Patents uses open-source software evidence as proof to establish that the trolls often don't have a case. This is done using Inter Partes Review (IPR), a 2012 legal tool for showing that a bad patent never should have been granted in the first place. [Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin] notes, "The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB)'s discretionary rulings on IPRs have changed the landscape around NPEs. These cases take a long time to be resolved. Typically, it takes from 12 to 24 months. That also makes them expensive for both the OSS Zone and the trolls. Keith Bergelt, the OIN's CEO, said "In other technology areas when patents go through the IPR process or are reexamined, there is a settlement around 20% of the time. In the OSS Zone, there are few settlements. This makes it more costly and difficult to administer, but also is difficult on the PAEs. When the success rate against their patents is over 95%, certain PAEs that would otherwise hope to settle have essentially given up on defending their patents." Still, with such a high success rate, it's worth the expense.

To date, Unified has overseen and managed 43 challenges. Of these, 12 patents were found invalid, another 23 cases have been instituted, and six are still in process. This has led to multiple settlements for Unified Patents members. These, in turn directly pass through to OIN's 3,600+ community members. For example, an Accelerated Memory Tech patent 6,513,062, was used by the troll IP Investments Group to claim that the open-source Redis, which manages cache resources on the cloud, violated the patent. Redis, not having any money, IP Investments Group instead went after Hulu, Citrix Systems, Barracuda Networks, Kemp Technologies, and F5 Networks for their use of Redis software. IP Investments Group gave up rather than fighting it out. Everyone who uses Redis wins. It's one small victory, but that's how the patent troll wars are won. And, with the United Patents' high-success rate in knocking out bad patents, slowly but surely the patent trolls are being driven back from not only open-source software but all software.

Researchers have now harnessed the power of artificial intelligence to infer how pigs are feeling on the basis of their grunts. The Guardian reports: Scientists believe that the AI pig translator -- which turns oinks, snuffles, grunts and squeals into emotions -- could be used to automatically monitor animal wellbeing and pave the way for better livestock treatment on farms and elsewhere. "We have trained the algorithm to decode pig grunts," said Dr Elodie Briefer, an expert in animal communication who co-led the work at the University of Copenhagen. "Now we need someone who wants to develop the algorithm into an app that farmers can use to improve the welfare of their animals."

Working with an international team of colleagues, Briefer trained a neural network to learn whether pigs were experiencing positive emotions, such as happiness or excitement, or negative emotions, such as fear and distress, using audio recordings and behavioral data from pigs in different situations, from birth through to death. Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers describe how they used the AI to analyze the acoustic signatures of 7,414 pig calls recorded from more than 400 animals. While most of the recordings came from farms and other commercial settings, others came from experimental enclosures where pigs were given toys, food and unfamiliar objects to nose around and explore.

The scientists used the algorithm to distinguish calls linked to positive emotions from those linked to negative emotions. The different noises represented emotions across the spectrum and reflected positive situations, such as huddling with littermates, suckling their mothers, running about and being reunited with the family, to negative situations ranging from piglet fights, crushing, castration and waiting in the abattoir. The researchers found that there were more high-pitched squeals in negative situations. Meanwhile, low-pitched grunts and barks were heard across the board, regardless of their predicament. Short grunts, however, were generally a good sign of porcine contentment.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Interesting Engineering: Green Hydrogen International (GHI) has unveiled its plans to build a 60 GW green hydrogen production facility near the Piedras Pintas salt dome in Texas. The facility will be the largest of its kind in the world, the company claimed in a press release. While the world seeks cleaner alternatives to the energy that can power long-haul flights and stand in as a substitute for natural gas, green hydrogen appears to be one of the front runners. With countries such as China, Saudi Arabia, Chile, Spain having initiated green hydrogen projects on a pilot basis, GHI would have to make a big splash to announce its arrival.

The company is hopeful that its proposed plant, capable of producing 2.5 billion kilograms of green hydrogen every year, will do exactly that. According to its website, GHI has seven projects that are under development with a combined output of one terawatt. The largest and the first one to get off the ground is Hydrogen City in Texas. Using onshore wind and solar energy, the project aims to produce 60 gigawatts of green hydrogen every year. The Piedras Pintas salt dome in Duval County will serve as the hydrogen storage facility for the project which in its initial stages will see a 2-gigawatt production facility being drawn up. Green hydrogen production is expected to begin by 2026 and it will tap into renewable energy from the Texan electricity grid. Green hydrogen produced at the facility will be piped to the coastal city of Corpus Christi and Brownsville, where industries will convert them to other products. "Hydrogen City is a massive, world-class undertaking that will put Texas on the map as a leading green hydrogen producer," GHI's founder and CEO Brian Maxwell said. "Texas has been the world leader in energy innovation for over 100 years and this project is intended to cement that leadership for the next century and beyond."

Over 170 million U.S.-born people who were adults in 2015 were exposed to harmful levels of lead as children, a new study estimates. The Associated Press reports: Researchers used blood-lead level, census and leaded gasoline consumption data to examine how widespread early childhood lead exposure was in the country between 1940 and 2015. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, they estimated that half the U.S. adult population in 2015 had been exposed to lead levels surpassing five micrograms per deciliter -- the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention threshold for harmful lead exposure at the time.

The scientists from Florida State University and Duke University also found that 90% of children born in the U.S. between 1950 and 1981 had blood-lead levels higher than the CDC threshold. And the researchers found significant impact on cognitive development: on average, early childhood exposure to lead resulted in a 2.6-point drop in IQ. The researchers only examined lead exposure caused by leaded gasoline, the dominant form of exposure from the 1940s to the late 1980s, according to data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Leaded gasoline for on-road vehicles was phased out starting in the 1970s, then finally banned in 1996.

According to Deadline, Prime Video is turning PlayStation's mythology-themed game franchise God of War into a live-action TV series. From the report: I hear the series adaptation comes from The Expanse creators/executive producers Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby and The Wheel of Time executive producer/showrunner Rafe Judkins as well as Sony Pictures Television and PlayStation Productions, which collaborate on all TV series based on PlayStation games. This would mark the latest big deal for a TV series based on a popular video game title in a red-hot streaming marketplace for gaming IP. Peacock just landed another SPT/PlayStation property, Twisted Metal, with a series order and Anthony Mackie starring. HBO has coming up the high-profile PlayStation game-based series The Last of Us, starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. Netflix has a Resident Evil TV series in the works, while Paramount+ is about to debut Halo.
[...]
The God of War franchise from Sony's Santa Monica Studio spans a total of seven games across four PlayStation consoles. The action game series launched in 2005 on the PlayStation 2, with the first God of War. At the center is ex-Spartan warrior Kratos and his perilous journey to exact revenge on the Ares, the Greek God of War, after killing his loved ones under the deity's influence. After becoming the ruthless God of War himself, Kratos finds himself constantly looking for a chance to change his fate. Following several titles on various PlayStation consoles including the PS3 and the handheld PSP, Santa Monica Studio brought new life to the franchise with the 2018 game on the PlayStation 4. In it, Kratos comes to the Norse wilds where he gets a second chance at fatherhood with his son Atreus. The installment a slew of honors at the 2018 Game Awards, including Game of the Year. An eighth God of War installment, God of War: Ragnorok, is in the works for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 and is set to drop this year.

With sanctions against Russia starting to bite, the Kremlin is mulling ways to keep businesses and the government running. The latest is a creative twist on state asset seizures, only instead of the government taking over an oil refinery, for example, Russia is considering legalizing software piracy. Ars Technica reports: Russian law already allows for the government to authorize -- "without consent of the patent holder" -- the use of any intellectual property "in case of emergency related to ensuring the defense and security of the state." The government hasn't taken that step yet, but it may soon, according to a report from Russian business newspaper Kommersant, spotted and translated by Kyle Mitchell, an attorney who specializes in technology law. It's yet another sign of a Cyber Curtain that's increasingly separating Russia from the West.

The plan would create "a compulsory licensing mechanism for software, databases, and technology for integrated microcircuits," the Kommersant said. It would only apply to companies from countries that have imposed sanctions. While the article doesn't name names, many large Western firms -- some of which would be likely targets -- have drastically scaled back business in Russia. So far, Microsoft has suspended sales of new products and services in Russia, Apple has stopped selling devices, and Samsung has stopped selling both devices and chips. Presumably, any move by the Kremlin to "seize" IP would exempt Chinese companies, which are reportedly considering how to press their advantage. Smartphone-makers Xiaomi and Honor stand to gain, as do Chinese automakers. Still, any gains aren't guaranteed since doing business in Russia has become riddled with problems, spanning everything from logistics to finance.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: YouTube is still gearing up for a big podcast push. After hiring an executive in charge of podcasting last year, YouTube is now offering cash to popular podcasts that are willing to make the jump to video. Bloomberg is reporting that YouTube's content push works out to "offers of $50,000 to individual shows and $200,000 and $300,000 to podcast networks." The report says these "grants" are meant to help with the high start-up costs of producing video, which requires cameras, lighting, a studio, and a lot of other equipment you don't need to just do audio.

We still don't know the extent of YouTube's podcasting plans. The project sounds like another instance of YouTube developing a specific content vertical with a specialized interface and custom branding. We've already seen this play out when YouTube's plethora of gaming content led to YouTube Gaming, when all the company's music deals created YouTube Music, and when kids' content got a "YouTube Kids" vertical. If podcasting follows a similar playbook, expect a "YouTube Podcasts" app and website, or at least a special section in the Music app.

A research center housing a nuclear neutron source facility held at the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology in eastern Ukraine was hit by Russian forces on Sunday, per a report from the state nuclear inspectorate. Motherboard reports: In a release published Sunday evening, the inspectorate called the blast "nuclear terrorism," spelling out a list of damages: a substation, which connects the plant to the electrical grid, on which the plant runs; cables within the facility's cooling system, which effectively prevent the plant from a meltdown; a heating line between structures in the facility; surface damages to the building that houses the structure; and windows across a number of buildings within the installation. "This list of damages is not complete so far. Currently, information on the consequences of the damages is being specified by the personnel," the report reads. An updated report following further inspection located no additional damage this morning.

The Security Service of Ukraine's Kharkiv branch said destruction of the facility could lead to "environmental disaster," the Kyiv Independent reported Sunday. Russian state-owned news agency TASS reported Sunday that the attacks were in fact brought on by Ukraine, a line that has since been debunked. The reactor, known as the NSA "Neutron Source" was built with support from the Illinois-based Argonne National Laboratory in service of an agreement signed between the U.S. and Ukraine at the 2010 Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C. The U.S. invested $73 million in the project, which promised that the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology would be "given the opportunity to build state-of-the-art technology in nuclear research that will contribute to "solving problems of nuclear power industry and extending technical lifetime of nuclear power plants,'" according to a report from the European Union Non-Proliferation Consortium.

Amazon has continued to work with companies in China accused of using forced labor despite public warnings about their work practices, according to a report published Monday by a nonprofit watchdog group. NBC News reports: The report from the Tech Transparency Project, a research group that is run by the nonprofit Campaign for Accountability and is often critical of large tech companies, found that Amazon's public list of suppliers includes five companies previously linked by journalists and think tank researchers to "labor transfer" programs in China. The suppliers help produce Amazon-branded devices and products sold under house labels like Amazon Basics. The report also warned that some of Amazon's third-party sellers may be offering products made using labor from the western Chinese region of Xinjiang, such as cotton imports that are already the subject of U.S. sanctions.

The Tech Transparency Project identified three Amazon suppliers that have been linked to forced labor in China directly: Luxshare Precision Industry, AcBel Polytech and Lens Technology. It's not clear what specific Amazon items they may be responsible for producing. According to its public supplier list, Amazon works with two subsidiaries of Luxshare: Dongguan Luxshare Precision Industry and Shenzhen Luxshare Electro Acoustic Technology. Chinese government documents reported by The Information in May showed Luxshare Precision Industry, an electronics manufacturer, had allegedly accepted "as many as hundreds of Xinjiang laborers" between 2017 and 2020. Lens Technology, a company known for producing glass screens for laptops and smartphones, has accepted thousands of Uyghur workers in recent years, according to Chinese government documents first reported by The Washington Post. After receiving negative attention about its labor practices, the company reportedly began phasing out Uyghur workers from its factories. [...] The Tech Transparency Project identified two additional Amazon suppliers -- GoerTek and Hefei BOE Optoelectronics -- that were themselves accused of working with companies that have allegedly used forced labor. Neither supplier responded to requests for comment.

The Tech Transparency Project researchers also found that Amazon continued listing two subsidiaries of the textiles manufacturer Esquel on its supplier list over a year after another subsidiary was sanctioned by the Department of Commerce for allegedly using forced labor. The U.S. government placed sanctions on Changji Esquel Textile in July 2020. But the other subsidiaries remained on Amazon's website until as recently as December 2021, according to the Tech Transparency Project. [...] The Tech Transparency Project also found evidence of Xinjiang labor on Amazon's third-party marketplace. The Tech Transparency Project said the findings raise "questions about Amazon's monitoring of such sellers."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg Quint: Cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase said it blocked over 25,000 wallet addresses related to Russian individuals or entities that it believes to be engaging in illicit activity. The blocked addresses represent about 0.2% of Coinbase's 11.4 million monthly transacting users, based on 2021 data. In a company blog, Paul Grewal, Coinbase's chief legal officer, said the largest U.S. crypto exchange has banned access for sanctioned individuals and is using blockchain analytics to identify addresses potentially linked to them, which it also adds to an internal blocklist. "Today, Coinbase blocks over 25,000 addresses related to Russian individuals or entities we believe to be engaging in illicit activity, many of which we have identified through our own proactive investigations," Grewal wrote. "We shared them with the government to further support sanctions enforcement."

The British government has asked its nuclear regulator to start the process for approving Rolls-Royce's planned small- scale modular nuclear reactor, which policymakers hope will help cut dependence on fossil fuels and lower carbon emissions. From a report: Britain last year backed a $546 million funding round at the company to develop the country's first small modular nuclear reactor (SMR), part of its drive to reach net zero carbon emissions and promote new technology with export potential. Energy minister Kwasi Kwarteng has also said new nuclear projects will play an important part in Britain's efforts to reduce its reliance on expensive gas, which hit fresh record high prices on Monday amid the crisis in Ukraine. SMRs can be made in factories, with parts small enough to be transported on trucks and barges and assembled more quickly and cheaply than large-scale reactors. Each mini plant can power around one million homes and Rolls-Royce has forecast the SMR business could create up to 40,000 jobs based on British and export demand.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Monday said it was proposing new rules to cut smog-forming and greenhouse gas emissions from heavy duty vehicles. From a report: The agency is proposing to require cuts in nitrogen oxide emissions from heavy trucks of 47 percent to 60 percent by 2045. The new standards would begin in the 2027 model year. Separately, the Transportation Department is announcing nearly $1.5 billion in funding for 2022 to help state and local governments purchase U.S.-built electric transit buses and low-emission models. The department is also announcing $2.2 billion in funding to 35 transit agencies across 18 states. The EPA is also proposing stricter new greenhouse gas emissions standards for some types of heavy vehicles.