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Submission + - Happy Birthday, Apple Computer, Inc. 1

Submitted by NoMoreACs
NoMoreACs writes: It was 49 Years Ago Today. . .

April 1, 1976, Apple Computer was Incorporated.

. . .and the Rest, is History!

Submission + - Was Alleged CEO Shooter Luigi Mangione Radicalized by Pain? 4

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Podcaster and journalist Robert Evans, who covers topics such as far-right extremism, terrorism and protests, provocatively writes: "When Luigi Mangione, the suspected shooter of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was arrested at a McDonald’s, it didn't take long for digital sleuths to put together a comprehensive record of his online activity. I will tell you now that nothing he read or posted explains why he gunned down an insurance executive better than this single image in the background of his Twitter profile. This is an X-ray showing four screws in someone’s lower base spine, apparently due to lumbar spinal fusion surgery. [...] This is a man who had options [Mangione had a BS and MS in CS from Penn, where he was passionate about game development]. He could have been almost anything he wanted to be. And the thing he ultimately chose to do with his life, after suffering a debilitating injury, was to shoot the CEO of United Healthcare. Luigi Mangione was radicalized by pain."

A commenter on the article notes that Mangione is 26, the age when you get kicked off your parents' health insurance.

Submission + - ChromeOS 115 Rolling Out: Android App Streaming, PDF Signatures (9to5google.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google is rolling out ChromeOS 115 as a bigger-than-usual update with a number of user-facing additions over the coming days. Amidst I/O 2023, Google announced the beta availability of Android App Streaming from your Pixel (4a+) or Xiaomi (12T, 12T Pro, 13, 13 Pro) phone running Android 13 and newer with Cross-Device Services installed. It’s now entering stable with ChromeOS 115 so that you can stream apps from your mobile device to your Chromebook. This is framed as letting you “complete quick tasks like replying to a conversation, checking on the status of a rideshare or delivery, and editing your shopping list.”

Android apps, which open in a phone-sized window, can be launched via the Phone Hub where you get a row of Recent apps at the bottom of the panel with the ability to browse all compatible “Apps from your phone.” Applications can also open when you tap through a messaging notification. When opening PDFs in the Gallery app, ChromeOS 115 adds a signature tool. Appearing next to Draw in the top toolbar, you can add a signature, which is much easier with a touchscreen than a trackpad and save it for future use. You can place it in any document and resize the signature to ensure line fit. Lastly, Google has updated the keyboard Shortcuts app with “new navigation and taxonomy,” improved search, and a “refreshed shortcut visualization” that better shows what to press.

Meanwhile, this is unmentioned in the stable release notes, but ChromeOS 115 is testing better windowing options in the beta channel. Hovering over the expand/minimize button in the top-right corner control group will show you a new layout menu. There’s Split (half), Partial, Full and Float. That last option is new and makes it so that the window is always on top, just like Picture-in-Picture (PiP) for video. The other options were previously accessed by dragging a window and moving to the left/right side of the screen until an overlay appears. This approach is much more accessible and hopefully sees a wide launch soon.

Submission + - Meta Testing The Blocking of News Sites in Canada (ctvnews.ca)

Submitted by Peppercopia
Peppercopia writes: CTV news is reporting that Meta will begin testing the blocking of news sites in Canada. If the argument is that the social media giants are unfairly benefitting from content from Canadian news organizations, this move should be moot as the "stealing" would now be stopping. Unfortunately the opposite is likely the case, and the news organizations will find out how important the free traffic and promotion they are getting from social media giants really is. It feels a bit like killing the golden goose to get the eggs.

Submission + - SPAM: Satellites May Have Been Underestimating the Planet's Warming For Decades

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The global warming that has already taken place may be even worse than we thought. That's the takeaway from a new study that finds satellite measurements have likely been underestimating the warming of the lower levels of the atmosphere over the last 40 years. Basic physics equations govern the relationship between temperature and moisture in the air, but many measurements of temperature and moisture used in climate models diverge from this relationship, the new study finds. That means either satellite measurements of the troposphere have underestimated its temperature or overestimated its moisture, study leader Ben Santer, a climate scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, said in a statement.

"It is currently difficult to determine which interpretation is more credible," Santer said. "But our analysis reveals that several observational datasets — particularly those with the smallest values of ocean surface warming and tropospheric warming — appear to be at odds with other, independently measured complementary variables." Complementary variables are those with a physical relationship to each other. In other words, the measurements that show the least warming might also be the least reliable.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: US Soldiers Expose Nuclear Weapons Secrets Via Flashcard Apps

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For US soldiers tasked with the custody of nuclear weapons in Europe, the stakes are high. Security protocols are lengthy, detailed and need to be known by heart. To simplify this process, some service members have been using publicly visible flashcard learning apps — inadvertently revealing a multitude of sensitive security protocols about US nuclear weapons and the bases at which they are stored. While the presence of US nuclear weapons in Europe has long been detailed by various leaked documents, photos and statements by retired officials, their specific locations are officially still a secret with governments neither confirming nor denying their presence. As many campaigners and parliamentarians in some European nations see it, this ambiguity has often hampered open and democratic debate about the rights and wrongs of hosting nuclear weapons.

However, the flashcards studied by soldiers tasked with guarding these devices reveal not just the bases, but even identify the exact shelters with “hot” vaults that likely contain nuclear weapons. They also detail intricate security details and protocols such as the positions of cameras, the frequency of patrols around the vaults, secret duress words that signal when a guard is being threatened and the unique identifiers that a restricted area badge needs to have. Like their analogue namesakes, flashcard learning apps are popular digital learning tools that show questions on one side and answers on the other. By simply searching online for terms publicly known to be associated with nuclear weapons, Bellingcat was able to discover cards used by military personnel serving at all six European military bases reported to store nuclear devices. Experts approached by Bellingcat said that these findings represented serious breaches of security protocols and raised renewed questions about US nuclear weapons deployment in Europe.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - The Magic Leap Con (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by merbs
merbs writes: After years of intense secrecy and relative silence, in August, Magic Leap finally launched its flagship product, a mixed reality rig featuring goggles, a control wand, and clip-on computer pack, to developers, who could purchase it for $2,295. This week, the company held its inaugural developer conference, to try to entice third-party creators, and to introduce the gear to a wider audience. In many ways, this is the final stage of the product’s public debut. In 2015, Abovitz told Wired, “When we launch it, it is going to be huge.” After spending two days at LEAPcon, I feel it is my duty—in the name of instilling a modicum of sanity into an age where a company that has never actually sold a product to a consumer can be worth a billion dollars more than the entire GDP of Fiji—to inform you that it is not.

Submission + - Trump administration kills reprocessing plant for nuclear fuel (reuters.com)

Submitted by Mr. Dollar Ton
Mr. Dollar Ton writes: The Trump administration this week killed a contract for a project to convert plutonium from Cold War-era bombs into nuclear power fuel.

Instead of completing MOX, the Trump administration wants to blend the 34 tonnes of deadly plutonium — enough to make about 8,000 nuclear weapons — with an inert substance and bury it underground in New Mexico’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP).

Burying the plutonium would cost nearly $20 billion over the next two decades. Maintaining the site will cost tens of billions more in the coming decades.

MOX opponents praised the closure.

Submission + - WiFi Mesh Recommendations for a Small Museum 1

Submitted by pikester
pikester writes: I have a friend who is running a museum that is looking to make it more interactive for the visitors. To make this happen, the museum is going to need to have good WiFi connectivity throughout the premises. The good news is that the museum is pretty small. The bad news is that it is located in an old horse barn with many metal walls. I'm hoping to put in a mesh network for him, but most solutions I've seen are pretty bulky. I'm looking for recommendations for a solution that is easily mountable in the building.

Submission + - Google Debunks Trump's Claim It Censored His State of the Union Address (theverge.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: President Donald Trump intensified his criticism of Google today, posting a native video of unknown origin to his Twitter account this afternoon claiming the search giant stopped promoting the State of the Union (SOTU) address on its homepage after he took office. It turns out the video he posted is not only misleading, but also contains what appears to be a fake screenshot of the Google homepage on the day in question. It has since been viewed more than 1.5 million times. In a statement given to The Verge, a Google spokesperson clarifies that the company promoted neither former President Barack Obama nor Trump’s inaugural SOTU addresses in 2009 and 2017, respectively. That’s because they were not technically State of the Union addresses, but “addresses to a joint session” of Congress, a tradition set back in 1993 so that new presidents didn’t have to immediately deliver SOTU addresses after holding office for just a few weeks. Google resumed promoting Obama’s SOTU address in 2010 and continued to do so through 2016, as he held office for all six of those years.

With regards to the 2018 SOTU, Google says it did in fact promote it on its homepage. “On January 30th 2018, we highlighted the livestream of President Trump’s State of the Union on the google.com homepage,” reads Google’s statement. “We have historically not promoted the first address to Congress by a new President, which is not a State of the Union address. As a result, we didn’t include a promotion on google.com for this address in either 2009 or 2017.”

Submission + - Nintendo Shuts Down Tool Used To Build Pokemon Fan Games (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Since 2007, Pokémon Essentials has been a crucial part of the Pokémon fan game community. As a free mod for the paid RPG Maker software, Pokémon Essentials offers all the graphics, music, maps, and tilesets a fan game maker needs to craft their own Poké-adventure. Fans of the tool congregated around the PokeCommunity forums and a dedicated Pokémon Essentials wiki to download files, share creations, and discuss the scene. Earlier this week, however, PokéCommunity forum moderator Marin announced that "the Pokémon Essentials wikia and all downloads for it have been taken down due to a copyright claim by Nintendo of America." That means "we will not allow Pokémon Essentials or any of its assets to be hosted or distributed on PokéCommunity," the announcement reads. "We sincerely apologize that we have to do this, but there is no going around it."
User Journal

Journal Journal: Yet another example of why Ubuntu will never matter much

Journal by shanen

Part of the reason Ubuntu doesn't really matter and never will:

Join us in building a kind, collaborative community
Read Code of Conduct

Our new Code of Conduct came from numerous conversations with the Stack Exchange community. Together, you helped create a code that reinforces our commitment to mutual respect and kindness. Take a moment to read our newly updated Code of Conduct.

Here are some highlights:

Submission + - Anti-Amazon Graffiti Increasing in Seattle (with Photos) (geekwire.com)

Submitted by reifman
reifman writes: If you're eagerly awaiting your city's selection for HQ2, you may want to check out GeekWire's photo gallery of anti-Amazon graffiti images from around Seattle. Animosity towards Amazon has grown in the wake of its threats over a per head tax on employees, which the city council passed and then repealed shortly after. The tax would have increased the budget for services for our 12,000+ homeless. Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos also fought the state income tax on the wealthy in 2010.

Submission + - China's Quantum Radar Could Detect Stealth Planes and Missiles (popsci.com)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC), China's foremost military electronics company, announced that its groundbreaking quantum radar has achieved capability of tracking high altitude objects, likely by increasing the coherence time entangled photons. CETC envisions that its quantum radar will be used in the stratosphere to track objects in "the upper atmosphere and beyond" (including space). Quantum can identify the position, radar cross section, speed, direction and even 'observe' on the composition of the target such as differentiating between an actual nuclear warhead against inflatable decoys.. Importantly, attempts to spoof the quantum radar would be easily noticed since any attempt to alter or duplicate the entangled photons would be detected by the radar. The news is an important illustration of a larger trend of Chinese advancement in the new, crucial area of quantum research. Other notable projects in China's quantum technology include the Micius satellite, and advances by Alibaba and the Chinese University of Science and Technology in a world record of entangling 18 photons (a quantum supercomputer would require about 50 entangled photons), such that China arguably leads the world in quantum technologies.

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