AMD increased its market share in data center and laptop CPU segments during Q2 2024, according to a new report from Mercury Research. The company captured 24.1% of the data center CPU market, up 0.5% from the previous quarter and 5.6% year-over-year. In laptops, AMD's share rose to 20.3%, a 1% increase quarter-over-quarter and 3.8% year-over-year. The company's revenue share in laptops reached 17.7%, indicating lower average selling prices compared to Intel. Intel maintained its overall lead, controlling 78.9% of the client PC market. In desktops, Intel gained 1% share, now holding 77% of the market. AMD's data center revenue share hit 33.7%, suggesting higher average selling prices for its EPYC processors compared to Intel's Xeon chips. AMD earned $2.8 billion from 24.1% unit share, while Intel made $3.0 billion from 75.9% unit share.

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For the first time, two new all-electric passenger trains are operating in the US, which is woefully behind the rest of the world in electrifying its rolling stock. The Verge: The two new trains are operated by Caltrain. California Governor Gavin Newson and House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi were on hand to take the inaugural ride, which took place on Saturday. The trains were put into regular service the following day, running along the route between San Jose and San Francisco. It's taken almost 20 years since the idea of electric trains was first proposed in California. But officials insisted the new trains will be quieter and faster than the diesel-powered trains in current operation while also providing a better experience for passengers. The two trains will be joined by 17 others that should be in service by mid-September. [...] It shouldn't come as any shock that the US is lagging behind the rest of the world in introducing electric trains. India is on the cusp of electrifying 100 percent of its rail lines, while China is nearing three-quarters of its network. Over 57 percent of the rail system in the European Union is electric.

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Apple has threatened to remove crowdfunding app Patreon from the App Store if creators continue to use unsupported third-party billing options or disable transactions on iOS, instead of using Apple's own in-app purchasing system. From a report: In a blog post and email to Patreon creators about upcoming changes to membership in the iOS app, the company says it's begun a 16-month-long migration process to move all creators to Apple's subscription billing by November 2025. Patreon also informed creators it will switch them over to subscription billing as of November 2024, but they will be able to decide whether to price their memberships at a higher fee to cover Apple's commission or decide if they want to absorb the fee themselves. In addition, creators can opt to delay the migration in their Patreon settings to November 2025, the company said. However, if creators choose the latter option, they won't be able to offer memberships in the iOS app until they adopt Apple's subscription billing, as Apple rules will apply as of this November.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft Paint isn't one of Windows' best photo editing apps, but in the recent past, the software giant introduced some exciting features, such as layer support, to make the app more viable for Windows users. While Microsoft was pouring the Paint app with new features, the Paint 3D app was dying a slow death. The app will finally be delisted from the Microsoft Store in November this year.

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Proximity to natural gas lines could become just as desirable for datacenter operators as high-speed fiber-optic networks as they scramble to satiate AI's ever growing thirst for power. From a report: Speaking to analysts during their respective earnings call this week, executives at Energy Transfer LP and Williams Companies, both of which operate pipelines across the US, revealed they were in talks with datacenter operators to supply them with large quantities of natural gas. "We are, in four different states, in discussions with multiple datacenters of different sizes. Some of them, or many of them, want to put generation on site ... So it's an enormous opportunity for us," Mackie McCrea, co-CEO of Energy Transfer LP, told Wall Street, according to a transcript. Energy Transfer LP's pipelines currently span 15 states in the USA, serving 185 power plants. Looking at the opportunity afforded by datacenter hookups, McCrea estimated that power demand could increase by 30 to 40 gigawatts over the next six to eight years. "We believe we are extremely well positioned to benefit from the anticipated rise in natural gas needs," Energy Transfer LP co-CEO Tom Long added. Energy Transfer LP isn't the only pipeline operator eager to take advantage of skyrocketing datacenter power demands. Speaking to analysts earlier this week, Williams Companies CEO Alan Armstrong expressed optimism about the firm's ability to capitalize on this demand.

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A co-founder of transparency activism organization Distributed of Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets) was a dark web drug kingpin who ran the successor to the infamous Silk Road marketplace and was later convicted of child abuse imagery crimes. From a report: The co-founder was Thomas White, who was prosecuted for administering the Silk Road 2.0 drug marketplace and for possessing images of child sexual abuse material. He decided to reveal his involvement in DDoSecrets to 404 Media after serving a five year prison sentence. "I was told, in no uncertain terms, that if I spoke out publicly against Ross Ulbricht's excessive sentence, [DDoSecrets] or anything similar, that I would spend much more time in prison," he said. "Now I can freely speak again, it is important to use it or lose it. So #FreeRoss." The news provides more insights into the origins of DDoSecrets, which has filled the void left by Wikileaks to become the most significant site publishing massive data dumps at this time. The other co-founder is Emma Best, who for years has archived, cataloged, and distributed large amounts of hacked information online. "Emma and I have been communicating for many years, and both know the difficulty in finding and verifying leaked material. It was a shared vision to make this process easier for people better placed than ourselves, to use the data to counteract the veil of secrecy protecting many bad actors in society," White told 404 Media in an email in July.

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A company called ChargerHelp provides certified technicians to service EV charging stations (for a monthly fee). And they've just issued their annual "reliability report," reports CleanTechnica: Its analysis of more than 19 million data points collected from public and private sources in 2023 — including real-time assessments of 4,800 chargers from ChargerHelp technicians in the field — finds that â"software consistently overestimates station uptime, point-in-time status, and the ability to successfully charge a vehicle...." [W]hen ChargerHelp technicians personally inspected 4,800 charge points, they found more than 10% were reported to be online but were in fact unable to complete a test charge... These findings by ChargerHelp are backed up by many smaller scale studies and surveys over the past several years that have found that claims of 95% uptime or greater do not match real world experience. A 2022 study of 657 chargers at 181 non-Tesla public charging sites in the San Francisco Bay Area determined that only 73% were capable of delivering a charge for more than two minutes, for example. [I]mprovements have been slow to materialize. In fact, driver satisfaction with public charging has only worsened over the past year, according to the latest J.D. Power Electric Vehicle Experience Ownership Study, released in February. As the variety, price, and range of EVs available to US drivers have become more attractive, mistrust of public charging now constitutes the most significant headwind for EV adoption, J.D. Power says. The report also "lists the biggest infrastructure pain points," reports the Verge, "including a failure to report broken stalls, inaccurate station status messages, aging equipment, and some habitually unreliable network providers (who go unnamed in the study, unfortunately)." EV chargers can break in many ways, the study concludes. These include broken retractor systems intended to protect the cable from getting mangled by vehicle tires, broken screens, and inoperable payment systems. There is also general damage to the cabinet and, of course, broken cables and connectors. Across the chargers recorded, ChargerHelp calculates that actual uptime is only 73.7 percent, compared to the 84.6 percent self-reported by the EV network providers.

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"Battling choppy waves and high winds, three engineers pulled ashore a yellow submarine in Scotland this week," reports the BBC. "With sheets of water pouring from its body, the UK's most famous robot — Boaty McBoatface — was winched up after 55 days at sea." Boaty has completed a more-than-2,000km scientific odyssey from Iceland [the longest journey yet for its class of submarine, and major test of its engineering]... "Boaty has absolutely passed. It's a massive relief," says Rob Templeton [from Southampton's National Oceanography Centre]... It is exciting technology but the science that Boaty was doing could be part of a game-changer in how scientists understand climate change... Cruising at 1.1metres per second and diving thousands of metres, Boaty had more than 20 sensors monitoring biological and chemical conditions like nutrients, oxygen levels, photosynthesis and temperature... "We are measuring what's been happening in the upper ocean with the phytoplankton, the plants that grow there. We are looking at the little zooplankton, the animals that eat them. And we've been measuring the fecal pellets, the poo that the animals produce," explained Dr Stephanie Henson [chief scientist on the research project "BioCarbon" run by the National Oceanography Centre, the University of Southampton and Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.] "Our climate would be significantly warmer if the carbon pump wasn't there," Stephanie said. Without it, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels would be about 50% higher, she says. But current climate modelling does not get the carbon pump right, she says. "We want to know how strong it is, what changes its strength. Does it change from season to season, and year to year?" she says... There are tentative signs from the research that the carbon pump might be slowing down, the scientists explain. The team recorded much smaller "blooms" of the tiny plants and animals that feed on them than they expected in spring. "If that trend were to continue in future years it would mean the biological (carbon) pump could be weakening which could result in more carbon dioxide being left in the atmosphere," Stephanie said. It's really nice to see photos of the yellow submarine coming ashore after 55 days underwater, "on its way home to Southampton." But according to the article, Dr Adrian Martin (running the BioCarbon project) "explains the research aims to better understand how the oceans are storing carbon because of a controversial field of study called geoengineering." Some scientists and entrepreneurs believe we can artificially change the ocean, for example by altering its chemistry, in the hope it would absorb more carbon. But these are still very experimental and have lots of critics. Opponents worry geoengineering will do unexpected harm or not address climate change quickly enough. "If you're going to make interventions that could be global disturbances of the ocean ecosystem, you need to understand the consequences. Without that, you are not informed to make that decision," he says.

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"Zelle payments can't be reversed once they're sent," notes the Los Angeles Times — which could be why they're popular with scammers. "You can't simply stop the payment (like a check) or dispute it (like a credit card). Now, the federal regulator overseeing financial products is probing whether banks that offer Zelle to their account holders are doing enough to protect them against scams. Two major banks — JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo — disclosed in their security filings in the last week that they'd been contacted by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. According to the Wall Street Journal, which reported the filings Wednesday, the CFPB is exploring whether banks are moving quickly enough to shut down scammers' accounts and whether they're doing enough to identify and prevent scammers from signing up for accounts in the first place... A J.D. Power survey this year found that 3% of the people who'd used Zelle said they had lost money to scammers, which was less than the average for peer-to-peer money transfer services such as Venmo, CashApp and PayPal. The chief executive of Early Warning Services, which runs Zelle, told a Senate subcommittee in July that only 0.1% of the transactions on Zelle involved a scam or fraud; in 2023, the company said, that percentage was 0.05%. But Zelle operates at such a large scale — 120 million users, 2.9 billion transactions and $806 billion transferred in 2023, according to Early Warning Services — that even a tiny percentage of scam and fraud problems translates into a large number of users and dollars... From 2022 to 2023, Zelle cut the rate of scams by nearly 50% even as the volume of transactions grew 28%, resulting in less money scammed in 2023 than in 2022, said Ben Chance, the chief fraud risk management officer for Zelle. The company didn't disclose the amounts involved, but if 0.05% of the $806 billion transferred in 2023 involved scam or fraud, that would translate to $403 million. Do Zelle users get reimbursed for scams? Only in certain cases, and this is where the banks that offer Zelle have drawn the most heat. If you use Zelle to pay a scammer, banks say, that's a payment you authorized, so they're not obliged under law to refund your money... Some banks, such as Bank of America, say they will put a freeze on transfers by a suspected scammer as soon as a report comes in, then investigate and, if the report is substantiated, seize and return the money. But that works only if the scam is reported right away, before the scammer has the chance to withdraw the funds — which many will do immediately, said Iskander Sanchez-Rola, director of innovation at the cybersecurity company Gen.

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The Guardian reports Sunday, Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, highlighted that Russian forces appeared to have started a fire in one of the cooling towers of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant that it has occupied since the early days of the war. "Radiation levels are within norm," Zelenskiy said before accusing Russia of using its control of the site, whose six reactors are in shutdown mode, "to blackmail Ukraine, all of Europe, and the world". A Ukrainian official in Nikopol, the nearest town across the river Dnipro from the nuclear plant, added that according to "unofficial information", the fire was caused by setting fire to "a large number of automobile tyres" in a cooling tower. Video and pictures showed smoke dramatically billowing from one of the towers, although experts said they are not in use while the reactor is in shutdown mode, prompting some to question whether it was a way of trying raise the stakes over Ukraine's incursion into Russia. From the CBC: The Russian management of the facility said emergency workers had contained the fire and that there was no threat of it spreading further. "The fire did not affect the operation of the station," it said. The six reactors at the plant located close to the front line of the war in Ukraine are not in operation but the facility relies on external power to keep its nuclear material cool and prevent a catastrophic accident. Moscow and Kyiv have routinely accused each other of endangering safety around it.

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"Last year, a major meta-analysis that re-examined 107 studies over 40 years came to the conclusion that no amount of alcohol improves health," the New York Times reported this June, citing a study co-authored by Tim Stockwell, an epidemiologist at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research. Dr. Stockwell (and other scientists he's collaborated with) "are overhauling decades-worth of scientific evidence — and newspaper headlines — that backed the health benefits of alcohol," writes the Telegraph, "or what is known in the scientific community as the J-curve. The J-curve is the theory that, like a capital J, the negative health consequences of drinking dip slightly into positive territory with moderate drinking — as it benefits such things as the heart — before rising sharply back into negative territory the more someone drinks." But Stockwell's study prompted at least one scientist to accuse Stockwell of "cherry picking" evidence to suit an agenda — while a think-tank executive suggests he's a front for a worldwide temperance lobby: Dr Stockwell denies this. Speaking to The Telegraph, he in turn accused his detractors of being funded by the alcohol lobby and said his links to temperance societies were fleeting. He was the president of the Kettil Bruun Society (a think tank born out of what was the international temperance congresses) [from 2005 to 2007] and he has been reimbursed for addressing temperance movements and admits attending their meetings, but, he says, not as a member... Former British government scientist Richard Harding, who gave evidence on safe drinking to the House of Commons select committee on science and technology in 2011, told The Telegraph that Dr Stockwell had wrongly taken a correlation to be causal. "Dr Stockwell's research is essentially epidemiology, which is the study of populations," Dr Harding said. "You record people's lifestyle and then see what diseases they get and try to correlate the disease with some aspect of their lifestyle. But it is just a correlation, it's just an association. Epidemiology can never establish causality on its own. And in this particular case, Dr Stockwell selected six studies out of 107 to focus on. You could say he cherry picked them. Really, the important thing is not the epidemiology, it's the effect that alcohol actually has on the body. We know the reasons why the curve is J-shaped; it's because of the protective effect moderate consumption has on heart disease and a number of other diseases." Dr Stockwell rejects Dr Harding's criticism of his study, telling The Telegraph that Dr Harding "doesn't appear to have read it" and accusing him of being in the pocket of the alcohol industry. "We identified six high-quality studies out of 107 and they didn't find any J-shaped curve," Dr Stockwell said. "In fact, since our recent paper, we've now got genetic studies which are showing there's no benefits of low-level alcohol use. I personally think there might still be small benefits, but the point of our work is that, if there are benefits, they've been exaggerating them." The article notes that Stockwell's research "has been published in The Lancet, among other esteemed organs," and that "scientists he has collaborated with on research highlighting the dangers of alcohol are in positions of power at major institutions, such as the World Health Organisation." And honestly, the opposing viewpoint seems to be thinly-sourced. Besides Harding (the former British government scientist), the article cites: The head of lifestyle economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs (which Wikipedia describes as "a right-wing, free market think tank") An alcohol policy specialist at Brock University in Ontario (who argues rather unconvincingly that "you can't measure when someone didn't hurt themselves because a friend invited them for a drink.") On the basis of that, the article writes "respected peers say it is far from settled science and have cast doubt on his research". (And that "fellow academics and experts" told The Telegraph "they read the report in disbelief.") Did the Telegraph speak to others who just aren't mentioned in the story? Or are they extrapolating, in that famous British tabloid journalism sort of way?

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The New York Times visits the downtown of one of America's biggest tech cities to explore San Francisco's "Vacant to Vibrant" initiative, where "city and business leaders provide free rent for up to six months" to "entrepreneurs who want to set up shop in empty spaces, many of which are on the ground floor of office buildings." The program also offers funding for business expenses (plus technical and business permit assistance) — and it seems to be working. One cafe went on to sign a five-year lease for a space in the financial district's iconic One Embarcadero Center building — and the building's landlord says the program also resulted in another three long leases. Can the progress continue? The hope is that these pop-up operations will pay rent and sign longer leases after the free-rent period is over, and that their presence will regenerate foot traffic in the area. Some 850 entrepreneurs initially applied for a slot, and 17 businesses were chosen to occupy nine storefront spaces in the fall. Out of those businesses, seven extended their leases and now pay rent. Eleven businesses were selected in May for the program's second cohort, which started operating their storefronts this summer... The city's office vacancy rate hit 33.7%, a record high, in the second quarter this year, according to JLL, a commercial real estate brokerage. That's one of the bleakest office markets in the nation, which has an average vacancy rate of about 22%. For the moment, however, San Francisco has a silver lining in Vacant to Vibrant. Rod Diehl, the BXP executive vice president who oversees its West Coast properties, said the pop-up strategy was good not just for local business owners to test their concepts and explore growth opportunities, but also for office leasing efforts... Beyond free rent, which is typically given for three months with a possibility for another three months, Vacant to Vibrant provides up to $12,000 to the businesses to help cover insurance and other expenses. The program also offers grants up to $5,000 for building owners to cover costs for tenant improvements in the spaces as well as for other expenses like utilities... In addition to the Vacant to Vibrant program — which received $1 million from the city initially and is set to receive another $1 million for the current fiscal year, which began July 1 — the city is directing nearly $2 million toward a similar pop-up program. This new program would help businesses occupy larger empty spaces along Powell Street, as crime and other retail pressures have driven out several retailers, including Anthropologie, Banana Republic and Crate & Barrel, in the Union Square area. One business owner who joined "Vacant to Vibrant" in May says they haven't decided yet whether to sign a lease. "It's not as crowded as before the pandemic." But according to the article, "she was hopeful that more businesses opening nearby would attract more people." "In addition to filling empty storefronts, the program has the opportunity to bring in a fresher and more localized downtown shopping vibe, said Laurel Arvanitidis, director for business development at San Francisco's Office of Economic and Workplace Development." Victor Gonzalez, an entrepreneur who founded GCS Agency to stage showings for artists, is embracing the opportunity to get a foothold downtown despite the city's challenges. When he opened a storefront as part of the first Vacant to Vibrant cohort in the Financial District last year, he immediately knew that he wanted to stay there as long as possible. He has since signed a three-year lease. "San Francisco is no stranger to big booms and busts," he said. "So if we're in the midst of a bust, what's next? It's a boom. And I want to be positioned to be part of it."

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The Wall Street Journal visits scientists at Harvard University's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering who are researching a "sugar-to-fiber" enzyme (normally used by plants to create stalks). They're testing a version they've "encased in spherical nanoparticles — tiny mesh-like cages made of pectin that allow the enzyme to be added to food without being activated until it reaches the intestine. "Once there, a change in pH causes the cage to expand, freeing the enzyme to float through its holes and start converting sugar to fiber." The Wyss Institute's goal for its enzyme product was to reduce the sugar absorbed from food by 30%, though it has the potential to remove even more than that, says Sam Inverso, director of business development partnerships at the Wyss Institute. The enzyme's ability to turn sugar into fiber is also key, as most Americans don't get nearly enough fiber in their diet, says Adama Sesay, a senior engineer at the Wyss Institute who worked on the project... The Wyss Institute is now licensing the technology to a company to help bring its enzyme product to market, a process that entails additional testing and work to secure regulatory approval. Inverso says that the aim is for the product to be available to U.S. food manufacturers within the next two years, and that other encapsulated enzymes could follow: products that reduce lactose absorption after drinking milk, or cut gluten after eating bread. For now the enzyme works better in solid food than in a liquid. Producing it in large quantities and at low cost is still a ways off — currently it's 100 times more expensive than raw sugar, Inverso says. And the Journal notes they're not the only ones working on the problem: San Francisco-based startup Biolumen recently launched a product called Monch Monch, a drink mix made of fibrous, microscopic sponges designed to soak up sugar and prevent it from reaching the bloodstream. At mealtime consumers can blend a teaspoon of Monch Monch, which has no taste, smell or color, into drinks from water to wine. Once it has reached the stomach, the sponges start to swell and sequester sugar, reducing its burden on the body, says Dr. Robert Lustig, Biolumen's co-founder and chief medical officer... One gram of Monch Monch can sequester six grams of sugar, says Lustig... The product, introduced as a dietary supplement, can also be used as a food ingredient under a Food and Drug Administration principle known as "generally recognized as safe." Packets of Monch Monch are available for purchase online, and Biolumen says it is in talks with U.S. food manufacturers it declined to name about its use in other products... Food companies are betting on other solutions for now. Cereal startup Magic Spoon uses allulose, a natural sugar found in figs and raisins that is growing in popularity, helped by FDA guidance that allows it to be excluded from sugar or added-sugar totals on nutrition labels. Ingredient company Tate & Lyle, which makes allulose from corn kernels, says the sweetener tastes like sugar and adds bulk and caramel color, but passes through the body without being metabolized... Chicago-based Blommer Chocolate recently launched a line of reduced-sugar chocolate and confectionery products made with Incredo, a sugar that has been physically altered to taste sweeter using a mineral carrier that dissolves faster in saliva and targets the sweet-taste receptors on the tongue. Incredo's use enables manufacturers to use up to 50% less sugar, the company says. The article even notes that "researchers still working to reduce sugar are peddling new technologies, like individual sugar crystals modified to dissolve more quickly in the mouth, making food taste sweeter."

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"AT&T has been told to stop running ads that claim the carrier is already offering cellular coverage from space," reports Ars Technica: AT&T intends to offer Supplemental Coverage from Space (SCS) and has a deal with AST SpaceMobile, a Starlink competitor that plans a smartphone service from low-Earth-orbit satellites. But AST SpaceMobile's first batch of five satellites isn't scheduled to launch until September. T-Mobile was annoyed by AT&T running an ad indicating that its satellite-to-cellular service was already available, and filed a challenge with the advertising industry's self-regulatory system run by BBB National Programs. The BBB National Advertising Division (NAD) ruled against AT&T last month and the carrier appealed to the National Advertising Review Board (NARB), which has now also ruled against AT&T... AT&T, which is also famous for renaming its 4G service "5GE," reluctantly agreed to comply with the recommendation and released a new version of the satellite-calling commercial with more specific disclaimers. The 30-second ad — titled "Epic Bad Golf Day" — featured Ben Stiller golfing chasing a badly-hit golf ball all the way into the desert (accompanied by the Pixies' song "Where is My Mind"). But according to the article, T-Mobile filed an official complaint with the advertising review board that "the use of humor does not shield an advertiser from its obligation to ensure that claims are truthful and non-misleading." The ad originally included small text that described the depicted satellite call as a "demonstration of evolving technology." The text was changed this week to say that "satellite calling is not currently available...." The original version also had text that said, "the future of help is an AT&T satellite call away." The NARB concluded that this "statement can be interpreted reasonably as stating that 'future' technology has now arrived... In the updated version of the ad, AT&T changed the text to say that "the future of help will be an AT&T satellite call away."

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"Algorithmic price-fixing appears to be spreading to more and more industries," warns the Atlantic. "And existing laws may not be equipped to stop it." They start with RealPage's rental-property software (pointing out that "a series of lawsuits says it's something else: an AI-enabled price-fixing conspiracy" and "The lawsuits also argue that RealPage pressures landlords to comply with its pricing suggestions.") But the most important point is that RealPage isn't the only company doing this: Its main competitor, Yardi, is involved in a similar lawsuit. One of RealPage's subsidiaries, a service called Rainmaker, faces multiple legal challenges for allegedly facilitating price-fixing in the hotel industry. (Yardi and Rainmaker deny wrongdoing.) Similar complaints have been brought against companies in industries as varied as health insurance, tire manufacturing, and meat processing. But winning these cases is proving difficult. The article notes that "Agreeing to fix prices is punishable with up to 10 years in prison and a $100 million fine." But it also notes concerns that algorithms could produce price-fixing-like behavior that's "almost impossible to prosecute under existing antitrust laws. Price-fixing, in other words, has entered the algorithmic age, but the laws designed to prevent it have not kept up." Last week, San Francisco passed a first-of-its-kind ordinance banning "both the sale and use of software which combines non-public competitor data to set, recommend or advise on rents and occupancy levels." Whether other jurisdictions follow suit remains to be seen. In the meantime, more and more companies are figuring out ways to use algorithms to set prices. If these really do enable de facto price-fixing, and manage to escape legal scrutiny, the result could be a kind of pricing dystopia in which competition to create better products and lower prices would be replaced by coordination to keep prices high and profits flowing. That would mean permanently higher costs for consumers — like an inflation nightmare that never ends.

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"Not many Americans have August 6 circled on their calendars," writes the New York Times, "but it's a day that the Japanese can't forget." 79 years after an atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima, the Times visits a hospital that "continues to treat, on average, 180 survivors — known as hibakusha — of the blasts each day." The bombs killed an estimated 200,000 men, women and children and maimed countless more. In Hiroshima 50,000 of the city's 76,000 buildings were completely destroyed. In Nagasaki nearly all homes within a mile and a half of the blast were wiped out. In both cities the bombs wrecked hospitals and schools. Urban infrastructure collapsed... [T]he hibakusha and their offspring have formed the backbone of atomic memory. Many see their life's work as informing the wider world about what it's like to carry the trauma, stigma and survivor's guilt caused by the bombs, so that nuclear weapons may never be used again. Their urgency to do so has only increased in recent years. With an average age of 85, the hibakusha are dying by the hundreds each month — just as the world is entering a new nuclear age. Countries like the United States, China and Russia are spending trillions of dollars to modernize their stockpiles. Many of the safeguards that once lowered nuclear risk are unraveling, and the diplomacy needed to restore them is not happening. The threat of another blast can't be relegated to history... Kunihiko Sakuma [who was 9 months old the day of the attack]: "People died or got sick not just right after the bombing. The reality is, their symptoms are emerging even today, 79 years later. I thought all this was in the past. But as I started talking to survivors, I realized their suffering was ongoing. The atomic bomb is such an inhumane weapon, and the effects of radiation stay with survivors for a very long time. That's why they need our continued support." The article includes this quote from Keiko Ogura, who was 8 years old at the time of the attack — and still worries she hasn't done enough to abolish the use of nuclear weapons: "As survivors, we cannot do anything but tell our story. 'For we shall not repeat the evil' — this is the pledge of survivors. Until we die, we want to tell our story, because it's difficult to imagine." Many of the stories are horrifying. But I'll note this one by Seiichiro Mise — who on the day of the atomic bomb attack was 10 years old: "I got married in 1964. At the time, people would say that if you married an atomic bomb survivor, any kids you had would be deformed. "Two years later, I got a call from the hospital saying my baby had been born. But on my way, my heart was troubled. I'm an atomic bomb victim. I experienced that black rain. So I felt anguished. Usually new parents simply ask the doctor, 'Is it a boy or girl?' I didn't even ask that. Instead, I asked, 'Does my baby have 10 fingers and 10 toes?' "The doctor looked unsettled. But then he smiled and said it was a healthy boy. I was relieved." The first U.S. president to visit Hiroshima was Barack Obama in 2016. The article notes he did not issue the official apology many Japanese had hoped for. But he did say "we have a shared responsibility to look directly into the eye of history and ask what we must do differently to curb such suffering again... "Someday the voices of the hibakusha will no longer be with us to bear witness. But the memory of the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, must never fade."

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Mozilla's interim CEO Laura Chambers "says the company is reinvesting in Firefox after letting it languish in recent years," reports Fast Company, "hoping to reestablish the browser as independent alternative to the likes of Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari. "But some of those investments, which also include forays into generative AI, may further upset the community that's been sticking with Firefox all these years..." Chambers acknowledges that Mozilla lost sight of Firefox in recent years as it chased opportunities outside the browser, such as VPN service and email masking. When she replaced Mitchell Baker as CEO in February, the company scaled back those other efforts and made Firefox a priority again. "Yes, Mozilla is refocusing on Firefox," she says. "Obviously, it's our core product, so it's an important piece of the business for us, but we think it's also really an important part of the internet." Some of that focus involves adding features that have become table-stakes in other browsers. In June, Mozilla added vertical tab support in Firefox's experimental branch, echoing a feature that Microsoft's Edge browser helped popularize three years ago. It's also working on tab grouping features and an easier way to switch between user profiles. Mozilla is even revisiting the concept of web apps, in which users can install websites as freestanding desktop applications. Mozilla abandoned work on Progressive Web Apps in Firefox a few years ago to the dismay of many power users, but now it's talking with community members about a potential path forward. "We haven't always prioritized those features as highly as we should have," Chambers says. "That's been a real shift that's been very felt in the community, that the things they're asking for . . . are really being prioritized and brought to life." Firefox was criticized for testing a more private alternative to tracking cookies which could make summaries of aggregated data available to advertisers. (Though it was only tested on a few sites, "Privacy-Preserving Attribution" was enabled by default.) But EFF staff technologist Lena Cohen tells Fast Company that approach was "much more privacy-preserving" than Google's proposal for a "Privacy Sandbox." And according to the article, "Mozilla's system only measures the success rate of ads — it doesn't help companies target those ads in the first place — and it's less susceptible to abuse due to limits on how much data is stored and which parties are allowed to access it." In June, Mozilla also announced its acquisition of Anonym, a startup led by former Meta executives that has its own privacy-focused ad measurement system. While Mozilla has no plans to integrate Anonym's tech in Firefox, the move led to even more anxiety about the kind of company Mozilla was becoming. The tension around Firefox stems in part from Mozilla's precarious financial position, which is heavily dependent on royalty payments from Google. In 2022, nearly 86% of Mozilla's revenue came from Google, which paid $510 million to be Firefox's default search engine. Its attempts to diversify, through VPN service and other subscriptions, haven't gained much traction. Chambers says that becoming less dependent on Google is "absolutely a priority," and acknowledges that building an ad-tech business is one way of doing that. Mozilla is hoping that emerging privacy regulations and wider adoption of anti-tracking tools in web browsers will increase demand for services like Anonym and for systems like Firefox's privacy-preserving ad measurements. Other revenue-generating ideas are forthcoming. Chambers says Mozilla plans to launch new products outside of Firefox under a "design sprint" model, aimed at quickly figuring out what works and what doesn't. It's also making forays into generative AI in Firefox, starting with a chatbot sidebar in the browser's experimental branch. Chambers "says to expect a bigger marketing push for Firefox in the United States soon, echoing a 'Challenge the default' ad campaign that was successful in Germany last summer. Mozilla's nonprofit ownership structure, and the idea that it's not beholden to corporate interests, figures heavily into those plans."

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Here's a question from the blog OMG Ubuntu. "Ever get miffed reading about a major new Ubuntu release only to learn it doesn't come with the newest Linux kernel? "Well, that'll soon be a thing of the past." Canonical's announced a big shift in kernel selection process for future Ubuntu release, an "aggressive kernel version commitment policy" pivot that means it will ship the latest upstream kernel code in development at the time of a new Ubuntu release. Yes, even if that upstream kernel hasn't yet seen a formal stable release (and received the requisite newspaper-graphic-topped rundown on this blog). Which is a huge change. Currently, new Ubuntu releases include the most recent stable Linux kernel release at the time of the kernel freeze milestone in the Ubuntu development cycle. Here's the official announcement by Canonical's Brett Grandbois. "Ubuntu will now ship the absolute latest available version of the upstream Linux kernel at the specified Ubuntu release freeze date, even if upstream is still in Release Candidate status..." It is actually expected that Late Releases will be the exception rather than the norm and in most releases these guidelines will not be necessary as the upstream kernel will release with enough time for the Ubuntu kernel to stabilize. However, adopting a more aggressive kernel version commitment policy does require us to be prepared for a possible Late Release situation and therefore informing the community on what they can expect.

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An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN: More than a year after Hyundai and Kia released new anti-theft software updates, thefts of vehicles with the new software are falling — even as thefts overall remain astoundingly high, according to a new analysis of insurance claim data. The automakers released the updates starting last February, after a tenfold increase in thefts of certain Hyundai and Kia models in just the past three years — sparked by a series of social media posts that showed people how to steal the vehicles. "Whole vehicle" theft claims — insurance claims for the loss of the entire vehicle — are 64% lower among the Hyundai and Kia cars that have had the software upgrade, compared to cars of the same make, model and year without the upgrade, according to the Highway Loss Data Institute. "The companies' solution is extremely effective," Matt Moore, senior vice president of HLDI, an industry group backed by auto insurers, said in a statement... Between early 2020 and the first half of 2023, thefts of Hyundai and Kia models rose more than 1,000%. The article points out that HDLI's analysis covered 2023, and "By the end of that year, only about 30% of vehicles eligible for the security software had it installed. By now, around 61% of eligible Hyundai vehicles have the software upgrade, a Hyundai spokesperson said." The car companies told CNN that more than 2 million Hyundai and Kia vehicles have gotten the update (part of a $200 million class action settlement reached in May of 2023).

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Though "It could take years to resolve," the Washington Post imagines six changes that could ultimately result from the two monopoly rulings on Google: Imagine a Google-quality search engine but without ads — or one tailored to children, news junkies or Lego fans. It's possible that Google could be forced to let other companies access its search technology or its essential data to create search engines with the technical chops of Google — but without Google... Would Apple create a search engine...? The likeliest scenario is you'd need to pick whether to use Google on your iPhone or something else. But technologists and stock analysts have also speculated for years that Apple could make its own search engine. It would be like when Apple started Apple Maps as an alternative to Google Maps. What if Google weren't allowed to know so much about you? Jason Kint of Digital Content Next, an industry group that includes online news organizations, said one idea is Google's multiple products would no longer be allowed to commingle information about what you do. It would essentially be a divorce of Google's products without breaking the company up. That could mean, for example, that whatever you did on your Android phone or the websites you visit using Chrome would not feed into one giant Google repository about your activities and interests. The article also wonders if the judge could order Google to be broken up, with separate companies formed out of Android, Google search, and Chrome. (Or if more search competition might make prices drop for the products advertised in search results — or lower the fees charged in Android's app store.) Android's app store might also lose its power to veto apps that compete with Google. "This is educated speculation," the article acknowledges. "It's also possible that not much will really change. That's what happened after Google was found to have broken the European Union's anti-monopoly laws." Google has also said it plans to appeal Monday's ruling.

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