Chinese scientists have developed a new method to produce significant quantities of water from lunar soil brought back by the Chang'e-5 mission in 2020, state broadcaster CCTV reported. The "brand-new method" involves heating moon minerals containing hydrogen to generate water vapor, which could be crucial for future lunar research stations and space exploration. Reuters reports: "After three years of in-depth research and repeated verification, a brand-new method of using lunar soil to produce large amounts of water was discovered, which is expected to provide important design basis for the construction of future lunar scientific research stations and space stations," said CCTV. The discovery could have important implications for China's decades-long project of building a permanent lunar outpost amid a U.S.-China race to find and mine the moon's resources. Using the new method, one tonne of lunar soil will be able to produce about 51-76 kg of water, equivalent to more than a hundred 500ml bottles of water, or the daily drinking water consumption of 50 people, the state broadcaster said. China hopes that recent and future lunar expeditions will set the foundations to build the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), an initiative it is co-leading with Russia.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Just under a year ago, the east coast of Greenland was hit by a megatsunami. Triggered by a large landslide entering the uninhabited Dickson Fjord, the resulting tsunami was 200 meters high -- equivalent to more than 40 double-decker buses. Luckily no one was hurt, though a military base was obliterated. Now analysis of the seismic data associated with the event has revealed that the tsunami was followed by a standing wave, which continued to slosh back and forth within the narrow fjord for many days. Angela Carrillo Ponce from the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, analyzed the seismic data, recorded at earthquake monitoring stations more than 3,000 miles (5,000km) away, and found signals persisting long after the 16 September 2023 landslide event. Using satellite images and computer modeling, Ponce and her colleagues were able to confirm the presence of a standing wave of about 1 meter in height which lasted for more than a week. Their findings, published in The Seismic Record, warn that climate change is accelerating the melt of Greenland's glaciers and permafrost, increasing the chance of landslides and subsequent megatsunamis. Smaller events have been observed a number of times in recent years, such as the rock avalanche into western Greenland's Karrat Fjord in 2017, which triggered a tsunami that flooded the village of Nuugaatsiaq, destroying 11 houses and killing four people.

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Nearly 200 Google DeepMind workers signed a letter urging Google to cease its military contracts, expressing concerns that the AI technology they develop is being used in warfare, which they believe violates Google's own AI ethics principles. "The letter is a sign of a growing dispute within Google between at least some workers in its AI division -- which has pledged to never work on military technology -- and its Cloud business, which has contracts to sell Google services, including AI developed inside DeepMind, to several governments and militaries including those of Israel and the United States," reports TIME Magazine. "The signatures represent some 5% of DeepMind's overall headcount -- a small portion to be sure, but a significant level of worker unease for an industry where top machine learning talent is in high demand." From the report: The DeepMind letter, dated May 16 of this year, begins by stating that workers are "concerned by recent reports of Google's contracts with military organizations." It does not refer to any specific militaries by name -- saying "we emphasize that this letter is not about the geopolitics of any particular conflict." But it links out to an April report in TIME which revealed that Google has a direct contract to supply cloud computing and AI services to the Israeli Military Defense, under a wider contract with Israel called Project Nimbus. The letter also links to other stories alleging that the Israeli military uses AI to carry out mass surveillance and target selection for its bombing campaign in Gaza, and that Israeli weapons firms are required by the government to buy cloud services from Google and Amazon. "Any involvement with military and weapon manufacturing impacts our position as leaders in ethical and responsible AI, and goes against our mission statement and stated AI Principles," the letter that circulated inside Google DeepMind says. (Those principles state the company will not pursue applications of AI that are likely to cause "overall harm," contribute to weapons or other technologies whose "principal purpose or implementation" is to cause injury, or build technologies "whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.") The letter says its signatories are concerned with "ensuring that Google's AI Principles are upheld," and adds: "We believe [DeepMind's] leadership shares our concerns." [...] The letter calls on DeepMind's leaders to investigate allegations that militaries and weapons manufacturers are Google Cloud users; terminate access to DeepMind technology for military users; and set up a new governance body responsible for preventing DeepMind technology from being used by military clients in the future. Three months on from the letter's circulation, Google has done none of those things, according to four people with knowledge of the matter. "We have received no meaningful response from leadership," one said, "and we are growing increasingly frustrated."

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After a couple of years of regular use, Samsung's $400 Galaxy Ring will end up contributing to the growing e-waste problem. "The Galaxy Ring -- and all smart rings like it -- comes with a huge string attached," writes iFixit in a blog post. "It's 100% disposable, just like the AirPod-style Buds3 that Samsung just released. The culprit? The lithium ion batteries." ZDNet reports: The problem is the battery, and how they have a finite lifespan. Usually that's about 400 recharge cycles, and after that the batteries are finished. And if you can't replace it, then it's the end of the line for the gadget, and it's tossed onto the e-waste pile. [...] iFixit is damning about this sort of tech. "There's nothing wrong with simple but there is something wrong with unrepairable. Just like the Galaxy Buds3, the Galaxy Ring is a disposable tech accessory that isn't designed to last more than two years." And the bottom line is simple: "We can't recommend buying disposable tech like this." Here's what iFixit's Shahram Mokhtari had to say about the Galaxy Ring's battery, after putting it through a CT scanner: On the right hand side of the ring is the faint outline of a lithium polymer battery pouch. There's an inductive coil sitting right on top of the battery (the lines that look like a rectangular track) and another very similar inductive coil that's parallel and slightly separated from the first. That second inductive coil is inside the charging case and works together with the inductive coil in the ring to recharge the battery inside the Galaxy Ring. Inductive charging is the only practical way to deliver power to a device that doesn't have any ports. But there's something else here that sticks out like a sore thumb ... that is a press connector joining the battery to the rest of the board! This is a surprising use of space, why isn't this directly soldered? Nobody is getting back in there to disconnect this thing! We love press connectors, they're easy to work with and make replacing batteries a sight easier than desoldering a half dozen wires. But this one is sealed into the device and serves no purpose in replacement or repair. Our best guess as to why it's in the Galaxy Ring: The battery and wireless charging coil were made in one place, the circuit board somewhere else, and it all comes to a production line somewhere where the two need to be connected together quickly and cheaply. Hence the press connector. It's not for your benefit, it's for the manufacturers.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Amazon may be forced to meet some unionized delivery drivers at the bargaining table after a regional National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) director determined Thursday that Amazon is a joint employer of contractors hired to ensure the e-commerce giant delivers its packages when promised. This seems like a potentially big loss for Amazon, which had long argued that delivery service partners (DSPs) exclusively employed the delivery drivers, not Amazon. By rejecting its employer status, Amazon had previously argued that it had no duty to bargain with driver unions and no responsibility for alleged union busting, The Washington Post reported. But now, after a yearlong investigation, the NLRB has issued what Amazon delivery drivers' union has claimed was "a groundbreaking decision that sets the stage for Amazon delivery drivers across the country to organize with the Teamsters." In a press release reviewed by Ars, the NLRB regional director confirmed that as a joint employer, Amazon had "unlawfully failed and refused to bargain with the union" after terminating their DSP's contract and terminating "all unionized employees." The NLRB found that rather than bargaining with the union, Amazon "delayed start times by grounding vans and not preparing packages for loading," withheld information from the union, and "made unlawful threats." Teamsters said those threats included "job loss" and "intimidating employees with security guards." [...] Unless a settlement is reached, the NLRB will soon "issue a complaint against Amazon and prosecute the corporate giant at a trial" after finding that "Amazon engaged in a long list of egregious unfair labor practices at its Palmdale facility," Teamsters said. Apparently downplaying the NLRB determination, Amazon is claiming that the Teamsters are trying to "misrepresent what is happening here." Seemingly Amazon is taking issue with the union claiming that an NLRB determination on the merits of their case is a major win when the NLRB has yet to issue a final ruling. According to the NLRB's press release, "a merit determination is not a 'Board decision/ruling' -- it is the first step in the NLRB's General Counsel litigating the allegations after investigating an unfair labor practice charge." Sean M. O'Brien, the Teamsters general president, claimed the win for drivers unionizing not just in California but for nearly 280,000 drivers nationwide. "Amazon drivers have taken their future into their own hands and won a monumental determination that makes clear Amazon has a legal obligation to bargain with its drivers over their working conditions," O'Brien said. "This strike has paved the way for every other Amazon worker in the country to demand what they deserve and to get Amazon to the bargaining table."

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The Register's Connor Jones reports: The U.S. is suing one of its leading research universities over a litany of alleged failures to meet cybersecurity standards set by the Department of Defense (DoD) for contract awardees. Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT), commonly referred to as Georgia Tech, and its contracting entity, Georgia Tech Research Corporation (GTRC), are being investigated following whistleblower reports from insiders Christopher Craig and Kyle Koza about alleged (PDF) failures to protect controlled unclassified information (CUI). The series of allegations date back to 2019 and continued for years after, although Koza was said to have identified the issues as early as 2018. Among the allegations is the suggestion that between May 2019 and February 2020, Georgia Tech's Astrolavos Lab -- ironically a group that focuses on cybersecurity issues affecting national security -- failed to develop and implement a cybersecurity plan that complied with DoD standards (NIST 800-171). When the plan was implemented in February 2020, the lawsuit alleges that it wasn't properly scoped -- not all the necessary endpoints were included -- and that for years afterward, Georgia Tech failed to maintain that plan in line with regulations. Additionally, the Astrolavos Lab was accused of failing to implement anti-malware solutions across devices and the lab's network. The lawsuit alleges that the university approved the lab's refusal to deploy the anti-malware software "to satisfy the demands of the professor that headed the lab," the DoJ said. This is claimed to have occurred between May 2019 and December 2021. Refusing to install anti-malware solutions at a contractor like this is not allowed. In fact, it violates federal requirements and Georgia Tech's own policies, but allegedly happened anyway. The university and the GTRC also, it is claimed, submitted a false cybersecurity assessment score in December 2020 -- a requirement for all DoD contractors to demonstrate they're meeting compliance standards. The two organizations are accused of issuing themselves a score of 98, which was later deemed to be fraudulent based on various factors. To summarize, the issue centers around the claim that the assessment was carried out on a "fictitious" environment, so on that basis the score wasn't given to a system related to the DoD contract, the US alleges. The claims are being made under the False Claims Act (FCA), which is being utilized by the Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative (CCFI), which was introduced in 2021 to punish entities that knowingly risk the safety of United States IT systems. It's a first-of-its-kind case being pursued as part of the CCFI. All previous cases brought under the CCFI were settled before they reached the litigation stage.

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Wyoming is pioneering the next phase of crypto growth by creating its own U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, the Wyoming stable token. The state aims for an early 2025 launch and have it serve as a model for a digitized dollar at the federal level, while also using the token's reserves to fund public schools. CNBC reports: Wyoming is currently vetting potential partners and vendors with more tech expertise to help build the stable token. It will require an exchange and wallet providers -- Coinbase and Kraken, for example, offer both -- to purchase and hold the token. The state plans to issue the token to an exchange so the exchange can issue it to the retail user. From there, it should be just another payment method for everyday things, said Flavia Naves, a commissioner at the Wyoming Stable Token Commission. "When you walk into Cowboy Coffee in Jackson, Wyoming, and you want to buy your latte, there's going to be their wallet there in Solana that you can use to buy your coffee with the Wyoming token," she said, describing the vision for the stablecoin. It also has a public good tilt to it: the commission plans to invest reserves that back each token in circulation into Treasurys and reverse repos, and use the interest made on those investments to fund its public schools. At the conference, [Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon] emphasized the importance of resisting the urge to focus too much on how much money the state can make here and to instead prioritize reserve management. [...] Naves emphasized that there will be a "buffer" in the reserves to account for any potential deviations and full transparency to establish and maintain public trust. "There will be audits available to the public on how many tokens [are] in circulation [and] how much money is in the bank account backing, so you can always see there is a 1-to-1 [stablecoin-to-dollar ratio]," she said. "This is a public token as well so as with any public service, all the information is available." The commission invites the public virtually to its meetings on the stable token and posts the minutes to its website afterward. "This is fully reserved and part of what we've been working out ... is to make sure that we can fully back whatever it is we're going to do," Gordon said. "Plus the fact that our legislation says that when a person buys a Treasury or a repo, we're going to have that in evidence, you're going to be able to see that. So hopefully we can avoid the de begging issues." Success would be "adoption of a stablecoin ... that's transparent, that is fully backed by our short-term Treasurys [and] that's dollar dependent," Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon told CNBC at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium in Jackson Hole. "One of the big things for me is to be able to bring back onshore a lot of our debt, because if it's bought by treasuries and supported by Treasurys, it will help to stabilize that market to a degree." "It is clear to me is that digital assets are going to have a future," Gordon said. "The United States has to address this issue. Washington's being a little bit stodgy, which is why Wyoming, being a nimble and entrepreneurial state, can make a difference."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Post: You may find yourself smelling crayons in the aisles of stores soon -- if Crayola's chief executive Pete Ruggiero has his way. In July, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a trademark to the arts and crafts giant for the smell of its crayons -- that waxy scent of a childhood spent trying to color within the lines. While it's too soon for this back-to-school season, Ruggiero imagines one day pumping it through the aisles of retailers, triggering nostalgia while shoppers are browsing and hopefully buying more crayons. Crayola, a unit of Hallmark, first applied for the trademark in 2018 and was initially turned down less than a year later, but won its bid on appeal. During the process, the company shared examples of its own crayons as well as competitors to verify the distinctiveness. It's a "slightly earthy soap with pungent, leather-like clay undertones," according to the trademark documents. "We've been talking about doing it for years," Ruggiero said about the trademark. "That Crayola smell, there's a connection between the smell and childhood memories that is very powerful."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Language models generate text based on statistical probabilities. This led to serious false accusations against a veteran court reporter by Microsoft's Copilot. German journalist Martin Bernklau typed his name and location into Microsoft's Copilot to see how his culture blog articles would be picked up by the chatbot, according to German public broadcaster SWR. The answers shocked Bernklau. Copilot falsely claimed Bernklau had been charged with and convicted of child abuse and exploiting dependents. It also claimed that he had been involved in a dramatic escape from a psychiatric hospital and had exploited grieving women as an unethical mortician. Copilot even went so far as to claim that it was "unfortunate" that someone with such a criminal past had a family and, according to SWR, provided Bernklau's full address with phone number and route planner. I asked Copilot today who Martin Bernklau from Germany is, and the system answered, based on the SWR report, that "he was involved in a controversy where an AI chat system falsely labeled him as a convicted child molester, an escapee from a psychiatric facility, and a fraudster." Perplexity.ai drafts a similar response based on the SWR article, explicitly naming Microsoft Copilot as the AI system.

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Doctors have begun trialling the world's first mRNA lung cancer vaccine in patients, as experts hailed its "groundbreaking" potential to save thousands of lives. From a report: Lung cancer is the world's leading cause of cancer death, accounting for about 1.8m deaths every year. Survival rates in those with advanced forms of the disease, where tumours have spread, are particularly poor. Now experts are testing a new jab that instructs the body to hunt down and kill cancer cells -- then prevents them ever coming back. Known as BNT116 and made by BioNTech, the vaccine is designed to treat non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the most common form of the disease. The phase 1 clinical trial, the first human study of BNT116, has launched across 34 research sites in seven countries: the UK, US, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain and Turkey. The UK has six sites, located in England and Wales, with the first UK patient to receive the vaccine having their initial dose on Tuesday. Overall, about 130 patients -- from early-stage before surgery or radiotherapy, to late-stage disease or recurrent cancer -- will be enrolled to have the jab alongside immunotherapy. About 20 will be from the UK. The jab uses messenger RNA (mRNA), similar to Covid-19 vaccines, and works by presenting the immune system with tumour markers from NSCLC to prime the body to fight cancer cells expressing these markers. The aim is to strengthen a person's immune response to cancer while leaving healthy cells untouched, unlike chemotherapy.

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China's world-leading clean energy boom has passed another benchmark, with its wind and solar capacity surpassing a target set by President Xi Jinping almost six years earlier than planned. From a report: The nation added 25 gigawatts of turbines and panels in July, expanding total capacity to 1,206 gigawatts, according to a statement from the National Energy Administration on Friday. Xi set a goal in December 2020 for at least 1,200 gigawatts from the clean energy sources by 2030. China by far outspends the rest of the world when it comes to clean energy, and has repeatedly broken wind and solar installation records in recent years. The rapid growth has helped lead to declines in coal power generation this summer and may mean the world's biggest polluter has already reached peak emissions well before its 2030 target.

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Linux creator Linus Torvalds expressed disappointment with the slow adoption of Rust in the Linux kernel at the Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit China. In a conversation with Verizon executive Dirk Hohndel, Torvalds said, "I was expecting updates to be faster, but part of the problem is that old-time kernel developers are used to C and don't know Rust. They're not exactly excited about having to learn a new language that is, in some respects, very different." This resistance has led to "some pushback on Rust," he said. "Another reason has been the Rust infrastructure itself has not been super stable," he added.

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Amazon is canceling its PhotosPlus subscription service for the Echo Show 8 Photos Edition, effectively ending the device's main selling point. The company will automatically cancel all PhotosPlus subscriptions on September 12 and cease support for the service on September 23. The Echo Show 8 Photos Edition, launched in September 2023, allowed users to display personal photos indefinitely on the home screen for a $2 monthly fee. Without PhotosPlus, the device will revert to showing ads and promotions after three hours, like standard Echo Show 8 models. Amazon spokesperson says that the Photos Edition was discontinued in March, citing regular product evaluations based on customer feedback. Users can still display photos on the device, but not indefinitely. The move has sparked criticism from customers who paid a $10 premium for ad-free photo display.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Software engineers may have to develop other skills soon as AI takes over many coding tasks. That's according to Amazon Web Services' CEO, Matt Garman, who shared his thoughts on the topic during an internal fireside chat held in June, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by Business Insider. "If you go forward 24 months from now, or some amount of time -- I can't exactly predict where it is -- it's possible that most developers are not coding," said Garman, who became AWS's CEO in June. "Coding is just kind of like the language that we talk to computers. It's not necessarily the skill in and of itself," the executive said. "The skill in and of itself is like, how do I innovate? How do I go build something that's interesting for my end users to use?" This means the job of a software developer will change, Garman said. "It just means that each of us has to get more in tune with what our customers need and what the actual end thing is that we're going to try to go build, because that's going to be more and more of what the work is as opposed to sitting down and actually writing code," he said.

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The Justice Department on Friday filed an antitrust lawsuit against RealPage, a property management software provider, alleging it enabled a collusion among landlords to inflate rents for millions of Americans. From a report: The complaint claims the Richardson, Texas-based company and its competitors engaged in a price-fixing scheme by sharing nonpublic, sensitive information, which RealPage's algorithmic pricing software used to generate pricing recommendations. The company replaced competition with rent coordination to the detriment of renters across the U.S., according to the suit, monopolizing the market through its revenue management software which was used by landlords to maximize rent costs. The DOJ is joined by the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee and Washington. The complaint alleges that RealPage violated sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, an antitrust law. "Americans should not have to pay more in rent because a company has found a new way to scheme with landlords to break the law," Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement Friday. "We allege that RealPage's pricing algorithm enables landlords to share confidential, competitively sensitive information and align their rents. Using software as the sharing mechanism does not immunize this scheme from Sherman Act liability, and the Justice Department will continue to aggressively enforce the antitrust laws and protect the American people from those who violate them." Further reading: Can the US Regulate Algorithm-Based Price Fixing on Rental Housing?; Are We Entering an AI Price-Fixing Dystopia?; Accused of Using Algorithms To Fix Rental Prices, RealPage Goes on Offensive; Rent Going Up? One Company's Algorithm Could Be Why.

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Meta Platforms has canceled plans for a premium mixed-reality headset intended to compete with Apple's Vision Pro, The Information reported Friday, citing sources. From the report: Meta told employees at the company's Reality Labs division to stop work on the device this week after a product review meeting attended by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth and other Meta executives, the employees said. The axed device, which was internally code-named La Jolla, began development in November and was scheduled for release in 2027, according to current and former Meta employees. It was going to contain ultrahigh-resolution screens known as micro OLEDs -- the same display technology used in Apple's Vision Pro.

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Microsoft is stepping up its plans to make Windows more resilient to buggy software [non-paywalled source] after a botched CrowdStrike update took down millions of PCs and servers in a global IT outage. Financial Times: The tech giant has in the past month intensified talks with partners about adapting the security procedures around its operating system to better withstand the kind of software error that crashed 8.5mn Windows devices on July 19. Critics say that any changes by Microsoft would amount to a concession of shortcomings in Windows' handling of third-party security software that could have been addressed sooner. Yet they would also prove controversial among security vendors that would have to make radical changes to their products, and force many Microsoft customers to adapt their software. Last month's outages -- which are estimated to have caused billions of dollars in damages after grounding thousands of flights and disrupting hospital appointments worldwide -- heightened scrutiny from regulators and business leaders over the extent of access that third-party software vendors have to the core, or kernel, of Windows operating systems. Microsoft will host a summit next month for government representatives and cyber security companies, including CrowdStrike, to discuss "improving resiliency and protecting mutual customers' critical infrastructure," Microsoft said on Friday.

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Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell gave his strongest signal yet that interest-rate cuts are coming soon, saying the central bank intends to act to stave off a further weakening of the U.S. labor market. From a report: "We do not seek or welcome further cooling in labor market conditions," Powell said in prepared remarks for a speech at the central bank's annual gathering in the Grand Teton National Park on Friday. "The time has come for policy to adjust." Fed officials' next policy meeting is scheduled for Sept. 17-18. They are widely expected to lower the benchmark federal-funds rate at that meeting. Powell's comments Friday all but bring to a conclusion the Fed's historic inflation-fighting campaign, one that Powell amplified from the same stage two years ago when he signaled his readiness to accept a recession as the price of lowering inflation. The Fed held rates steady at its most-recent meeting in late July, though several officials saw a case for cutting at that meeting. Two days later, the Labor Department reported that unemployment rose to its highest rate in nearly three years. Inflation, while still above the Fed's 2% target, has been falling steadily in recent months.

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Australia's competition regulator has announced that it will closely monitor domestic air fares between metropolitan cities after local carrier Regional Express withdrew from the market last month as it entered voluntary administration. From a report: Rex is the second domestic airline to take that route this year. Low-cost airline Bonza was the first. It said in April it had suspended flights, and would assess the viability of its business. The collapse of Bonza and the withdrawal of Rex between metropolitan cities means that no domestic route had more than two competing airline groups as of July, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said.

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Uber and General Motors' Cruise have partnered to offer driverless rides to Uber users as early as soon as next year. CNBC reports: Both Cruise CEO Marc Whitten and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi hailed the partnership in a press release, stressing that the companies believe autonomous vehicles can be deployed safely. "Cruise is on a mission to leverage driverless technology to create safer streets and redefine urban life," Whitten said in the release. "We are excited to partner with Uber to bring the benefits of safe, reliable, autonomous driving to even more people, unlocking a new era of urban mobility." Khosrowshahi said in the release that Uber is "thrilled to partner with Cruise and look forward to launching next year." On Uber's most recent earnings call, analysts asked the company how the emergence of robotaxis would likely impact the ridehailing giant's business long-term. Khosrowshahi said on the call that "AV players" experience much higher utilization with Uber than they do "without a network on a first-party basis." He also predicted there will be a "pretty long hybrid period as autonomous is developing and regulators are trying to figure out exactly how to regulate it." He added, "We don't think this will be a winner-take-all market."

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