Arqit says its encryption system can't be broken by quantum computers, but former employees and people outside the company question the relevance of its technology. The Wall Street Journal: A U.K. cybersecurity startup rocketed to a multibillion-dollar valuation when it listed publicly last fall on the promise of making encryption technology that would protect the defense industry, corporations and consumers alike from the prying eyes of next-generation computer systems. Founder and Chief Executive David Williams told investors at the time that his company, Arqit Quantum had an "impressive backlog" of revenue and was ready "for hyperscale growth." But Arqit has given investors an overly optimistic view of its future revenue and the readiness and workability of its signature encryption system, according to former employees and other people familiar with the company, and documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

While the company says it has a solution to a quantum-computing security challenge that U.S. intelligence last year said "could be devastating to national security systems and the nation," government cybersecurity experts in the U.S. and the U.K. have cast doubt on the utility of Arqit's system. Arqit's stock price reached its highest level to date of $38.06 on Nov. 30 and has since fallen, to $15.06 on April 14, amid a broad pullback of young tech stocks. When the company secured its Nasdaq listing last autumn, its revenue consisted of a handful of government grants and small research contracts, and its signature product was an early-stage prototype unable to encrypt anything in practical use, according to the people. The encryption technology the company hinges on -- a system to protect against next-generation quantum computers -- might never apply beyond niche uses, numerous people inside and outside the company warned, unless there were a major overhaul of internet protocols. Arqit disputed that its encryption system was only a prototype at the company's market debut. "This was a live production software release and not a demonstration or trial," said a company representative. "It was being used by enterprise customers on that day and subsequently for testing and integration purposes, because they need to build Arqit's software into their products."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: More than half a decade has passed since the notorious Russian hackers known as Sandworm targeted an electrical transmission station north of Kyiv a week before Christmas in 2016, using a unique, automated piece of code to interact directly with the station's circuit breakers and turn off the lights to a fraction of Ukraine's capital. That unprecedented specimen of industrial control system malware has never been seen again -- until now: In the midst of Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine, Sandworm appears to be pulling out its old tricks.

On Tuesday, the Ukrainian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UA) and the Slovakian cybersecurity firm ESET issued advisories that the Sandworm hacker group, confirmed to be Unit 74455 of Russia's GRU military intelligence agency, had targeted high-voltage electrical substations in Ukraine using a variation on a piece of malware known as Industroyer or Crash Override. The new malware, dubbed Industroyer2, can interact directly with equipment in electrical utilities to send commands to substation devices that control the flow of power, just like that earlier sample. It signals that Russia's most aggressive cyberattack team attempted a third blackout in Ukraine, years after its historic cyberattacks on the Ukrainian power grid in 2015 and 2016, still the only confirmed blackouts known to have been caused by hackers.

ESET and CERT-UA say the malware was planted on target systems within a regional Ukrainian energy firm on Friday. CERT-UA says that the attack was successfully detected in progress and stopped before any actual blackout could be triggered. But an earlier, private advisory from CERT-UA last week, first reported by MIT Technology Review today, stated that power had been temporarily switched off to nine electrical substations. Both CERT-UA and ESET declined to name the affected utility. But more than 2 million people live in the area it serves, according to Farid Safarov, Ukraine's deputy minister of energy. [...] The revelation of Sandworm's attempted blackout attack provides more evidence that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been accompanied by a new wave of cyberattacks on the country's networks and critical infrastructure, though with only mixed success.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Paramount is launching its NFT marketplace / metaverse / annoying marketing stunt that fans are already angry about with Star Trek non-fungible tokens (or NFTs.) The company partnered with Recur to create a platform called Paramount.xyz, which it says will "bring Paramount's beloved entertainment entities, brands and characters to the metaverse." Paramount is aping what's worked for big NFT projects in the past; the Star Trek NFTs will depict "algorithmically-generated starships" and can be purchased at the low, low price of $250 per pack. Packs, by the way, contain a single ship -- which only has around an 11 percent chance of looking like the Enterprise. You can (but absolutely should not) guarantee that you'll get a cool ship by buying the "Admiral pack" instead of the "Captain pack," but you can only get those if you've shelled out for a Recur pass -- another NFT that costs at least $290.

The ships are stored in what Paramount is calling "Star Trek Continuum," which is what the company describes as "an experiential hub that will house this first and all future seasons of Star Trek NFTs." Those "future seasons" will involve collecting crewmates and doing vague, unspecified missions according to Paramount's roadmap. In terms of what that "metaverse" or those experiences will actually look like, Paramount's press release has a lot of words that basically add up to a hand wave: "Recur and Paramount are building a roadmap of in-real-life utility over the course of this multi-year partnership and Continuum holders will get access to exclusive perks, events and content expanding on the utility of the NFTs digitally and in-real-life."

An anonymous reader shares a report: On a winter night in early 2016, Jeremy Kitson gathered in his buddy's large shed with some neighbors to plan their fight against a proposed wind farm in rural Van Wert County, Ohio. The project would be about a mile from his home. From the beginning, Kitson -- who teaches physics and chemistry at the local high school -- knew he didn't want the turbines anywhere near him. He had heard from folks who lived near another wind project about 10 miles away that the turbines were noisy and that they couldn't sleep. "There were so many people saying that it's horrible, you do not want to live under these things,'" Kitson says. He and his neighbors went on the offensive. "I was just like, there's got to be a way to beat 'em," he says of the developer, Apex Clean Energy. "You got to outsmart them. You got to figure out the science. You got to figure out the economic arguments. You got to figure out what they're going to say and figure out how to counter it."

At the shed, according to Kitson, they agreed that part of their outreach would involve posting information on a Facebook community page called "Citizens for Clear Skies," which ultimately grew to more than 770 followers. In between posts selling anti-wind yard signs and posts about public meetings opposing local wind projects, there were posts that spread false, misleading and questionable information about wind energy. Links to stories about wind turbine noise causing birth defects in Portuguese horses. Posts about the health effects of low frequency infrasound, also called wind turbine syndrome. Posts about wind energy not actually reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Photos of wind turbines breaking, burning and falling -- some in nearby counties and states, but some in Germany and New Zealand.

According to 2014 data from the Department of Energy, the most recent available, out of the then-40,000 turbines in the U.S., there had been fewer than 40 incidents. Kitson, the administrator of the Facebook page, says he knows that these accidents aren't typical. "Those events are not likely. We know that," Kitson says. But Kitson has seen a broken piece of a fallen turbine blade himself, which got him worrying about how the fiberglass might affect the integrity of the soil and the crops. So he posts the photos and articles, many of which he receives from an anti-wind email list. "I do that just to try to show people what's possible." Kitson's group is one of dozens in the United States and abroad that oppose utility-scale wind and solar projects. Researchers say that in many groups, misinformation is raising doubts about renewable energy and slowing or derailing projects.

Limiters cap amount of electricity households can use, making many appliances unusable. From a report: Josie Gagne was stumbling in the dark, sobbing while on the phone with an Enmax customer assistant, as she tried to locate the tiny orange button under the utility meter that would restore heat inside. It was the shock that got her. The young single mother with two kids under two returned home one winter day last year to find a note on her door from Enmax. She'd fallen behind on bills; the home was now on a limiter, capping her electricity. The furnace was off and at that point, she had no idea what a limiter even was. "I'm freaking out. I'm crying, thinking 'What am I going to do?'" she said. "It's the middle of winter, it's still cold outside. How am I going to feed my children when my oven doesn't work?"

Rising utility bills have community advocates worried the number of Calgarians facing this scenario will increase, and many don't know what a load limiter is. It's often the first step before disconnection. Several Calgary residents flagged the issue while sharing their utility bill experiences with CBC Calgary through text messaging, and on Calgary Kindness, a mutual aid Facebook group. They've shared their personal stories with CBC journalists so others know what to expect. Contributors said they were scared their fridge would lose power and their groceries would rot. They relied on air fryers, barbecues or a hot plate to make it through. The extra fees -- $52 for the notice, $52 to remove the limiter -- only made it worse. Plus, the black mark on their files means they often can't get a contract with more favourable fixed rates. When the device is installed, a stove or anything else requiring 240 volts of electricity won't work.

Power blackouts and rising electricity costs have inspired "a small but growing number of Californians" to leave the power grid altogether for their own home-generated energy, reports the New York Times.

And thanks to "a stunning drop" in the cost of solar panels and batteries, "Some homeowners who have built new, off-grid homes say they have even saved money because their systems were cheaper than securing a new utility connection...." Nobody is quite sure how many off-grid homes there are but local officials and real estate agents said there were dozens here in Nevada County, a picturesque part of the Sierra Nevada range between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe. Some energy experts say that millions of people could eventually go off the grid as costs drop....

People going off the grid argue that utilities are not moving fast enough to address climate change and are causing other problems. In Northern California, Pacific Gas & Electric's safety record has alienated many residents. The company's equipment caused the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed dozens and destroyed the town of Paradise, about 70 miles north of Nevada City. The utility's effort to prevent fires by cutting off power to homes and businesses has also angered people. One of those residents is Alan Savage, a real estate agent in Grass Valley, who bought an off-grid home six years ago and has sold hundreds of such properties. He said he never loses power, unlike PG&E customers. "I don't think I'll ever go back to being on the grid," Mr. Savage said.

For people like him, it is not enough to take the approach favored by most homeowners with solar panels and batteries. Those homeowners use their systems to supplement the electricity they get from the grid, provide emergency backup power and sell excess energy to the grid.

The appeal of off-grid homes has grown in part because utilities have become less reliable. As natural disasters linked to climate change have increased, there have been more extended blackouts in California, Texas, Louisiana and other states.... Installing off-grid solar and battery systems is expensive, but once the systems are up and running, they typically require modest maintenance and homeowners no longer have an electric bill. RMI, a research organization formerly known as the Rocky Mountain Institute, has projected that by 2031 most California homeowners will save money by going off the grid as solar and battery costs fall and utility rates increase. That phenomenon will increasingly play out in less sunny regions like the Northeast over the following decades, the group forecasts....

Some energy experts worry that people who are going off the grid could unwittingly hurt efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That is because the excess electricity that rooftop solar panels produce will no longer reach the grid, where it can replace power from coal or natural gas plants. "We don't need everybody to cut the cord and go it alone," said Mark Dyson, senior principal with the carbon-free electricity unit of RMI.... Scott Aaronson, a senior vice president for security and preparedness at the Edison Electric Institute, a utility industry trade group, said that while off-grid living might appeal to some, it was "like having a computer not connected to the internet.... You're getting some value but you're not part of a greater whole," he said. "When something goes wrong, that's wholly on you...."

Off-grid systems are particularly attractive to people building new homes. That's because installing a 125- to 300-foot overhead power line to a new home costs about $20,000, according to the California Public Utilities Commission. In places where lines have to be buried, installation runs about $78,000 for 100 feet.
The article ends by pointing out that off-the-grid residents will soon also have a handy alternative to the giant electric batteries that store the excess energy from their solar panels: electric cars like the Ford F-150 Lightning and the Hyundai Ioniq 5.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) will begin testing bidirectional charging in California with new pilot programs announced this week at General Motors and Ford. ["This will enable power to flow from a charged EV into a customer's home, automatically coordinating between the EV, home and PG&E's electric supply," explains InsideEVs.] [...] General Motors might be late to the EV pickup party, but on Wednesday, it was first to announce that it is working with PG&E on vehicle-to-home technology. This summer, the two companies will begin lab tests with different GM EVs before starting to test vehicle-to-home connections at some customer homes. The two companies say they plan to open up to a larger customer trial by the end of this year.

On Thursday, Ford and PG&E revealed similar plans at the CERAWeek conference in Houston. Few details have been made public so far, though we know that unlike in the GM pilot, PG&E will not be able to remotely operate the vehicle-to-home feature on demand. And unfortunately, neither the Ford Mustang Mach-E nor the e-Transit will be capable of bidirectional charging; it will just be the F-150 Lightning.

NBC News reports that energy analysts "still expect most solar energy production in the near future to come from utility-scale projects, in part because of the savings that comes with massive installations."

Unfortunately, "It's those projects that are facing pushback." Local governments in states such as California, Indiana, Maine, New York and Virginia have imposed moratoriums on large-scale solar farms, as a national push for cleaner energy has collided with complaints about how the projects affect wildlife and scenic views. In one Nevada town west of Las Vegas, residents are trying to block a proposed 2,300-acre solar field. NBC News counted 57 cities, towns and counties across the country where residents have proposed solar moratoriums since the start of 2021, according to local news reports, and not every proposed ban gets local news coverage. At least 40 of those approved the measures. Other localities did so in earlier years.

That resistance is a threat to the big ambitions of the solar energy movement.
The current workaround? Solar panel installations "in unexpected places..." [Walmart] told NBC News it has more than 550 renewable energy projects, including solar and wind, implemented or under development. Several have opened recently in California, including with parking lot canopies. The company has a goal of using 100 percent renewable energy by 2035, up from 36 percent by its estimate now....

Houston has chosen the 240-acre site of a former landfill to install what the city said will be the largest infill solar project in the nation. In a neighborhood named Sunnyside, the project will generate enough electricity for 5,000 homes, according to the city. Similar projects have been built on landfills throughout New Jersey. An energy firm is building a solar project on a former coal mine on the border of Kentucky and West Virginia, while in New York state, researchers at Cornell University are testing putting solar panels in a field where sheep graze.

A city in Northern California says it has the largest floating solar farm in the U.S. at its wastewater treatment plant, and in January, a China-based energy company said it had built the world's largest floating solar array on a reservoir there. And last year, the Biden administration encouraged the development of solar projects on highway right-of-way, with a notice from the Federal Highway Administration telling field offices to work with states on ideas. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, including Webber, have said most states have more than 200 miles of interstate frontage suitable for solar development, especially near exits and rest stops.

Creative locations have a particular benefit: fewer potential neighbors who might complain.

Electrek writes: Nearly a year ago, Electrek reported that scientists published a feasibility study about the benefits of erecting solar panels over canals. That study is about to become a reality in a [one-mile] pilot project in California.

The California Department of Water Resources, utility company Turlock Irrigation District, Marin County, California-based water and energy project developer Solar AquaGrid, and The University of California, Merced, are partnering on a pilot project named Project Nexus — a "nod to the water-energy nexus paradigm gaining attention among public utilities."
California has about 4,000 miles of canal transporting water to 35 million California, explains Roger Bales, a distinguished engineering professor at the University of California, Merced (who is working on the project). "It's the largest such system in the world.

"We estimate that about 1% to 2% of the water they carry is lost to evaporation under the hot California sun." In a 2021 study... we showed that covering all 4,000 miles of California's canals with solar panels would save more than 65 billion gallons of water annually by reducing evaporation. That's enough to irrigate 50,000 acres of farmland or meet the residential water needs of more than 2 million people....

Shading California's canals with solar panels would generate substantial amounts of electricity. Our estimates show that it could provide some 13 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity, which is about half of the new sources the state needs to add to meet its clean electricity goals: 60% from carbon-free sources by 2030 and 100% renewable by 2045.

Installing solar panels over the canals makes both systems more efficient. The solar panels would reduce evaporation from the canals, especially during hot California summers. And because water heats up more slowly than land, the canal water flowing beneath the panels could cool them by 10 degrees Fahrenheit, boosting production of electricity by up to 3%.

These canopies could also generate electricity locally in many parts of California, lowering both transmission losses and costs for consumers. Combining solar power with battery storage can help build microgrids in rural areas and underserved communities, making the power system more efficient and resilient. This would mitigate the risk of power losses due to extreme weather, human error, and wildfires....

Another benefit is curbing aquatic weeds that choke canals. In India, where developers have been building solar canals since 2014, shade from the panels limits growth of weeds that block drains and restrict water flow....

Building smart solar developments on canals and other disturbed land can make power and water infrastructure more resilient while saving water, reducing costs, and helping to fight climate change.
"The project is anticipated to break ground in fall 2022," writes Turlock Irrigation District, "and be complete by the end of 2024."

A swath of major American businesses -- from major banks to utility companies -- is preparing for possible cyberattacks against their computer networks as Russia on Thursday threatened "consequences" for nations that interfere with its invasion of Ukraine. From a report: Their concerns, echoed in C-suites and around Washington, follow recent warnings from the Biden administration that U.S. firms should harden their defenses against potential cyberattacks that could disrupt the nation's critical infrastructure. American officials say there are no current threats against the U.S. But they have nonetheless urged organizations to plan for worst-case scenarios and more aggressively monitor their computer networks for possible intrusions.

"Right now, everybody needs to be at a heightened alert in the event this continues to escalate, and Russia tries to sway political opinion by causing damage in the United States and its Western allies," said David Kennedy, the chief executive officer of security firm TrustedSec. He said companies should be going through their computer infrastructure "with a fine-tooth comb" to ensure previous intrusions can't be used to cause future, more damaging, attacks. Major U.S. banks, for instance, fear aggressive cyberattacks if Washington imposes deeper financial sanctions on Russia, said two banking executives who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. CEOs of major financial firms and their cybersecurity experts recently met with Treasury officials as Russian threats of war intensified, according to the executives.

Web3 is Going Great reports: The popular Tom's Hardware and PC Gamer websites both ran articles about a utility called "Nvidia RTX LHR v2 Unlocker", which claimed to increase the artificially-limited cryptocurrency mining performance of its RTX graphics cards. These graphics cards are shipped with performance-limiting software to reduce the GPUs' attractiveness to cryptocurrency miners, whose thirst for GPUs has made it difficult and expensive for gamers and various others to acquire the hardware. Unfortunately, both publications had to run a second article just a day later to warn their readers away from the software they had just advertised.

Microsoft last month received a US patent covering modifications to a data-encoding technique called rANS, one of several variants in the Asymmetric Numeral System (ANS) family that support data compression schemes used by leading technology companies and open source projects. The Register reports: The creator of ANS, Jaroslaw Duda, assistant professor at Institute of Computer Science at Jagiellonian University in Poland, has been trying for years to keep ANS patent-free and available for public use. Back in 2018, Duda's lobbying helped convince Google to abandon its ANS-related patent claim in the US and Europe. And he raised the alarm last year when he learned Microsoft had applied for an rANS (range asymmetric number system) patent.

Now that Microsoft's patent application has been granted, he fears the utility of ANS will be diminished, as software developers try to steer clear of a potential infringement claim. "I don't know what to do with it -- [Microsoft's patent] looks like just the description of the standard algorithm," he told The Register in an email. The algorithm is used in JPEG XL and CRAM, as well as open source projects run by Facebook (Meta), Nvidia, and others. "This rANS variant is [for example] used in JPEG XL, which is practically finished (frozen bitstream) and [is] gaining support," Duda told The Register last year. "It provides ~3x better compression than JPEG at similar computational cost, compatibility with JPEG, progressive decoding, missing features like HDR, alpha, lossless, animations. "There is a large team, mostly from Google, behind it. After nearly 30 years, it should finally replace the 1992 JPEG for photos and images, starting with Chrome, Android."

CBS News reports that foreign cyberattackers aren't the only potential threat to America's electrical power grid: Domestic violent extremists have been planning to try to disrupt the U.S. power grid and will probably keep doing so, according to a Department of Homeland Security intelligence bulletin shared with law enforcement agencies and utility operators Monday and obtained by CBS News. "Domestic violent extremists have developed credible, specific plans to attack electricity infrastructure since at least 2020, identifying the electric grid as a particularly attractive target given its interdependency with other infrastructure sectors," the bulletin reads. It warns that extremists "adhering to a range of ideologies will likely continue to plot and encourage physical attacks against electrical infrastructure."

Still, the bulletin notes that, "Absent significant technical knowledge or insider assistance, small scale attacks are unlikely to cause widespread, multi-state power loss but may result in physical damage that poses risks to operations or personnel."

Texas governor candidate Don Huffines said he is "committed to making Texas the citadel for bitcoin and has released a plan detailing the effort. "As a leader in innovation, Texas needs to lead the nation in Bitcoin & cryptocurrency adoption," it reads. "Not only by acknowledging, supporting, and promoting the industry, but by also using our natural resources and the power of our state to legitimize Bitcoin as a store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account."

Huffines says the state must stop the federal government from "discriminating against Bitcoin holders" and "trying to shut down or limit freedom-loving Texans investing in Bitcoin." Not only does the plan call for a declaration making bitcoin a legal tender but it calls for establishing the Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency Policy Commission, "which will be tasked with identifying the utility of currencies that can be recognized as accepted Texas currency."

Do you agree with what Huffines proposes or do you think he's simply pandering for votes by capitalizing on the red-hot crypto craze?

If you created an online account to manage your tax records with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS), those login credentials will cease to work later this year. From a report: The agency says that by the summer of 2022, the only way to log in to irs.gov will be through ID.me, an online identity verification service that requires applicants to submit copies of bills and identity documents, as well as a live video feed of their faces via a mobile device. McLean, Va.-based ID.me was originally launched in 2010 with the goal of helping e-commerce sites validate the identities of customers who might be eligible for discounts at various retail establishments, such as veterans, teachers, students, nurses and first responders.

These days, ID.me is perhaps better known as the online identity verification service that many states now use to help staunch the loss of billions of dollars in unemployment insurance and pandemic assistance stolen each year by identity thieves. The privately-held company says it has approximately 64 million users, and gains roughly 145,000 new users each day. Some 27 states already use ID.me to screen for identity thieves applying for benefits in someone else's name, and now the IRS is about to join them. The service requires applicants to supply a great deal more information than typically requested for online verification schemes, such as scans of their driver's license or other government-issued ID, copies of utility or insurance bills, and details about their mobile phone service.

1.77 million people live in South Australia, speading across 984,321 square kilometres (or 380,048 square miles), according to Wikipedia. Today the Sydney Morning Herald announced that South Australia "sourced an average of just over 100 per cent of the electricity it needed from renewable power for 6 and a half days leading up to December 29 last year."

They're calling it "a record for the state and perhaps for comparable energy grids around the world." The state's previous record was just over three days, says Geoff Eldridge, an energy analyst who runs the website NEMlog.com.au, which tracks the operations of the National Energy Market covering Australia's east-coast states and South Australia.

His analysis shows that for the six days identified, the state produced on average 101 per cent of the energy it needed from wind, rooftop solar and solar farms, with just a fraction of the energy the state used being drawn from gas, in order to keep the grid stable. At times during the period, slightly less renewable energy was available and at other times renewable capacity was higher than needed, he says.

Bruce Mountain, director of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre, said he believed that aside from some small island grids such as those in Hawaii and Tasmania, it was likely that South Australia's six-day run on renewables was a record for a grid supporting an advanced economy.

During the unprecedented 156-hour renewable run, the share of wind in total energy supplied averaged 64.4 per cent, while rooftop solar averaged 29.5 per cent and utility-scale solar averaged 6.2 per cent, clean energy website RenewEconomy.com.au reported, using Mr Eldridge's data.
(Thanks to Slashdot reader betsuin for sharing the article)

Long-time Slashdot reader jimminy_cricket shares a new article from the technology site Inverse exploring the origin of blinking cursors.

They trace the invention to the 1960s and electronics engineer Charles Kiesling, a naval veteran of the Korean War who "spent his immediate post-war years on a new challenge: the exploding computing age." Still decades away from personal computers — let alone portable ones — Kiesling was joining the ranks of engineers tinkering with room-sized computers like the IBM 650 or the aging ENIAC. He joined Sperry Rand, now Unisys, in 1955, and helped develop the kind of computer guts that casual users rarely think about. This includes innards like logic circuitry, which enable your computer to make complex conditional decisions like "or," "and," or "if only" instead of simply "yes" or "no". One of these seemingly innocuous advancements was a 1967 patent filing Kiesling made for a blinking cursor...."

According to a post on a computer science message board from a user purporting to be Kiesling's son, the inspiration for this invention was simply utility. "I remember him telling me the reason behind the blinking cursor, and it was simple," Kiesling's son writes. "He said there was nothing on the screen to let you know where the cursor was in the first place. So he wrote up the code for it so he would know where he was ready to type on the Cathode Ray Tube."

The blinking, it turns out, is simply a way to catch the coders' attention and stand apart from a sea of text.
The article credits Apple with popularizing blinking cursors to the masses. And it also remembers a fun story about Steve Jobs (shared by Thomas Haigh, a professor of technology history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee): While he was in support of the blinking cursor itself, Haigh says Steve Jobs was famously against controlling it using cursor keys. Jobs attempted — and failed — to remove these keys from the original Mac in an effort to force users into using a mouse instead. In an interaction with biographer Walter Isaacson years later, he even pried them off with his car keys before signing his autograph on the keyboard.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: Yes, it's true. 83-year-old Tommy Chong and and 75-year-old Cheech Marin have reunited to create NFTs — a whole series of 'em — "bringing to life new characters and storylines," according to an official announcement, "while simultaneously celebrating Cheech & Chong's 50-plus year career of commercial and cultural success."

The NFT series will be called "Homies in Dreamland."

"As many know, I am deeply involved in the art community," Cheech says in the announcement. "As an early believer, I am glad we are introducing an NFT project now, ushering in a new era of branding for the duo and the art community."

And Tommy Chong calls NFTs "a new way for people to express themselves and reach out to others.

"Art is connecting with others and reaching the deeper parts of self. This can bring people from the NFT world into the world of Cheech and Chong, and together in the world of NFTs."
Last month Cheech and Chong even announced an official Discord channel for their NFT series — where they're also hosting movie and trivia nights. But "the holders of the NFT art collectible will gain access to a variety of utility, including future airdrops and special access/utility tokens randomly inserted throughout the collection."

The NFT series will release sometime this month, according to the announcement, with artwork by Jermaine Rogers, known for his poster art for musical acts including David Bowie, Childish Gambino, Tool, Foo Fighters, Radiohead, and Run The Jewels...

AnandTech: The notebook market is a tough nut to crack with a single solution. People want that mix of high performance at the top, cost effectiveness at the bottom, and throughout there has to be efficiency, utility, and function. On the back of a successful ramp last year, AMD is striking the notebook market hot again in 2022 with the launch of its new Ryzen 6000 Mobile processors. These 'Rembrandt' APUs feature AMD's latest RDNA2 graphics, up to eight Zen3+ cores with enhanced power management features, and it uses TSMC's N6 manufacturing process for performance and efficiency improvements. Yesterday AMD disclosed that they would be launching the new Ryzen 6000 Mobile series today -- updated cores, better graphics, more features, all in a single monolithic package a little over 200 mm2.

There will be 10 new processors, ranging from the traditional portable 15 W and 28 W hardware, up to 35 W and 45 W plus for the high-end gaming machines. AMD is expecting 200+ premium systems in the market with Ryzen Mobile in 2022. At the heart of the design is AMD's Zen 3+ core, which affords an improvement in power management between the cores, but keeps the Zen 3 performance characteristics. The focus here is mainly to improve idle power consumption and power when using accelerators, to help extend the life of ultraportable devices -- AMD is claiming 15-40% lower power between web browsing and video streaming. There is a frequency uplift as well, with the top processors going up to 5.0 GHz. AMD is claiming up to 1.3x single thread performance for the Ryzen 7 6800U.

Hungarian-born billionaire Thomas Peterffy, chairman of Interactive Brokers Group, says the online brokerage is now expanding the cryptocurrencies it offers its customers after sensing "urgency" from their clients to get in.

He still hasn't decided whether cryptocurrencies are a good investment — "I think it can go to zero, and I think it can go to a million dollars," he tells Bloomberg. "I have no idea." But he's invested a small amount just as a hedge against possible problems with fiat currency. His approach highlights the shifting attitude toward crypto by investors who once scorned or were wary of digital tokens but realized, especially in 2021, that they can't bear to miss out on the potential for big gains....

[American billionaire] Ray Dalio recently revealed he was holding at least some Bitcoin and Ethereum in his portfolio only months after questioning crypto's utility as a store of wealth. The Bridgewater Associates founder views the investments as an alternative money in a world where "cash is trash'' and inflation erodes buying power. [American billionaire hedge fund manager] Paul Tudor Jones disclosed he's invested as a hedge against inflation, and almost half the family offices Goldman Sachs Group Inc. does business with were interested in adding digital currencies to their portfolios, according to a recent bank survey.

Crypto moved increasingly into the mainstream of finance, albeit with mixed success. ProShares launched the first U.S. Bitcoin futures ETF, which attracted more than $1 billion in two days, before inflows sputtered and the price slumped since its October debut. Crypto enthusiasts are still hoping U.S. regulators approve an ETF that actually holds Bitcoin in 2022. Faring better, Coinbase Global Inc. went public and now has a $54 billion market valuation. It's founder, Brian Armstrong, is worth $9.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index...

There's still plenty of skepticism from Wall Street and the ultra-wealthy, but also pragmatism. [Multinational hedge fund] Citadel's Ken Griffin recently described the rush to embrace cryptocurrencies as a "jihadist call" against the U.S. dollar. But Griffin said his own firm would trade crypto if there were more regulation. JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s Jamie Dimon called Bitcoin "worthless" in October, but that came even as the New York-based banking giant was bulking up hiring to help its clients trade digital currencies.

The bank's clients are "adults," Dimon has said.