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Submission + - US Court of Appeals upends 50 years of Environmental Law (yalejreg.com)

Submitted by magzteel
magzteel writes: In "D.C. Circuit Upends CEQ’s NEPA Rule", the Yale Journal on Regulation writes on the Marin Audubon v FAA decision:

This holding upends almost 5 decades of administrative practice, as CEQ has been issuing regulations since the 1970s. The problem is that NEPA does not provide express rulemaking authority, and the court did not find it to be implied, either (slip. op. at 16). The court looked beyond NEPA to the other statutes listed in EO 11,991, which refer to CEQ but do not confer rulemaking authority beyond those rules “related to a fund used to finance the Office’s projects and research studies” (slip. op. at 17).

As reported in RedState: https://redstate.com/streiff/2...

This decision throws the entire environmental regulation scheme governing the federal government into chaos. I suspect that many of the CEQs regulations will be reissued by other agencies, but after Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (see The Supreme Court Firebombs the Administrative State and Tells Congress to Get Off Its Butt and Work) that slew the medusa called "Chevron deference," the survival of those replacement regulations is not assured."

Submission + - Cheap fix floated for plane vapour's climate damage (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: The climate-damaging vapours left behind by jet planes could be easily tackled, aviation experts say, with a new study suggesting they could be eliminated for a few pounds per flight. Jet condensation trails, or contrails, have spawned wild conspiracy theories alleging mind control and the spreading of disease, but scientists say the real problem is their warming effect.

“They create an artificial layer of clouds, which traps the heat from the Earth that’s trying to escape to outer space,” said Carlos Lopez de la Osa, from the Transport & Environment campaign group, which has carried out a new study on the solutions to contrails. “The scale of the warming that's associated with them is roughly having a similar impact to that of aviation carbon emissions.”

Tweaking the flight paths of a handful of aircraft could reduce contrail warming by more than half by 2040, at a cost of less than £4 per flight. Geography and a flight's latitude have a strong influence on whether a contrail is warming. Time of day also influences the climate effects of contrails. Those formed by evening and night flights have the largest warming contribution. Seasonality is also important — the most warming contrails tend to occur in winter. “Planes are already flying around thunderstorms and turbulence areas,” Mr Lopez de la Osa said. “We will need to add one more constraint to flight planning, which is avoiding areas of contrail formation.”

Submission + - China unveils Haolong space shuttle (space.com)

Submitted by Geoffrey.landis
Geoffrey.landis writes: The Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute, part of the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), has unveiled their design for a reusable uncrewed spaceplane for delivering and returning cargo from the Chinese Tiangong space station. Like the Sierra Space "Dream Chaser," the vehicle is to be launched as a payload on a separate launch vehicle, and land horizontally on Earth on a runway. The design is aerodynamically a hybrid, incorporating features of both winged and lifting-body designs. A model of the Haolong will make its debut at the 15th "Airshow China", November 12 to 17 in Zhuhai. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Submission + - Canada Passes New Right To Repair Rules With the Same Old Problem (theregister.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Royal assent was granted to two right to repair bills last week that amend Canada's Copyright Act to allow the circumvention of technological protection measures (TPMs) if this is done for the purposes of "maintaining or repairing a product, including any related diagnosing," and "to make the program or a device in which it is embedded interoperable with any other computer program, device or component." The pair of bills allow device owners to not only repair their own stuff regardless of how a program is written to prevent such non-OEM measures, but said owners can also make their devices work with third-party components without needing to go through the manufacturer to do so.

Bills C-244 (repairability) and C-294 (interoperability) go a long way toward advancing the right to repair in Canada and, as iFixit pointed out, are the first federal laws anywhere that address how TPMs restrict the right to repair – but they're hardly final. TPMs can take a number of forms, from simple administrative passwords to encryption, registration keys, or even the need for a physical object like a USB dongle to unlock access to copyrighted components of a device's software. Most commercially manufactured devices with proprietary embedded software include some form of TPM, and neither C-244 nor C-294 place any restrictions on the use of such measures by manufacturers. As iFixit points out, neither Copyright Act amendments do anything to expand access to the tools needed to circumvent TPMs. That puts Canadians in a similar position to US repair advocates, who in 2021 saw the US Copyright Office loosen DMCA restrictions to allow limited repairs of some devices despite TPMs, but without allowing access to the tools needed to do so. [...]

Canadian Repair Coalition co-founder Anthony Rosborough said last week that the new repairability and interoperability rules represent considerable progress, but like similar changes in the US, don't actually amount to much without the right to distribute tools. "New regulations are needed that require manufacturers and vendors to ensure that products and devices are designed with accessibility of repairs in mind," Rosborough wrote in an op-ed last week. "Businesses need to be able to carry out their work without the fear of infringing various intellectual property rights."

Submission + - US Congress to open another UAP (UFO) hearing (space.com)

Submitted by thephydes
thephydes writes: The hearing will go ahead on November 13th at 11.30ET (16.30GMT)
Apparently it will "further pull back the curtain on secret UAP research programs conducted by the U.S. government, and undisclosed findings they have yielded,"

It's driven by two republicans, Nancy Mace and Glenn Grothman, who say:
"Americans deserve to understand what the government has learned about UAP sightings, and the nature of any potential threats these phenomena pose. We can only ensure that understanding by providing consistent, systemic transparency. We look forward to hearing from expert witnesses on ways to shed more light and bring greater accountability to this issue,"

Submission + - Pentagon Leaker Sentenced To 15 Years In Prison For Sharing Military Secrets (nbcnews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Former Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira was sentenced Tuesday to 15 years for stealing classified information from the Pentagon and sharing it online, the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts announced. Teixeira received the sentence before Judge Indira Talwani in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. In March, the national guardsman pleaded guilty to six counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information under the Espionage Act. He was arrested by the FBI in North Dighton, Massachusetts, in April 2023 and has been in federal custody since mid-May 2023.

According to court documents, Teixeira transcribed classified documents that he then shared on Discord, a social media platform mostly used by online gamers. He began sharing the documents in or around 2022. A document he was accused of leaking included information about providing equipment to Ukraine, while another included discussions about a foreign adversary's plot to target American forces abroad, prosecutors said. [...] While the documents were discovered online in March 2023, Teixeira had been sharing them online since January of that year, according to prosecutors.

Submission + - VMware Makes Workstation and Fusion Free For Everyone (bleepingcomputer.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: VMware has announced that its VMware Fusion and VMware Workstation desktop hypervisors are now free to everyone for commercial, educational, and personal use. In May, the company also made VMware Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro free for personal use, allowing students and home users to set up virtualized test labs and experiment with other OSs by running virtual machines and Kubernetes clusters on Windows, Linux, and macOS devices. Starting this week, the Pro versions and the two products will no longer be available under a paid subscription model.

"Effective immediately, both VMware Fusion and VMware Workstation will transition away from the paid subscription model, meaning you can now utilize these tools without any cost. The paid versions of these offerings – Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro – are no longer available for purchase," said Broadcom product marketing director Himanshu Singh. "If you're currently under a commercial contract, you can rest easy knowing that your agreement will remain in effect until the end of your term. You will continue to receive the full level of service and enterprise-grade support as per your contract."

While the free versions will include all the features available in the paid products, Broadcom will no longer provide users with support ticketing for troubleshooting. Broadcom plans to continue developing new features and improvements and ensure that updates are rolled out promptly. "We're actively investing in new features, usability improvements, and other valuable enhancements," Singh added. "Our engineering teams are committed to maintaining our high standards for stability, with timely updates and reliable performance."

Submission + - Open Source Project DeFlock Is Mapping License Plate Surveillance Cameras (404media.co)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Flock is one of the largest vendors of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) in the country. The company markets itself as having the goal to fully “eliminate crime” with the use of ALPRs and other connected surveillance cameras, a target experts say is impossible. [...] Flock and automated license plate reader cameras owned by other companies are now in thousands of neighborhoods around the country. Many of these systems talk to each other and plug into other surveillance systems, making it possible to track people all over the country. “It went from me seeing 10 license plate readers to probably seeing 50 or 60 in a few days of driving around,” [said Alabama resident and developer Will Freeman]. “I wanted to make a record of these things. I thought, ‘Can I make a database of these license plate readers?’”

And so he made a map, and called it DeFlock. DeFlock runs on Open Street Map, an open source, editable mapping software. He began posting signs for DeFlock (PDF) to the posts holding up Huntsville’s ALPR cameras, and made a post about the project to the Huntsville subreddit, which got good attention from people who lived there. People have been plotting not just Flock ALPRs, but all sorts of ALPRs, all over the world. [...]

When I first talked to Freeman, DeFlock had a few dozen cameras mapped in Huntsville and a handful mapped in Southern California and in the Seattle suburbs. A week later, as I write this, DeFlock has crowdsourced the locations of thousands of cameras in dozens of cities across the United States and the world. He said so far more than 1,700 cameras have been reported in the United States and more than 5,600 have been reported around the world. He has also begun scraping parts of Flock’s website to give people a better idea of where to look to map them. For example, Flock says that Colton, California, a city with just over 50,000 people outside of San Bernardino, has 677 cameras. People who submit cameras to DeFlock have the ability to note the direction that they are pointing in, which can help people understand how these cameras are being positioned and the strategies that companies and police departments are using when deploying them. For example, all of the cameras in downtown Huntsville are pointing away from the downtown core, meaning they are primarily focused on detecting cars that are entering downtown Huntsville from other areas.

Submission + - New thermal material provides 72% better cooling than conventional paste (techspot.com)

Submitted by jjslash
jjslash writes: Researchers at the University of Texas have unveiled a new thermal interface material that could revolutionize cooling, outperforming top liquid metal solutions by up to 72% in heat dissipation. This breakthrough not only improves energy efficiency but also enables higher-density data center setups, cutting cooling costs and energy usage significantly. TechSpot reports:

Data centers are hot, both figuratively and literally. As we feed more and more data and processing demands into these server farms, keeping them from overheating is becoming an increasingly expensive and energy-intensive challenge. But researchers at the University of Texas may have a cool solution – a new thermal interface material that can whisk heat away from processors better than the likes of Thermalright and Thermal Grizzly.

Submission + - US Senate to revive Software Patents with PERA Bill Vote on Thursday (eff.org) 1

Submitted by zoobab
zoobab writes: The US Senate to set to revive Software Patents with the PERA Bill, with a vote on Thursday, November 14, 2024.

A crucial Senate Committee is on the cusp of voting on two bills that would resurrect some of the most egregious software patents and embolden patent trolls. The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA), S. 2140, would dismantle vital safeguards that prohibit software patents on overly broad concepts. If passed, courts would be compelled to approve software patents on mundane activities like mobile food ordering or basic online financial transactions. This would unleash a torrent of vague and overbroad software patents, which would be wielded by patent trolls to extort small businesses and individuals.

The EFF is inviting members of the public to contact their Senators.

Submission + - LG's New Stretchable Display Can Grow By 50% (tomshardware.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: LG Display, one of the global leaders in display technologies, unveiled a new stretchable display prototype that can expand by up to 50%. This makes it the most stretchable display in the industry, more than doubling the previous record of 20% elongation. [...] The prototype being flexed in [this image] is a 12-inch screen with a 100-pixel-per-inch resolution and full RGB color that expands to 18-inches when pulled. LG Display said that it based the stretchable display on a “special silicon material substrate used in contact lenses” and then improved its properties for better “stretchability and flexibility.” It also used a new wiring design structure and a micro-LED light source, allowing users to repeatedly stretch the screen over 10,000 times with no effect on image quality.

Submission + - SpaceX Alums Find Traction On Earth With Their Mars-Inspired CO2-To-Fuel Tech (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A trend has emerged among a small group of climate tech founders who start with their eyes fixed on space and soon realize their technology would do a lot more good here on Earth. Halen Mattison and Luke Neise fit the bill. Mattison spent time at SpaceX, while Neise worked at Vanderbilt Aerospace Design Laboratory and Varda Space Industries. The pair originally wanted to sell reactors to SpaceX that could turn carbon dioxide into methane for use on Mars. Today, they’re building them to replace natural gas that’s pumped from underground. Their company, General Galactic, which emerged from stealth in April, has built a pilot system that can produce 2,000 liters of methane per day. Neise, General Galactic’s CTO, told TechCrunch that he expects that figure to rise as the company replaces off-the-shelf components with versions designed in-house.

“We think that’s a big missing piece in the energy mix right now,” said Mattison, the startup’s CEO. “Being able to own our supply chains, to be able to fully control all of the parameters, to challenge the requirements between components, all of that unlocks some real elegance in the engineering solution.” At commercial scale, the company’s reactors will be assembled using mass production techniques. It’s a contrast to how most petrochemical and energy facilities are built today. General Galactic is focused on producing methane. However, Mattison said the company isn’t necessarily looking to displace the fuel from heating and energy. “Those are generally going toward electrification,” he said. Instead, it intends to sell its methane to companies that use it as an ingredient or to power a process, like in chemical or plastic manufacturing. The company isn’t ruling out transportation entirely either. Mattison hinted that General Galactic is working on other hydrocarbons that could be used for transportation, like jet fuel. “Stay tuned,” he said.

Submission + - Apple's new iPhone update is locking law enforcement out of phones (mashable.com) 1

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: Last week, 404 Media reported on a new phenomenon occurring that was freaking out law enforcement. iPhones that were being stored for forensic investigations were "mysteriously" rebooting, making it harder for LEOs to collect evidence from the devices.

Now, a researcher at the Hasso Plattner Institute, Dr.-Ing. Jiska Classen appears to have solved the mystery. Apple quietly rolled out a new feature in iOS 18.1 that reboots a user's iPhone if it has not been unlocked for a certain period of time.

Submission + - US agency says Tesla's public statements about self driving are misleading (apnews.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: The U.S. government’s highway safety agency says Tesla is telling drivers in public statements that its vehicles can drive themselves, conflicting with owners manuals and briefings with the agency saying the electric vehicles need human supervision.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is asking the company to “revisit its communications” to make sure messages are consistent with user instructions.

The request came in a May email to the company from Gregory Magno, a division chief with the agency’s Office of Defects Investigation. It was attached to a letter seeking information on a probe into crashes involving Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” system in low-visibility conditions. The letter was posted Friday on the agency’s website.

The agency began the investigation in October after getting reports of four crashes involving “Full Self-Driving” when Teslas encountered sun glare, fog and airborne dust. An Arizona pedestrian was killed in one of the crashes.

Critics, including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, have long accused Tesla of using deceptive names for its partially automated driving systems, including “Full Self-Driving” and “Autopilot,” both of which have been viewed by owners as fully autonomous.

Submission + - Courts Are Coming for Digital Libraries (reason.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: In September, a federal appeals court dealt a major blow to the Internet Archive—one of the largest online repositories of free books, media, and software—in a copyright case with significant implications for publishers, libraries, and readers.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that found the Internet Archive's huge, digitized lending library of copyrighted books was not covered by the "fair use" doctrine and infringed on the rights of publishers.

Submission + - Hopes Dim for China and US Space Agencies to Exchange Moon Samples (msn.com) 1

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: Despite restrictions by the Wolf Amendment, a 2011 US law that prevents direct collaboration with China in space projects unless Congress gives special authorization, NASA has requested access to moon rocks retrieved by China's Chang'e-5 mission in 2020. In response, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) proposed a swap with Apollo lunar samples. Now, South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong-based newspaper, reported that the hope for the swap is fading as NASA has sent no response to the proposal. "Basically, the Americans want our lunar samples, but we can't have theirs," said two Chinese planetary geologists, one based in Beijing and the other in Hong Kong, who spoke on condition of anonymity. After CNSA issued a global call for applications to study its Chang'e-5 moon samples last year, NASA worked with Congress to create an exception to the Wolf Amendment so that Nasa-funded scientists could apply. In April, 10 international applicants — five from the US — were interviewed by CNSA for their research proposals. NASA has not responded to the Post's request for comment.

Submission + - Best Open Source LLM:Tencent Hunyuan-Large: The 389 Billion Parameter Model Outp (techwavearena.com)

Submitted by dlb07
dlb07 writes: In the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence, large language models (LLMs) are pushing the boundaries of whatâ(TM)s possible in fields like natural language processing, data analysis, and multilingual support. Tencentâ(TM)s latest contribution, Hunyuan-Large, is a Mixture of Experts (MoE) model with an impressive 389 billion parameters (52 billion active parameters), setting new standards in both scalability and efficiency. By incorporating advanced technologies like Grouped Query Attention (GQA) and Cross-Layer Attention (CLA) for KV cache compression, Hunyuan-Large achieves higher throughput while managing resources efficiently.

Hereâ(TM)s what makes Hunyuan-Large a groundbreaking model in the open-source AI community.........

Submission + - Behind the Scenes of a Minuteman ICBM Launch with 3 Test Warheads (airandspaceforces.com) 1

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: VANDENBERG SPACE FORCE BASE, Calif.—The U.S. launched a Minuteman III missile here at 11:01 p.m. Pacific Time on Nov. 5., in an important test of the weapon’s ability to strike its targets with multiple warheads.

The Minuteman III missiles that form a critical leg of the U.S. nuclear triad each carry one nuclear-armed reentry vehicle. But the missile that was tested carried three test warheads.

The ICBM test was controlled by an airborne command post in a test of the U.S. ability to launch its nuclear deterrent from a survivable platform.

“These tests are demonstrative of what Striker Airmen bring to the fight if called by the president,” Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere, the commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, said in a release. “An airborne launch validates the survivability of our ICBMs, which serve as the strategic backstop of our nation’s defense and defense of allies and partners.”

After the launch command was transmitted by a U.S. Navy E-6B Mercury, the Minuteman III blasted out of a silo at the launch facility on the north side of this base on the California coast. Airmen from the 625th Strategic Operations Squadron of Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., were aboard the E-6 along with Navy aircrew.

The three test reentry vehicles—one high-fidelity Joint Test Assembly, which carries non-nuclear explosives, and two telemetry Joint Test Assembly objects—struck the Reagan Test Site near the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands roughly 30 minutes later after launch, a flight of about 4,200 miles.

“They make up essentially a mock warhead,” Col. Dustin Harmon, the commander of the 377th Test and Evaluation Group, the nation’s operational ICBM test unit, said in an interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine. “There’s two different types. One is telemetered, so it’s got a radio transmitter in it, it’s got antennas, gyroscopes, accelerometers—all the things that can sense motion and movement. And we fly those or we can put one in there that’s called a high-fidelity. That is assembled much like an actual weapon would be, except we use surrogate materials, and so we want it to fly similarly to an actual weapon. It has the explosives in it that a normal warhead would to drive a detonation, but there’s nothing to drive.”

Submission + - In Amazon's New Holiday Ad, a Singing Janitor Strikes Similar Tune to AGT Winner

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "Amazon’s 2024 holiday ad," reported Amazon News last week, "showcases how small, thoughtful acts can spark joy that helps to bring people together. A heartwarming brand film, 'Midnight Opus,' tells the story of a theatre janitor whose hidden vocal talent is discovered and celebrated by his colleagues during his daily shift. The commercial opens on the janitor going about his daily tasks in the theater, while quietly singing to himself. We see a glimpse of his lifelong passion for singing, as he opens his locker to reveal a picture of him as a younger man performing on stage. After his colleagues overhear his remarkable voice, which gently echoes through the empty halls of the grand building, they’re moved to orchestrate a special surprise. Coming together as a community, they transform the ornate Sonnet theater into a performance stage, complete with lighting, staging and, to his wonder, an instrumental backing track. With a little help from Amazon, the final touch is a swift delivery of an elegant black tuxedo jacket, enabling the humble star to step into the spotlight and, urged by his admiring colleagues, to simply 'Sing.' As his colleagues take their seats, the janitor performs a touching performance of the beloved 1965 classic 'What the World Needs Now Is Love,' showcasing his spectacular and surprising vocal prowess."

The theater janitor in Amazon's ad follows a similar path to the real life Indiana elementary school janitor who won season 19 of NBC's reality competition show "America’s Got Talent" in September. Richard Goodall opened his audition by telling the show's judges that he was a longtime janitor whose passion in life is singing. He said the title of the song he was performing — Journey’s "Don't Stop Believin'" — speaks for itself, and he proceeded to belt out an impressive version of the 1981 hit. He went on to perform songs by Michael Bolton and Survivor, and another by Journey, before being backed by the actual band in the finals. "Before 'AGT,' my life was very normal ... I would have never thought any of this up. Never," Goodall told NBC Insider after his win. "You’re just doing what you do. You don’t think you’re all that special. This is something you see in movies, and here I am."

Lest you think Amazon's holiday commercial might have been inspired by and perhaps even generated from all the Internet content about Goodall by Amazon Ads' Studio Video Generator or other generative AI tools, Amazon said its ad was produced by the company’s internal creative team in partnership with production company Hungry Man. And in an email statement to GeekWire, Jo Shoesmith, Amazon global chief creative officer, explained the inspiration behind the ad was the joy we get from doing something special for the people in our lives.

Submission + - iPhones suddenly rebooting while in police possession (macrumors.com) 2

Submitted by tlhIngan
tlhIngan writes: A new interesting issue has cropped up making law enforcement lives harder — iPhones have been mysteriously rebooting. The problem is the iPhone can be in one of two states — "Before First Unlock" (BFU) or "After First Unlock" (AFU). iPhones in AFU mode are much easier to unlock using the traditional tools, but after a reboot, they go into BFU mode which requires a stronger authentication scheme in order to unlock as many services, including saved passwords are unavailable in BFU mode. They discovered their iPhones, even ones locked away in Faraday cages were mysteriously rebooting on them which locked them up. They speculate iPhones can emit a "mystery signal" that tells other iPhones around them to reboot, but that seems implausible at best.

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