Microsoft continues to baby-step around the obvious, but it has officially deprecated the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) as it pushes the desktop-focused Windows App SDK (formerly called Project Reunion) and WinUI 3 as the future of Windows application development. Paul Thurrott reports: For those unclear on the matter, the Windows App SDK basically takes key UWP technologies and new technologies like WinUI 3 that will not be backported to UWP and makes them available to developers in a way that is not tied to specific Windows releases (as was the case with individual UWP features). In this way, Microsoft can "deliver on the agility and backward compatibility developers need to reach across the entire Windows ecosystem" while not leaving developers behind. Going forward, UWP will only receive "bug, reliability, and security fixes," and not new features, Microsoft says, indicating that it is now deprecated. Developers with UWP apps in the market who "are happy with [the] current functionality in UWP" can of course continue to keep using UWP. But those who want "the latest runtime, language, and platform features," including WinUI 3, WebView 2, .NET 5, full compatibility with Windows 10 version 1809 or newer, and any upcoming new features will have to migrate their apps to the Windows App SDK.

Akamai researchers have analyzed 10,000 JavaScript samples including malware droppers, phishing pages, scamming tools, Magecart snippets, cryptominers, etc. At least 26% of them use some form of obfuscation to evade detection, indicating an uptick in the adoption of this basic yet effective technique. BleepingComputer reports: Obfuscation is when easy-to-understand source code is converted into a hard to understand and confusing code that still operates as intended. Threat actors commonly use obfuscation to make it harder to analyze malicious scripts and to bypass security software. Obfuscation can be achieved through various means like the injection of unused code into a script, the splitting and concatenating of the code (breaking it into unconnected chunks), or the use of hexadecimal patterns and tricky overlaps with function and variable naming.

But not all obfuscation is malicious or tricky. As the report explains, about 0.5% of the 20,000 top-ranking websites on the web (according to Alexa), also use obfuscation techniques. As such, detecting malicious code based on the fact that is obfuscated isn't enough on its own, and further correlation with malicious functionality needs to be made. This mixing with legitimate deployment is precisely what makes the detection of risky code challenging, and the reason why obfuscation is becoming so widespread in the threat landscape.

As Paul Thurrott reports, Brave is removing Google Search as its default search engine. From the report: Going forward, the Brave web browser will default to Brave Search. "Brave Search has grown significantly since its release last June, with nearly 80 million queries per month," Brave CEO and co-founder Brendan Eich says. "Our users are pleased with the comprehensive privacy solution that Brave Search provides against Big Tech by being integrated into our browser. As we know from experience in many browsers, the default setting is crucial for adoption, and Brave Search has reached the quality and critical mass needed to become our default search option, and to offer our users a seamless privacy-by-default online experience."

Brave Search is built on top of an independent index, and doesn't track users, their searches, or their clicks, the firm says. And starting with Brave 1.3 on desktop and Android, and Brave 1.32 on iOS, it will be the default search engine in the browser, instead of Google, in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. It is also replacing Qwant in France and DuckDuckGo in Germany, and Brave says that more locales will be added in the next several months. Existing users can keep their chosen search engine default, of course, and new users who prefer other search engines can configure as needed. Brave Search doesn't display ads today, but the free version of the service will soon be ad-supported. An ad-free Premium version is coming "in the near future," Brave says. Along with this search engine news, Brave announced the Web Discovery Project (WDP), "which it describes as a privacy-preserving system for users to anonymously contribute data to improve Brave Search results," writes Thurrott. "The WDP is an opt-in feature that protects user privacy and anonymity by ensuring that contributed data is not linked to individuals, their devices, or any set of users." It has a GitHub repo available to help you learn more about this system.

Today, Google has officially launched Android 12 for select Pixel devices. The Verge reports: It's available to install right now on Pixel 3 and up, including the Pixel 3A, Pixel 4, Pixel 4A, Pixel 4A 5G, the Pixel 5, and the Pixel 5A. It'll launch on the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, as well. Android 12 will be coming later this year to Samsung Galaxy, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Tecno, Vivo, and Xiaomi devices.

The most noticeable feature in Android 12 is the new Material You design, which lets you go a little deeper to tweak the look of the homescreen to your liking. It's more expressive than previous versions of Android, with tools to let you coordinate colors that can extend across app icons, pull-down menus, widgets, and more. Speaking of widgets, many of those have been updated to match the new look, and Google shared today that by the end of October, it plans to have over a dozen new or refreshed widgets available for its first-party apps. Google has published a blog post detailing more features available in this release, including the "Pixel-first" features like Material You.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from People: Doctors around the world are seeing a rise in cases of tic-like behaviors in teen girls, which they believe could be caused by watching TikTok videos about Tourette syndrome. Pediatric hospitals have reported an increase in teen girls coming in after developing tics, sudden twitches or noises that are a common symptom of Tourette syndrome, during the pandemic. The sudden rise is unusual, with tics typically occurring in boys, not girls. Experts in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia studied the patients for months and consulted between hospitals, finding that the common factor between the girls was an interest in watching TikTok videos from influencers who said they have Tourette syndrome, The Wall Street Journal reported.

According to the outlet, Texas Children's Hospital said they've had around 60 teens come in with tics since March 2020, compared to just one or two a year before then, while at Johns Hopkins University Tourette's Center, the number of patients reporting tic-like behaviors has jumped from 2 to 3% a year to 10 to 20%. And Rush University Medical Center in Chicago had 20 patients with tics over just four months this year, compared to 10 all of last year. Researchers from pediatric hospitals around the world found that referrals for tic-like behaviors soared during the pandemic, especially in girls aged 12 to 25, they wrote in a study published in August in the journal Movement Disorders. Since March 2020, referrals in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany and Australia went from 1 to 2% to 20 to 35%. The researchers wrote that they've seen a "similarity between the tics or tic-like behaviors shown on social media and the tic-like behaviors of this group of patients." Another group of doctors say they "believe this to be an example of mass sociogenic illness," where people are copying the behaviors they see in the videos. Doctors recommend therapy to treat kids experiencing these symptoms. They also advise parents to require their teens to "take a social media break or block Tourette videos on their TikTok account," adds the report.

Alongside today's release of the new Pixel 6 smartphones, Google has again upgraded one of the device's most basic -- but often overlooked -- functions: the ability to make phone calls. From a report: In previous years, Google Assistant learned to screen your calls and make your reservations by phone via a technology called Duplex. Last year, it learned how to wait on hold for you, too. Today, Google is expanding some of these existing features and adding new ones -- including a tool that shows you the best time to call a business and a new Duplex-powered feature for navigating businesses' phone trees. With the Phone app on Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, a new feature called "Wait Times" will display the projected time it will take to get through to a person when dialing a toll-free number. You'll be able to see this information before you place the call now only for the present time, but also for the rest of the week. This information may allow you to make a better decision about when to place the call. [...] Another new addition is the "Direct My Call" feature, which will help you get through complicated phone trees when you dial a business. Instead of listening and trying to remember the many options presented (e.g. "Press 1 for hours and locations"), Google Assistant will translate the automated messages for you.

This morning, at the company's virtual hardware event, Google is finally showing us what it means to pick up and start over again. From a report: In many ways, the Pixel 6 marks the most radical departure in the history of Google's flagship devices -- and its most serious attempt to take the fight to Samsung and Apple. The company gave us our first glimpse of the device back in August. It was a surprisingly complete look at a device it would take another three and a half months to announce. Hardware head Rick Osterloh primarily focused on chips, design and the fact that Google was becoming the latest company to buck its reliance on Qualcomm by building its own in-house chip, Tensor. And now it is. The Tensor had landed, alongside the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro it powers. I have the latter in my possession, and it's immediately clear that this is a radically new direction for the Pixel line. Google's clearly gone in a premium direction with the new device, which shares more common DNA with the likes of Samsung's devices than any of the Pixels we've seen to date.

The Pixel 6 sports a 6.4-inch FHD+ OLED at 411 ppi -- that bit, at least, is keeping with mid-range specs. The Pro bumps it up to a 6.7-inch QHD+ at 512 ppi. Those displays have refresh rates of 90 and 120 Hz, respectively, protected by a Gorilla Glass Victus cover, which curves on the edges. [...] The 6 supports two lenses: a 50-megapixel wide-angle camera and 12-megapixel on the 6, plus a 48 megapixel telephoto on the 6 Pro. That last one does 4x optical or up to 20x Super Res, though even with computational photography, things are going to degrade pretty quickly. The front-facing camera, meanwhile, is eight megapixels on the 6 and 11 megapixels on the 6 Pro, with 84- and 94-degree fields of view, respectively. [...] The company has addressed some of the battery issues that plagued earlier models. The 6 and 6 Pro feature 4,614 and 5,003mAh batteries, respectively -- that's a nice jump from the Pixel 5's 4,080mAh (which, in turn, was a nice jump from the Pixel 4). The Pixel 6 starts at $599 and the Pixel 6 Pro starts at $899.

Facebook's crypto wallet Novi is inching forward with a "small pilot" in the U.S. and Guatemala, according to a tweet thread by David Marcus. From a report: The wallet project, which gatecrashed the crypto world in 2019 alongside a digital token dubbed Libra (now Diem), represents one of Facebook's attempts to lean into the fast-growing crypto market as well as the market for payments and remittances. As uncertainty hangs over Diem, Novi moved ahead with Pax Dollar for the pilot. The Block first reported that the project was weighing such a deal in August. Still, Marcus said that Novi's "support for Diem hasn't changed and we intend to launch Novi with Diem once it receives regulatory approval and goes live. Beyond the pilot, our business model is clear," Marcus added.

For its 60th anniversary, Fisher-Price announced a special edition Chatter telephone that can make and receive real phone calls. Engadget reports: Before you start planning on where to display it at your home, know that it doesn't work as a landline unit. It connects to your iOS or Android phone via Bluetooth instead and has to be within 15 feet of your mobile device to work. You'll get nine hours of talk time on the Chatter phone on a single charge, and it comes with a speakerphone button. Other than the features that make it a working device, this Chatter for grown-ups looks just like its toy counterpart with its rotary dial, red handset and wheels. [...] You can get the fully functional Chatter for $60 exclusively from Best Buy's website, starting today until supplies last.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: California company Radiant has secured funding to develop a compact, portable, "low-cost" one-megawatt nuclear micro-reactor that fits in a shipping container, powers about 1,000 homes and uses a helium coolant instead of water. Founded by ex-SpaceX engineers, who decided the Mars colony power sources they were researching would make a bigger impact closer to home, Radiant has pulled in $1.2 million from angel investors to continue work on its reactors, which are specifically designed to be highly portable, quick to deploy and effective wherever they're deployed; remote communities and disaster areas are early targets.

The military is another key market here; a few of these could power an entire military base in a remote area for four to eight years before expending its "advanced particle fuel," eliminating not just the emissions of the current diesel generators, but also the need to constantly bring in trucks full of fuel for this purpose. Those trucks will still have to run -- up until the point where the military ditches diesel in all its vehicles -- but they'll be much less frequent, reducing a significant risk for transport personnel. Radiant says its fuel "does not melt down, and withstands higher temperatures when compared to traditional nuclear fuels." Using helium as the coolant "greatly reduces corrosion, boiling and contamination risks," and the company says it's received provisional patents for ideas it's developed around refueling the reactors and efficiently transporting heat out of the reactor core.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Associated Press: Facebook said it plans to hire 10,000 workers in the European Union over the next five years to work on a new computing platform that promises to connect people virtually but could raise concerns about privacy and the social platform gaining more control over people's online lives. The company said in a blog post Sunday that those high-skilled workers will help build "the metaverse," a futuristic notion for connecting online that uses augmented and virtual reality. Facebook executives have been touting the metaverse as the next big thing after the mobile internet, though their track record is spotty on predicting future trends. "As we begin the journey of bringing the metaverse to life, the need for highly specialized engineers is one of Facebook's most pressing priorities," according to the blog post from Nick Clegg, vice president of global affairs, and Javier Olivan, vice president of central products. Facebook's recruiters are targeting Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, the Netherlands and Ireland for the hiring drive. The company as of June reported having more than 63,000 employees worldwide, up 21% from the same time last year.

The metaverse essentially is a massive virtual world that can be accessed in real time by millions of people using avatars, who can use it to hold virtual meetings or buy virtual land and clothing or other digital assets, often paying with cryptocurrencies. The social network isn't the only one working on the metaverse, and Facebook acknowledged that no single company will own and operate it. Other players include Fortnite maker Epic Games, which has raised $1 billion from investors to help with its long-term plans for building the metaverse. "There's not going to be specific metaverses to specific companies. There's only going to be one metaverse," said Tuong Nguyen, an analyst who tracks immersive technologies for research firm Gartner. But there are concerns Facebook and a handful of other Silicon Valley giants would end up monopolizing the metaverse and use it to collect and profit from personal data, mirroring the situation now with the internet.

Along with new MacBook Pro models, Apple announced during its Mac event today that macOS Monterey will be available on Monday, Oct. 25. Gizmodo reports: As with macOS Big Sur before it, Monterey represents a renewed effort by Apple to streamline its operating systems, with new Focus profiles for limiting notifications and helping you be more productive just like in iOS 15 and iPadOS 15. Shortcuts, Apple's automation app, is now available on desktop for the first time. Monterey also represents the first time users will be able to AirPlay content from a Mac, a function that iPhone users have long enjoyed. If you've already downloaded iOS 15, updating to Monterey just makes sense -- these devices are so much more functional when they work seamlessly with each other.

But perhaps the most anticipated feature Monterey is supposed to bring us is Universal Control, which allows you to use a single mouse/trackpad and keyboard to control multiple Macs and iPads simultaneously. While the new feature wasn't initially included in the public beta rollout of Monterey, that omission has only allowed the hype to grow. It's unclear when Universal Control will come to macOS, only that it won't be available to use at launch. FaceTime's new SharePlay feature, which is also expected to arrive in iOS 15, will also not be ready to try at launch. That feature will allow you to share music or watch shows with folks over FaceTime. The devices that support macOS Monterey include: iMac (late 2015 and newer), iMac Pro (2017 and newer), Mac Pro (late 2013 and newer), Mac Mini (late 2014 and newer), MacBook Pro (early 2015 and newer), MacBook Air (early 2015 and newer), and MacBook (early 2016 and newer).

Further reading: macOS Monterey Release Candidate Undoes Safari Changes, Reintroduces Old Tab Design

TV broadcasts for Sinclair-owned channels went down Sunday across the US in what the stations have described as technical issues, but which multiple sources told The Record to be a ransomware attack. From the report: The incident occurred in the early hours of the day and took down the Sinclair internal corporate network, email servers, phone services, and the broadcasting systems of local TV stations. As a result of the attack, many channels weren't able to broadcast morning shows, news segments, and scheduled NFL games, according to a barrage of tweets coming from viewers and the TV channels themselves. "Internally, it's bad," a source who had to call Sinclair employees on their personal numbers to get more details about the attack, told The Record earlier today in a private conversation.

Today in the Wall Street Journal, Facebook's head of integrity, Guy Rosen, admitted that from April to June of this year, one in every 2,000 content views on Facebook still contained hate speech. (Alternate URL here, with shorter versions here and here.)

Head of integrity Rosen was calling that figure an improvement over mid-2020, when one in every 1,000 content views on Facebook were hate speech. But at that same moment in time Mark Zuckerberg was telling the U.S. Congress that "In terms of fighting hate, we've built really sophisticated systems!" "Facebook Inc. executives have long said that artificial intelligence would address the company's chronic problems keeping what it deems hate speech and excessive violence as well as underage users off its platforms," reports the Wall Street Journal.

"That future is farther away than those executives suggest, according to internal documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Facebook's AI can't consistently identify first-person shooting videos, racist rants and even, in one notable episode that puzzled internal researchers for weeks, the difference between cockfighting and car crashes." On hate speech, the documents show, Facebook employees have estimated the company removes only a sliver of the posts that violate its rules — a low-single-digit percent, they say. When Facebook's algorithms aren't certain enough that content violates the rules to delete it, the platform shows that material to users less often — but the accounts that posted the material go unpunished.

The employees were analyzing Facebook's success at enforcing its own rules on content that it spells out in detail internally and in public documents like its community standards. The documents reviewed by the Journal also show that Facebook two years ago cut the time human reviewers focused on hate-speech complaints from users and made other tweaks that reduced the overall number of complaints. That made the company more dependent on AI enforcement of its rules and inflated the apparent success of the technology in its public statistics.

According to the documents, those responsible for keeping the platform free from content Facebook deems offensive or dangerous acknowledge that the company is nowhere close to being able to reliably screen it. "The problem is that we do not and possibly never will have a model that captures even a majority of integrity harms, particularly in sensitive areas," wrote a senior engineer and research scientist in a mid-2019 note. He estimated the company's automated systems removed posts that generated just 2% of the views of hate speech on the platform that violated its rules. "Recent estimates suggest that unless there is a major change in strategy, it will be very difficult to improve this beyond 10-20% in the short-medium term," he wrote.

This March, another team of Facebook employees drew a similar conclusion, estimating that those systems were removing posts that generated 3% to 5% of the views of hate speech on the platform, and 0.6% of all content that violated Facebook's policies against violence and incitement.
Facebook does also take some other additional steps to reduce views of hate speech (beyond AI screening), they told the Journal — also arguing that the internal Facebook documents the Journal had reviwed were outdated. But one of those documents showed that in 2019 Facebook was spending $104 million a year to review suspected hate speech, with a Facebook manager noting that "adds up to real money" and proposing "hate speech cost controls."

Facebook told the Journal the saved money went to better improving their algorithms. But the Journal reports that Facebook "also introduced 'friction' to the content reporting process, adding hoops for aggrieved users to jump through that sharply reduced how many complaints about content were made, according to the documents."

Facebook told the Journal that "some" of that friction has since been rolled back.

Greg Bensinger of the New York Times editorial board argues ridesharing companies haven't delivered on their promises of well-paying driver jobs with less traffic congestion (let alone their predictions of an end to car ownership — or even of a sustainable, profitable, business model).

And he adds that now a new study "is punching a hole in another of Uber and Lyft's promised benefits: curtailing pollution." The companies have long insisted their services are a boon to the environment in part because they reduce the need for short trips, can pool riders heading in roughly the same direction and cut unnecessary miles by, for instance, eliminating the need to look for street parking. It turns out that Uber rides do spare the air from the high amount of pollutants emitted from starting up a cold vehicle, when it is operating less efficiently, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University found. But that gain is wiped out by the need for drivers to circle around waiting for or fetching their next passenger, known as deadheading. Deadheading, Lyft and Uber estimated in 2019, is equal to about 40 percent of rideshare miles driven in six American cities.

The researchers at Carnegie Mellon estimated that driving without a passenger leads to a roughly 20 percent overall increase in fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions compared with trips made by personal vehicles.

The researchers also found that switching from a private car to on-demand rides, like an Uber or Lyft, increased the external costs of a typical trip by 30 percent to 35 percent, or roughly 35 cents on average, because of the added congestion, collisions and noise from ridesharing services. "This burden is not carried by the individual user, but rather impacts the surrounding community," reads a summary of the research conducted by Jacob Ward, Jeremy Michalek and Constantine Samaras. "Society as a whole currently shoulders these external costs in the form of increased mortality risks, damage to vehicles and infrastructure, climate impacts and increased traffic congestion."

"Humanity will return to the lunar surface in 2024 as part of the Artemis program," writes the Auto Evolution site. "However, before NASA begins shuttling people to our natural satellite, it has to build a network there that will go beyond Earth's low orbit and connect space to Earth in a sort of Internet connection..." The network's name? LunaNet: Astronauts will be able to use the LunaNet via numerous nodes and communicate with the crew on and around the Moon in the same manner that we use Wi-Fi here on Earth. In addition, missions using the network will have access to position and time signals, allowing astronauts and rovers to navigate the rugged lunar terrain and return to their base. LunaNet will also use space-weather instruments to identify potentially dangerous solar activity, such as flares that erupt from the Sun and send harsh radiation towards the astronauts. With this new connectivity, the crew can be directly alerted. This will cut down the time it takes for network management on Earth to do so. These warnings will be comparable to the ones we receive on our phones when there is hazardous weather. The architecture's capabilities will also include a lunar search and rescue capability...

Researchers could also use LunaNet antennas to peer into deep space and search for radio signals from distant celestial objects. Altogether, the architecture's capabilities will give scientists a new platform to test space theories, allowing them to extend their scientific knowledge. Recently, NASA released the "Draft LunaNet Interoperability Specification" in order to kickstart the development of this new "lunar internet." Technical discussions among industry experts from around the world are expected to follow.

Slashdot reader dkatana shares IoT Times interview with Dr. Johannes Springer, Director General for the 5G Automotive Association, an EU lobbying group pushing for the inclusion of short-range 5G wireless technology in autonomous vehicles for vehicle-to-vehicle communications. Springer describes some of the services already being tested (like in Hamburg, Germany, where even traffic lights can communicate with vehicles for "optimal speed advisories" for avoiding red lights): We have, for instance, an initiative in Europe called a European Data Task Force, or data task force for world safety. And in this activity, millions of vehicles are already sharing safety-related data between the different car manufacturers. Of course, this data sharing exists via cellular networks. One vehicle that detects, for instance, a black ice warning, or produces a black ice warning, sends this warning via the cellular networks to other vehicles. And this consensus, the data sharing via the cellular networks, creates a lot of benefits for other traffic participants, not, by the way, just the vehicles, but also to other vulnerable road users, cyclists, pedestrians, and so on...
But they also discuss the prospects for automous vehicles beyond highway/intercity driving — and the idea of restricting them in cities to dedicated "safe corridors": Of course, the whole thing starts on a broad scale with restricted areas... And also, the private car industry is going heavily in this direction. If you take, for instance, the example of valet parking, automated parking. So, the automated driving task is restricted to a parking spot, to a parking garage: you can leave your car in front of the parking garage, and the car finds the free parking space by itself. And the same upon returning the vehicle. So this is something which takes place in the city but within a restricted area.

Suppose it goes, for instance, to buses or something like that. In that case, you can also see two examples during the ITS World Congress, two different, let's say, technical setups, where automated driving buses happen in the city. One is in a, let's say, non-controlled environment, and the vehicle drives entirely on its own, yeah? So this is shown by Easy Drive, part of Continental, a company that produces these types of systems. Of course, there is still the need to have a backup driver in the bus, which directly destroys the business case for the bus operator. And secondly, the driving speed is relatively low; I think 30 kilometers per hour or something like that.

The second example is, which is shown by Siemens, called the Heat Project, where the whole environment is completely controlled by roadside infrastructure. You have cameras and all these things equipped at the road to assess the situation and things around the bus. Personally, I don't believe that it can happen in cities or other open urban areas. Maybe, of course, if you have an airport, it might be different. But we cannot afford the necessary infrastructure, let's say, for monitoring the situation around the vehicle in real-time, whether it's a bus or another vehicle. No city is willing to pay for such an infrastructure just for the benefit of autonomous driving. So I'm pretty sure that this will not happen.
In the comments on the original submission, long-time Slashdot reader Gravis Zero discounts this as the opinion of a lobbying group advocating for specific 5G technologies (rather than using WiFi for direct vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication).

But for what it's worth, the IoT Times interviewer also says "I've been talking to some experts in smart cities and some vehicle manufacturers... They say that certain types of autonomous driving have been going around for some time... But they are mainly focusing on motorways and intercity driving. We still have many problems allowing full autonomous driving in cities because of the number of different things that can happen."

"China tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile in August," reports Reuters, "showing a capability that caught U.S. intelligence by surprise, the Financial Times reported, citing five unnamed sources."

AFP explains what's uniquely threatening about hypersonic missiles: Ballistic missiles fly high into space in an arc to reach their target, while a hypersonic flies on a trajectory low in the atmosphere, potentially reaching a target more quickly. Crucially, a hypersonic missile is maneuverable (like the much slower, often subsonic cruise missile), making it harder to track and defend against. While countries like the United States have developed systems designed to defend against cruise and ballistic missiles, the ability to track and take down a hypersonic missile remains a question.
Business Insider highlights this assessment from the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the US/Canada organization providing North America's aerospace warnings: In August, General Glen VanHerck, head of NORAD, said that China's advanced hypersonic capability would "provide significant challenges to my Norad capability to provide threat warning and attack assessment," the Financial Times said... Sources also told the paper that the Chinese weapon could theoretically fly over the South Pole, another cause for concern for the US military, whose missile systems focus on the northern polar route.
Bloomberg reports that the missile missed its target (by over 32 kilometers — about 20 miles), "and the test doesn't necessarily mean China will deploy such a weapon, the Financial Times said..."

They also point out that "Along with China, the United States, Russia and at least five other countries are working on hypersonic technology." (Reuters adds that "last month North Korea said it had test-fired a newly-developed hypersonic missile.")

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ExtremeTech: The world's first drone delivery of lungs has gone down in history as a success. Unither Bioelectronique, a bioengineering firm focused on organ transportation, recently completed a "proof-of-concept" flight in which a pair of human lungs were shipped via drone to the transplant site in about six minutes. The lungs were flown from the Toronto Western Hospital to Toronto General Hospital, where Dr. Shaf Keshavjee, surgeon-in-chief of Canada's University Health Network, received the cargo at about 1 a.m. He needed the lungs for a transplant he was performing that very day on a male engineer who'd soon become the first transplant patient to receive his "new" lungs by drone.

Though the circumstances of the trip were urgent, the trip itself was 18 months in the making. Organs have been shipped by drone before, but lungs are particularly sensitive to environmental shifts during transport, with a majority of donated lungs rendered unusable by insufficient oxygenation. In order to make the trip worthwhile, engineers at Unither Bioelectronique had to design a lightweight carbon fiber shipping container that could withstand vibrations and in-flight changes in elevation and barometric pressure. Preparation involved practice flights and drop tests using simulation lung packages. The drone and its container counterpart were fitted with a parachute and an advanced GPS system, as the drone would fly through the air unmanned. "This innovation in the transportation of organs has the potential to significantly increase the transfer efficiency between donors and recipients, especially in congested urban areas," Unither Bioelectronique says of the trip on their website. "Through this project, we have established an important stepping stone for future organ delivery that ultimately will open the door for large-scale adoption of larger fully autonomous, electrically-powered, environmentally-friendly drones... for transplant across trans-continental distances."

A new research paper written by a team of academics and computer scientists from Spain and Austria has demonstrated that it's possible to use Facebook's targeting tools to deliver an ad exclusively to a single individual if you know enough about the interests Facebook's platform assigns them. TechCrunch reports: The paper -- entitled "Unique on Facebook: Formulation and Evidence of (Nano)targeting Individual Users with non-PII Data" -- describes a "data-driven model" that defines a metric showing the probability a Facebook user can be uniquely identified based on interests attached to them by the ad platform. The researchers demonstrate that they were able to use Facebook's Custom Audience tool to target a number of ads in such a way that each ad only reached a single, intended Facebook user.

The research raises fresh questions about potentially harmful uses of Facebook's ad targeting tools, and -- more broadly -- questions about the legality of the tech giant's personal data processing empire given that the information it collects on people can be used to uniquely identify individuals, picking them out of the crowd of others on its platform even purely based on their interests. The findings could increase pressure on lawmakers to ban or phase out behavioral advertising -- which has been under attack for years, over concerns it poses a smorgasbord of individual and societal harms. And, at the least, the paper seems likely to drive calls for robust checks and balances on how such invasive tools can be used. The findings also underscore the importance of independent research being able to interrogate algorithmic adtech -- and should increase pressure on platforms not to close down researchers' access.