Businesses

India Aims To Make Domestic Microchips By End of 2024 (ft.com) 31

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
India will break ground on its first semiconductor assembly plant next month and begin producing the country's first domestically manufactured microchips by the end of 2024, according to a senior government official who is overseeing New Delhi's $10bn chipmaking foray. From a report: Ashwini Vaishnaw, India's minister of electronics and information technology, said US semiconductor company Micron Technology, which is setting up a chip assembly and test facility in Gujarat, would start construction in August on the $2.75bn project, which includes government support. Vaishnaw said the India Semiconductor Mission spearheaded by Narendra Modi's government was also doing "extensive work" to marshall support from other supply chain partners, including suppliers of chemicals, gases and manufacturing equipment, alongside companies interested in setting up silicon wafer fabrication plants.

"This is the fastest for any country to set up a new industry," Vaishnaw said in an interview with the Financial Times. "I'm not just saying a new company -- this is a new industry for the country." He added: "Eighteen months is when we have targeted for [the first] production to come out of this factory -- that is, December of '24." The minister's remarks set a demanding timeline for Modi's government as it strives to build up India's capacity in producing smartphones, batteries, electric vehicles and other electronics. The country's tech manufacturing sector lags behind those of east Asia's export-led economies, notably China, which began earlier and offered more subsidies to industry.
Earth

World Registers Hottest Day Ever Recorded on July 3 (reuters.com) 126

Posted by msmash from the concerning-signs dept.
July 3 was the hottest day ever recorded globally, according to data from the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction. From a report: The average global temperature reached 17.01 degrees Celsius (62.62 Fahrenheit), surpassing the August 2016 record of 16.92C (62.46F) as heatwaves sizzled around the world. The southern U.S. has been suffering under an intense heat dome in recent weeks. In China, an enduring heatwave continued, with temperatures above 35C (95F). North Africa has seen temperatures near 50C (122F). And even Antarctica, currently in its winter, registered anomalously high temperatures. Ukraine's Vernadsky Research Base in the white continent's Argentine Islands recently broke its July temperature record with 8.7C (47.6F).
Mars

Mars Helicopter Finally Makes Contact After Two Months of Silence (gizmodo.com) 26

Posted by msmash from the all's-well dept.
JoeRobe writes: After 63 days of agonizing silence, NASA's Martian chopper finally phoned home. The Ingenuity helicopter reestablished communication with mission control on June 28, officially logging its 52nd flight as a success, NASA recently announced. The space agency lost contact with Ingenuity as the helicopter was descending towards the surface of the Red Planet following its most recent flight on April 26.

The reason behind the communication drop was that a hill was inconveniently positioned between Ingenuity and its rover pal Perseverance, preventing the Martian pair from communicating with one another. Ingenuity relies on Perseverance to deliver its messages to Earth, using shiny antennas to exchange data at about 100 kilobits per second. The data is routed from the Ingenuity-facing antenna to the rover's main computer before being transferred to Earth by way of an orbiting spacecraft.
News

Why Human Societies Still Use Arms, Feet, and Other Body Parts To Measure Things (science.org) 199

Posted by msmash from the whatever-works dept.
Body-based measurements may have persisted because they are convenient and offer ergonomic advantages over standardized units. From a report: Although standardized units are often upheld as superior to informal corporeal measures, people in many societies have continued to use their bodies this way well after standardization has taken root, notes Roope Kaaronen, a cognitive scientist who studies cultural evolution at the University of Helsinki. To explore how widespread such practices have been in human history, Kaaronen and colleagues pored over ethnographic data from 186 past and present cultures across the world, looking for descriptions of body-based units of measurement in a database called the Human Relations Area Files. This database is the product of an international nonprofit organization that has been collecting and administering ethnographies and anthropological literature since the 1950s.

The team found these systems used in every culture they looked at, particularly in the construction of clothes and technologies. For example, in the early 1900s, the Karelian people, a group indigenous to Northern Europe, traditionally designed skis to be a fathom plus six hand spans long. In the late 1800s the Yup'ik people from the Alaskan coast recorded building kayaks that were 2.5 fathoms long plus a cockpit, which was the length of an arm with a closed fist. Next, the team looked at a subsample of 99 cultures that, according to a widely used benchmark in anthropology, developed relatively independently of one another. Fathoms, hand spans, and cubits were the most common body-based measurements, each popping up in about 40% of these cultures. Different societies likely developed and incorporated such units because they were especially convenient for tackling important everyday tasks, the authors argue, such as measuring clothes, designing tools and weapons, and building boats and structures.
United States

Judge Blocks US Officials From Tech Contacts in First Amendment Case (washingtonpost.com) 414

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
A federal judge on Tuesday blocked key Biden administration agencies and officials from meeting and communicating with social media companies about "protected speech," in an extraordinary preliminary injunction in an ongoing case that could have profound effects on the First Amendment. From a report: The injunction came in response to a lawsuit brought by Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, who allege that government officials went too far in their efforts to encourage social media companies to address posts that they worried could contribute to vaccine hesitancy during the pandemic or upend elections.

The Trump-appointed judge's move could undo years of efforts to enhance coordination between the government and social media companies. For more than a decade, the federal government has attempted to work with social media companies to address a wide range of criminal activity, including child sexual abuse images and terrorism. Over the last five years, coordination and communication between government officials and the companies increased as the federal government responded to rising election interference and voter suppression efforts after revelations that Russian actors had sowed disinformation on U.S. social sites during the 2016 election. Public health officials also frequently communicated with the companies during the coronavirus pandemic, as falsehoods about the virus and vaccines spread on social networks including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Firefox

Firefox 115 Released (mozilla.org) 61

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
williamyf writes: Today, Mozilla released Firefox 115. Changes most visible to users include:

* Hardware video decoding is now enabled for Intel GPUs on Linux..

* Migrating from another browser? Now you can bring over payment methods you've saved in Chrome-based browsers to Firefox.

* The Tab Manager dropdown now features close buttons, so you can close tabs more quickly.

* The Firefox for Android address bar's new search button allows you to easily switch between search engines and search your bookmarks and browsing history.

* We've refreshed and streamlined the user interface for importing data in from other browsers.

* Users without platform support for H264 video decoding can now fallback to Cisco's OpenH264 plugin for playback.

But the most important feature is that this release is the new ESR. Why this is important? y'all ask, well:

* Many a "downstream" project depends on Firefox ESR, for example the famous email client Thunderbird, or KaiOS (a mobile OS very popular in India, SE Asia, Africa and LatAm), so, for better or worse, whatever made it to (or is lacking from) this version of the browser, those projects have to use for the next year.

* Firefox ESR is the default browser of many distros, like Debian and Kali Linux, so, whatever made it to this version will be there for next year, ditto to whatever is lacking.

* If you are on old -- unsupported OSs, like Windows 7, 8-8.1 or MacOS 10.14 (Mojave, the last MacOS with support for 32 Bit Apps), 10.13 or 10.12 you will automatically be migrated to Firefox ESR, so this will be your browser until Sept. 2024.
AI

ChatGPT Pauses Bing Integration To Stop People From Bypassing Paywalls 33

Posted by msmash from the tough-love dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Last week, OpenAI's chatbot, ChatGPT, gained a new feature dubbed Browse with Bing. The feature shipped exclusively to ChatGPT Plus subscribers. Microsoft promised to bring Bing integration to the platform to enhance its search experience during its annual developer conference for developers, Build 2023. Before this inclusion, ChatGPT depended on OpenAI's GPT-4 model, which limited its capabilities. This is because the chatbot could only access information up until September 2021.

However, shortly after incorporating the new feature into the chatbot, OpenAI discovered that there are instances where it malfunctions. "For example, if a user specifically asks for a URL's full text, it might inadvertently fulfill this request," said OpenAI. As such, the company disabled the Browse with Bing beta feature on July 3, 2023.
Microsoft

Microsoft Seems To Think We're Getting a PS5 Slim This Year (theverge.com) 29

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
Microsoft thinks we're getting a PS5 Slim model later this year that might be priced at $399.99. From a report: The software giant is currently waiting a ruling in the FTC v. Microsoft hearing and as part of the case Microsoft has filed documents which reveal it thinks a PS5 Slim is on the way "later this year." Here's exactly what Microsoft says: "PlayStation likewise sells a less expensive Digital Edition for $399.99, and is expected to release a PlayStation 5 Slim later this year at the same reduced price point."
United States

US Looks To Restrict China's Access To Cloud Computing To Protect Advanced Technology (wsj.com) 84

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
The Biden administration is preparing to restrict Chinese companies' access to U.S. cloud-computing services, WSJ reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the situation, in a move that could further strain relations between the world's economic superpowers. From the report: The new rule, if adopted, would likely require U.S. cloud-service providers such as Amazon.com and Microsoft to seek U.S. government permission before they provide cloud-computing services that use advanced artificial-intelligence chips to Chinese customers, the people said. The Biden administration's move would follow other recent measures as Washington and Beijing wage a high-stakes conflict over access to the supply chain for the world's most advanced technology.

Beijing Monday announced export restrictions on metals used in advanced chip manufacturing, days ahead of a visit to China by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. The proposed restriction is seen as a means to close a significant loophole. National-security analysts have warned that Chinese AI companies might have bypassed the current export controls rules by using cloud services. These services allow customers to gain powerful computing capabilities without purchasing advanced equipment -- including chips -- on the control list, such as the A100 chips by American technology company Nvidia.
Security

336,000 Servers Remain Unpatched Against Critical Fortigate Vulnerability (arstechnica.com) 23

Posted by BeauHD from the what-are-you-waiting-for dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Researchers say that nearly 336,000 devices exposed to the Internet remain vulnerable to a critical vulnerability in firewalls sold by Fortinet because admins have yet to install patches the company released three weeks ago. CVE-2023-27997 is a remote code execution in Fortigate VPNs, which are included in the company's firewalls. The vulnerability, which stems from a heap overflow bug, has a severity rating of 9.8 out of 10. Fortinet released updates silently patching the flaw on June 8 and disclosed it four days later in an advisory that said it may have been exploited in targeted attacks. That same day, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Administration added it to its catalog of known exploited vulnerabilities and gave federal agencies until Tuesday to patch it.

Despite the severity and the availability of a patch, admins have been slow to fix it, researchers said. Security firm Bishop Fox on Friday, citing data retrieved from queries of the Shodan search engine, said that of 489,337 affected devices exposed on the internet, 335,923 of them -- or 69 percent -- remained unpatched. Bishop Fox said that some of the vulnerable machines appeared to be running Fortigate software that hadn't been updated since 2015. "Wow -- looks like there's a handful of devices running 8-year-old FortiOS on the Internet," Caleb Gross, director of capability development at Bishop Fox, wrote in Friday's post. "I wouldn't touch those with a 10-foot pole."
Space

Blue Origin Is Planning To Open New Launch Sites Outside the US (engadget.com) 31

Posted by BeauHD from the privately-funded-space-race dept.
According to the Financial Times, Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin has announced plans to expand its operations to "Europe and beyond." Engadget reports: Part of this growth hinges on finding a site for an international launch facility -- the company has already put down roots in Texas, Washington, Florida and Alabama -- but the new location hasn't been chosen yet. It's also actively looking for fresh acquisitions and partnerships outside of the US in areas such as manufacturing and software.

Though Blue Origin was the first to launch, land and reuse a rocket successfully, it has fallen behind its rival due to hold-ups with building its launchers. Blue Origin's plans for a more global footprint might help them catch up with SpaceX's progress. Amazon's Project Kuiper also plans to use Blue Origin's rocket New Glenn for at least 12 launches between 2024 and 2029 after a few years of delays. "We're looking for anything we can do to acquire, to scale up to better serve our customers," Bob Smith, Blue Origin CEO, said. "It's not a function of size -- rather how much it accelerates our road map of what we're trying to get done."
Space

Quasar 'Clocks' Show the Universe Was Five Times Slower Soon After the Big Bang (phys.org) 57

Posted by BeauHD from the Einstein-was-right-yet-again dept.
Scientists have achieved a breakthrough by observing the early universe in extreme slow motion, confirming Einstein's theory of an expanding universe. The research is published in Nature Astronomy. Phys.Org reports: Einstein's general theory of relativity means that we should observe the distant -- and hence ancient -- universe running much slower than the present day. However, peering back that far in time has proven elusive. Scientists have now cracked that mystery by using quasars as "clocks." "Looking back to a time when the universe was just over a billion years old, we see time appearing to flow five times slower," said lead author of the study, Professor Geraint Lewis from the School of Physics and Sydney Institute for Astronomy at the University of Sydney. "If you were there, in this infant universe, one second would seem like one second -- but from our position, more than 12 billion years into the future, that early time appears to drag."

Professor Lewis and his collaborator, Dr. Brendon Brewer from the University of Auckland, used observed data from nearly 200 quasars -- hyperactive supermassive black holes at the centers of early galaxies -- to analyze this time dilation. Previously, astronomers have confirmed this slow-motion universe back to about half the age of the universe using supernovae -- massive exploding stars -- as "standard clocks." But while supernovae are exceedingly bright, they are difficult to observe at the immense distances needed to peer into the early universe. By observing quasars, this time horizon has been rolled back to just a tenth the age of the universe, confirming that the universe appears to speed up as it ages.

Professor Lewis worked with astro-statistician Dr. Brewer to examine details of 190 quasars observed over two decades. Combining the observations taken at different colors (or wavelengths) -- green light, red light and into the infrared -- they were able to standardize the "ticking" of each quasar. Through the application of Bayesian analysis, they found the expansion of the universe imprinted on each quasar's ticking. "With these exquisite data, we were able to chart the tick of the quasar clocks, revealing the influence of expanding space," Professor Lewis said. These results further confirm Einstein's picture of an expanding universe but contrast earlier studies that had failed to identify the time dilation of distant quasars.

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