Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: Google marked what would've been Stephen Hawking's 80th birthday with a very special Doodle — an animated video in which the voice of Stephen Hawking speaks again, generated and used with the approval of the Hawking estate.

"My expectations were reduced to zero at 21. Everything since then has been a bonus," Hawking says in the video. "Although I cannot move and I have to speak through a computer, in my mind I am free. I have spent my life travelling across the universe, inside my mind."

In the video tribute, Stephen Hawking passes near a black hole on a model timeline of the universe. "We are very very small," he says. "But we are profoundly capable of very very big things.

"There should be no boundaries to human endeavor. However bad life may seem. While there is life, there is hope. Be brave, be curious, be determined, overcome the odds. It can be done."
"From colliding black holes to the Big Bang, his theories on the origins and mechanics of the universe revolutionized modern physics," explains the Google Doodles page, "while his best-selling books made the field widely accessible to millions of readers worldwide."

And Google's Arts and Culture blog shares a longer look at Stephen Hawking's life, including a 1979 photo of young Hawking at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University. "Because of Stephen Hawking's work, the radiation emitted by black holes is now called Hawking Radiation," the biography says at one point, also remembering Hawking's best-selling book A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes.

But they also share some more personal memories: In 1990, with lifelong friend, the physicist Kip Thorne, Stephen approached the controversial notion of whether time travel is allowed by the laws of physics. To explore this hypothesis Stephen planned a party for time travellers. He wrote invitations, set a date, time and venue and provided precise GPS coordinates.

Stephen did not send out the invitations until after the party date was over. That way, only those who could genuinely travel back in time would know of it and be able to attend.

On the due day Stephen sat politely and waited. But no-one came. And that was the point. "I have experimental evidence that time travel is not possible", he said afterwards. And the champagne went back on ice....
The biography closes with this quote from Stephen Hawking. "Remember to look up at the stars, and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe.

"Be curious, and however difficult life may seem there is always something you can do and succeed at; it matters that you don't just give up."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Drive: AU.S. Cyber Command task force executed what is being described as its "first offensive cyber effect operation" against real-world cyber threats. While the exact nature of the operation and its target remains unknown, the event was significant enough for the U.S. Secretary of Defense to personally attend to watch the operation in action. The operation was conducted between February and August 2021 by a task force consisting of personnel from the Maryland Air National Guard's 175th Cyber Operations Group, the Delaware Air National Guard's 166th Cyber Operations Squadron, U.S. Navy's Cyber Strike Activity Sixty-Three, the U.S. Air Force's 341st Cyber Operations Squadron, and the Air Force Reserve. The task force executed the operation from February to August last year, although the Air National Guard (ANG) just announced it this week. While there have been other offensive cyber operations conducted by U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM), this is the first conducted and acknowledged by this particular task force.

Details about the specific threat countered by the task force's cyber offensive are scarce, but USAF Maj. Corley Bradford, director of operations for 175th Cyberspace Operations Squadron, said the offensive cyber operation involved the security of Department of Defense information networks. "[Our] NMT was a direct contributor to [our task force] conducting a successful offensive cyber effects operation," Bradford stated in an ANG press release. "It was a lot of excitement to finally see the fruits of our labor when [our task force] delivered its first offensive cyber effects operations during this mobilization," said Bradford. Interestingly, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III was on hand to personally witness the operation. "It was a massive milestone," Maj. Bradford said, "so he wanted front row seats to see the action firsthand."

PayPal is exploring the launch of its own stablecoin as part of its cryptocurrency push, according to the company, which confirmed the development after evidence of the move was discovered inside its iPhone app. From a report: "We are exploring a stablecoin; if and when we seek to move forward, we will of course, work closely with relevant regulators," Jose Fernandez da Ponte, senior vice president of crypto and digital currencies at PayPal, said in a statement to Bloomberg News. Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies backed and priced by the value of an existing currency or commodity.

Brussels Airlines has operated 3,000 flights without passengers this winter to avoid losing take-off and landing slots. From a report: The airline's parent company, Lufthansa Group, confirmed that 18,000 flights had been flown empty, including 3,000 Brussels Airlines services, reports The Bulletin. EU rules require that airlines operate a certain percentage of scheduled flights to keep their slots at major airports. Under these "use it or lose it" regulations, prior to the pandemic carriers had to utilise at least 80 per cent of their scheduled take-off and landing slots. This was revised to 50 per cent as coronavirus saw travel become increasingly difficult -- but airlines are still struggling to hit this target. As a result of Lufthansa Group's latest figures, the Belgian federal government has written to the European Commission, calling for a change to the rules on maintaining slots. It follows the news that European airlines are slashing their winter schedules amid a dampening of demand due to Omicron travel restrictions. Lufthansa Group, which owns the carriers Lufthansa, Swiss International Airlines, Austrian Airlines, and Eurowings in addition to Brussels Airlines, has already axed 33,000 flights in January and February.

Senior figures in the Polish government indicated on Friday that the country had bought sophisticated spyware developed by the Israel-based NSO Group, but denied that it had been used against political opponents. Reuters reports: Reports from the Associated Press that NSO Group's Pegasus software was used to hack the phones of government critics, including a senator who ran the election campaign for the largest opposition party in 2019, have led to accusations that special services are undermining democratic norms. Government figures had previously declined to comment on whether or not Poland has access to Pegasus, citing laws on official secrets. In December, a deputy defense minister said Poland did not use Pegasus. However, in extracts from an interview with conservative weekly Sieci published on Friday, the leader of Poland's ruling nationalists Law and Justice (PiS) indicated that Polish services had the software.

"Pegasus is a program that is used by services combating crime and corruption in many countries...It would be bad if the Polish services did not have this type of tool," Jaroslaw Kaczynski [leader of the Law and Justice party] was quoted as saying. He rejected opposition claims that Pegasus had been used against political opponents as "utter nonsense." Asked about Pegasus during a news conference, Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro said it would be a "disgrace" if Polish services did not have access to such surveillance technology.

The surviving sister of Dave Patrick Underwood, a federal security guard who was killed in a drive-by shooting in 2020, has filed a lawsuit against Meta, the parent organization of Facebook. The suit seeks to hold the company accountable for connecting the two men charged in the murder plot and giving them a space online to plan the attack. Engadget reports: Underwood was shot outside a federal building in Oakland, California in May of 2020. The two men charged inn the case were later linked to so-called "boogaloo" anti-government movement, which Facebook banned from its platform in June of 2020 citing the group's history of "actively promoting violence against civilians, law enforcement and government officials and institutions."

"The shooting was not a random act of violence," the lawsuit states. "It was the culmination of an extremist plot hatched and planned on Facebook by two men who Meta connected through Facebook's groups infrastructure and its use of algorithms designed and intended to increase user engagement and, correspondingly, Meta's profits." The lawsuit alleges the two men would never have met if not for Facebook's recommendations, which pushed them both to join groups that "openly advocated for violence." A spokesperson for Meta said in a statement to The New York Times that the "claims are without legal basis," and pointed to the company's work to ban "militarized social movements."

The Swiss army has told its ranks to stop using foreign instant-messaging services like WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram for official communications. Instead, it's opting for a Swiss alternative -- in part over concerns about legislation in Washington that governs how U.S. authorities can access information held by tech companies. From a report: Army leaders, in a letter to top commanders last month, called for use of the Swiss instant messaging service Threema, and a promotion for the service was posted Dec. 29 on the Swiss army's page on Facebook, which, like WhatsApp, is owned by the U.S. company now known as Meta. Officials have cited an enhanced need for secure communications as Swiss soldiers have fanned out to support the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Alpine country. A letter sent to army chiefs last month said Threema "must be used for all service communications," adding that "no other messaging service will be authorized."

A man in Sweden is alive today thanks to -- in part -- a drone. The 71-year-old had a heart attack while shoveling snow in December and was resuscitated by a nearby doctor after a drone flew in a defibrillator, Everdrone reported this week. From a report: Someone having a heart attack needs help within 10 minutes in order to survive. Everdrone's Emergency Medical Aerial Delivery (EMADE) service is designed to deliver help as quickly as possible -- it allows emergency dispatchers to send a drone carrying the device to a caller's home, kickstarting the lifesaving process before the ambulance arrives at their home. In this particular patient's case, it took three minutes for the services to deliver the defibrillator to his home. A bystander, who happened to be a doctor on the way to his job, used the AED on the patient after providing CPR. The drone was developed with the Center for Resuscitation Science at Karolinska Institutet, SOS Alarm, and Region Vastra Gotaland. "This is an excellent real-world example of how Everdrone's cutting edge drone technology, fully integrated with emergency dispatch, can minimize the time for access to live-saving AED equipment," Everdrone CEO Mats Sallstrpm said.

GameStop plans to launch a marketplace for nonfungible tokens for gamers by the end of the year, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing a person familiar with the matter. From the report: The company, which is in the midst of a turnaround to focus on digital sales rather than brick-and-mortar shops, is also in talks with crypto and blockchain companies about which tokens could be used on the NFT marketplace, the person said, asking not to be named discussing details that aren't yet public. It's also discussing with partners the potential for creating a number of funds, of up to $100 million each, to invest in NFT content creators and gaming companies. Over the last few months, GameStop has assembled a team of more than 20 people that are focused on the crypto-related push, the person said.

sciencehabit shares a report from Science.org: It takes a lot of science to stop a fire. To prevent homes and workplaces from going up in smoke, manufacturers have added flame retardants to plastic, wood, and steel building materials for decades. But such additives can be toxic, expensive, and sometimes ineffective. Now, researchers in Australia and China have come up with a new flame retardant that, when exposed to extreme heat, forms a ceramic layer akin to hardened lava, squelching the flames before they spread. "This is very good work," says David Schiraldi, a chemist at Case Western Reserve University, who has developed other flame retardants. He notes that the ceramic's starting materials aren't particularly expensive or toxic, making it more likely to see widespread use. "[This] could impact public safety in the long run."

[The researchers] used three components. First, they created a mixture of several metal oxide powders -- including oxides of aluminum, silicon, calcium, and sodium. That mix begins to melt at about 350C (below the temperature of most flames), forming a glasslike sheet. Next, the researchers added tiny flakes of boron nitride, which flow easily and help fill any spaces between the metal oxides as the glass forms. Finally, they added a fire-retardant polymer, which they described in ACS Nano in 2021. The polymer acts as a binder to glue the rest of the mixture to whatever it's coating. That mix dissolved in water into a milky-white solution, which they then sprayed on a variety of surfaces, including rigid foam insulation, wood, and steel. After it dried, they blasted each coated material for 30 seconds with an 1100C butane torch. In each case, the coating melted into a viscous liquid, covering the material in a continuous glassy sheet.

When heated by the torch, coating spewed out nonflammable gases, such as carbon dioxide. As it did, it became more dense and formed a uniform, noncombustible char layer, which blocked flames from spreading to the materials underneath. The novel flame retardant protected rigid polymer foam -- the kind used to insulate homes -- better than more than a dozen commonly used retardants, the researchers report today in Matter. The new coating also excelled at protecting wood and steel. If sprayed on building materials during construction, the new coating could prevent disasters like the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London, where 72 people died, the researchers say.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from XDA Developers: In January of 2020, Sonos filed two lawsuits against Google, claiming that the latter stole its multiroom speaker technology and infringed on 100 patents. In September, Sonos then sued Google alleging that the company's entire line of Chromecast and Nest products violated five of Sonos' wireless audio patents. A judge (preliminarily) ruled in favor of Sonos. Now it's gone from bad to worse for Google, as the preliminary findings have been finalized by the U.S. International Trade Commission. As a result, Google is not allowed to import any products that violate patents owned by Sonos, which Sonos argues includes Google Pixel phones and computers, Chromecasts, and Google Home/Nest speakers.

These products produced by Google are often made outside of the United States and imported, hence why this is a big deal for Google. In the ruling (PDF) (via The New York Times), Google was also served a cease & desist in order to stop violating Sonos' patents. It has been theorized that as a result of the lawsuit, Google had removed Cast volume controls in Android 12, though it was recently added back with the January 2022 security patch. Sonos has previously said that it had proposed a licensing deal to Google for patents the company was making use of, but that neither company was able to reach an agreement. [...] There are still two more lawsuits pending against Google filed by Sonos, meaning that it's unlikely this is the last we've heard of this spat.

Honda and Acura owners around the world are reporting that their clocks and calendars are getting stuck at a certain time in the year 2002. "The spread is impressive, impacting Honda and Acura models as old as 2004 and as new as 2012," reports Jalopnik. "There is no fix for the current issue. Honda says it's investigating and if it does not find a fix, the clocks should correct themselves sometime in August." From the report: As a number of Honda and Acura owners have noted on these forums, their clocks read correctly until what appeared to have been the first time update of 2022. Then, their navigation systems turned into time machines, leaving them behind as they went back to 2002. I asked Honda about the cause of the issue and received this back: "American Honda is aware of a potential concern related to the clock display on certain older Acura and Honda models equipped with navigation systems. We are currently investigating this issue to determine possible countermeasures and have no additional details to share at this time." Owners have also reached out and received different responses.

If you have experience coding or troubleshooting software, the possible cause of this time warp probably popped into your head early on. Drive Accord forum user Jacalar went into the navigation system's diagnostic menu on Sunday and discovered that the GPS date was set to May 19, 2002, or exactly 1024 weeks in the past. Global Positioning Systems measure time from an epoch, or a specific starting point used to calculate time. The date is broadcasted including a number representing the week, coded in 10 binary digits. These digits count from 0 to 1023 then roll over on week 1024. GPS weeks first started on January 6, 1980 before first zeroing out on midnight August 21, 1999. It happened again April 6, 2019. The next happens in 2038.

If software isn't coded to account for the rollover, weird stuff can happen, like a calendar going back exactly 1024 weeks. It's impossible to know for sure without being able to look at Honda's programming, but these navigation systems might be programmed so that the start of their week counter is a date 19.6 years in the past, but not in-line with GPS epoch. Owners should be able to turn off the automatic update function and set the date and time manually, but they're finding that the functionality doesn't work right now. Likewise, the clock resets back to the incorrect time every time the car is started.

The Mozilla Foundation is pausing accepting donations in cryptocurrency following a backlash from scores of people including a founder of the Mozilla Project. From a report: The foundation, which oversees the development of Firefox browser, on Thursday acknowledged conversations around the environment impact that cryptocurrency potentially pose and said it is reviewing whether its current policy on crypto donations "fits with our climate goals."

The foundation started to face backlash following a tweet late last year that invited people to donate via using a variety of crypto tokens including Bitcoin. In response to it, Jamie Zawinski expressed dismay at the foundation's move. "Everyone involved in the project should be witheringly ashamed of this decision to partner with planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters," he said, adding an expletive.

The global computing power of the bitcoin network has dropped sharply as the shutdown this week of Kazakhstan's internet during a deadly uprising hit the country's fast-growing cryptocurrency mining industry. From a report: Kazakhstan became last year the world's second-largest centre for bitcoin mining after the United States, according to the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, after China clamped down on crypto mining activity. Russia sent paratroopers into Kazakhstan on Thursday to help put down the countrywide uprising after violence spread across the tightly controlled former Soviet state. Police said they had killed dozens of rioters in the main city, Almaty, while state television said 13 members of the security forces had died. The internet was on Wednesday shut down across the country in what monitoring site Netblocks called "a nation-scale internet blackout." The move would have probably prevented Kazakhstan-based miners from accessing the bitcoin network.

CNET News writes about Lenovo's ThinkBook Plus Gen 3. From the report: With the first two generations of the ThinkBook Plus, Lenovo put an E Ink display on the lid of a 13-inch laptop. The external display lets you read, take notes, get notifications and see your work calendar, all without opening the laptop. It's a cool idea but also kind of limiting. Aside from being a laptop with two displays, the third-gen model is nothing like its predecessors. For starters, it's an ultrawide 17.3-inch laptop with a 21:10 aspect ratio and a 3,072x1,440 resolution at 120Hz and with 100% P3 color gamut, which could be interesting if this were a gaming laptop. But it's not, it's made for doing work. The second display, an 8-inch color pen-enabled touchscreen with an 800x1,280-pixel resolution, is embedded in the laptop deck to the right of the keyboard and touchpad. It's like if you set down an 8-inch tablet on your laptop's keyboard and it just latched on and wouldn't let go.

Aside from the dual displays, though, the laptop isn't too unusual. It'll be powered by 12th-gen Intel Core H-series processors and have up to 32GB of LPDDR5 memory and an up-to-1TB PCIe NVMe Gen 4 solid-state drive. It has security features you'd expect to find on a Lenovo business laptop in addition to a fingerprint reader in the power button and a full-HD webcam with an IR camera for face recognition and a privacy shutter. The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 will be available in May starting at $1,399, which seems reasonable for what you're getting.

Alphabet's Google was slapped with a record French fine of 150 million euros ($170 million) by the nation's privacy watchdog, together with a 60 million-euro fine for Meta Platforms' Facebook, over the way the companies manage cookies. From a report: CNIL, France's data protection authority, on Thursday issued the companies with a three-month ultimatum "to provide internet users located in France with a means of refusing cookies as simple as the existing means of accepting them, in order to guarantee their freedom of consent." Failing to do so will come with the risk of an additional daily fine of 100,000 euros, CNIL said in the statement. The latest penalties follow probes by the watchdog looking at companies' compliance with new rules on cookies, which are tracking devices that are placed on people's computers. The watchdog in 2020 fined Google 100 million euros and online shopping giant Amazon.com Inc. 35 million euros for placing such cookies on people's computers without their consent.

An Italian mafia boss on the run for 20 years was tracked down to a Spanish town after being spotted on Google Street View. The Guardian reports: Gioacchino Gammino, a convicted murderer listed among Italy's most wanted gangsters, was arrested in Galapagar, a town near Madrid, where over the years he had married, changed his name to Manuel, worked as a chef and owned a fruit and vegetable shop. Sicilian police carried out several investigations in their search for Gammino, 61, and a European arrest warrant was issued in 2014. The fugitive was traced to Spain, but it was Google Street View that helped to pinpoint his precise location.

The navigation tool, accessible through Google Maps, had captured an image of two men chatting outside a fruit and vegetable shop called El Huerto de Manu, or Manu's Garden, in Galapagar. Police believed one of the men closely resembled Gammino, but his identity was only confirmed when they came across a listing for a nearby restaurant called La Cocina de Manu or Manu's Kitchen. The shop and the restaurant are now closed, but the police found a photo of Gammino, dressed in his chef's garb, on a still-existing Facebook page for La Cocina de Manu. He was recognisable by the scar on the left side of his chin. The restaurant's menu included a dish called Cena Siciliana or Sicilian dinner. Gammino was arrested on 17 December but the details surrounding his capture did not come to light until they were reported by La Repubblica on Wednesday. Upon his arrest, Gammino reportedly told police: "How did you find me? I haven't even called my family for 10 years!"

At CES in Las Vegas this evening, Sony's Chairman, President and CEO Kenichiro Yoshida showed off a brand new prototype of its Vision S concept electric car, and announced that the Sony Group is starting a new division -- the Sony Mobility Inc -- which will start commercializing its electric vehicles. TechCrunch reports: On the CES stage during the Sony press conference, the company showed off its existing Sony Vision-S sedan, which was revealed at CES last year. This year, it also flexed a new model in the lineup, the Sony Vision-S SUV prototype. "The excitement we received after we showed off the Vision-S really encouraged us to further consider how we can bring creativity and technology to change the experience of moving from one place to another," said Yoshida, before revealing the new Vision-S SUV prototype. "This is our new Vision-S SUV. Vision-S has been developed on a foundation of safety, adaptability and entertainment. Safety has been our No. 1 priority in creating a comfortable mobility experience. That has not changed when building this SUV. A total of 40 sensors are installed inside and outside of the vehicle to monitor safety.

"In terms of adaptability, we have connectivity that enables us to build a vehicle that continuously evolves. It also makes it possible to personalize the cabin for each user. With 5G, it enables high speed, high capacity and low-latency connectivity between the in-vehicle system and the cloud. The Vision-S also evolves mobility as an entertainment space," said Yoshida. "The Vision-S also evolves mobility as an entertainment space, including gaming experience and audio. We have learned more about mobility through our exploration of Vision-S and through our partners who have supported this effort." There's been a lot of EV announcements today. Not only did GM reveal an electric version of the Chevy Silverado, but Chrysler announced plans to go all-electric by 2028, starting with the Airflow, "a concept crossover that appears to be close to ready for production," reports Ars Technica.

BMW also unveiled color-changing paint for its vehicles that relies on the E-ink electronic paper technology found in e-readers like the Kindle.

At CES 2022, BMW unveiled color-changing paint for its vehicles that relies on the E-ink electronic paper technology found in e-readers like the Kindle. Engadget reports: [N]o, this futuristic feature is nowhere near production ready despite appearing at the show on a live demonstration vehicle, dubbed the BMW iX Flow featuring E Ink. The electrophoretic coloring material itself is applied as a vehicle body wrap but works just like it e-ink displays do in your Kindle. The wrap is embedded with millions of microcapsules each containing a negatively-charged white pigment and a positively charged-black pigment. Depending on the setting, applying an electrical charge to the material will cause either the white or black pigments to rise to the top of the microcapsule, changing the vehicle's color in moments.

While the current iteration can only swap between a pair of colors, the palette could eventually be expanded to display a rainbow's worth of differing shades. "This gives the driver the freedom to express different facets of their personality or even their enjoyment of change outwardly, and to redefine this each time they sit into their car," Stella Clarke, Head of Project for the BMW iX Flow featuring E Ink, said in a prepared statement. [...] E-ink exterior displays could also prove useful in more practical applications such as changing colors depending on the weather to increase a vehicle's battery life (and therefore, range) in cold climates or reduce the need for air conditioning in balmy weather.

A supermajority of customer service representatives for Google Fiber, operating out of a store in Kansas City, Missouri, have signed union cards in the hopes of bargaining their first contract with their bosses. Engadget reports: They're organizing under the auspices of the Alphabet Workers Union, a year-old division of the Communication Workers of America which is seeking to represent employees and contractors at all level of Google's parent company. The 11 workers -- 10 of whom have signed cards since the union drive began in October -- are jointly employed by Google and a staffing agency called BDS Connected Solutions.

That's not out of the ordinary, as staffing arrangements with Alphabet go: a 2019 story in the New York Times found temps and contractors made up the majority of the tech giant's workforce, while a Recode report that same year indicated that this second class of laborers earned significantly less than Google's own full-time employees. According to two BDS workers who spoke to Engadget, customer representatives had been feeling left out of key conversations about staffing and safety protocols, and communication with management has deteriorated. [...] Kansas City was the very first market Google Fiber launched in, nearly a decade ago.

What makes this push to form a bargaining unit somewhat unusual, however, has been the decision to skip straight to petitioning the National Labor Relations Board. Typically, this is the longer, more arduous option when an employer refuses to voluntarily recognize a union. But, according to Adair, Alphabet and BDS have neither attempted to quash the union drive, nor expressed a willingness to recognize it. "There's been no acknowledgement, no pushback. no response at all yet," they said. [...] While they weren't keen to give too many specifics as to what they'd hope to secure in a first contract, one of the benefits they're seeking to obtain is hazard pay [while working in person in a pandemic.] While it may be months or years before the NLRB makes a ruling, Google Fiber representative Mike Knox hopes it might spur action from others within Google Fiber. "We're really hoping that this inspires in that regard," he said. "We're hoping that's a flashpoint where other people can see that and decide to push for more input."