Daihatsu, the Japanese automaker owned by Toyota, has halted domestic production after admitting it forged the results of safety tests for its vehicles for more than 30 years. From a report: The brand, best known for manufacturing small passenger cars, has stopped output at all four of its Japanese factories as of Tuesday, including one at its headquarters in Osaka, a spokesperson told CNN. The shutdown will last through at least the end of January, affecting roughly 9,000 employees who work in domestic production, according to the representative. The move comes as Daihatsu grapples with a deepening safety scandal that Toyota says "has shaken the very foundations of the company." Last week, Daihatsu announced an independent third-party committee had found evidence of tampering with safety tests on as many as 64 vehicle models, including those sold under the Toyota brand. As a result, Daihatsu said it would temporarily suspend all domestic and international vehicle shipments and consult with authorities on how to move forward. The scandal is another blow to the automaker, which had admitted in April to violating standards on crash tests on more than 88,000 cars, mostly sold under the Toyota brand in countries such as Malaysia and Thailand. In that case, "the inside lining of the front seat door was improperly modified" for some checks, while Daihatsu did not comply with regulatory requirements for certain side collision tests, it said in a statement at the time.

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Boeing instructed customer airlines to inspect their 787 Max jets for loose bolts, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced this week. From a report: The request comes after the manufacturer discovered two aircraft with missing bolts in the rudder control system, raising concerns about faults across all aircraft. "The issue identified on the particular airplane has been remedied," Boeing told CNN in a statement. "Out of an abundance of caution, we are recommending operators inspect their 737 Max airplanes and inform us of any findings." The inspection request entails a two-hour probe of the aircraft's safety-critical parts for each of the approximately 1,300 787 Max jets in service, the FAA said.

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After falsified records for spare aircraft parts set off a frantic global search for suspect pieces, the aviation industry now faces another daunting task: adapting the archaic paperwork for 100 million components to the digital age. From a report: Since the middle of the year, maintenance shops and aerospace manufacturers have found thousands of engine parts with falsified records linked to a distributor called AOG Technics. Airlines from China to the US and Europe have had to pull planes from service and extract the dubious components, leaving jets grounded and racking up millions of dollars in costs. The episode has prodded carriers and maintenance shops to bolster scrutiny of their vendors and the parts they receive. And it's given fresh weight to an ongoing push to digitize the paper-based records still prevalent in the industry to document the lifespan of every piece of an aircraft from the time that it's made to when it lands in a scrap heap. But any structural reforms to thwart would-be copycats of the scheme of which AOG is suspected are likely years away. The industry is accustomed to following standardized methods and only making fundamental changes after a detailed and often lengthy examination of potential safety risks -- and costs.

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Japan's nuclear power regulator this week lifted an operational ban imposed on Tokyo Electric Power's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant two years ago, allowing it to work towards gaining local permission to restart. From a report: Tepco has been eager to bring the world's largest atomic power plant back online to slash operating costs, but a resumption still needs consent from the local governments of Niigata prefecture, Kashiwazaki city and Kariwa village, where it is located. When that might happen is unknown. With capacity of 8,212 megawatts (MW), the plant has been offline since 2012 after the Fukushima disaster a year earlier led to the shutdown of all nuclear power plants in Japan at the time. In 2021, the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) barred Tepco from operating Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, its only operable atomic power station, due to safety breaches including the failure to protect nuclear materials and missteps that saw an unauthorised staff member accessing sensitive areas of the plant.

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U.S. Energy Information Administration, in a press release: A new reactor at Georgia's Vogtle nuclear power plant is now in commercial operation, according to an announcement from Georgia Power, one of the plant's owners. It is the first new nuclear reactor to start up in the United States since the Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar 2 was commissioned in 2016. The new 1,114 megawatt (MW) Unit 3 reactor joins two existing reactors at Plant Vogtle, which is jointly owned by Georgia Power and three other electric utility companies. The plant's first two reactors, with a combined 2,430 MW of nameplate capacity, came online in the late 1980s. Georgia Power expects another similar-sized fourth reactor, Vogtle Unit 4, to begin operation sometime between November 2023 and March 2024. The two new reactors will make Plant Vogtle the largest nuclear power plant in the country, surpassing the 4,210 MW Palo Verde plant in Arizona. Construction at the two new reactor sites began in 2009. Originally expected to cost $14 billion and begin commercial operation in 2016 (Vogtle 3) and 2017 (Vogtle 4), the project ran into significant construction delays and cost overruns. The total cost of the project is now estimated at more than $30 billion.

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South Korea will start issuing new "digital nomad" visas starting Monday, which will allow some foreign residents to stay for up to two years while maintaining a job back home, officials said Friday. From a report: "To make remote work and vacation of foreigners in Korea smoother, we have decided to launch a new digital nomad visa," the Justice Ministry said, highlighting the rise of the "workcation" trend, where employees work remotely from a different location. "So far, foreigners were required to apply for tourist visas or just stay for less than 90 days without a visa for workcation in Korea. The new system will allow employees and employers in overseas firms to tour and work remotely in Korea for a longer period of time," it added. Those seeking to apply must submit documents to the Korean embassy in their respective country proving that they earn an annual income of over 84.96 million won ($65,860). The figure is double the amount of Korea's gross national income per capita as of 2022, which stood at 42.48 million won. Applicants must submit additional documents including verification of employment, details of their criminal record and proof of private health insurance. They are required to hold private health insurance with coverage of at least 100 million won to ensure the ability to travel back home in an emergency situation. Applicants must also be 18 or older and have worked in their current field for at least a year.

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The EU's competition and digital chief has defended the bloc's landmark law on AI, saying the move would create "legal certainty" for tech start-ups building the technology, even as it comes under fire from critics including French President Emmanuel Macron. From a report: Margrethe Vestager told the Financial Times that the EU's proposed AI Act would "not harm innovation and research, but actually enhance it." That is because the legislation, for the first time, provides a clear set of rules for those building so-called foundation models -- the technology that underpins generative AI products such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, which can churn out humanlike text, images and code in seconds. "[The AI Act] creates predictability and legal certainty in the market when things are put to use," said Vestager, the commission's executive vice-president who oversees competition and the EU's strategy dubbed "Europe fit for the digital age." She added: "If you do foundational models, but also if you want to apply foundational models, you know exactly what you are going to look for once it is put into use. It is important that you do not have any regulatory over-reach, that innovation and research is promoted again." Her defence of the AI Act comes after Macron argued the legislation risks leaving European tech companies lagging behind those based in the US and China.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from SecurityWeek: Albania's Parliament said on Tuesday that it had suffered a cyberattack with hackers trying to get into its data system, resulting in a temporary halt in its services. A statement said Monday's cyberattack had not "touched the data of the system," adding that experts were working to discover what consequences the attack could have. It said the system's services would resume at a later time. Local media reported that a cellphone provider and an air flight company were also targeted by Monday's cyberattacks, allegedly from Iranian-based hackers called Homeland Justice, which could not be verified independently. Albania suffered a cyberattack in July 2022 that the government and multinational technology companies blamed on the Iranian Foreign Ministry. Believed to be in retaliation for Albania sheltering members of the Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or MEK, the attack led the government to cut diplomatic relations with Iran two months later. The Iranian Foreign Ministry denied Tehran was behind an attack on Albanian government websites and noted that Iran has suffered cyberattacks from the MEK. In June, Albanian authorities raided a camp for exiled MEK members to seize computer devices allegedly linked to prohibited political activities. [...] In a statement sent later Tuesday to The Associated Press, MEK's media spokesperson Ali Safavi claimed the reported cyberattacks in Albania "are not related to the presence or activities" of MEK members in the country.

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Melbourne-based developer xssfox has championed a unique "diagonal mode" for monitors by utilizing Linux's xrandr (x resize and rotate) tool, finding a 22-degree tilt to the left to be the ideal angle for software development on her 32:9 aspect ratio monitor. As Tom's Hardware notes, Linux is the "only OS to support a diagonal monitor mode, which you can customize to any tilt of your liking." It begs the question, could 2024 be the year of the Linux diagonal desktop? From the report: Xssfox devised a consistent method to appraise various screen rotations, working through the staid old landscape and portrait modes, before deploying xrandr to test rotations like the slightly skewed 1 degree and an indecisive 45 degrees. These produced mixed results of questionable benefits, so the search for the Goldilocks solution continued. It turns out that a 22-degree tilt to the left was the sweet spot for xssfox. This rotation delivered the best working screen space on what looks like a 32:9 aspect ratio monitor from Dell. "So this here, I think, is the best monitor orientation for software development," the developer commented. "It provides the longest line lengths and no longer need to worry about that pesky 80-column limit." If you have a monitor with the same aspect ratio, the 22-degree angle might work well for you, too. However, people with other non-conventional monitor rotation needs can use xssfox's javascript calculator to generate the xrandr command for given inputs. People who own the almost perfectly square LG DualUp 28MQ780 might be tempted to try 'diamond mode,' for example. We note that Windows users with AMD and Nvidia drivers are currently shackled to applying screen rotations using 90-degree steps. MacOS users apparently face the same restrictions.

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