PolygamousRanchKid shares a report from Motherboard: In November 2019, twelve bottles of Chateau Petrus 2000 -- a rare and expensive red wine from Bordeaux, France -- hitched a ride to the International Space Station aboard a Northrop Grumman spacecraft. It was followed several months later by 320 snippets of grapevine, or canes, of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. For a year, both viticultural products were exposed to the unique stress of the station's microgravity environment. On January 1st, the wine bottles and canes returned to earth aboard a SpaceX cargo vessel, and were hurried back to the Institute of Vine and Wine Science (ISVV) at the University of Bordeaux. Researchers have already begun analyzing the changes they underwent while in orbit, and during a press conference on Wednesday, revealed their preliminary findings. They had also, of course, tasted the wine.

To the surprise of researchers, all 320 vine snippets survived the stay in space. Some have since been replanted, and the results have been astounding. "They are developing much, much faster than the normal canes -- the ones that are coming back from space," said Dr. Michel Lebert, SCU's Chief Science Officer. The wine, to the delight of the experiment's organizers, also appears to have undergone significant changes. "With the one that had been in space, I would say the differences that I found most were with heightened floral characteristics," said Jane Ansen, a wine writer with a diploma in wine-tasting from ISVV. "I would probably say that the Petrus 2000 that had been on the ISS was maybe one, two, even three years further evolved that you would expect compared to the one that had remained on earth,"; she said.

"When the Earth environment is recreated in space, like on the ISS, the only parameter that changes from Earth is near-zero gravity," said Nicolas Gaume, CEO of Space Cargo Unlimited. "This exposes life on the ISS to immense stress." The researchers hypothesize that this stress, promoted by microgravity, expedited the natural aging process taking place in the wine bottles, and led the canes to develop a resiliency that is contributing to their rapid growth back on earth. If their theory is correct, the implications could be significant for a future in which climate change threatens to disrupt agricultural production. "If the vines find a way to evolve so that they are more naturally resistant to stress on Earth, then that opens very exciting possibilities for all of us," said Gaume.

AT&T is lobbying against proposals to subsidize fiber-to-the-home deployment across the U.S., arguing that rural people don't need fiber and should be satisfied with Internet service that provides only 10Mbps upload speeds. Ars Technica reports: AT&T Executive VP Joan Marsh detailed the company's stance Friday in a blog post titled "Defining Broadband For the 21st Century." AT&T's preferred definition of 21st-century broadband could be met with wireless technology or AT&T's VDSL, a 14-year-old system that brings fiber to neighborhoods but uses copper telephone wires for the final connections into each home.

"[T]here would be significant additional cost to deploy fiber to virtually every home and small business in the country, when at present there is no compelling evidence that those expenditures are justified over the service quality of a 50/10 or 100/20Mbps product," AT&T wrote. (That would be 50Mbps download speeds with 10Mbps upload speeds or 100Mbps downloads with 20Mbps uploads.) AT&T said that "overbuilding" areas that already have acceptable speeds "would needlessly devalue private investment and waste broadband-directed dollars." "Overbuilding" is what the broadband industry calls one ISP building in an area already served by another ISP, whereas Internet users desperate for cheaper, faster, and more reliable service call that "broadband competition."

Volkswagen accidentally posted a press release on its website a month early on Monday announcing a new name for its U.S. operations, Voltswagen of America, emphasizing the German automaker's electric vehicle efforts. CNBC reports: The release called the change a "public declaration of the company's future-forward investment in e-mobility." It said Voltswagen will be placed as an exterior badge on all EV models with gas vehicles having the company's iconic VW emblem only. To "preserve elements of Volkswagen's heritage," the release said the company planned to retain the dark blue color of the VW logo for gas-powered vehicles and use light blue to differentiate "the new, EV-centric branding."

The release said Voltswagen of America would remain an operating unit of Volkswagen Group of America and a subsidiary of Volkswagen AG, with headquarters in Herndon, Virginia. Volts are the derived units for electric potential, also known as electromotive force, between two points. General Motors previously used Volt for a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle between 2010 and 2019. The VW press release was incomplete, citing the need for an additional quote and photography from the automaker's plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
UPDATE: VW later said the name change was an April Fool's Day prank which had leaked early.

Google tried to copy Amazon's playbook to become the shopping hub of the internet, with little success. Now it is trying something different: the anti-Amazon strategy. From a report: Google is trying to present itself as a cheaper and less restrictive option for independent sellers. And it is focused on driving traffic to sellers' sites, not selling its own version of products, as Amazon does. In the last year, Google eliminated fees for merchants and allowed sellers to list their wares in its search results for free. It is also trying to make it easier for small, independent shops to upload their inventory of products to appear in search results and buy ads on Google by teaming up with Shopify, which powers online stores for 1.7 million merchants who sell directly to consumers. But like Google's many attempts during its two-decade quest to compete with Amazon, this one shows little sign of working. Google has nothing as alluring as the $295 billion that passed through Amazon's third-party marketplace in 2020. The amount of goods people buy on Google is "very small" by comparison -- probably around $1 billion, said Juozas Kaziukenas, the founder of Marketplace Pulse, a research company.

Amazon is a fixture in the lives of many Americans. It has usurped Google as the starting point for shoppers and has become equally essential for marketers. Amazon's global advertising business grew 30 percent to $17.6 billion in 2020, trailing only Google and Facebook in the United States. But as the pandemic has forced many stores to go online, it has created a new opening for Google to woo sellers who feel uneasy about building their businesses on Amazon. [...] Sellers often complain about Amazon's fees, which can account for a quarter of every sale, not including the cost of advertising, and the pressure to spend more to succeed. Merchants on Amazon do not have a direct relationship with their customers, limiting their ability to communicate with them and to generate future business. And because everything is contained within the Amazon world, it is harder to create a unique look and feel that express a brand's identity the way companies can on their own websites. High-profile Venture Capitalist Bill Gurley added said the article misses a key point, that is, "Amazon benefits from 20 years of supply chain investment. Even if you own the leading search engine, you cannot emulate 1-click 1.5 day shipping with high certainty (for consumer)."

Many internet companies posted record performance during the pandemic as consumers turned to apps and other cloud software to work, study, socialize and shop from home. But as vaccines roll out and restrictions relax, some of this unprecedented digital demand is fading. From a report: Data from research firm Apptopia reveal how the superstar apps of the Covid-19 era are faring now in the U.S. Plus, stats from New Zealand, a country that reopened earlier, show what the future might hold for these services. Here's the main takeaway: Many well-known apps are losing ground, or usage has stabilized. Some behaviors are sticking, though, suggesting the pandemic will provide a more-permanent boost for a few internet companies.

Zoom Video Communications's app has been so ubiquitous during the pandemic that it's now a verb. Lately, though, workers complain of "Zoom fatigue," and data from New Zealand are ominous. Usage has dropped in that country as employees and students return to offices and schools. Even in the U.S., where most offices remain virtual, Zoom use peaked in September. The company said recently it's well positioned for strong growth. Microsoft's Teams communication software was another work-from-home hit last year. That service has seen mobile app usage decline, too, especially in New Zealand. Other staples of the virtual workplace are here to stay, according to Apptopia data. DocuSign's app, which lets you sign contracts and other documents digitally, has seen consistently high usage lately. The app has become a popular way to close real-estate transactions, so it is likely getting an extra boost from the housing boom.

Sunday IT Wire counted up the number of signatories on two open letters, one opposing Richard Stallman's return to the FSF and one supporting it.

- The pro-Stallman letter had 3,632 individual signers
- The anti-Stallman letter had 2,812 individual signers (plus 48 companies and organizations).

But the question of Stallman's leadership has now also arisen in the GCC community:

A long-time developer of GCC, the compiler created by the GNU Project and used in Linux distributions, has issued a call for the removal of Free Software Founder Richard Stallman from the GCC steering committee. Nathan Sidwell [also a software engineer at Facebook] said in a post directed to the committee that if it was unwilling to remove Stallman, then the panel should explain why it was not able to do so.

Stallman is also the founder of the GNU Project and the original author of GCC.

"RMS [Stallman] is no longer a developer of GCC, the most recent commit I can find regards SCO in 2003," Sidwell wrote in a long email. "Prior to that there were commits in 1997, but significantly less than 1994 and earlier. GCC's implementation language is now C++, which I believe RMS neither uses nor likes.

"When was RMS' most recent positive input to the GCC project? Even if it was recent and significant, that doesn't mean his toxic behaviour should be accepted."
Meanwhile, the following groups have also issued statements opposing Stallman's return to the FSF:

- Mozilla: We can't demand better of the internet if we don't demand better of our leaders, colleagues and ourselves. We're with the Open Source Diversity Community, Outreachy & the Software Conservancy project in supporting this petition.
- The Tor Project: The Tor Project is joining calls for Richard M. Stallman to be removed from board, staff, volunteer, and other leadership positions in the FOSS community, including the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project.
Rust creator Graydon Hoare: He's been saying sexist shit & driving women away for decades. He can't change, the FSF board knows it, is sending a "sexism doesn't matter" message. This is bad leadership and I'm sad about all of it, agree with calls to resign.

If someone is a public leader their public behaviour matters. I don't criticize private individuals here and I don't think twitter-justice is especially nuanced. But this is so far over the line, such a stupid and tone-deaf choice, and it is about community leadership.
The EFF: We at EFF are profoundly disappointed to hear of the re-election of Richard Stallman to a leadership position at the Free Software Foundation, after a series of serious accusations of misconduct led to his resignation as president and board member of the FSF in 2019. We are also disappointed that this was done despite no discernible steps taken by him to be accountable for, much less make amends for, his past actions or those who have been harmed by them. Finally, we are also disturbed by the secretive process of his re-election, and how it was belatedly conveyed to FSF's staff and supporters.

Stallman's re-election sends a wrong and hurtful message to free software movement, as well as those who have left that movement because of Stallman's previous behavior.

Free software is a vital component of an open and just technological society: its key institutions and individuals cannot place misguided feelings of loyalty above their commitment to that cause. The movement for digital freedom is larger than any one individual contributor, regardless of their role. Indeed, we hope that this moment can be an opportunity to bring in new leaders and new ideas to the free software movement.

We urge the voting members of the FSF1 to call a special meeting to reconsider this decision, and we also call on Stallman to step down: for the benefit of the organization, the values it represents, and the diversity and long-term viability of the free software movement as a whole.
Finally, the Free Software Foundation itself has now pinned the following tweet at the top of its Twitter feed: No LibrePlanet organizers (staff or volunteer), speakers, award winners, exhibitors, or sponsors were made aware of Richard Stallman's announcement until it was public.

NBC News reports: Facebook said Wednesday that hackers based in China used the social media platform as part of a campaign to hack and spy on diasporas of Uyghurs, the minority group the country has been accused of putting in "re-education" camps. The hackers used Facebook to identify, track and send malicious links to Uyghur activists, dissidents and journalists living in the U.S., Australia, Canada and Turkey, among other countries, Facebook said.

Facebook stopped short of directly blaming the Chinese government for sponsoring the campaign. "We can see geographic attribution based on the activity, but we can't actually prove who's behind the operation," the company's head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, said in a phone call with journalists. But Facebook did say the hackers are part of the same operation that the cybersecurity company Volexity cited in 2019 as being affiliated with the Chinese government. It published research that revealed that the country's hackers had gone to extreme measures to hack and spy on Uyghurs. They used sophisticated, previously unknown tools to load malicious code into multiple Uyghur news sites so that they would hack and spy on nearly any smartphone that visited.

"Who else would have the resources, the time and effort to go after these people? If you told me it was Iceland I'd be pretty surprised," Volexity CEO Steven Adair said in a phone call Wednesday...

Facebook's head of cyberespionage, Mike Dvilyanski, said on the call that while it had found and removed fewer than 500 accounts that sent malicious links to Uyghurs, it was "an extremely targeted operation... We were seeing them create personas on Facebook that are designed to look like journalists that focus on issues critical to the Uyghur community, that are designed to look like activists that might be standing up for the Uyghur community, designed to look like members of the community," Dvilyanski said. "Then use that as a way to trick them into clicking into these links to expose their devices."
The article also cites "multiple investigative reports" showing China "maintains re-education camps that detain an estimated 1 million Uyghurs...

"With omnipresent cameras, face recognition technology and intense collection of residents' data, it's one of the most heavily surveilled areas in the world."

Parler confirmed Saturday that it had referred dozens of violent posts to America's Federal Bureau of Investigation, reports Newsweek. But even after a blog post explaining its reasons, "some of the platform's users were less than impressed." Parler, which faced significant backlash in the wake of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by former President Donald Trump's supporters, referred violent content to the FBI at least 50 times prior to the pro-Trump riot, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. The social media site shared a link to the article, drawing backlash from some members of the online platform. Parler has built its platform by positioning itself as being opposed to censorship and staunchly in favor of free speech.

"In reaction to yesterday's news stories, some users have raised questions about the practice of referring violent or inciting content to law enforcement. The First Amendment does not protect violence inciting speech, nor the planning of violent acts. Such content violates Parler's TOS. Any violent content shared with law enforcement was posted publicly and brought to our attention primarily via user reporting. And, as it is posted publicly, it can properly be referred to law enforcement by anyone. Parler remains steadfast in protecting your right to free speech," Parler posted on Saturday in response to criticism.

But some users of the site were still unhappy with Parler's decision.

"I don't like snitches," user MelodySuarez wrote in response to the explanation.
Users "vented their fury at the site's apparent willingness to report its users despite its pitch of protecting free speech," Newsweek reported in an earlier article.

"Parler is a fraud," one user had complained.

The team behind UNIX also built another operating system at Bell Labs, writes the corporate CTO and president of Nokia Bell Labs: Starting in the late 1980s, a group led by Rob Pike and UNIX co-creators Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie developed "Plan 9". Their motivation was two-fold: to build an operating system that would fit an increasingly distributed world, and to do so in a clean and elegant manner. The plan was not to build directly on the Unix foundation but to implement a new design from scratch. The result was named Plan 9 from Bell Labs — the name an inside joke inspired by the cult B-movie "Plan 9 from Outer Space."

Plan 9 is built around a radically different model from that of conventional operating systems. The OS is structured as a collection of loosely coupled services, which may be hosted on different machines. Another key concept in its design is that of a per-process name space: services can be mapped on to local names fixed by convention, so that programs using those services need not change if the current services are replaced by others providing the same functionality.

Despite the groundbreaking innovations in Plan 9, the operating system did not take off — at least not enough to justify Bell Labs continued investment in Plan 9 development. But Plan 9's innovations found their way into many commercial OSes: the concept of making OS services available via the file system is now pervasive in Linux; Plan 9's minimalist windowing system design has been replicated many times; the UTF-8 character encoding used universally today in browsers was invented for, and first implemented in, Plan 9; and the design of Plan 9 anticipated today's microservice architectures by more than a decade...!

Starting this week, Plan 9 will have a new home in the space it helped define: cyberspace. We are transferring the copyright in Plan 9 software to the Plan 9 Foundation for all future development, allowing them to carry on the good work that Bell Labs and many other Plan 9 enthusiasts have undertaken over the past couple of decades. Indeed, there is an active community of people who have been working on Plan 9 and who are interested in the future evolution of this groundbreaking operating system. That community is organizing itself bottom-up into the new Plan 9 Foundation, which is making the OS code publicly available under a suitable open-source software license.

We at Nokia and Bell Labs are huge advocates for the power of open-source communities for such pioneering systems that have the potential to benefit the global software development community. Who knows, perhaps Plan 9 will become a part of the emerging distributed cloud infrastructure that will underpin the coming industrial revolution?

This week Swedish developer Daniel Stenberg posted a remarkable reflection on the 23rd anniversary of his command-line data tool, cURL: curl was adopted in Red Hat Linux in late 1998, became a Debian package in May 1999, shipped in Mac OS X 10.1 in August 2001. Today, it is also shipped by default in Windows 10 and in iOS and Android devices. Not to mention the game consoles, Nintendo Switch, Xbox and Sony PS5.

Amusingly, libcurl is used by the two major mobile OSes but not provided as an API by them, so lots of apps, including many extremely large volume apps bundle their own libcurl build: YouTube, Skype, Instagram, Spotify, Google Photos, Netflix etc. Meaning that most smartphone users today have many separate curl installations in their phones.

Further, libcurl is used by some of the most played computer games of all times: GTA V, Fortnite, PUBG mobile, Red Dead Redemption 2 etc.

libcurl powers media players and set-top boxes such as Roku, Apple TV by maybe half a billion TVs.

curl and libcurl ships in virtually every Internet server and is the default transfer engine in PHP, which is found in almost 80% of the world's almost two billion websites.

Cars are Internet-connected now. libcurl is used in virtually every modern car these days to transfer data to and from the vehicles.

Then add media players, kitchen and medical devices, printers, smart watches and lots of "smart"; IoT things. Practically speaking, just about every Internet-connected device in existence runs curl.

I'm convinced I'm not exaggerating when I claim that curl exists in over ten billion installations world-wide...

Those 300 lines of code in late 1996 have grown to 172,000 lines in March 2021.
Stenberg attributes cURL's success to persistence. "We hold out. We endure and keep polishing. We're here for the long run. It took me two years (counting from the precursors) to reach 300 downloads. It took another ten or so until it was really widely available and used." But he adds that 22 different CPU architectures and 86 different operating systems are now known to have run curl.

In a later blog post titled "GitHub Steel," Stenberg also reveals that GitHub gave him a 3D-printed steel version of his 2020 GitHub contribution matrix — accompanied by a friendly note. "Please accept this small gift as a token of appreciation on behalf of all of us here at GitHub, and everyone who benefits from your work."

The Drive reports on an "unprecedent exercise" which included a Russian nuclear submarine firing a torpedo underneath Arctic ice, which it calls "a bold statement of Russia's presence and capabilities in the increasingly tense Arctic region." Three Russian ballistic missile submarines surfaced next to each other from beneath the ice near the North Pole as part of a recent major Arctic exercise. The head of the country's Navy said that event was a first for his service. It also underscores the growing geopolitical competition in this highly strategic region... A pair of MiG-31 Foxhound interceptors, supported by an Il-78 aerial refueling tanker, also flew over the North Pole and troops have been conducting maneuvers on the ground in extreme cold weather conditions as part of Umka-2021. Average temperatures in the exercise area, at present, are ranging between -13 and -22 degrees Fahrenheit, with winds gusting up to just over 70 miles per hour, according to state-run media outlet TASS....

[A]ll of this is magnified by the ever-increasing strategic significance of the Arctic and growing geopolitical competition there, as a result. Much of this has been driven by the emergence of new economic opportunities as global climate change has caused ice in the region to recede. This has made the prospect of sending commercial shipping via the Northern Sea Route more viable and offers the possibility of greater access to untapped natural resources, including oil and natural gas. Just this week, Russia's state nuclear agency Rosatom has been promoting the Northern Sea Route as an alternative to traditional routes in light of the very serious situation in the Suez Canal...

The Umka-2021 drills come as Russia and the United States, among others, are working to expand their abilities to project military power into the Arctic. Russia has been working particularly hard to build new facilities and expand existing ones, especially air bases, in the region. The U.S. military, in cooperation with Canada, just recently demonstrated its ability to conduct more routine combat aviation operations out of the strategic Thule Air Base in Greenland, as well.
The article notes that U.S. Navy also conducts Ice Exercises each year with submarines surfacing from under Arctic the ice, "though not with ballistic missile boats. However, this particular drill is, nevertheless, a significant show of force and general demonstration of the Russian Navy's strategic capabilities...."

"We're in competition... and to be competitive with Russia and China, specifically in the Arctic, you have to be on the field," said the U.S. Air Force general who heads NORAD in remarks to Congress last week. The Drive quotes him as saying "And, so it's crucial that we do that and we continue producing capabilities that will allow us to be in the Arctic." The Russian Navy sending three ballistic missile submarines punching through the Arctic ice together in a row near the North Pole provides a very clear look at this competition and more such displays are likely to come as the geopolitical friction in the region continues to increase.

Car and Driver magazine has over a million readers. This month they called Tesla's "full self driving" beta "laughably bad and potentially dangerous."

schwit1 shares their report on a 13-minute video posted to YouTube of a Model 3 with FSD Beta 8.2 "fumbling its way around Oakland." Quite quickly, the video moves from "embarrassing mistakes" to "extremely risky, potentially harmful driving." In autonomous mode, the Tesla breaks a variety of traffic laws, starting with a last-minute attempt to cross a hard line and execute an illegal lane change. It then attempts to make a left turn next to another car, only to give up midway through the intersection and disengage. It goes on to take another turn far too wide, landing it in the oncoming lane and requiring driver intervention. Shortly thereafter, it crosses into the oncoming lane again on a straight stretch of road with bikers and oncoming traffic. It then drunkenly stumbles through an intersection and once again requires driver intervention to make it through. While making an unprotected left after a stop sign, it slows down before the turn and chills in the pathway of oncoming cars that have to brake to avoid hitting it...

The Tesla attempts to make a right turn at a red light where that's prohibited, once again nearly breaking the law and requiring the driver to actively prevent it from doing something. It randomly stops in the middle of the road, proceeds straight through a turn-only lane, stops behind a parked car, and eventually almost slams into a curb while making a turn. After holding up traffic to creep around a stopped car, it confidently drives directly into the oncoming lane before realizing its mistake and disengaging. Another traffic violation on the books — and yet another moment where the befuddled car just gives up and leaves it to the human driver to sort out the mess...

Then comes another near collision. This time, the Tesla arrives at an intersection where it has a stop sign and cross traffic doesn't. It proceeds with two cars incoming, the first car narrowly passing the car's front bumper and the trailing car braking to avoid T-boning the Model 3. It is absolutely unbelievable and indefensible that the driver, who is supposed to be monitoring the car to ensure safe operation, did not intervene there. It's even wilder that this software is available to the public. But that isn't the end of the video. To round it out, the Model 3 nearly slams into a Camry that has the right of way while trying to negotiate a kink in the road. Once it gets through that intersection, it drives straight for a fence and nearly plows directly into it.

Both of these incidents required driver intervention to avoid.
Their conclusion? "Tesla's software clearly does a decent job of identifying cars, stop signs, pedestrians, bikes, traffic lights, and other basic obstacles. Yet to think this constitutes anything close to 'full self-driving' is ludicrous."

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 quotes a columnist from Inc: Apple isn't going to stop developers from tracking you. It's also not against personalized ads, as Facebook refers to the targeted advertising it shows you based on your internet activity. If you want to share everything you do online with Facebook, Apple won't stop you. In that case, a developer can still collect the IDFA for the purpose of targeting ads or tracking conversions.

Apple is just going to require developers to be transparent about what data they want to collect and how they want to use it. Then, they have to ask your permission.

That's what the real fight is over – transparency. And, it's why Facebook is so worried.

Facebook's problem is that, if given a choice, many people will choose not to allow tracking. A recent survey from AppsFlyer, an attribution data platform, shows that almost half of all users (47 percent) are likely to opt-out of tracking.

That's the dirty little secret it would rather not talk about. Facebook doesn't want you to think about tracking, and certainly doesn't want you to have a choice.
The column includes a pithy observation. "If your business model will break because people are given a choice over whether or not you can track them, your problem isn't with Apple. Your problem is the business model."

"40,000 lines of flawed code almost made it into FreeBSD's kernel," writes Ars Technica, reporting on what happened when the CEO of Netgate, which makes FreeBSD-powered routers, decided it was time for FreeBSD to enjoy the same level of in-kernel WireGuard support that Linux does. The issue arose after Netgate offered a burned-out developer a contract to port WireGuard into the FreeBSD kernel (where Netgate could then use it in the company's popular pfSense router distribution): [The developer] committed his port — largely unreviewed and inadequately tested — directly into the HEAD section of FreeBSD's code repository, where it was scheduled for incorporation into FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE. This unexpected commit raised the stakes for WireGuard founding developer Jason Donenfeld, whose project would ultimately be judged on the quality of any production release under the WireGuard name. Donenfeld identified numerous problems...but rather than object to the port's release, Donenfeld decided to fix the issues. He collaborated with FreeBSD developer Kyle Evans and with Matt Dunwoodie, an OpenBSD developer who had worked on WireGuard for that operating system...

How did so much sub-par code make it so far into a major open source operating system? Where was the code review which should have stopped it? And why did both the FreeBSD core team and Netgate seem more focused on the fact that the code was being disparaged than its actual quality?
There's more to the story, but ultimately Ars Technica confirmed the presences of multiple buffer overflows, printf statements that are still being triggered in production, and even empty validation function which always "return true" rather than actually validating the data. The original developer argued the real issue is an absence of quality reviewers, but Ars Technica sees a larger problem. "There seems to be an absence of process to ensure quality code review." Several FreeBSD community members would only speak off the record. In essence, most seem to agree, you either have a commit bit (enabling you to commit code to FreeBSD's repositories) or you don't. It's hard to find code reviews, and there generally isn't a fixed process ensuring that vitally important code gets reviewed prior to inclusion. This system thus relies heavily on the ability and collegiality of individual code creators.
Ars Technica published this statement from the FreeBSD Core Team: Core unconditionally values the work of all contributors, and seeks a culture of cooperation, respect, and collaboration. The public discourse over WireGuard in the past week does not meet these standards and is damaging to our community if not checked. As such, WireGuard development for FreeBSD will now proceed outside of the base system. For those who wish to evaluate, test, or experiment with WireGuard, snapshots will be available via the ports and package systems.

As a project, we remain committed to continually improving our development process. We'll also continue to refine our tooling to make code reviews and continuous integration easier and more effective. The Core Team asks that the community use these tools and work together to improve FreeBSD.
Ars Technica applauds the efforts — while remaining concerned about the need for them. "FreeBSD is an important project that deserves to be taken seriously. Its downstream consumers include industry giants such as Cisco, Juniper, NetApp, Netflix, Sony, Sophos, and more. The difference in licensing between FreeBSD and Linux gives FreeBSD a reach into many projects and spaces where the Linux kernel would be a difficult or impossible fit."

"When Luke Stark sought money from Google in November he had no idea he'd be turning down $60,000 from the tech giant in March," reports CNN: Stark, an assistant professor at Western University in Ontario, Canada, studies the social and ethical impacts of artificial intelligence. In late November, he applied for a Google Research Scholar award, a no-strings-attached research grant of up to $60,000 to support professors who are early in their careers. He put in for the award, he said, "because of my sense at the time that Google was building a really strong, potentially industry-leading ethical AI team...."

Gebru's ouster kicked off a months-long crisis for the company, including employee departures, a leadership shuffle, and an apology from Google's CEO for how the circumstances of Gebru's departure caused some employees to question their place there. Google conducted an internal investigation into the matter, results of which were announced on the same day the company fired Gebru's co-team leader, Margaret Mitchell, who had been consistently critical of the company on Twitter following Gebru's exit. (Google cited "multiple violations" of its code of conduct.) Meanwhile, researchers outside Google, particularly in AI, have become increasingly distrustful of the company's historically well-regarded scholarship and angry over its treatment of Gebru and Mitchell.

All of this came into sharp focus for Stark on Wednesday, March 10, when Google sent him a congratulatory note, offering him $60,000 for his proposal for a research project that would look at how companies are rolling out AI that is used to detect emotions. Stark said he immediately felt he needed to reject the award to show his support for Gebru and Mitchell, as well as those who yet remain on the ethical AI team at Google...

Gebru said she appreciated Stark's action.
Stark is the first person to turn down one of the 6,500 academic and research grants Google has given out over the last 15 years, the company tells CNN. But CNN also notes some AI conference organizers are now rethinking having Google as a sponsor.

"The widening fallout from Google's tensions with its ethical AI team now pose a risk to the company's reputation and stature in the AI community. This is crucial as Google battles for talent — both as employees at the company and names connected to it in the academic community."

It all began when a CEO and founder "was thinking about identity and the peppy phrases that female professionals use to describe themselves online: 'girl bosses' and the like," reports the New York Times: "I worry about the negative impact of that," Ashley Sumner, 32, said. "I worry that it allows investors to see founders who are women as a separate class from the rest of the founders. I worry it allows investors to write women founders smaller checks. I do believe that women need to help inspire other women but also that identity can be used as labels to separate us."

Ms. Sumner is the chief executive officer of Quilt, an audio platform for conversations about self-care topics like wellness in the workplace, PTSD and astrology. (In prepandemic days, the company organized work gatherings and group discussions in people's homes.) She has felt marginalized in the woman section of founders' circles. "I am always asked to speak on the female founders panel," Ms. Sumner said. "I want to be asked to speak on the panel...."

On LinkedIn, she had never done more than repost someone else's articles or musings. But given that platform's focus on professional life, she thought it was a reasonable place to first share her handiwork. Ms. Sumner's post has drawn nearly 20,000 comments, from men and women in the United States, Australia, Africa, Latin America, India and beyond; from executives, construction workers, health care employees, professors and military professionals...

More than 150 female founders posted similar photos of themselves, crossing out the word "female," and then shared what was now credibly a meme on the internet.
Although not everyone in the Times' article agrees with that position, Sumner is arguing that "putting my gender in front of what I am belittles what I've accomplished."

Medium's tech site OneZero reports on "Rest of World" [dot org], which they call "a news site dedicated to telling technology stories about what's happening outside of North America and Europe," but founded as a nonprofit by the daughter of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt: Sophie Schmidt: We have big intractable problems in the tech and society category: misinformation, disinformation, surveillance, privacy, you name it. We're creating panels, and commissions, and we're shaking our fists at big platforms and saying, "Please fix it." And it feels a little bit helpless. But the thing that's not coming up is that every other country in the world is also dealing with it in slightly different ways.

What if the solutions to our problems lie in the sharing of those experiences, and ideas, and learnings? Expanding the dataset. It's honestly baffling. We have billions of people in the world all using technology all the time. I think the last data I saw said there's almost 5 billion people online. And depending on how you count Western versus non-Western, something like 80% of all humans live outside of the Western bubble. That means that you have almost an infinite number of parallel experiments, playing out simultaneously all around us just outside of you. So, why aren't we comparing experiences...?
Some of the interview's highlights:

• On the topic of emotion recognition software, a Rest of World senior editor points out "it's basically junk science. It's not based on any fundamental facts about human behavior... There's a lot of companies across China who are trying to use this faulty science for a number of different applications."

• The senior editor argues that our conception of the social credit score in China was off. "Some of the Chinese researchers I talked to were like, 'We got this idea from you. I have no idea why you guys are so upset about it.'"

• The senior editor agrees Clubhouse might change the way that politics works globally. "But I think the second option, which we're already seeing glimmers of, is that it's going to get banned in more places. And the places where it doesn't get banned, it's going to be very closely surveilled."

• Schmidt is proud of their follow-up on OKash, an African mobile-lending company partially owned by Opera that was accused of predatory loans through Android apps. "We did some digging and the Filipino SEC had banned, I think, 24 similar types of apps just a few months before that. And those ones were inspired by something that came out of China.
  
  "...the things that can happen outside of regulated environments tell us what the limits of tech are. They tell us what tech can be."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: More than five hours of questioning later, we have learned very little about the state of disinformation from today's marathon hearing with Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and Sundar Pichai. Democrats pushed the CEOs to answer for their platforms' failing on vaccine misinformation and extremism. Republicans wanted to talk about child safety. Everyone wanted simple "yes" or "no" answers, though few were given. What is clear is that both sides are more than ready to impose new rules on Facebook, Twitter and Google.

The hearing was supposed to be about the platforms' handling of misinformation and extremism. The issue has taken on a new significance during the coronavirus pandemic and in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol. [...] As with other recent hearings, the format made it nearly impossible to extract meaningful answers. Many lawmakers used their allotted five minutes to demand "yes or no" answers, which the executives were reluctant to give. In one particularly memorable exchange, Rep. Anna Eshoo of California was questioning Zuckerberg over Facebook's algorithms when she interrupted him to point out that "we don't do filibuster in the House." "I think it's irritating all of us and that is, no one seems to know the word yes or the word no, which one is it," she said. "Congresswoman, these are nuanced issues, " Zuckerberg said before he was cut off. "Okay, that's a no," she said.

As the hearing dragged on, lawmakers began to repeat themselves. Inevitably, when a new issue or angle was raised -- like when Rep. David McKinley showed Zuckerberg copies of Instagram posts selling prescription pills -- the executives had little time to respond in a meaningful way. The result is that the CEOs' opening statements provided more detail on the issues at hand than anything they were able to say in the five hours that came after them. This, of course, is nothing new. Over the last couple of years, Congress has convened a number of hearings featuring Big Tech executives, and most of them have played out in a similar fashion. But what's increasingly clear is that the both sides of the aisle are eager to impose new regulations on tech platforms.

Apple is considering launching an Apple Watch with a rugged casing aimed at athletes, hikers and others who use the device in more extreme environments, according to people familiar with the matter. Bloomberg reports: The Cupertino, California-based technology giant has internally discussed introducing such a Watch variation later in 2021 or 2022 at the earliest, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private matters. If Apple goes ahead this time, the rugged version would be an additional model similar to how Apple offers a lower-cost option called the Apple Watch SE and special editions co-branded with Nike and Hermes International. Sometimes dubbed the "Explorer Edition" inside Apple, the product would have the same functionality as a standard Apple Watch but with extra impact-resistance and protection in the vein of Casio's G-Shock watches.

Long-time Slashdot reader RockDoctor writes: A project to create a working example of [english mathematician and computer pioneer Charles Babbage's] original "steampunk computer," referred to by Babbage as the "Analytical Engine 30," is continuing. The update comes via a "Spring 2021 report" to the Computer Conservation Society.

The main news is that a new series of plans, dating from about 1857 have been found and are being examined for incorporation into the final design. "One remarkable feature is the extension of the Store to 1000 registers, and most intriguingly various methods of mechanically addressing the store contents," reads the update. This would compare well with electronic processor design... not that anyone is expecting this machine, when built, to be blisteringly fast.

Could a steam-powered Analytical Engine support backup DNS services in a post-apocalyptic world? Is this Cloudflare's ultimate plan?