"Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says that he stands by the company's decision to charge for API access," writes the blog 9to5Mac, "despite the fact that it was massively unpopular, and led to the demise of the leading Reddit app, Apollo." In an interview with FastCo, Huffman is unrepentant about the API decision, but says it could have been better communicated... "[H]e defended the company's decision to limit free access to its API as a necessary measure to foil AI-training freeloaders. 'Reddit is an open platform, and we love that,' he told me. 'At the same time, we have been taken advantage of by some of the largest companies in the world.'"
The incident ended up reappearing in Reddit's own "recap" pages showing highlights from its popular subreddits. For its Technology subreddit, the official recap shows that two most popular posts were "Apollo for Reddit is shutting down" and "Reddit sparks outrage after a popular app developer said it wants him to pay $20 million a year for data access."

And Reddit's official recap also shows that discussion leading to the second-most popular comment of the entire year for the subreddit. "Users supply all the content, and reddit turns around with this huge fuck you to its users, without whom it's just another crappy link aggregator. No, reddit, fuck you and your money grab."

The first most-popular comment appeared in a related discussion, headlined "Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators From Subreddits Continuing Apollo-Related Blackouts." The comment?

Reddit: You're fired!
Moderator: I don't even work here.

The topic also dominated the official recap for the Programming subreddit, where it was the subject of all three of the top comments — and all three of the year's top posts:

Ironically, FastCo headlined its interview "As the AI era begins, Reddit is leaning into its humanity." ("Rebellious moderators. Large language models' peril and promise. Maybe a long-awaited IPO. Amid it all, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says the web megacommunity is on a roll.") Other work has addressed concerns that bubbled to the surface during the moderator dust-up, such as accessibility issues: "I told the team, 'Just show up and ship,'" Huffman says. The official Reddit apps are finally compatible with screen readers used by users with vision impairments, with full compliance with the World Wide Web Consortium's accessibility guidelines planned by the end of 2024.

As for AI's potential to transform the Reddit experience, Huffman is less prone to exuberant overpromising than the average tech company CEO. But the same attributes that led third-party assemblers of large language models to crave access to the company's corpus of information could help it leverage the technology to its own benefit... Rather than involving the most obvious AI functionality, like a Reddit chatbot, the examples he provides relate to moderation of problem content. For instance, the latitude that individual moderators have to govern their communities means that they can set rules that Huffman describes as "sometimes strict and sometimes esoteric." Newbies may run afoul of them by accident and have their posts yanked just as they're trying to join the conversation. In response, Reddit is currently prototyping an AI-powered feature called "post guidance." It'll flag rule-violating material before it's ever published: "The new user gets feedback, and the mod doesn't have to deal with it," says Huffman. He adds that Reddit will also use AI to crack down on willful bad behavior, such as bullying and hate speech, and that he expects progress on that front in 2024...

Members already engage in acts of commerce such as tipping Photoshop wizards to remove ex-boyfriends from images; he says the company plans to facilitate these transactions with a payment system "that will basically involve users sending money to users, whether it's rewarding them for content or paying for digital services or digital goods or [physical] services." "People are trying to start businesses on Reddit, but it wasn't really built for that," he adds. "So just trying to flesh out that ecosystem, I think that'll be very powerful."

In a cavernous theater lit up with the green shapes of camels and palms at COP28 in Dubai, ecologist Thomas Crowther, former chief scientific adviser for the United Nations' Trillion Trees Campaign, was doing something he never would have expected a few years ago: begging environmental ministers to stop planting so many trees. From a report: Mass plantations are not the environmental solution they're purported to be, Crowther argued when he took the floor on December 9 for one of the summit's "Nature Day" events. The potential of newly created forests to draw down carbon is often overstated. They can be harmful to biodiversity. Above all, they are really damaging when used, as they often are, as avoidance offsets-- "as an excuse to avoid cutting emissions," Crowther said.

The popularity of planting new trees is a problem -- at least partly -- of Crowther's own making. In 2019, his lab at ETH Zurich found that the Earth had room for an additional 1.2 trillion trees, which, the lab's research suggested, could suck down as much as two-thirds of the carbon that humans have historically emitted into the atmosphere. "This highlights global tree restoration as our most effective climate change solution to date," the study said. Crowther subsequently gave dozens of interviews to that effect. This seemingly easy climate solution sparked a tree-planting craze by companies and leaders eager to burnish their green credentials without actually cutting their emissions, from Shell to Donald Trump. It also provoked a squall of criticism from scientists, who argued that the Crowther study had vastly overestimated the land suitable for forest restoration and the amount of carbon it could draw down. (The study authors later corrected the paper to say tree restoration was only "one of the most effective" solutions, and could suck down at most one-third of the atmospheric carbon, with large uncertainties.)

Crowther, who says his message was misinterpreted, put out a more nuanced paper last month, which shows that preserving existing forests can have a greater climate impact than planting trees. He then brought the results to COP28 to "kill greenwashing" of the kind that his previous study seemed to encourage -- that is, using unreliable evidence on the benefits of planting trees as an excuse to keep on emitting carbon. "Killing greenwashing doesn't mean stop investing in nature," he says. "It means doing it right. It means distributing wealth to the Indigenous populations and farmers and communities who are living with biodiversity."

For the first time, Netflix has released a comprehensive report of what people watched on the platform over a six month period. It includes hours viewed for every title, the premiere date for any Netflix show and movie, and whether a title was available globally. From the Hollywood Reporter: The list includes worldwide viewing for more than 18,000 movies and seasons of TV (18,214, to be exact) between January and June. Those 18,214 titles all had at least 50,000 hours of viewing over those six months, encompassing about 99 percent of all viewing on Netflix, vp strategy and analysis Lauren Smith told reporters during a presentation of the data on Tuesday. It is the deepest dive into viewing that Netflix (or any other streamer) has ever made public.

Among the highlights: The Night Agent was the biggest title on Netflix in the first half of 2023, racking up 812.1 million hours of viewing. Season two of Ginny & Georgia was second at 665.1 million hours, followed by Korean drama The Glory (622.8 million hours). Wednesday ranked fourth at 507.7 million hours of viewing, despite being released in November 2022. The company is using total hours viewed in this report as a way to measure engagement by its users rather than the "view" formula (total viewing hours divided by running time) it employs to compare titles in its weekly top 10 lists.

Original series and movies dominate the top of the chart, but Smith said the split between original and licensed titles was more even: About 55 percent of viewing was for originals and 45 percent was for licensed shows and films. Suits, which dominated the Nielsen U.S. streaming charts for much of the summer and fall, had a combined 599 million hours of viewing worldwide on Netflix across all nine seasons. The show's first season ranked highest, coming in 67th place with 129.1 million hours. At the other end, a little more than 20 percent of the titles on Netflix's list (3,813 in all) had very little viewing. The company rounded them to 100,000 hours but they would fall between 50,000 and 149,999 hours -- barely a drop in the streamer's more than 100 billion total hours of viewing for the six months. The full "What We Watched: A Netflix Engagement Report" can be downloaded here.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: A document detailing technical requirements of Italy's Piracy Shield anti-piracy system confirms that ISPs are not alone in being required to block pirate IPTV services. All VPN and open DNS services must also comply with blocking orders, including through accreditation to the Piracy Shield platform. [...] Italy's Piracy Shield anti-piracy system reportedly launched last week, albeit in limited fashion. Whether the platform had any impact on pirate IPTV providers offering the big game last Friday is unclear but plans supporting a full-on assault are pressing ahead.

When lawmakers gave Italy's new blocking regime the green light during the summer, the text made it clear that blocking instructions would not be limited to regular ISPs. The document issued by AGCOM [...] specifically highlights that VPN and DNS providers are no exception. "[A]ll parties in any capacity involved in the accessibility of illegally disseminated content -- and therefore also, by way of example and not limitation -- VPN and open DNS service providers, will have to execute the blocks requested by the Authority [AGCOM] including through accreditation to the Piracy Shield platform or otherwise implementing measures that prevent the user from reaching that content," the notice reads. [...]

The relevant section of the new law is in some ways even more broad when it comes to search engines such as Google. Whether they are directly involved in accessibility or not, they're still required to take action. AGCOM suggests that Google understands its obligations and is also prepared to take things further. The company says it will deindex offending platforms from search and also remove their ability to advertise. "Since this is a dynamic blocking, the search engine therefore undertakes to perform de-indexing of all websites/telematic addresses that are the subject of subsequent reports that can also be communicated by rights holders accredited to the platform," AGCOM writes. "Google has shared a procedural mode for the communication of the blocking list, and the Company has also committed to the timely removal of all advertisements that do not comply with the company's policies, having particular regard to those that invest the promotion of pirate sites referring to protected sporting events."

The White House is racing to overcome internal differences and hash out a new policy over how the US and other governments should view the rapid rise of global data flows that are fueling everything from AI to advanced manufacturing. From a report: In a series of sessions due to begin on Wednesday, President Joe Biden's national security and economic teams are due to meet with companies, labor and human rights advocates, and other experts on the digital economy as part of a review launched last month, according to people directly involved. At issue is laying out a clear US position on the rules for the global internet as governments confront an accelerating amount of data flowing across borders with mounting economic, privacy, income inequality and national security consequences.

Coming just days after the EU agreed late Friday to new regulations for AI, the Biden administration's push highlights how governments are racing to figure out their role in a fast-evolving digital economy and competing to lead the conversation. [...] In an interview, a senior administration official said the US was not backing away from long-standing US advocacy for a free and open internet even as some governments around the world are increasingly trying to restrict information flows.

Slash_Account_Dot writes: The FBI investigated a man who allegedly posed as a police officer in emails and phone calls to trick Verizon to hand over phone data belonging to a specific person that the suspect met on the dating section of porn site xHamster, according to a newly unsealed court record. Despite the relatively unconvincing cover story concocted by the suspect, including the use of a clearly non-government ProtonMail email address, Verizon handed over the victim's data to the alleged stalker, including their address and phone logs. The stalker then went on to threaten the victim and ended up driving to where he believed the victim lived while armed with a knife, according to the record.

The news is a massive failure by Verizon who did not verify that the data request was fraudulent, and the company potentially put someone's safety at risk. The news also highlights the now common use of fraudulent emergency data requests (EDRs) or search warrants in the digital underworld, where criminals pretend to be law enforcement officers, fabricate an urgent scenario such as a kidnapping, and then convince telecoms or tech companies to hand over data that should only be accessible through legitimate law enforcement requests. As 404 Media previously reported, some hackers are using compromised government email accounts for this purpose.

Speaking of early-impressions of Gemini, users' confidence in Google might be shaken further to learn that the company pretty much faked the most impressive demo of Gemini. TechCrunch: A video called "Hands-on with Gemini: Interacting with multimodal AI" hit a million views over the last day, and it's not hard to see why. The impressive demo "highlights some of our favorite interactions with Gemini," showing how the multimodal model (that is, it understands and mixes language and visual understanding) can be flexible and responsive to a variety of inputs.

To begin with, it narrates an evolving sketch of a duck from a squiggle to a completed drawing, which it says is an unrealistic color, then evinces surprise ("What the quack!") when seeing a toy blue duck. [...] Just one problem: the video isn't real. "We created the demo by capturing footage in order to test Gemini's capabilities on a wide range of challenges. Then we prompted Gemini using still image frames from the footage, and prompting via text." So although it might kind of do the things Google shows in the video, it didn't, and maybe couldn't, do them live and in the way they implied. In actuality, it was a series of carefully tuned text prompts with still images, clearly selected and shortened to misrepresent what the interaction is actually like.

One of the suggestions in a recent report (PDF) from the European Parliament's Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection is to expand geo-blocking restrictions to the audiovisual sector, including streaming platforms. This has spooked some stakeholders who warn that a ban on geo-blocking would put the entire industry at risk. TorrentFreak reports: The report recommends the EU Commission to launch a comprehensive review of the current geo-blocking regulation and have that completed by 2025. It also carries several suggestions for improvement and expansion of the current rules. "The data presented in the report suggest that the effects of such an [geo-blocking] extension would vary by type of content, depending on the level of consumer demand and on the availability of content across the EU," the report's summary reads. "As regards an extension to audio-visual content, it highlights potential benefits for consumers, notably in the availability of a wider choice of content across borders. The report also identifies the potential impact that such an extension of the scope would have on the overall dynamics of the audio-visual sector, but concludes that it needs to be further assessed."

The proposals don't include the abolishment of all territorial licenses in the EU, and they're mindful of the potential impact on the industry. Nevertheless, some industry insiders are spooked; the Creativity Works! coalition (CW), for example, which counts the MPA, ACT, and the Premier League among its members. According to CW, geo-blocking technology is crucial to the creative and cultural industries in Europe. "Geo-blocking is one of the foundations for Europe's creative and cultural sectors, providing Europeans with the means to create, produce, showcase, publish, distribute and finance diverse, high-quality and affordable content," they write.

Banning geo-blocking altogether would be a disaster that puts millions of jobs and hundreds of billions of euros in revenue at risk, CW warns. At the same time, it may result in more expensive subscriptions for many consumers. "Ending geo-blocking's exclusive territorial licensing would threaten 10,000 European cinemas, access to over 8,500 European VOD films and up to half of European film budgets," CW writes. "What's more, over 100 million European fans could pay more to view the same sports coverage, while major digital streaming platforms might be forced to introduce sharp hikes for consumers in many European countries." Understandably, the movie industry is concerned about legislation that upsets the status quo. However, the IMCO report doesn't recommend a wholesale ban on territorial licenses but aims to ensure that content is available in regions where it currently isn't. At this stage, nothing is set in stone, so proposals could change. However, the present recommendations appear to seek a balance between the interests of the entertainment industry and the public at large.

America's long-standing Advanced Research Projects Agency (or ARPA) developed the foundational technologies for the internet.

This week its energy division announced $42 million for projects enabling a "more secure and reliable" energy grid, "allowing it to utilize more solar, wind, and other clean energy." But specifically, they funded 15 projects across 11 states to improve the reliability, resiliency, and flexibility of the grid "through the next-generation semiconductor technologies." Streamlining the coordinated operation of electricity supply and demand will improve operational efficiency, prevent unforeseen outages, allow faster recovery, minimize the impacts of natural disasters and climate-change fueled extreme weather events, and redcude grid operating costs and carbon intensity.
Some highlights:

• The Georgia Institute of Technology will develop a novel semiconductor switching device to improve grid control, resilience, and reliability.
• Michigan's Great Lakes Crystal Technologies (will develop a diamond semiconductor transistor to support the control infrastructure needed for an energy grid with more distributed generation sources and more variable loads
• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will develop an optically-controlled semiconductor transistor to enable future grid control systems to accommodate higher voltage and current than state-of-the-art devices.
• California's Opcondys will develop a light-controlled grid protection device to suppress destructive, sudden transient surges on the grid caused by lightning or electromagnetic pulses.
• Albuquerque's Sandia National Laboratories will develop novel a solid-state surge arrester protecting the grid from very fast electromagnetic pulses that threaten grid reliability and performance.

America's Secretary of Energy said the new investment "will support project teams across the country as they develop the innovative technologies we need to strengthen our grid security and bring reliable clean electricity to more families and businesses — all while combatting the climate crisis."

Mononymous writes: FreeBSD 14 has been officially released. You can get it from FreeBSD.org, or via freebsd-update and source update methods for existing systems. Some highlights:
- OpenSSH version 9.5p1
- OpenSSL version 3.0.12, a major upgrade from OpenSSL 1.1.1t in FreeBSD 13.2
- OpenZFS release 2.2
- The bhyve hypervisor now supports TPM and GPU passthrough

This version will now create user home directories in /home by default, instead of the traditional /usr/home. More information on the release and changes can be found via the release announcement page.

Firefox 120 will be available tomorrow, bringing support for the Global Privacy Control "Sec-GPC" request header to indicate whether a user consents to a website or service selling or sharing their personal information with third parties. It's also enabling the WebAssembly GC extension by default, opening up new languages like Dart and Kotlin to run in the browser. Phoronix's Michael Larabel highlights some of the other features included in this release: - Ubuntu Linux users now have the ability to import data from Chromium when both are installed as Snap packages. - Picture-in-Picture mode now supports corner snapping on Windows and Linux.
- Support for the light-dark() CSS color function that allows setting of colors for both light and dark without needing to use the prefers-color-scheme media feature. This allows conveniently specifying the preferred light color theme value followed by the dark color theme value.
- CSS support for the lh and rlh line height units.

Google is suing scammers who are trying to use the hype around generative AI to trick people into downloading malware, the company has announced. From a report: In a lawsuit filed today in California, the company says individuals believed to be based in Vietnam are setting up social media pages and running ads encouraging users to "download" its generative AI service Bard. The download actually delivers malware to the victims, which steals social media credentials for the scammers to use. "Defendants are three individuals whose identities are unknown who claim to provide, among other things, 'the latest version' of Google Bard for download," the lawsuit reads.

"Defendants are not affiliated with Google in any way, though they pretend to be. They have used Google trademarks, including Google, Google AI, and Bard to lure unsuspecting victims into downloading malware onto their computers." The lawsuit notes that scammers have specifically used promoted Facebook posts in an attempt to distribute malware. Similar to crypto scams, the lawsuit highlights how interest in an emerging technology can be weaponized against people who may not fully understanding how it operates.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Earlier this year, Mozilla acquired Fakespot, a startup that leverages AI and machine learning to identify fake and deceptive product reviews. Now, Mozilla is launching its first LLM (large language model) with the arrival of Fakespot Chat, an AI agent that will help consumers as they shop online by answering questions about the product or even suggesting questions that could be useful in your product research. [...] Fakespot has been using AI, including generative AI technologies, to make the online shopping process more trustworthy, not less. For instance, it launched a generative AI feature called Pros and Cons last year, that could replace the need for reading reviews by writing up its own summaries of a product's positives and negatives. The feature was trained on billions of data points, with the model itself using five different models under its hood, the company said.

This week, Fakespot Chat launched into testing, allowing shoppers to ask an AI chatbot about a product they're considering, similar to how you could ask a salesperson for help if you were shopping in a physical store in the real world. The technology uses AI and machine learning to sort through the product reviews, sorting real from fake, to answer the user's questions. The information from your chat session is saved to improve the experience for others, Mozilla notes, but users don't have to create an account or divulge personal information for the experience to work. The feature is available via the Fakespot Analyzer or it can be used on an Amazon.com product from Fakespot's browser extension. For the former, you'd copy and paste the URL of the product into the analyzer to ask your questions, but if using the browser add-on, the analysis starts automatically. When the analysis is complete, Fakespot Chat appears on the right-hand side of the analysis page alongside other features, like Pros and Cons, as well as Fakespot's Review Grades and Highlights. You can then interrogate the AI agent about the product as you weigh your purchase decisions.

Google -- under fire in court for allegedly resting on its laurels thanks to its 90% market dominance -- only made an effort to beef up the quality of its search engine in the European Union after being hit by a record antitrust fine, according to internal documents revealed in the US Justice Department's monopolization case against the tech giant. From a report: The Justice Department is arguing at a trial in Washington that Google's failure to improve its products -- unless put under pressure -- proves that it's illegally maintaining its monopoly. Alphabet's Google planned to improve its European search results only after a record 2018 European antitrust fine, according to the documents, which revealed that Google executives discussed a plan dubbed "Go Big in Europe."

The plan aimed to improve results in France and Germany in 2019 and 2020 with changes such as adding post-game soccer video highlights, more local content and news, pronunciation practice for different languages and more information on local television options available for streaming. The catalyst was a 2018 EU antitrust order that forced Google to offer a choice screen giving Android phone users five search engine options to choose from, according to US antitrust enforcers trying the case.

Google says it'll issue a system update to fix a major storage bug in Android 14 that has caused some users to be locked out of their devices. Ars Technica reports: Apparently one more round of news reports was enough to get the gears moving at Google. Over the weekend the Issue tracker bug has been kicked up from a mid-level "P2" priority to "P0," the highest priority on the issue tracker. The bug has been assigned to someone now, and Googlers have jumped into the thread to make official statements that Google is looking into the matter. Here's the big post from Google on the bug tracker [...]. The highlights here are that Google says the bug affects devices with multiple Android users, not multiple Google accounts or (something we thought originally) users with work profiles. Setting up multiple users means going to the system settings, then "Multiple users," then "Allow multiple users," and you can add a user other than the default one. If you do this, you'll have a user switcher at the bottom of the quick settings. Multiple users all have separate data, separate apps, and separate Google accounts. Child users are probably the most popular reason to use this feature since you can lock kids out of things, like purchasing apps.

Shipping a Google Play system update as a quick Band-Aid is an interesting solution, but as Google's post suggests, this doesn't mean the problem is fixed. Play system updates (these are alternatively called Project Mainline or APEX modules) allow Google to update core system components via the Play Store, but they are really not meant for critical fixes. The big problem is that the Play system updates don't aggressively apply themselves or even let you know they have been downloaded. They just passively, silently wait for a reboot to happen so they can apply. For Pixel users, it feels like the horse has already left the barn anyway -- like most Pixel phones have automatically applied the nearly 13-day-old update by now. Users can force Play system updates to happen themselves by going to the system settings, then "Security & Privacy," then "System & updates," then "Google Play system update." If you have an update, you'll be prompted to reboot the phone. Also note that this differs from the usual OS update checker location, which is in system settings, then "System," then "System update." The system update screen will happily tell you "Your system is up to date" even if you have a pending Google Play system update. It would be great to have a single location for OS updates, Google Play System/Mainline updates, and app updates, but they are scattered everywhere and give conflicting "up to date" messages.

A new study found that adult ADHD "may take a toll on the brain and is linked to a higher likelihood of developing dementia," reports the Washington Post: A study published in JAMA Network Open reported that being diagnosed with ADHD as an adult is associated with a 2.77-fold increased risk of dementia.

The study only showed an association and doesn't tell us whether ADHD is a direct cause of cognitive decline. But the results suggest that "if you do have attention-deficit disorder, you're going to have more trouble with normal brain aging," said Sandra Black, a cognitive neurologist at Sunnybrook Research Institute in Toronto who was not involved in the study. "It adds another risk factor...."

Notably, of the 730 participants with adult ADHD, 13.2 percent (96 participants) were diagnosed with dementia. In contrast, of the 108,388 participants without adult ADHD, just 7 percent (7,630 participants) developed dementia. Intriguingly, adults with ADHD who were taking a psychostimulant medication such as Ritalin or Adderall did not have an increased risk of developing dementia compared with those not taking medication. Only 22.3 percent of people with ADHD had taken a psychostimulant medication at any point.
The Post also notes the work of Sara Becker, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Calgary. "In a 2023 systematic review, Becker and her colleagues identified only seven previous studies investigating the link between ADHD and neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia, most of which found that adult ADHD conferred a higher dementia risk."
The research highlights the importance of seeking care — and the need for more research. Treatment with psychostimulant medications may attenuate the risk, said Stephen Levine, a professor at the University of Haifa's School of Public Health in Israel and the lead author of the study. Lifestyle changes, such as better sleep and staying socially engaged, can also lower risk for dementia....

A 2020 landmark study by the Lancet Commission highlighted 12 modifiable factors for dementia that, if addressed, could mitigate the risk of dementia by up to 40 percent. Some of these factors are hearing loss, excessive alcohol intake and smoking.
Other lifestyle changes that lower your risk of demential include keeping up your physical activity, and eating a Mediterranean diet, the Post reports (citing cognitive neurologist Sandra Black).

An estimated 3 percent of adults have ADHD.

The World Science Fiction Society "administers and presents the Hugo Awards, the oldest and most noteworthy award for science fiction," according to Wikipedia. Its members vote on each year's winners, and this year they received 1,847 nominating ballots.

This year the 81st edition of their World Science Fiction Convention was held from October 18 to 22 in Chengdu, China. More details from Gizmodo: While fan-favorite cozy fantasy novel Legends & Lattes lost Best Novel to T. Kingfisher's excellent horror-fantasy Nettle & Bone, Legends & Lattes author Travis Baldtree won the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. Everything Everywhere All at Once snagged film's top honor, and The Expanse's finale episode did the same for televsion, beating out both nominated Andor episodes among others. Some other great standouts include short fiction editor Neil Clarke, who has kept Clarkesworld magazine running despite getting swamped by AI-generated submissions earlier this year.
And "By winning Best Graphic Story or Comic, [Bartosz] Sztybor-who also served as a producer on the overwhelmingly popular Netflix anime Cyberpunk: Edgerunners-also becomes the first Polish author to win a Hugo," reports Forbes: [Cyberpunk 2077: Big City Dreams] is set in Night City-as seen in Cyberpunk 2077-and follows the story of two small-time thieves, Tasha and Mirek, who are trying to survive the harsh metropolis together. "Tasha and Mirek make a living for themselves stealing cyberware and indulging in parties and braindances," the official teaser explains...
Other highlights from this year's awards:

• Best novella: Where the Drowned Girls Go, by Seanan McGuire (Tordotcom)
• Best Novelette: "The Space-Time Painter", by Hai Ya (Galaxy's Edge, April 2022)
• Best Short Story: "Rabbit Test", by Samantha Mills (Uncanny Magazine, November-December 2022)
• Best Series: Children of Time series, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Pan Macmillan/Orbit)
• Best Related Work: Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes, by Rob Wilkins (Doubleday)

An anonymous reader shares a report: It was always abundantly clear that the leader of the Russian space corporation Roscosmos from 2018 to 2022, Dmitry Rogozin, sought to kowtow to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Now we have an anecdote from Putin himself that highlights how much. The story concerns a satellite constellation now known as Sfera (or Sphere, in English), a modestly ambitious constellation of 264 satellites. The Sphere constellation is intended to provide broadband Internet service from middle-Earth orbit to Russia as well as high-resolution Earth observation satellites.

As is usual with Russian space projects, because they tend to be poorly funded, the timeline for Sphere's deployment has been delayed and its scope reduced. It also underwent an unscheduled name change. Prior to 2018, this satellite program was known as Ehfir (Ether), a reference to the invisible substance once thought to fill the universe and the medium through which light waves propagated.

However that changed in 2018 when Putin was publicly announcing the program's creation. He recently recalled this in remarks that were recorded by RIA Novosti's Telegram channel. They were translated for Ars by Rob Mitchell. "At first it was called Ehfir," Putin said. "And at one of my public speeches I was talking and said it was Sfera. I arrived at the Kremlin, and the former Roscosmos head greeted me and said, 'Vladimirovich, you said it was project Sfera, Sfera you said. That's what it is, project Sfera.'"

Rogozin, who was listening to these remarks, acted immediately -- presumably to save his boss from embarrassment. After Rogozin said the constellation was named Sphere, Putin recalled that he asked how's that? Rogozin replied that it had already been renamed Sfera, not to worry. Laughing, Putin added, "So I didn't even make it back and it's already renamed to Sfera. So I said, well, OK then." Rogozin confirmed the anecdote on his Telegram channel this week.

Long-time Slashdot reader Noryungi writes: OpenBSD 7.4 has been officially released. The 55th release of this BSD operating system, known for being security oriented, brings a lot of new things, including dynamic tracer, pfsync improvements, loads of security goodies and virtualization improvements. Grab your copy today! As mentioned by Phoronix's Michael Larabel, some of the key highlights include:

- Dynamic Tracer (DT) and Utrace support on AMD64 and i386 OpenBSD
- Power savings for those running OpenBSD 7.4 on Apple Silicon M1/M2 CPUs by allowing deep idle states when available for the idle loop and suspend
- Support for the PCIe controller found on Apple M2 Pro/Max SoCs
- Allow updating AMD CPU Microcode updating when a newer patch is available
- A workaround for the AMD Zenbleed CPU bug
- Various SMP improvements
- Updating the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) graphics driver support against the upstream Linux 6.1.55 state
- New drivers for supporting various Qualcomm SoC features
- Support for soft RAID disks was improved for the OpenBSD installer
- Enabling of Indirect Branch Tracking (IBT) on x86_64 and Branch Target Identifier (BTI) on ARM64 for capable processors

You can download and view all the new changes via OpenBSD.org.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Today, Tesla released (PDF) its Q3 2023 financial results and as expected, there was an update about Cybertruck in there. In the quarterly presentation, Tesla mentioned that "pilot production" of the Cybertruck has begun: "At Gigafactory Texas, we began pilot production of the Cybertruck, which remains on track for initial deliveries this year." While that doesn't include any new information, in the photo section of the presentation, Tesla added a comment confirming that "deliveries will begin in November 2023."

The previous official comment from CEO Elon Musk was that Tesla was aiming for the end of Q3, which ended last month. Interestingly, Tesla also updated its "installed annual vehicle capacity" and added capacity for the Cybertruck for the first time. Surprisingly, Tesla already claims a capacity of "over 125,000 Cybertrucks" at Gigafactory Texas. In a company post on X, Tesla specifies that its first Cybertruck deliveries are scheduled for November 30th at Giga Texas.

These are the highlights of Tesla's Q3 shareholder update, as mentioned in the company's X post: "Cybertruck production remains on track for later this year, with first deliveries scheduled for November 30th at Giga Texas.

Production of our higher density 4680 cell is progressing as planned & we continue building capacity for cathode production & lithium refining in the US.

In Europe, Model Y remains the best-selling vehicle of any kind (based on latest available data as of August) Thank you to our European owners!

We have more than doubled the size of our AI training compute, accommodating for both our growing data set & Optimus, which is currently being trained for simple tasks through AI rather than hardcoded software, while its hardware continues to improve.

All Hertz rentals in the US & Canada now allow Tesla app access, enabling renters to use keyless lock/unlock via phone key, remotely precondition the cabin & more.

In addition, we redesigned the in-app service experience for owners, making scheduling & tracking service appointments & loaner access much simpler."

Energy deployments increased 90% YoY to 4GWh -- our highest quarterly deployment ever!