Space.com describes it as "a nearly 3-ton leftover tossed overboard from the International Space Station" — which crashed back to earth today. One satellite tracker claims to have filmed it passing over the Netherlands... "A couple minutes later reentry and it would have reached Fort Meyers" in Florida, posted astronomer Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. But instead it re-entered the earth's atmosphere "over the Gulf of Mexico between Cancun and Cuba," Friday afternoon. "This was within the previous prediction window but a little to the northeast of the 'most likely' part of the path." From Space.com: The multi-ton Exposed Pallet 9 (EP9) was jettisoned from the space station back in March 2021. At the time, it was reported to be the most massive object ever tossed overboard from the International Space Station. Disposing of used or unnecessary equipment in such a way is common practice aboard the space station, as the objects typically burn up harmlessly in Earth's atmosphere. Ahead of EP9's reentry, the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Relief, National Warning Center 1 in Bonn, Germany issued this information... "The object is battery packs from the International Space Station. Luminous phenomena or the perception of a sonic boom are possible...." EP9 is loaded with old Nickel-Hydrogen batteries, NASA explained at the time it was jettisoned, also explaining that EP9 has the approximate mass of a large SUV and predicting it would re-enter Earth's atmosphere in two-to-four years. "A large space object reenters the atmosphere in a natural way approximately once per week," the European Space Agency points out, "with the majority of the associated fragments burning up before reaching the ground. "Most spacecraft, launch vehicles and operational hardware are designed to limit the risks associated with a reentry."

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"Shares of Rivian Automotive surged 13% on Thursday," reports CNBC, "as the EV maker unveiled three new vehicles and announced more than $2 billion in savings related to pausing construction on a plant in Georgia." CNBC notes that Rivian's current vehicles "start at roughly $70,000 and can top $100,000," so the new cheaper R2 midsize SUV (starting at $45,000) could be more appealing. "Especially if it qualifies for the $7,500 EV tax credit," adds the Verge: "Seven percent of new vehicle sales are electric," [Rivian founder and CEO RJ] Scaringe notes.... "The reality is that Tesla continues to be wildly successful, and we want to pull from that 93 percent that haven't made the jump to pure EV, because the form factor didn't fit their lifestyle." The article adds that Rivian "will use Tesla's NACS connectors for its future vehicles starting in 2025, which will allow Rivian owners to use the company's Supercharger Network. Both the R2 and R3 will have the NACS ports built natively into the vehicle..." "I would say with absolute and complete certainty that the entire world is going to convert to electric vehicles," Scaringe tells The Verge. "I've never been more bullish on electrification. I've never been more bullish on Rivian." More from CNBC: The announcements come at a crucial time for Rivian as it attempts to expand its customer base amid slower-than-expected EV sales in the U.S. after automakers flooded the first-adopter market with pricey all-electric vehicles in recent years. Rivian's sales pace has slowed in recent quarters, and the company widely disappointed investors last month by missing quarterly estimates and forecasting slightly lower production this year compared to 2023 due to plant downtime. The Amazon-backed company has been burning through cash to improve current EV production and narrow losses... It will be capable of more than 300 miles of all-electric range on a single charge and 0-60 mph time in under3 seconds, the company said. "Its battery will be capable of charging from 10 to 80 percent in under 30 minutes," notes Car and Driver. UPDATE: The Verge reports that less than 24 hours after launching the R2, Rivian has already received more than 68,000 reservations. It will go into production in the first half of 2026.

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An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: The Earth just observed its warmest February, setting a monthly record for the ninth time in a row, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service announced Wednesday. The unrelenting and exceptional global warmth — fueled by a combination of human-caused warming and the El Niño climate pattern — has spanned both land and ocean areas since June. It has scientists worried about the planet crossing a critical climate threshold and prospects for an active Atlantic hurricane season. The month's average global air temperature of 13.5 degrees Celsius (56.3 degrees Fahrenheit) was 0.12 degrees (0.22 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the previous warmest February in 2016. The warmth of the last 12-month period is unprecedented in modern records, coming in at 1.56 degrees (2.8 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than preindustrial levels... Scientists fear that tipping points, such as those that could lead to catastrophic sea level rises or the collapse of critical ocean circulations, will become more likely to be reached if the Earth's temperature remains near or above that threshold for multiple years. Axios adds: This is significant, since these 12 months exceeded the Paris Agreement's 1.5-degree target for a full year. However, the pact is aimed at averting multiple decades above that level, meaning the target hasn't yet been officially breached. Europe was especially warm compared to average during February, along with central and northwest North America, much of South America, Africa and western Australia, Copernicus found. The Washington Post notes that in the United States, "more than 200 locations in the Midwest and Northeast set records for winter warmth." They also quote a weather historian who posted on social media that "We are witnessing something extraordinary and unprecedented. Several thousands of records pulverized all over the world in a matter of hours, with margins never seen before."

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Roughly $138 billion in U.S. student loan debt has now been cancelled, reports CNN. "That's about one-third of the $430 billion that would've been canceled under the president's one-time forgiveness plan, which was struck down by the Supreme Court last year." It's 9% of all outstanding federal student loan debt, according to the article, "wiping out debts for about 3.9 million borrowers — by using a number of existing programs that aim to offer debt relief for certain groups of struggling borrowers..." What President Biden has been doing — before and after the Supreme Court ruling — is using existing student loan forgiveness programs to deliver relief to certain groups of borrowers, like public-sector workers (through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program) and borrowers who were defrauded by their college (through the borrower defense to repayment program). His administration also made discharges for borrowers who are totally and permanently disabled. None of these programs expire, meaning they will help qualifying borrowers now and in the future. In some cases, Biden's administration has expanded the reach of these programs, making more borrowers eligible. And in other cases, it has made an effort to correct past administrative errors made to borrowers' student loan accounts by conducting a one-time recount of borrowers' past payments. This effort helps make sure people receive the loan forgiveness they may already qualify for by having made at least 20 years of payments in an income-driven plan, which calculates monthly payment amounts based on a borrower's income and family size, rather than the amount owed. The recount is expected to be completed by July... Last year, the administration created a new income-driven repayment plan. Known as SAVE, the new plan offers the most generous terms for low-income borrowers. Those who originally borrowed $12,000 or less will see their remaining debt canceled after making payments for at least 10 years... [The administration] is working on implementing another path toward a broad student loan forgiveness program, this time relying on a different legal authority in hopes that this attempt holds up in court. This proposal is currently making its way through a lengthy rulemaking process and has yet to be finalized.

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Remember Avi Loeb, the Harvard professor who claims fragments of alien technology turned up in a high-speed meteor he retrieved from the waters off of Papua, New Guinea? "Reanalysis of seismic data now suggests Loeb may have been looking for the meteor remnants in the wrong place," writes the Washington Post: The analysis, led by seismologist Benjamin Fernando of Johns Hopkins University, contends that sound waves purportedly from the meteor exploding in the atmosphere, and cited by Loeb as helping to locate the meteor's debris field, were most likely from a truck driving on a road near the seismometer. "Interstellar signal linked to aliens was actually just a truck," reads the headline on an announcement from Johns Hopkins University. "The fireball location was actually very far away from where the oceanographic expedition went to retrieve these meteor fragments," Fernando says in the announcement. "Not only did they use the wrong signal, they were looking in the wrong place." Using data from stations in Australia and Palau designed to detect sound waves from nuclear testing, Fernando's team identified a more likely location for the meteor, more than 100 miles from the area initially investigated. They concluded the materials recovered from the ocean bottom were tiny, ordinary meteorites — or particles produced from other meteorites hitting Earth's surface mixed with terrestrial contamination. "There are hundreds of signals that look just like this on that seismometer in Papua New Guinea in the days before and the days after," Fernando told the Washington Post. But the newspaper adds that "Loeb, however, stands his ground." "The seismic data is completely irrelevant to the location of the meteor," Loeb told The Washington Post. He said his team based its search coordinates primarily on satellite data from the United States military. A three-year analysis by the United States Space Command supported the hypothesis that the meteor's extreme velocity indicated an origin outside our solar system, Loeb said... [Fernando] said his team believes the purported velocity of the meteor is the result of a measurement error by a sensor. "We think the most likely case is it's a natural meteor from within our solar system," he said. In any case, Loeb is not done with the search. When he gets sufficient funding, he told The Post, he's going back to the Pacific in search of larger pieces of whatever splashed into the sea.

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It was an idea first proposed by Archimedes, reports CNN. But now, "Brenden Sener, 13, of London, Ontario, has won two gold medals and a London Public Library award for his minuscule version of the contraption — a supposed war weapon made up of a large array of mirrors designed to focus and aim sunlight on a target, such as a ship, and cause combustion — according to a paper published in the January issue of the Canadian Science Fair Journal." For his 2022 science project, Sener recreated the Archimedes screw, a device for raising and moving water. But he didn't stop there. Sener found the death ray to be one of the more intriguing devices — sometimes referred to as the heat ray. Historical writings suggested that Archimedes used "burning mirrors" to start anchored ships on fire during the siege of Syracuse from 214 to 212 BC... There is no archaeological evidence that the contraption existed, as Sener noted in his paper, but many have tried to recreate the mechanism to see if the ancient invention could be feasible. In Sener's attempt at the ray, he set up a heating lamp facing four small concave mirrors, each tilted to direct light at a piece of cardboard with an X marked at the focal point. In this project he designed for the 2023 Matthews Hall Annual Science Fair, Sener hypothesized that as the mirrors focused light energy onto the cardboard, the temperature of the target would increase with each mirror added. In his experiment, Sener conducted three trials with two different light bulb wattages, 50 watts and 100 watts. Each additional mirror increased the temperature notably, he found... The temperature of the cardboard with just the heating lamp and the 100-watt light bulb and no mirrors was about 81 degrees Fahrenheit (27.2 degrees Celsius). After waiting for the cardboard to cool, Sener added one mirror and retested. The focal point's temperature increased to almost 95 F (34.9 C), he found. The greatest increase occurred with the addition of the fourth mirror. The temperature with three mirrors aimed at the target was almost 110 F (43.4 C), but the addition of a fourth mirror increased the temperature by about 18 F (10 C) to 128 F (53.5 C)... Sener was not attempting to light anything on fire, as "a heating lamp does not generate anywhere near enough heat as the sun would," he said. But he believes that with the use of the sun's rays and a larger mirror, "the temperature would increase even more drastically and at a faster rate" and "would easily cause combustion." The powerful weapon wouldn't work on cloudy days, Sener's paper points out, and even a moving ship might diminish its impact. But in an interview with CNN, Sener calls Archimedes' death ray "a neat idea".

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" A federal agency in charge of cybersecurity discovered it was hacked last month..." reports CNN. Last month the U.S. Department of Homeland Security experienced a breach at its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, reports the Record, "through vulnerabilities in Ivanti products, officials said..." "The impact was limited to two systems, which we immediately took offline," the spokesperson said. We continue to upgrade and modernize our systems, and there is no operational impact at this time." "This is a reminder that any organization can be affected by a cyber vulnerability and having an incident response plan in place is a necessary component of resilience." CISA declined to answer a range of questions about who was behind the incident, whether data had been accessed or stolen and what systems were taken offline. Ivanti makes software that organizations use to manage IT, including security and system access. A source with knowledge of the situation told Recorded Future News that the two systems compromised were the Infrastructure Protection (IP) Gateway, which houses critical information about the interdependency of U.S. infrastructure, and the Chemical Security Assessment Tool (CSAT), which houses private sector chemical security plans. CISA declined to confirm or deny whether these are the systems that were taken offline. CSAT houses some of the country's most sensitive industrial information, including the Top Screen tool for high-risk chemical facilities, Site Security Plans and the Security Vulnerability Assessments. CISA said organizations should review an advisory the agency released on February 29 warning that threat actors are exploiting previously identified vulnerabilities in Ivanti Connect Secure and Ivanti Policy Secure gateways including CVE-2023-46805, CVE-2024-21887 and CVE-2024-21893. "Last week, several of the world's leading cybersecurity agencies revealed that hackers had discovered a way around a tool Ivanti released to help organizations check if they had been compromised," the article points out. The statement last week from CISA said the agency "has conducted independent research in a lab environment validating that the Ivanti Integrity Checker Tool is not sufficient to detect compromise and that a cyber threat actor may be able to gain root-level persistence despite issuing factory resets." UPDATE: The two systems run on older technology that was already set to be replaced, sources told CNN..." While there is some irony in it, even cybersecurity agencies or officials can be victims of hacking. After all, they rely on the same technology that others do. The US' top cybersecurity diplomat Nate Fick said last year that his personal account on social media platform X was hacked, calling it part of the "perils of the job."

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"2004 was already an eventful year for Linux," writes ZDNet's Jack Wallen. "As I reported at the time, SCO was trying to drive Linux out of business. Red Hat was abandoning Linux end-user fans for enterprise customers by closing down Red Hat Linux 9 and launching the business-friendly Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Oh, and South African tech millionaire and astronaut Mark Shuttleworth [also a Debian Linux developer] launched Canonical, Ubuntu Linux's parent company. "Little did I — or anyone else — suspect that Canonical would become one of the world's major Linux companies." Mark Shuttleworth answered questions from Slashdot reader in 2005 and again in 2012. And this year, Canonical celebrates its 20th anniversary. ZDNet reports: Canonical's purpose, from the beginning, was to support and share free software and open-source software... Then, as now, Ubuntu was based on Debian Linux. Unlike Debian, which never met a delivery deadline it couldn't miss, Ubuntu was set to be updated to the latest desktop, kernel, and infrastructure with a new release every six months. Canonical has kept to that cadence — except for the Ubuntu 6.06 release — for 20 years now... Released in October 2004, Ubuntu Linux quickly became synonymous with ease of use, stability, and security, bridging the gap between the power of Linux and the usability demanded by end users. The early years of Canonical were marked by rapid innovation and community building. The Ubuntu community, a vibrant and passionate group of developers and users, became the heart and soul of the project. Forums, wikis, and IRC channels buzzed with activity as people from all over the world came together to contribute code, report bugs, write documentation, and support each other.... Canonical's influence extends beyond the desktop. Ubuntu Linux, for example, is the number one cloud operating system. Ubuntu started as a community desktop distribution, but it's become a major enterprise Linux power [also widely use as a server and Internet of Things operating system.] The article notes Canonical's 2011 creation of the Unity desktop. ("While Ubuntu Unity still lives on — open-source projects have nine lives — it's now a sideline. Ubuntu renewed its commitment to the GNOME desktop...") But the article also argues that "2016, on the other hand, saw the emergence of Ubuntu Snap, a containerized way to install software, which --along with its rival Red Hat's Flatpak — is helping Linux gain some desktop popularity."

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An anonymous Slashdot reader shared this article from Live Science: Manufacturers will no longer use harmful "forever chemicals" in food packaging products in the U.S., according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In a statement released February 28, the agency declared that grease-proofing materials that contain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) will not be used in new food packaging sold in the U.S. These include PFAS used in fast-food wrappers, microwave popcorn bags, takeout boxes and pet food bags. The FDA's announcement marks the completion of a voluntary phase-out of the materials by U.S. food packaging manufacturers. This action will eliminate the "major source of dietary exposure to PFAS," Jim Jones, deputy commissioner for human foods at the FDA, said in an associated statement. Companies told the FDA that it could take up to 18 months to completely exhaust the market supply of these products following their final date of sale. However, most of the affected manufacturers phased out the products faster than they initially predicted, the agency noted... The FDA's new announcement marks a "huge win for the public," Graham Peaslee, a professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame who studies PFAS, told The Washington Post.

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"A 20-year-old Trojan resurfaced recently," reports Dark Reading, "with new variants that target Linux and impersonate a trusted hosted domain to evade detection." Researchers from Palo Alto Networks spotted a new Linux variant of the Bifrost (aka Bifrose) malware that uses a deceptive practice known as typosquatting to mimic a legitimate VMware domain, which allows the malware to fly under the radar. Bifrost is a remote access Trojan (RAT) that's been active since 2004 and gathers sensitive information, such as hostname and IP address, from a compromised system. There has been a worrying spike in Bifrost Linux variants during the past few months: Palo Alto Networks has detected more than 100 instances of Bifrost samples, which "raises concerns among security experts and organizations," researchers Anmol Murya and Siddharth Sharma wrote in the company's newly published findings. Moreover, there is evidence that cyberattackers aim to expand Bifrost's attack surface even further, using a malicious IP address associated with a Linux variant hosting an ARM version of Bifrost as well, they said... "As ARM-based devices become more common, cybercriminals will likely change their tactics to include ARM-based malware, making their attacks stronger and able to reach more targets."

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An anonymous reader shared this report from the Guardian: The U.S. is not secretly hiding alien technology or extraterrestrial beings from the public, according to a defense department report. On Friday, the Pentagon 'published the findings of an investigation conducted by the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), a government office established in 2022 to detect and, as necessary, mitigate threats including "anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged and transmedium objects".... AARO investigators, which were "granted full access to all pertinent sensitive [U.S. government] programs", reviewed all official government investigatory efforts since 1945. Investigators also researched classified and unclassified archives, conducted approximately 30 interviews, and collaborated with intelligence community and defense department officials responsible for controlled and special access program oversight, the report revealed. NPR writes that "Many of the sightings turned out to be drones, weather balloons, spy planes, satellites, rockets and planets, according to the report..." "AARO has found no evidence that any U.S. government investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology," Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a statement Friday. All investigative efforts concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and the result of misidentification, Ryder said... The office plans to publish a second volume of the report later this year that covers findings from interviews and research done between November 2023 and April 2024." The report finds no evidence of any confirmed alien technology, the Guardian notes: It added that sensors and visual observations are imperfect, the vast majority of cases lack actionable data and such available data is limited or of poor quality. The report also said resources and staffing for such programs have largely been irregular and sporadic and that the vast majority of reports "almost certainly" are the result of misidentification. In addition, the report found "no empirical evidence for claims that the [U.S. government] and private companies have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology"... The report's public release comes as AARO's acting director, Timothy Phillips, told reporters on Wednesday that the US military is developing a UFO sensor and detection system called Gremlin. "If we have a national security site and there are objects being reported that [are] within restricted airspace or within a maritime range or within the proximity of one of our spaceships, we need to understand what that is ... and so that's why we're developing sensor capability that we can deploy in reaction to reports," Phillips said, CNN reports.

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Legislation proposed in California "aims to repeal Daylight saving time and put California permanently on Standard time," reports a San Diego news station: In November 2018, California voters passed Prop 7, a measure that would allow the state legislature to change Daylight saving time by either keeping it year-round or getting rid of it altogether. However, this measure also requires approval by the U.S. Congress if California were to opt for year-round Daylight Saving Time. So far, nothing has materialized. "I am really, really passionate about this bill," said State Assembly Member Tri Ta, who added it is finally time to listen to the will of the voters. He has drafted new legislation that to do away with twice-yearly time changes. However, his bill would put the Golden State onto year-round Standard time: a move that would not require federal action. Oregon and Washington state are also considering similar moves [though Oregon's bill appears stalled]. "If my bill is passed, we do not need congressional approval," Ta told CBS 8, "so that's a win-win for everyone...." Ta said that his bill has the support of the California Medical Association, as well as sleep experts who say Standard time syncs better with our natural clocks. "So why don't we go along with science?" Ta added. "That's what I believe." One things most people seem to agree on: it's time to stop changing our clocks, which research has shown leads to higher rates of accidents as well as increased health risks. "While this new bill continues to work its way through Sacramento, Daylight saving time is still a go here in California," the article points out, "starting 2 a.m. Sunday, when we set our clocks forward one hour." But USA Today adds that across the rest of the country, "Most Americans — 62% — are in favor of ending the time change, according to an Economist/YouGov poll from last year."

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An anonymous reader shared this article from the Washington Post: A much-debated theory holds that 4 billion years ago, give or take, long before the appearance of dinosaurs or even bacteria, the primordial soup contained only the possibility of life. Then a molecule called RNA took a dramatic step into the future: It made a copy of itself. Then the copy made a copy, and over the course of many millions of years, RNA begot DNA and proteins, all of which came together to form a cell, the smallest unit of life able to survive on its own. Now, in an important advance supporting this RNA World theory, scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., have carried out a small but essential part of the story. In test tubes, they developed an RNA molecule that was able to make accurate copies of a different type of RNA. The work, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, gets them closer to the grand goal of growing an RNA molecule that makes accurate copies of itself. "Then it would be alive," said Gerald Joyce, president of Salk and one of the authors of the new paper. "So, this is the road to how life can arise in a laboratory or, in principle, anywhere in the universe...." John Chaput, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of California at Irvine who did not participate in the study, called the crossing of that threshold by the Salk team "monumental," adding that "at first, I looked on it as a little bit jaw-dropping. ... It's super-neat." The Post adds that "the scenario they tested probably mimics one of the earliest stirrings of evolution." And Michael Kay, a professor of biochemistry at University of Utah, says the new paper has given the RNA World theory "key evidence" to show "it is plausible and reasonable." He added that the RNA copier developed at Salk will "provide a valuable tool for people wanting to do directed evolution experiments."

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Slashdot reader ArchieBunker shared this article from NBC News: Exposure to leaded gasoline lowered the IQ of about half the population of the United States, a new study estimates. The peer-reviewed study, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focuses on people born before 1996 — the year the U.S. banned gas containing lead. Overall, the researchers from Florida State University and Duke University found, childhood lead exposure cost America an estimated 824 million points, or 2.6 points per person on average. Certain cohorts were more affected than others. For people born in the 1960s and the 1970s, when leaded gas consumption was skyrocketing, the IQ loss was estimated to be up to 6 points and for some, more than 7 points. Exposure to it came primarily from inhaling auto exhaust. "Lead is a neurotoxin, and no amount of it is safe.

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Long-time Slashdot reader garote writes: It's the year 1991. You're a teenage computer geek. You've just upgraded to an Apple IIgs, your first "16-bit" computer. To relieve the crushing boredom of your High School coursework, you and your friends embark on the computer geek equivalent of forming a heavy metal band: Making your own video game. You meet at the benches during lunch hour, and pass around crude plans scribbled on graph paper. You assign each other impressive titles like "Master Programmer", "Sound Designer", and "Area Data Input". You swap 3.5" disks like furtive secret agents, and stay up coding untl 3am. Your parents look at your owlish eyes — and your slipping grades — and ask if you're "on drugs". If that sounds familiar, this essay may prove interesting. It uses the game my friends and I started — but didn't finish — in High School over 30 years ago, to explore the absurd programming contortions we did to make it playable on the Apple IIgs: The red-headed stepchild of the Apple II line; a machine that languished for six years without a hardware upgrade to avoid competing with the Macintosh. Thanks to the recent release of the first cycle-accurate emulator for this machine, you can actually play the game in all its screen-tearing glory. You can also explore the source code which has survived for 30 years, and been adapted to build on modern hardware thanks to Merlin32 and CiderPress II. "Nowadays, the content of the game itself is only good for an embarrassing laugh," according to the web page, "but I feel that the code we hammered out shows the unique challenges of a bygone era, which should be remembered..."

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An anonymous reader shared this report from the Guardian: The U.S. is not secretly hiding alien technology or extraterrestrial beings from the public, according to a defense department report. On Friday, the Pentagon 'published the findings of an investigation conducted by the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), a government office established in 2022 to detect and, as necessary, mitigate threats including "anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged and transmedium objects".... AARO investigators, which were "granted full access to all pertinent sensitive [U.S. government] programs", reviewed all official government investigatory efforts since 1945. Investigators also researched classified and unclassified archives, conducted approximately 30 interviews, and collaborated with intelligence community and defense department officials responsible for controlled and special access program oversight, the report revealed. NPR writes that "Many of the sightings turned out to be drones, weather balloons, spy planes, satellites, rockets and planets, according to the report..." "AARO has found no evidence that any U.S. government investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology," Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a statement Friday. All investigative efforts concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and the result of misidentification, Ryder said... The office plans to publish a second volume of the report later this year that covers findings from interviews and research done between November 2023 and April 2024." The report finds no evidence of any confirmed alien technology, the Guardian notes: It added that sensors and visual observations are imperfect, the vast majority of cases lack actionable data and such available data is limited or of poor quality. The report also said resources and staffing for such programs have largely been irregular and sporadic and that the vast majority of reports "almost certainly" are the result of misidentification. In addition, the report found "no empirical evidence for claims that the [U.S. government] and private companies have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology"... The report's public release comes as AARO's acting director, Timothy Phillips, told reporters on Wednesday that the US military is developing a UFO sensor and detection system called Gremlin. "If we have a national security site and there are objects being reported that [are] within restricted airspace or within a maritime range or within the proximity of one of our spaceships, we need to understand what that is ... and so that's why we're developing sensor capability that we can deploy in reaction to reports," Phillips said, CNN reports.

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Ubuntu-based Linux Mint includes HexChat software by default "to offer a way for users of the distro to talk to, ask questions, and get support from other users," according to the Linux blog OMG Ubuntu. But in February HexChat's developer announced its final release... That got devs thinking. As is, IRC isn't user-friendly. It's a kind of an arcane magic involving strange commands. Its onboarding is obtuse. And the protocol doesn't natively support things like media sharing (screenshots are useful when troubleshooting), clickable links, or other modern "niceties". And yet, IRC is a fast, established, open, and versatile protocol... It's free and immediate (no sign-up required to use it) which makes it ideal for 'when you need it' use. So work has begun on a new dedicated "chat room" app to replace HexChat, called Jargonaut. Linux Mint's goal is not to build a fully-featured IRC client, or even an IRC client at all. Jargonaut is a chat app that just happens to use IRC as its underlying chat protocol. Users won't need to know what IRC is nor learn its syntax, as Jargonaut isn't going to respond to standard IRC commands... When the app is opened Linux Mint's official support channels are there, ready to engage with. A real-time support chat app built on IRC — with additional bells: "[Jargonaut] will support pastebin/imgur via DND, uploading your system specifications, troubleshooting and many features which have nothing to do with IRC," says Linux Mint lead Clement Lefebvre in the distro's latest monthly update. "HexChat was a great IRC client which helped us make a relatively good support chat room. We're hoping Jargonaut will help us make this chat room even better and much easier to use." "Like most of Linux Mint's home-grown XApps the new app is hosted on Github," the article points out, "which is where you should go t to check in on Jargonaut's current status, check out the code and compile it, or contribute to its development with your own fair hands." The article also argues that IRC "isn't as trendy as Discord or Telegram, but it is a free, open standard that no single entity controls, is relatively low-bandwidth, interoperable, and efficient."

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One year after Silicon Valley Bank's collapse and seizure, "Regional bank stocks remain volatile compared to other types of financial institutions," reports the Observer, "indicating investors' lingering worries about the sector." But not everyone suffered: Benefiting from the crisis were big players, like JPMorgan Chase. After acquiring First Republic's $212.6 billion in loans and $92.4 billion in deposits for just over $10 billion in May 2023, JPMorgan saw a 67 percent year-over-year growth in profits that quarter. Overall, larger commercial banks saw inflows as customers sought safer institutions to hold their money. And what happened to Silicon Valley Bank? Axios reports: Today, SVB says it's still the same bank customers loved, but with better risk management and some other tweaks, like smaller deposit requirements for startup borrowers, president Marc Cadieux told Axios last month. 81% of SVB's clients from a year ago are still banking with SVB, according to Cadieux, with "thousands of them" returning after initially switching out... "I think there was an inference that this was a regional bank crisis, but it really wasn't — those were niche banks," Citizens CEO Bruce Van Saun tells Axios. "The failure was is in governance and the business model." Citizens is America's 14th largest bank, and as its CEO, Van Saun was asked by CNN what caused 2023's failures at other banks: CEO Van Saun: Both of those banks [Signature Bank and Silicon Valley Bank] went from $50 billion in assets to over $200 billion in four years. They grew too fast, took in a high percentage of uninsured deposits, had very concentrated, narrow customer bases so they were susceptible to [deposit] flight risk. They also borrowed short and invested long, which is a cardinal sin of banking. They didn't manage their interest rate risk well because they didn't have the muscle that you would have if you grew slowly over the years and were heavily regulated like bigger banks like ourselves. CNN: Who deserves more blame: failed banks' management teams for not ensuring proper guardrails were in place or financial supervisors whose jobs are to identify red flags? Van Saun: It's a joint failure... CNN: [W]hat about commercial real estate? The number of people working in offices is much, much lower than it was pre-pandemic. Are you bracing for another chapter of banking stress? What is Citizens doing to cushion against potential high losses in the sector given close to one-fifth of your loans are there? Van Saun: You have to look under the covers. The nature of our portfolio matters. Within commercial real estate, industrial, warehouse and distribution space is fine. Multi-family homes are generally fine. When it comes to offices, we have certain pockets of life science businesses like lab research facilities that are super safe because they never had to close during Covid. [Loans to general office buildings are riskier though, he said.] We go through all of that and we say we'll lose some money here, but we're not going to lose our shirt and we've put up big reserves against them. We're working on a loan-by-loan basis with our most senior people. I think it's a well-managed process.

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An anonymous reader shared this article from Futurism: More than two years since MIT claimed its scientists achieved a breakthrough in fusion energy, the university is claiming that new research "confirms" that the magnet-based design used in those tests isn't just impressive in a lab setting, but is practical and economically viable, too. These findings come from a comprehensive report which features six separate [peer-reviewed] studies published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity this month, assessing the feasibility of the superconductor magnets used by MIT scientists in their landmark test conducted in September 2021. "Together, the papers describe the design and fabrication of the magnet and the diagnostic equipment needed to evaluate its performance," MIT announced, "as well as the lessons learned from the process. "Overall, the team found, the predictions and computer modeling were spot-on, verifying that the magnet's unique design elements could serve as the foundation for a fusion power plant." The successful test of the magnet, says Hitachi America Professor of Engineering Dennis Whyte, who recently stepped down as director of MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center, was "the most important thing, in my opinion, in the last 30 years of fusion research." Before the [2021] demonstration, the best-available superconducting magnets were powerful enough to potentially achieve fusion energy — but only at sizes and costs that could never be practical or economically viable. Then, when the tests showed the practicality of such a strong magnet at a greatly reduced size, "overnight, it basically changed the cost per watt of a fusion reactor by a factor of almost 40 in one day," Whyte says. "Now fusion has a chance," Whyte adds

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