Phys.org reports that a newly published theoretical/computer-modeling study "suggests that the world's most powerful lasers might finally crack the elusive physics behind some of the most extreme phenomena in the universe — gamma ray bursts, pulsar magnetospheres, and more."

The study comes from an international team including researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and France's Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (publishing in the journal Physical Review Letters.): The team's modeling study shows that petawatt (PW)-class lasers — juiced to even higher intensities via light-matter interactions — might provide a key to unlock the mysteries of the strong-field (SF) regime of quantum electrodynamics (QED). A petawatt is 1 times ten to the fifteenth power (that is, followed by 15 zeroes), or a quadrillion watts. The output of today's most powerful lasers is measured in petawatts... "This is a powerful demonstration of how advanced simulation of complex systems can enable new paths for discovery science by integrating multiple physics processes — in this case, the laser interaction with a target and subsequent production of particles in a second target," said ATAP Division Director Cameron Geddes....

The scheme consists of boosting the intensity of a petawatt laser pulse with a relativistic plasma mirror. Such a mirror can be formed when an ultrahigh intensity laser beam hits an optically polished solid target. Due to the high laser amplitude, the solid target is fully ionized, forming a dense plasma that reflects the incident light. At the same time the reflecting surface is actually moved by the intense laser field. As a result of that motion, part of the reflected laser pulse is temporally compressed and converted to a shorter wavelength by the Doppler effect. Radiation pressure from the laser gives this plasma mirror a natural curvature. This focuses the Doppler-boosted beam to much smaller spots, which can lead to extreme intensity gains — more than three orders of magnitude — where the Doppler-boosted laser beam is focused. The simulations indicate that a secondary target at this focus would give clear SF-QED signatures in actual experiments.

The study drew upon Berkeley Lab's diverse scientific resources, including its WarpX simulation code, which was developed for modeling advanced particle accelerators under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy's Exascale Computing Project... The discovery via WarpX of novel high-intensity laser-plasma interaction regimes could have benefits far beyond ideas for exploring strong-field quantum electrodynamics. These include the better understanding and design of plasma-based accelerators such as those being developed at the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator. More compact and less expensive than conventional accelerators of similar energy, they could eventually be game-changers in applications that range from extending the reach of high-energy physics and of penetrating photon sources for precision imaging, to implanting ions in semiconductors, treating cancer, developing new pharmaceuticals, and more.

"It is gratifying to be able to contribute to the validation of new, potentially very impactful ideas via the use of our novel algorithms and codes," Vay said of the Berkeley Lab team's contributions to the study. "This is part of the beauty of collaborative team science."
Long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot has suggested that the article deserves an alternate title: "Article I Read Three Times and Still Don't Completely Understand."

Paul Ratner writes via Interesting Engineering: Theoretical inventions known as the "UFO patents" have been inflaming worldwide curiosity. A product of the American engineer Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais, the patents were filed during his work for the U.S. Navy and are so ambitious in their scope and imagination that they continue to draw interest despite any clear evidence that they are feasible. The patents include designs for a futuristic hybrid vehicle with a radical propulsion system that would work equally well in the air, underwater, and in space, as well as a compact fusion reactor, a gravitational wave generator, and even a "spacetime modification weapon." The technology involved could impact reality itself, claims its inventor, whose maverick audacity rivals that of Nikola Tesla.

How real are these ideas? While you can read the patents for yourself, it's evident that the tech necessary to actually create the devices described is beyond our current capabilities. Yet research into many of these fields has gone on for years, which may explain why the Navy expressed an interest. Another likely influence is the fact that the Chinese government seems to be working to develop similar technology. The fantastical inventions devised by Dr. Pais largely build upon an idea that he calls "The Pais Effect." In his patent write-ups and in an interview with The Drive, he described it as "the generation of extremely high electromagnetic energy fluxes (and hence high local energy densities) generated by controlled motion of electrically charged matter (from solid to plasma states) subjected to accelerated vibration and/or accelerated spin, via rapid acceleration transients." This effect amounts to the ability to spin electromagnetic fields to contain a fusion reaction. The electromagnetic energy fields would be so powerful that they could "engineer the fabric of our reality at the most fundamental level," writes Pais. In practical terms, this invention could lead to a veritable revolution in propulsion, quantum communications, and create an abundance of cheaply-produced energy. Certainly, an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence, as posits the Sagan standard.

Despite the well-founded unease at Dr. Pais's inventions, the Navy took them seriously enough to run experiments for three years and even found some of them "operable," although the extent of that alleged operability is under debate. In the patent documents, two Navy officials seemed to assert the operability of the inventions. Furthermore, in correspondence with The Drive's "War Zone," Timothy Boulay of NAWCAD, stated that Pais's High Energy Electromagnetic Field Generator was, in fact, tested from 2016 until 2019, at a cost of $508,000. The team working on the project consisted of at least 10 technicians and engineers and put in some 1,600 hours of work. But upon the conclusion of the testing, the Pais Effect "could not be proven," shared Boulay. What happened subsequently with the tested device and further investigations is not known at this point. There are indications in documents obtained by The Drive's WarZone through the Freedom of Information Act that the inventions could be moved to another research department in the Navy or the Air Force, or possibly even to NASA or DARPA, but whether that really happened is not clear. "One of the most attention-grabbing designs by Dr. Pais is the 2018 patent for a cone-shaped craft of unprecedented range and speed," writes Ratner. "Another futuristic patent with far-reaching ramifications is Pais' Plasma Compression Fusion Device. [...] Notes from researchers who worked on vetting Pais' ideas indicate that a possible outcome of the plasma fusion device and the high energy levels it may generate is the 'Spacetime Modification Weapon' (SMW). Research documents refer to it as 'a weapon that can make the Hydrogen bomb seem more like a firecracker, in comparison.'"

Pais also has a patent for an electromagnetic field generator, which could create "an impenetrable defensive shield to sea and land as well as space-based military and civilian assets." Another device conceived by Pais that could deflect asteroids is the high-frequency gravitational wave generator.

Razer has announced an update to its popular Huntsman lineup of mechanical keyboards that reduces input latency to "near-zero," the company claims. The Verge reports: [T]he newly announced Huntsman V2 and Huntsman V2 Tenkeyless (which omits the numpad, volume wheel, and media controls for a more compact board) both have a polling rate of 8,000Hz, meaning they can theoretically detect key presses eight times faster than the original Huntsman keyboards. Combined with the keyboards' optical switches, which use an infrared beam of light to sense when they've been pressed rather than metal contact points, Razer reckons the two new Huntsman keyboards will feel more responsive for gaming, especially when combined with a high-refresh rate monitor. In contrast, standard mechanical switches can suffer from what's known as a "debounce delay," when the keyboard has to take a moment to work out if a key has actually been pressed or not.

Other improvements introduced with the V2 keyboards include new doubleshot PBT keycaps, which have a more durable design with legends that shouldn't wear away over time. The doubleshot design also allows the keyboard's programmable RGB backlighting to shine through the caps. There are seven preset lighting effects built into the keyboard, and you can customize them via Razer's software and save them to the board's firmware. Both keyboards are available with either Razer's clicky or linear optical switches. The linear switches have also seen improvements since the keyboard's first iteration, with the addition of a silicon sound dampener inside, and more lubricant to make them feel smoother to press. Razer also says it's improved the acoustics of the keyboards, with the addition of a new layer of sound dampening foam, and there's now a wrist rest included in the box with both keyboards. The full-size Huntsman V2 features a volume wheel and media controls on its top right, but only the smaller tenkeyless model has a detachable USB-C cable.

Researchers have developed a technique for reconstructing whole genomes, including the human genome, on a personal computer. "This technique is about a hundred times faster than current state-of-the-art approaches and uses one-fifth the resources," reports Phys.Org. From the report: The study, published September 14 in the journal Cell Systems, allows for a more compact representation of genome data inspired by the way in which words, rather than letters, offer condensed building blocks for language models. [...] To approach genome assembly more efficiently than current techniques, which involve making pairwise comparisons between all possible pairs of reads, [researchers] turned to language models. Building from the concept of a de Bruijn graph, a simple, efficient data structure used for genome assembly, the researchers developed a minimizer-space de Bruin graph (mdBG), which uses short sequences of nucleotides called minimizers instead of single nucleotides. "Our minimizer-space de Bruijn graphs store only a small fraction of the total nucleotides, while preserving the overall genome structure, enabling them to be orders of magnitude more efficient than classical de Bruijn graphs," says [one of the researchers].

The researchers applied their method to assemble real HiFi data (which has almost perfect single-molecule read accuracy) for Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies, as well as human genome data provided by Pacific Biosciences (PacBio). When they evaluated the resulting genomes, [researchers] found that their mdBG-based software required about 33 times less time and 8 times less random-access memory (RAM) computing hardware than other genome assemblers. Their software performed genome assembly for the HiFi human data 81 times faster with 18 times less memory usage than the Peregrine assembler and 338 times faster with 19 times less memory usage than the hifiasm assembler. Next, [researchers] used their method to construct an index for a collection of 661,406 bacterial genomes, the largest collection of its kind to date. They found that the novel technique could search the entire collection for antimicrobial resistance genes in 13 minutes -- a process that took 7 hours using standard sequence alignment.

Toyota said on Tuesday it expects to spend more than $13.5 billion by 2030 to develop batteries and its battery supply system -- a bid to lead in the key automotive technology over the next decade. From a report: The world's largest automaker by volume, which pioneered hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles with the popular Prius, is now moving rapidly to deliver its first all-electric line-up next year. Considered a leader in developing batteries for electric vehicles, Toyota said it aims to slash the cost of its batteries by 30% or more by working on the materials used and the way the cells are structured. "Then, for the vehicle, we aim to improve power consumption, which is an indicator of the amount of electricity used per kilometer, by 30%, starting with the Toyota bZ4X," Chief Technology Officer Masahiko Maeda told a briefing, referring to an upcoming compact SUV model.

Passengers escaped an Alaska Airlines jet via emergency slides on Monday night after a malfunctioning smartphone filled the cabin with smoke. The Register reports: The pilot ordered the evacuation of flight 751 from New Orleans to Seattle after someone's cellphone started to spit out sparks and smoke just after landing. As the aircraft was still waiting on the tarmac at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport for a gate, the slides were deployed and all 129 passengers and six crew made it out. The errant mobile was also stuffed in a bag to curb its compact conflagration. Two people, we're told, were taken to hospital.

"The crew acted swiftly using fire extinguishers and a battery containment bag to stop the phone from smoking," a spokesperson for Alaska Airlines told The Register. "Crew members deployed the evacuation slides due to hazy conditions inside the cabin. Two guests were treated at a local area hospital." Airport officials, meanwhile, said "only minor scrapes and bruises were reported." It's unknown which device malfunctioned on this flight, but it makes us think back to the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco of 2016 that prompted Samsung to formally recall the smartphone after nearly 100 reports of them catching fire and spewing noxious black smoke. The Note 7 was also banned from aircraft in the United States under an emergency order.

A new paper suggests Saturn's core is more like a fluid than a solid, and makes up more of the planet's interior than we thought. From a report: With its massive rings stretching out 175,000 miles in diameter, Saturn is a one-of-a-kind planet in the solar system. Turns out its insides are pretty unique as well. A new study published in Nature Astronomy on Monday suggests the sixth planet from the sun has a "fuzzy" core that jiggles around. It's quite a surprising find. "The conventional picture for Saturn or Jupiter's interior structure is that of a compact core of rocky or icy material, surrounded by a lower-density envelope of hydrogen and helium," says Christopher Mankovich, a planetary scientist at Caltech and coauthor of the new study, along with his colleague Jim Fuller.

What Mankovich and Fuller glimpsed "is essentially a blurred-out version of that conventional structure." Instead of seeing a tidy boundary dividing the heavier rocks and ice from the lighter elements, they found that the core is oscillating so that there is no single, clear separation. This diffuse core extends out to about 60% of Saturn's radius -- a huge leap from the 10 to 20% of a planet's radius that a traditional core would occupy. One of the wildest aspects of the study is that the findings did not come from measuring the core directly -- something we've never been able to do. Instead, Mankovich and Fuller turned to seismographic data on Saturn's rings first collected by NASA's Cassini mission, which explored the Saturnian system from 2004 to 2017.

"Saturn essentially rings like a bell at all times," says Mankovich. As the core wobbles, it creates gravitational perturbations that affect the surrounding rings, creating subtle "waves" that can be measured. When the planet's core was oscillating, Cassini was able to study Saturn's C ring (the second block of rings from the planet) and measure the small yet consistent gravitational "ringing" caused by the core. Mankovich and Fuller looked at the data and created a model for Saturn's structure that would explain these seismographic waves -- and the result is a fuzzy interior. "This study is the only direct evidence for a diffuse core structure in a fluid planet to date," says Mankovich.

"A start-up founded by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says it is nearing a technological milestone that could take the world a step closer to fusion energy, which has eluded scientists for decades," reports the New York Times: Researchers at M.I.T.'s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and engineers at the company, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, have begun testing an extremely powerful magnet that is needed to generate immense heat that can then be converted to electricity. It would open the gates toward what they believe could eventually be a fusion reactor... Though a fusion energy breakthrough remains elusive, it is still held out as one of the possible high-technology paths to ending reliance on fossil fuels. And some researchers believe that fusion research could finally take a leap forward this decade. More than two dozen private ventures in the United States, Europe, China and Australia and government-funded consortia are now investing heavily in efforts to build commercial fusion reactors. Total investment by people such as Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos is edging toward $2 billion. The federal government is also spending about $600 million each year on fusion research, and there is a proposed amendment to add $1 billion to the Biden administration's infrastructure bill, said Andrew Holland, chief executive of the Fusion Industry Association...

Commonwealth's new magnet, which will be one of the world's most powerful, will be a crucial component in a compact nuclear fusion reactor known as a Tokamak, a design that uses magnetic forces to compress plasma until it is hotter than the sun... Commonwealth Fusion executives claim that the magnet is a significant technology breakthrough that will make Tokamak designs commercially viable for the first time. They say they are not yet ready to test their reactor prototype, but the researchers are finishing the magnet and hope it will be workable by 2025...

Commonwealth, which has raised more than $250 million so far and employs 150 people, received a significant boost last year when physicists at M.I.T.'s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and the company published seven peer-reviewed papers in the Journal of Plasma Physics explaining that the reactor will work as planned. What remains to be proved is that the Commonwealth prototype reactor can produce more energy than it consumes, an ability that physicists define as Q greater than 1. The company is hoping that its prototype, when complete, will produce 10 times the energy it consumes.
Commonwealth's chief executive (also a plasma physicist) explains to the Times how fusion energy is different than other sources: because it really doesn't require any resources. "You add up all the costs, the cost of normal stuff like concrete and steel, and it will make as much power as a gas plant, but without having to pay for the gas."

Three-and-half months after launching the Magic Keyboard with Touch ID, Apple is finally breaking it out from its iMac bundle. The accessory is now available as a standalone through Apple Stores and the company's site. From a report: There are two versions: the standard and a longer model with a numeric keypad (pretty much what the company offers with all of its Magic Keyboards), running $149 and $179, respectively. There's also a $99 version that keeps the new rounded, compact design, but drops the Touch ID in favor of a key that locks the system. But where's the fun in that? All of the models have keys devoted to Spotlight, Dictation, Do Not Disturb and Emoji.

Long-time Slashdot reader phalse phace writes: 2021 is turning out to be an even stronger year for vinyl album sales than in 2020.

In the first six months of 2021, 19.2 million vinyl albums were sold, outpacing CD volume of 18.9 million, according to MRC Data, an analytics firm that specializes in collecting data from the entertainment and music industries. That is a 108% increase from the 9.2 million that were sold during the same period in 2020.

And according to MRC Data, Record Store Day 2021 helped to sell 1.279 million vinyl albums in the U.S. in the week ending June 17, a record for a Record Store Day week and the third-largest week for vinyl album sales since MRC Data began electronically tracking sales in 1991. Further, with 942,000 vinyl albums sold at independent record stores in the week ending June 17, that marks the largest week ever for the format at the indie sector in MRC Data history.

Apple has hired Ulrich Kranz, a former senior executive at BMW AG's electric car division, to help lead its own vehicle efforts. Bloomberg reports: The technology giant hired Kranz in recent weeks, about a month after he stepped down as chief executive officer of Canoo, a developer of self-driving electric vehicles. Before co-founding Canoo, Kranz was senior vice president of the group that developed the i3 and i8 cars at BMW, where he worked for 30 years.

Kranz is one of Apple's most significant automotive hires, a clear sign that the iPhone maker is determined to build a self-driving electric car to rival Tesla and other carmakers. Kranz will report to Doug Field, who led development of Tesla's mass-market Model 3 and now runs Apple's car project, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss a private matter. [...] Following successful stints at BMW's Mini division and teams working on sports cars and SUVs, Kranz was asked to run Project I, a battery-powered vehicle skunkworks started in 2008. It yielded the all-electric i3 compact and the plug-in hybrid i8 sports car. The former was panned by design critics, and production was very limited on the latter. Kranz left BMW in 2016 and soon became chief technology officer at Faraday Future, an electric vehicle startup based in Los Angeles. He stayed only three months, before co-founding Canoo. Both firms have struggled with their technology and ability to produce vehicles, while Canoo reportedly discussed selling itself to Apple and other companies.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The future of driving may cost you $8.50 per hour if Volkswagen follows through on its boardroom musings. The German automaker is considering charging an hourly fee for access to autonomous driving features once those features are ready. The company is also exploring a range of subscription features for its electric vehicles, including "range or performance" increases that can be purchased on an hourly or daily basis, said Thomas Ulbrich, a Volkswagen board member, to the German newspaper Die Welt. Ulbrich said the first subscription features will appear in the second quarter of 2022 in vehicles based on Volkswagen's MEB platform, which underpins the company's new ID.3 compact car and ID.4 crossover.

The executive said that Volkswagen will also offer video games in cars, similar to Tesla's arcade. "In the charging breaks, even if they only last 15 minutes, we want to offer customers something," Ulbrich said. He said the automaker wouldn't be developing the games themselves, and it's not clear whether they'll come preinstalled or be available for purchase through an app store. Volkswagen's real moneymaker might be autonomous driving, though. "In autonomous driving, we can imagine that we switch it on by the hour. We assume a price of around seven euros ($8.50) per hour. So if you don't want to drive yourself for three hours, you can do it for 21 euros," said Klaus Zellmer, chief sales officer of the Volkswagen brand. In a swipe at Tesla, he said that by charging hourly fees, VW would make autonomous driving more accessible than "a car with a five-digit surcharge." That's not to say Volkswagen isn't hoping to make serious money off the subscriptions. In total, Zellmer said he anticipates the subscriptions will eventually make the company hundreds of millions of euros in additional revenue.

One of the biggest new features of macOS Monterey, the next version of macOS announced at WWDC, is the ability to share a keyboard and mouse across an iMac, MacBook, and iPad. It's called "Universal Control" and it's coming this Fall. Ars Technica reports: Apple SVP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi demonstrated the ability to simply set an iPad near a Mac, move the cursor of the latter toward the former, and have the iPad automatically recognize it. This means users can directly drag and drop files between devices, for instance. Apple demonstrated this feature across an iMac, MacBook, and iPad in concert. Beyond that, macOS Monterey will make it possible to AirPlay video, audio, documents, and other items from an iPad or iPhone directly to a Mac.

The update also brings the Shortcuts feature first seen on iPhones and iPads, allowing users to access automated tasks and workflows on the Mac. Apple says the existing Automator app will continue to be supported with Monterey and that users will be able to import existing Automator workflows into Shortcuts. Safari will also receive something of a makeover with Monterey, bringing a thinner and visually cleaner toolbar alongside more compact tabs. Active tab bars will now house the traditional URL and search bar, and tabs can now be grouped together and accessed through Safari's sidebar. These tab groups can then be accessed and updated across Macs, iPhones, and iPads.

The update will include a number of features from the newly announced iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 updates as well. This includes a SharePlay feature that lets users share content or their current device screen over a FaceTime call and a Focus feature that filters and minimizes notifications when users indicate they are in the middle of a particular activity ("coding," "gaming," etc.).

AmiMoJo writes: Mozilla Ideas is a new platform by Firefox-maker Mozilla to improve communication with the Firefox userbase. At its core, Ideas works similarly to Uservoice and other services of its kind. Firefox users and developers may post new content on the platform, and everyone else may comment and vote on the idea. Users may access the latest, top voted, most discussed or even random topics on the Ideas platform. Current ideas include re-adding the compact interface option, improving the master password protection, or providing a higher contrast default theme.

"An EV motor has been developed that uses no magnets, thus lessening the United States' reliance on Chinese magnets (which make up 97% of the world's supply)," writes Slashdot reader nickwinlund77, adding: "I wonder what the motor's performance is like on high grade roads?" New Atlas reports: German company Mahle has just announced a new electric motor that sounds like it solves a lot of problems in a very tidy manner. The new Mahle design uses no magnets, instead using powered coils in its rotor. Unlike previous efforts, it transfers power to the spinning rotor using contactless induction -- so there are basically no wear surfaces. This should make it extremely durable -- not that electric motors have a reputation for needing much maintenance. The lack of expensive metals should make it cheaper to manufacture than typical permanent-magnet motors. Mahle says the ability to tune and change the parameters of the rotor's magnetism instead of being stuck with what a permanent magnet offers has allowed its engineers to achieve efficiencies above 95 percent right through the range of operating speeds -- "a level that has only been achieved by Formula E racing cars." It's also particularly efficient at high speeds, so it could help squeeze a few extra miles out of a battery in normal use. The company says it'll scale nicely from sizes relevant to compact cars up to commercial vehicles.

"Our magnet-free motor can certainly be described as a breakthrough, because it provides several advantages that have not yet been combined in a product of this type," says Dr. Martin Berger, Mahle's VP of Corporate Research and Advanced Engineering. "As a result, we can offer our customers a product with outstanding efficiency at a comparatively low cost." Mass production is about two and a half years away, according to IEEE Spectrum, and Mahle has not yet nominated which auto manufacturers it's dealing with, but test samples are already starting to circulate.

Scientists studying a sample of oceanic crust retrieved from the Pacific seabed nearly a mile down have discovered traces of a rare isotope of plutonium, the deadly element that has been central to the atomic age. From a report: They say it was made in colliding stars and later rained down through Earth's atmosphere as cosmic dust millions of years ago. Their analysis opens a new window on the cosmos. "It's amazing that a few atoms on Earth can help us learn about where half of all the heavier elements in our universe are synthesized," said Anton Wallner, the paper's first author and a nuclear physicist. Dr. Wallner works at the Australian National University as well as the Helmholtz Center in Dresden, Germany. Dr. Wallner and his colleagues reported their findings in Science on Thursday. Plutonium has a bad reputation, one that is well-deserved.

The radioactive element fueled the world's first nuclear test explosion as well as the bomb that leveled the Japanese city of Nagasaki during World War II. After the war, scientists found the health repercussions of plutonium to be particularly deadly. If inhaled or ingested in minute quantities, it could result in fatal cancers. Small amounts also pack a bigger punch than other nuclear fuels, a quality that aided the making of compact city busters that nuclear powers put atop their intercontinental missiles. The element is often considered artificial because it is so seldom found outside of human creations. In the periodic table, it is the last of 94 atoms characterized as naturally occurring. Traces of it can be found in uranium ores. Astrophysicists have long known that it's also spontaneously created in the universe. But they've had a hard time pinpointing any exact sites of its origin.

Berkshire Hathaway is trading at more than $421,000 per Class A share, and the market is optimistic. That's a problem. From a report: The price has grown so high, it has nearly hit the maximum number that can be stored in one common way exchange computers handle digits. On Tuesday, Nasdaq temporarily suspended broadcasting prices for Class A shares of Berkshire over several popular data feeds. Such feeds provide real-time price updates for a number of online brokerages and finance websites. Nasdaq's computers can only count so high because of the compact digital format they use for communicating prices. The biggest number they can handle is $429,496.7295. Nasdaq is rushing to finish an upgrade later this month that would fix the problem. It isn't just Nasdaq.

Another exchange operator, IEX Group Inc., said in March that it would stop accepting investors' orders in Class A shares of Berkshire Hathaway "due to an internal price limitation within the trading system." It's the stock-market version of the Y2K bug. And it's becoming an increasingly urgent issue as shares of Warren Buffett's company have risen more than 20% this year, buoyed by a rising market and a return to profitability after fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Here's the trouble: Nasdaq and some other market operators record stock prices in a compact computer format that uses 32 bits, or ones and zeros. The biggest number possible is two to the 32nd power minus one, or 4,294,967,295. Stock prices are frequently stored using four decimal places, so the highest possible price is $429,496.7295. No other stock is anywhere near Berkshire Class A's stratospheric price levels, so it is understandable why the engineers behind Nasdaq's and IEX's systems chose the number format, which programmers call a four-byte unsigned integer.

Artem S. Tashkinov writes: Over the past ten years, Firefox market share has decreased substantially and the web browser has lost its appeal and coolness. Seeing that, someone at Mozilla probably decided that the best way to entice people back is by changing its UI, thus Firefox has already seen quite a huge number of changes despite other major web browsers staying relatively the same in terms of their visuals; i.e. Google Chrome and Apple Safari look almost the same as they did a decade ago. The most substantial redesign, which is being prepared for the next release, called Proton, promises to drive most power users away because it's broken on a number of levels and makes using the browser a very unpleasant experience.

So, what has changed:
- The compact density option for the address bar is now gone, and not only that, the title bar is now a lot taller than before. Overall, vertically, the title bar and address bar now take almost a dozen pixels more than previous Firefox releases, which steals very precious vertical space.
- The floating tabs. The active tab is now totally disconnected from the active web page and it looks out of place.
- The inactive tabs now completely lack a delimiter between them; and in the case of websites lacking a favicon, all inactive tabs look like one, which makes understanding what's open and what to click very difficult and time consuming.
- Mozilla has removed icons from menus, which makes navigating them slower and more difficult. Human beings can easily recognize and memorize icons, and now instead you have to read 20 menu items and try to understand what you actually need to click. Just to illustrate it, check how Firefox 88 looks and what is up and coming.

It surely looks like whatever UX studies Mozilla has done were either not run properly, or the data being collected was not properly understood. Mozilla has disabled feedback for Firefox, they've made it abundantly clear that you cannot leave comments in their Bugzilla, and considering they want to deprecate userChrome.css, it makes it impossible to restore the semblance of a good web browser experience. The Slashdot crowd loves free and open-source web browsers, so the question is, how can we make the company stop maiming and destroying their most important product?

Netflix says it has a plan to hit net zero greenhouse gas emissions by the end of 2022, with a big part of the streaming giant's efforts aimed at operating more eco-friendly film and TV productions. From a report: The "Net Zero + Nature" plan was outlined Tuesday in a blog post by Emma Stewart, PhD, who joined Netflix as its first sustainability officer last fall. At Netflix, "we aspire to entertain the world," she wrote. "But that requires a habitable world to entertain." In 2020, Netflix estimates its carbon footprint was 1.13 million metric tons, down slightly from 1.31 million the year prior (mostly due to delayed content productions during the COVID-19 pandemic). Roughly 50% of that was generated by the physical production of Netflix films and series, including third-party projects licensed as Netflix-branded originals. Another 45% came from corporate operations (e.g. office space) and purchased goods (like marketing spend) and 5% was attributed to internet cloud providers like Amazon Web Services and Netflix's Open Connect content delivery network.

Netflix's Net Zero + Nature approach encompasses three steps: reducing emissions, aligning with the Paris Agreement's goal to limit global warming to 1.5C; investing in projects that prevent carbon from entering the atmosphere; and investing in projects that remove carbon. (Netflix says its goal of reaching net zero CO2 emissions is a higher standard than "carbon neutral," which doesn't require reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.) By 2030, Netflix is aiming to reduce direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions (Scope 1 and 2 emissions) by 45%, in line with the guidance from the Science Based Targets Initiative, a partnership among CDP, the U.N. Global Compact, World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

Firefox's "Compact density" option, which reduces the size of the user interface, is set to disappear when Mozilla rolls out its Proton visual redesign for the browser later this year. PCMag reports: A bug was posted on Mozilla's bug tracking system entitled "Remove compact mode inside Density menu of customize palette." The reasons given for its removal include the fact it's "currently fairly hard to discover" and "we assume gets low engagement." The development team wants to "make sure that we design defaults that suit most users and we'll be retiring the compact mode for this reason." The Bugzilla thread highlights a desire for compact density to be retained as an option, but it doesn't seem likely to survive right now.

When Proton arrives, the Normal and Touch density options are expected to remain, with Touch increasing the size of the user interface to make it more finger-friendly. Meanwhile, the development team is optimizing the Normal density for displays that use 768 pixels for height, while most displays now use a higher resolution than that. Hopefully this doesn't mean the UI will be larger than it is now by default.