"SpaceX has received FCC clearance to operate a mysterious 'wireless module' device," PC Magazine reported earlier this week, speculating that the device "might be a new Starlink router." On Tuesday, the FCC issued an equipment authorization for the device, which uses the 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi radio bands. A document in SpaceX's filing also says it features antennas along with Wi-Fi chips apparently from MediaTek. Another document calls the device by the codename "UTW-231," and defines it as a "wireless router" supporting IEEE 802.11b/g/n/ax for Wi-Fi 6 speeds up to 1,300Mbps. But perhaps the most interesting part is an image SpaceX attached, which suggests the router is relatively small and can fit in a person's open hand.... SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said the "Starlink mini" dish is slated to arrive later this year and that it's small enough to fit in a backpack... On Wednesday, PCMag also spotted the official Starlink.com site referencing the name "Mini" in a specification page for the satellite internet system. Today saw some interesting speculation on the unoffical "Starlink Hardware" blog (written by Noah Clarke, who has a degree in electronics). Clarke guesses the product "will be aimed at portable use cases, such as camping, RV's, vans, hiking... designed to be easy to store, transport, and deploy". But he also notes Starlink updated their app today, with a new shopping page showing what he believes the upcoming product will look like. ("Very similar to the Standard dish, just smaller. It has a similar shape, and even a kickstand.") If you go into developer mode and play around with the Mini network settings, you notice something interesting. There is no separate router. Devices are connected to the dish itself... I'm guessing that, in order to make the Mini as portable as possible, Starlink decided it was best to simplify the system and limit the number of components. There are more Wifi details that have been revealed, and that is mesh compatibility. For those of you that might be interested in using the Mini at home, or for larger events where you need additional Wifi coverage, the Mini's built-in router will be compatible with Starlink mesh. You'll be able to wirelessly pair another Starlink router to the Mini.

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In 2016, Phoronix remembered how the early days of Linux kernel mode-setting (KMS) had brought hopes for improved error messages. And one long-awaited feature was errors messages for "Direct Rendering Manager" (or DRM) drivers — something analgous to the "Blue Screen of Death" Windows gives for critical errors. Now Linux 6.10 is introducing a new DRM panic handler infrastructure enabling messages when a panic occurs, Phoronix reports today. "This is especially important for those building a kernel without VT/FBCON support where otherwise viewing the kernel panic message isn't otherwise easily available." With Linux 6.10 the initial DRM Panic code has landed as well as wiring up the DRM/KMS driver support for the SimpleDRM, MGAG200, IMX, and AST drivers. There is work underway on extending DRM Panic support to other drivers that we'll likely see over the coming kernel cycles for more widespread support... On Linux 6.10+ with platforms having the DRM Panic driver support, this "Blue Screen of Death" functionality can be tested via a route such as echo c > /proc/sysrq-trigger. The article links to a picture shared on Mastodon by Red Hat engineer Javier Martinez Canillas of the error message being generated on a BeaglePlay single board computer. Phoronix also points out that some operating systems have even considered QR codes for kernel error messages...

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Linus Torvalds as the father of the Linux kernel set aside some time this Father's Day to release Linux 6.10-rc4...

Wednesday the annual electric vehicle outlook report was released by market researcher BloombergNEF. And the analyst wrote that "Our long-term outlook for EVs remains bright," according to the Los Angeles Times: In 2023, EVs made up 18% of global passenger-vehicle sales. By 2030, according to the report, 45% will be EVs. That number jumps to 73% by 2040 — still short of what the world needs to reach net zero emissions in transportation, the firm says, but enough to achieve major reductions in climate-changing carbon emissions... [D]ifferent countries are moving at different speeds and with different levels of commitment. Today, "China, India and France are still showing signs of healthy growth, but the latest data from Germany, Italy and the U.S. is more concerning," BloombergNEF said. Global EV sales "are set to rise from 13.9 million in 2023 to over 30 million in 2027," despite the lagging U.S. [The article points out later that "For the first quarter in China, EV sales were up 37%, according to BloombergNEF. In India, it's 39%, and in France, 20%. The U.S. was a laggard, up just 4%."] Whatever the geography, consumer concerns about price, driving range, battery lifespan, and unreliable public charging continue to dampen many buyers' enthusiasm for EVs. BloombergNEF's findings are echoed by consulting firm McKinsey and the AAA motor club, in recent forecasts of their own. But EV prices are coming down, range is improving, and large numbers of public chargers are being installed, all of which could revive sales growth. Consumers around the planet are warming to the idea of buying an electric car, but they're moving slowly. According to McKinsey, 14% of 30,000 global survey respondents in 2021 said their next vehicle would be an EV. This year, it's 18%. In the U.S. it's a different story, where consumer interest in an EV purchase declined to 18% this year, according to AAA's survey, down from 23% in 2023. And nearly two-thirds reported they were unlikely to buy an EV next time they buy a car. Interest in hybrids is on the rise. One in three said they were likely to buy a hybrid, a vehicle that adds a small battery to an internal combustion engine to improve fuel efficiency. That's bad news for pure EV sales, at least in the immediate future, said Greg Brannon, head of automotive research at AAA. Early adopters already have their EVs, he said, while mainstream buyers remain skeptical. The article does note that major automakers "are losing billions of dollars in their EV division," with several cutting the EV goals for the U.S. (Though Hyundai and Kia are not.) And then there's this... A global survey conducted by consulting firm McKinsey, also released Wednesday, included this shocker: 29% of EV owners told McKinsey they plan to replace the EV they bought with a gasoline or diesel car, a figure that jumps to 38% for U.S. EV owners. Phillip Kampshoff, who leads McKinsey's Center for Future Mobility in the Americas, said he'd seen EV sales as "a one way street. Once you buy, you're hooked on an EV. But that's not what the data shows...." But the article points out that both BloombergNEF and McKinsey still remained bullish that adoption will increase in the future.

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The Los Angeles Times reports that "The personal information of more than 200,000 people in Los Angeles County was potentially exposed after a hacker used a phishing email to steal the login credentials of 53 public health employees, the county announced Friday." Details that were possibly accessed in the February data breach include the first and last names, dates of birth, diagnoses, prescription information, medical record numbers, health insurance information, Social Security numbers and other financial information of Department of Public Health clients, employees and other individuals. "Affected individuals may have been impacted differently and not all of the elements listed were present for each individual," the agency said in a news release... The data breach happened between Feb. 19 and 20 when employees received a phishing email, which tries to trick recipients into providing important information such as passwords and login credentials. The employees clicked on a link in the body of the email, thinking they were accessing a legitimate message, according to the agency... The county is offering free identity monitoring through Kroll, a financial and risk advisory firm, to those affected by the breach. Individuals whose medical records were potentially accessed by the hacker should review them with their doctor to ensure the content is accurate and hasn't been changed. Officials say people should also review the Explanation of Benefits statement they receive from their insurance company to make sure they recognize all the services that have been billed. Individuals can also request credit reports and review them for any inaccuracies. From the official statement by the county's Public Health department: Upon discovery of the phishing attack, Public Health disabled the impacted e-mail accounts, reset and re-imaged the user's device(s), blocked websites that were identified as part of the phishing campaign and quarantined all suspicious incoming e-mails. Additionally, awareness notifications were distributed to all workforce members to remind them to be vigilant when reviewing e-mails, especially those including links or attachments. Law enforcement was notified upon discovery of the phishing attack, and they investigated the incident.

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Bloomberg reports: A disease caused by a rare "flesh-eating bacteria" that can kill people within 48 hours is spreading in Japan after the country relaxed Covid-era restrictions. Cases of streptococcal toxic shock syndrome (STSS) reached 977 this year by June 2, higher than the record 941 cases reported for all of last year, according to the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, which has been tracking incidences of the disease since 1999. Group A Streptococcus (GAS) typically causes swelling and sore throat in children known as "strep throat," but some types of the bacteria can lead to symptoms developing rapidly, including limb pain and swelling, fever, low blood pressure, that can be followed by necrosis, breathing problems, organ failure and death. People over 50 are more prone to the disease. "Most of the deaths happen within 48 hours," said Ken Kikuchi, a professor in infectious diseases at Tokyo Women's Medical University. "As soon as a patient notices swelling in foot in the morning, it can expand to the knee by noon, and they can die within 48 hours...." At the current rate of infections, the number of cases in Japan could reach 2,500 this year, with a "terrifying" mortality rate of 30%, Kikuchi said.

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Building off Friday's release of Wine 9.11, the development team has now also released Wine Staging 9.11 with some 428 patches, reports Phoronix founder Michael Larabel: Catching my interest was a patch for Bug 7955. That right away catches my attention since the latest Wine bug reports are at a bug ticket number over 56,000.... Yep, Bug 7955 dates back 14 years ago to April 2007. The #7955 bug report is over the S-Hoai Windows client displaying an application exception when clicking the "File" or "Projects" menu. S-Hoai is a Windows application used in Germany by architects and building engineers/contractors for managing estimates and billing according to German laws.

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Slashdot reader hackertourist shared this announcement from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Edward C. Stone, former director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and project scientist of the Voyager mission for 50 years, died on June 9, 2024. He was age 88... Stone served on nine NASA missions as either principal investigator or a science instrument lead, and on five others as a co-investigator (a key science instrument team member). These roles primarily involved studying energetic ions from the Sun and cosmic rays from the galaxy. He had the distinction of being one of the few scientists involved with both the mission that has come closest to the Sun (NASA's Parker Solar Probe) and the one that has traveled farthest from it (Voyager). Stone is best known for his work on NASA's longest-running mission, Voyager, whose twin spacecraft launched in 1977 and are still exploring deep space today. He served as Voyager's sole project scientist from 1972 until his retirement in 2022. Under Stone's leadership, the mission took advantage of a celestial alignment that occurs just once every 176 years to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. During their journeys, the spacecraft revealed the first active volcanoes beyond Earth, on Jupiter's moon Io, and an atmosphere rich with organic molecules on Saturn's moon Titan. Voyager 2 remains the only spacecraft to fly by Uranus and Neptune, revealing Uranus' unusual tipped magnetic poles, and the icy geysers erupting from Neptune's moon Triton. The mission "transformed our understanding of the solar system, and is still providing useful data today," writes hackertourist. (Watch Stone speak in this 2018 video about the Voyager 2 spacecraft.) NASA's announcement also includes stories of Stone's desire to engage the public and his thoughtfulness in considering the true boundary of interstellar space. As director of JPL, Stone was responsible for more than two dozen other missions, including landing NASA's Pathfinder mission with the first Mars rover in 1996. "Ed Stone was a trailblazer who dared mighty things in space. He was a dear friend to all who knew him, and a cherished mentor to me personally," said Nicola Fox, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Ed took humanity on a planetary tour of our solar system and beyond, sending NASA where no spacecraft had gone before. His legacy has left a tremendous and profound impact on NASA, the scientific community, and the world."

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The Washington Post reports: Commitments from Big Tech companies to identify and label fake artificial-intelligence-generated images on their platforms won't be enough to keep the tech from being used by other countries to try to influence the U.S. election, said the head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. AI won't completely change the long-running threat of weaponized propaganda, but it will "inflame" it, CISA Director Jen Easterly said at The Washington Post's Futurist Summit on Thursday. Tech companies are doing some work to try to label and identify deepfakes on their platforms, but more needs to be done, she said. "There is no real teeth to these voluntary agreements," Easterly said. "There needs to be a set of rules in place, ultimately legislation...." In February, tech companies, including Google, Meta, OpenAI and TikTok, said they would work to identify and label deepfakes on their social media platforms. But their agreement was voluntary and did not include an outright ban on deceptive political AI content. The agreement came months after the tech companies also signed a pledge organized by the White House that they would label AI images. Congressional and state-level politicians are debating numerous bills to try to regulate AI in the United States, but so far the initiatives haven't made it into law. The E.U. parliament passed an AI Actt year, but it won't fully go into force for another two years.

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IceWM 3.6 is out today as the newest version of this lightweight X11 window manager...

ZDNet published a new article this week with their own tips for new Linux users. It begins by arguing that switching to the Linux desktop "is easier than you think" and "you'll find help everywhere". (And also that "You won't want for apps.") That doesn't mean it has everything. For example, there is no version of Adobe Photoshop. There is GIMP (which is just as powerful as Photoshop) but for those of you accustomed to Adobe's de facto standard, you're out of luck. The worst-case scenario is you have to learn a new piece of software to meet your graphic needs. At the same time, you might have to turn to proprietary software. For open-source purists, that's a no-go. But for those who just need to get things done, you'll find a mixture of open-source and proprietary software will give you everything you need to be productive and entertained. Their article also recommends new users should "weed out Arch-based distributions," while warning that "Linux is more secure, but..." The truth is, any time you have a computer connected to a network, it's vulnerable and it doesn't matter what operating system you use. To that end, it's crucial that you keep your operating system (and the installed applications) up to date. Fortunately, most Linux operating systems make this very easy... You're probably used to the slow trickle of updates and improvements found in the likes of Windows or MacOS. On Linux, you can count on that process being considerably faster. This is especially important with updates. When a vulnerability is found in an application that affects Linux, it is fixed far faster than it would be on competing platforms. The reason for this is that most Linux software is created and maintained by developers who don't have to answer to boards or committees or have a painfully slow bug resolution process. It might be announced that a vulnerability has been discovered in an application and the fix is officially released the next day. I've seen that very thing happen more times than I can count. But it's not just about vulnerabilities. Developers add new features to software all the time and even listen to users. You could contact a developer of an open-source application with an idea and find it implemented in the next update. Linux is always evolving and it does so much faster than other operating systems. And there's one final caveat. "Not all hardware will work (but most will)." I'll say this (and I stand by it): Ubuntu Linux probably has the best hardware detection and support of any operating system on the market. But that doesn't mean it works with everything. Certain peripherals you own could have trouble working with Linux. Two of the more problematic pieces of hardware are scanners and wireless chips. When I find a piece of hardware that isn't supported, here's one thing I've often done: I try a different Linux distribution... (Fedora often ships with a newer kernel than Ubuntu Linux, and therefore supports more modern hardware.) Keep in mind that most Linux distributions are offered as Live images, which means you can test-drive them without making any changes to your hard drive. This is a great way to tell if a distribution will support all the hardware you need to use. Agree? Disagree? Share your reactions in the comments... And what advice would you give to a first-time Linux user?

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After being talked about for years of DRM panic handling and coming with a "Blue Screen of Death" solution for DRM/KMS drivers, Linux 6.10 is introducing a new DRM panic handler infrastructure for being able to display a message when a panic occurs. This is especially important for those building a kernel without VT/FBCON support where otherwise viewing the kernel panic message isn't otherwise easily available...

For months Broadcom has been working on the VMware Hypercall API for the Linux kernel. This "vmware_hyperscall" is a new family of functions for use by the VMware guest code and virtual device drivers in an architecture-independent manner...

Christian Schaller of Red Hat shared an update on Friday around the ongoing enhancements to Fedora Workstation. Given the current industry trends, ongoing Fedora Workstation development is seeing a lot of attention around... AI, AI, AI...

For years there has been the RKVDEC Linux media driver to provide accelerated video decoding on Rockchip SoCs. Being worked on now is RKVDEC2 for providing video decoding on the newer Rockchip SoCs...

"Titanium that was distributed with fake documentation has been found in commercial Boeing and Airbus jets," reports CNN. America's Federal Aviation Administration is now investigating whether those components pose a safety hazard to the public," along with the manufacturers of the aircraft and supplier Spirit AeroSystems. "A parts supplier found small holes in the material from corrosion," the New York Times reported Friday: Boeing and Airbus both said their tests of affected materials so far had shown no signs of problems. Boeing said it directly purchased most of the titanium used in its plane production, so most of its supply was unaffected. "This industrywide issue affects some shipments of titanium received by a limited set of suppliers, and tests performed to date have indicated that the correct titanium alloy was used," Boeing said in a statement. "To ensure compliance, we are removing any affected parts on airplanes prior to delivery. Our analysis shows the in-service fleet can continue to fly safely."

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Hier, nous publions la première partie des Cowcotland Awards 2024, une liste qui fait suite aux European Hardware Awards 2024 remis à l'occasion du COMPUTEX il y a quelques jours de cela. Aujourd'hui, place à la deuxième et dernière partie. […]

Lire la suite

It's one of Saturn's 146 moons — just 310 miles in diameter (or 498 kilometers). Yet the European Space Agency plans to send a robot on a one-billion mile trip to visit it. Why? Because astronomers have discovered Enceladus "possesses geysers that regularly erupt from its surface and spray water into space," reports the Guardian: Even more astonishing, these plumes contain complex organic compounds, including propane and ethane. "Enceladus has three key ingredients that are considered to be essential for the appearance of life," said astronomer Professor Michele Dougherty of Imperial College London. "It has got liquid water, organic material and a source of heat. That combination makes it my favourite moon in the whole solar system." A panel of expert scientists have now recommended the Saturn moon for an ESA mission by 2040, according to the article, "with the aim of either landing on the moon or flying through the geysers spraying water and carbon chemicals from its surface into space. Preferably, both goals would be attempted, the panel added." It will be tricky. Dougherty warns that Enceladus "is small with weak gravity, which means you will need a lot of fuel to slow it down so that it does not whiz past its target into deep space. That is going to be a tricky issue for those designing the mission." But Dougherty has a special interest, as the principal investigator for the magnetometer flown on the Cassini mission that studied Saturn and its moons between 2004 and 2017. "At one point, Cassini passed close to Enceladus and our instrument indicated Saturn's magnetic field was being dragged round the moon in a way that suggested the little moon had an atmosphere," said Dougherty. Cassini's managers agreed to direct the probe to take a closer look and, in July 2005, the spaceship swept over the moon's surface at a height of 173km — and detected significant amounts of water vapour. "It was wonderful," recalls Dougherty. Subsequent sweeps produced even greater wonders. Huge geysers of water were pictured erupting from geological fault lines at the south pole. The only other body in the solar system, apart from Earth, possessing liquid water on its surface had been revealed. Finally came the discovery of organics in those plumes and Enceladus went from being rated a minor, unimportant moon to a world that is now set to trigger the expenditure of billions of euros and decades of effort by European astronomers and space engineers. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader thephydes for sharing the article.

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Last month TIOBE announced its estimate that the four most popular programming languages were: 1. Python 2. C 3. C++ 4. Java But this month C++ "overtook" C for the first time, TIOBE announced, becoming (according to the same methodology) the #2 most popular programming language, with C dropping to #3. " C++ has never been that high in the TIOBE index," says TIOBE Software CEO Paul Jansen in the announcement, "whereas C has never been that low." 1. Python 2. C++ 3. C 4. Java C++ started a new life as of 2011 with its consistent 3 yearly updates. Although most compilers and most engineers can't take up with this pace, it is considered a success to see the language evolve. The main strengths of C++ are its performance and scalability. Its downside is its many ways to get things done, i.e. its rich idiom of features, which is caused by its long history and aim for backward compatibility. C++ is heavily used in embedded systems, game development and financial trading software, just to name a few domains. There's different rankings from the rival PYPL index of programming language popularity. It lumps C and C++ together to award them a collective ranking (#5). But unlike TIOBE, it shows Java [and JavaScript and C#] all being more popular (with Python still the #1 most popular language). Of course, statistical anomalies could be also skewing the results. Visual Basic also lost two ranks in popularity in the last month, according to TIOBE, dropping from the #7 position to the #9 position (now falling just behind Go and SQL). This becomes the first time that Go has risen as high as #7, according to TIOBE's announcement — with Rust also reaching an all-time high of #17...

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