A US District Court judge in San Francisco has largely dismissed a class-action lawsuit against GitHub, Microsoft, and OpenAI, which challenged the legality of using code samples to train GitHub Copilot. The judge ruled that the plaintiffs failed to establish a claim for restitution or unjust enrichment but allowed the claim for breach of open-source license violations to proceed. InfoWorld reports: The lawsuit, first filed in Nov. 2022, claimed that GitHub's training of the Copilot AI on public GitHub code repositories violated the rights of the "vast number of creators" who posted code under open-source licenses on GitHub. The complaint (PDF) alleged that "Copilot ignores, violates, and removes the Licenses offered by thousands -- possibly millions -- of software developers, thereby accomplishing software piracy on an unprecedented scale." [...]

In a decision first announced on June 24, but only unsealed and made public on July 5, California Northern District judge Jon S. Tigar wrote that "In sum, plaintiff's claims do not support the remedy they seek. Plaintiffs have failed to establish, as a matter of law, that restitution for any unjust enrichment is available as a measure of plaintiffs' damages for their breach of contract claims." Judge Tigar went on to state that "court dismisses plaintiffs' section 1202(b) claim, this time with prejudice. The Court declines to dismiss plaintiffs' claim for breach of contract of open-source license violations against all defendants. Finally, the court dismisses plaintiffs' request for monetary relief in the form of unjust enrichment, as well as plaintiffs' request for punitive damages."

Reuters reports: A special uranium fuel planned for next-generation U.S. nuclear reactors poses security risks because it could be used without further enrichment as fissile material in nuclear weapons, scientists said in an article published on Thursday. The fuel, called high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU, is enriched to levels of up to 20%, compared with about 5% for the fuel that powers most existing reactors.

Until recently it was made in commercial amounts only in Russia, but the United States wants to produce it to fuel a new wave of reactors... "This material is directly usable for making nuclear weapons without any further enrichment or reprocessing," said Scott Kemp, one of five authors of the peer-reviewed article in the journal Science. "In other words, the new reactors pose an unprecedented nuclear-security risk," said Kemp, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former science adviser on arms control at the State Department. A bomb similar in power to the one the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945 could be made from 2,200 pounds (1,000 kg) or less of 19.75% enriched HALEU, the article said. "Designing such a weapon would not be without its challenges, but there do not appear to be any convincing reasons why it could not be done," it said.

The authors said if enrichment is limited to 10% to 12%, the supply chain would be far safer with only modest costs...

TerraPower, a company backed by Bill Gates that has received funding from the [U.S.] Energy Department, hopes to build its Natrium nuclear plant in Wyoming by 2030 to run on HALEU. TerraPower in late 2022 delayed Natrium's launch date by at least two years to 2030 due to a lack of HALEU. A TerraPower spokesperson said Natrium will use HALEU as it allows more efficient energy production and reduces nuclear waste volumes. "TerraPower has made reduction of weapons risks a foundational principle" the spokesperson said, adding that its fuel cycle eliminates the risk of proliferation.
Reuters notes that America's 2022 climate legislation "included $700 million for a HALEU availability program including purchasing the fuel to create a supply chain for planned high-tech reactors."

But the study's authors argue that if it becomes a standard reactor fuel, it could eliminate the distinction between peaceful and nonpeaceful nuclear programs — in countries around the world.

Thanks to Slashdot reader locater16 for sharing the article.

It's the world's most widely used vulnerability database, reports SC Magazine, offering standards-based data on CVSS severity scores, impacted software and platforms, contributing weaknesses, and links to patches and additional resources.

But "there is a growing backlog of vulnerabilities" submitted to America's National Vulnerability Database and "requiring analysis", according to a new announcement from the U.S. Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards. "This is based on a variety of factors, including an increase in software and, therefore, vulnerabilities, as well as a change in interagency support." From SC Magazine: According to NIST's website, the institute analyzed only 199 of 3370 CVEs it received last month. [And this month another 677 came in — of which 24 have been analyzed.]

Other than a short notice advising it was working to establish a new consortium to improve the NVD, NIST had not provided a public explanation for the problems prior to a statement published [April 2]... "Currently, we are prioritizing analysis of the most significant vulnerabilities. In addition, we are working with our agency partners to bring on more support for analyzing vulnerabilities and have reassigned additional NIST staff to this task as well."

NIST, which had its budget cut by almost 12% this year by lawmakers, said it was committed to continuing to support and manage the NVD, which it described as "a key piece of the nation's cybersecurity infrastructure... We are also looking into longer-term solutions to this challenge, including the establishment of a consortium of industry, government and other stakeholder organizations that can collaborate on research to improve the NVD," the statement said. "We will provide more information as these plans develop..."

A group of cybersecurity professionals have signed an open letter to Congress and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in which they say the enrichment issue is the result of a recent 20% cut in NVD funding.
The article also cites remarks from NVD program manager Tanya Brewer (reported by Infosecurity Magazine) from last week's VulnCon conference on plans to establish a NVD consortium. "We're not going to shut down the NVD; we're in the process of fixing the current problem. And then, we're going to make the NVD robust again and we'll make it grow."

Thanks to Slashdot reader spatwei for sharing the article.

OpenAI must face a claim that it violated California unfair competition law by using copyrighted books from comedian Sarah Silverman and other authors to train ChatGPT without permission. From a report: But US District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin on Monday also dismissed a number of Silverman and her coplaintiffs' other legal claims, including allegations of vicarious copyright infringement, violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, negligence, and unjust enrichment. The judge gave the authors the opportunity to amend their proposed class action by March 13 to fix the defects in the complaint.

The core of the lawsuit remains alive, as OpenAI's motion to dismiss, filed last summer, didn't address Silverman's claim of direct copyright infringement for copying millions of books across the internet without permission. Courts haven't yet determined whether using copyrighted work to train AI models falls under copyright law's fair use doctrine, shielding the companies from liability. Although Martinez-Olguin allowed the unfair competition claim to advance, she said the claim could be preempted by the federal Copyright Act, which prohibits state law claims that allege the same violation as a copyright claim.

Richard Speed reports via The Register: A jury has sided with Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) against Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) over the theft of source code and documentation. A total of $210 million was this week awarded. According to the verdict [PDF], a Texas jury agreed that TCS had "willfully and maliciously" misappropriated both source and confidential documentation by "improper means," awarding CSC $140 million in damages, with another $70 million tacked on for TCS's "unjust enrichment." The complaint [PDF] was filed in April 2019 regarding CSC's VANTAGE-ONE and CyberLife software platforms. CSC had licensed these software platforms to Transamerica Corporation, a life insurance holding company, to whom Tata -- used here to collectively refer to Tata Consultancy Services Limited and Tata America International Corporation -- began providing maintenance services.

In 2014, CSC and Transamerica signed off on a Third-Party Access Addendum that would allow Tata to alter CSC's software, but only for the benefit of its customer -- Transamerica. All was well until 2016, when Transamerica decided it needed to refresh its software. CSC and Tata both put in bids. CSC lost, and Tata won with its own software platform called BaNCS. The circumstances got sticky at this point, not least because Tata hired more than 2,000 Transamerica employees. CSC alleged that these former employees had access to its code and documents, and forwarded them on to the Tata BaNCS development team. The situation escalated in 2019, when a CSC employee was accidentally copied in on an email between Tata and Transamerica showing that Tata was accessing confidential information, according to CSC. The company then began legal proceedings. Documents and motions have been exchanged in the years since as Tata sought to get the case thrown out while CSC's claims were upheld. Eventually, it went to a jury trial, which found for CSC.

"12 people account for the lion's share of anti-vaccination propaganda posted to three of the leading social media outlets," NPR reported in 2021, citing a study from a London-based group opposed to online hate and disinformation."

But this week Ars Technica reports that one of those 12 "lost a lawsuit attempting to force YouTube to provide access to videos that were removed from the platform after YouTube banned his channels." Joseph Mercola had tried to argue that YouTube owed him more than $75,000 in damages for breaching its own user contract and denying him access to his videos. However, in an order dismissing Mercola's complaint, U.S. magistrate judge Laurel Beeler wrote that according to the contract Mercola signed, YouTube was "under no obligation to host" Mercola's content after terminating his channel in 2021 "for violating YouTube's Community Guidelines by posting medical misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines."

"The court found no breach because 'there is no provision in the Terms of Service that requires YouTube to maintain particular content' or be a 'storage site for users' content,'" Beeler wrote. Because Mercola's contract with YouTube was found to be enforceable and "YouTube had the discretion to take down content that harmed its users," Beeler said that Mercola did not plausibly plead claims for breach of contract or unjust enrichment.

Mercola's complaint was dismissed without leave to amend.
Thanks to ArchieBunker (Slashdot reader #96,909) for sharing the article.

Vanity Fair revisits the many warning signs about OceanGate's Titan submersible prior to an implosion on June 18th that killed all five passengers onboard.

A professional expedition leader tells their reporter that "This tragedy was predicted. It was avoidable. It was inevitable." As the world now knows, Stockton Rush touted himself as a maverick, a disrupter, a breaker of rules. So far out on the visionary curve that, for him, safety regulations were mere suggestions. "If you're not breaking things, you're not innovating," he declared at the 2022 GeekWire Summit. "If you're operating within a known environment, as most submersible manufacturers do, they don't break things. To me, the more stuff you've broken, the more innovative you've been." In a culture that has adopted the ridiculous mantra "move fast and break things," that type of arrogance can get a person far. But in the deep ocean, the price of admission is humility — and it's nonnegotiable...

In December 2015, two years before the Titan was built, Rush had lowered a one third scale model of his 4,000-meter-sub-to-be into a pressure chamber and watched it implode at 4,000 psi, a pressure equivalent to only 2,740 meters. The test's stated goal was to "validate that the pressure vessel design is capable of withstanding an external pressure of 6,000 psi — corresponding to...a depth of about 4,200 meters." He might have changed course then, stood back for a moment and reconsidered. But he didn't. Instead, OceanGate issued a press release stating that the test had been a resounding success because it "demonstrates that the benefits of carbon fiber are real."
OceanGate's director of marine operations later issued a Quality Control Inspection Report filled with warnings: These included missing bolts and improperly secured batteries, components zip-tied to the outside of the sub. O-ring grooves were machined incorrectly (which could allow water ingress), seals were loose, a highly flammable, petroleum-based material lined the Titan's interior... Yet even those deficiencies paled in comparison to what Lochridge observed on the hull. The carbon fiber filament was visibly coming apart, riddled with air gaps, delaminations, and Swiss cheese holes — and there was no way to fix that short of tossing the hull in a dumpster...

Rush's response was to fire Lochridge immediately, serve him and his wife with a lawsuit (although Carole Lochridge didn't work at OceanGate or even in the submersible industry) for breach of contract, fraud, unjust enrichment, and misappropriation of trade secrets; threaten their immigration status; and seek to have them pay OceanGate's legal fees.
The article also tells a story about OceanGate's 240-foot dive to the wreck of the Andrea Doria in 2016. The article claims that Rush disregarded safety instructions, then "landed too close, got tangled in the current, managed to wedge the sub beneath the Andrea Doria's crumbling bow, and descended into a full-blown panic..."

The article's author marvels that five years ago, "I didn't yet know how reckless, how heedless, how insane the Titan was." They'd once even considered booking a trip on the OceanGate's submersible — until receiving this advice from the chief pilot of the University of Hawaii's two deep-sea submarines. "Do not get into that sub. He is going to have a major accident."

Thanks to Slashdot reader AleRunner for sharing the article.

OpenAI has responded to a pair of nearly identical class-action lawsuits from book authors -- including Sarah Silverman, Paul Tremblay, Mona Awad, Chris Golden, and Richard Kadrey -- who earlier this summer alleged that ChatGPT was illegally trained on pirated copies of their books. From a report: In OpenAI's motion to dismiss (filed in both lawsuits), the company asked a US district court in California to toss all but one claim alleging direct copyright infringement, which OpenAI hopes to defeat at "a later stage of the case." The authors' other claims -- alleging vicarious copyright infringement, violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), unfair competition, negligence, and unjust enrichment -- need to be "trimmed" from the lawsuits "so that these cases do not proceed to discovery and beyond with legally infirm theories of liability," OpenAI argued.

OpenAI claimed that the authors "misconceive the scope of copyright, failing to take into account the limitations and exceptions (including fair use) that properly leave room for innovations like the large language models now at the forefront of artificial intelligence." According to OpenAI, even if the authors' books were a "tiny part" of ChatGPT's massive dataset, "the use of copyrighted materials by innovators in transformative ways does not violate copyright." Unlike plagiarists who seek to directly profit off distributing copyrighted materials, OpenAI argued that its goal was "to teach its models to derive the rules underlying human language" in order to do things like help people "save time at work," "make daily life easier," or simply entertain themselves by typing prompts into ChatGPT.

The purpose of copyright law, OpenAI argued is "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" by protecting the way authors express ideas, but "not the underlying idea itself, facts embodied within the author's articulated message, or other building blocks of creative," which are arguably the elements of authors' works that would be useful to ChatGPT's training model. Citing a notable copyright case involving Google Books, OpenAI reminded the court that "while an author may register a copyright in her book, the 'statistical information' pertaining to 'word frequencies, syntactic patterns, and thematic markers' in that book are beyond the scope of copyright protection."

Fines for overdue library books were eliminated more than three years ago in Chicago, Seattle, and San Francisco — as well as at the Los Angeles Public Library system (which serves 18 million people). The Hill reported that just in the U.S., more than 200 cities and municipalities had eliminated the fines by the end of 2019: Fines account for less than 1 percent of Chicago Public Library's revenue stream, and there is also a collection cost in terms of staff time, keeping cash on hand, banking and accounting. The San Diego library system did a detailed study and found the costs were higher than the fines collected, says Molloy.
And this week the King County Library System in Washington state — serving one million patrons in 50 libraries — joined the trend, announcing that it would end all late fines for overdue books.

A local newspaper summarized the results of a six-month review by library staff presented to the Board of Trustees: - In recent years, fines made up less than 1% of KCLS' operating budget.
- Late fine revenue continues to decrease over time. This trend correlates with patrons' interest in more digital and fewer physical items. Digital titles return automatically and do not accrue late fines.
- Collecting fines from patrons also has costs. Associated expenses include staff time, payment processing fees, printing notices and more.
- A majority of peer libraries have eliminated late fines.
Now Slashdot reader robotvoice writes: Library fines were assessed since early last century as an incentive for patrons to return materials and "be responsible." However, many studies have found that fines disproportionately affect the poor and disadvantaged in our society...

I have collected several anecdotes of dedicated library patrons who were locked out of borrowing because of excessive and punitive fines... I get daily use and enjoyment from library books and materials. While I personally have been scrupulous about paying fines — until they were eliminated — I support the idea that libraries are there to help those with the least access.

What do you think?
Share your own thoughts in the comments. Should libraries eliminate fines for overdue books?

A frustrated owner of an RTX 4090 graphics card, suffering from the infamous melty power connector problem, has filed a class action suit against Nvidia. From a report: Filed in a California court on November 11th, the suit may make for painful reading for Nvidia and includes numerous allegations from fraud to unjust enrichment. The case refers to widely reported instances of the new-style 16-pin power connector used by Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090 boards overheating and melting under heavy load. Reportedly, the lawsuit claims that Nvidia sold RTX 4090s with, "defective and dangerous power cable plug and socket(s), which has rendered consumers' cards inoperable and poses a serious electrical and fire hazard for each and every purchaser." It's notable that the claimant, one Lucas Genova, describes himself as "experienced in the installation of computer componentry like graphics cards," thereby aiming to head off any implication of user error at the pass.

"The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced it will once again require applicants to take the SAT or ACT, reversing a Covid-era policy that made the standardized tests optional and rejecting the idea that the tests hurt diversity," reports CNN. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a blog post announcing the decision, writing: From the policy announcement, there's an excess of delicacy -- to the point where you might find it funny or terribly disturbing: "Our research can't explain why these tests are so predictive of academic preparedness for MIT, but we believe it is likely related to the centrality of mathematics -- and mathematics examinations -- in our education. All MIT students, regardless of intended major, must pass two semesters of calculus, plus two semesters of calculus-based physics [...]. The substance and pace of these courses are both very demanding, and they culminate in long, challenging final exams that students must pass to proceed with their education. In other words, there is no path through MIT that does not rest on a rigorous foundation in mathematics, and we need to be sure our students are ready for that as soon as they arrive."

Did the entire admissions department threaten to quit? Or did the incoming class turn out to be morons? "Our research shows standardized tests help us better assess the academic preparedness of all applicants, and also help us identify socioeconomically disadvantaged students who lack access to advanced coursework or other enrichment opportunities that would otherwise demonstrate their readiness for MIT," Dean of Admissions Stu Schmill wrote in the policy announcement.

"We believe a requirement is more equitable and transparent than a test-optional policy."

A number of elite schools, including Harvard and University of California, announced plans to stop using the SAT and ACT college admissions exams. Last May, Colorado became the first state to ban "legacy" admissions and signed a bill that removes a requirement that public colleges consider SAT or ACAT scores for freshmen.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Our universe is connected by a cosmic web made of giant threads of dark matter and gas that stretch across millions of light years and intersect at "nodes" populated by dense clusters of galaxies. This vast network shapes the distribution and evolution of galaxies in fundamental ways that scientists are trying to unravel with ever-sharper observations and advanced simulations. Now, a team led by Callum Donnan, a postgraduate student in astronomy at the University of Edinburgh, have identified a key correlation between the chemical makeup of galaxies and their location within the cosmic web. Using both real-life observations and computer simulations, the team found that "galaxies closer to nodes [display] higher chemical enrichment than those farther away," a discovery that reveals some of the mysterious dynamics that link the universe, according to a study published on Monday in Nature Astronomy.

To home in on this question, Donnan and his colleagues examined galaxies within about a billion light years of the Milky Way observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey in New Mexico, which covers a huge area of the sky. The team studied the elemental makeup of gasses in the interstellar spaces within these real-life galaxies, a property that is known as gas-phase metallicity. The results revealed that galaxies close to the nodes of the cosmic web were richer in "metals," which in astronomy refers to any element heavier than helium. A weaker correlation was also observed with proximity to the web's filaments, which are the threads that stretch across the universe and link nodes together. The team ran sophisticated cosmological simulations using the IllustrisTNG platform, which supported the observational findings. Significantly, the approach revealed that a galaxy's position in the cosmic web modulates its chemical content even when other factors, such as the density of a particular region in the universe, are taken into account.

Naturally, that raises the question of why galaxies located near nodes are enriched with more metals compared to those distributed along filaments or in empty "voids" within the cosmic web. Donnan's team isolated two major drivers of this relationship: The absorption of gas from outside of galaxies and the evolution of stars and dark matter inside of them. Galaxies feed on gasses that are strewn across space in the intergalactic medium, but those that are further from nodes consume much more of this outside material than those close to nodes. Since intergalactic gas is metal-poor, it dilutes the enriched gas of far-flung galaxies, lowering their overall gas-phase metallicities. Galaxies near nodes don't consume as much of this metal-poor material, which helps to keep them chemically enriched with higher concentrations of heavier elements. In addition, galaxies close to nodes seem to have matured earlier than those located at a distance. These galaxies had a head-start in birthing new stars and collecting dark matter, which is a mysterious substance that makes up most of the matter in the universe.

Software engineer Molly White has been a Wikipedia editor since 2006 (and also served several terms on the site's Arbitration Committee). White is now a Wikipedia administrator and functionary — and just published an Opinion piece opposing the continued acceptance of cryptocurrency donations for the Wikimedia Foundation.

Here's an excerpt from White's remarks in The Signpost, an online newspaper for (English-language) Wikipedia that's been published online since 2005 with contributions from Wikipedia editors:

When the Wikimedia Foundation first began accepting cryptocurrency donations in 2014, it was still fairly nascent technology. Cryptocurrencies resonated with many in free and open-source software communities and in the Wikimedia movement more specifically, and cryptocurrency projects tended to share similar ideals: privacy, anonymity, decentralization, freedom. In more recent history, cryptocurrencies and blockchain-based technologies more generally have morphed into something very different from the ideals of their youth. Some proponents continue to speak about freedom and decentralization, but the space has overwhelmingly become an opportunity for self-enrichment at the expense of others and the environment.

Cryptomining operations set up shop in locations with low energy costs — until late 2021, most bitcoin mining happened in China, where it relied on coal so heavily that the resulting coal mining accidents from increased demand contributed to a crackdown on the practice. Some of those miners moved to Kazakhstan, where they were using the nation's supply of lignite (an extremely harmful form of coal) to produce 18% of the global computing power behind bitcoin in January. Bitcoin mining alone rivals the total energy use of countries like the Netherlands or Finland;456 emissions from other popular cryptocurrencies like ethereum only compound the problem.

Furthermore, in recent years, more and more enthusiasts are being convinced that they too might strike it rich by buying in early to the next bitcoin or the next ethereum. But unfortunately, the playing field more often resembles a landscape with scammers and marks. Many are convinced that purchasing these currencies is an "investment", rather than risky speculation that would be more accurately described as gambling if not outright investment fraud. People are regularly scammed for enormous sums of money, and the anonymous, nominally decentralized, and largely unregulated nature of the space offers them little recourse.

The purported benefits of cryptocurrencies have also been largely unrealized. Rather than empowering the unbanked and distributing wealth to those in need, as once described, money has been hoarded in incredible amounts by a few wealthy individuals — 0.01% of bitcoin holders collectively own 27% of bitcoin in circulation, equivalent to around $232 billion. Furthermore, the underlying technology is enormously slow and difficult to scale when compared to databases used in most modern computing, so many technologies built around blockchains have spawned new, centralized solutions to the problems the blockchains themselves have introduced. As a result, the decentralization of the web that was supposed to result from the adoption of blockchain technologies has only resulted in the centralization of power in a handful of companies and venture capital firms.

The Wikimedia Foundation's acceptance of cryptocurrency donations has had minimal returns, and no longer accepting them is unlikely to have a major impact on the Foundation's ability to fundraise. In 2021, the Wikimedia Foundation only received about $130,000 in donations via cryptocurrency, making it one of their smallest revenue channels at only 0.08% of total donations. The benefits to donors are also minimal: the anonymity that might normally be offered to those who use cryptocurrencies is largely nullified by the WMF's cryptocurrency payment processor, BitPay, which requires prospective donors to disclose their identities.

The most impactful result of the WMF's acceptance of cryptocurrencies has been to normalize their use. As the technology space around blockchains has evolved over the years, so too should we. Cryptocurrencies have been joined by a bubble of predatory, inherently harmful technologies that take advantage of individuals and contribute to the destruction of our environment. It is no longer ethical for the Wikimedia Foundation to tacitly endorse a technology that incentivizes the predatory behavior that has become rampant in the cryptocurrency space in the past few years. I have asked that they stop doing so in an Request for Comments on meta.

Rembrandt's masterpiece The Night Watch "can now be viewed on computers everywhere in ultra high definition," writes The Hill.

But ultra high definition is an understatement, according to long-time Slashdot reader dr_blurb. "Some tech specs: 717 Gigapixels in a 5.6 terabyte image: 8,439 individual images, taken with a 100 megapixel Hasselblad H6D 400 MS camera."

This single image is over four meters in length and three meters in height, reports Digital Photography Review: The museum also points out that the distance between 2 pixels on the image is 5 micrometers (0.0005 centimeters). This means that 1 pixel on the image is smaller than a human red blood cell. According to representatives from the museum, each photo has a depth of field of 125 micrometers (0.0125 centimeters). To ensure each image was properly in focus, the surface of the painting was scanned with lasers. Then the camera's settings were adjusted for optimal image quality. After each image was captured, a neural network scanned it for color accuracy and sharpness.

The level of detail captured, coupled with the size of the file, makes it the largest image of a work of art ever captured. It's 4 times larger than the original digitized version of "The Night Watch" that was published on the museum's website in May 2020, and that file was already 44.8 gigapixels...

It can be viewed on the Rijksmuseum museum's website.
"There were many people who thought it was impossible, and who thought the Operation Night Watch team were crazy to even attempt it," said Robert Erdmann, senior scientist at the Rijksmuseum. "We have surpassed ourselves in what can justifiably be described as a world-class achievement..."

Two dozen theologians participated in a program funded partially by NASA to research how humans may react to news that intelligent life exists on other planets, according to one religious scholar who says he was recruited. From a report: The Rev. Dr. Andrew Davison, of the University of Cambridge, told the Times UK in a recent interview that he was among 23 other theologians in a NASA-sponsored program at the Center for Theological Inquiry at Princeton University from 2016 to 2017. Davison said he and his colleagues examined how each of the world's major religions would likely respond if they were made aware of the existence of aliens. His own work focused on the connection between astrobiology and Christian theology. Will Storrar, director of the CTI, said NASA wanted to see "serious scholarship being published in books and journals" addressing the "profound wonder and mystery and implication of finding microbial life on another planet," the Times reported.

[...] NASA's Astrobiology program provided partial funding through a grant to the CTI in 2015, with the agency-funded portion of the project concluding in 2017, a NASA spokesperson confirmed to Changing America. NASA was not directly involved in the selection of researchers for the study.

Japan will compensate companies to keep secret patents with potential military applications under proposed legislation, the Nikkei reported on Sunday, without citing sources. Reuters: The patents under review in the proposed economic security legislation will include technology that can help develop nuclear weapons, such as uranium enrichment and cutting-edge innovations like quantum technology, the financial daily said.

Nasa's Juno mission, the solar-powered robotic explorer of Jupiter, has completed its five-year prime mission to reveal the inner workings of the Solar System's biggest planet. The most recent findings from these measurements have now been published in a series of papers, revealing the three-dimensional structure of Jupiter's weather systems -- including of its famous Great Red Spot, a centuries-old storm big enough to swallow the Earth whole. The Conversation reports: Jupiter's Great Red Spot has had a hard time in recent years. [...] But fans of the storm can take comfort from Juno's latest findings. In 2017, Juno was able to observe the red spot in microwave light. Then, in 2019, as Juno flew at more than 200,000 kilometers per hour above the vortex, Nasa's Deep Space Network was monitoring the spacecraft's velocity from millions of kilometers away. Tiny changes as small as 0.01 millimeters per second were detected, caused by the gravitational force from the massive spot. By modeling the microwave and gravity data, my colleagues and I were able to determine that the famous storm is at least 300 km (186 miles) deep, maybe as deep as 500 km (310 miles). That's deeper than the expected cloud-forming "weather layer" that reaches down to around 65 km (40 miles) below the surface, but higher than the jet streams that might extend down to 3,000 km (1,864 miles). The deeper the roots, the more likely the Red Spot is to persist in the years to come, despite the superficial battering it has been receiving from passing storms. To place the depth in perspective, the International Space Station orbits ~420 km (260 miles) above Earth's surface. Yet despite these new findings, the spot could still be a "pancake-like" structure floating in the bottomless atmosphere, with the spot's 12,000 km (7,456 mile) width being 40 times larger than its depth.

In the cloud-forming weather layer, Juno's microwave antennae saw the expected structure of belts and zones. The cool zones appeared dark, indicating the presence of ammonia gas, which absorbs microwave light. Conversely, the belts were bright in microwave light, consistent with a lack of ammonia. These bright and dark bands in the weather layer were perfectly aligned with the winds higher up, measured at the top of the clouds. But what happens when we probe deeper? The temperature of Jupiter's atmosphere is just right for the formation of a water cloud around 65 km (40 miles) down below the cloud tops. When Juno peered through this layer, it found something unexpected. The belts became microwave-dark, and the zones became microwave-bright. This is the complete reverse of what we saw in the shallower cloudy regions, and we are calling this transition layer the "jovicline" -- some 45-80 km (28-50 miles) below the visible clouds. [...] The jovicline may separate the shallow cloud-forming weather layer from the deep abyss below. This unexpected result implies something is moving all that ammonia around.

One possibility is that each jet stream is associated with a "circulation cell," a climate phenomenon that moves gases around via currents of rising and falling air. The rising could cause ammonia enrichment, and the sinking ammonia depletion. If true, there would be about eight of these circulation cells in each hemisphere. [...] Other meteorological phenomena might be responsible for moving the ammonia around within this deep atmosphere. For example, vigorous storms in Jupiter's belts might create mushy ammonia-water hailstones (known as "mushballs"), which deplete ammonia within the shallow belts before falling deep, eventually evaporating to enrich the belts at great depths.

couchslug writes: Canon, best nown for manufacturing camera equipment and printers for business and home users, is being sued for not allowing customers to use the scan or fax functions in multi-function devices if the ink runs out on numerous printer models. David Leacraft filed a class action lawsuit against Canon USA, alleging the company engaged in deceptive marketing and unjust enrichment practices.

For 14 years Israel had wanted to kill Iran's chief military nuclear scientist and the father of its weapons program, who they suspected of leading Iran's quest to build nuclear weapons.

Then last November "they came up with a way to do it with no operatives present" using a "souped-up, remote-controlled machine gun," according to the New York Times:

(Thanks to Slashdot readers schwit1 and PolygamousRanchKid for sharing this story.) Since 2004, when the Israeli government ordered its foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, the agency had been carrying out a campaign of sabotage and cyberattacks on Iran's nuclear fuel enrichment facilities. It was also methodically picking off the experts thought to be leading Iran's nuclear weapons program. Since 2007, its agents had assassinated five Iranian nuclear scientists and wounded another. Most of the scientists worked directly for Fakhrizadeh on what Israeli intelligence officials said was a covert program to build a nuclear warhead, including overcoming the substantial technical challenges of making one small enough to fit atop one of Iran's long-range missiles. Israeli agents had also killed the Iranian general in charge of missile development and 16 members of his team.

But the man Israel said led the bomb program was elusive... This time they were going to try something new.

Iranian agents working for the Mossad had parked a blue Nissan Zamyad pickup truck on the side of the road connecting Absard to the main highway. The spot was on a slight elevation with a view of approaching vehicles. Hidden beneath tarpaulins and decoy construction material in the truck bed was a 7.62 mm sniper machine gun... The assassin, a skilled sniper, took up his position, calibrated the gun sights, cocked the weapon and lightly touched the trigger. He was nowhere near Absard, however. He was peering into a computer screen at an undisclosed location more than 1,000 miles away... Cameras pointing in multiple directions were mounted on the truck to give the command room a full picture not just of the target and his security detail, but of the surrounding environment...

The time it took for the camera images to reach the sniper and for the sniper's response to reach the machine gun, not including his reaction time, was estimated to be 1.6 seconds, enough of a lag for the best-aimed shot to go astray.The AI was programmed to compensate for the delay, the shake and the car's speed.
Ultimately 15 bullets were fired in less than 60 seconds. None of them hit Fakhrizadeh's wife, who was seated just inches away.

The whole remote-controlled apparatus "was smuggled into the country in small pieces over several months," reports the Jerusalem Post, "because, taken together, all of its components would have weighed around a full ton." One new detail in the report was that the explosives used to destroy evidence of the remote-gun partially failed, leaving enough of the gun intact for the Iranians to figure out what had happened...

While all Israeli intelligence and defense officials still praise the assassination for setting back Iran's nuclear weapons program dramatically, 10 months later and with the Islamic Republic an estimated one month away from producing sufficient enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb, the legacy of the operation is less clear... On the other hand, others say that even if Iran decides to move its uranium enrichment up to 90%, that is weaponized level, they still have to put together the other components of a nuclear weapon capability. These include tasks concerned with detonation and missile delivery. Fakhizadeh would have shone in these tasks and his loss will still be felt and slow down the ayatollahs.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The explosion and blackout at the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran over the weekend raised the specter of past sabotage -- including the Stuxnet cyberattack that took out some of Natanz's centrifuges between 2007 and 2010 as well as an explosion and fire that occurred there last July -- destroying about three-fourths of a newly opened plant for the assembly of centrifuges. Government officials and news reports gave conflicting accounts of what caused the latest blasts, the extent of damage, and Iran's capacity to quickly recover. Initial reports said there was no harm to the Natanz facility, but Iranian officials later acknowledged damage to its centrifuges.

And while media accounts have suggested saboteurs focused on taking out the facility's electric supply, David Albright, founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, D.C., believes the aim was to destroy centrifuges. Power is easy to restore even when electrical equipment is damaged, allowing enrichment work to quickly resume. But an abrupt blackout that also takes out backup power would have destroyed some centrifuges, Albright says, since they need to be powered down slowly. Failure to do so leads to vibrations that can cause centrifuge rotors and bellows to become damaged and in some cases disintegrate, which is what Albright suspects occurred.