"Firewalls can be notoriously and fiendishly difficult to configure correctly, and often present a target-rich environment for successful attacks," writes long-time Slashdot reader Lauren Weinstein.

"The thing is, firewall vulnerabilities are not headline news -- they're an old story, and better solutions to providing network security already exist." In particular, Google's "BeyondCorp" approach is something that every enterprise involved in computing should make itself familiar with. Right now! BeyondCorp techniques are how Google protects its own internal networks and systems from attack, with enormous success.

In a nutshell, BeyondCorp is a set of practices that effectively puts "zero trust" in the networks themselves, moving access control and other authentication elements to individual devices and users. This eliminates traditional firewalls (and in nearly all instances, VPNs) because there is no longer any need for such devices or systems that, once breached, give an attacker access to internal goodies.

If Capital One had been following BeyondCorp principles, there'd likely be 100+ million fewer potentially panicky people today.

GNOME and KDE are co-hosting this year's Linux App Summit (LAS) in Barcelona from November 12th to 15th.

An anonymous reader shared the big announcement: LAS is the first collaborative event co-hosted by the two organizations since the Desktop Summit in 2009. Both organizations are eager to bring their communities together in building an application ecosystem that transcends individual distros and broadens the market for everyone involved.

KDE and GNOME will no longer be taking a passive role in the free desktop sector. With the joint influence of the two desktop projects, LAS will shepherd the growth of the FOSS desktop by encouraging the creation of quality applications, seeking opportunities for compensation for FOSS developers, and fostering a vibrant market for the Linux operating system.

• "I am excited to see GNOME and KDE working together on LAS, and I believe that the event will help lay down strong foundations for collaborative cross-project development that would benefit Linux users across all distributions and on any compatible device." -- Christel Dahlskjaer, Private Internet Access and freenode Project Lead.

• "Together with GNOME, counting with the collaboration of many distributions and application developers, we'll have the opportunity to work side by side, share our perspectives and offer the platform that the next generation of solutions will be built on." -- Aleix Pol Gonzalez, KDE e.V Vice-President says about the inaugural effort about LAS.

• "By partnering with KDE we show the desire to build the kind of application ecosystem that demonstrates that Open Source and Free Software are important; the technology and organization we build to achieve this is valuable and necessary." -- GNOME executive director, Neil McGovern

• "The desktop wars is not really a thing any more. It makes more sense to work together and pool resources." -- Paul Brown, a KDE Communications Specialist (quoted by ZDNet)

ZDNet called the collaboration "a major step forward," giving their story the headline "GNOME and KDE work together on the Linux desktop." But the Twitter feed for the KDE community quickly clarified that KDE "is working with GNOME to create a common, fair, sustainable and open app ecosystem, not a desktop."

"The GNOME and KDE communities want to provide users with free and open applications that will respect their privacy and rights. That is what Linux App Summit is about."

In news that will shock absolutely nobody, LG and Sony continue to struggle when it comes to selling smartphones. An anonymous reader shares a report: Despite posting record second-quarter and first-half revenues and operating profit totaling $559.4 million -- largely due to strong home appliance sales -- LG's Mobile Communications division continues to underperform. Sales of $1.38 billion equate to a 21.3% drop compared with the same period last year, although it is an increase of 6.8% over the previous quarter. The company blames the usual factors for these results: stagnant demand across the whole sector and "continued aggressive pricing by Chinese brands." Further improvement is expected in Q3 with new products coming to market and greater demand for 5G products, apparently. It's a similar story over at Sony, whose sales in the Electronics Products & Solutions division that smartphones are now a part of reached $776 million, marking a 15% decrease year-on-year. The Japanese company attributes the poor performance to a drop shipments of not just smartphones, but also televisions and digital cameras, two areas that Sony usually does better in.

DevNull127 writes: Hiring is broken and yours is too," argues a New York-based software developer whose LinkedIn profile says he's worked at both Amazon and Google, as well as doing architecture verification work for both Oracle and Intel. Summarizing what he's read about hiring just this year in numerous online articles, he lists out the arguments against virtually every popular hiring metric, ultimately concluding that "Until and unless someone does a rigorous scientific study evaluating different interviewing techniques, preferably using a double-blind randomized trial, there's no point in beating this dead horse further. Everyone's hiring practices are broken, and yours aren't any better."

For example, as a Stanford graduate he nonetheless argues that "The skills required for getting into Stanford at 17 (extracurriculars, SAT prep etc) do not correlate to job success as a software developer. How good a student you were at 17, is not very relevant to who you are at 25." References are flawed because "People will only ever list references who will say good things about them," and they ultimately punish people who've had bad managers. But asking for source code from past sides projects penalizes people with other interests or family, while "most work product is confidential."

Brain teasers "rely on you being lucky enough to get a flash of inspiration, or you having heard it before," and are "not directly related to programming. Even Google says it is useless." And live-coding exercises are "artificial and contrived," and "not reflective of practical coding," while pair programming is unrealistic, with the difficulty of the tasks varying from day to day.

He ultimately criticizes the ongoing discussion for publicizing the problems but not the solutions. "How exactly should we weigh the various pros and cons against each other and actually pick a solution? Maybe we could maybe try something novel like data crunch the effectiveness of each technique, or do some randomized experiments to measure the efficacy of each approach? Lol, j/k. Ain't nobody got time for that!"

Atlanta's mayor put a pause on the city's issuance of permits for smartphone-based electric scooter rentals Thursday following two recent deaths. From a report: The city had come under pressure from activists in recent days who had protested on Atlanta's streets after a man riding a scooter was run over by a city transit bus. The executive order from Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms stops short of removing scooters from the city's streets.

"Across the nation, municipalities are dealing with the sudden and unforeseen impact these devices have had on our communities," Bottoms said in a press release. "While some municipalities have banned the devices altogether, the City of Atlanta acted in good faith to work with the private sector to explore innovative solutions to ease existing commuting strains," said Bottoms. "However, as Atlanta has seen two scooter related deaths, this complex issue requires a more thorough and robust dialogue."

There's already nearly 5,000 satellites orbiting earth, "and many of them are non-functioning space debris now, clogging up orbital paths for newer satellites," reports Universe Today. Yet over the next five years we expect to launch up to 2600 more -- which is prompting a search for solutions to "the growing problem of space debris in Low-Earth Orbit." Some exotic-sounding solutions involve harpoons, nets, magnets, even lasers. Now NASA has given Purdue University-related startup Vestigo Aerospace money for a six month study that looks at using drag sails to de-orbit space junk, including satellites, spent rocket boosters, and other debris, safely...Drag sails are a bit different than other methods. While the harpoons, lasers, and nets proposed by various agencies are meant to deal with the space junk that's already accumulated, drag sails are designed to be built into a satellite and deployed at the end of their useful life... Once deployed, they would reduce an object's velocity and then help it deorbit safely.

Currently, satellites deorbit more or less on their own terms, and it's difficult to calculate where they may strike Earth, if they're too large to burn up on re-entry... [D]rag sails offer an affordable, and potentially easy-to-develop method to ensure future satellites don't outlive their usefulness.
The company was started by a Purdue associate professor of engineering who tells the site they're building in scalability, so their sails can handle satellites that weigh one kilogram -- or one ton.

A new study from International Data Corporation (IDC) found that of the organizations already using AI, only 25% have developed an "enterprise-wide" AI strategy, and it found that among those in the process of deploying AI, a substantial number of projects are doomed to fail. VentureBeat reports: IDC's Artificial Intelligence Global Adoption Trends & Strategies report, which was published today, summarizes the results of a May 2019 survey of 2,473 organizations using AI solutions in their operations. It chiefly focused on respondents' AI strategy, culture, and implementation challenges, as well as their AI data readiness initiatives and the production deployment trends expected to experience growth in the next two years. Firms blamed the cost of AI solutions, a lack of qualified workers, and biased data as the principal blockers impeding AI adoption internally. Respondents identified skills shortages and unrealistic expectations as the top two reasons for failure, in fact, with a full quarter reporting up to 50% failure rate.

However, that's not to suggest success stories are few in far between. More than 60% of companies reported changes in their business model in association with their AI adoption, and nearly 50% said they'd established a formal framework to encourage the ethical use, potential bias risks, and trust implications of AI, according to IDC. Moreover, 25% report having established a senior management position to ensure adherence.

The Microsoft security team has issued a warning today about ongoing malware campaigns that are distributing the Astaroth malware using fileless and living-off-the-land techniques that make it harder for traditional antivirus solutions to spot the ongoing attacks. From a report: The attacks were detected by the team behind Windows Defender ATP, the commercial version of the company's Windows Defender free antivirus. Andrea Lelli, a member of the Windows Defender ATP team said alarms bells sounded at Microsoft's offices when they detected a huge and sudden spike in usage of the Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) tool. This is a legitimate tool that ships with all modern versions of Windows, but the sudden spike in usage suggested a pattern specific to malware campaigns. When Microsoft looked closer, it discovered a malware campaign that consisted of a massive spam operation that was sending out emails with a link to a website hosting a .LNK shortcut file.

Remember when the small town of Lake City, Florida paid $460,000 for a ransomware's decryption key?

As they slowly recover 100 years of encrypted municipal records, the New York Times looks at the lessons learned, arguing that cyberattackers have simply found a juicy target: small governments with weak computer protections -- and strong insurance policies. The city had backup files for all its data, but they were on the same network -- and also inaccessible... The city's insurer, the Florida League of Cities, hired a consultant to handle the negotiations with the hackers via the email addresses that had been posted on the city server. The initial demands were refused outright, and city technicians raced to find a workaround. "We tried a lot of different solutions," said Joseph Helfenberger, the city manager. None of them worked. "We were at the end of the day faced with either re-creating the data from scratch, or paying the ransom," he said.

The insurer's negotiator settled on a payment of 42 Bitcoins, or about $460,000, Helfenberger said, of which the city would pay a $10,000 deductible. After the payment, the hackers provided a decryption key, and recovery efforts began in earnest.

As it turned out, recovery would not be simple. Even with the decryption key, each terabyte has taken about 12 hours to recover. Much of the city's data, nearly a month after the onset of the attack, has still not been unlocked... In Lake City, the information technology director, blamed for both failing to secure the network and taking too long to recover the data, wound up losing his job.
Mark A. Orlando, the chief technology officer for Raytheon Intelligence Information and Services, tells the Times it's unrealistic to expect cities to never pay the ransom. "Anyone who said that has never been in charge of a municipality that has half their services down and no choice."

But does that create an ever-widening problem? The FBI knows of at least 1,500 reported ransomware incidents last year, according to the article, although the Illinois computer programmer offering free decryption help at ID Ransomware says he's receiving 1,500 requests for assistance every day.

On June 27, the U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan cybersecurity bill that will study ways to replace automated systems with low-tech redundancies to protect the country's electric grid from hackers. Called The Securing Energy Infrastructure Act (SEIA), the bill establishes a two-year pilot program identifying new security vulnerabilities and researching and testing solutions, including "analog and nondigital control systems." The U.S Department of Energy would be required to report back to Congress on its findings. Utility Drive reports: The increase in distributed energy resources can serve load more efficiently, but also offers potential attackers more potential entry points. "Our connectivity is a strength that, if left unprotected, can be exploited as a weakness," Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who sponsored the bill with Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, said in a statement. Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., and Mike Crapo, R-Idaho cosponsored the bill. The House measure is being introduced by Reps. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., and John Carter, R-Texas.

New documents obtained by Motherboard using a Freedom of Information request show how Amazon, Ring, a GPS tracking company, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service collaborated on a package sting operation with the Aurora, Colorado Police Department in December. From the report: The operation involved equipping fake Amazon packages with GPS trackers, and surveilling doorsteps with Ring doorbell cameras in an effort to catch someone stealing a package on tape. The documents show the design and implementation of a highly elaborate public relations stunt, which was designed both to endear Amazon and Ring with local law enforcement, and to make local residents fear the place they live. The parties were disappointed when the operation didn't result in any arrests. The Aurora Police Department received 25 Amazon boxes, Amazon-branded tape, and Amazon lithium ion stickers as a part of the operation. It also received 15 Ring doorbell cameras and 15 GL300W GPS trackers from 7P Solutions. "Operation Grinch Grab," as it was called internally, involved seven Aurora zip codes. These companies spent days with the Aurora Police Department preparing them for the operation, and discussing local news coverage and rewriting press releases.

"Robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) is about to eat the world of work" argues Hooman Radfar, a partner at the startup studio Expa who's been "actively investing in and looking for new companies" catalyzing the change." Companies buy massive robots and software solutions that are customized -- at great cost -- to their specific needs. The massive conglomerates that sell these robots have dominated the field for decades, but that is about to change. One major factor driving this change is how dramatically globalization has reduced hardware production costs and capabilities. At the same time, cheap and powerful computing and cloud infrastructure are now also readily available and easy to spin up. As a result, vertical-specific, robotic-powered, solutions can today be offered as variable cost services versus being sold at a fixed cost. Just as cable companies include the costs of set-top boxes in their monthly bill, robots and their associated software will be bundled together and sold in a subscription package. This change to the robotics business model will have profound implications, radically transforming markets and at the same time changing the future of work.

With a new variable cost model in place as a result of subscription packages, it's simple to calculate when a market is about to tip to favor RaaS. A market has hit its automation tipping point when an RaaS solution is introduced with a unit cost that is less than or equal to the unit cost for humans-in-the-loop to conduct the same task... One market that has already reached its automation tipping point is the enterprise building security market... Crop dusting ($70 billion), industrial cleaning ($78 billion), warehouse management ($21 billion), and many more service markets are tipping. When these sectors hit their automation tipping point, we will see the same level of industry disruption currently taking place in the building security market.

The changes taking place in the enterprise will also deeply impact consumer markets, and ultimately society, in profound and potentially challenging ways. We are at the start of a massive shift in how work gets done.
One study predicted the worldwide RaaSS market would be $34.7 within three years, according to the article, which also explores how the building security market is already being disrupted. "Instead of manning a building with three to four people, you can have one human managing a few remote robots" -- at a cost that's 30% cheaper.

"Moreover, all the data and insights collected via these robots is organized and made available for building and security optimization. It isn't just cheaper, it's better. There's no turning back -- this market has hit its automation tipping point."

An anonymous reader quotes CNET: A former Equifax executive who sold his stock in the consumer credit reporting firm before it announced a massive data breach has been sentenced to four months in federal prison for insider trading. Jun Ying, former chief information officer for the company's US Information Solutions, was also ordered to pay about $117,000 in restitution and a $55,000 fine, the US Attorney's Office said Thursday... Ying sold all his shares in Equifax, making more than $950,000. Ying's insider trading happened 10 days before Equifax publicly announced its breach.

Ying, 44, is the second Equifax employee convicted of insider trading related to the data breach. Sudhakar Reddy Bonthu, a former Equifax software development manager, pleaded guilty in 2018 to using the insider information to make more than $75,000 on the stock market. Bonthu was ordered to serve eight months home confinement, pay a $50,000 fine and forfeit the proceeds from the stock sale.
In announcing the sentence, U.S. Attorney Byung J. Pak said that Ying had "thought of his own financial gain before the millions of people exposed in this data breach even knew they were victims."

An anonymous reader shares a report: The most astonishing thing about cement is how much air pollution it produces. Manufacturing the stone-like building material is responsible for 7% of global carbon dioxide emissions, more than what comes from all the trucks in the world. And with that in mind, it's surprising that leading cement makers from LafargeHolcim in Switzerland to Votorantim Cimentos in Brazil are finding customers slow to embrace a greener alternative. Their story highlights the difficulties of taking greenhouse gases out of buildings, roads and bridges. After wresting deep cuts from the energy industry, policymakers looking to extend the fight against global warming are increasingly focusing on construction materials and practices as a place to make further reductions. The companies are working on solutions, but buyers are reluctant to pay more.

While architects and developers concentrate on the energy used by their buildings, it's actually the materials supporting the structure that embody the biggest share of its lifetime carbon footprint. Cement's contribution to emissions is especially immense because of the chemical process required to make it. About two-thirds of the polluting gases that come from cement production stem from burning limestone. Kilns are heated to more than 1,400 degrees Celsius (2,600 Fahrenheit), about four times hotter than a home oven set to the self-clean cycle. Inside the kiln, carbon trapped in the limestone combines with oxygen and is released as CO2, the most abundant greenhouse gas.

Sidewalk Labs, Alphabet's smart city subsidiary, released its massive plan Monday to transform a slice of Toronto's waterfront into a high-tech utopia. From a report: Eighteen months in the making and clocking in at 1,524 pages, the plan represents Alphabet's first, high-stakes effort to realize Alphabet CEO Larry Page's long-held dream of a city within a city to experiment with innovations like self-driving cars, public Wi-Fi, new health care delivery solutions, and other city planning advances that modern technology makes possible. Previously, Sidewalk Labs called it "a neighborhood built from the internet up." But on Monday, Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff went a step further to describe it as "the most innovative district in the world."

The plan includes: Ten new buildings of mixed-use development consisting primarily of thousands of new residential units, as well as retail and office spaces, all made from mass timber. A proposal to extend the city's light-rail system to serve the new neighborhood. Redesigning streets to reduce car use and promote biking and walking. Installation of public Wi-Fi, in addition to other sensors to collect "urban data" to better inform housing and traffic decisions, for example. Proposal to reduce greenhouse gases by up to 89 percent. Building the new Canadian headquarters of Google on the western edge of Villiers Island. Further reading: Former Firefox VP on What It's Like To Be Both a Partner of Google and a Competitor via Google Chrome; Sidewalk Labs' 1,500-Page Plan for Toronto Is a Democracy Grenade.

This year America's National Security Agency (NSA) is once again "developing a cyber challenge and daring more than 330 schools and 2,600 students to solve it," writes Federal News Network.

Slashdot reader eatvegetables shares their report: Kathy Hutson, the senior strategist for industry and academic engagement at the NSA, said the Codebreaker Challenge has become one of the best ways to attract the next generation of talent to the federal government... NSA launched the Codebreaker Challenge in 2013 as a way to further connect with students and professors, who are focused on technology and cyber issues. Over the last six years, the annual initiative has become a much-anticipated challenge with professors making it a part of their classes and students testing their mettle against NSA's cyber experts...

The initiative provides students, professors and anyone else who is interested "with a hands-on opportunity to develop their reverse-engineering /low-level code analysis skills while working on a realistic problem set centered around the NSA's mission," said Eric Bryant, a technical director in the crypto analysis organization at the NSA. The 2018 challenge focused on ransomware and blockchain, requiring participants to solve eight separate, but related challenges... Bryant said a group of NSA cyber experts develop the challenge each year on top of their regular duties. He said they try to focus on areas that are either up-and-coming or current cyber threats and attack vectors. For the 2019 Codebreaker Challenge, Bryant said it likely will focus on mobile security threats, probably using an Android operating system...

Bryant said he reaches out to all of the students who solve the challenge and NSA sends them letters of recognition and a memento for participating. "We reach out to these students to figure out what year they are in, how could they come here to do internships or hire them full-time, so we are definitely on that from a hiring and recruitment perspective," Hutson said. The NSA keeps a leaderboard ranking the participating colleges. (Last year Oregon State had over 100 students participating.)

The 2018 challenge is still online, Bryant says, "and there are people who are working and submitting solutions."

lazarus writes: As part of the investigation being done by Ernst & Young into the mismanagement of client's cash and cryptocurrency at Quadriga Fintech Solutions Corp they have found that the late founder and CEO Gerald Cotten transferred client's cryptocurrency to personal accounts on rival exchanges and heavily traded on them. "Competitor exchanges received multiple forms of cryptocurrencies from Quadriga wallets from 2016 through 2019 -- 9,450 Bitcoin, 387,738 Ethereum and 239,020 Litecoin," reports the Financial Post. "Quadriga's cryptocurrency reserves were 'adversely affected' by trading losses and incremental fees charged by other exchanges, the report said."

"The late CEO also created accounts under aliases where 'unsupported deposits' were used to trade within the platform, resulting in inflated revenue figures, artificial trades with users and ultimately the withdrawal of cryptocurrency, the report said. And 'substantial funds' were transferred to Cotten personally and other related parties." The report also paints a picture of an organization that was run by a single person from his laptop with no oversight, segregation of duties and responsibilities, and no internal controls.

The Berlin Senate on Tuesday approved a five-year rent freeze designed to tame soaring housing costs in the German capital, bowing to pressure from residents angry that their city has become unaffordable. From a report: Once described as "poor but sexy," Berlin's housing costs have doubled over the last decade as employees lured by the strong job market move into the city. The sharp rent hikes have led some residents to ponder radical solutions, including pushing for the seizure of housing stock from landlords. Berlin's city government agreed on Tuesday on the outlines of a draft law that would include a temporary freeze on rents for five years from 2020, with a bill to be drafted. The cap means "protection against rent increases for 1.5 million apartments," tweeted the Berlin government's department for urban development and housing. Under the plan, landlords who seek to raise rates because of renovation work will also have to seek official approval for any increases above 50 cents (44p) per sq metre (11 sq ft).

Facebook has finally revealed the details of its cryptocurrency Libra. From a blog post: Today we're sharing plans for Calibra, a newly formed Facebook subsidiary whose goal is to provide financial services that will let people access and participate in the Libra network. The first product Calibra will introduce is a digital wallet for Libra, a new global currency powered by blockchain technology. The wallet will be available in Messenger, WhatsApp and as a standalone app -- and we expect to launch in 2020. [...] For many people around the world, even basic financial services are still out of reach: almost half of the adults in the world don't have an active bank account and those numbers are worse in developing countries and even worse for women. The cost of that exclusion is high -- approximately 70% of small businesses in developing countries lack access to credit and $25 billion is lost by migrants every year through remittance fees. This is the challenge we're hoping to address with Calibra, a new digital wallet that you'll be able to use to save, send and spend Libra.

From the beginning, Calibra will let you send Libra to almost anyone with a smartphone, as easily and instantly as you might send a text message and at low to no cost. And, in time, we hope to offer additional services for people and businesses, like paying bills with the push of a button, buying a cup of coffee with the scan of a code or riding your local public transit without needing to carry cash or a metro pass. When it launches, Calibra will have strong protections in place to keep your money and your information safe. We'll be using all the same verification and anti-fraud processes that banks and credit cards use, and we'll have automated systems that will proactively monitor activity to detect and prevent fraudulent behavior. We'll also offer dedicated live support to help if you lose your phone or your password -- and if someone fraudulently gains access to your account and you lose some Libra as a result, we'll offer you a refund. Facebook's currency is backed by more than two dozen companies ranging from Visa and Mastercard to Lyft and Spotify. Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft have not yet signed up. Banks decided not to join the starting roster because of uncertainties about regulation and concerns over logistical issues that could hamper take-up, Financial Times reported citing several industry executives. From the report: If successful, the project could dramatically reshape some corners of the finance industry, disintermediating payments platforms and stealing business from retail banks and fintech groups, particularly those that specialise in sending payments across borders. Jorn Lambert, executive vice-president for digital solutions at Mastercard, said he was not worried that fee-free transactions would threaten the payment card business. "It's an addition to what we do, not instead of what we do. It is not a zero-sum game. Today, 85 per cent of transactions are made in cash." It is unclear whether Libra will clear the steep hurdles needed to get off the ground, win over regulators, such as the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and be embraced, or strongly resisted, by the financial services industry. Central banks have already questioned the impact of company-created cryptocurrencies on financial stability. "We see hurdles to scale, we see hurdles to adoption, we see enough of this to decide that we would not participate in a scheme like this," said a senior payments executive at a large global bank.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CleanTechnica: Spanish renewable energy giant and offshore wind energy leader Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy last week inaugurated operations of its electrothermal energy storage system which can store up to 130 megawatt-hours of electricity for a week in volcanic rock. The newly-opened electric thermal energy storage system is billed by Siemens Gamesa as "The Future Energy Solution" and as costing "significantly" less than classic energy storage solutions. Specifically, according to the company, even at the gigawatt-hour (GWh) pilot scale, ETES "would be highly competitive compared to other available storage technologies."

The heat storage facility consists of around 1,000 tonnes of volcanic rock which is used as the storage medium. The rock is fed with electrical energy which is then converted into hot air by means of a resistance heater and a blower that, in turn, heats the rock to 750C/1382F. When demand requires the stored energy, ETES uses a steam turbine to re-electrify the stored energy and feeds it back into the grid. The new ETES facility in Hamburg-Altenwerder can store up to 130 MWh of thermal energy for a week, and storage capacity remains constant throughout the charging cycles.