×

Submission + - Energy Prices Drop Below Zero in UK Thanks to Record Wind-Generated Electricity (ecowatch.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Record wind-generated electricity across Northern Ireland and Scotland Tuesday night pushed Britain’s power prices below zero.

Wind output peaked at a record high 22.4 gigawatts (GW), breaking the previous high set Sunday evening, the national system operator said, as Bloomberg reported. The record output provided more than 68 percent of the country’s power.

From 5:30 to 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday, the half-hourly price fell to 6.57 pounds per megawatt-hour, according to data from European power exchange Epex Spot.

Submission + - Say goodbye to your privacy (dailygalaxy.com) 3

Submitted by mspohr
mspohr writes: Google is rolling out a tracking system unlike anything youâ(TM)ve seen beforeâ"your browser, smart TV, and even gaming consoles could all be part of the plan. Privacy experts are raising alarms, calling this a game-changer for how your data is used.

Googleâs ad-tracking approach will now revolve around digital fingerprinting, moving beyond browser-based cookies to an ecosystem-wide tracking mechanism. Starting February 16, 2024, this update allows Google to track users across virtually all smart devices, from browsers to smart TVs, streaming platforms, and gaming consoles. This shift, touted as a response to technological advancements, has sparked fierce regulatory criticism and raised privacy alarms globally.

Unlike cookiesâ"which rely on stored files that users can deleteâ"digital fingerprinting gathers subtle clues from a deviceâ(TM)s hardware, software, and browsing activity. These clues include:

Device attributes: screen resolution, operating system, browser type, and even font libraries.
Network identifiers: IP address, connected Wi-Fi networks, and geolocation data.
Behavioral patterns: app usage, browsing habits, and engagement metrics.
When combined, this data creates a unique identifier that tracks individuals across devices and platforms. The UK Information Commissionerâ(TM)s Office (ICO) has openly criticized this approach, stating, âoeFingerprinting involves the collection of pieces of information about a deviceâ(TM)s software or hardware, which, when combined, can uniquely identify a particular device and user.â

Submission + - Arctic Siberia summers were up to 10C warmer than today during Last Interglacia (phys.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Interglacials are, as the name suggests, warm periods between planetary glaciations when the expanse of ice on Earth shrinks. Currently, we are in an 11,000 year-long interglacial period known as the Holocene. Prior to this, the Last Interglacial occurred between 115,000 and 130,000 years ago.

During this time, Earth experienced summers that were almost completely ice-free and there was significant vegetation growth in polar regions, changing the ecosystems for life to flourish. Scientists can look to this Last Interglacial as a potential analog for future global warming.

Indeed, new research, currently under review for publication in the Climate of the Past journal, has turned to the geological record of the Arctic to understand how terrestrial environments responded to the warmer world. Here, warming was amplified compared to the rest of the northern hemisphere due to ice albedo feedbacks, whereby solar insolation melted ice sheets, reducing the amount of radiation reflected back out to space and causing further warming, creating a positive feedback loop.

Submission + - I am a robot? 3

Submitted by Anne Thwacks
Anne Thwacks writes: Today, I have twice failed to complete a capcha despite trying as hard as I can for absolutely ages.
Is this because I am secretly a robot?

Or is it because the pathetically poor, grainy, low resolution pictures are impossible for humans to interpret?
Not helped by instructions given in US English?

This side of the Atlantic (LANG=en_GB), our fire hydrants look different, we do not consider motorcycles to be bicycles (despite both having two wheels), and we don't have sidewalks or crosswalks (but do have pavements and zebra crossings).

Also, the foolish questions to not specify whether a part of a motorcycle wheel is considered to be a whole bicycle, and if a part is considered to be the whole, how small a part? Does a single pixel count? Does the handrail count as part of stairs?

I am not opposed to the concept of captchas, However, Google's implementation appears to be designed by the kind of American that does not understand that the rest of the world considers American English to be the work of unintelligible idiots.

Submission + - Craig Wright Handed Suspended Prison Sentence (theguardian.com)

Submitted by newcastlejon
newcastlejon writes: From The Guardian:

An Australian computer scientist who falsely claimed to be the creator of bitcoin has been given a one-year suspended prison sentence after the high court in London ruled he was in contempt because he would not stop suing people.

Mr Justice Mellor had already found that Craig Wright, 54, repeatedly lied about his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym used by the person or people who launched bitcoin – the cryptocurrency that was first mined in 2009 and recently soared in value to £79,000.

On Thursday Wright was sentenced for five counts of contempt of court. Sentencing him to 12 months in jail, suspended for two years and to pay £145,000 in costs within a fortnight, the court also struck out his enormous claim.

Wright appeared by video link from an undisclosed location in Asia, having refused to comply with an order to appear in person.

Submission + - Hydroxychloroquine promoting COVID study retracted after 4 yrs (nature.com) 1

Submitted by backslashdot
backslashdot writes: The study received almost 3,400 citations (follow on studies mentioning it) according to the Web of Science database, it is the second-most-cited retracted paper of any kind, and highest cited COVID paper to be retracted.

Researchers had critiqued the controversial paper many times, raising concerns about its data quality and an unclear ethics-approval process. Its eventual withdrawal, on the grounds of concerns over ethical approval and doubts about the conduct of the research, marks the 28th retraction for co-author Didier Raoult, a French microbiologist, formerly at Marseille’s Hospital-University Institute Mediterranean Infection (IHU), who shot to global prominence in the pandemic. French investigations found that he and the IHU had violated ethics-approval protocols in numerous studies, and Raoult has now retired.

Submission + - LockBit plans comeback with 4.0 release (thecyberexpress.com)

Submitted by storagedude
storagedude writes: LockBit was the most active ransomware group until a massive global law enforcement action resulted in takedowns, arrests and source code and decryption key leaks.

Now the group plans a comeback, according to a Cyber Express article that cited Cyble threat researchers, with the launch of LockBit 4.0 coming in February.

“Want a lamborghini, ferrari and lots of girls?” LockBit’s announcement said. “Sign up and start your pentester billionaire journey in 5 minutes with us.”

Cyble researchers noted that “it is uncertain whether LockBit will regain traction, as the group has faced declining credibility amidst competition from other RaaS groups, such as RansomHub, which currently dominate the ransomware landscape.”

Submission + - A Mom Asked for Public School Board Records. They Charged Her $33 Million (thefp.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Elizabeth Clair, the mother of a seventh grader in suburban Detroit, wanted to find out whether her local school district had mended its ways after it lost a lawsuit for improperly tracking disgruntled parents. Instead, she’s the one who learned a lesson: Prying information out of local governments can be very expensive—and state transparency laws don’t always help.

Back in 2022, the Rochester Community School District settled a lawsuit for nearly $200,000 with another mom who accused the district of keeping a “dossier” on parents critical of Covid lockdowns. Clair said she wanted to know what the district was doing to stem future retaliation against parents. So she filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for six months’ worth of emails containing the word anti-retaliation.

A few weeks later, she heard back from the district’s FOIA coordinator: Her request had been granted. All she had to do was pay $33,103,232.56. That’s right. More than $33 million.

The district explained that it would take an employee 717,000 hours at a rate of over $46 per hour to review the 21,514,288 emails related to her request.

Submission + - T2 Linux SDE 24.12 "Sky's the Limit!" Released with 37 ISOs for 25 CPU ISAs (t2sde.org)

Submitted by ReneR
ReneR writes: The T2 Linux team has unveiled T2 Linux SDE 24.12, codenamed "Sky’s the Limit!", delivering a massive update for this highly portable source-based Linux distribution. The release includes 37 pre-compiled ISOs with Glibc, Musl, and uClibc, supporting 25 CPU architectures like ARM(64), RISCV(64), Loongarch64, SPARC(64), and vintage retro computing platforms such as M68k, Alpha, and even initial Nintendo Wii U support added.
The Cosmic Desktop, a modern Rust-based environment, debuts alongside expanded application support for non-mainstream RISC architectures, now featuring LibreOffice, OpenJDK, and QEMU. With 3280 package updates, 206 new features, and the ability to boot on systems with as little as 512MB RAM, this release further strengthens T2 Linux’s position as the ultimate tool for developers working across diverse hardware and embedded systems.
More details and downloads are available on the official https://t2linux.com/ site.

Submission + - New Shelly Smart Devices Have One-Mile Range, Thanks To Z-Wave (pcworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Smart home devices compatible with the Matter standard have garnered most of our attention lately, but the compelling features in the latest generation of Z-Wave chips convinced the IoT developer Shelly Group to build no fewer than 11 new products powered by Z-Wave technology. The new collection includes a smart plug, in-wall dimmers, relays, and various sensors aimed at DIYers, installers, and commercial builders. Citing the ability of Z-Wave 800 (aka Z-Wave Long Range or LR) chips to operate IoT devices over extremely long range—up to 1 mile, line of sight—while running on battery power for up to 10 years, Shelly Group CTO Leon Kralj said “Shelly is helping break down smart home connectivity barriers, empowering homeowners, security installers, and commercial property owners and managers with unmatched range, scalability, and energy efficiency to redefine their automation experience.”

[...] While most homeowners won’t need to worry about the number of IoT devices their networks can support, commercial builders will appreciate the scalability of Z-Wave 800-powered devices – namely, you can deploy as many as 4,000 nodes on a single mesh network. That’s a 20x increase over what was possible with previous generations of the chip. And since Z-Wave LR is backward compatible with those previous generations, there should be no worries about integrating the new devices into existing networks. Shelly says all 11 of its new Z-Wave 800-powered IoT devices will be available in the first half of 2025.

Submission + - Hackers Can Alter Digital License Plates (wired.com)

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes:

Hackers Can Jailbreak Digital License Plates to Make Others Pay Their Tolls and Tickets.Digital license plates sold by Reviver, already legal to buy in some states and drive with nationwide, can be hacked by their owners to evade traffic regulations or even law enforcement surveillance.

This story will be on-going payday for traffic ticket lawyers. I am ordering one now.

Submission + - 'World's first' grid-scale nuclear fusion power plant announced in the US (cnn.com)

Submitted by timeOday
timeOday writes: If all goes to plan, Virginia will be the site of the world’s first grid-scale nuclear fusion power plant, able to harness this futuristic clean power and generate electricity from it by the early 2030s, according to an announcement Tuesday by the startup Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

CFS, one of the largest and most-hyped nuclear fusion companies, will make a multibillion-dollar investment into building the facility near Richmond. When operational, the plant will be able to plug into the grid and produce 400 megawatts, enough to power around 150,000 homes, said its CEO Bob Mumgaard.

“This will mark the first time fusion power will be made available in the world at grid scale,” Mumgaard said. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin welcomed the announcement, calling it “an historic moment for Virginia and the world at large.”

The plant would represent a new stage in the quest to commercialize nuclear fusion, the process which powers the stars. But the path toward it is unlikely to be smooth, not least because the technology has not yet been proved viable.

Submission + - Salesforce Will Hire 2,000 People To Sell AI Products (cnbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Salesforce will hire 2,000 people to sell artificial intelligence software to clients, CEO Marc Benioff said on Tuesday, double the number the company indicated it was planning to add a month ago. The cloud software company, which targets sales reps, marketers and customer service agents, is among the many technology companies hoping to boost revenue with generative AI features. “We’re adding another couple of thousand salespeople to help sell these products,” Benioff said at a company event in San Francisco. “We already had 9,000 referrals for the 2,000 positions that we’ve opened up. It’s amazing.”

Last month, Benioff told Bloomberg that it planned to hire 1,000 salespeople focusing on AI. On Tuesday, Salesforce said the second generation of its Agentforce technology creating and operating AI agents will become available to customers in February 2025. Agentforce will be able to tackle sophisticated questions in Salesforce’s Slack communications app, based on all available data. [...] Benioff said Salesforce’s homepage now features an experimental AI agent that can respond to user queries about the company’s products. Salesforce customers in need of assistance can visit a chat-based help page that conducts 32,000 conversations a week. About 5,000 are getting escalated to humans as a result of current AI capabilities, down from 10,000 before, Benioff said.

Slashdot Top Deals