Google is adding Gemini-powered "Suggested times" to Google Calendar, automatically scanning attendees' calendars to surface the best meeting slots based on availability, work hours, and conflicts. The feature also streamlines rescheduling with one-click alternatives when invitees decline. Digital Trends reports: According to a recent post on the Workspace Updates blog, Gemini in Google Calendar can now help you quickly identify optimal meeting times when creating an event, as long as you have access to the attendees' calendars. The new "Suggested times" feature scans everyone's calendars and highlights the best time slots based on availability, working hours, and potential conflicts, eliminating the need to manually check schedules. Google has also made rescheduling simpler. The company explains that if multiple attendees decline your invite, you'll see a banner in the event showing a time when everyone is available, letting you update the invite with a single click. The feature is being rolled out starting today to eligible Workspace tiers. It will be enabled by default and is expected to reach all eligible users over the next few weeks.

The U.S. government's 10% stake in Intel "is a mistake," writes the Washington Post's editorial board, calling Intel "an aging also-ran in critical markets" that "has spent recent years stumbling on execution and missing one strategic opportunity after another."

But TechCrunch points out that the U.S. government "does not appear to be committing new funds. Instead, it's simply making good on what Intel described as 'grants previously awarded, but not yet paid, to Intel.'" Specifically, the $8.9 billion is supposed to come from $5.7 billion awarded-but-not-paid to Intel under the Biden administration's CHIPS Act, as well as $3.2 billion also awarded by the Biden administration through the Secure Enclave program. In a post on his social network Truth Social, Trump wrote, "The United States paid nothing for these shares..." Trump has been critical of the CHIPS Act, calling it a "horrible, horrible thing" and calling on House Speaker Mike Johnson to "get rid" of it...

According to The New York Times, some bankers and lawyers believe the CHIPS Act may not allow the government to convert its grants to equity, opening this deal to potential legal challenges.
Reuters writes that the money "will not be enough for its contract-chipmaking business to flourish, analysts said. Intel still needs external customers for its cutting-edge 14A manufacturing process to go to production, says Summit Insights analyst Kinngai Chan, "to make its foundry arm economically viable." "We don't think any government investment will change the fate of its foundry arm if they cannot secure enough customers..."

Reuters has reported that Intel's current 18A process — less advanced than 14A — is facing problems with yield, the measure of how many chips printed are good enough to make available to customers. Large chip factories including TSMC swallow the cost of poor yields during the first iterations of the process when working with customers like Apple. For Intel, which reported net losses for six straight quarters, that's hard to do and still turn a profit. "If the yield is bad then new customers won't use Intel Foundry, so it really won't fix the technical aspect of the company," said Ryuta Makino, analyst at Gabelli Funds, which holds Intel stock.

Makino, who believes that Intel can ultimately produce chips at optimal yields, views the deal as a net negative for Intel compared with just receiving the funding under the CHIPS Act as originally promised under the Biden Administration. "This isn't free money," he said. The federal government will not take a seat on Intel's board and has agreed to vote with the company's board on matters that need shareholder approval, Intel said. But this voting agreement comes with "limited exceptions" and the government is getting Intel's shares at a 17.5% discount to their closing price on Friday. The stake will make the U.S. government Intel's biggest shareholder, though neither Trump nor Intel disclosed when the transaction would happen...

Some analysts say Intel could benefit from the government's support, including in building out factories. Intel has said it is investing more than $100 billion to expand its U.S. factories and expects to begin high-volume chip production later this year at its Arizona plant. "To have access to capital and a new partial owner that wants to see you succeed are both important," said Peter Tuz, president of Chase Investment Counsel.

Daniel Parris: Some TV shows take a while to "get good." Modern classics like Breaking Bad, The Wire, Community, and Bojack Horseman are notorious for "starting slow" and are often recommended with a disclaimer like "Give it a few episodes; I promise it gets good!"

At the same time, some shows never get good. Recently, I started a spy series called The Agency, which could best be characterized as premium mediocre (at least so far). There are big-name actors (Michael Fassbender, Jeffrey Wright, Richard Gere), expensive sets, and glossy camerawork -- but after a few installments, I'm trapped in a liminal space between engaged and listless. At the end of each episode, I'm left with the same thought: "Maybe the next one will get good."

Committing to a mediocre program or continuing with a floundering series elicits a state of (mildly) torturous ambiguity. Should you cut your losses, or is this show some late-blooming classic like Breaking Bad? What is the optimal number of episodes one should watch before cleansing a subpar series from their life? Surely, a universal number must exist! Like 42, but for television. So today, we'll explore how long it takes a new show to reach its full potential and how many lackluster episodes you should grant an established series before cutting ties. His analysis reveals that viewers should watch six episodes before quitting TV shows. The study, based on IMDb user ratings, found most series require six to seven episodes before early ratings match or exceed the show's long-term average. After six consecutive subpar episodes, the likelihood of permanent decline exceeds 50%, making it the optimal point to abandon disappointing series.

Several acclaimed shows including Breaking Bad, Friends, and Seinfeld required multiple episodes before reaching their quality potential, with Seinfeld needing 16 episodes to match its series average. The research also identified a pattern where long-running shows typically experience quality decline around seasons five and six, with ratings dropping below first-season averages and continuing to fall.

Apple is advancing its plans for a foldable iPhone, with potential release as early as 2026, The Information reported Tuesday. The iPhone-maker has begun engaging with Asian suppliers for component production, the report added. The proposed device is said to feature a clamshell design, reminiscent of Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip series.

The company faces considerable technical hurdles, including display crease issues and achieving optimal device thickness. Despite these challenges, the assignment of an internal codename, V68, suggests the project has progressed beyond the conceptual stage, the report added.

Longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares a report from Gizmodo: A team of researchers think they've discovered a cave on the Moon in radar images of the lunar surface, which they posit could be a future site for an established human presence on our rocky satellite. The tunnel is in the Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility) pit, the deepest known pit on the Moon. (If the name is familiar to you, the Sea of Tranquility is where the Apollo 11 mission landed in 1969.) The pit formed due to a lava tube's roof collapse or a collapse of a void structure created by tectonic processes. To look for potential cave structures within the pit, the researchers studied side-looking radar images taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's Mini-RF instrument between 2009 and 2011. The team then conducted 3D radar simulations of potential geometries of the pit and its cave, to determine that the brightness they saw in radar images could be due to subsurface features. Ultimately, the team determined there is a tunnel in the pit that is between 98 feet (30 meters) long and 262ft (80m) long. The tunnel is roughly 148ft (45m) wide and is either flat or inclined with a maximum steepness of 45 degrees. "The exploration of lunar caves through future robotic missions could provide a fresh perspective on the lunar subsurface and yield new insights into the evolution of lunar volcanism," the team wrote in the paper. "Furthermore, direct exploration could confirm the presence of stable subsurface environments shielded from radiation and with optimal temperature conditions for future human utilization."

The findings have been published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

"The Spectre vulnerability that has haunted hardware and software makers since 2018 continues to defy efforts to bury it," reports the Register: On Thursday, Eduardo (sirdarckcat) Vela Nava, from Google's product security response team, disclosed a Spectre-related flaw in version 6.2 of the Linux kernel. The bug, designated medium severity, was initially reported to cloud service providers — those most likely to be affected — on December 31, 2022, and was patched in Linux on February 27, 2023.

"The kernel failed to protect applications that attempted to protect against Spectre v2, leaving them open to attack from other processes running on the same physical core in another hyperthread," the vulnerability disclosure explains. The consequence of that attack is potential information exposure (e.g., leaked private keys) through this pernicous problem....

Spectre v2 — the variant implicated in this particular vulnerability — relies on timing side-channels to measure the misprediction rates of indirect branch prediction in order to infer the contents of protected memory. That's far from optimal in a cloud environment with shared hardware... The bug hunters who identified the issue found that Linux userspace processes to defend against Spectre v2 didn't work on VMs of "at least one major cloud provider."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT News: What if the U.S. placed a tax on robots? The concept has been publicly discussed by policy analysts, scholars, and Bill Gates (who favors the notion). Because robots can replace jobs, the idea goes, a stiff tax on them would give firms incentive to help retain workers, while also compensating for a dropoff in payroll taxes when robots are used. Thus far, South Korea has reduced incentives for firms to deploy robots; European Union policymakers, on the other hand, considered a robot tax but did not enact it. Now a study by MIT economists scrutinizes the existing evidence and suggests the optimal policy in this situation would indeed include a tax on robots, but only a modest one. The same applies to taxes on foreign trade that would also reduce U.S. jobs, the research finds.

"Our finding suggests that taxes on either robots or imported goods should be pretty small," says Arnaud Costinot, an MIT economist, and co-author of a published paper detailing the findings. "Although robots have an effect on income inequality ... they still lead to optimal taxes that are modest." Specifically, the study finds that a tax on robots should range from 1 percent to 3.7 percent of their value, while trade taxes would be from 0.03 percent to 0.11 percent, given current U.S. income taxes. "We came in to this not knowing what would happen," says Ivan Werning, an MIT economist and the other co-author of the study. "We had all the potential ingredients for this to be a big tax, so that by stopping technology or trade you would have less inequality, but ... for now, we find a tax in the one-digit range, and for trade, even smaller taxes."

[...] Apart from its bottom-line tax numbers, the study contains some additional conclusions about technology and income trends. Perhaps counterintuitively, the research concludes that after many more robots are added to the economy, the impact that each additional robot has on wages may actually decline. At a future point, robot taxes could then be reduced even further. "You could have a situation where we deeply care about redistribution, we have more robots, we have more trade, but taxes are actually going down," Costinot says. If the economy is relatively saturated with robots, he adds, "That marginal robot you are getting in the economy matters less and less for inequality." The paper, "Robots, Trade, and Luddism: A Sufficient Statistic Approach to Optimal Technology Regulation," appears in advance online form in The Review of Economic Studies.

Last week the Los Angeles Times published a sympathetic portrait of Robbi Jade Lew, the woman facing unproven allegations of cheating in a high-stakes poker match.

This week the newspaper profiled the man making those accusations — Garrett Adelstein, known "as an affable guy who is known for taking even big losses in stride." "Garrett would have reacted normally if his opponent made a good, even heroic, call that cost him $100,000," said Jennifer Shahade, a pro poker player and chess champion. "I think the initial hand, the call and the situation would be suspicious under any circumstances, any gender."
In the profile we learn that Adelstein has 14 years of experience as a professional poker, and is "one of the game's best and most profitable high-stakes cash players, known to viewers of popular casino broadcasts for his loose-aggressive style of no-limit hold 'em and his willingness to buy in for enormous sums of money, bringing as much as $1 million to the table....

"On Sept. 29, Adelstein made the biggest bet of his life: risking his well-respected reputation, and possibly his poker career, when he accused rookie player Robbi Jade Lew of cheating in a $269,000 hand against him on Hustler Casino Live..." Adelstein, 36, hasn't played poker since. Whereas he once spent much of his time studying optimal strategy, reviewing past hands and appearing on streams from Hustler Casino in Gardena and Bicycle Casino in Bell Gardens, he is now hyper-focused on conducting his own investigation to prove his case. In a more than four-hour interview from his Manhattan Beach home on Tuesday, Adelstein said he was "extremely confident" that he was the target of a cheating ring involving not just Lew but other players and at least one member of the show's production crew. Lew, 37, denied the allegation, which she called "defamatory."

The drama has left Adelstein uncertain when he'll return to the poker table.... Adelstein says he has been cheated before. When he was 26, he was invited to a home game where he bought in for $100,000.... Adelstein said, he laid out his suspicions about the intricacies of the operation to the host and a business partner, and said he would go public with what happened. "They offered me a deal where they would refund me my money in exchange for my silence," he said. "And then they paid me in six installments, once a month, for a six-month period."

The incident, which he relayed on a poker podcast last year, showed Adelstein the darker side of poker and left him cautious.

He never played in a high-stakes home game with strangers again, choosing to exclusively play in casinos, where he reasoned cheating would be less likely. Still, "I'm always looking out for it," he said. "I'm not the world's most trusting guy when it comes to poker."
The article notes how major poker sites were busted 15 years ago for "superuser" accounts with cheating privileges — and a 2019 lawsuit in which dozens of pros sued a player and gambling hall accused of leaking info from the RFID-tagged cards uesd in their livestreams. "When it comes to stream security and these types of games, as professionals we're obviously always on the lookout so it doesn't happen again," poker player Matt Berkey said of the aftermath. "Garrett's one of the biggest players who plays on stream, so he himself is more of a potential target."

"Hustler Casino Live," the streaming show that hosted the now-infamous Sept. 29 game, also uses RFID playing cards. Since its first show aired in August 2021, it has become the world's most-watched poker stream, combining the drama of the game with huge amounts of cash, poker's top players, celebrities and other colorful personalities. "Hustler Casino Live" now has more than 1 million monthly unique viewers and 185,000 subscribers.

The show's games are streamed five days a week on a delay of one to four hours to prevent information from being passed to players live. But now its stream security has been called into question, with players saying tighter protocols need to be implemented. They've raised concerns over the number of employees who had access to the control room where hole cards were being monitored, and a few have said the stream should temporarily shut down while the investigation is ongoing....

"I thought that streamed poker was, at least by comparison to the other options, one of the last safe havens," Adelstein said. "And at this point, I have so little faith in that...."

"Live at the Bike," on which Adelstein has played several times, has been hitting him up since Sept. 29 in the hopes that he will join its stream. But he says he's not in the right headspace for it.

"There's I guess a world in the next several weeks or months where maybe I'm able to process this and want to play a poker game. But at the moment, that's not how I feel," he said.

"I'm not playing poker on a stream again unless I see tangible, noticeable, measurable differences in livestream security," he continued. "That's for my own benefit and it's for the benefit of the poker community at large."

OneHundredAndTen writes: A recent paper proposes a new way to put together a message for alien intelligent beings. It comes up with an elaborate mechanism to convey information in notably constrained bitmaps, but one can't help but wonder whether it is too elaborate. For example, for 1+1 = 2, the article proposes something far more visually complex than 1+1 = 2, which could also be, with small adjustments, easily coerced to have a representation as a bitmap with the limitations in the article. It is not clear why the representation that the authors are proposing would be easier for aliens to decode and understand than something much closer to 1+1 = 2: either representation would be, well, alien to them. "Calculation of the optimal timing during a given calendar year is specified for potential future transmission from both the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope in China and the SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array in northern California to a selected region of the Milky Way which has been proposed as the most likely for life to have developed," reads the paper.

"These powerful new beacons, the successors to the Arecibo radio telescope which transmitted the 1974 message upon which this expanded communication is in part based, can carry forward Arecibo's legacy into the 21st century with this equally well-constructed communication from Earth's technological civilization."

Possibly anticipating some new regulations, America's Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating "gamification and behavioral prompts used by online brokerages that encourage trading," reports CNBC.

And SEC chairman Gary Gensler has specifically requested public input on two questions: First, the SEC chair wants to know how the financial regulator should protect investors against a potential conflict of interest. Online brokerages generate profits when their customers trade more often. Robinhood Markets, for example, makes money in part by sending its customers' orders to high-frequency traders in exchange for cash. That process is itself controversial and known on Wall Street as payment for order flow. But if game-like prompts or congratulatory messages from online brokerages cause customers to make more trades — and especially if more trades result in poorer portfolio performance at slightly worse prices — should the SEC intervene?

Gensler's second key question is a bit more cerebral. In essence, the SEC wants to answer: If brokerages' game-like or predictive prompts assume optimal outcomes and impact how often customers trade, should the regulator consider those in-app prompts as formal investment recommendations or investment advice?
Or, as Barrons puts it, "Critics say that some stock-trading apps look more like online games or gambling services, and their graphic interfaces are coercing users into making bad decisions."

Meanwhile, MarketWatch (via Dow Jones Newswires) reports on another issue: "According to a new survey from consumer finance website MagnifyMoney, 32% of U.S. investors say they have made trades while drunk." Gen Z members fell into the trap the most of any generation, with 59% confessing to drunk trading, while 9% of baby boomers admitted to trading under the influence. This can be combined with the rise in "emotionally charged" investing that traders say they would later regret. Per the survey, 66% of Americans admit to making impulsive investing decisions... Entering trade orders on mobile devices has assuredly made stock trading easier to complete while engaged in other tasks, including imbibing, but why does it seemingly impact younger investors more? According to the Addiction Center, an informational group for people struggling with substance-use disorders and co-occurring behavioral and mental-health disorders, the gamification interface of trading apps like Robinhood could be a factor.
A Robinhood spokesperson told MarketWatch their platform was designed "to remove historical barriers to investing and open financial markets to millions upon millions of people previously left behind.

"We are proud to expand access to the financial system and enable everyday people to learn and invest responsibly."

Though the U.S. government averted a shutdown of TikTok through a new Oracle/Walmart partnership, that leaves much bigger questions unresolved. The biggest issue may be that banning apps "defeats the original intent of the internet," argues the New York TImes. "And that was to create a global communications network, unrestrained by national borders." "The vision for a single, interconnected network around the globe is long gone," Jason Healey, a senior research scholar at Columbia University's School for International and Public Affairs and an expert on cyber conflict. "All we can do now is try to steer toward optimal fragmentation."
But the Times also asks whether the TikTok agreement fails even at its original goal of protecting the app from foreign influence: The code and algorithms are the magic sauce that Beijing now says, citing its own national security concerns, may not be exported to to a foreign adversary... Microsoft's bid went further: It would have owned the source code and algorithms from the first day of the acquisition, and over the course of a year moved their development entirely to the United States, with engineers vetted for "insider threats." So far, at least, Oracle has not declared how it would handle that issue. Nor did President Trump in his announcement of the deal. Until they do, it will be impossible to know if Mr. Trump has achieved his objective: preventing Chinese engineers, perhaps under the influence of the state, from manipulating the code in ways that could censor, or manipulate, what American users see.
Other questions also remain, including America's larger policy towards other apps like Telegram made by foreign countries. Even Amy Zegart, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and Stanford's Freeman-Spogli Institute, complains to the Times that "bashing TikTok is not a China strategy. China has a multi-prong strategy to win the tech race. It invests in American technology, steals intellectual property and now develops its own technology that is coming into the U.S... And yet we think we can counter this by banning an app. The forest is on fire, and we are spraying a garden hose on a bush."

And another article in the Times argues that the TikTok agreement doesn't even eliminate Chinese ownership of the app: Under the initial terms, ByteDance still controls 80 percent of TikTok Global, two people with knowledge of the situation have said, though details may change. ByteDance's chief executive, Zhang Yiming, will also be on the company's board of directors, said a third person. And the government did not provide specifics about how the deal would answer its security concerns about TikTok...

A news release published by Walmart on Saturday on its website — then edited later — captured the chaos. "This unique technology eliminates the risk of foreign governments spying on American users or trying to influence them with disinformation," the company said. "Ekejechb ecehggedkrrnikldebgtkjkddhfdenbhbkuk."

To many college students, the prospect of a year of school during a pandemic -- with virtual classes, restricted movements and no parties -- is a huge bummer. Some Silicon Valley startups, hungry for young talent, see it as an opportunity. From a report: Over the past few months, several companies have presented an alternative to school: a remote internship, aimed specifically at young people looking for alternatives to a dismal school year. Dozens of Silicon Valley startups are looking to hire fall interns, according to a list assembled by startup accelerator Y Combinator. This month, venture firm Neo organized a virtual career fair for 120 students and a range of startups, hoping to match pairs for internships during the upcoming academic year. And venture firm Contrary Capital is offering to invest $100,000 in five teams of entrepreneurs if they take a gap year from school to build a company.

Such arrangements allow interns to get paid and learn on the job, while avoiding paying tens of thousands of dollars for Zoom University. It also means that companies willing to improvise on hiring and gamble on younger workers may get new access to fresh talent. Ali Partovi, Neo's chief executive officer, said the firm surveyed 120 students who are part of its mentorship programs and found that 46% of them are interested in taking a gap semester and 21% are interested in taking a gap year. "There's a potential for a big shift right now," said Alexandr Wang, the co-founder and CEO of Scale AI Inc., a startup that helps people train computer vision. He said Scale would hire up to 10 gap-year workers if they found the right people. For many students he talks to, school this year seems like a "sub-optimal" option, Wang said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Food & Wine Magazine: Fried rice is one of those dishes where the name practically tells you how to make it. But the key to cooking perfect fried rice is in the details: not just the ingredients but also the equipment and technique. Traditionally, the dish is made in a wok with chefs continually tossing the rice to avoid caramelization and burning. It led a lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology to wonder, is there an optimal way to cook fried rice? Turns out, yes, and the pros have pretty much nailed it -- though the researchers do have a suggestion. Published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, the study "The physics of tossing fried rice" delivers on what the title promises -- analyzing the technique of five professional chefs to better understand their cooking technique.

[The] research confirmed that handling a wok is tough business. In the technique used by professionals, "The key is using the stove rim as the fulcrum of [a] see-saw motion," according to the paper, resulting in the rice being tossed at a rapid 2.7 times per second. "We show that the wok is always contacting the stove and getting support from it so that the chef wouldn't have to lift it," Hungtang Ko, a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech, who co-authored the study, stated. "Most importantly, we show that the wok motions adopted by the chefs are really some sort of optimal [motion] for the rice grains to jump the farthest." And yet, after developing a mathematical model that successfully described the wok tossing process, Ko and co-author David Hu, the professor who runs the lab, came up with some potential improvements. "Tossing is a combination of two independent motions, a side to side motion and a see-saw motion, allowing rice grains to slide around the wok as well as to jump off the surface," the conclusion of the paper states. "We identify two critical parameters that chefs can vary: the frequency of tossing and the phase lag between the two motions applied. By filming professional chefs, we found that, at the frequency chosen by chefs, the phase difference performed is optimal for mixing. We suggest that future chefs increase the frequency of motion, which may enable rice to jump further, and promote cooling and mixing." Ko and Hu point out that 64.5 percent of Chinese restaurant chefs complain of shoulder pain, likely in part to all that wok work.

As a result, Ko believes his research might help "guide the design of robots that can mix granular materials efficiently and rapidly." He adds: "It also paves ways for designing assistive robotic devices that chefs can wear to reduce the burden from the arm muscles."

"A scientist working for the U.S. Navy has filed for a patent on a room-temperature superconductor, representing a potential paradigm shift in energy transmission and computer systems," reports Phys.org: Salvatore Cezar Pais is listed as the inventor on the Navy's patent application made public by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday. The application claims that a room-temperature superconductor can be built using a wire with an insulator core and an aluminum PZT (lead zirconate titanate) coating deposited by vacuum evaporation with a thickness of the London penetration depth and polarized after deposition.

An electromagnetic coil is circumferentially positioned around the coating such that when the coil is activated with a pulsed current, a non-linear vibration is induced, enabling room temperature superconductivity. "This concept enables the transmission of electrical power without any losses and exhibits optimal thermal management (no heat dissipation)," according to the patent document, "which leads to the design and development of novel energy generation and harvesting devices with enormous benefits to civilization."
Long-time Slashdot reader resistant writes: NextBigFuture says the same individual appears to have made other startling claims that arguably stretch the boundaries of belief, such as a "high-frequency gravitational wave generator" that could supposedly drive a spaceship without conventional propellants as well as an "inertial mass reduction device." Prudence would appear to dictate examining these and other claims by Mr. Salvatore Cezar Pais with great caution.

Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday criticized the FCC on its response to Verizon's throttling of firefighters' data speeds as they battled a major wildfire in Northern California. "In a letter Friday, Senator Edward Markey and Congresswoman Anna Eshoo demanded answers from the FCC over what steps it is currently taking to address 'critical threats to public safety,' citing its decision to repeal Obama-era net neutrality protections," reports Gizmodo. From the report: The 2015 Open Internet Order -- overturned by the FCC's Republican majority last winter -- reclassified internet providers like Verizon as common carriers under Title II of the Federal Communications Act, granting the FCC regulatory authority that, in this instance, would have allowed the commission to investigate and potential penalize Verizon for its decision. At Chairman Ajit Pai's direction, the commission abdicated that authority this year. It no longer has the power to establish rules prohibiting Verizon from throttling emergency services, or charging police and fire departments additional fees to maintain their communications at optimal speeds when usage peaks -- say, during a wildfire, or an earthquake, or a mass shooting.

"The FCC has incorrectly suggested that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) could sufficiently fill this void," wrote Markey and Eschoo, whose congressional districting includes portions of Santa Clara. "We strongly disagree with that assertion." In their letter, the Democratic lawmakers urged the FCC to make use of its Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau and investigate the matter, saying that while the FTC may find Verizon's actions exemplify an "unfair and deceptive practice," both agencies should use "all of the tools available" to resolve this public safety matter. "To do nothing is unacceptable," they said.

New submitter psnyder shares a report from CoinDesk: [The patent] outlined a potential cryptocurrency exchange system that would convert one digital currency into another. Further, this system would be automated, establishing the exchange rate between the two currencies based on external data feeds. The patent describes a potential three-part system, where the first part would be a customer's account and the other two would be accounts owned by the business running the system. The user would store their chosen cryptocurrency through the customer account. The second account, referred to as a "float account," would act as a holding area for the cryptocurrency the customer is selling, while the third account, also a float account, would contain the equivalent amount of the cryptocurrency the customer is converting their funds to. That third account would then deposit the converted funds back into the original customer account for withdrawal. The proposed system would collect data from external information sources on cryptocurrency exchange rates, and use this data to establish its own optimal rate. The patent notes this service would be for enterprise-level customers, meaning that if the bank pursues this project, it would be offered to businesses.

An anonymous reader writes: Soylent has announced today their latest product, Soylent 2.0. It comes premixed and ready to drink in recyclable bottles. Each bottle is one fifth of a scientifically balanced daily meal plan, will last up to a year unrefrigerated, and will cost you $2.42. A Soylent blog post reads in part: "Not only are its ingredients vegan, Soylent 2.0 reaches an unprecedented level of environmental sustainability with half of its fat energy coming from farm-free, algae sources. This next generation agricultural technology has the potential to reduce the ecological impact of food production by orders of magnitude, signifying a major step towards a future of abundance, a world where optimal nutrition is the new normal."

Nerval's Lobster writes "Microsoft might want a piece of the mini-tablet market. The company has lowered the minimum screen resolution for Windows 8 tablets, from 1,366 x 768 pixels to 1024 x 768 pixels. "This doesn't imply that we're encouraging partners to regularly use a lower screen resolution," it wrote in an accompanying newsletter. "We understand that partners exploring designs for certain markets could find greater design flexibility helpful." As pointed out by ZDNet's Ed Bott—cited by other publications as the journalist who first noticed the altered guidelines—that lowered resolution "would allow manufacturers to introduce devices that are in line with the resolutions of the iPad Mini (1024 x 768) and the Kindle Fire and Google Nexus 7 (both 1280 x 800)." Whatever the contours of the smaller-tablet market, it's certainly popular enough to tantalize any potential competitor. But if Microsoft plunges in, it will face the same challenges that confronted it in the larger-tablet arena: lots of solid competitors, and not a whole lot of time to make a winning impression. There are also not-inconsiderable hardware challenges to overcome, including processor selection and engineering for optimal battery life."

Last week you had a chance to ask former Republican staffer Derek Khanna about his well publicized firing, copyright law, and the state of the government. Read below to see his answers to your questions.

A while ago you had the chance to ask Bruce Perens about how open source has changed in the past 15 years, what's happening now, and what's to come. Bruce has been busy traveling, but he's found some free time and sent in his answers. Read below to see what he has to say.