An anonymous reader shares a report: A disgruntled former Disney employee allegedly repeatedly hacked into a third-party menu creation software used by Walt Disney World's restaurants and changed allergy information on menus to say that foods that had peanuts in them were safe for people with allergies, added profanity to menus, and at one point changed all fonts used on menus to Wingdings, according to a federal criminal complaint.

The suspect in the case, Michael Scheuer, broke into a proprietary menu creation and inventory system that was developed by a third-party company exclusively for Disney and is used to print menus for its restaurants, the complaint alleges. The complaint alleges he did this soon after being fired by Disney using passwords that he still had access to on several different systems. Once inside the systems, he allegedly altered menus and, in once case, broke the software for several weeks.

"The threat actor manipulated the allergen information on menus by adding information to some allergen notifications that indicated certain menu items were safe for individuals with peanut allergies, when in fact they could be deadly to those with peanut allergies," the criminal complaint states. According to the complaint, the menus were caught by Disney after they were printed but before they were distributed to Disney restaurants. Disney's menus have extensive "allergy friendly" sections.

The BBC interviewed scientists Charley Kline and Bill Duvall 55 years after the first communications were made over a system called Arpanet, short for the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. "Kline and Duvall were early inventors of networking, networks that would ultimately lead to what is today the Internet," writes longtime Slashdot reader dbialac. "Duvall had basic ideas what might come of the networks, but they had no idea of how much of a phenomenon it would turn into." Here's an excerpt from the interview: BBC: What did you expect Arpanet to become?
Duvall: "I saw the work we were doing at SRI as a critical part of a larger vision, that of information workers connected to each other and sharing problems, observations, documents and solutions. What we did not see was the commercial adoption nor did we anticipate the phenomenon of social media and the associated disinformation plague. Although, it should be noted, that in [SRI computer scientist] Douglas Engelbart's 1962 treatise describing the overall vision, he notes that the capabilities we were creating would trigger profound change in our society, and it would be necessary to simultaneously use and adapt the tools we were creating to address the problems which would arise from their use in society."

What aspects of the internet today remind you of Arpanet?
Duvall: Referring to the larger vision which was being created in Engelbart's group (the mouse, full screen editing, links, etc.), the internet today is a logical evolution of those ideas enhanced, of course, by the contributions of many bright and innovative people and organisations.

Kline: The ability to use resources from others. That's what we do when we use a website. We are using the facilities of the website and its programs, features, etc. And, of course, email. The Arpanet pretty much created the concept of routing and multiple paths from one site to another. That got reliability in case a communication line failed. It also allowed increases in communication speeds by using multiple paths simultaneously. Those concepts have carried over to the internet. Today, the site of the first internet transmission at UCLA's Boetler Hally Room 3420 functions as a monument to technology history (Credit: Courtesy of UCLA) As we developed the communications protocols for the Arpanet, we discovered problems, redesigned and improved the protocols and learned many lessons that carried over to the Internet. TCP/IP [the basic standard for internet connection] was developed both to interconnect networks, in particular the Arpanet with other networks, and also to improve performance, reliability and more.

How do you feel about this anniversary?
Kline: That's a mix. Personally, I feel it is important, but a little overblown. The Arpanet and what sprang from it are very important. This particular anniversary to me is just one of many events. I find somewhat more important than this particular anniversary were the decisions by Arpa to build the Network and continue to support its development.

Duvall: It's nice to remember the origin of something like the internet, but the most important thing is the enormous amount of work that has been done since that time to turn it into what is a major part of societies worldwide.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Similar to how Mastodon offers an open source, distributed version of X, the fediverse is getting its own TikTok competitor. This week, an app called Loops began accepting signups on its new platform for sharing short, looping videos. Still in the early stages, Loops is not yet open sourced, nor has it completed its integration with ActivityPub, the protocol that powers Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, and other federated apps. However, both those efforts are in the works and when complete, will allow Loops to add another layer of social activity to the growing open social web known as the fediverse, which now has north of 11.6 million users and over 1 million monthly active users. (Mastodon accounts for roughly 65% of that activity.) Growth in this space has also encouraged other apps to adopt ActivityPub, like social magazine app Flipboard and Meta's Threads. The latter is not yet fully integrated but already has more than 200 million monthly active users.

Loops, meanwhile, was developed by Daniel Supernault, who also created the federated Instagram rival Pixelfed. In fact, Loops will run under the Pixelfed project, according to an FAQ on its website. [...] Aimed at users 13 and up, Loops will allow you to follow other users, as well as like, comment on, or share their videos. But as a part of the federated web -- the open social web running on ActivityPub -- remote users from other platforms like Mastodon and Pixelfed will also be able to follow users' Loops accounts and then view the videos in their home feed on those respective platforms. These remote followers will also be able to like, comment on, or share videos if their platform supports it. Videos published to the app will be held for moderation if the uploader has a low trust score, but trusted users will be able to skip the queue and publish immediately. The trust score is also used to hide problematic comments on posts and apply content warnings, Supernault notes. Other features, like profile sharing or the ability for Loops users to follow Mastodon and Pixelfed users in return, are still "to be announced," the site notes.

A commercial military simulation software, originally inspired by Tom Clancy novels, has become an unexpected tool for military training across NATO forces and defense analysts worldwide. Command: Professional Edition, developed by Britain's Slitherine Software, has secured contracts with the U.S. Air Force and British Strategic Command, while Taiwanese analysts use it to war-game potential conflicts with China.

The software's success stems from its vast database of military equipment and capabilities, compiled through contributions from its million-strong user base. Marine Corps University's wargaming director Tim Barrick employs the software to train officers, noting its effectiveness in developing tactical creativity. "These are not simple problems," said Barrick, a retired Marine colonel, told WSJ.

A fascinating excerpt from the report: Command's British publisher, Slitherine Software, stumbled into popularity. The family business got started around 2000 selling retail CD-ROM games like Legion, involving ancient Roman military campaigns. When Defense Department officials in 2016 first contacted Slitherine, which is based in an old house in a leafy London suburb, its father-and-son managers were so stunned they thought the call might be a prank. "Are you taking the piss?" J.D. McNeil, the father, recalled asking near the end of the conversation.

England and Wales have recorded their lowest birth rate since records began in 1938, with women having an average of 1.44 children in 2023, official data showed on Monday. The figure falls well below the 2.1 children per woman needed to maintain a stable population without migration in developed nations, the Office for National Statistics reported.

The rate has declined steadily since 2010. The steepest drops occurred among women under 30, with new mothers in 2023 averaging almost a year older than in 2013. Experts link the decline to multiple factors, including widespread contraception use, women's increased participation in education and employment, and rising childcare and housing costs. The trend mirrors similar patterns across developed economies, with EU nations like Italy and Spain reporting rates as low as 1.2 children per woman in 2023.

When SpaceX developed reusable boosters for its Falcon rockets, it helped cut costs of launches.

Now the Wall Street Journal reports that last week's first-time catch of "its huge Starship booster" could "extend SpaceX's cost advantages, especially in launches to low-Earth orbit, where SpaceX and others operate satellites." A fully and rapidly reusable Starship would push down SpaceX's costs by limiting the need to crank out new hardware and cutting downtime between flights, space industry executives say. Bain, the consulting firm, has estimated that Starship would reduce the cost of getting each kilogram to low-Earth orbit by 50 to 80 times... SpaceX's rocket peers are moving toward reusability, but they are behind the progress Musk's company has made.

- The huge booster that will power New Glenn, the orbital rocket Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is developing, is designed to be reusable. That rocket is slated to launch for the first time next month.

- ULA, the rocket operator owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, is looking to recover the two engines that help power the first part of its new rocket, Vulcan Centaur. The parent company for Arianespace, whose new vehicle is powered by an expendable booster, has also invested in a startup developing a reusable booster.

- Last year, Rocket Lab USA used an engine that had flown before on a flight of its Electron rocket, and is working on a new vehicle, called Neutron, with a booster it could use again.

- Jason Kim, chief executive of Firefly Aerospace, said the reusable vehicle the Texas-based company is developing with Northrop Grumman would give launch customers more flexibility and better pricing. "It really comes down to the affordability and the schedule," Kim said in a recent interview.
"We need reusability for rockets, just like we have reusability for cars, for airplanes, for bicycles, for horses," Musk said in a video SpaceX posted earlier this year...

In Iceland, "a volcanic system has awoken after an 800-year slumber," according to a multimedia CNN Special Report. "But in another part of Iceland, scientists and engineers are hoping to harness magma's immense power to solve the planet's biggest problem..."

It all started in 2009 when Bjarni Pálsson, an engineer with Iceland's national power company, accidentally drilled into a magma chamber. "Armed with new technology and know-how, he is going back in..." The ambition of the geothermal experts and volcanologists that comprise the Krafla Magma Testbed is to convert the immense heat and pressure into a new "limitless" form of supercharged geothermal energy — a tantalizing prospect as the world struggles to end its relationship with planet-heating fossil fuels. "This has never been done before," said Hjalti Páll Ingólfsson, director of the Geothermal Research Cluster, which developed the project....

If all goes to plan, the first borehole will be completed in 2027 and will mark the first time anyone has ever implanted sensors directly into a magma chamber... If the first drilling experiment succeeds, the team will move onto the second borehole, due to be completed in 2029 — and this could be the global gamechanger. It's here the team will attempt to harness the intense heat of magma to produce a new kind of extreme geothermal energy, many times more powerful than conventional...

If they succeed, the implications could reverberate around the world, Ingólfsson said. There are an estimated 800 million people living within roughly 60 miles of an active volcano.
The report includes a map showing volcano sites around the earth where similar drilling could theoretically unleash the same intense magma-powered extreme geothermal energy.

Iceland's plan is to drill down 1.2 miles — about 2 kilometers — into a magma chamber that's around 1,800 Fahrenheit (nearly 1,000 degrees Celsius). The engineering feat "won't be easy," the article acknowledges. "But as humans heat the planet at record speed with fossil fuel pollution, there is increasing pressure to perform moonshot feats of engineering to save us from ourselves."

SFGate spills the secrets of Disneyland's "Enchanted Tiki Room" and its lifelike animatronic singing birds — Jose, Fritz, Michael and Pierre — "whose movements were perfectly synced with the audio track." "Beneath the room, the heartbeat of the attraction is a $1 million installation of electronics equipment, operated by a roll of 14-channel magnetic tape," the Orange County Register wrote upon its opening. "It is the same system which programs the U.S. military's polaris missile." That system also ran very hot. To keep guests from overheating, air conditioning was installed throughout the building, making the Tiki Room Disneyland's first attraction to be fully air conditioned...
Or, as another article puts it, "While Disney did not delve into the speculative science of cryogenics to preserve his life, he did borrow the mechanical brain of a nuclear missile to simulate life, creating a new type of entertainment in the process."

The article remembers how Wernher Von Braun became a technical advisor (and on-camera presenter) for three Disney-produced TV episodes about space travel — at the same time Von Braun was working as technical director for the U.S. Army rocket program that produced the world's first long-range guided ballistic missile, plus the first submarine-launched ballistic missile with its ground-breaking launch control mechanism: An important aspect of the Polaris launch system hinged on the fact that the conditions under which the missiles might be launched were constantly changing. Different underwater currents, temperatures, and flexing of the metal hull all contributed to the difficulty of a successful launch. In order to minimize human errors and to automate the sequence as much as possible, scientists developed an audio control system. A magnetic audio tape with a series of prerecorded cues precisely timed to account for the submarine's movement, controlled the launch machinery.

This new technology, invented to deliver nuclear destruction, proved exactly what Disney needed for his wonderland developed for children.
The article concludes that Disneyland engineering "transformed Von Braun's military technology" to the point today where "what was once controlled by the artificial brain of a nuclear missile is now run by the equivalent of a MacBook."

SFGate delves deeper into the attraction's strange origins — and how it all came full circle 63 years later... At the intersection of Main Street and Adventureland, a restaurant called the Pavillion — now the Jolly Holiday — bridged the gap. Under one roof, it served food to Main Street guests on one side and Adventureland diners on the other. The inelegant transition created an eyesore that Walt despised... The need for the Tiki Cafe "appeared to be less about food and more about aesthetics," Ken Bruce writes in Before the Birds Sang Words , a comprehensive history of the attraction.

In 1961, Walt gathered with park designers about the concept. The sketch made by legendary theme park designer John Hench was remarkably thorough, with much of its design incorporated into the final product... When Walt saw a plethora of birds in the sketch, he famously exclaimed, "We can't have birds in there ... because they'll poop in the food." Hench hurriedly ad-libbed that the birds would be mechanical, a concept that Walt adored...

Although its powerful air conditioning may be its biggest draw today, many attractions you love owe their existence to the flock of singing birds. Disney engineers' work on the talking flora and fauna laid the foundation for much more complex Audio-Animatronics (a word that Walt Disney coined). Without Jose, Fritz, Michael and Pierre, there would be no Haunted Mansion, no Pirates of the Caribbean, no Rise of the Resistance. Next year, in celebration of Disneyland's 70th anniversary, the park will unveil one of its most sophisticated animatronics yet: Walt Disney himself. It will be the first time Walt appears in a Disney attraction anywhere in the world, completing a journey that started with a mechanical bird and ends with an immortal homage.
Their article also reveals that a year after the Tiki Room opened, one of the birds was programmed to say "Come, there's an island there for you in Hawaii. Soaring birds of United Airlines fly there too!" Because Disneyland had signed a sponsorship deal with United Airlines...

"We passed Berkeley air — just outdoor air — into the material to see how it would perform," says U.C. Berkeley chemistry professor Omar Yaghi, "and it was beautiful.

"It cleaned the air entirely of CO2," Yaghi says in an announcement from the university. "Everything."

SFGate calls it "a discovery that could help potentially mitigate the effects of climate change..." Yaghi's lab has worked on carbon capture since the 1990s and began work on these crystalline structures in 2005. The innovative substance has lots of tiny holes, making it "great for storing gases or liquids, much like a sponge holds water," Yaghi said... While it could take one to two years for the powder to be usable in large-scale applications, Yaghi co-founded Atoco, an Irvine company, to commercialize his research and expand it beyond just carbon capture and storage.
"Capturing carbon from the air just got easier," says the headline on the anouncement from the university, which explains why this technology is crucial: [T]oday's carbon capture technologies work well only for concentrated sources of carbon, such as power plant exhaust. The same methods cannot efficiently capture carbon dioxide from ambient air, where concentrations are hundreds of times lower than in flue gases. Yet direct air capture, or DAC, is being counted on to reverse the rise of CO2 levels, which have reached 426 parts per million, 50% higher than levels before the Industrial Revolution. Without it, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we won't reach humanity's goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degreesC (2.7 degreesF) above preexisting global averages.

A new type of absorbing material developed by chemists at the University of California, Berkeley, could help get the world to negative emissions... According to Yaghi, the new material could be substituted easily into carbon capture systems already deployed or being piloted to remove CO2 from refinery emissions and capture atmospheric CO2 for storage underground. UC Berkeley graduate student Zihui Zhou, the paper's first author, said that a mere 200 grams of the material, a bit less than half a pound, can take up as much CO2 in a year — 20 kilograms (44 pounds) — as a tree.
Their research was published this week in the journal Nature.

And it's also interesting that they're using AI, according to the university's announcement: Yaghi is optimistic that artificial intelligence can help speed up the design of even better COFs and MOFs for carbon capture or other purposes, specifically by identifying the chemical conditions required to synthesize their crystalline structures. He is scientific director of a research center at UC Berkeley, the Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet (BIDMaP), which employs AI to develop cost-efficient, easily deployable versions of MOFs and COFs to help limit and address the impacts of climate change. "We're very, very excited about blending AI with the chemistry that we've been doing," he said.
Another potential use could be for harvesting water from desert air for drinking water, Yaghi told SFGate. But he seems very focused specifically on carbon capture.

"Another thing is that we need a strong determination among officials and industries to make carbon capture a high priority. Things have to change, but I believe that direct carbon capture from air is very doable."

PV Magazine reports: Researchers in Australia and China have developed an innovative technology enabling direct lithium extraction from difficult-to-process sources like saltwater, which they say represents a substantial portion of the world's lithium potential.

Until now, up to 75% of the world's lithium-rich saltwater sources have remained untapped because of technical limitations, but given predictions that global lithium supply could fall short of demand as early as 2025, the researchers believe they have a game-changing solution. Their technology is a type of nanofiltration system that uses ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid, or EDTA, as a chelating agent to selectively separate lithium from other minerals, especially magnesium, which is often present in brines and difficult to remove.
"With some predicting global lithium supply could fall short of demand as early as 2025, the innovative technology sets a new standard in lithium processing," writes SciTechDaily: The work, co-led by Dr Zhikao Li, from the Monash Suzhou Research Institute and the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, and Professor Xiwang Zhang from the University of Queensland, promises to meet the surging demand for lithium and paves the way for more sustainable and efficient extraction practices... "Our technology achieves 90 percent lithium recovery, nearly double the performance of traditional methods, while dramatically reducing the time required for extraction from years to mere weeks," Dr. Li said.

The technology also turns leftover magnesium into a valuable, high-quality product that can be sold, reducing waste and its impact on the environment. Beyond its advanced efficiency, the EALNF system brings innovation to address major environmental concerns associated with lithium extraction. Unlike conventional methods that deplete vital water resources in arid regions, the technology produces freshwater as a by-product.

Dr Li said the system was flexible and ready for large-scale use, meaning it can quickly expand from testing to full industrial operations. "This breakthrough is crucial for avoiding a future lithium shortage, making it possible to access lithium from hard-to-reach sources and helping power the shift to clean energy."
"Our scalable process minimizes environmental impact while maximizing resource utilization," according to the researchers' article in Nature Sustainability, "thereby catalysing the shift toward a more sustainable future."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

The Register's Laura Dobberstein reports: Huawei formally launched its home-brewed operating system, HarmonyOS NEXT, on Wednesday, marking its official separation from the Android ecosystem. Huawei declared it released and "officially started public beta testing" of the OS for some of its smartphones and tablets that run its own Kirin and Kunpeng chips.

Unlike previous iterations of HarmonyOS, HarmonyOS NEXT no longer supports Android apps. Huawei maintains top Chinese outfits aren't deterred by that. It cited Meituan, Douyin, Taobao, Xiaohongshu, Alipay, and JD.com as among those who have developed native apps for the OS. In case you're not familiar, they're China's top shopping, payment, and social media apps.

Huawei also claimed that at the time of its announcement, over 15,000 HarmonyOS native applications and meta-services were also launched. That's a nice number, but well short of the millions of apps found on the Google Play Store and Apple's App Store. The Chinese tech player also revealed that the operating system has 110 million lines of code and claimed it improves the overall performance of mobile devices running it by 30 percent. It also purportedly increases battery life by 56 minutes and leaves an average of 1.5GB of memory for purposes other than running the OS.

Apple's latest iOS update has removed the "C" button from its Calculator app, replacing it with a backspace function. The change, part of iOS 18, has sparked debate among users accustomed to the traditional clear function. The removal of the "C" button represents a significant departure from decades-old calculator design conventions, The Atlantic writes. From the story: The "C" button's function is vestigial. Back when calculators were commercialized, starting in the mid-1960s, their electronics were designed to operate as efficiently as possible. If you opened up a desktop calculator in 1967, you might have found a dozen individual circuit boards to run and display its four basic mathematical functions. Among these would have been an input buffer or temporary register that could store an input value for calculation and display. The "C" button, which was sometimes labeled "CE" (Clear Entry) or "CI" (Clear Input), provided a direct interface to zero out -- or "clear" -- such a register. A second button, "AC" (All Clear), did the same thing, but for other parts of the circuit, including previously stored operations and pending calculations. (A traditional calculator's memory buttons -- "M+," "M-," "MC" -- would perform simple operations on a register.)

By 1971, Mostech and Texas Instruments had developed a "calculator on a chip," which condensed all of that into a single integrated circuit. Those chips retained the functions of their predecessors, including the ones that were engaged by "C" and "AC" buttons. And this design continued on into the era of pocket calculators, financial calculators, and even scientific calculators such as the ones you may have used in school. Some of the latter were, in essence, programmable pocket computers themselves, and they could have been configured with a backspace key. They were not.

Tom's Hardware reports on some interesting hardware history being shared on X.com: AMD engineer Phil Park identified a curious nugget of PC architectural history from, of all places, a year-old Quora answer posted by former Intel engineer [and Pentium Pro architect] Robert Colwell. The nugget indicates that Intel could have beaten AMD to the x86-64 punch if the former wasn't dead-set on the x64-only Itanium line of CPUs.
Colwell had responded on Quora to the question "Shouldn't Intel with its vast resources have been able to develop both architectures?" This was a marketing decision by Intel — they believed, probably rightly, that bringing out a new 64-bit feature in the x86 would be perceived as betting against their own native-64-bit Itanium, and might well severely damage Itanium's chances. I was told, not once, but twice, that if I "didn't stop yammering about the need to go 64-bits in x86 I'd be fired on the spot" and was directly ordered to take out that 64-bit stuff. I decided to split the difference, by leaving in the gates but fusing off the functionality. That way, if I was right about Itanium and what AMD would do, Intel could very quickly get back in the game with x86. As far as I'm concerned, that's exactly what did happen.
Phil Park continued the discussion on X.com. "He didn't quite get what he wanted, but he got close since they had x86-64 support in subsequent products when Intel made their comeback." (So, Park posted later in the thread, "I think he won the long game.")

Park also shared a post from Nicholas Wilt (NVIDIA CUDA designer who earlier did GPU computing work at Microsoft and built the prototype for Windows Desktop Manager): I have an x86-64 story of my own. I pressed a friend at AMD to develop an alternative to Itanium. "For all the talk about Wintel," I told him, "these companies bear no love for one another. If you guys developed a 64-bit extension of x86, Microsoft would support it...."

Interesting coda: When it became clear that x86-64 was beating Itanium in the market, Intel reportedly petitioned Microsoft to change the architecture and Microsoft told Intel to pound sand.

The FIDO Alliance is developing new specifications to enable secure transfer of passkeys between different password managers and platforms. Announced this week, the initiative is the result of collaboration among members of the FIDO Alliance's Credential Provider Special Interest Group, including Apple, Google, Microsoft, 1Password, Bitwarden, Dashlane, and others. From a report: Passkeys are an industry standard developed by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium, and were integrated into Apple's ecosystem with iOS 16, iPadOS 16.1, and macOS Ventura. They offer a more secure and convenient alternative to traditional passwords, allowing users to sign in to apps and websites in the same way they unlock their devices: With a fingerprint, a face scan, or a passcode.

Passkeys are also resistant to online attacks like phishing, making them more secure than things like SMS one-time codes. The draft specifications, called Credential Exchange Protocol (CXP) and Credential Exchange Format (CXF), will standardize the secure transfer of credentials across different providers. This addresses a current limitation where passkeys are often tied to specific ecosystems or password managers. Further reading: Passwords Have Problems, But Passkeys have more.

An anonymous reader shares a report: From the ground, northeastern Norway might look like fjord country, peppered with neat red houses and dissected by snowmobile tours through the winter. But for pilots flying above, the region has become a danger zone for GPS jamming. The jamming in the region of Finnmark is so constant, Norwegian authorities decided last month they would no longer log when and where it happens -- accepting these disturbance signals as the new normal.

Nicolai Gerrard, senior engineer at NKOM, the country's communications authority, says his organization no longer counts the jamming incidents. "It has unfortunately developed into an unwanted normal situation that should not be there. Therefore, the [Norwegian authority in charge of the airports] are not interested in continuous updates on something that is happening all the time." Pilots meanwhile, still have to adapt, usually when they are above 6,000 feet in the air. "We experience this almost every day," says Odd Thomassen, a captain and senior safety adviser at the Norwegian airline Wideroe. He claims jamming typically lasts between six and eight minutes at a time.

In a memo from CEO Sundar Pichai, Google said it is moving the team behind the Gemini app to its AI research lab DeepMind. The shift "will improve feedback loops, enable fast deployment of our new models in the Gemini app," said Pichai. Reuters reports: Gemini is Google's most advanced AI technology, developed by DeepMind. The Gemini app is the direct consumer interface to the latest Gemini models. The Gemini app team, led by Sissie Hsiao, will join Google DeepMind under the leadership of its CEO Demis Hassabis.

Google also announced that Prabhakar Raghavan, who has led the company's products including search, ads and commerce will become chief technologist and work closely with Pichai. Raghavan's role as lead of the Knowledge and Information team will be taken up by Nick Fox, who has closely worked with Google on its AI product roadmap.

Amazon said on Wednesday it has signed three agreements on developing the nuclear power technology called small modular reactors, becoming the latest big tech company to push for new sources to meet surging electricity demand from data centers. From a report: Amazon said it will fund a feasibility study for an SMR project near a Northwest Energy site in Washington state. The SMR is planned to be developed by X-Energy. Financial details were not disclosed. Under the agreement, Amazon will have the right to purchase electricity from four modules. Energy Northwest, a consortium of state public utilities, will have the option to add up to eight 80 MW modules, resulting in a total capacity up to 960 MWs, or enough to power the equivalent of more than 770,000 U.S. homes. The additional power would be available to Amazon and utilities to power homes and businesses. "Our agreements will encourage the construction of new nuclear technologies that will generate energy for decades to come," said Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon Web Services. SMRs will have their components built in a factory to reduce construction costs. [...]

Amazon said it is also leading a funding round for $500 million to support X-Energy's development of SMRs. Amazon and X-Energy aim to bring more than 5 gigawatts online in the United States by 2039, which the companies call the largest commercial deployment target of SMRs yet. Amazon also signed an agreement with Dominion Energy, opens new tab to explore the development of an SMR project near the utility's existing power station in Virginia. The about 300 megawatt project would help meet power needs in a region where demand is expected to jump 85% in 15 years, Dominion said.

Casio has opened preorders for Moflin, a cuddly robotic pet that "looks like a cross between a hamster and Star Trek's Tribbles," reports The Verge. The robot is priced at around $400 and is expected to ship on November 7th. From the report: Unlike Sony's robot dog Aibo that can follow you around, Moflin is designed to be held and cuddled, and over time, Casio says it will learn who you are and attempt to develop a simulated bond expressed through unique sounds and movements. Originally developed through a collaboration with a Japanese startup called Vanguard Industries, Moflin is now being manufactured and distributed by Casio. It can be preordered for [around $398 USD] and is expected to be available starting on November 7th. Casio is also offering an optional subscription service called Club Moflin for [about $44 USD] per year, which gets you a discount on repairs, cleanings, and even a complete fur replacement. Accidents happen.

Casio's Moflin isn't designed to be a play toy like Sony's Aibo. It's intended to be more of a comforting companion and potentially a tool to help improve your mental wellness, similar to Qoobo, the headless robotic cat. While being held, Moflin's limited head and body movements are supposed to make it feel like the furry robot is attempting to snuggle with you, and as with many devices debuting this year, there are some AI-powered features, too. Moflin is supposed to learn to recognize the person who interacts with it the most through their voice and the way they handle the bot, and it will respond with unique sounds and movements only expressed to that person to simulate a close bond.

The robot is also designed to develop its own simulated feelings and personality, which can change over time. With regular interactions, it will become happy, secure, and calm. If it's ignored, it can become stressed, anxious, and sad. But given the robot's limited emotive capabilities, it doesn't make sad sounds, or display an anxious wiggle, demonstrating those feelings. Its emotional state can only be determined through an app, making it feel almost like a very expensive Tamagotchi, minus any digital rewards for being a diligent caregiver. The app can also be used to turn down the volume of the sounds the robot makes.

"Technical outerwear brand Arc'teryx and wearable technology startup Skip have teamed up to create exoskeleton hiking pants, powered by AI..." reports CNN. After four years of collaboration and testing, the two companies plan to start selling the battery-powered pants in 2025 for $5,000 — but they're also "available to rent and try out now," according to CNN's video report: "You can think of it like an e-bike for walking..." says Skip's co-founder and chief product officer Anna Roumiantseva. "On the way up, it really kind of offloads some of those big muscle groups that are working their hardest. We like to say it gives you about 40% more power in your legs on the way up with every step." ("And then supports their knees on the way down," says Cam Stuart, Arc'Teryx's advanced concepts team manager for research and engineering.)

Kathryn Zealand, Skip Co-founder and CEO adds, "There's a lot of artificial intelligence built into these pants," with Roumiantseva explaining that technology "understands how you move, predicts how you're going to want to move next — and then assists you in doing that, so that the assistant doesn't feel like you're walking to the beat of the robot or is moving independently..."

Stuart: I think when people think of what an exoskeleton is, they think of this big bionic frame or they think it's like Avatar or something like that. The challenge for us really was how do we put that in a pair of pants...?"

Co-founder Roumiantseva: We've done a lot of work to make a lot of the complicated and sophisticated technology that goes into it look and feel as approachable and as similar to a garment as possible.

Co-founder Zealand: And so maybe you think about them like a pair of pants.
CNN points out it isn't the only "recreational exoskeleton." (Companies like Dnsys and Hypershell have even "developed their own lightweight exoskeletons — through Kickstarter campaigns.")

But beyond recreation, this also has applications for people with disabilities. "Movement and mobility, it's such a huge driver of quality of life, it's such a huge driver of joy," says Skip's co-founder and chief product officer. "It does become a luxury — and that's a huge part of why we're building what we're building. Is we don't think it should be."

wiredmikey writes: As the dust settles following the massive Windows BSOD tech outages caused by CrowdStrike in July 2024, the question is now, how do we prevent this happening again? While there was no current way Microsoft could have prevented this incident, the OS firm is obviously keen to prevent anything similar happening in the future. SecurityWeek talked to David Weston, VP enterprise and OS security at Microsoft, to discuss Windows kernel access and safe deployment practices (or SDP).
Former Ukranian officer Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov created a Signal channel where military communications specialists could talk with civilian radio experts, reports MIT's Technology Review. But radio communications are crucial for drones, so... About once a month, he drives hundreds of kilometers east in a homemade mobile intelligence center: a black VW van in which stacks of radio hardware connect to an array of antennas on the roof that stand like porcupine quills when in use. Two small devices on the dash monitor for nearby drones. Over several days at a time, Flash studies the skies for Russian radio transmissions and tries to learn about the problems facing troops in the fields and in the trenches.

He is, at least in an unofficial capacity, a spy. But unlike other spies, Flash does not keep his work secret. In fact, he shares the results of these missions with more than 127,000 followers — including many soldiers and government officials — on several public social media channels. Earlier this year, for instance, he described how he had recorded five different Russian reconnaissance drones in a single night — one of which was flying directly above his van... Drones have come to define the brutal conflict that has now dragged on for more than two and a half years. And most rely on radio communications — a technology that Flash has obsessed over since childhood. So while Flash is now a civilian, the former officer has still taken it upon himself to inform his country's defense in all matters related to radio...

Flash has also become a source of some controversy among the upper echelons of Ukraine's military, he tells me. The Armed Forces of Ukraine declined multiple requests for comment, but Flash and his colleagues claim that some high-ranking officials perceive him as a security threat, worrying that he shares too much information and doesn't do enough to secure sensitive intel... [But] His work has become greatly important to those fighting on the ground, and he recently received formal recognition from the military for his contributions to the fight, with two medals of commendation — one from the commander of Ukraine's ground forces, the other from the Ministry of Defense...

And given the mounting evidence that both militaries and militant groups in other parts of the world are now adopting drone tactics developed in Ukraine, it's not only his country's fate that Flash may help to determine — but also the ways that armies wage war for years to come.
He's also written guides on building cheap anti-drone equipment...