Canva, a popular online design platform, plans to significantly increase prices for some of its business subscriptions next year, citing the addition of generative AI features. The company's Teams subscription, which supports multiple users, will see price hikes of up to 300% in some regions. From a report: Subscribers to Canva Teams, which is targeted at businesses with several users, were emailed late last week to notify them of the price increase, which amounts to a three-times jump. A spokesperson for Canva said the price rise was due in part to the introduction of a number of new features on the Canva platform, including many powered by AI and generative AI.

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Kotaku reviews Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft's latest AAA title: I was staring at a wall. It was an early mission in Ubisoft's latest behemothic RPG, Star Wars Outlaws, in which I was charged with infiltrating an Empire base to recover some information from a computer, and this wall really caught my attention. It was a perfect wall. It absolutely captured that late-70s sci-fi aesthetic of dark gray cladding broken up by utilitarian-gray panels covered in dull blinking lights, and I stopped to think about how much work must have gone into that wall. Looking elsewhere on the screen, I was then overwhelmed. This wall was the most bland thing in a vast hanger, where TIE Fighters hung from the ceiling, Stormtroopers wandered in groups below, and even the little white sign with the yellow arrow looked like it was a decade old, meticulously crafted to fit into this universe. I felt sheer astonishment at the achievement of this. Ubisoft, via multiple studios across the whole world, and the work of thousands of deeply talented people, had built this impossibly perfect area for one momentary scene that I was intended to run straight past. Except I ran past it three times, because the AI kept fucking up and I was restarted at a checkpoint right before that gray wall over and over. I'm struggling to capture the dissonance of this moment. This sense of absolute awe, almost unbelieving admiration that it's even possible to build games at this scale and at this detail, slapped hard around the face by the bewilderingly bad decisions that take place within it all. Brokerage firm UBS said in a note to clients: Based on the 621 ratings thus far the game has received a score of 4.8 (out of 10). This tracks behind previous blockbuster releases by Ubisoft in Assassin's Creed and Far Cry, behind competing open world games released in 2024 and behind other major recent Star Wars Games released by EA in 2019 and 2023. The user ratings, which are generally unfavourable lag its generally favourable critic reviews (game received a score of 76 by critics). Early user ratings suggest downside risk to our 10m units forecast for the game: While we previously felt the largely positive critic reviews made our 10m units sold look achievable (a component upon which we forecast +4% FY25 net bookings growth), the user ratings now suggest downside risk to our estimates. Previous Ubisoft games in Assassin's Creed and Far Cry which sold 10m+ units in their first fiscal year all received higher user ratings and were instalments of well entrenched franchises.

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Children under the age of two should not be exposed to any screens whatsoever and teenagers should have no more than three hours of screen time a day, according to guidelines announced by health authorities in Sweden. From a report: Parents and guardians should think about how they use screens with their children and tell them what they are doing on their phones when they use them in their presence, the advice says. The guidelines, announced on Monday, mark the first time that Folkhalsomyndigheten, Sweden's public health authority, has stipulated how parents should regulate screen time. Screen use among two- to five-year-olds should be limited to a maximum of one hour, while children aged between six and 12 should not use screens for more than two hours. Among 13- to 18-year-olds, the limit is three hours. This is a sharp reduction on the current average screen time figures among Swedish children and young people, which is estimated to be four hours a day for nine- to 12-year-olds and more than seven hours a day -- not including schoolwork -- for 17- and 18-year-olds.

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Night trains are experiencing a resurgence across Europe as travelers seek more environmentally friendly alternatives to flying. European Sleeper, a Dutch cooperative, recently launched a new overnight route from Brussels to Prague, extending its existing service to Berlin. The 13-hour journey traverses Germany in refurbished 1970s-era carriages, accommodating up to 600 passengers. Bart Poels, head of service, reports high demand with most routes fully booked through September. Passengers are citing various reasons for choosing night trains, including reduced carbon footprint, city center-to-center convenience, and cost savings on hotel accommodations, El Pais reports. The diverse clientele includes executives, families, and retirees. This revival comes after years of decline in night train services. Austrian railway OBB's Nightjet brand, launched in 2016, has also sparked renewed interest in overnight rail travel. The COVID-19 pandemic further accelerated the trend as travelers sought alternatives to flying. European officials are supporting the expansion of cross-border rail connections. The European Commission has backed pilot projects for more frequent and affordable services, while the European Investment Bank has provided loans for new equipment purchases.

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Stefan S has recently joined the ranks of software developers, having taken on his first job as a junior developer. After a few months of on-boarding with Terry, another new developer, they're now both actually getting assigned real work on tickets that deliver new functionality.

Stefan proudly pushed his first feature, complete with plenty of unit, functional, and end-to-end tests. After a little brushing up during code-review, it was merged along with a few "atta boys", and Stefan was feeling pretty good about himself.

A few days later, he pulled the latest changes, and ran the test suite. And all of the tests he wrote suddenly failed. Stefan's stomach dropped into his shoes, and he struggled to think: "How did I mess up this badly?"

Except Stefan didn't mess up that badly. A quick check on source control history showed that Terry had added some new commits- one of which "optimized" Stefan's code by adding a NullPointerException.

Stefan was relieved, but annoyed. He opted to, in his mind, "be a bro", and not open a ticket that the rest of the team could see, and instead messaged Terry directly. "Your changes have broken functionality. You need to fix it."

At 5:05PM, Terry pushed a fix, and messaged Stefan, "Tests don't fail anymore," then left for the weekend. Terry was correct, the tests stopped failing.

(Names anonymized by Stefan)

public class MyPerfectlyDoneTestClassNotReadyToHaveTheHunsReleasesUponItself { @Test public void addition_isCorrect() { assertEquals(4, 2 + 2); } @Test public void test(){ try { // lots of logic and setup 20+ lines } catch (Throwable throwable) { assertTrue(true); } } @Test public void test2(){ // different logic assertTrue(true); } @Test public void test3(){ try { // yet more well thought out logic. Since there was setUp to these tests // he had to move the setUp to the actual methods and since they throw he had to put them in try catch } catch () { assertFalse(false); } } @Test public void test40Plus(){ // I give up assertTrue(true); } }

So, yes. Terry just asserted true on any test that threw an exception. Or, asserted false. He also stripped out the set-up methods for the test suite and copy/pasted the setup code into methods. This massive change to the test suite was quite a bit of work- quite a bit more than just fixing the bug with the null pointer.

The lesson here, for Stefan, is that "being a bro" isn't a great idea. Opening a ticket and creating visibility isn't throwing Terry under the bus- Terry's a junior and these kinds of mistakes are still likely to happen, and any healthy organization will be willing to allow growth. When we see mistakes, we can correct them.

The additional visibility also helps the organization spot the deeper WTF: Terry's code should never have ended up in a branch anyone else was touching. CI and code review should have stopped Terry from breaking code in a way that impacted anyone else.

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Elastic, creator of popular search engine Elasticsearch and visualization tool Kibana, plans to introduce the AGPL open-source license alongside its existing licenses. The move comes three years after Elastic ditched the Apache 2.0 license, sparking controversy in the tech community. Founder Shay Banon says the change aims to clarify Elastic's market position following AWS's creation of OpenSearch, a fork of Elasticsearch. Despite initial friction, Banon claims Elastic's relationship with AWS has improved, citing growth in Elastic Cloud revenue and customer base.

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Hewlett Packard Enterprise has confirmed it will push ahead with a high court lawsuit against the estate of the deceased tech tycoon Mike Lynch in which it is seeking damages of up to $4 billion. From a report: The US company said in a statement it would follow the legal proceedings "through to their conclusion" despite Lynch's death last month when his yacht sank off the coast of Italy. HPE won a civil claim against Lynch in the English high court in 2022, after accusing him and his former finance director Sushovan Hussain of fraud over its $11 billion takeover of his software company Autonomy in 2011. A ruling on damages is expected soon, although the judge presiding over the case, Mr Justice Hildyard, wrote in 2022 that he expected final damages to be "substantially less than is claimed." Lynch, 59, who was cleared in a separate criminal fraud trial over the Autonomy deal in the US in June, and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, were among seven people who died after the Bayesian superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily last month.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: While the latest update to Windows 11 makes it look like the upcoming Recall feature can be easily removed by users, Microsoft tells us it's just a bug and a fix is coming. Deskmodder spotted the change last week in the latest 24H2 version of Windows 11, with KB5041865 seemingly delivering the ability to uninstall Recall from the Windows Features section. "We are aware of an issue where Recall is incorrectly listed as an option under the 'Turn Windows features on or off' dialog in Control Panel," says Windows senior product manager Brandon LeBlanc in a statement to The Verge. "This will be fixed in an upcoming update."

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A former executive of smartphone startup OSOM Products has filed a lawsuit alleging the company's founder misused funds for personal expenses, including two Lamborghinis and a lavish lifestyle. Mary Ross, OSOM's ex-Chief Privacy Officer, is seeking access to company records in a Delaware court filing. OSOM, founded in 2020 by former Essential employees, launched two products: the Solana-backed Saga smartphone and a privacy cable. Android founder Andy Rubin founded Essential, which sought to compete with Apple and Android-makers on a smartphone, but later shutdown after not find many takers for its phone. The lawsuit claims OSOM founder Jason Keats used company money for racing hobbies, first-class travel, and mortgage payments.

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Efforts to add Rust code to the Linux kernel has suffered a setback as one of the maintainers of the Rust for Linux project has stepped down -- citing frustration with "nontechnical nonsense." The Register: Wedson Almeida Filho, a software engineer at Microsoft who has overseen the Rust for Linux project, announced his resignation in a message to the Linux kernel development mailing list. "I am retiring from the project," Filho declared. "After almost four years, I find myself lacking the energy and enthusiasm I once had to respond to some of the nontechnical nonsense, so it's best to leave it up to those who still have it in them." [...] Memory safety bugs are regularly cited as the major source of serious software vulnerabilities by organizations overseeing large projects written in C and C++. So in recent years there's been a concerted push from large developers like Microsoft and Google, and well as from government entities like the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, to use memory-safe programming languages -- among them Rust. Discussions about adding Rust to Linux date back to 2020 and were realized in late 2022 with the release of Linux 6.1. "I truly believe the future of kernels is with memory-safe languages," Filho's note continued. "I am no visionary but if Linux doesn't internalize this, I'm afraid some other kernel will do to it what it did to Unix."

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Notorious for a hardworking culture, Japan launched an initiative to help people cut back. But three years into the effort, the country is having a hard time coaxing people to take a four-day workweek. From a report: Japanese lawmakers first proposed a shorter work week in 2021. The guidelines aimed to encourage staff retention and cut the number of workers falling ill or dying from overwork in an economy already suffering from a huge labor shortage. The guidelines also included overtime limits and paid annual leave. However, the initiative has had a slow start: According to the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, only about 8% of companies in Japan allow employees to take three or more days off a week. It's not just companies -- employees are hesitant, too. Electronics manufacturer Panasonic, one of Japan's largest companies, opted into the effort in early 2022. Over two years in, only 150 of its 63,000 eligible employees have chosen to take up four-day schedules, a representative of the company told the Associated Press. Other major companies to introduce a four-day workweek include Uniqlo parent Fast Retailing, electronics giant Hitachi, and financial firm Mizuho. About 85% of employers report giving workers the usual two days off a week. Much of the reluctance to take an extra day off boils down to a culture of workers putting companies before themselves, including pressure to appear like team players and hard workers. This intense culture stems from Japan's postwar era, where, in an effort to boost the economy, then-Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida enlisted major corporations to offer their employees lifelong job security, asking only that workers repay them with loyalty.

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Google executive James Manyika has warned that AI's impact on productivity is not guaranteed [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled], despite predictions of trillion-dollar economic potential. From the report: "Right now, everyone from my old colleagues at McKinsey Global Institute to Goldman Sachs are putting out these extraordinary economic potential numbers -- in the trillions -- [but] it's going to take a whole bunch of actions, innovations, investments, even enabling policy ...The productivity gains are not guaranteed. They're going to take a lot of work." In 1987 economist Robert Solow remarked that the computer age was visible everywhere except in the productivity statistics. "We could have a version of that -- where we see this technology everywhere, on our phones, in all these chatbots, but it's done nothing to transform the economy in that real fundamental way." The use of generative AI to draft software code is not enough. "In the US, the tech sector is about 4 per cent of the labour force. Even if the entire tech sector adopted it 100 per cent, it doesn't matter from a labour productivity standpoint." Instead the answer lies with "very large sectors" such as healthcare and retail. Former British prime minister Sir Tony Blair has said that people "will have an AI nurse, probably an AI doctor, just as you'll have an AI tutor." Manyika is less dramatic: "In most of those cases, those professions will be assisted by AI. I don't think any of those occupations are going to be replaced by AI, not in any conceivable future."

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schwit1 shares a report: If you are reading this and live in America, or used to live in America, or maybe just went to America one time many years ago, then you are almost certainly performing unpaid labor for the U.S. government and have been for years. How? By storing some of the billions of pennies the U.S. Mint makes every year that virtually no one uses. Why are we still making tons (many thousands of tons) of pennies if no one uses them? That's a sensible question with a psychotic answer: We have to keep making all these pennies -- over $45 million worth last year -- because no one uses them. In fact, it could be very bad if we did. When you insert a quarter into a soda machine, that quarter eventually finds its way back to a bank, from which it can be redistributed to a store's cash register and handed out as change -- maybe even to you, who can put it into a soda machine again and start the whole process over. That's beautiful. (Please be mindful of your soft drink consumption.) But few of us ever spend pennies. We mostly just store them. The 1-cent coins are wherever you've left them: a glass jar, a winter purse, a RAV4 cup holder, a five-gallon water cooler dispenser, the couch. Many of them are simply on the ground. But take it from me, a former cashier: Cashiers don't have time to scrounge on the sidewalk every time they need to make change. That is where the Mint comes in. Every year it makes a few billion more pennies to replace the ones everyone is thoughtlessly, indefinitely storing and scatters them like kudzu seeds across the nation. You -- a scientist of some kind, possibly -- might think an obvious solution now presents itself: Why not encourage people to use the pennies they have lying around instead of manufacturing new ones every year? We can't! Or, anyway, we'd better not. According to a Mint report, if even a modest share of our neglected pennies suddenly returned to circulation, the result would be a "logistically unmanageable" dilemma for Earth's wealthiest nation. As in, the penny tsunami could overwhelm government vaults. That's not great, but at the end of the day we're talking only about pennies. How much could a penny cost to make? A penny? If only we lived in such a paradise. Unfortunately, one penny costs more than three pennies (3.07 cents at last count) to make and distribute! When I learned this, I lost my mind.

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Microsoft's Windows 11 operating system has surpassed Windows 10 usage for Steam users for the first time since its launch in 2021. From a report: Windows 10 has been holding strong in recent years, despite Microsoft's plans to end support for Windows 10 in October 2025. There are now signs that Windows 11 adoption is finally heading in the right direction for Microsoft. Steam hardware survey data for August puts Windows 11 usage at 49 percent, an increase of more than 3 percent over the previous figure in July of nearly 46 percent. Windows 10 usage has dipped by around 3 percent to 47 percent, while macOS and Linux Steam usage has largely remained the same during August.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger and key executives are expected to present a plan later this month to the company's board of directors to slice off unnecessary businesses and revamp capital spending, according to a source familiar with the matter, as they try to revive the once-dominant chipmaker's fortunes. The plan will include ideas on how to shave overall costs by selling businesses, including its programmable chip unit Altera, that Intel can no longer afford to fund from the company's once-sizeable profit. Gelsinger and other high-ranking executives at Intel are expected to present the plan at a mid-September board meeting, the same source said. The proposal does not yet include plans to split Intel and sell off its contract manufacturing operation, or foundry, to a buyer such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., according to the source and another person familiar with the matter. The presentation, including the plans around its manufacturing operations, are not yet finalized and could change ahead of the meeting.

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"Let's get one thing out of the way," writes the Verge's transportation editor. Contrary to what you may have heard about U.S. sales of electric vehicles — sales are up. [Consumer insights company] JD Power is projecting that 1.2 million EVs will be sold in the US by the end of 2024, an increase over 1 million sold last year. That's 9 percent of total vehicles sold, which has been revised down from a previous prediction of 12 percent... Overall, an additional 35,000 battery-electric vehicles were sold in the first seven months of 2024 as compared to last year, JD Power says. That includes hybrids and PHEVs, which I think gets at the root of the problem. Those who were expecting an even swap — battery-electric for internal combustion — didn't anticipate the popularity of hybrids in the market. If anything, hybrids are cannibalizing EV sales, giving the pure-battery electric vehicles more competition than anticipated. But in retrospect, it makes sense. What better response to "range anxiety" than a vehicle that, in a sense, operates as an electric vehicle until the battery runs out, and then switches over to gas...? EVs are still too expensive, giving potential buyers sticker shock. According to data from Kelley Blue Book, the average transaction price for an electric car in July 2024 was $56,520. Meanwhile, the average gas-powered vehicle is selling at $48,401. There's also a depreciation problem. New research out of George Washington University finds that older EVs depreciate in value faster than conventional gas cars. Some even lost 50 percent of their resale value in a single year. The upside is that newer models with longer driving ranges are holding their value better and approaching the retention rates of many gas cars. The charging experience is still wildly out-of-sync for most people. Either it's the single most satisfying thing about owning an EV or it's the worst. And the distinction is usually between people who live in houses and can install a home charger in their garage and those who live in an apartment building or multi-unit housing and have to rely on unreliable public chargers... But JD Power is optimistic about where that's heading, especially as public satisfaction is growing in both Level 2 and DC fast charging over two consecutive quarters. The Biden administration also continues to make massive investments in public charging, which should slowly ease the experience of public charging from "soul-sucking" to "honestly whatever." The article concludes that the EV industry needs patience and flexibility. But more than that, it "needs to slow it down with the six-figure, luxury pickups and SUVs and start offering more low-cost compact cars and sedans."

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"Houston resident Brandy Deason put an Apple AirTag in her recycling to see where her plastic trash was going," writes Tom's Hardware. "While many might expect the city would drop the recyclables off at a recycling center, Deason instead found her trash sitting in an open-air lot alongside millions of other pieces of trash at Wright Waste Management." Wright Waste Management did not allow CBS News to enter and inspect its premises. Still, the news team's drone camera discovered that all the trash picked up from the Houston Recycling Collaboration (HRC) was apparently just sitting there on its premises, stacked more than 10 feet high. This came as a shock, as the HRC was meant to revolutionize the city's recycling program, allowing it to process all kinds of plastic. Instead, we see all the collected waste sitting idle in open-air lots waiting for the right technology to appear. That's because [Exxon-funded] Cyclix International, one of the partners in the HRC, has yet to open its massive factory to scale up its plastic recycling operation. The company said that it recycles all kinds of plastic and has even already set aside a sprawling space big enough to accommodate nine football fields. However, the current facility is just an empty husk without a single piece of machinery in sight. Deason included 12 airtags in bags of recycling — and nine of them ended up at the HRC facility (with another one going to the local dump). In a video report, CBS News asked Deason what they thought about household recycling ended up in massive piles of plastic. "I thought it was kind of strange, because if you store plastic outside in the heat, it's a fire problem." In fact, that facility has already failed three fire-safety inspections by the county, according to CBS News. And while the facility has "applied" for approval to store plastic waste, that application has not yet been approved. CBS asked a Cyclix project manager about the piles of unprocessed plastic sitting in the sun. "We need a huge supply of plastics to get ready for startup here," a spokesperson answered, "And we want to start that now in order to get ahead of it." CBS's interviewer also raised another issue: the facility's plan is to recycle some of the plastic products into fuel. "So if you turn plastic waste into fuel that is then burned and creates greenhouse gas emissions, that's just another environmental problem." Cyclix Project Manager: "Plastic waste is the challenge. So if we have the ability to take plastic waste and convert it to new products — that's what we're trying to do!" CBS News points out that urning plastics into burn-able fuel is considered "recycling" by 25 states...

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It's a holiday in the US today, where we celebrate labor and laborers. Enjoy a story of working smarter, not harder, to meet unrealistic deadlines and create a lot more work for someone in the future. Original --Remy

It was the early 1990s and Frank was living the dream – unshaven, in pajama bottoms and his favorite hockey jersey, having just woken up at 12:18 PM, was now working in the dim light of his basement on one of his freelance projects. Just as he was sipping a cup of coffee, the phone rang.

Frank tried fruitlessly to fight an unexpected open-mouthed yawn when he picked up the receiver. "OOOOAAAaaahhhh... hello?"

"Hi, Frank. We have a very exciting opportunity for a qualified individual like you. Interested?" Odd that this caller hadn't even identified what company he was with, Frank thought. After sleepily getting some of the details, yeah, Frank was mildly interested, and he agreed to an interview in 30 minutes... at a bagel shop that was 25 minutes away.

Ten minutes late and having not changed at all aside from putting on non-pajama pants and shoes, he was immediately flagged over by a man in a nice suit. "You have the look like a computer genius, I already know you're perfect for this," he said without a hint of sarcasm. He asked lots of vague questions about computers; stuff like "So you know computers? What about, like, servers?" Frank had all the traits of a young man in IT – beyond his physical appearance, he was brash, overconfident, and narcissistic. Throughout the brief interview, he didn't restrain any of these traits, but still, he was only vaguely interested in the position, so he winged all the questions. Ten minutes later, the man pulled out a marker, wrote something on a napkin, and slid it across the table. "That's what your hourly rate would be." The man arched his eyebrow. "Interested?"

Frank was already pulling in some respectable bank, but this was more than twice what he was currently making. Gears started turning in his brain while he mulled it over. Well, I guess if I was to take this jo-"YES." On his way home from the interview, Frank picked up a razor, stopped for a haircut, and generally got himself kempt.

The Job

The day after the interview, he was sitting opposite the Executive Vice President of Data Processing, who was giving a second interview. "Let's say I asked you to consolidate twelve server facilities into one. How would you do it?" Ahh, a riddle question, like "how would you move a mountain to the other side of a village?"

"Well," Frank started, winging his second interview in as many days, "I'd take a systematic approach. Figure out where everything was, how the different systems were integrated, how they communicate, and gradually migrate servers over."

The Bank Boss was clearly impressed since Frank was given a contract on the spot; no references or background checks. And not just that, Frank was given keycard access to everything – all of the different datacenters and various facilities. He didn't encounter anything his keycard didn't give him access to (though he never tried the bank's vault). He was also given passwords to every sensitive system, including the money transfer system, responsible for transferring money in the range of around one trillion dollars every day.

It quickly became clear that the interview question wasn't a hypothetical, and Frank was dealing with the impossible. And maybe that's why they hired him – he was an idealistic hard worker, a badass who could do anything. What he lacked in experience then he'd make up for in tenacity. At least that's what Frank was having a harder and harder time reminding himself.

And for better or for worse, he'd effectively be on his own. As it turned out, his team and the man that hired him were electricians. Back in those days, the bank (and, more importantly, their union contract) considered moving servers to be "electrical work" and, therefore, only union electrician companies were allowed to do it. Or those that the electricians hired.

The Problem

In short, the bank had a dozen VAX datacenters that they wanted as a single cluster in a new building. Everything communicated over DECnet, which was a network protocol not too dissimilar from TCP/IP. One of the nice things about DECnet was the ability to route datagrams (packets) around the network in different ways to avoid failures, a fact which later proved to be useful.

The problem with the banks infrastructure was that either no one knew everything that was running in each datacenter, how it all worked, or how they'd work together in a single facility. Even worse, the people at the datacenters didn't want to talk to Frank, as the sooner Frank finished his job, the sooner they'd lose theirs.

The visits to the various datacenters always left Frank in a worse mood. All of them were in various states of disrepair – dirty, perhaps a flickering light, disorganized, but one stood above the others. Its floor was almost completely torn up due to a major renovation project following an asbestos contamination. All of the systems in this room were caked with dust, so much so that the labels were completely illegible. Only one system had lights blinking on its network port; so Frank brushed the dust off its label. "VDL-23 – Maintenance Test Box." Why does that sound so familiar?

Earlier that morning, Frank had done some network analysis, and found that all redundant links between the Money Transfer System and the other datacenters (aside from VDL-23) had been down for quite a while. Since DECnet routed around the failures and no one had thought to set-up network monitoring, no one had noticed that all of the other links had gone down. And before Frank discovered it, no one knew (or no one would tell him) where the box was physically. Immediately, Frank got cracking on a plan to bring the redundancy back online while keeping VDL-23 up, thanking the stars that the architecture of DECnet prevented the network from going down with all of the other servers. Still, something told him that the twisted, crushed, mistreated cables strewn across the floor might not remain reliable for transfers of $1T/day for long...

His watch alarm went off before he finished, it was a reminder that he had a mandatory meeting for all staff involved in the migration – about two hundred people in total. Frank rushed back to the main office, taking shortcuts using his everything-access keycard, and arriving just as the meeting was starting.

"Thank you all for coming," the executive vice president said, voice quivering, with a sweaty brow. "We're required to migrate the network to TCP/IP by the communications standard director." Frank winced.

The VP of communications chimed in, equally nervous. "Well... it's DECnet... it uses the non-routable LAT protocol. I... *ahem* we may need to push the deadline out..." The executive VP frowned, and asked for an update from the apps team.

The VP of Applications looked equally nervous, stammering out "we're still gathering information on the applications... and... we're not totally sure if we can actually run this all in one system..."

In a hushed tone, the executive VP took the floor again. "You're telling me we're going to miss our deadline. The board is very firm about our deadline. I'm not happy."

Frank craned his neck and looked around the room, everyone was staring at the floor. This was his moment. Once again feeling like a badass he rose from his seat dramatically, and in his most heroic voice, he boomed "There is a way."

Success!

Three months later, a beautifully appointed datacenter hummed along, processing transfers and perfectly replicating all of the functionality from the former twelve separate datacenters. Pristine rows of computers and neatly arranged drive controllers worked dutifully, everything in perfect order. The board came through the datacenter to inspect the work, and left with no complaints. It had been completed on schedule and was looking great, everyone was happy.

Under the raised floor, the tangle of cables told the real story. What was really in that room was the original twelve datacenters, all of the systems sitting pretty on the raised floor, underneath which were piles of cables connected exactly the same way they'd always been connected, and with back-hauled communication lines running between the systems. As they say, out with the old, in with the old.

And off in one corner, on upgraded hardware, was VDL-23; still responsible for routing all of the money transfer traffic, now safely sitting in a datacenter where it would remain unperturbed.

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Slashdot covered shrinkwrap licenses on software back in 2000 and 2002. But now ewhac (Slashdot reader #5,844) writes: The user Wraithe on the Mastodon network is reporting that a bottle of Vital Proteins(TM) collagen peptides purchased at Costco came with a shrinkwrap contract. Collagen peptides are often used as an anti-aging nutritional supplement. The top of the Vital Proteins bottle has a pull-to-open seal. Printed on the seal is the following: "Read This: By opening and using this product, you agree to be bound by our Terms and Conditions, fully set forth at vitalproteins.com/tc, which includes a mandatory arbitration agreement. If you do not agree to be bound, please return this product immediately." So-called "shrinkwrap contracts" have been the subject of controversy and derision for decades since their first widespread appearance in the 1970's, attempting to alter the terms of sale after the fact, impose unethical and onerous restrictions on the purchaser, and absolving the vendor of all liability. Most such contracts appear on items involving copyrighted works (computer software, or any item containing computer software). The alleged "validity" of such contracts supposedly proceeds from the (alleged) need that the item requires a copyright license from the vendor to use (because the right to use/read/listen/view/execute is somehow not concomitant with purchase), and that the shrinkwrap contract furnishes such license. The application of such a contract to a good where copyright has no scope, however, is something new. The alleged contract itself governs consumers' use of, "the VitalProteins.com website and any other applications, content, products, and services (collectively, the "Service")...," contains the usual we're-not-responsible-for-anything indemnification paragraph, and unilaterally removes your right to seek redress in court of law and imposes binding arbitration involving any disputes that may arise between the consumer and the company. Indeed, the arbitration clause is the first numbered section in the alleged contract. The same contract has been spotted by numerous others — including someone who posted about it on Reddit two years ago. ("When I opened it, encountered a vacuum seal with the following 'READ THIS: by opening and using this product, you agree to...'") But the same verbiage still appears in online listings today for the product from Albertsons, Walgreens, and CVS. Shrinkwrap contracts. They're not just for software any more...

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1.9 million solar panels began operating this year in California — at a Mortenson facility with 120,000 installed batteries that give it a storage capacity of 3,280 megawatts. An article in El Pais notes that this helped California pass 10,000 megawatts of photovoltaic storage in April — enough to meet 20% of demand — for the first time ever. (In 2019, the state had just 770 megawatts of storage capacity.) Mark Rothleder, the vice president of the independent grid operator, California ISO (CAISO), said earlier this year that they will add another 1,134 megawatts in the first eight months of 2024. This is growth on top of the leap made last year. "In 2023 alone, the ISO successfully onboarded 5,660 megawatts of new power to the grid," Rothleder said at a conference in San Diego... Renewable production was enough to supply the grid on 40 out of 48 days this spring, compared to seven days in the whole of last year. Lithium batteries appear to be undercutting the use of fossil fuels. Gas accounts for 40% of California's grid. However, its use in April registered its lowest proportion in seven years. "The data clearly shows that batteries are displacing natural gas when solar generation is ramping up and down each day in CAISO," notes an analysis by Grid Status, a firm specializing in energy issues. Natural gas was king on the grid in April 2021, 2022 and 2023. CAISO was sending between 9,000 and 10,000 megawatts produced from gas to the grid once solar ran out. Last April, however, it amounted to only 5,000 megawatts... [California's goal: run on 100% renewable energy by 2045.] Arizona and Georgia have followed California's lead. But it is Texas, the other major U.S. giant in this industry, that is snapping at its heels. At the end of April, batteries supplied 4% of the grid's electricity, enough to power several million homes. Batteries are beginning to look like an alternative to a system heavily dependent on gas and coal.

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