In the near future, "Top Gun" may get a reboot. Roughly one year from now, fighter pilots will begin flying with helmets outfitted with visors that can augment reality and place digital replicas of enemy fighter jets in their field of vision. For the first time, pilots will get to fly in the air and practice maneuvering against imitations of highly advanced aircraft made by countries like China and Russia. From a report: It is also part of the U.S. military's investment of billions into virtual reality, artificial intelligence and algorithms to modernize the way it fights wars. The pilot training solution, created by military technology company Red6, will be rolled out to the Air Force first as part of its $70 million contract with the branch. Company and former military officials say the technology will be a safe, cheap and realistic way to ensure American pilots are prepared to battle the best fighter planes in the world.

"Better, faster, cheaper," said Daniel Robinson, founder and chief executive of Red6. "This is the way we'll train them in the future." The military wants new 'robot ships' to replace sailors during battle For decades, the way America trains its fighter pilots has changed little. Aviators from the Air Force and Navy often start their training flying on a Northrop T-38 jet, often using a similar syllabus to one that has been around since the 1960s. From there, they train on planes, such as F-22 or F-35 fighter jets, that they will fly during their career.

Intel's Arc graphics cards aren't just for gamers, it seems, as the previously CPU-exclusive company has taken the lid off a new line of professional GPUs to complement the existing Arc line -- well, existing in China, maybe. From a report:The new cards are called Arc Pro, and target those who use their graphics cards for more than shooting bad guys. Maybe they won't be among the best graphics cards for gaming, but the AV1 encoding at least might get some takers. Intel today unveiled one mobile professional GPU, the A30M, and two desktop models: the single-slot A40 and double-slot A50. Both desktop cards are described as being for small form-factor machines, which makes us suspect Intel may have some much larger cards up its sleeve.

All the newly announced GPUs feature built-in ray tracing hardware, machine learning capabilities and industry-first AV1 hardware encoding acceleration. Google's royalty-free, open source alternative to HEVC, AV1 hasn't gained a lot of traction on the web so far despite promises from Netflix and YouTube, with its main use being in Google's Duo video calling despite beating HEVC for compression quality. It's always been very slow to encode, however, so a good hardware accelerator and Intel's backing could see it take off.

Tornado Cash, a popular cryptocurrency service that allows users to mask their transactions, was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department after North North Korean hackers relied on it to launder illicit gains, officials announced on Monday. The sanctions bar American companies and individuals from doing business with it. From a report: The platform facilitates anonymous transactions by mixing funds from different sources before transmitting them to the ultimate beneficiary. Tornado Cash has been used to launder more than $7 billion in virtual currency, a senior Treasury official said in a press conference. North Korea's Lazarus Group has laundered about $450 million through the service, according to the official. It was also used to launder more than $100 million in the June hack of the Harmony blockchain's Horizon Bridge, which allows crypto trading between other blockchains, the official said.

Described by administration officials as the go-to mixer for cyber criminals, Tornado Cash became the second such service targeted by the Treasury Department. In May, the agency issued sanctions against Blender.io, which was also allegedly used by North Korean hackers to launder illicit proceeds from hacking. Following the sanctions, it appears Blender.io is no longer operating, the official said. The action against Tornado is a "watershed" moment and the Treasury's "most significant action in the crypto space to date," said Ari Redbord, head of legal and government affairs at TRM Labs, a blockchain analysis firm used by governments and financial institutions to fight fraud, money laundering and financial crime, in an email. "This designation sends a message that the US government will not tolerate mixing services that cannot stop illicit actors from using their services."

Communications giant Twilio has confirmed hackers accessed customer data after successfully tricking employees into handing over their corporate login credentials. From a report: The San Francisco-based company, which allows users to build voice and SMS capabilities -- such as two-factor authentication (2FA) -- into applications, said in a blog post published Monday that it became aware that someone gained "unauthorized access" to information related to some Twilio customer accounts on August 4. Twilio has more than 150,000 customers, including Facebook and Uber. According to the company, the as-yet-unidentified threat actor convinced multiple Twilio employees into handing over their credentials, which allowed access to the company's internal systems. The attack used SMS phishing messages that purported to come from Twilio's IT department, suggesting that the employees' password had expired or that their schedule had changed, and advised the target to log in using a spoofed web address that the attacker controls.

If it weren't for Slashdot, Mark Zuckerberg wouldn't be facing a six-hour deposition over alleged involvement in the Cambridge Analytica Scandal, argues long-time Slashdot reader theodp: In 2003, Harvard's student newspaper the Harvard Crimson reported that Zuck's programming skills attracted attention from the likes of Microsoft and others following a 2003 Slashdot post. That post — titled Machine Learning and MP3s — described how "Students at Caltech [freshman Adam D'Angelo, Quora CEO and co-founder] and Harvard [freshman Zuck] developed a system that analyzes playlists and learns people's listening patterns." The playlist-making software, Synapse AI, was Zuck's high school senior project at Phillips Exeter Academy.

Interestingly, in a modded-up comment ("Informative") on the post, Slashdot user Mark Zuckerberg vowed to protect user privacy. "And a note about privacy," promised Zuck. "None of your musical listening data will be available to anyone other than you. We hope to use massive amounts of data to aid in analysis, but your individual data will never be seen by anyone else."

Hey, things change. And Slashdot user SkyIce (apparently D'Angelo) added, "I'm not going to spam people. I promise." .
Zuckerberg was just 18 years old — and Steven Levy's 2020 book Facebook: The Inside Story recounts how all "the Slashdot attention was a boon." Zuckerberg heard from multiple companies interested in the student project, including Microsoft and AOL. Zuckerberg and D'Angelo got an offer approaching a million dollars from one of those suitors. But the payout would be contingent on Zuckerberg and D'Angelo committing to work for that company for three years. They turned it down.
That summer, back in Cambridge, young Mark Zuckerberg "thought it was interesting that I was so excited about Friendster," D'Angelo remembered in the book. Friendster was an earlier social network founded in 2002 (which eventually closed in 2018). D'Angelo remembered that Zuckerberg "wasn't into it as a user, but it was clear to him that there was something there...."

About two-thirds of Americans now say they support unions, reports CNBC, "the highest approval rating since 1965." And suddenly in the last few months, "workers have been organizing at a pace this country hasn't seen since the Great Depression." Amazon has captured headlines for union drives at its warehouses, including a successful effort on New York's Staten Island. But activity is picking up elsewhere in retail and tech at big companies that are generally viewed as progressive, with no history of labor unions. As of Wednesday, 209 Starbucks stores have officially voted to unionize according to the National Labor Relations Board. First-ever unions have also formed at an Apple store in Maryland, a Google Fiber contractor, REI, Trader Joe's, Kickstarter and Activision Blizzard....

The union movement at Apple stores is progressing at a slower pace. The first union win among Apple's 270-plus U.S. stores happened on June 18, when workers in Towson, Maryland, voted 65 to 33 to join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. No other stores have held a vote.... Three other stores have taken steps to unionize, although one in Atlanta withdrew its election petition in May. That same month, a memo was leaked showing Apple's anti-union talking points, instructing store managers to tell workers they could lose benefits and career opportunities if they organized....

Communications Workers of America, which has about 700,000 members, helped organize the Atlanta Apple store, as well as workers at Google. In March, Google Fiber contractors in Kansas City held an NLRB election, becoming the first to officially unionize under what's known as the Alphabet Workers Union. Nearly 1,000 other Google workers have also signed cards to join the AWU, but because the employees haven't officially held an NLRB election, their group is known as a minority union. "There's a lot of research that shows that most Americans want unions," said Sara Steffens, secretary-treasurer of Communications Workers of America. "They just don't want to go through this scary union-busting process...."

Google has also been accused of fighting back. The NLRB found that the company "arguably violated" labor law when it fired employees for speaking up. The Google Fiber contractors faced additional anti-union messaging in a letter from the contractor, which said "everyone will be stuck with the union and forced to pay dues."
The article points out that union workers earn 16.6% more than nonunion workers on average — roughly $10,000 a year. "Workers are looking at how well their employers are performing and wondering why they're not getting rewarded equally. For example, Google parent Alphabet recorded its fastest revenue growth rate since 2007 last year. Apple's margin has been steadily rising and the company closed 2021 with its biggest quarter ever for sales, at almost $124 billion....

The article also notes that official figures from October 1, 2021 through June 30 showed a 58% increase in official attempts to unionize. "Whether the organizing momentum spreads more widely across the economy may depend on how vocal and successful workers are at Starbucks, Apple and elsewhere."

An anonymous reader shares this report on The Switchblade, "an aircraft that doubles as a car."

It could be "just weeks away from getting its wheels off the ground after an inspection by America's Federal Aviation Administration determined that the vehicle is safe to fly: The project has been 14 years in the making, and Sam Bousfield, CEO of Samson Sky and inventor of the Switchblade, said he's "stoked" to reach this milestone. After passing the FAA inspection, his team wasted no time in beginning the high-speed taxi test. They were out on the taxiway the next day. "[The crew] took off their 'I'm doing R&D' and they put on their 'I am flight test' crew hat, and I think that really set the tone for everything after," Bousfield said. "So, we're in a different game now...."

Just like a pocket knife, the Switchblade's wings slip smoothly into the body of the vehicle with the touch of a button, allowing it to seamlessly transition from sky to air. Its tail also unfurls or retracts, depending on if it's being used to fly or drive. The idea is that the vehicle could be parked in a garage, driven to an airport, flown to a new destination, and then driven anywhere on the ground after it lands. When a trip is over, the user can fly it home or fly it elsewhere.
"The side windows (in the doors) will be power windows," noted a tweet Thursday on the car manufacturer's official Twitter feed @FlyingSportsCar.

And Maxim points out that The Switchblade can be flown at up to 200 mph and as high as 13,000 feet, "for up to 450 miles, with the 190-hp liquid-cooled three-cylinder powering the single propeller." On the ground, the Switchblade can achieve a brisk 125 mph, making it similar to "a little flying sports car," Bousfield added.

Before production begins, the Switchblade has more regulatory hurdles that flying cars will need to overcome. Owners will need a pilot's license and either a motorcycle or driver's license to operate it in both flight and ground modes, plus car/motorcycle and aircraft insurance. But for now, the FAA flight approval has inspired Bousfield to keep charging ahead....

It will be at least a few more years before civilians are flying their own Switchblades, which are expected to cost around $170,000. But anyone can join the 1,670 people who have reserved one free of charge.

1,975 flights were cancelled in the U.S. today. 2,919 flights were cancelled Friday. And 28,118 more flights were at least delayed. That's according to the flight tracking site FlightAware, which also showed another 1,248 flights cancelled Thursday, according to CNN.

They note that America's "massive flight cancellations" started Thursday when "thunderstorms pounded major airports on the East Coast." Southwest Airlines canceled 370 flights, or 9% of its Thursday schedule. Southwest delayed another 1,800 flights, 46% of its Thursday schedule. "We are working through a variety of weather-related challenges that are affecting a number of our larger operations across the country this week," Southwest Airlines said in a statement on Friday...

Airlines have been struggling with flight cancellations and delays this summer as they face staffing shortages, severe weather and air traffic control delays. US airlines have been preemptively trimming their schedules to ease air traffic disruptions, with American Airlines the latest to make cuts, particularly at its hub in Philadelphia. American Airlines had canceled more than 200 flights by Friday afternoon. Air traffic disruptions have been bad in Europe, too. London Heathrow and Amsterdam Schiphol airports announced moves this week to curb congestion.
Elsewhere CNN reports that there's a larger ongoing problem. "As global travelers return to the skies in droves after a pandemic-enforced pause, airlines and airports across the world are grappling to match supply with demand." When aviation ground to a halt in the early days of the pandemic, most airlines and airports either furloughed or laid off many ground and air workers. Many carriers operated a skeleton staff for the best part of the last two years. Now, travel demand is back, and the industry is struggling to catch up and rehire....

A spokesperson for Lufthansa said that the aviation industry as a whole is "suffering from bottlenecks and staff shortages, noticeable especially during peak periods." The post-pandemic travel boom was "expected — but not in this intensity," the Lufthansa spokesperson added.

Sociologist Ashley Mears know the secret to making viral videos on Facebook. "It's like a magic trick," one creator explains. Literally.

"Many of the most successful people in the content-creation game on Facebook are magicians," Mears explains in a video. "I think that that's not such a surprise, because magicians are extremely skilled in manipulating people's attention, which is basically what the viral video economy does."

Mears recently visited the "new creative elites," a group of creators regularly getting 100 million to 200 million views, which includes former jazz singer Anna Rothfuss and her magician boyfriend Justin Flom: Rothfuss and Flom are among the 180 video-makers (or "creators" in the industry's jargon) working with a Las Vegas magician called Rick Lax. They produce short videos timed to last the precise number of seconds that Facebook requires a clip to run to be eligible for an ad (this used to be three minutes but recently went down to one). Though the clips usually look like authentic user-generated material, all are scripted. Most fall into genres: diy, crafts, hazards, adultery and proposals. Lax manages his network like a cross between a Hollywood agent and a schoolteacher. He takes a slice of the ad revenue that creators earn. In exchange, he gives them online tutorials about how to make viral content: everything from how to hold the camera to which metrics matter to Facebook. He releases new instructions every time the algorithm changes substantially, and offers feedback on people's videos. He also posts his creators' videos on his own Facebook page, which has 14m followers....

A friend was making videos for Rick Lax, and invited Rothfuss to join in 2019. A year later she bought her first mansion. Entering the viral-content game involves a certain surrendering of artistic aspirations, but Rothfuss says she doesn't care. "I do not want to be famous," she says. "I love being low-key and flying under the radar, and just getting rich...."

Lax realised that appetite for these videos was insatiable: the only obstacle to earning more money was how many clips he could make in a day.... Lax wouldn't go into details of his profit-sharing arrangement but his creators are clearly flourishing. Many told me they felt like they were taking part in a 21st-century gold rush. "This doesn't happen to that many people," says Amy Boiss, a one-time Uber driver whose magician boyfriend introduced her to Lax's network. "To make more money than neurosurgeons...." Lax and his friends got rich without anyone knowing who they are....

It's perhaps no coincidence that the two most-viewed Facebook creators in 2021, Lax and Julius Dein, both started out as magicians (as did many of their affiliates). Their videos aren't magic performances as such, but they're informed by the art of magic. "Magicians start by looking for blind spots, edges, vulnerabilities and limits of people's perception," wrote a former Google employee (and amateur magician) in an essay published on Medium in 2017, "How technology hijacks your mind". Social-media companies, wrote the author, "influence what people do without them even realising it", just as magicians do: "Once you know how to push people's buttons you can play them like a piano."
Ironically, the creators end up driven by "the same dopamine rush they were exploiting in us," the article points out. "If you're looking at the data, you can actually see your earnings go up as people watch your work: making viral videos can be just as addictive as watching them."

One of the magicians in Lax's network even says point-blank that "It feels like a drug."

For months international experts worried about "a sprawling nuclear power plant on the banks of Dnipro River in southern Ukraine," reports CNN.

"Then, on Friday, explosions rang out at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power complex, the biggest of its kind in Europe, reigniting fears of a potential disaster." Moscow and Kyiv have accused each other of shelling the plant, which was taken over by Russian forces in early March, along with the town of Enerhodar, where the complex is located. CNN was unable to verify claims of damage at the plant, which occupies a large site. Much of the recent Russian fire in the area has originated from near the plant and it is unclear if parts of the nuclear facility were hit accidentally.... The Russian defense ministry added that the generating capacity of one unit at the plant had been reduced, and power supply to another cut....

When fierce fighting first broke out near the facility in the early days of the war, it sparked fears of a nuclear incident and prompted condemnations from the international community. Russian troops forced its managers to work "at gunpoint" after seizing the plant on March 5, according to Ukrainian nuclear officials. A week later, the Kremlin sent officials and technicians from Russia's state nuclear agency to help conduct repairs and manage the facility. Ukrainian and Russian staff have been working alongside each other since, and communication with the outside world has been intermittent.

Ukraine's state-run nuclear power operator, Energoatom, said Friday that Russian shelling had hit in and around the nuclear complex and damaged a water intake facility, cutting power and water to much of Enerhodar. "Three hits were recorded directly at the site of the station," the Ukrainian agency said, claiming that one was "near one of the power units where the nuclear reactor is located...."

Energoatom said on Saturday that the plant was operational and Ukrainian staff at the station continued to work to ensure radiation safety. Ukrainian prosecutors have opened an investigation into the incident.
Tuesday the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency warned that the plant "is completely out of control," adding "Every principle of nuclear safety has been violated.... What is at stake is extremely serious and extremely grave and dangerous." But CNN adds that "Other officials have been more measured, pointing to the fact that recent nuclear energy facilities are designed to withstand terrorist attacks and natural disasters.

"Several Western and Ukrainian officials believe that Russia is now using the giant nuclear facility as a fortress to protect their troops and stage attacks, because they assume Kyiv will not retaliate and risk a crisis."

"Nineteen new GNU releases in the last month," reads a "July GNU Spotlight" announcement from the Free Software Foundation.

Here's (edited and condensed) descriptions of some of the highlights:

• GNU Datamash (version 1.8) — a command-line program performing basic numeric, textual, and statistical operations on input textual data files (designed to work within standard pipelines).

• GNUnet (version 0.17.2) — a framework for secure peer-to-peer networking. "The high-level goal is to provide a strong foundation of free software for a global, distributed network that provides security and privacy. GNUnet in that sense aims to replace the current internet protocol stack. Along with an application for secure publication of files, it has grown to include all kinds of basic applications for the foundation of a GNU internet."

• GnuTLS (version 3.7.7) — A secure communications library implementing the SSL, TLS and DTLS protocols, provided in the form of a C library.

• Jami (version 20220726.1515.da8d1da) — a GNU package for universal communication that respects the freedom and privacy of its users, using distributed hash tables for establishing communication. ("This avoids keeping centralized registries of users and storing personal data.")

• LibreJS (version 7.21.0) — an add-on for GNU Icecat and other Firefox-based browsers that detects non-trivial and non-free JavaScript code from being loaded without your consent when you browse the web. "JavaScript code that is free or trivial is allowed to be loaded."

• GNU Nettle (version 3.8.1) — a low-level cryptographic library. It is designed to fit in easily in almost any context. It can be easily included in cryptographic toolkits for object-oriented languages or in applications themselves.

• GNU Octave (version 7.2.0) — a high-level interpreted language specialized for numerical computations, for both linear and non-linear applications and with great support for visualizing results.

• R (version 4.2.1) — a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics, along with robust support for producing publication-quality data plots. "A large amount of 3rd-party packages are available, greatly increasing its breadth and scope."

• TRAMP (version 2.5.3) — a GNU Emacs package allowing you to access files on remote machines as though they were local files. "This includes editing files, performing version control tasks and modifying directory contents with dired. Access is performed via ssh, rsh, rlogin, telnet or other similar methods."

Click here to see the other new releases and download information.

The FSF announcement adds that "A number of GNU packages, as well as the GNU operating system as a whole, are looking for maintainers and other assistance."

When a U.S. satellite passed over Russia's Plesetsk Cosmodrome, a Russian satellite was launched close behind it "with capabilities unknown," reports the Drive, adding that it's now "getting suspiciously close..." Russia has launched satellite 14F150 Nivelir into orbit under a mission dubbed Kosmos-2558, and its current orbital path could soon place it in close proximity to what is reported to be the spy satellite designated USA-326. Unconfirmed rumors that the asset will serve as an 'inspector' satellite to covertly spy on nearby spacecraft have begun to circulate online following the launch and would line up with Russia's known on-orbit anti-satellite weapons capabilities and developments.

Its exact purpose is unknown at present, but it has been described as an "inspector" satellite, a term that is often associated with so-called "killer satellites...." Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics, or @planet4589 on Twitter, has noted that Kosmos-2558's current orbital path will soon place it within 80 km of what is believed to be the USA 326 satellite. For reference, the Center for Astrophysics is a collaborative effort run jointly by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Harvard College Observatory....

USA-326 was launched in February of this year by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket out of Vandenberg Space Force Base, its mission designated NROL-87, which is a classified national security operation led by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in partnership with SpaceX. A press release shared by the NRO following the initial launch claimed that NROL-87 was designed, built, and now operated by the NRO to support its "overhead reconnaissance mission," which is largely centered around protecting national security through the exploitation of space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the story.

During his weekly Ask Me Anything today, CEO Adam Mosseri confirmed that Instagram will begin testing ultra-tall 9:16 photos "in a week or two." The Verge reports: "You can have tall videos, but you cannot have tall photos on Instagram," Mosseri said. "So we thought maybe we should make sure that we treat both equally." Currently, Instagram tops out around 4:5 when displaying vertical images that've been cropped accordingly. But introducing support for slimmer, taller 9:16 photos will help them fill the entire screen as you scroll through the app's feed. Further reading: 'Stop Trying To Be TikTok': User Backlash Over Instagram Changes

With annual CG confab SIGGRAPH slated to start Monday in Vancouver, DreamWorks Animation announced its intent to release its proprietary renderer, MoonRay, as open-source software later this year. Hollywood Reporter reports: MoonRay has been used on feature films such as How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, Croods: A New Age, The Bad Guys and upcoming Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. MoonRay uses DreamWorks' distributed computation framework, Arras, also to be included in the open-source code base.

"We are thrilled to share with the industry over 10 years of innovation and development on MoonRay's vectorized, threaded, parallel, and distributed code base," said Andrew Pearce, DWA's vp of global technology. "The appetite for rendering at scale grows each year, and MoonRay is set to meet that need. We expect to see the code base grow stronger with community involvement as DreamWorks continues to demonstrate our commitment to open source."

"Students should not have to fear expulsion for expressing themselves on social media after school and off-campus, but that is just what happened to the plaintiff in C1.G v. Siegfried," writes Mukund Rathi via the Electronic Frontier Foundation (DFF). "Last month, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the student's expulsion violated his First Amendment rights. The court's opinion affirms what we argued in an amicus brief last year." From the report: We strongly support the Tenth Circuit's holding that schools cannot regulate how students use social media off campus, even to spread "offensive, controversial speech," unless they target members of the school community with "vulgar or abusive language."

The case arose when the student and his friends visited a thrift shop on a Friday night. There, they posted a picture on Snapchat with an offensive joke about violence against Jews. He deleted the post and shared an apology just a few hours later, but the school suspended and eventually expelled him. [...] The Tenth Circuit held the First Amendment protected the student's speech because "it does not constitute a true threat, fighting words, or obscenity." The "post did not include weapons, specific threats, or speech directed toward the school or its students." While the post spread widely and the school principal received emails about it, the court correctly held that this did not amount to "a reasonable forecast of substantial disruption" that would allow regulation of protected speech.

Meta's AI research labs have created a new state-of-the-art chatbot and are letting members of the public talk to the system in order to collect feedback on its capabilities. The Verge reports: The bot is called BlenderBot 3 and can be accessed on the web. (Though, right now, it seems only residents in the US can do so.) BlenderBot 3 is able to engage in general chitchat, says Meta, but also answer the sort of queries you might ask a digital assistant, "from talking about healthy food recipes to finding child-friendly amenities in the city." The bot is a prototype and built on Meta's previous work with what are known as large language models or LLMS -- powerful but flawed text-generation software of which OpenAI's GPT-3 is the most widely known example.

Like all LLMs, BlenderBot is initially trained on vast datasets of text, which it mines for statistical patterns in order to generate language. Such systems have proved to be extremely flexible and have been put to a range of uses, from generating code for programmers to helping authors write their next bestseller. However, these models also have serious flaws: they regurgitate biases in their training data and often invent answers to users' questions (a big problem if they're going to be useful as digital assistants). This latter issue is something Meta specifically wants to test with BlenderBot. A big feature of the chatbot is that it's capable of searching the internet in order to talk about specific topics. Even more importantly, users can then click on its responses to see where it got its information from. BlenderBot 3, in other words, can cite its sources.

By releasing the chatbot to the general public, Meta wants to collect feedback on the various problems facing large language models. Users who chat with BlenderBot will be able to flag any suspect responses from the system, and Meta says it's worked hard to 'minimize the bots' use of vulgar language, slurs, and culturally insensitive comments." Users will have to opt in to have their data collected, and if so, their conversations and feedback will be stored and later published by Meta to be used by the general AI research community. "We are committed to publicly releasing all the data we collect in the demo in the hopes that we can improve conversational AI," Kurt Shuster, a research engineer at Meta who helped create BlenderBot 3, told The Verge. Further reading: Microsoft's 'Teen Girl' AI Experiment Becomes a 'Neo-Nazi Sex Robot'

ChromeOS 104 is rolling out starting today with several big interface updates that improve how you use the operating system. 9to5Google reports: ChromeOS 104 introduces proper dark and light themes that touch every aspect of the user interface. This includes the shelf, app launcher, Files app, and the backgrounds of various settings pages. You can enable the dark theme from the second page of Quick Settings. Google also created wallpapers that "subtly shift from light to dark," depending on the set theme. After updating, you'll notice that the month and day now appear to the left of the time in the shelf. Tapping opens a monthly calendar with the ability to tap a day to see all events, with an additional click opening the Google Calendar PWA. You can see other months and quickly return to "Today." This takes up the same size as Quick Settings, while any available alerts appear just above. Notifications from the same sender are now grouped together, while there are bigger touch targets for alert actions.

The redesigned Launcher that's more compact and does not take up your entire screen is seeing wider availability. Additionally, some might be able to quickly search for Android apps from the Play Store with an inline rating. Version 104 of ChromeOS introduces a more full-featured Gallery app (with a new purple icon) that can open PDFs with the ability to fill out forms, sign documents, and make text annotations, like highlights. There's also a new Wallpaper & style application that's accessed by right-clicking the shelf and selecting the last option. Besides the collections curated by Google, you can set wallpapers from your Google Photos library. There's the ability to select an album and have a new background appear daily. This experience also lets you set the device theme (auto-switching available), and Screen saver with three styles available: Slide show, Feel the breeze, and Float on by.

Olivia Meehan, who worked on the web archiving team at the US Library of Congress, evaluates how well online archives of the Papal Transition 2005 Collection from 2005 have survived: Based on the results I have so far and conversations I've had with other web archivists, the lifecycle of websites is unpredictable to the extent that accurately tracking the status of a site inherently requires nuance, time, and attention -- which is difficult to maintain at scale. This data is valuable, however, and is worth pursuing when possibleÂ. Using a sample selection of URLs from larger collections could make this more manageable than comprehensive reviews.

Of the content originally captured in the Papal Transition 2005 Collection, 41% is now offline. Without the archived pages, the information, perspectives, and experiences expressed on those websites would potentially be lost forever. They include blogs, personal websites, individually-maintained web portals, and annotated bibliographies. They frequently represent small voices and unique perspectives that may be overlooked or under-represented by large online publications with the resources to maintain legacy pages and articles.

The internet is impermanent in a way that is difficult to quantify. The constant creation of new information obscures what is routinely deleted, overwritten, and lost. While the scope of this project is small within the context of the wider internet, and even within the context of the Library's Web Archive collections as a whole, I hope that it effectively demonstrates the value of web archives in preserving snapshots of the online world as it moves and changes at a record pace.

Amazon this morning announced plans to acquire iRobot for an all-cash deal valued at $1.7 billion. From a report: The home robotics firm, best known for pioneering the robotic vacuum, was founded in 1990 by MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab members Colin Angle, Rodney Brooks and Helen Greiner. Twelve years after its founding, the company introduced the Roomba, a brand that has since become synonymous with the branding, selling more than 30 million units as of 2020.

Brooks and Greiner have gone on to found and lead several other companies, while Angle has remained on-board as CEO -- a position he will maintain post-acquisition. "Since we started iRobot, our team has been on a mission to create innovative, practical products that make customers' lives easier, leading to inventions like the Roomba and iRobot OS," CEO Colin Angle said in a release. "Amazon shares our passion for building thoughtful innovations that empower people to do more at home, and I cannot think of a better place for our team to continue our mission. I'm hugely excited to be a part of Amazon and to see what we can build together for customers in the years ahead."

India is a key overseas market for several global tech giants including Meta and Google. Now the South Asian nation is gearing up to have its voice heard for global M&A deals. From a report: New Delhi has proposed amendments to its Competition Act, 2002, to introduce a number of changes including requiring the permission of local watchdog (Competition Commission of India) for all overseas deals exceeding $252 million in value for firms with "substantial business operations in India."

India, the world's second largest internet market that has drawn investments of tens of billions of dollars from Meta, Google and Amazon and venture capitalists including SoftBank, Sequoia and Tiger Global, has traditionally scrutinized deals based on asset size and not the transaction value. According to law firm Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas, Indian regulator approved over 700 fillings in the past decade alone. But things appear to be taking a shift and attempting to bring parity between India's position to those of China, U.S., and Europe.