Reuters reports that the Iranian hacking team which compromised the campaign of U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump "is known for placing surveillance software on the mobile phones of its victims, enabling them to record calls, steal texts and silently turn on cameras and microphones, according to researchers and experts who follow the group." Known as APT42 or CharmingKitten by the cybersecurity research community, the accused Iranian hackers are widely believed to be associated with an intelligence division inside Iran's military, known as the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC-IO. Their appearance in the U.S. election is noteworthy, sources told Reuters, because of their invasive espionage approach against high-value targets in Washington and Israel. "What makes (APT42) incredibly dangerous is this idea that they are an organization that has a history of physically targeting people of interest," said John Hultquist, chief analyst with U.S. cybersecurity firm Mandiant, who referenced past research that found the group surveilling the cell phones of Iranian activists and protesters... Hultquist said the hackers commonly use mobile malware that allows them to "record phone calls, room audio recordings, pilfer SMS (text) inboxes, take images off of a machine," and gather geolocation data... APT42 also commonly impersonates journalists and Washington think tanks in complex, email-based social engineering operations that aim to lure their targeting into opening booby-trapped messages, which let them takeover systems. The group's "credential phishing campaigns are highly targeted and well-researched; the group typically targets a small number of individuals," said Josh Miller, a threat analyst with email security company Proofpoint. They often target anti-Iran activists, reporters with access to sources inside Iran, Middle Eastern academics and foreign-policy advisers. This has included the hacking of western government officials and American defense contractors. For example, in 2018, the hackers targeted nuclear workers and U.S. Treasury department officials around the time the United States formally withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), said Allison Wikoff, a senior cyber intelligence analyst with professional services company PricewaterhouseCoopers. "APT42 is still actively targeting campaign officials and former Trump administration figures critical of Iran, according to a blog post by Google's cybersecurity research team."

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Boeing "will return its Starliner capsule from the International Space Station without the NASA astronauts," reports CNBC. Though they've been on the space station since early June, the plan is to have them stay "for about six more months before flying home in February on SpaceX's Crew-9 vehicle. "The test flight was originally intended to last about nine days." The decision to bring Starliner back from the ISS empty marks a dramatic about-face for NASA and Boeing, as the organizations were previously adamant that the capsule was the primary choice for returning the crew. But Starliner's crew flight test, which had been seen as the final major milestone in the spacecraft's development, faced problems — most notably with its propulsion system. "Boeing has worked very hard with NASA to get the necessary data to make this decision," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a press conference with top NASA officials at Johnson Space Center in Houston on Saturday. "We want to further understand the root causes and understand the design improvements so that the Boeing Starliner will serve as an important part of our assured crew access to the ISS." He reiterated that test flights are "neither safe, nor routine," and that the decision was the "result of a commitment to safety." NASA will now conduct another phase of its Flight Readiness Review to determine when to bring the empty Starliner home. Boeing officials had been adamant in press briefings that Starliner was safe for the astronauts to fly home in the event of an emergency, despite delaying the return multiple times. NASA said there was a "technical disagreement" between the agency and the aerospace company, and said it evaluated risk differently than Boeing for returning its crew. Nonetheless, NASA officials repeatedly expressed support for Boeing, and Nelson said he was "100% certain" that Starliner would be able to launch with a crew again someday. NASA posted on X.com that they'd reached the decision "after extensive review by experts across the agency. And CNBC adds that "Ken Bowersox, NASA associate administrator, said NASA officials were unanimous in their decision to choose SpaceX to bring the crew home."

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He was employee #13 at Apple Computers — after impressing Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs with his "blue box" phone-phreaking technique. Now 81-year-old John "Captain Crunch" Draper has launched a new YouTube channel and web site. "I spent decades exploring the depths of communication technology," Draper says in a recent video, "always pushing the boundaries of what's possible, and challenging the status quo." The video is embedded at the top of the new web site, welcoming visitors to "your gateway to my world, where I share everything from my secrets the early phone freaking days to the latest in emergency communication systems that could one day save your life." "Here you'll find insights into my current projects including advanced uses of artificial intelligence, emergency communication preparedness, and much more. Whether you're a technology enthusiast, a fellow veteran, or someone curious about the unseen forces that connect our world, here's something for you." And clicking the "Current Projects" link leads to an interesting list: "My involvement in the field of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) recently took me to "Contact in the Desert," a pivotal gathering of leading scientists pushing for governmental transparency in UAP research." "Artificial Intelligence, particularly ChatGPT, has captivated my interest. I'm refining my skills as a prompt engineer, integrating AI into various facets of my life, from web development and programming to personal research on UAPs and anti-gravity phenomena." "In light of global tensions, such as the Ukrainian conflict, I'm actively preparing for potential disruptions in conventional communication systems. Together with a hardware partner, we are pioneering advanced communication technologies under the unlicensed ISM band using the Meshtastic protocol. This technology, which is popular in the UK but less so in the US, facilitates secure, low-power, and nearly undetectable communication. I am advocating for its adoption in Las Vegas, where it remains largely underutilized." "My YouTube channel not only serves as a platform for project updates but also as a conduit for preserving the legacy of the computing era's pioneers." [Draper plans to host interviews with members of the original 1970s HomeBrew Computer Club.] Draper's home page also has a 59-minute video of a conference talk where Draper tells his life story... And five months ago Draper released a video on YouTube showing what happened when he asked ChatGPT to design his logo. It resulted in "really hokey pictures — terrible." But Draper scrolls them all to provide his critique.... There's also a Patreon account where Draper is offering to schedule Zoom meetings with subscribers (for between $22 and $45 an hour).

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NASA's 2022 DART mission "successfully demonstrated how a fast-moving spacecraft could change an asteroid's trajectory by crashing into it," remembers Gizmodo, "potentially providing a way to defend Earth — though the asteroid in this test was never a real threat." But a followup study suggests debris from that 525-foot (160-meter) asteroid "could actually strike back," they add, "though we're not in any danger." The [DART] team posits that the collision produced a field of rocky ejecta that could reach Earth within 10 years... [Various aerospace scientists] studied data collected by the Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids, or LICIACube, which observed DART's impact of Dimorphos up close. Then, they fed LICIACube's data into supercomputers at NASA's Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility to simulate how the debris from the asteroid — basically dust and rock — may have disseminated into space. The simulations tracked about 3 million particles kicked up by the impact, some of which are large enough to produce meteors that could be spotted on Earth. Particles from the impact could get to Mars in seven to 13 years, and the fastest particles could make it to our own world in just seven years. "This detailed data will aid in the identification of DART-created meteors, enabling researchers to accurately analyze and interpret impact-related phenomena," the team wrote in the paper. "However, these faster particles are expected to be too small to produce visible meteors, based on early observations," said Dr. Eloy Peña-Asensio, who lead the research team, in an interview with Universe Today. (He's a Research Fellow with the Deep-space Astrodynamics Research and Technology group at Milan's Polytechnic Institute.) The team's simulations indicated it could take up to 30 years before any of the ejecta is observed on Earth, in a new (and human-created) meteor shower called the Dimorphids. So while they won't pose any risk, "If these ejected Dimorphos fragments reach Earth... their small size and high speed will cause them to disintegrate in the atmosphere, creating a beautiful luminous streak in the sky."

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Under the streets of New York City, they're testing a "quantum network," reports Phys.org — where engineers from a Brooklyn company named Qunnect Inc are taking steps to "overcome the fragility of entangled states in a fiber cable and ensure the efficiency of signal delivery." For their prototype network, the Qunnect researchers used a leased 34-kilometer-long fiber circuit they called the GothamQ loop. Using polarization-entangled photons, they operated the loop for 15 continuous days, achieving an uptime of 99.84% and a compensation fidelity of 99% for entangled photon pairs transmitted at a rate of about 20,000 per second. At a half-million entangled photon pairs per second, the fidelity was still nearly 90%... They sent 1,324 nm polarization-entangled photon pairs in quantum superpositions through the fiber, one state with both polarizations horizontal and the other with both vertical — a two-qubit configuration more generally known as a Bell state. In such a superposition, the quantum mechanical photon pairs are in both states at the same time. "While others have transmitted entangled photons before, there has been too much noise and polarization drift in the fiber environment for entanglement to survive," the article points out, "particularly in a long-term stable network." So the Qunnect team built "automated polarization compensation" devices to correct the polarization of the entangled pairs: In their design, an infrared photon [with a wavelength of 1,324 nanometers] is entangled with a near-infrared photon of 795 nanometers. The latter photon is compatible in wavelength and bandwidth with the rubidium atomic systems, such as are used in quantum memories and quantum processors. It was found that polarization drift was both wavelength- and time-dependent, requiring Qunnect to design and build equipment for active compensation at the same wavelengths... Qunnect's GothamQ loop demonstration was especially noteworthy for its duration, the hands-off nature of the operation time, and its uptime percentage. It showed, they wrote, "progress toward a fully automated practical entanglement network" that would be required for a quantum internet. And Qunnect's co-founder/chief science officer says "since we finished this work, we have already made all the parts rack-mounted, so they can be used everywhere..." Their network design and results are published in PRX Quantum.

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Monday brought spectacular footage of an explosion at a UK rocket test site after an engine test went awry. The plan had been to test-fire all of a rocket stage's nine engines at the same time — they've successfully ignited the mores more than a hundred times — but this time one of the first eight had an "unusual" anomaly — "most likely a fire in the oxygen pump," according to a video posted by space company RFA on X.com. The trouble "spread onto neighboring engines," eventually leading to a billowing jet of fire from the side of the vehicle. ("The engine-propellant manifold system was damaged to such a great extent that kerosene kept fueling the fire.") Slashdot reader AleRunner writes: A rocket company has vowed to return to regular operations "as soon as possible" after an explosion during a test at the UK's new spaceport in Shetland. The explosion happened after "an "anomaly" had led to "the loss of the stage" — but there were no injuries according to a Guardian report. The test was carried out by German company Rocket Factory Augsburg which hopes to make the first UK vertical rocket launch into orbit... "We develop iteratively with an emphasis on real testing."This is part of our philosophy and we were aware of the higher risks attached to this approach. Our goal is to return to regular operations as soon as possible." "In true RFA fashion, we're being as transparent as possible," the company posted Friday on X.com, "and sharing our own raw footage of the incident." The day of the explosion they'd posted that "The launch pad has been saved and is secured," and Friday posted that six-minute video explaining what happened. (It emphasizes there's an improved version of this stage that's already been built.) The Guardian added that the explosion comes three months after RFA's successful 8-second test firing of its rocket engines — the spaceport's first rocket test.

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Alien: Romulus director Fede Ãlvarez "briefly dropped into an Alien franchise subreddit this week to chat with fans about his new sequel," reports Deadline. "But the moderators weren't having it, flagging Ãlvarez as an imposter in a notice that he is 'permanently banned' from the subreddit." The moderator shared an update that Ãlvarez "was immediately reinstated and had a very friendly conversation with us. Awesome guy." They also shared the filmmaker's response. "I'm sorry, just found it hilarious," wrote Ãlvarez. "My bad. Not harm done. Thanks again for such great work moderating my favorite subreddit." Fangoria notes this might not be the last Alien movie from director Alvarez: Talking with The Hollywood Reporter earlier this week, the Evil Dead and Don't Breathe director teased that ideas are in the pipeline for an Alien: Romulus sequel, which would — if it comes to fruition — be the eighth instalment in the legendary sci-fi horror franchise." The Hollywood Reporter also notes that Ash, the "calculating synthetic character" from the original 1979 movie Alien (played by the late Ian Holm) got a kind of reprise in 2024 with another character named Rook: According to Ãlvarez, Rook was a collaborative decision with [Ridley] Scott, who also wanted to see another version of the artificial person he introduced 45 years ago. The Romulus team then received approval from Holm's estate, and using the English actor's headcast from The Lord of the Rings as a foundation, Legacy Effects built Rook's torso and head as an animatronic. The practical character was then enhanced by CG and deepfake AI technology for certain shots as needed... "There might be some deepfake in the eyes because it's the best when it comes to creating the likeness of the eyes, but it's a whole bag of tricks from 1970s and 1980s technology to technology from yesterday." The article also notes one horrifying plot twist "received some respectful opposition to this unsettling choice from 20th Century and Disney, but that's precisely when [director Alvarez] knew he was on the right course." "If you're given an Alien movie by a corporation that is owned by Disney and they immediately say, 'Yeah, let's make it,' then you are failing somehow. So we really pushed it to the limit, and I'm glad we did." Alvarez's social media feed also explores what Alien: Romulus would look like as trading cards or as 1950s comic book, shares posts from the movie's poster designer, and admits that "everything I do is influenced by Terminator / Alien / Predator."

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Security Week brings news about CI/CD workflows using GitHub Actions in build processes. Some workflows can generate artifacts that "may inadvertently leak tokens for third party cloud services and GitHub, exposing repositories and services to compromise, Palo Alto Networks warns." [The artifacts] function as a mechanism for persisting and sharing data across jobs within the workflow and ensure that data is available even after the workflow finishes. [The artifacts] are stored for up to 90 days and, in open source projects, are publicly available... The identified issue, a combination of misconfigurations and security defects, allows anyone with read access to a repository to consume the leaked tokens, and threat actors could exploit it to push malicious code or steal secrets from the repository. "It's important to note that these tokens weren't part of the repository code but were only found in repository-produced artifacts," Palo Alto Networks' Yaron Avital explains... "The Super-Linter log file is often uploaded as a build artifact for reasons like debuggability and maintenance. But this practice exposed sensitive tokens of the repository." Super-Linter has been updated and no longer prints environment variables to log files. Avital was able to identify a leaked token that, unlike the GitHub token, would not expire as soon as the workflow job ends, and automated the process that downloads an artifact, extracts the token, and uses it to replace the artifact with a malicious one. Because subsequent workflow jobs would often use previously uploaded artifacts, an attacker could use this process to achieve remote code execution (RCE) on the job runner that uses the malicious artifact, potentially compromising workstations, Avital notes. Avital's blog post notes other variations on the attack — and "The research laid out here allowed me to compromise dozens of projects maintained by well-known organizations, including firebase-js-sdk by Google, a JavaScript package directly referenced by 1.6 million public projects, according to GitHub. Another high-profile project involved adsys, a tool included in the Ubuntu distribution used by corporations for integration with Active Directory." (Avital says the issue even impacted projects from Microsoft, Red Hat, and AWS.) "All open-source projects I approached with this issue cooperated swiftly and patched their code. Some offered bounties and cool swag." "This research was reported to GitHub's bug bounty program. They categorized the issue as informational, placing the onus on users to secure their uploaded artifacts." My aim in this article is to highlight the potential for unintentionally exposing sensitive information through artifacts in GitHub Actions workflows. To address the concern, I developed a proof of concept (PoC) custom action that safeguards against such leaks. The action uses the @actions/artifact package, which is also used by the upload-artifact GitHub action, adding a crucial security layer by using an open-source scanner to audit the source directory for secrets and blocking the artifact upload when risk of accidental secret exposure exists. This approach promotes a more secure workflow environment... As this research shows, we have a gap in the current security conversation regarding artifact scanning. GitHub's deprecation of Artifacts V3 should prompt organizations using the artifacts mechanism to reevaluate the way they use it. Security defenders must adopt a holistic approach, meticulously scrutinizing every stage — from code to production — for potential vulnerabilities. Overlooked elements like build artifacts often become prime targets for attackers. Reduce workflow permissions of runner tokens according to least privilege and review artifact creation in your CI/CD pipelines. By implementing a proactive and vigilant approach to security, defenders can significantly strengthen their project's security posture. The blog post also notes protection and mitigation features from Palo Alto Networks....

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In the 1980s, a radio show about home computers was broadcast on a handful of California radio stations. 40 years later, reel-to-reel tapes of the shows were re-discovered — and digitized — by an Internet Archive special collections manager. An Internet Archive blog post tells the story: Earlier this year archivist Kay Savetz recovered several of the tapes in a property sale, and recognizing their value and worthiness of professional transfer, launched a GoFundMe to have them digitized, and made them available at Internet Archive with the permission of the show's creators... Interviews in the recovered recordings include Timothy Leary, Douglas Adams, Bill Gates, Atari's Jack Tramiel, Apple's Bill Atkinson, and dozens of others. The recovered shows span November 17 1984 through July 12, 1985. Many more of the original reel-to-reel tapes — including shows with interviews with Ray Bradbury, Robert Moog, Donny Osmond, and Gene Roddenberry — are still lost, and perhaps are still waiting to be found in the Los Angeles area. [Though there appears to be a transcript of the Gene Roddenberry interview.] The stories of how The Famous Computer Cafe was created — and saved, 40 years later — is explored in an episode of the Radio Survivor podcast. The podcast interviewed show co-creator Ellen Fields and archivist Kay Savetz, providing a dual perspective of how the show was created and how it was recovered. The recovery of these interviews, 40 years after their original airing, holds out hope that many more relics and treasures still await discovery. You get another perspective on the past from the show's advertisements for 1980s software (and from the production values of 1980s-era radio technology). Bill Gates was just 29 when he recorded his interview. And Douglas Adams was 32.

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Slashdot reader yeokm1 is the Singapore-based embedded security researcher whose side projects include installing Linux on a 1993 PC and building a ChatGPT client for MS-DOS. Today he writes: When one thinks of modern technologies like Thunderbolt, 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet and modern CPUs, one would associate them with modern operating systems. How about DOS? It might seem impossible, however I did an experiment on a relatively modern 2020 Thinkpad and found that it can still run MS-DOS 6.22. MS-DOS 6.22 is the last standalone version of DOS released by Microsoft in June 1994. This makes it 30 years old today. I'll share the steps and challenges in locating a modern laptop capable of doing so — and the challenge of making the 30-year-old OS work on it with audio and networking functions. This is likely among the final generation of laptops able to run DOS natively.

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Bloomberg's Mark Gruman remembers how Apple's hardware group "allowed Apple to dump Intel chips from its entire Mac lineup." And they're now building an in-house cellular modem: For more than a decade, Apple has used modem chips designed by Qualcomm... But in 2018 — while facing a legal battle over royalties and patents — Apple started work on its own modem design.... It's devoting billions of dollars, thousands of engineers and millions of working hours to a project that won't really improve its devices — at least at the outset... Over the past few years, Apple's modem project has suffered numerous setbacks. There have been problems with performance and overheating, and Apple has been forced to push back the modem's debut until next year at the earliest. The rollout will take place on a gradual basis — starting with niche models — and take a few years to complete. In a sign of this slow transition, Apple extended its supplier agreement with Qualcomm through March 2027... But Qualcomm has said that Apple will still have to pay it some royalties regardless (the chipmaker believes that Apple won't be able to avoid infringing its patents). So it's hard to tell how big the benefits will be in the near term. Down the road, there are plans for Apple to fold its modem design into a new wireless chip that handles Wi-Fi and Bluetooth access. That would create a single connectivity component, potentially improving reliability and battery life. There's also the possibility that Apple could one day combine all of this into the device's main system on a chip, or SoC. That could further cut costs and save space inside the iPhone, allowing for more design choices. Furthermore, if Apple does ultimately save money by switching away from Qualcomm, it could redirect that spending toward new features and components.

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"AI is already able to mimic sight and hearing," writes CNBC. And now a startup named Osmo "wants to use the technology to digitize another: smell." Co-founded by a former Google research scientist, the company built an AI that's "superhuman in its ability to predict what things smelled like," the company's co-founder says. And he believes this might actually prove useful. "We've known that smell contains information we can use to detect disease. But computers can't speak that language and can't interpret that data yet... We will eventually be able to detect disease with scent and we're on our way to building that technology. It's not going to happen this year or anytime soon, but we're on our way." CoinTelegraph describes how the company invented a training dataset from scratch — a kind of "smell map" with labelled examples of molecular bond associations to teach the AI to identify specific patterns. The team also hopes to develop a method to recreate smells using molecular synthesis. This would, for example, allow a computer in one place to "smell" something and then send that information to another computer for resynthesis — essentially teleporting odor over the internet. This also means scent could join sight and sound as part of the marketing and branding world.

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Indian influencers It's the largest country on earth — home to 1.4 billion people. But "The Indian government has plans to classify social media creators as 'digital news broadcasters,'" according to the nonprofit site RestofWorld.org. While there's "no clarity" on the government's next move, the proposed legislation would require social media creators "to register with the government, set up a content evaluation committee that checks all content before it is published, and appoint complaint handlers — all at their own expense. Any failures in compliance could lead to criminal charges, including jail term." On July 26, the Hindustan Times reported that the government plans to tweak the proposed Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, which aims to combine all regulations for broadcasters under one law. As per a new version of the bill, which has been reviewed by Rest of World, the government defines "digital news broadcaster" as "any person who broadcasts news and current affairs programs through an online paper, news portal, website, social media intermediary, or other similar medium as part of a systematic business, professional or commercial activity." Creators and digital rights activists believe the potential legislation will tighten the government's grip over online content and threaten the last bastion of press freedom for independent journalists in the country. Over 785 Indian creators have sent a letter to the government seeking more transparency in the process of drafting the bill. Creators have also stormed social media with hashtags like #KillTheBill, and made videos to educate their followers about the proposal. One YouTube creator told the site that if the government requires them to appoint a "grievance redressal officer," they might simply film themselves, responding to grievances — to "make content out of it".

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"From the beginning, we have believed that the right way to build these AI models is with open licenses," says the Open Model Initiative. SD Times quotes them as saying that open licenses "allow creatives and businesses to build on each other's work, facilitate research, and create new products and services without restrictive licensing constraints." Phoronix explains the community initiative "came about over the summer to help advance open-source AI models while now is becoming part of the Linux Foundation to further their cause." As part of the Linux Foundation, the OMI will be working to establish a governance framework and working groups, create shared standards to enhance model interoperability and metadata practices, develop a transparent dataset for training and captioning, complete an alpha test model for targeted red teaming, and release an alpha version of a new model with fine-tuning scripts before the end of 2024. The group was established "in response to a number of recent decisions by creators of popular open-source models to alter their licensing terms," reports Silicon Angle: The creators highlighted the recent licensing change announced by Stability AI Ltd., regarding its popular image-generation model Stable Diffusion 3 (SD3). That model had previously been entirely free and open, but the changes introduced a monthly fee structure and imposed limitations on its usage. Stability AI was also criticized for the lack of clarity around its licensing terms, but it isn't the only company to have introduced licensing restrictions on previously free software. The OMI intends to eliminate all barriers to enterprise adoption by focusing on training and developing AI models with "irrevocable open licenses without deletion clauses or recurring costs for access," the Linux Foundation said. InfoWorld also notes "the unavailability of source code and the license restrictions from LLM providers such as Meta, Mistral and Anthropic, who put caveats in the usage policies of their 'open source' models." Meta, for instance, does provide the rights to use Llama models royalty free without any license, but does not provide the source code, according to [strategic research firm] Everest Group's AI practice leader Suseel Menon. "Meta also adds a clause: 'If, on the Meta Llama 3, monthly active users of the products or services is greater than 700 million monthly active users, you must request a license from Meta.' This clause, combined with the unavailability of the source code, raises the question if the term open source should apply to Llama's family of models," Menon explained.... The OMI's objectives and vision received mixed reactions from analysts. While Amalgam Insights' chief analyst Hyoun Park believes that the OMI will lead to the development of more predictable and consistent standards for open source models, so that these models can potentially work with each other more easily, Everest Group's Malik believes that the OMI may not be able to stand before the might of vendors such as Meta and Anthropic. "Developing LLMs is highly compute intensive and has cost big tech giants and start-ups billions in capital expenditure to achieve the scale they currently have with their open-source and proprietary LLMs," Malik said, adding that this could be a major challenge for community-based LLMs. The AI practice leader also pointed out that previous attempts at a community-based LLM have not garnered much adoption, as models developed by larger entities tend to perform better on most metrics... However, Malik said that the OMI might be able to find appropriate niches within the content development space (2D/3D image generation, adaptation, visual design, editing, etc.) as it begins to build its models... One of the other use cases for the OMI's community LLMs is to see their use as small language models (SLMs), which can offer specific functionality at high effectiveness or functionality that is restricted to unique applications or use cases, analysts said. Currently, the OMI's GitHub page has three repositories, all under the Apache 2.0 license.

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"Ben Affleck and Matt Damon have acquired a screenplay called Killing Gawker," reports TechCrunch, for a film which "presumably delves into billionaire VC Peter Thiel's campaign to bury the media outfit for posting excerpts from a Hulk Hogan sex tape." The film is based on a book that details the 2016 court case in which Hogan won a $140 million judgment against a Gawker editor, Gawker founder Nick Denton, and Gawker itself, whose Valleywag site long chronicled Silicon Valley personalities and routinely zeroed in on Thiel. While casting hasn't been announced, it's "been rumored" Hulk Hogan will be played by Ben Affleck, writes Variety. "Gus Van Sant, who previously helmed Affleck and Damon's Good Will Hunting, is set to direct". The script was adapted from the book Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker and the Anatomy of Intrigue, they report — though the movie currently "has no formal start date or production schedule."

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"A new Mozilla logo appears to be on the way," writes the blog OMG Ubuntu, " marking the company's first major update to its word-mark since 2017." The existing logo, which incorporates the internet protocol "://" and chosen based on feedback from the community, has become synonymous with the non-profit company. But German blogger Sören Hentzschel, an avid watcher of all things Mozilla, recently noticed that a different Mozilla word-mark was accompanying the (unchanged) Firefox logo on Mozilla's 'Nothing Personal' webpage [upper-left]. Some digging uncovered a number of recent code commits readying and referencing a refreshed word-mark and symbol for use in the navigation areas of Mozilla websites, landing pages, and so on... However, what's most exciting (to a nerd like me) with this new logo is the ASCII symbol at the end. It could be viewed as a flag on a pole. Sort of like Mozilla planting its values in the ground to say "we're here, come join". But it's more likely a nod to the original Mozilla mascot (inherited from its Netscape beginnings), which was a red dinosaur (an interesting logo of itself as it was designed by Shepard Fairey who created other seminal design works, and the skate brand OBEY)... Between the inclusion on a live webpage, code commits readying new logo for Mozilla websites, and the fact people can buy official Mozilla merchandise emblazoned with the new design, it seems a formal rebrand announcement is fairly imminent...

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Apple is building "a pricey tabletop home device" which uses "a thin robotic arm to move around a large screen," using actuators "to tilt the display up and down and make it spin 360 degree," according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Citing "people with knowledge of the matter," Gurman writes that Apple assigned "several hundred people" to the project: The device is envisioned as a smart home command center, videoconferencing machine and remote-controlled home security tool, said the people... The project — codenamed J595 — was approved by Apple's executive team in 2022 but has started to formally ramp up in recent months, they said... Apple has now decided to prioritize the device's development and is aiming for a debut as early as 2026 or 2027, according to the people. The company is looking to get the price down to around $1,000. But with years to go before an expected release, the plans could theoretically change... The idea is for the tabletop product to be primarily controlled using the Siri digital assistant and upcoming features in Apple Intelligence. The device could respond to commands, such as "look at me," by repositioning the screen to focus on the person saying the words — say, during a video call. It also could understand different voices and adjust its focus accordingly. Current models in testing run a customized version of the iPad operating system... The company also is working on robots that move around the home and has discussed the idea of a humanoid version. Those projects are being led, in part, by Hanns Wolfram Tappeiner, a robotics expert who now has about 100 former car team engineers reporting to him. In a job listing published this month, Apple said it has a team "working to leverage and build upon groundbreaking machine learning robotics research, thereby enabling development of generalizable and reliable robot systems." The company said it's seeking experts with experience in "robot manipulation" and creating AI models for robot control. The article calls points out that Apple "still gets roughly half its revenue from the iPhone," and calls the robotics effort "one of a few avenues Apple is pursuing to generate new sources of revenue" — and to "capitalize" on its AI technology. (Apple is also working on both smart eyeglasses and augmented reality galsses.)

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Data center construction "could delay California's transition away from fossil fuels and raise electric bills for everyone else," warns the Los Angeles Times — and also increase the risk of blackouts: Even now, California is at the verge of not having enough power. An analysis of public data by the nonprofit GridClue ranks California 49th of the 50 states in resilience — or the ability to avoid blackouts by having more electricity available than homes and businesses need at peak hours... The state has already extended the lives of Pacific Gas & Electric Co.'s Diablo Canyon nuclear plant as well as some natural gas-fueled plants in an attempt to avoid blackouts on sweltering days when power use surges... "I'm just surprised that the state isn't tracking this, with so much attention on power and water use here in California," said Shaolei Ren, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Riverside. Ren and his colleagues calculated that the global use of AI could require as much fresh water in 2027 as that now used by four to six countries the size of Denmark. Driving the data center construction is money. Today's stock market rewards companies that say they are investing in AI. Electric utilities profit as power use rises. And local governments benefit from the property taxes paid by data centers. The article notes a Goldman Sachs estimate that by 2030, data centers could consume up to 11% of all U.S. power demand — up from 3% now. And it shows how the sprawling build-out of data centers across America is impacting surrounding communities: The article notes that California's biggest concentration of data centers — more than 50 near the Silicon Valley city of Santa Clara — are powered by a utility emitting "more greenhouse gas than the average California electric utility because 23% of its power for commercial customers comes from gas-fired plants. Another 35% is purchased on the open market where the electricity's origin can't be traced." Consumer electric rates are rising "as the municipal utility spends heavily on transmission lines and other infrastructure," while the data centers now consume 60% of the city's electricity. Energy officials in northern Virginia "have proposed a transmission line to shore up the grid that would depend on coal plants that had been expected to be shuttered." In 2022 an Oregon newspaper discovered Google data centers were consuming 29% of one city's water supply. "Earlier this year, Pacific Gas & Electric told investors that its customers have proposed more than two dozen data centers, requiring 3.5 gigawatts of power — the output of three new nuclear reactors."

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The Washington Post reviews a new book about Microsoft's 68-year-old co-founder Bill Gates: "He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy." That immortal line from Monty Python's Life of Brian kept running through my head as I was reading "Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King: Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World," by Anupreeta Das, a reporter at the New York Times... which often feels like an extended list of all the major and minor complaints that Das could find not only about Gates but also about billionaires, nerds and the broader practice of philanthropy... [T]he philanthropist who played a central role in the spectacularly successful fight against diseases like HIV/AIDS; the environmentalist whose net-zero vision has led him to create a multibillion-dollar nuclear-power company — that man barely makes an appearance in this book... Rather than weigh Gates's accomplishments against his failures, Das focuses on his personal weaknesses — his unpleasant management style, his extramarital affairs and, especially, his association with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who is featured extensively throughout, including in the beginning of the book's introduction and in a 12-page section that leads off the chapter titled "Cancel Bill." Frustratingly, Das sheds little new light on the Gates-Epstein relationship, beyond suggesting that Epstein first attracted the billionaire by indicating that he might be able to get Gates his coveted Nobel Peace Prize. While I and others have reported that a $2 million donation from Gates to the MIT Media Lab was thought of within MIT as being Epstein money, for instance, Das will go only so far as to say that "the donation may or may not have been at Epstein's recommendation." The Guardian also notes that the Gates Foundation and the Gateses "have prevented millions of deaths, pumping billions of dollars into fighting Aids, tuberculosis and malaria around the world." They co-founded Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which vaccinated half the world's children... [During the pandemic] the Gates-backed Covax partnership was spearheading the global vaccination effort, procuring more than 1bn doses for people in poorer countries. But this doesn't seem to wash with Das, who reports that the foundation is "bigfooting", "neocolonial", "antidemocratic", and "top down", and sees it as an egotistical way for Bill to charity-wash his reputation... The penultimate chapter is titled Cancel Bill, and that's what the whole book feels like: an appeal to public opinion to write Gates off. As yet, and in the context of what other American billionaires do and get away with, it seems a little unfair.

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