The world has baked for 12 consecutive months in temperatures 1.5C (2.7F) greater than their average before the fossil fuel era, new data shows. Temperatures between July 2023 and June 2024 were the highest on record, scientists found, creating a year-long stretch in which the Earth was 1.64C hotter than in preindustrial times. From a report: The findings do not mean world leaders have already failed to honour their promises to stop the planet heating 1.5C by the end of the century -- a target that is measured in decadal averages rather than single years -- but that scorching heat will have exposed more people to violent weather. A sustained rise in temperatures above this level also increases the risk of uncertain but catastrophic tipping points. Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, which analysed the data, said the results were not a statistical oddity but a "large and continuing shift" in the climate. "Even if this specific streak of extremes ends at some point, we are bound to see new records being broken as the climate continues to warm," he said. "This is inevitable unless we stop adding greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and the oceans." Copernicus, a scientific organisation that belongs to the EU's space programme, uses billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations to track key climate metrics. It found June 2024 was hotter than any other June on record and was the 12th month in a row with temperatures 1.5C greater than their average between 1850 and 1900. Because temperatures in some months had "relatively small margins" above 1.5C, the scientists said, datasets from other climate agencies may not confirm the 12-month temperature streak.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Wall Street Journal analysis has revealed that private insurers in the government's Medicare Advantage program, including UnitedHealth Group, have made numerous questionable diagnoses leading to increased taxpayer-funded payments between 2018 and 2021. The investigation found instances where patients were diagnosed with conditions they did not have, such as diabetic cataracts and HIV, often without their knowledge. These diagnoses resulted in higher payments from Medicare to the insurers. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said they are implementing changes to ensure "taxpayer dollars are appropriately spent." The story adds: In all, Medicare paid insurers about $50 billion for diagnoses added just by insurers in the three years ending in 2021, the Journal's analysis showed.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Cybernews researchers discovered what appears to be the largest password compilation with a staggering 9,948,575,739 unique plaintext passwords. The file with the data, titled rockyou2024.txt, was posted on July 4th by forum user ObamaCare. While the user registered in late May 2024, they have previously shared an employee database from the law firm Simmons & Simmons, a lead from an online casino AskGamblers, and student applications for Rowan College at Burlington County. The team cross-referenced the passwords included in the RockYou2024 leak with data from Cybernews' Leaked Password Checker, which revealed that these passwords came from a mix of old and new data breaches. "In its essence, the RockYou2024 leak is a compilation of real-world passwords used by individuals all over the world. Revealing that many passwords for threat actors substantially heightens the risk of credential stuffing attacks," researchers said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft is finally rolling out spellcheck and autocorrect for its Notepad app in Windows 11, more than 40 years after the simple text editor was first introduced in Windows in 1983. The software giant started testing both features in March, and has now quietly started enabling them for all Windows 11 users in recent days. The spellcheck feature in Notepad is almost identical to how Word or Edge highlight misspelled words, with a red underline to clearly show mistakes.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft told employees in China that from September they'll only be able to use iPhones for work, effectively cutting off Android-powered devices from the workplace. Bloomberg: The US company will soon require Chinese-based employees to use only Apple devices to verify their identities when logging in to work computers or phones, according to an internal memo reviewed by Bloomberg News. The measure, part of Microsoft's global Secure Future Initiative, will affect hundreds of workers across the Chinese mainland and is intended to ensure that all staff use the Microsoft Authenticator password manager and Identity Pass app. The move highlights the fragmented nature of Android app stores in the country and the growing differences between Chinese and foreign mobile ecosystems. Unlike Apple's iOS store, Google Play isn't available in China, so local smartphone makers like Huawei and Xiaomi operate their own platforms. Microsoft has chosen to block access from those devices to its corporate resources because they lack Google's mobile services in the country, the message said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Remember those researchers who spent years training AI tools to analyze the reviews drivers left on the smartphone apps where they pay for EV charging? There was one more unexpected finding. "Rideshare drivers who work for companies such as Uber are increasingly turning to electric vehicles to reduce fuel costs." That trend is boosting demand for conveniently located, publicly accessible EV chargers... "They are mostly relying on public chargers for their daily Uber needs, usually every day or every couple of days, which dramatically increases electric vehicle miles traveled," [climate fellow Omar Asensio told the Institute's blog], explaining that many drivers live in apartments that lack garages or space for a residential EV charger. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi considers the issue so pressing he urged U.S. policymakers to accelerate plans to improve the nation's EV charging infrastructure in a Fast Co. op-ed in January — during the World Economic Forum in Davos, when media messaging can influence policymakers. Independent Uber drivers, Khosrowshahi said, are converting to electric vehicles seven times faster than the general public and they tend to be disproportionately from low- and middle-income households that need access to public charging stations. "Charging infrastructure must be more equitable," Khosrowshahi wrote. "Many drivers don't have driveways or garages, so access to nearby overnight charging is essential. Yet our data shows us that Uber drivers often live in neighborhoods lacking this infrastructure. These 'charging deserts' hold countless people back from making the switch."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Russia has finally admitted that American astronauts did, in fact, land on the moon," reports Newsweek: Head of Russian Space Corporation Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, accepted the truth of the U.S. putting a man on the moon in an address to the State Duma, Intellinews has reported. "As for whether the Americans were on the Moon or not, I have one fact to share," he was reported to have said. "I was personally interested in this matter. At one time, they provided us with a portion of the lunar soil that the astronauts brought back during their expedition." Previous polling revealed that just under half of Russians believe America's 1969 moon landing was a government hoax. However, Borisov said that tests performed on the samples by the Russian Academy of Scientists confirmed their authenticity.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We're taking our summer break, which means we reach back into the archives and find some classics. This one teaches you everything you need to know about generating XML. --Remy

XML is an absolutely wonderful innovation. It allows us to easily describe and share just about any data immaginable. Of course, there's always gotta be someone (as Tim points out) who has to go and ... well ... see for yourself ...

The code in this screenshot exists in about 20 places. Each time is this style and is customized for the particular set of statistics that that test generated. Recently I was brought on to the project and part of my goal was to improve the projects effectiveness. Since no DTDs or documentation of any kind existed for the XML format(s) I created one. Imagine my horror when changes need to ripple through 20+ "custom" XML outputs. Unfortunately this code still exists but I am trying hard to correct things that make it hard to eliminate (can anyone say tight coupling).

[Advertisement] BuildMaster allows you to create a self-service release management platform that allows different teams to manage their applications. Explore how!

Boeing agreed on Sunday to plead guilty to conspiring to defraud the government in a case linked to crashes of its 737 Max jets in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people -- a stunning turn for the aerospace giant after the Justice Department determined that Boeing failed to live up to terms of a 2021 deal to avoid prosecution. Washington Post adds: Prosecutors alleged that two Boeing pilots concealed key information from the Federal Aviation Administration about a new automated control system on the Max. The system was implicated in both crashes, causing uncontrollable dives. By agreeing to plead guilty to the single felony count just before a midnight deadline Sunday, the company will avoid going to trial in the high-profile case. The Justice Department filed documents related to the deal in federal court in Texas late Sunday night, setting up a planned hearing where family members -- who have criticized the pending agreement -- will be permitted to speak out. The court subsequently must decide whether to accept the plea agreement. Boeing had already agreed to $2.5 billion in penalties and payouts in 2021. As part of the new deal, the company will pay an additional $487.2 million in penalties, agree to oversight by an independent monitor, spend at least $455 million to strengthen compliance and safety programs and be placed on supervised probation for roughly three years, according to a Justice Department official. The agreement also included one thing crash victims' families long sought: a meeting with Boeing's board of directors.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Many bike riders are hopeful about a world of robot drivers that never experience road rage or get distracted by their phones," reports the Washington Post. "But some resent being guinea pigs for driverless vehicles that veer into bike lanes, suddenly stop short and confuse cyclists trying to navigate around them. "In more than a dozen complaints submitted to the DMV, cyclists describe upsetting near misses and close calls... " Of the nearly 200 California DMV complaints analyzed by The Post, about 60 percent involved Cruise vehicles; the rest mostly involved Waymo. About a third describe erratic or reckless driving, while another third document near misses with pedestrians. The remainder involve reports of autonomous cars blocking traffic and disobeying road markings or traffic signals... Only 17 complaints involved bicyclists or bike lane disruptions. But interviews with cyclists suggest the DMV complaints represent a fraction of bikers' negative interactions with self-driving vehicles. And while most of the complaints describe relatively minor incidents, they raise questions about corporate boasts that the cars are safer than human drivers, said Christopher White, executive director of the San Francisco Bike Coalition... Robot cars could one day make roads safer, White said, "but we don't yet see the tech fully living up to the promise. ... The companies are talking about it as a much safer alternative to people driving. If that's the promise that they're making, then they have to live up to it...." Many bicycle safety advocates support the mission of autonomous vehicles, optimistic the technology will cut injuries and deaths. They are quick to point out the carnage associated with human-driven cars: There were 2,520 collisions in San Francisco involving at least one cyclist from 2017 to 2022, according to state data analyzed by local law firm Walkup, Melodia, Kelly & Schoenberger. In those crashes, 10 cyclists died and another 243 riders were severely injured, the law firm found. Nationally, there were 1,105 cyclists killed by drivers in 2022, according to NHTSA, the highest on record... Meanwhile, the fraction of complaints to the DMV related to bicycles demonstrates the shaky relationship between self-driving cars and cyclists. In April 2023, a Waymo edged into a crosswalk, confusing a cyclist and causing him to crash and fracture his elbow, according to the complaint filed by the cyclist. Then, in August — days after the state approved an expansion of these vehicles — a Cruise car allegedly made a right turn that cut off a cyclist. The rider attempted to stop but then flipped over their bike. "It clearly didn't react or see me!" the complaint said. Even if self-driving cars are proven to be safer than human drivers, they should still receive extra scrutiny and aren't the only way to make roads safer, several cyclists said. Thanks to Slashdot reader echo123 for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Its FOSS writes: When it comes to Linux, we get to see some really cool, and sometimes quirky projects (read Hannah Montana Linux) that try to show off what's possible, and that's not a bad thing. One such quirky undertaking has recently surfaced, which sees a sophomore trying to one-up their friend, who had booted Linux off NFS. With their work, they have been able to run Arch Linux on Google Drive. Their ultimate idea included FUSE (which allows running file-system code in userspace). The developer's blog post explains that when Linux boots, "the kernel unpacks a temporary filesystem into RAM which has the tools to mount the real filesystem... it's very helpful! We can mount a FUSE filesystem in that step and boot normally.... " Thankfully, Dracut makes it easy enough to build a custom initramfs... I decide to build this on top of Arch Linux because it's relatively lightweight and I'm familiar with how it work." Doing testing in an Amazon S3 container, they built an EFI image — then spent days trying to enable networking... And the adventure continues. ("Would it be possible to manually switch the root without a specialized system call? What if I just chroot?") After they'd made a few more tweaks, "I sit there, in front of my computer, staring. It can't have been that easy, can it? Surely, this is a profane act, and the spirit of Dennis Ritchie ought't've stopped me, right? Nobody stopped me, so I kept going..." I build the unified EFI file, throw it on a USB drive under /BOOT/EFI, and stick it in my old server... This is my magnum opus. My Great Work. This is the mark I will leave on this planet long after I am gone: The Cloud Native Computer. Despite how silly this project is, there are a few less-silly uses I can think of, like booting Linux off of SSH, or perhaps booting Linux off of a Git repository and tracking every change in Git using gitfs. The possibilities are endless, despite the middling usefulness. If there is anything I know about technology, it's that moving everything to The Cloud is the current trend. As such, I am prepared to commercialize this for any company wishing to leave their unreliable hardware storage behind and move entirely to The Cloud. Please request a quote if you are interested in True Cloud Native Computing. Unfortunately, I don't know what to do next with this. Maybe I should install Nix?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the BBC: On 21 June, Barcelona mayor Jaume Collboni announced plans to ban short term rentals in the city starting in November 2028. The decision is designed to solve what Collboni described as "Barcelona's biggest problem" — the housing crisis that has seen residents and workers priced out of the market — by returning the 10,000 apartments currently listed as short-term rentals on Airbnb and other platforms into the housing market... It's all part of a wider theme: around the world. Airbnb — which dominates the short-term rental market with more than 50% of all online bookings — and others, including VRBO, Booking.com and Expedia.com, are being scrutinised at the same time as questions are being asked about who tourism is for, and where the balance lies between benefits for tourists and locals alike... Recent years have seen a backlash against the brand, which is blamed for pushing up housing prices and affecting locals who feel they have been forced to live next door to unregulated hotels... The question is: does banning or restricting short-term rentals actually reduce housing prices or affect housing stock? Harvard Business Review's study on the impact of the New York City ban, published earlier this year, concluded that in this case, short term rentals are not the biggest contributor to high rents, and that regulations, rather than bans, would offer better benefits to the city and locals alike. One clear result from the city's ban has been that hotel room rates have hiked to a record average of $300 per night. So why are tourism authorities and city councils doing it? Perhaps the real reason is that it's not just about the numbers, it's about how local people feel about tourism... Successful on paper or not, these bans send a signal to local people that politicians are listening to their concerns and will prioritise them over tourists. There is an alternative to outright bans, though. Many destinations, including Berlin, restrict owner-occupiers to a 90-day maximum rental period over a year, effectively allowing part-time hosts to continue to make a supplementary income while preventing professional hosts from buying up housing stock and turning it into full-time short-term rentals. The issue for all countries moving in this direction, including the UK, which proposes something similar, is about regulation. How do you do it and how much extra does it cost to do so?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"China may be the world's second-largest economy," writes Fortune's news editor, "but when it comes to startup funding, the U.K. is punching above its weight." Startups in the U.K. raised $6.7 billion in funding during the first half of 2024, helping dethrone China and propelling the U.K. to second place globally for funds raised, according to a new report. Crucial to the U.K.'s success were a dozen funding rounds worth over $100 million each, including those of digital bank Monzo ($620 million), lender Abound ($862 million), and automated driving startup Wayve ($1.05 billion). While the overall U.K. figure was down 2% year on year, according to data from global market intelligence platform Tracxn, it remained more robust than that of China, whose funding sat at $6.1 billion in H1 2024, helping the U.K. move into the No. 2 spot globally. The win is a milestone for the U.K. tech sector, which has remained under pressure owing to a string of challenges, including Brexit, COVID-19, and the subsequent global economic slowdown. Only the U.S. saw startups raise more capital in H1, with a combined $54.8 billion raised across some 2,654 funding rounds in the first half of the year. The article's last line? "With the arrival of new U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, many will be hoping that the first Labour government in 14 years will continue to support the U.K.'s position as a critical player in the global tech landscape."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Linux's vDSO (or virtual dynamic shared object) is "a small shared library that the kernel automatically maps into the address space of all user-space applications," according to its man page. "There are some system calls the kernel provides that user-space code ends up using frequently, to the point that such calls can dominate overall performance... due both to the frequency of the call as well as the context-switch overhead that results from exiting user space and entering the kernel." But Linus Torvalds had a lot to say about a proposed getrandom() upgrade, reports Phoronix: This getrandom() work in the vDSO has been through 20+ rounds of review over the past 2+ years, but... Torvalds took some time out of his U.S. Independence Day to argue the merits of the patches on the Linux kernel mailing list. Torvalds kicked things off by writing: Nobody has explained to me what has changed since your last vdso getrandom, and I'm not planning on pulling it unless that fundamental flaw is fixed. Why is this _so_ critical that it needs a vdso? Why isn't user space just doing it itself? What's so magical about this all? This all seems entirely pointless to me still, because it's optimizing something that nobody seems to care about, adding new VM infrastructure, new magic system calls, yadda yadda. I was very sceptical last time, and absolutely _nothing_ has changed. Not a peep on why it's now suddenly so hugely important again. We don't add stuff "just because we can". We need to have a damn good reason for it. And I still don't see the reason, and I haven't seen anybody even trying to explain the reason. And then he responded to himself, adding: In other words, I want to see actual *users* piping up and saying "this is a problem, here's my real load that spends 10% of time on getrandom(), and this fixes it". I'm not AT ALL interested in microbenchmarks or theoretical "if users need high-performance random numbers". I need a real actual live user that says "I can't just use rdrand and my own chacha mixing on top" and explains why having a SSE2 chachacha in kernel code exposed as a vdso is so critical, and a magical buffer maintained by the kernel." Torvalds also added in a third message: One final note: the reason I'm so negative about this all is that the random number subsystem has such an absolutely _horrendous_ history of two main conflicting issues: people wanting reasonable usable random numbers on one side, and then the people that discuss what the word "entropy" means on the other side. And honestly, I don't want the kernel stuck even *more* in the middle of that morass.... Torvalds made additional comments. ("This smells. It's BS...") Advocating for the change was WiredGuard developer Jason Donenfeld, and more communication happened (and continues to happen... 40 messages and counting). At one point the discussion evolved to Torvalds saying "Bah. I guess I'll have to walk through the patch series once again. I'm still not thrilled about it. But I'll give it another go..."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As Amazon's stock hits a record high (rising 32% just this year), long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: GeekWire reports that Jeff Bezos keeps selling Amazon stock after announcing his move away from Washington state — and its 7% tax on capital gains of more than $262,000 from the sale of stocks and bonds — to Florida, which does not have a capital gains tax (like WA, FL also does not tax personal income). Taylor Soper writes, "Bezos saved more than $600 million by moving to Miami and avoiding Washington's capital gains tax, CNBC reported in February, based on his sale of 50 million shares [$8.5 billion] earlier this year. With the sale of 25 million additional shares [$5 billion], revealed this week in a regulatory filing, Bezos will likely have saved close to $1 billion in total so far. It's a giant chunk of change that would have otherwise gone to the state of Washington."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Workers at delivery company Shipt "found that their paychecks had become...unpredictable," according to an article in IEEE Spectrum. "They were doing the same work they'd always done, yet their paychecks were often less than they expected. And they didn't know why...." The article notes that "Companies whose business models rely on gig workers have an interest in keeping their algorithms opaque." But "The workers showed that it's possible to fight back against the opaque authority of algorithms, creating transparency despite a corporation's wishes." On Facebook and Reddit, workers compared notes. Previously, they'd known what to expect from their pay because Shipt had a formula: It gave workers a base pay of $5 per delivery plus 7.5 percent of the total amount of the customer's order through the app. That formula allowed workers to look at order amounts and choose jobs that were worth their time. But Shipt had changed the payment rules without alerting workers. When the company finally issued a press release about the change, it revealed only that the new pay algorithm paid workers based on "effort," which included factors like the order amount, the estimated amount of time required for shopping, and the mileage driven. The company claimed this new approach was fairer to workers and that it better matched the pay to the labor required for an order. Many workers, however, just saw their paychecks dwindling. And since Shipt didn't release detailed information about the algorithm, it was essentially a black box that the workers couldn't see inside. The workers could have quietly accepted their fate, or sought employment elsewhere. Instead, they banded together, gathering data and forming partnerships with researchers and organizations to help them make sense of their pay data. I'm a data scientist; I was drawn into the campaign in the summer of 2020, and I proceeded to build an SMS-based tool — the Shopper Transparency Calculator [written in Python, using optical character recognition and Twilio, and running on a home server] — to collect and analyze the data. With the help of that tool, the organized workers and their supporters essentially audited the algorithm and found that it had given 40 percent of workers substantial pay cuts... This "information asymmetry" helps companies better control their workforces — they set the terms without divulging details, and workers' only choice is whether or not to accept those terms... There's no technical reason why these algorithms need to be black boxes; the real reason is to maintain the power structure... In a fairer world where workers have basic data rights and regulations require companies to disclose information about the AI systems they use in the workplace, this transparency would be available to workers by default. The tool's creator was attracted to the idea of helping a community "control and leverage their own data," and ultimately received more than 5,600 screenshots from over 200 workers. 40% were earning at least 10% less — and about 33% were earning less than their state's minimum wage. Interestingly, "Sharing data about their work was technically against the company's terms of service; astoundingly, workers — including gig workers who are classified as 'independent contractors' — often don't have rights to their own data... "[O]ur experiment served as an example for other gig workers who want to use data to organize, and it raised awareness about the downsides of algorithmic management. What's needed is wholesale changes to platforms' business models... The battles that gig workers are fighting are the leading front in the larger war for workplace rights, which will affect all of us. The time to define the terms of our relationship with algorithms is right now." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader mspohr for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At one point on Friday the entire cryptocurrency market shed more than $170 billion in capitalization within 24 hours, CNBC reported (citing data from CoinGecko). "Cryptocurrencies plunged... as investors focused on the payout of nearly $9 billion to users of collapsed bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox." This dumping of coins onto the market is expected to lead to some significant selling action. The slump in crypto prices led to hefty liquidations in the derivatives markets, according to crypto data firm Coinglass, which suggests that 229,755 traders had their positions worth a combined $639.58 million liquidated [within 24 hours]. Of this sum, $540.46 million represented long trades — financial positions taken when an investor expects the price of an asset to appreciate over the long term. Also pressuring crypto markets, the German government on Thursday sold roughly 3,000 bitcoins — worth approximately $175 million as of today's prices — from a 50,000-bitcoin pile seized in connection with the movie piracy operation Movie2k, according to Arkham Intelligence.... Tom Lee, co-founder and head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors, told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Monday that he still sees bitcoin hitting $150,000 despite the "overhang" from Mt. Gox's upcoming disbursement of tokens to creditors. Wired focuses on how "After a 10-Year Wait, Mt. Gox Bitcoin Is Finally Being Returned": In a highly atypical turn of events, Mt. Gox customers actually stand to profit financially from their involvement in the bankruptcy. Because only a limited amount of bitcoin was recovered, customers will receive only roughly 15 percent of the bitcoin they held on the exchange. However, the hundredfold increase in price in the intervening period means the dollar-value of the coins will far exceed the worth of their original pile.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from NPR: A teenage computer whiz who used the early-aughts internet to spread awareness of the Catholic faith will become the church's first millennial saint. Carlo Acutis, who died of leukemia at age 15 in 2006, is already referred to as "God's influencer" and the "patron saint of the internet" for his work cataloging Eucharistic miracles around the world — and soon it will be official. Pope Francis and a group of cardinals approved Acutis for canonization at a meeting at the Vatican on Monday, Vatican News announced. It says he will likely be proclaimed a saint at some point in 2025, during the church's jubilee year. Acutis was a devout Catholic who taught himself programming from an early age and created websites with a spiritual focus, including his widely praised database of miracles. He is credited with helping homeless people and defending victims of bullying during his lifetime, and having a hand in two healing miracles after his death — the requisite number for all Catholic saints. Monday's approval clears the final hurdle in a multiyear process, which began in 2013 when the pope approved the cause for his beatification and canonization and named him "a Servant of God...." Acutis also loved playing video games — CNN cited Halo, Super Mario and Pokémon among his favorites — though limited himself to one hour a week.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"After sixteen years since the introduction of Python 3, the Fedora project announces that Python 2.7, the last of the Python 2 series, will be retired," according to long-time Slashdot reader slack_justyb. From the announcement on the Fedora changes page: The python2.7 package will be retired without replacement from Fedora Linux 41. There will be no Python 2 in Fedora 41+ other than PyPy. Packages requiring python2.7 on runtime or buildtime will have to deal with the retirement or be retired as well. "This also comes with the announcement that GIMP 3 will be coming to Fedora 41 to remove any last Python 2 dependencies," adds slack_justyb. GIMP 2 was originally released on March 23, 2004. GIMP will be updated to GIMP 3 with Python 3 support. Python 2 dependencies of GIMP will be retired. Python 2's end of life was originally 2015, but was extended to 2020. The Python maintainers close with this: The Python maintainers will no longer regularly backport security fixes to Python 2.7 in RHEL, due to the the end of maintenance of RHEL 7 and the retirement of the Python 2.7 application stream in RHEL 8. We provided this obsolete package for 5 years beyond its retirement date and will continue to provide it until Fedora 40 goes end of life. Enough has been enough.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Harvard Business School has an "Institute for Business in Global Society" that explores the societal impacts of business. And they've recently published some new AI-powered research about EV charging infrastructure, according to the Institute's blog, conducted by climate fellow Omar Asensio. "Asensio and his team, supported by Microsoft and National Science Foundation awards, spent years building models and training AI tools to extract insights and make predictions," using the reviews drivers left (in more than 72 languages) on the smartphone apps drivers use to pay for charging. And ultimately this research identified "a significant obstacle to increasing electric vehicle (EV) sales and decreasing carbon emissions in the United States: owners' deep frustration with the state of charging infrastructure, including unreliability, erratic pricing, and lack of charging locations..." [C]harging stations in the U.S. have an average reliability score of only 78%, meaning that about one in five don't work. They are, on average, less reliable than regular gas stations, Asensio said. "Imagine if you go to a traditional gas station and two out of 10 times the pumps are out of order," he said. "Consumers would revolt...." EV drivers often find broken equipment, making charging unreliable at best and simply not as easy as the old way of topping off a tank of gas. The reason? "No one's maintaining these stations," Asensio said. One problem? Another blog post by the Institute notes that America's approach to public charging has differed sharply from those in other countries: In Europe and Asia, governments started making major investments in public charging infrastructure years ago. In America, the initial thinking was that private companies would fill the public's need by spending money to install charging stations at hotels, shopping malls and other public venues. But that decentralized approach failed to meet demand and the Biden administration is now investing heavily to grow the charging network and facilitate EV sales... "No single market actor has sufficient incentive to build out a national charging network at a pace that meets our climate goals," the report declared. Citing research and the experience of other countries, it noted that "policies that increase access to charging stations may be among the best policies to increase EV sales." But the U.S. is far behind other countries. Thanks to Slashdot reader NoWayNoShapeNoForm for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.