An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple has argued for years that developers who don't want to abide by its rules for native iOS apps can always write web apps. It has done so in its platform guidelines, in congressional testimony, and in court. Web developers, for their part, maintain that Safari and its underlying WebKit engine still lack the technical capabilities to allow web apps to compete with native apps on iOS hardware. To this day, it's argued, the fruit cart's laggardly implementation of Push Notifications remains subpar.

The enforcement of Europe's Digital Markets Act was expected to change that -- to promote competition held back by gatekeepers. But Apple, in a policy change critics have called "malicious compliance," appears to be putting web apps at an even greater disadvantage under the guise of compliance with European law. In the second beta release of iOS 17.4, which incorporates code to accommodate Europe's Digital Markets Act, Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) have been demoted from standalone apps that use the whole screen to shortcuts that open within the default browser. This appears to solely affect users in the European Union, though your mileage may vary. Concerns about this demotion of PWAs surfaced earlier this month, with the release of the initial iOS 17.4 beta. As noted by Open Web Advocacy -- a group that has lobbied to make the web platform more capable -- "sites installed to the home screen failed to launch in their own top-level activities, opening in Safari instead."

James Felton reports via IFL Science: One of the deepest metal mines in Europe -- the Pyhasalmi Mine in central Finland -- is to be turned into an enormous gravity battery capable of storing 2 megawatts of energy. [...] Despite the cool name, the idea behind gravity batteries is really simple. During times when energy sources are producing more energy than the demand, the excess energy is used to move weights (in the form of water or sometimes sand) upwards, turning it into potential energy. When the power supply is low, these objects can then be released, powering turbines as our good friend (and deadly enemy) gravity sends them towards the Earth.

Though generally gravity batteries take the form of reservoirs, abandoned mines moving sand or other weights up when excess power is being produced have also been suggested. Scottish company Gravitricity created a system of winches and hoists that can be installed in such disused mineshafts. The company will install the system in the 1,400-meter-deep (4,600 feet) zinc and copper mine in Pyhajarvi, Finland. "A study last year by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) estimated that gravity batteries in abandoned underground mines could store up to 70TWh of energy -- enough to meet global electricity demands," reports The Independent. "The repurposed mines could also provide economic benefits to the communities that previously relied on the mine for their livelihoods."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Science: As detailed in the new issue of the journal Cell Stem Cell, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have developed a novel 3D-printing approach for creating cultures that grow and operate similar to brain tissue. While traditional 3D-printing involves layering "bio-ink" vertically like a cake, the team instead tasked their machine to print horizontally, as if playing dominoes. As New Atlas explains, researchers placed neurons grown from pluripotent stem cells (those capable of becoming multiple different cell types) within a new bio-ink gel made with fibrinogen and thrombin, biomaterials involved in blood clotting. Adding other hydrogels then helped loosen the bio-ink to solve for the 3 encountered during previous 3D-printed tissue experiments. According to Su-Chun Zhang, a research lead and UW-Madison professor of neuroscience and neurology, the resultant tissue is resilient enough to maintain its structure, but also sufficiently malleable to permit adequate levels of oxygen and nutrient intake for the neurons. "The tissue still has enough structure to hold together but it is soft enough to allow the neurons to grow into each other and start talking to each other," Zhang explains in a recent university profile.

Because of their horizontal construction, the new tissue cells formed connections not only within each layer, but across them, as well -- much like human neurons. The new structures could interact thanks to producing neurotransmitters, and even created support cell networks within the 3D-printed tissue. In these experiments, the team printed both cerebral cortex and striatum cultures. Although responsible for very different functions -- the former associated with thought, language, and voluntary movement; the latter tied to visual information -- the two 3D-printed tissues could still communicate, "in a very special and specific way," Zhang said. Researchers believe their technique isn't limited to creating just those two types of cultures, but hypothetically "pretty much any type of neurons [sic] at any time," according to Zhang. This means the 3D-printing method could eventually help study how healthy portions of the brain interact with parts affected by Alzheimers, examining cell signal pathways in Downs syndrome, as well as use tissue to test new drugs. "Our brain operates in networks," Zhang explained. "We want to print brain tissue this way because cells do not operate by themselves. They talk to each other. This is how our brain works and it has to be studied all together like this to truly understand it."

The "technology building blocks" for space solar are already available, reports Clean Technica. "It's just a matter of scaling, systems integration, and adjustments for space-hardiness."

And several groups are looking at it — including the U.S. Space Force To help push costs down, the California Institute of Technology has proposed a sandwich-type solar module that integrates solar harvesting along with conversion to a radio frequency into one compact package, accompanied by a built-in antenna. Last month researchers at the school wrapped up a months-long, in-space test of different types of solar cells. Another approach is illustrated by the Michigan startup Virtus Solis, an industry partner of the University of Bristol. Last June the company and the school received £3.3 million in funding from the UK Net Zero Innovation program, for developing an open-source model for testing the performance of large, centralized antennas in space. "The concept depends upon the use of gigascale antenna arrays capable of delivering over 2GW of power from space onto similar gigascale antenna arrays either at sea or on the ground," the school explained.

As for how such a thing would be launched into space, that's where the U.S. Space Force comes in. Last August, the Space Force awarded a small business contract to the U.S. startup Orbital Composites. The company is tasked with the mission of developing its patented "quantum antenna" and in-space fabrication tools for secure communications in space applications, including space-to-space as well as space-to-Earth and vice versa. The basic idea is to let 3D printing doing much of the work in space. According to Orbital, in-space fabrication would save more than 100 times the cost of applying conventional fabrication methods to large-scale orbiting antennas. "By harnessing the potential of In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (ISAM), the company eyes the prospect of creating significantly larger space antennas," Orbital Composites explains. "By fabricating antennas in space, larger and more complex designs are possible that eliminate the constraints of launch and rocket fairings...."

If you're guessing that a hookup between Virtus and Orbital is in the works, that's a good guess. On February 1, at the SpaceCOM conference in Orlando, Florida, Virtus Solis let slip that it is working with Orbital Composites on a space solar pilot project. If all goes according to plan, the project will be up and running in 2027, deploying Virtus's robot-enabled fabrication system with Orbital's 3D printing. As of this writing the two companies have not posted details, but Space News picked up the thread. "The 2027 mission is designed to showcase critical power-generation technologies including in-space assembly of solar panels and transmission of more than one kilowatt to Earth," Space News explained. "The news release calls the 2027 mission "a precursor to large-scale commercial megawatt-class solar installations in space by 2030...."

To be clear, Orbital's press release about its new Space Force quantum antenna contract does not mention anything in particular about space solar. However, the pieces of the puzzle fit. Along with the Virtus and Grumman connections, in October of 2022 Orbital won a small business contract through SpaceWERX, the Space Force's innovative technologies funding arm, to explore the capabilities of ISAM systems.
"SpaceWERX comes under the umbrella of the U.S. Air Force's AFWERX innovation branch, which has developed a program called SSPIDR, short for Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research Project," the article points out. (While Virtus believes most space-based solar power systems could deliver megawatt hours of electricity at prices comparable to today's market.)

"My goal is to have a firewall that I trust," writes Slashdot reader eggegick, "not a firewall that comes from the manufacture that might have back doors." I'm looking for a cheap mini PC I can turn into a headless Linux-based wireless and Ethernet router. The setup would be a cable modem on the Comcast side, Ethernet out from the modem to the router and Ethernet, and WiFi out to the home network.
Two long-time Slashdot readers had suggestions. johnnys believes "any old desktop or even a laptop will work.... as long as you have a way to get a couple of (fast or Gigabit) Ethernet ports and a good WiFi adapter... " Cable or any consumer-grade broadband doesn't need exotic levels of throughput: Gigabit Ethernet will not be saturated by any such connection...

You can also look at putting FOSS firewall software like DD-WRT or OpenWrt on consumer-grade "routers". Such hardware is usually set up with the right hardware and capabilities you are looking for. Note however that newer hardware may not work with such firmwares as the FCC rules about controlling RF have caused many manufacturers to lock down firmware images.

And you don't necessarily need to roll your own with iptables: There are several BSD or Linux-based FOSS distributions that do good firewall functionality. PFSense is very good and user-friendly, and there are others. OpenBSD provides an exceptionally capable enterprise-level firewall on a secure platform, but it's not designed to be user-friendly.
Long-time Slashdot reader Spazmania agrees the "best bet" is "one of those generic home wifi routers that are supported by DD-WRT or OpenWrt." It's not uncommon to find something used for $10-$20. And then install one or the other, giving a Linux box with full control. Add a USB stick so you have enough space for all the utilities.

I just went through the search for mini-PCs for a project at work. The main problem is that almost all of them cool poorly, and that significantly impairs their life span.I finally found a few at the $100 price point that cooled acceptably... and they disappeared from the market shortly after I bought the test units, replaced with newer models in the $250 ballpark.
Share your own thoughts and experiences in the comments.

Can you roll your own home router?

SpaceX's Starship rocket has been selected by Starlab to launch its private space station into orbit. "SpaceX's history of success and reliability led our team to select Starship to orbit Starlab," Dylan Taylor, chairman and CEO of Voyager Space, said in a statement. "SpaceX is the unmatched leader for high-cadence launches, and we are proud Starlab will be launched to orbit in a single flight by Starship." Space.com reports: Today's announcement didn't give a target launch date. But NASA and Starlab's developers want the four-person commercial station to be up and running before 2030, when the International Space Station (ISS) is expected to cease operations (though that retirement date is apparently not set in stone). [...] The 400-foot-tall (122 meters) Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, capable of hauling up to 150 tons to low Earth orbit. It will send the fully outfitted Starlab up in just one launch, as Taylor noted above.

"Starlab's single-launch solution continues to demonstrate not only what is possible, but how the future of commercial space is happening now," Tom Ochinero, senior vice president of commercial business at SpaceX, said in the same statement. "The SpaceX team is excited for Starship to launch Starlab to support humanity's continued presence in low Earth orbit on our way to making life multiplanetary," Ochinero added.

OpenAI's most powerful AI software, GPT-4, poses "at most" a slight risk of helping people create biological threats, according to early tests the company carried out to better understand and prevent potential "catastrophic" harms from its technology. From a report: In October, President Joe Biden signed an executive order on AI that directed the Department of Energy to ensure AI systems don't pose chemical, biological or nuclear risks. That same month, OpenAI formed a "preparedness" team, which is focused on minimizing these and other risks from AI as the fast-developing technology gets more capable.

As part of the team's first study, released Wednesday, OpenAI's researchers assembled a group of 50 biology experts and 50 students who had taken college-level biology. Half of the participants were told to carry out tasks related to making a biological threat using the internet along with a special version of GPT-4 -- one of the large language models that powers ChatGPT -- that had no restrictions placed on which questions it could answer. The other group was just given internet access to complete the exercise. OpenAI's team asked the groups to figure out how to grow or culture a chemical that could be used as a weapon in a large enough quantity, and how to plan a way to release it to a specific group of people.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In a somewhat groundbreaking yet bizarre scientific feat, MIT biotechnology PhD student researcher Lauren "Ren" Ramlan has coaxed a simulation of the humble E. coli bacteria into a rudimentary screen capable of displaying the iconic video game. However, before you get too excited about playing games in a petri dish, there's a catch. According to Ramlan's simulation, displaying a single frame of Doom on these bioluminescent bacteria -- should anyone attempt to do this with the real thing -- would take roughly 70 minutes, with a full reset to the bacteria's original state taking a whopping eight hours and 20 minutes.

Dubbed a step into the world of biological screens, Ramlan engineered a system where the bacteria would function as 1-bit pixels, toggling between light and dark states. This bio-display utilizes a well plate in a 32x48 array, each containing genetically modified E. coli that can be induced to fluoresce, creating a grid of pixel-like structures.

Entrepreneur Daniel Gross speculates about the wide-ranging economic, technological, geopolitical, and societal implications if advanced AI systems become extremely capable at many different tasks. He poses open-ended questions across areas like markets, real estate, energy, nations, inflation, and geopolitics regarding what the impacts could be, what trends may emerge, what historical parallels could exist, and what investments or trades might make sense in such a hypothetical future scenario. From the post: Nations: Who wins and loses?
$250b of India's GDP exports are essentially GPT-4 tokens... what happens now?
Are there any relevant analogies from history we can compare to?
What is the euclidean distance of reskilling in prior revolutions, and how does AGI compare? The typist became an EA, can the software engineer become a machinist?
Electrification and assembly lines lead to high unemployment and the New Deal, including the Works Progress Administration, a federal project that employed 8.5m Americans with a tremendous budget... does that repeat?

According to Bloomberg (paywalled), OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is reportedly raising billions to develop a global network of chip fabrication factories, collaborating with leading chip manufacturers to address the high demand for chips required for advanced AI models. The Verge reports: A major cost and limitation for running AI models is having enough chips to handle the computations behind bots like ChatGPT or DALL-E that answer prompts and generate images. Nvidia's value rose above $1 trillion for the first time last year, partly due to a virtual monopoly it has as GPT-4, Gemini, Llama 2, and other models depend heavily on its popular H100 GPUs.

Accordingly, the race to manufacture more high-powered chips to run complex AI systems has only intensified. The limited number of fabs capable of making high-end chips is driving Altman or anyone else to bid for capacity years before you need it in order to produce the new chips. And going against the likes of Apple requires deep-pocketed investors who will front costs that the nonprofit OpenAI still can't afford. SoftBank Group and Abu Dhabi-based AI holding company G42 have reportedly been in talks about raising money for Altman's project.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: Researchers at Georgia Tech, in Atlanta, have developed what they are calling the world's first functioning graphene-based semiconductor. This breakthrough holds the promise to revolutionize the landscape of electronics, enabling faster traditional computers and offering a new material for future quantum computers. The research, published on January 3 in Nature and led by Walt de Heer, a professor of physics at Georgia Tech, focuses on leveraging epitaxial graphene, a crystal structure of carbon chemically bonded to silicon carbide (SiC). This novel semiconducting material, dubbed semiconducting epitaxial graphene (SEC) -- or alternatively, epigraphene -- boasts enhanced electron mobility compared with that of traditional silicon, allowing electrons to traverse with significantly less resistance. The outcome is transistors capable of operating at terahertz frequencies, offering speeds 10 times as fast as that of the silicon-based transistors used in current chips.

De Heer describes the method used as a modified version of an extremely simple technique that has been known for over 50 years. "When silicon carbide is heated to well over 1,000C, silicon evaporates from the surface, leaving a carbon-rich surface which then forms into graphene," says de Heer. This heating step is done with an argon quartz tube in which a stack of two SiC chips are placed in a graphite crucible, according to de Heer. Then a high-frequency current is run through a copper coil around the quartz tube, which heats the graphite crucible through induction. The process takes about an hour. De Heer added that the SEC produced this way is essentially charge neutral, and when exposed to air, it will spontaneously be doped by oxygen. This oxygen doping is easily removed by heating it at about 200C in vacuum. "The chips we use cost about [US] $10, the crucible about $1, and the quartz tube about $10," said de Heer. [...]

De Heer and his research team concede, however, that further exploration is needed to determine whether graphene-based semiconductors can surpass the current superconducting technology used in advanced quantum computers. The Georgia Tech team do not envision incorporating graphene-based semiconductors with standard silicon or compound semiconductor lines. Instead, they are aiming for a paradigm shift beyond silicon, utilizing silicon carbide. They are developing methods, such as coating SEC with boron nitride, to protect and enhance its compatibility with conventional semiconductor lines. Comparing their work with commercially available graphene field-effect transistors (GFETs), de Heer explains that there is a crucial difference: "Conventional GFETs do not use semiconducting graphene, making them unsuitable for digital electronics requiring a complete transistor shutdown." He says that the SEC developed by his team allows for a complete shutdown, meeting the stringent requirements of digital electronics. De Heer says that it will take time to develop this technology. "I compare this work to the Wright brothers' first 100-meter flight. It will mainly depend on how much work is done to develop it."

A resident in Virginia has urged the Federal Communications Commission to reconsider canceling $886 million in federal funding for SpaceX's Starlink system. But rival satellite company Viasat has gone out of its way to oppose the citizen-led petition.ÂPCMag: On Jan. 1, the FCC received a petition from the Virginia resident Greg Weisiger asking the commission to reconsider denying the $886 million to SpaceX. "Petitioner is at an absolute loss to understand the Commission's logic with these denials," wrote Weisiger, who lives in Midlothian, Virginia. "It is abundantly clear that Starlink has a robust, reliable, affordable service for rural and insular locations in all states and territories."

The petition arrived a few weeks after the FCC denied SpaceX's appeal to receive $886 million from the commission's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, which is designed to subsidize 100Mbps to gigabit broadband across the US. SpaceX wanted to use the funds to expand Starlink access in rural areas. But the FCC ruled that "Starlink is not reasonably capable of offering the required high-speed, low latency service throughout the areas where it won auction support." Weisiger disagrees. In his petition, he writes that the FCC's decision will deprive him of federal support to bring high-speed internet to his home. "Thousands of other Virginia locations were similarly denied support," he added.

Google researchers say they have evidence that a notorious Russian-linked hacking group -- tracked as "Cold River" -- is evolving its tactics beyond phishing to target victims with data-stealing malware. From a report: Cold River, also known as "Callisto Group" and "Star Blizzard," is known for conducting long-running espionage campaigns against NATO countries, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom. Researchers believe the group's activities, which typically target high-profile individuals and organizations involved in international affairs and defense, suggest close ties to the Russian state. U.S. prosecutors in December indicted two Russian nationals linked to the group.

Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) said in new research this week that it has observed Cold River ramping up its activity in recent months and using new tactics capable of causing more disruption to its victims, predominantly targets in Ukraine and its NATO allies, academic institutions and non-government organizations. These latest findings come soon after Microsoft researchers reported that the Russia-aligned hacking group had improved its ability to evade detection. In research shared with TechCrunch ahead of its publication on Thursday, TAG researchers say that Cold River has continued to shift beyond its usual tactic of phishing for credentials to delivering malware via campaigns using PDF documents as lures.

Japanese startup EX-Fusion plans to eliminate small pieces of space junk with laser beams fired from the ground. Nikkei Asia reports: EX-Fusion stands apart in that it is taking the ground-based approach, with the startup tapping its arsenal of laser technology originally developed in pursuit of fusion power. In October, EX-Fusion signed a memorandum of understanding with EOS Space Systems, an Australian contractor that possesses technology used to detect space debris. EX-Fusion plans to place a high-powered laser inside an observatory operated by EOS Space outside of Canberra. The first phase will be to set up laser technology to track debris measuring less than 10 cm. Pieces of this size have typically been difficult to target from the ground using lasers.

For the second phase, EX-Fusion and EOS Space will attempt to remove the space debris by boosting the power of the laser beams fired from the surface. The idea is to fire the laser intermittently against the debris from the opposing direction of its travel in order to slow it down. With a decreased orbiting speed, the debris will enter the Earth's atmosphere to burn up. High-powered lasers are often associated with weapons that blast objects into smithereens. Indeed, the EOS Space group supplies laser weapon systems used to destroy drones. But lasers designed to remove space debris are completely different from weapon-grade lasers, EOS Space's executive vice president James Bennett said during a visit to Japan in November.

Current laser weaponry often uses fiber lasers, which are capable of cutting and welding metal and can destroy targets like drones through heat created from continuous firing. Capturing and removing space junk instead involves diode-pumped solid-state (DPSS) lasers, which are pulsed to apply force to fast moving debris, stopping it like a brake. EX-Fusion's signature laser fusion process also involves DPSS lasers, which strike the surface of a hydrogen fuel pellet just millimeters in diameter, compressing it to trigger a fusion reaction. This makes space debris removal a useful test along the path to commercializing the fusion technology.

Generative AI "doesn't easily carry over into robotics," write two researchers in IEEE Spectrum, "because the Internet is not full of robotic-interaction data in the same way that it's full of text and images."

That's why they're working on a single deep neural network capable of piloting many different types of robots... Robots need robot data to learn from, and this data is typically created slowly and tediously by researchers in laboratory environments for very specific tasks... The most impressive results typically only work in a single laboratory, on a single robot, and often involve only a handful of behaviors... [W]hat if we were to pool together the experiences of many robots, so a new robot could learn from all of them at once? We decided to give it a try. In 2023, our labs at Google and the University of California, Berkeley came together with 32 other robotics laboratories in North America, Europe, and Asia to undertake the RT-X project, with the goal of assembling data, resources, and code to make general-purpose robots a reality...

The question is whether a deep neural network trained on data from a sufficiently large number of different robots can learn to "drive" all of them — even robots with very different appearances, physical properties, and capabilities. If so, this approach could potentially unlock the power of large datasets for robotic learning. The scale of this project is very large because it has to be. The RT-X dataset currently contains nearly a million robotic trials for 22 types of robots, including many of the most commonly used robotic arms on the market...

Surprisingly, we found that our multirobot data could be used with relatively simple machine-learning methods, provided that we follow the recipe of using large neural-network models with large datasets. Leveraging the same kinds of models used in current LLMs like ChatGPT, we were able to train robot-control algorithms that do not require any special features for cross-embodiment. Much like a person can drive a car or ride a bicycle using the same brain, a model trained on the RT-X dataset can simply recognize what kind of robot it's controlling from what it sees in the robot's own camera observations. If the robot's camera sees a UR10 industrial arm, the model sends commands appropriate to a UR10. If the model instead sees a low-cost WidowX hobbyist arm, the model moves it accordingly.
"To test the capabilities of our model, five of the laboratories involved in the RT-X collaboration each tested it in a head-to-head comparison against the best control system they had developed independently for their own robot... Remarkably, the single unified model provided improved performance over each laboratory's own best method, succeeding at the tasks about 50 percent more often on average." And they then used a pre-existing vision-language model to successfully add the ability to output robot actions in response to image-based prompts.

"The RT-X project shows what is possible when the robot-learning community acts together... and we hope that RT-X will grow into a collaborative effort to develop data standards, reusable models, and new techniques and algorithms."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Futurepower(R) for sharing the article.

After years of development, NASA has unveiled the X-59 supersonic jet capable of breaking the sound barrier without producing a thunderous sonic boom. "Instead, the Quesst will make a much quieter 'thump,' similar to the sound of a car door slamming as heard from indoors," reports Space.com. "If successful, the jet has the potential to revolutionize supersonic flight and aviation in general." From the report: NASA and Lockheed Martin showed off the finished X-59 Quesst ("Quiet SuperSonic Technology") today (Jan. 12) in front of a crowd of nearly 150 at the legendary Lockheed Martin Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California, a research and development site typically known for its secrecy. The elongated beak-like nose section of the aircraft stood out prominently, showing off the fact that it does not have a forward-facing window. [...] Instead, it features what NASA calls the eXternal Vision System, or XVS, which consists of a camera and a cockpit-mounted screen that offers pilots an augmented-reality view of what's in front of the jet.

Jim Free, NASA's associate administrator, continued this sentiment, noting that the X-59 is merely the latest in a long line of NASA X-planes that have revolutionized aviation throughout the agency's history. "Even among other X-planes, the X-59 is special. Every aircraft that receives that X-plane designation has a specific purpose to test new technologies or aerodynamic concepts," Free said, "These special planes push the envelope of what's possible in flight. And once they prove those concepts, they often go into museums. And that's really what makes the X-59 different."

Free was referring to the fact that once the X-59 is ready for flight, the jet will make multiple flights over select residential areas in the United States in order to collect data on how people on the ground below experience and react to the quieter sonic booms it creates. NASA will then use that data to seek approval for commercial supersonic flights from regulatory agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration, with the ultimate goal of making aviation more sustainable and enabling faster flight over populated areas. Some of the applications of supersonic flight mentioned at today's unveiling include rapid medical response, shorter shipping times and, of course, faster travel. "The first 'A' in NASA stands for aeronautics," said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy during the unveiling ceremony. "And we're all about groundbreaking aerospace innovation. The X-59 proudly continues this legacy, representing the forefront of technology driving aviation forward." The 'X' in NASA's latest X-plane stands for 'experimental.'

"This isn't just an airplane, this is an X-plane," Melroy added. "It's the manifestation of a collaborative genius."

SonicSpike shares a report from Forbes: X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, announced it would begin rolling out a peer-to-peer payment service similar to Venmo or PayPal this year -- a feature the social media site's billionaire owner Elon Musk has long pushed as part of his plan to develop an "everything app." X officially announced the new feature in a blog post, touting the new service designed to enhance "user utility and new opportunities for commerce." The company did not give a timeframe on when the new service would be available, but Musk previously told Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood it could launch as early as "mid-2024."

According to the company, the new payment service will "showcas[e] the power of living more of your life in one place," as owner Elon Musk continues to promote X as a future "everything app" capable of handling social media, video and other original content on the same site. X Payments has registered to do business in at least 32 states, according to public records, and has acquired a money transmitter license needed to process payments in 10, TechCrunch reported in December.

Qualcomm today unveiled a new Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 chipset, a single-chip architecture that will likely power Apple Vision Pro competitors from Meta, Samsung, Google and HTC, among others. ZDNet reports: Succeeding last year's XR2 Gen 2, the plus variant brings improved GPU and CPU frequency -- up 15% and 20% respectively, support for 4.3K per eye resolution at 90fps, and the ability for headsets to field 12 or more cameras with on-device AI capabilities. The latter allows equipped models to better track user movements and surrounding objects for more immersive (and harmonious) VR and MR experiences. As for efficiency gains, you'll still be getting the 50% improvement as the previous XR2 Gen 2 when stacked against the XR2 Gen 1 platform. Basically, there's no change on that front.

"(Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2) will take XR productivity and entertainment to the next level by bringing spectacularly clear visuals to use cases such as room-scale screens, life-size overlays and virtual desktops," said Hugo Swart, vice president and general manager of XR, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc, in a Thursday press release. Clearly, the new silicon is aimed at headsets that can do it all -- with feature parity to the $3,500 gorilla in the room, Apple's upcoming Vision Pro headset -- though Qualcomm says it'll be priced accessibly for manufacturers to build hardware around.

How affordable will these competing wearables be? Your guess is as good as mine. But considering we've already gotten products like the $500 Meta Quest 3 fielding the slightly less capable XR2 Gen 2 chip, the future of XR may not be as expensive as it seems. The new Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 chipset is made in collaboration with Google and Samsung, both of which bring expertise in the Android ecosystem and developing mobile VR devices. The trio had announced plans to develop an XR platform back in February of 2023, likely in reaction to the then-rumored headset by Apple.

As spotted by X user bedros_p, Google appears to be preparing to introduce a paid upgrade for Bard Advanced, a "new, cutting-edge AI experience" announced in December that gives users access to Google's best models and capabilities. Android Police reports: According to the strings, you will be able to "Try Bard Advanced for 3 months, on us." After that test period, you will likely have to pay up for the service. A defunct link within the code suggests that it may be part of Google One, but it's not clear if Bard Advanced will be added to all tiers or only more expensive ones with more Google Drive storage. It's also possible that it will be an extra new tier in Google One.

As a refresher, Google launched its most capable AI model yet in December 2023, called Gemini. The LLM is available in three tiers, including a Nano version capable of running on devices like phones and a Pro version currently powering Bard in the US. There is also a Gemini Ultra which isn't public just yet, but supposedly outperforms other LLMs in almost all metrics. Google says that this is the one that will power Bard Advanced.

fahrbot-bot shares a report from The Guardian: Scientists have discovered an entirely new class of antibiotic that appears to kill one of three bacteria considered to pose the greatest threat to human health because of their extensive drug-resistance. Zosurabalpin defeated highly drug-resistant strains of Carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (Crab) in mouse models of pneumonia and sepsis, and was being tested in human trials. Crab is classified as a priority 1 critical pathogen by the World Health Organization, alongside two other drug-resistant forms of bacteria -- Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Enterobacteriaceae.

Antibiotic-resistant infections pose an urgent threat to human health -- particularly those caused by a large group of bacteria known as Gram-negative bacteria, which are protected by an outer shell containing a substance called lipopolysaccharide (LPS). "LPS allows bacteria to live in harsh environments, and it also allows them to evade attack by our immune system," said Dr Michael Lobritz, the global head of infectious diseases at Roche Pharma Research and Early Development in Basel Switzerland, which developed the new drug. No new antibiotic for Gram-negative bacteria have been approved in more than 50 years.

Roche had previously identified Zosurabalpin as capable of blocking the growth of A baumannii but it was not clear how it worked, or if it would be effective in animals with Crab-related infections. Through a series of experiments published in Nature, Prof Daniel Kahne at Harvard University in Cambridge, US, and colleagues showed that the drug prevented LPS from being transported to the outer membrane of the bacterium, killing it. They also found that Zosurabalpin considerably reduced levels of bacteria in mice with Crab-induced pneumonia and prevented the death of those with Crab-related sepsis. While [Lobritz] stressed that this molecule alone would not solve the public health threat of antimicrobial resistant infections, the discovery could lay the foundations for future efforts to drug the same transport system in other bacteria.