159721871
submission
McGruber writes:
Retired NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly just announced that he was returning a medal awarded to him by Russia. A translation of his announcement, which Mr Kelly made in Russian:
Mr. Medvedev, I am returning to you the Russian medal "For Merit in Space Exploration", which you presented to me. Please give it to a Russian mother whose son died in this unjust war. I will mail the medal to the Russian embassy in Washington. Good luck.
159275417
submission
McGruber writes:
The cargo ship that caught fire in the Atlantic while transporting roughly 4,000 Volkswagen Group vehicles to the U.S. has sunk despite efforts to tow it to safety.
“The weather was pretty rough out there,” Pat Adamson, a spokesperson for MOL Ship Management, a unit of Mitsui OSK Lines Ltd., said by phone. “And then she sank, which was a surprise.”
In a projection assuming all vehicles would be lost, the risk-modeling company Russell Group last week estimated that the incident could cost the automaker at least $155 million. About $438 million worth of goods were aboard the ship, $401 million of which were cars.
Earlier story: https://hardware.slashdot.org/...
158943383
submission
McGruber writes:
An update to Friday's story about the burning cargo ship adrift in the Mid-Atlantic (https://news.slashdot.org/story/22/02/18/1615256/burning-cargo-ship-is-adrift-in-mid-atlantic-without-crew):
MSN is now reporting that the ship is aflame from bow to stern with a lithium-ion battery fire that can’t be put out with water alone. The fire has been burning since Wednesday (Feb. 16), as the ship drifts in the Atlantic about 200 miles southwest of Portugal’s Azores Islands. Its 22-person crew abandoned ship and was rescued on Thursday.
The ship left Germany on Feb. 10 and headed for the US with about 4,000 Porches, Bentleys and other luxury cars aboard, and some of those were electric vehicles. It’s not clear if the batteries contributed to the fire starting in the first place—a greasy rag in a lubricant-slicked engine room or a fuel leak are the usual suspects in ship fires—but the batteries are keeping the flames going now. A forensic investigation will take months to determine the cause.
Bloomberg adds (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-21/porsches-and-lamborghinis-lost-at-sea-may-be-worth-155-million) that the fire could cost Volkswagen at least $155 million based upon the Russell Group's estimate that there are $401 million worth of cars. VW group had Volkswagen, Porsche, Audi, Bentley and Lamborghini models on the vessel.
158906675
submission
McGruber writes:
NY Magazine has a great article that succinctly summarizes Meta's self-immolation:
There has never been a self-immolation quite like Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg’s social-media company has lost more than half a trillion dollars in market value since its August peak — about half of that vaporized in a single day, the biggest drop ever — as it starts to weaken from the constant siege of competitors and dissenters without and within. The fallout is so bad that Meta, once the sixth-largest company in the world by market capitalization, has fallen out of the top ten, replaced by two computer-chip makers, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, and the Chinese e-commerce company Tencent. For a CEO who has openly courted comparisons to the Roman emperor Augustus, it’s an ignominious fall from a rarefied group of world-dominating companies.
We may be witnessing the early days of the fall of Zuckustus. Facebook’s once unbeatable ad-tracking system — the engine that made it a more than $1 trillion company — has effectively been neutralized by the likes of Apple, which allows users to block the company’s trackers. (Google is set to start phasing in similar protections to its users over the next two years.) Facebook’s user base has started to shrink after revelations by whistleblowers and leaks that showed how harmful social media could be to teen users, who are flocking to less toxic competitors like TikTok anyway. And Zuckerberg — clearly bored with the company he founded 18 years ago — has shifted his vision into an immersive version of the internet, complete with headsets and digital avatars, that he calls the metaverse, an ambition that sets up Facebook’s competition not with another Silicon Valley company but with reality itself.
The important piece of this is the ads. Essentially, there are two main channels for advertisers to sell digital ads: one based on what you search for and the other based on which sites you’ve visited and your other online behaviors. The latter was Facebook’s business model — and the reason you would get uncanny ads for goods before you even knew you needed them. Apple and Google have decided they’re going to allow their users to disable code that tracks people across the internet, which happens to be good for their business model. According to The Wall Street Journal, the fallout has been so severe that advertisers are shifting their entire ad budgets to Google since Facebook is no longer profitable. It’s a bitter irony for the company as its opaque rules about what would show up on users’ feeds once led to the rise of clickbait farms like ViralNova and the decimation of an untold number of local news sites across the world.
157066431
submission
McGruber writes:
The Buffalo, NY newspaper reports:
The Erie County Legislature recently approved plans to establish a new, county-controlled corporation to oversee and manage the creation of ErieNet, an ambitious county-sponsored fiber-optic network that could give all cities, towns and interested internet service providers unparalleled access to up to 500 miles of untapped fiber-optic lines.
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz first announced a $20 million ErieNet initiative in the spring of 2019, with hopes that the full network could be built by the end of 2021. Nearly three years later, there is still no shovel in the ground. Business and design planning was delayed by Covid-19. Business planning has now restarted, though detailed network mapping is still months away.
The current ErieNet plan is for a more ambitious network than first proposed. Initially, Poloncarz said the county would lay roughly 360 miles of fiber-optic lines that would then be leased to public and private entities. But that was before federal stimulus aid was available. Now, county leaders are talking about an even larger network involving the laying of 400 to 500 miles of fiber. This would make Erie County one of the largest municipalities in the country to operate this type of backbone network, which could be leased by private internet service providers, individual companies, public institutions and local governments.
To get that ball rolling, Poloncarz requested that the County Legislature approve the creation of a local development corporation, with a board composed of elected and appointed county officials. This county-controlled, nonprofit corporation would administer and maintain ErieNet and market the program to interested users, who would be allowed to lease the county network. The board would provide governance and approve policies.
155010389
submission
McGruber writes:
Some Mailchimp employees said their situation just kept getting worse after they learned their company was being sold to Intuit in September. Employees discovered their MailChimp health benefits were abruptly terminated Sunday. Some employees also found out last week that their total pay as Intuit employees may be less, multiple employees said.
"The general feeling from those I'm speaking to is that the transition has been so badly handled that the only explanation is that Intuit wants to drive attrition," one employee said. The employee, along with two others, spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media. These employees said they learned their health benefits had lapsed only after their colleagues posted questions on Slack and in an online onboarding session. One said he found out when he went to go pick up a prescription and was told his coverage had expired.
The employees Business Insider spoke with said they would be covered retroactively only once the paperwork was finalized, which left them on the hook to pay upfront fees. Some employees had still not received their enrollment paperwork, they said. One said they canceled medical appointments for serious ongoing conditions to avoid bills for expensive treatments.
"I am extremely worried that in a 1,200-person company, it seems likely at least one person or dependent will need an ER visit before they get their new info and be saddled with the stress of a six-figure out-of-pocket bill," another employee said. "Or worse, some support colleague making 50K a year won't take a sick kid in because they are worried about the cost."
153756389
submission
McGruber writes:
A federal grand jury in the Northern District of Texas returned an indictment charging Mark A. Forkner, former Chief Technical Pilot for The Boeing Company (Boeing), with deceiving the Federal Aviation Administration’s Aircraft Evaluation Group (FAA AEG) in connection with the FAA AEG’s evaluation of Boeing’s 737 MAX airplane, and scheming to defraud Boeing’s U.S.based airline customers to obtain tens of millions of dollars for Boeing.
As alleged in the indictment, Forkner provided the agency with materially false, inaccurate, and incomplete information about a new part of the flight controls for the Boeing 737 MAX called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). Because of his alleged deception, a key document published by the FAA AEG lacked any reference to MCAS. In turn, airplane manuals and pilot-training materials for U.S.-based airlines lacked any reference to MCAS — and Boeing’s U.S.-based airline customers were deprived of important information when making and finalizing their decisions to pay Boeing tens of millions of dollars for 737 MAX airplanes.
On or about Oct. 29, 2018, after the FAA AEG learned that Lion Air Flight 610 — a 737 MAX — had crashed near Jakarta, Indonesia, shortly after takeoff and that MCAS was operating in the moments before the crash, the FAA AEG discovered the information about the important change to MCAS that Forkner had withheld. Having discovered this information, the FAA AEG began reviewing and evaluating MCAS.
On or about March 10, 2019, while the FAA AEG was still reviewing MCAS, the FAA AEG learned that Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 — a 737 MAX — had crashed near Ejere, Ethiopia, shortly after takeoff and that MCAS was operating in the moments before the crash. Shortly after that crash, all 737 MAX airplanes were grounded in the United States.
Earlier Slashdot article: https://yro.slashdot.org/story...
153077953
submission
McGruber writes:
Tesla Inc said on Saturday it had delivered a record electric cars in the third quarter, beating Wall Street estimates after Chief Executive Elon Musk asked staff to "go super hardcore" to make a quarter-end delivery push.
Tesla delivered 241,300 vehicles globally in the July to September quarter, up 73% from a year earlier. Analysts had expected the electric-car maker to deliver 229,242 vehicles, according to Refinitiv data.
General Motors, Honda and some of its bigger rivals posted declines in U.S. sales in the third quarter, hit by a prolonged chip shortage. GM's third-quarter U.S. sales fell nearly 33% to its lowest level in more than a decade.
153065921
submission
McGruber writes:
The shortage of semiconductor chips has hit General Motors, causing it to stop production of its Super Cruise driver assistance system. A Cadillac spokesperson said "Super Cruise is an important feature for the Cadillac Escalade program. Although it's temporarily unavailable at the start of regular production due to the industry-wide shortage of semiconductors, we're confident in our team's ability to find creative solutions to mitigate the supply chain situation and resume offering the feature for our customers as soon as possible."
Super Cruise is unavailable across GM's entire lineup of cars.
146623556
submission
McGruber writes:
On one day in February, 11-year-old Malachi Battle was not feeling well, so he stayed home sick and attended his 6th grade classes virtually via Zoom. Strange things started happening. In one class, Malachi said he heard an unknown person yell a racial slur. Teachers said other unidentified people were trying to get into their virtual classrooms. Two days later, Malachi was suspended, accused of repeatedly trying to log into Zoom classes with threatening phrases and racial slurs in lieu of his name
Malachi’s lawyers say Gwinnett County Public Schools accused him based on an inaccurate list of students’ Internet Protocol addresses from Zoom, a problem that could repeat elsewhere since the company’s online sessions are replacing classrooms for millions of students amid the coronavirus pandemic. Chris Gilliard, a fellow with the Technology and Social Change Project of the Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, had not heard of a situation similar to Malachi’s but said “it’s hugely unlikely that this is the first time” a student had been disciplined based on questionable data from Zoom.
During the “Zoom bombing” attempts, Malachi had already logged into the classes under his regular name, according to his appeal.
The school district retrieved from Zoom a list of the names and IP addresses in each waiting room, Malachi’s legal team said. The Zoom bombers’ public IP addresses matched Malachi’s — but four other students who did not appear to be Zoom bombers were also listed as having Malachi’s public IP address, an impossibility since they were not in the same house, said Scott Moulton, a Woodstock-based forensics expert hired by the attorney working on Malachi’s case.
Moulton said the school district’s technology employee who investigated should have been able to tell that many of the IP addresses in the Zoom report were wrong.
“I would have at least picked up the phone and called Zoom before hanging the life of an 11-year-old kid based on a log that looks like an error,” Moulton said.
The Zoom bombers’ local IP addresses, which identify the exact device being used, did not match Malachi’s, according to the log his attorneys provided. Nor did the local IP addresses match any of the possible sequences available under the configuration of the router in Malachi’s house, Moulton said. There were no other routers or devices in the house that could have used those local IP addresses, Moulton said.
145101990
submission
McGruber writes:
Two men were killed when a driver-less Tesla crashed into a tree and burned. Harris County, Texas Constable Mark Herman said that the investigation showed “no one was driving” the 2019 Tesla when the crash occurred. There was a person in the passenger seat of the front of the car and a person in the rear passenger seat of the car.
KPRC 2 reporter Deven Clarke spoke to one victim's brother-in-law who said the victim was taking the car out for a spin with his best friend, so there were just two in the vehicle. The owner backed out of the driveway and then may have hopped in the back seat only to crash a few hundred yards down the road. He said the owner was found in the back seat upright.
Authorities said they used 32,000 gallons of water to extinguish the flames because the vehicle’s batteries kept reigniting. At one point, Herman said, deputies had to call Tesla to ask them how to put out the fire in the battery.
144765236
submission
McGruber writes:
Georgia is waiving vehicle emissions checks because a cyberware attack has halted all emission testing across Georgia and seven other states. The CEO of Applus Technologies, whose software runs the system, apologized during the emergency meeting Monday.
The outages are delivering a huge blow to small business owners. “All of the sudden, we were doing emissions testing just like normal and the system just kind of shut down,” said James Baxter, who owns BP Car Care Tire Pros. “We haven’t been able to do emissions since.” Baxter said before the cyberattack, his full service automobile shop conducted more than 100 vehicle emissions tests per day. “Emissions is $25. You can imagine the revenue loss. We have employees that are out of work because of this,” he said.
Georgia's Department of Revenue issued a Press Release that omitted mention of the attack:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
March 31, 2021
ATLANTA – Due to a system outage with the Vehicle Emissions Inspection and Maintenance Program, the Georgia Department of Revenue (DOR) is notifying motor vehicle owners that they are currently unable to obtain vehicle emissions tests. As such, the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) has issued an emissions test waiver for motorists who need to register or renew their vehicle registrations until further notice.
Motorists granted this emissions test waiver must still provide all other necessary registration documentation, meet insurance requirements, and comply with all other state rules and regulations regarding the vehicle other than timely emissions testing. As soon as the Vehicle Emissions Inspection and Maintenance Program’s functionality has been restored, emissions testing will be required as normal.
Motor vehicle owners with a valid emissions test can renew their registration online at dor.georgia.gov/motor-vehicles, at their county tag office, or at a kiosk location.
https://dor.georgia.gov/press-...
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Article:
https://www.wsbtv.com/news/loc...
140423994
submission
McGruber writes:
Edmund M. Clarke (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_M._Clarke), the FORE Systems Professor of Computer Science Emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University, has died of Covid-19.
Professor Clarke was best known for his work in model checking, an automated method for detecting design errors in computer hardware and software. CMU president Farnam Jahanian said the world had “lost a giant in computer science” with Mr. Clarke’s death. “Ed’s pioneering work in model checking applied formal computational methods to the ultimate challenge: computers checking their own correctness,” Mr. Jahanian said in a statement. “As systems become ever more complex, we are just beginning to see the wide-reaching and long-term benefits of Ed's insights, which will continue to inspire researchers and practitioners for years to come.”
In the early 1980s, Mr. Clarke and his Harvard University graduate student, E. Allen Emerson — as well as Joseph Sifakis of the University of Grenoble, who was working separately — developed model checking, which has helped to improve the reliability of complex computer chips, systems and networks. For their work, the Association for Computing Machinery gave the three scientists the prestigious A.M. Turing Award — computer science’s Nobel Prize — in 2007.
Mr. Clark’s citation on the Turing Award website said Microsoft and Intel and other companies use model checking to verify designs for computer networks and software. “It is becoming particularly important in the verification of software designed for recent generations of integrated circuits, which feature multiple processors running simultaneously,” the citation page said. “Model checking has substantially improved the reliability and safety of the systems upon which modern life depends.”
135667126
submission
McGruber writes:
Keith Sylvester, an Atlanta man wrongfully accused of killing his parents who were found dead in a burning home, is now a free man after Google geofence data identified another man as the murderer.
“I had been telling them since 2018 that I was innocent,” said Sylvester. “I was held in jail for almost 15 months and I wrote just about everybody and they finally released me in March.”
Officers accused Sylvester of strangling his parents and then setting their home on fire to get rid of evidence, but there was video evidence that he was not at the scene at the time of murders. “It’s not just the video evidence from the convenient stores, it’s also his cell phone GPS data that they had, it’s also dash camera in his own car that recorded his location throughout the night. Putting all that evidence together it’s impossible to reconcile him being there at a time when he could’ve started a fire,” said Sylvester's attorney Zack Greenamyre.
In a statement District Attorney Paul Howard said they dropped the charges after their Major Felonies Unit conducted their own independent investigation. During the process they acquired a Google geofence search warrant which identified Cornelius Muckle as the culprit. The statement went on to say Muckle’s cell phone was inside the house at the time of the crimes and he has now been charged with the murders.
As for Sylvester, his attorney says that much of the information exonerating him was known at the time of his arrest. He says the officers ignored the evidence and should be held accountable.
130534418
submission
McGruber writes:
On Twitter, William Shatner is sending his contempt to the Lethbridge Police department and three of its officers celebrated May Fourth by drawing their rifles on and then taking down a woman dressed as Stormtrooper, who had been standing in the parking lot of a Star Wars themed business.
https://twitter.com/WilliamSha...
