The University of Toronto is constructing a 14-story building using mass timber, one of the largest and most recent projects to employ this innovative building technology. "Mass timber is an appealing alternative to energy-intensive concrete and steel, which together account for almost 15 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions," reports Knowable Magazine. "Though experts are still debating mass timber's role in fighting climate change, many are betting it's better for the environment than current approaches to construction. It relies on wood, after all, a renewable resource." From the report: Today, the tallest mass timber building is the 25-story Ascent skyscraper in Milwaukee, completed in 2022. As of that year, there were 84 mass timber buildings eight stories or higher either built or under construction worldwide, with another 55 proposed. Seventy percent of the existing and future buildings were in Europe, about 20 percent in North America and the rest in Australia and Asia, according to a report (PDF) from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. When you include smaller buildings, at least 1,700 mass timber buildings had been constructed in the United States alone as of 2023. [...] In principle, mass timber is like plywood but on a much larger scale: The smaller pieces are layered and glued together under pressure in large specialized presses. Today, beams up to 50 meters long, usually made of what's called glue-laminated timber, or glulam, can replace steel elements. Panels up to 50 centimeters thick, typically cross-laminated timber, or CLT, replace concrete for walls and floors. These wood composites can be surprisingly strong -- stronger than steel by weight. But a mass timber element must be bulkier to achieve that same strength. As a building gets higher, the wooden supports must get thicker; at some point, they simply take up too much space. So for taller mass timber buildings, including the Ascent skyscraper, architects often turn to a combination of wood, steel and concrete.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Euclid mission has revealed the first part of a 3D map of the universe, showcasing 14 million galaxies and tens of millions of stars with unprecedented detail. "The Euclid mission, launched in 2023 and run by the European Space Agency (Esa) with contributions from Nasa, sent its first snapshots in November of that year and in May 2024," reports The Guardian. "The goal of Euclid is to enable the creation of a 3D map in time and space of the universe, in an attempt to elucidate its evolution and, as a result, shed light on the mysterious phenomena of dark energy and dark matter that together make up 95% of the universe." From the report: The newly released data is a mosaic of 208 gigapixels and covers 1% of what will be the final map. The completed map is expected to involve six years of observations and will take in a third of the sky, with observations expected to capture billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light years. [...] Images released by Esa highlight the area of the sky covered by the new mosaic, together with the mosaic itself and zoomed-in views within it. Esa said regions of light blue that can be seen in the mosaic were galactic cirrus clouds that sit between stars in the Milky Way. These wispy clouds, composed of gas and dust, reflect optical light, allowing them to be captured by the mission's super-sensitive visible light camera. Zoom in on the mosaic further and other features can be seen, including the spiral galaxy NGC 2188 and the galaxy cluster Abell 3381. In a view zoomed in 600 times relative to the original mosaic, a distant swirling galaxy is visible in incredible detail.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: There's a valley in rural southwest Utah that's become a hub for renewable energy. Dozens of tall white wind turbines whoosh up in the sky. A sea of solar panels glistens in the distance. But the new kid on the block is mostly hidden underground. From the surface, Fervo Energy's Cape Station looks more or less like an oil derrick, with a thin metal tower rising above the sagebrush steppe. But this $2 billion geothermal project, which broke ground last year, is not drilling for gas. It's drilling for underground heat that CEO Tim Latimer believes holds the key to generating carbon-free power -- lots of it. "Just these three well pads alone will produce 100 megawatts of electricity. Around-the-clock, 24/7 electricity," he said. Latimer stood overlooking the project, which is currently under construction, on one of the drill rig's metal platforms 40 feet off the ground. This well is one of the 24 Fervo is in the process of completing at Cape Station to harness the Earth's natural heat and generate electricity. This isn't the type of geothermal that's already active in volcanic hot spots like Iceland or The Geysers project in California. It's called an enhanced geothermal system. Cold water goes down into a well that curves like a hockey stick as it reaches more than 13,000 feet underground. Then the water squeezes through cracks in 400-degree rock. The water heats up and returns to the surface through a second well that runs parallel to the first. That creates steam that turns turbines to produce electricity, and the water gets sent back underground in a closed loop. This horizontal well technique has been pioneered at a $300 million federal research project called Utah FORGE located in this same valley, which has paved the way for private companies to take the tech and run with it. Recent innovations like better drill bits -- made with synthetic diamonds to eat through hard subterranean granite -- have helped Fervo drill its latest well in a quarter of the time that it took just a couple of years ago. That efficiency has meant an 80% drop in drilling costs, Latimer said. Last year, Fervo's pilot project in Nevada used similar techniques to begin sending electricity to a Google data center. And the company's early tests at Cape Station in Utah show the new project can produce power at triple the rate of its Nevada pilot. "This is now a proven tech. That's not a statement you could have made two or three years ago," Latimer said. "Now, it just comes down to how do we get more of these megawatts on the grid so we have a bigger impact?" The report notes that Fervo signed a landmark deal with Southern California Edison, one of the country's largest electric utilities with 15 million customers. "It will send the first 70 megawatts of geothermal juice to the grid in 2026," reports NPR. "By the time the project is fully completed in 2028, this Utah plant will deliver 320 megawatts total -- enough to power 350,000 homes. The project's full output will be 400 megawatts."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Register's Jessica Lyons reports: Apple wants to shorten SSL/TLS security certificates' lifespans, down from 398 days now to just 45 days by 2027, and sysadmins have some very strong feelings about this "nightmarish" plan. As one of the hundreds that took to Reddit to lament the proposal said: "This will suck. My least favorite vendor manages something like 10 websites for us, and we have to provide the certs manually every time. Between live and test this is gonna suck." The Apple proposal, a draft ballot measure that will likely go up for a vote among Certification Authority Browser Forum (CA/B Forum) members in the upcoming months, was unveiled by the iThings maker during the Forum's fall meeting. If approved, it will affect all Safari certificates, which follows a similar push by Google, that plans to reduce the max-validity period on Chrome for these digital trust files down to 90 days. ... [W]hile it's generally agreed that shorter lifespans improve internet security overall -- longer certificate terms mean criminals have more time to exploit vulnerabilities and old website certificates -- the burden of managing these expired certs will fall squarely on the shoulders of systems administrators. [...] Even certificate provider Sectigo, which sponsored the Apple proposal, admitted that the shortened lifespans "will no doubt prove a headache for busy IT security teams, juggling with lots of certificates expiring at different times." While automation is often touted as the solution to this problem, sysadmins were quick to point out that some SSL certs can't be automated. "This is somewhat nightmarish," said one sysadmin. "I have about 20 appliance like services that have no support for automation. Almost everything in my environment is automated to the extent that is practical. SSL renewal is the lone achilles heel that I have to deal with once every 365 days."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Donald Trump's new crypto project, World Liberty Financial, had a rocky start today with frequent website outages during its token sale. According to CNBC, only about 4% of registered investors have bought tokens, and the project sold less than 3% of the 20 billion tokens available. From the report: WLF's website suffered regular and lengthy outages for much of the morning and early afternoon, contributing to a limited number of sales. Only about 4,300 unique walled addresses hold the token as of Tuesday afternoon, according to blockchain data tracked by Etherscan, representing roughly 4% of the total number of people who registered. The platform says it has sold more than 532 million tokens at 15 cents per token. That is less than 3% of the 20 billion tokens made available for public sale. Over the course of the day, the website frequently showed a page saying, "We are under maintenance." The glitchy launch is a potential setback to the Republican presidential nominee with just three weeks until the election. Trump and his family have been touting the project since August, branding it as "The DeFiant Ones," a play on DeFi, which is short for decentralized finance.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader mprindle shares a report from BleepingComputer: Cisco has confirmed to BleepingComputer that it is investigating recent claims that it suffered a breach after a threat actor began selling allegedly stolen data on a hacking forum. [...] This statement comes after a well-known threat actor named "IntelBroker" said that he and two others called "EnergyWeaponUser and "zjj" breached Cisco on October 6, 2024, and stole a large amount of developer data from the company. "Compromised data: Github projects, Gitlab Projects, SonarQube projects, Source code, hard coded credentials, Certificates, Customer SRCs, Cisco Confidential Documents, Jira tickets, API tokens, AWS Private buckets, Cisco Technology SRCs, Docker Builds, Azure Storage buckets, Private & Public keys, SSL Certificates, Cisco Premium Products & More!," reads the post to a hacking forum. IntelBroker also shared samples of the alleged stolen data, including a database, customer information, various customer documentation, and screenshots of customer management portals. However, the threat actor did not provide further details about how the data was obtained.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Global sales of fully electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles rose by an annual 30.5% in September, as China surpassed its record numbers recorded in August and Europe resumed growth, market research firm Rho Motion said on Tuesday. Gains in the U.S. market have been slow and steady in anticipation of the Nov. 5 election, which makes it difficult to predict future trends in the country, data manager Charles Lester told Reuters. EVs -- whether fully electric (BEV) or plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) -- sold worldwide reached 1.69 million in September, Rho Motion data showed. Sales in China jumped 47.9% in September and reached 1.12 million vehicles, while in the United States and Canada they were up 4.3% to 0.15 million. In Europe, EV sales rose 4.2% to 0.3 million units, thanks to a 24% jump in the United Kingdom and gains in Italy, Germany and Denmark, Lester said. In the Chinese market, the penetration rate of BEV and PHEV is growing faster than some expected and sales "could be a record every month until the end of the year", Lester said. He added that Germany's 7% year-on-year growth was "definitely positive news", and that intermediate carbon emission reduction goals set in the EU for next year will test the bloc's market.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Phoronix's Michael Larabel reports: Intel and AMD have jointly announced the creation of an x86 ecosystem advisory group to bring together the two companies as well as other industry leaders -- both companies and individuals such as Linux creator Linus Torvalds. Intel and AMD are forming this x86 ecosystem advisory group to help foster collaboration and innovations around the x86 (x86_64) ISA. [...] Besides Intel amd AMD, other founding members include Broadcom, Dell, Google, HPE, HP Inc, Lenovo, Microsoft, Oracle, and Red Hat. Here are the "intended outcomes" for the group, as stated in the press release: The intended outcomes include: - Enhancing customer choice and compatibility across hardware and software, while accelerating their ability to benefit from new, cutting-edge features. - Simplifying architectural guidelines to enhance software consistency and standardize interfaces across x86 product offerings from Intel and AMD. - Enabling greater and more efficient integration of new capabilities into operating systems, frameworks and applications.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a press release this morning, Apple announced a new iPad Mini with a faster A17 Pro chip that supports Apple Intelligence. The Verge reports: The new Mini is mostly a spec bump: it runs a new A17 Pro chip, which Apple says has a 30 percent faster CPU, 25 percent faster GPU, and a Neural Engine twice as fast as the previous model. The device also supports the new Apple Pencil Pro, which is a nice touch for the Mini-toting artists out there, and comes with 128GB of storage in the base model rather than 64GB. (Those AI models need all the space they can get.) The Wi-Fi 6E chip is faster, the USB-C port is faster, everything about the iPad Mini is the same as before only faster this time. The only real design change with the new Mini is the colors. Apple's gone more colorful with a lot of its products this year, and the Mini comes in new purple and blue models. In photos they look muted rather than vivid, though, so don't expect the eye-popping new colors on the iPhone 16.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: This fall, thousands of fake albums were added to Spotify, with some appearing on real artist pages, where they're positioned to lure unsuspecting listeners into streaming by posing as new releases from favorite bands. An Ars reader flagged the issue after finding a fake album on the Spotify page of an UK psych rock band called Gong. The Gong fan knew that the band had begun touring again after a surprise new release last year, but the "latest release" listed by Spotify wasn't that album. Instead, at the top of Gong's page was a fake self-titled album supposedly released in 2024. The real fan detected the fake instantly, and not just because the generic electronic music sounded nothing like Gong's experimental sounds. The album's cover also gave the scheme away, using a generic font and neon stock image that invoked none of the trippy imagery that characterized Gong's typical album covers. Ars confirmed with Gong member Dave Sturt that the self-titled item was an obvious fake on Monday. At that time, Sturt said the band was working to get the junk album removed from its page, but as of Tuesday morning, that album remained online, along with hundreds of other albums uploaded by a fake label that former Spotify data "alchemist" Glenn McDonald flagged in a social media post that Spotify seemingly ignored. On his site, McDonald gathered the junk album data by label, noting that Beat Street Music, which has no web presence but released the fake Gong album, uploaded 240 junk albums on Friday alone. Similarly, Ancient Lake Records uploaded 471 albums on Friday. And Gupta Music added 483 just a few days prior, along with 600 junk albums from Future Jazz Records uploaded between September 30 and October 8. These junk albums don't appear to be specifically targeting popular artists, McDonald told Ars. Rather, generic music is uploaded under a wide range of one-word artist names. However, by using that tactic, some of these fake albums appeared on real artist pages, such as Gong, experimental rock band Swans, and English rock bands Asia and Yes. And that oversight is on Spotify, McDonald suggested. "We are aware of the issue, have relocated the content in question, and are considering our further options against the providing licensor," a Spotify spokesperson said. "When we identify or are alerted to attempts by bad actors to game the system, we take action that may include removing stream counts and withholding royalties. Spotify invests heavily in automated and manual reviews to prevent, detect, and mitigate the impact of bad actors attempting to collect unearned royalties."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Communications Commission announced that it will open a renewed investigation into broadband data caps and how they impact both consumer experience and company competition. From a report: The FCC is soliciting stories from consumers about their experiences with capped broadband service. The agency also opened a formal Notice of Inquiry to collect public comment that will further inform its actions around broadband data caps. "Restricting consumers' data can cut off small businesses from their customers, slap fees on low-income families and prevent people with disabilities from using the tools they rely on to communicate," FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said. "As the nation's leading agency on communications, it's our duty to dig deeper into these practices and make sure that consumers are put first."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple's AI research team has uncovered significant weaknesses in the reasoning abilities of large language models, according to a newly published study. MacRumors: The study, published on arXiv [PDF], outlines Apple's evaluation of a range of leading language models, including those from OpenAI, Meta, and other prominent developers, to determine how well these models could handle mathematical reasoning tasks. The findings reveal that even slight changes in the phrasing of questions can cause major discrepancies in model performance that can undermine their reliability in scenarios requiring logical consistency. Apple draws attention to a persistent problem in language models: their reliance on pattern matching rather than genuine logical reasoning. In several tests, the researchers demonstrated that adding irrelevant information to a question -- details that should not affect the mathematical outcome -- can lead to vastly different answers from the models.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Many colleges are under financial pressure, and the cracks are starting to show. From a report: At least 20 colleges closed in 2024, and more are set to shut down after the current academic year, according to the latest tally by Implan, an economic software and analysis company. Altogether, more than 40 colleges have closed since 2020, according to a separate report by Best Colleges. As the sticker price at some private colleges nears six figures a year, students have increasingly opted for less expensive public schools or alternatives to a four-year degree altogether, such as trade programs or apprenticeships. At the same time, the population of college-age students is also shrinking, a trend referred to as the "enrollment cliff."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: If you're a fan of uBlock Origin, don't be surprised if it stops functioning on Chrome. The Google-owned browser has started disabling the free ad blocker as part of the company's plan to phase out older "Manifest V2" extensions. On Tuesday, the developer of uBlock Origin, Raymond Hill, retweeted a screenshot from one user, showing the Chrome browser disabling the ad blocker. "These extensions are no longer supported. Chrome recommends that you remove them," the pop-up from the Chrome browser told the user. In response, Hill wrote: "The depreciation of uBO in the Chrome Web Store has started."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SSD prices are set to drop up to 10% in Q4 2024, market research firm TrendForce has reported. The decline stems from increased production and weakening demand, particularly in the consumer sector. Enterprise SSD prices, however, may see a slight increase. TrendForce analysts attribute the softer demand partly to slower-than-expected adoption of AI PCs. The mobile storage market could experience even steeper price cuts, with eMMC and UFS components potentially falling 13% as smartphone makers deplete inventories. The forecast follows modest price reductions observed in Q3 2024.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In June, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) gave employees a presentation and tech demo called "AI-mazing Tech-venture" in which Google's Gemini AI was presented as a tool archives employees could use to "enhance productivity." During a demo, the AI was queried with questions about the John F. Kennedy assassination, according to a copy of the presentation obtained by 404 Media using a public records request. In December, NARA plans to launch a public-facing AI-powered chatbot called "Archie AI," 404 Media has learned. "The National Archives has big plans for AI," a NARA spokesperson told 404 Media. "It's going to be essential to how we conduct our work, how we scale our services for Americans who want to be able to access our records from anywhere, anytime, and how we ensure that we are ready to care for the records being created today and in the future." Employee chat logs given during the presentation show that National Archives employees are concerned about the idea that AI tools will be used in archiving, a practice that is inherently concerned with accurately recording history. One worker who attended the presentation told 404 Media "I suspect they're going to introduce it to the workplace. I'm just a person who works there and hates AI bullshit." The presentation was given about a month after the National Archives banned employees from using ChatGPT because it said it posted an "unacceptable risk to NARA data security," and cautioned employees that they should "not rely on LLMs for factual information."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Vietnam will convert all its networks to IPv6, under a sweeping digital infrastructure strategy announced last week. From a report: The plan emerged in Decision No. 1132/QD-TTg -- signed into existence by permanent deputy prime minister Nguyen Hoa Binh -- and defines goals for 2025 and 2030. By 2025, the nation intends to connect two new submarine cables -- an important local issue. Earlier this year, internet speeds slowed when three of the five cables connecting the country broke. Also by 2025, the country wants "universal" fiber-to-the-home, 5G services in all cities and industrial zones, and work to have commenced on an unspecified number of datacenters capable of running AI applications and operating with power usage effectiveness index (PUE) of less than 1.4. [...] Vietnam's population exceeds 100 million and it already has 140 mobile subscriptions per 100 inhabitants. IPv4 with network address translation can scale to those levels -- if Vietnamese carriers have secured sufficient number resources.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The number of sites identified as potentially having been polluted with banned cancer-causing "forever chemicals" in England is on the rise, and the Environment Agency (EA) says it does not have the budget to deal with them. From a report: A former RAF airfield in Cambridgeshire and a fire service college in the Cotswolds have joined a chemicals plant in Lancashire and a fire protection equipment supplier in North Yorkshire on the agency's list of "problem sites" for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). In total, according to a report compiled for the agency, there could be more than 10,000 locations in England contaminated with PFAS -- substances that have been linked to a wide range of diseases including cancers, and which do not break down in the environment, earning them the nickname "forever chemicals." But to date the agency is only taking action on four sites. [...] In an email sent to Defra in May, the agency says there are "funding pressures this year to take on all the inspection work we have been asked to do" relating to "PFAS and the two new potential site inspection requests we have accepted for AGC and Duxford." "These are the first requests we have had for many years and the very high cost of analysing for PFAS is beginning to get frightening,â the agency wrote. The "ballpark estimate of costs to carry out ... investigations on four PFAS problem sites ... has just come out at between $2.3m-$3.5m. We aren't planning to spend anything like [that], certainly not immediately but it does put the total value of our contaminated land budget of $392k plus $262k from [the chemicals funding stream] into context."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

India announced on Tuesday it would allocate spectrum for satellite services through administrative means rather than auction, a decision that aligns with recent comments by Elon Musk and rebuffs lobbying efforts by the country's largest telecom operators. From a report: Jyotiraditya Scindia, India's Communications Minister, stated on Tuesday evening: "Spectrum for satcomm is shared spectrum, and cannot be auctioned. The administrative allocation of satellite spectrum is practised worldwide." This move favors Musk's Starlink and Amazon's Project Kuiper, who have advocated for shared spectrum allocation. It contradicts Reliance Jio's position, led by India's richest man Mukesh Ambani, which has pushed for auctions to ensure a "level playing field." Musk had warned on Monday that satellite spectrum auctions "would be unprecedented," citing long-standing ITU designations of shared satellite spectrum.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a David vs. Goliath legal battle, AI powerhouse OpenAI is squaring off against a little-known entrepreneur who claims he conceived the company's name and mission months before its star-studded launch. Guy Ravine, a self-taught programmer with a history of near-misses in tech, registered the domain open.ai in March 2015. He envisioned a collaborative platform to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) for the benefit of humanity. By year's end, Ravine had pitched his "Open AI" concept to industry luminaries and filed for a trademark. Then, in December 2015, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman announced the creation of OpenAI, backed by a promised billion dollars from Elon Musk and others. The similarity was uncanny -- a non-profit aimed at developing AGI for the public good. "What the f---?" Ravine recalls thinking. He claims his idea was stolen, while OpenAI dismisses him as an opportunistic "troll" and a "fraud." The ensuing legal battle has consumed Ravine's life, Bloomberg Businessweek covers in great detail, and has raised thorny questions about idea ownership in Silicon Valley. It also casts a shadow over OpenAI's origin story as the company, now valued at $157 billion, shifts from its non-profit roots to a for-profit juggernaut. "It's humanity's asset," Ravine insists. "It's not his [Altman's] asset." For now, a judge has barred Ravine from using "Open AI" while the suit proceeds, but the inventor has vowed to fight on against what he calls "the most feared law firm in the world." An amusing excerpt from the story: But Ravine had poked the bear, and as he packed up his house on Aug. 11, 2023, he opened an email from a lawyer at the firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP, informing him that OpenAI was suing him in federal court over the domain and trademark. "I'm like, what the f---?" Ravine recalls. Altman, he says, "could have had it for free" -- or at least for the cost of a donation. "Instead, he decided to donate millions of dollars to literally the most feared law firm in the world, to sue me." Again and again in our conversations, he returns to that phrase: "the most feared law firm in the world." Finally, I ask him how he knows this. He turns his laptop toward me and pulls up the email. The signature reads "Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP: Most Feared Law Firm in the World."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.