An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The Australian government plans to enact laws requiring big tech firms to protect its citizens online, the latest move by the center-left Labor administration to crack down on social media including through age limits and curbs on misinformation. Communications Minister Michelle Rowland announced the government's plan for a legislated Digital Duty of Care in Australia on Wednesday night, saying it aligned with similar laws in the UK and European Union. "It is now time for industry to show leadership, and for social media to recognize it has a social responsibility," Rowland said in a speech in Sydney announcing the measures. It would "keep users safe and help prevent online harms." In response to the laws, Facebook and Instagram operator Meta Platforms Inc. called for the restrictions to be handled by app stores, such as those run by Google and Apple Inc., rather than the platforms themselves. The government has ignored those requests, but has yet to announce what fines companies would face or what age verification information will need to be provided. At the same time, Albanese has moved forward controversial laws to target misinformation and disinformation online, which opponents have labeled an attack on freedom of speech. Earlier this month, Albanese said the government would legislate for a ban on social media for children under 16, a policy the government says is world-leading. "Social media is doing harm to our kids and I'm calling time on it," Albanese told a news conference.

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ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols reports: [...] At KubeCon North America 2024 this week, CNCF executive director Priyanka Sharma said in her keynote, "Patent trolls are not contributors or even adopters in our ecosystem. Instead, they prey on cloud-native adopters by abusing the legal system. We are here to tell the world that these patent trolls don't stand a chance because CNCF is uniting the ecosystem to deter them. Like a herd of musk oxen, we will run them off our pasture." CNCF CTO Chris Aniszczyk added: "The reason trolls can make money is that many companies find it too expensive to fight back, so they pay trolls a settlement fee to avoid the even higher cost of litigation. Now, when a whole herd of companies band together like musk oxen to drive a troll off, it changes the cost structure of fighting back. It disrupts their economic model." How? Jim Zemlin, the Linux Foundation's executive director, said, "We don't negotiate with trolls. Instead, with United Patents, we go to the PTO and crush those patents. We strive to invalidate them by working with developers who have prior art, bringing this to the attention of the USPTO, and killing patents. No negotiation, no settlement. We destroy the very asset that made patent trolls' business work. Together, since we've started this effort, 90% of the time, we've been able to go in there and destroy these patents." "It's time for us to band together," said Joanna Lee, CNCF's VP of strategic programs and legal. "We encourage all organizations in our ecosystem to get involved. Join the fight, enhance your own company's protection, protect your customers, enhance our community defense, and save money on legal expenses." While getting your company and its legal department involved in the effort to fend off patent trolls is important, developers can also help. CNCF announced the Cloud Native Heroes Challenge, a patent troll bounty program in which cloud-native developers and technologists can earn swag and win prizes. They're asking you to find evidence of preexisting technology -- referred to by patent lawyers as "prior art" -- that can kill off bad patents. This could be open-source documentation (including release notes), published standards or specifications, product manuals, articles, blogs, books, or any publicly available information. All entrants who submit an entry that conforms to the contest rules will receive a free "Cloud Native Hero" t-shirt that can be picked up at any future KubeCon+CloudNativeCon. The winner will also receive a $3,000 cash prize. In the inaugural contest, the CNCF is seeking information that can be used to invalidate Claim 1 from US Patent US-11695823-B1. This is the major patent asserted by Edge Networking Systems against Kubernetes users. As is often the case with such patents, it's much too broad. This patent describes a network architecture that facilitates secure and flexible programmability between a user device and across a network with full lifecycle management of services and infrastructure applications. That describes pretty much any modern cloud system. If you can find prior art that describes such a system before June 13, 2013, you could be a winner. Some such materials have already been found. This is already listed in the "known references" tab of the contest information page and doesn't qualify. If you care about keeping open-source software easy and cheap to use -- or you believe trolls shouldn't be allowed to take advantage of companies that make or use programs -- you can help. I'll be doing some digging myself.

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Rocket Lab says it has signed the first customer for its Neutron launch vehicle, with a launch planned for mid-2025. SpaceNews reports: The company announced Nov. 12 that it signed a contract with an undisclosed "commercial satellite constellation operator" for two launches of Neutron, one in mid-2026 and the other in 2027, a deal that could lead to additional launches for the same customer. "We see this agreement as an important opportunity that signifies the beginning of a productive collaboration that could see Neutron deploy this particular customer's entire constellation," Peter Beck, chief executive of Rocket Lab, said in an earnings call Nov. 12 to discuss the company's third quarter financial results. [...] Beck said Rocket Lab is "deep into the qualification testing" of flight hardware, including vehicle structures and the Archimedes engine, which was hotfired for the first time in August at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. "Our engine test cadence in Mississippi has doubled over the quarter, and we've bought multiple engines to the test stand," he said. Neutron is a key part of the company's ambitions to deploy its own constellation, something that Beck has hinted at in some previous earnings calls. His presentation called that constellation the third pillar for Rocket Lab, after launch services and spacecraft production, both of which support the constellation. "We're not ready to reveal details on what this constellation or application may be," he said, "but I think it's important to understand the strong foundation we've built up across launch and space systems to enable it in due course." That includes Neutron, with Beck citing SpaceX's use of Falcon 9 to deploy its Starlink constellation. "Everything is irrelevant without a reusable high cadence launch. So, Neutron is really the key to unlocking that."

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Each day leading up through the 16th (the official day Half-Life 2 was launched), Ars Technica will be publishing a new article looking back at the game and its impact. Here's an excerpt from an article published today by Ars Technica's Kyle Orland: When millions of eager gamers first installed Half-Life 2 20 years ago, many, if not most, of them found they needed to install another piece of software alongside it. Few at the time could imagine that piece of companion software -- with the pithy name Steam -- would eventually become the key distribution point and social networking center for the entire PC gaming ecosystem, making the idea of physical PC games an anachronism in the process. While Half-Life 2 wasn't the first Valve game released on Steam, it was the first high-profile title to require the platform, even for players installing the game from physical retail discs. That requirement gave Valve access to millions of gamers with new Steam accounts and helped the company bypass traditional retail publishers of the day by directly marketing and selling its games (and, eventually, games from other developers). But 2004-era Steam also faced a vociferous backlash from players who saw the software as a piece of nuisance DRM (digital rights management) that did little to justify its existence at the time. In honor of the anniversary, Orbifold Studios released a new Half-Life 2 RTX trailer. "[T]his is a remastering project that leverages the technologies of NVIDIA's RTX Remix and has the blessing of the original developer, Valve," reports Wccftech. "Orbifold Studios, a team of experienced modders, was founded specifically to bring this project to fruition." It's unclear when exactly this project will be finished. Nvidia is also giving away a custom Half-Life 2 themed RTX 480 Super Founders Edition.

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sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: What if, rather than scouring the internet, ChatGPT could search all of the DNA on Earth? That future just got a bit closer with Evo, an AI model reported today in Science. The program -- trained on billions of lines of genetic sequences -- can design new proteins and even whole genomes. Previous AIs could only interpret and predict relatively short sections of DNA, and they could only work with groups of nucleotides -- the A, C, G, T alphabet of DNA -- not individual nucleotides. To take things to the next level, researchers trained Evo on 300 billion nucleotides of sequence information. In a first test, Evo bested other AI models on predicting the impact of mutations on protein performance. The team then had Evo design new versions of the CRISPR genome editor; the best designs were as good at cutting DNA as a commercial version. And in what study author Brian Hie, a computational biologist at Stanford University, calls the "most futuristic and crazy" part of the study, the researchers asked Evo to generate DNA sequences that are long enough to serve as genomes for bacteria -- a step toward AI-designed synthetic genomes. Much of the work on AI occurs in secret at companies. But the researchers have released Evo publicly so that other researchers can use it, and Hie says the team has no plans to commercialize its creation. "For now, I see this as a research project."

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Datacenter operators are increasingly turning to small modular reactors (SMRs) like those developed by Oklo to meet growing energy demands. According to The Register, Oklo has secured commitments from two major datacenter providers for 750 MW of power, pending regulatory approvals. It brings the firm's planned nuclear build-out to 2.1 gigawatts. From the report: Oklo's designs are, from what we understand, inspired by the Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR-II) and utilize liquid-metal cooling. They are capable of producing between 15MW and 50MW of power, depending on the configuration. That means Oklo's datacenter customers plan to deploy somewhere between 15 and 50 of the reactors to satisfy their thirst for electricity. However, they may be waiting a while. According to Oklo's website, the nuclear startup hopes to bring its first plant online before the end of the decade. Before that can happen, though, Oklo will need to obtain approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- something for which it says it's already submitted applications. In 2022, the watchdog rejected an Oklo plan to build a small atomic reactor in Idaho, citing "significant information gaps" on safety-related measures. That said, Oklo has lately received support from US government agencies including the Department of Energy (DoE), which has awarded a site use permit, while Idaho National Laboratory -- home of EBR-II -- has provided fuel material to support the efforts. Speaking of fuel, Oklo's designs may not suffer from the challenges other SMR startups, like Terrapower, have encountered. Oklo's designs are intended to run on recycled nuclear waste products from traditional reactors. In fact, the startup is currently working with DoE national labs to develop new fuel recycling technologies. Oklo hopes to bring a commercial-scale recycling plan online by the early 2030s.

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Francois Chollet, an AI pioneer and creator of the Keras framework, announced that he's leaving Google to co-found a new company. Neowin reports: In his parting message, Chollet assured that he would still be active with Keras and participate in its development on GitHub. His successor, Jeff Carpenter, will now lead Keras at Google, and Chollet expressed his full confidence in the team's future direction. Keras has come a long way since Chollet released it in 2015, initially as a high-level neural network API meant for simplicity and accessibility. Keras quickly gained traction in the AI community for its user-friendly Python interface and compatibility with frameworks like TensorFlow, simplifying machine learning model building for developers across various levels. Google published a blog post praising Chollet and reaffirming their commitment to Keras. Last year, Google lost the "Godfather of AI," Geoffrey Hinton, who left the company after nearly a decade. He said he quit his job at Google so he can freely speak out about the risks of AI.

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quonset shares a report from CNN: Between August 2022 and January 2024, hundreds of swatting calls were made across the country targeting religious institutions, government offices, schools, and random people. Authorities were finally able to track down the criminal, Alan Fillon, who entered the plea to four counts of making interstate threats to injure the person of another, the US Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida said in a news release. He faces up to five years in prison on each count. A sentencing date has not yet been set. The US Attorney's Office said Filion made more than 375 swatting and threat calls from August 2022 to January 2024. Those calls included ones in which he claimed to have planted bombs in targeted locations or threatened to detonate bombs and/or conduct mass shootings at those locations, prosecutors said. He targeted religious institutions, high schools, colleges and universities, government officials and people across the United States. Filion was 16 at the time he placed the majority of the calls.

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Phoronix's Michael Larabel reports: The OpenMP Architecture Review Board announced from SC24 that OpenMP 6.0 is now available as a major upgrade to the OpenMP specification for multi-process programming within C / C++ / Fortran. A big emphasis on OpenMP 6.0 is making it easier for developers to embrace. OpenMP 6.0 aims to make it easier to support parallel programming in new applications, easier to adapt to new use-cases, and more fine-grained developer control. OpenMP 6.0 simplifies task programming with support for task execution by free-agent threads, allowing for recording of task graphs for efficient replay, and other improvements. OpenMP 6.0 also brings support for array syntax applications, better control over memory allocations and accessibility, easier writing of asynchronous data transfers, and other improvements for enhanced device support / offloading. There is also easier programming of loop transformations, support for induction, support for C23 / Fortran 2023 / C++23, grater user control of storage resources and memory spaces, and other improvements.

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An update to OpenAI's ChatGPT app for macOS adds integration with third-party apps, including developer tools such as VS Code, Terminal, iTerm2 and Apple's Xcode. 9to5Mac reports: In a demo seen by 9to5Mac, ChatGPT was able to understand code from an Xcode project and then provide code suggestions without the user having to manually copy and paste content into the ChatGPT app. It can even read content from more than one app at the same time, which is very useful for working with developer tools. According to OpenAI, the idea is to expand integration to more apps in the future. For now, integration with third-party apps is coming exclusively to the Mac version of ChatGPT, but there's another catch. The feature requires a paid ChatGPT subscription, at least for now. ChatGPT Plus and Team subscribers will receive access to integration with third-party apps on macOS starting today, while access for Enterprise and Education users will be rolled out "in the next few weeks." OpenAI told 9to5Mac that it wants to make the feature available to everyone in the future, although there's no estimate of when this will happen. For privacy reasons, users can control at any time when and which apps ChatGPT can read. The app can be downloaded here.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Data Center Dynamics: The Japanese government is planning to invest approximately $65 billion to support the country's semiconductor and AI industries. The initiative, which will run until the end of the decade, is expected to generate ~$104 billion in public and private investment during the period. According to a report from Reuters, this new round of funding will specifically target state-backed chip foundry Rapidus and other AI chip suppliers. Rapidus was founded in November 2022 when the Japanese government and eight Japanese technology and automotive firms, including SoftBank, Sony, and NTT, invested more than $500 million to launch the business. Speaking at a news conference this week, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba did not provide any information about how the venture would be financed but said the government would not issue deficit-covering bonds. Japan's government also said it won't raise taxes to finance the $65 billion plan.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: U.K. consumer rights group 'Which?' is filing a legal claim against Apple under competition law on behalf of some 40 million users of iCloud, its cloud storage service. The collective proceeding lawsuit, which is seeking 3 billion pounds in compensation damages (around $3.8 billion at current exchange rates), alleges that Apple has broken competition rules by giving its own cloud storage service preferential treatment and effectively locking people into paying for iCloud at "rip-off" prices. "iOS has a monopoly and is in control of Apple's operating systems and it is incumbent on Apple not to use that dominance to gain an unfair advantage in related markets, like the cloud storage market. But that is exactly what has happened," Which wrote in a press release announcing filing the claim with the U.K.'s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT). The lawsuit accuses Apple of encouraging users of its devices to sign up to iCloud for photo storage and other data storage needs, while simultaneously making it difficult for consumers to use alternative storage providers -- including by not allowing them to store or back-up all of their phone's data with a third-party provider. "iOS users then have to pay for the service once photos, notes, messages and other data go over the free 5GB limit," Which noted. The suit also accuses Apple of overcharging U.K. consumers for iCloud subscriptions owing to the lack of competition. "Apple raised the price of iCloud for UK consumers by between 20% and 29% across its storage tiers in 2023," it wrote, saying it's seeking damages for all affected Apple customers -- and estimating that individual consumers could be owed an average of 70 pounds (around $90), depending on how long they've been paying Apple for iCloud services. "Anyone who has 'obtained' iCloud services, including non-paying users, over the nine-year timeframe since the Consumer Rights Act came into force on October 1st, 2015," will be included in the claim. U.K.-based consumers will have to opt-out if they do not want to be included. "Consumers who live outside the U.K. and believe they are eligible to be included must actively opt-in to join the action," adds TechCrunch.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: U.K. consumer rights group 'Which?' is filing a legal claim against Apple under competition law on behalf of some 40 million users of iCloud, its cloud storage service. The collective proceeding lawsuit, which is seeking 3 billion pounds in compensation damages (around $3.8 billion at current exchange rates), alleges that Apple has broken competition rules by giving its own cloud storage service preferential treatment and effectively locking people into paying for iCloud at "rip-off" prices. "iOS has a monopoly and is in control of Apple's operating systems and it is incumbent on Apple not to use that dominance to gain an unfair advantage in related markets, like the cloud storage market. But that is exactly what has happened," Which wrote in a press release announcing filing the claim with the U.K.'s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT). The lawsuit accuses Apple of encouraging users of its devices to sign up to iCloud for photo storage and other data storage needs, while simultaneously making it difficult for consumers to use alternative storage providers -- including by not allowing them to store or back-up all of their phone's data with a third-party provider. "iOS users then have to pay for the service once photos, notes, messages and other data go over the free 5GB limit," Which noted. The suit also accuses Apple of overcharging U.K. consumers for iCloud subscriptions owing to the lack of competition. "Apple raised the price of iCloud for UK consumers by between 20% and 29% across its storage tiers in 2023," it wrote, saying it's seeking damages for all affected Apple customers -- and estimating that individual consumers could be owed an average of 70 pounds (around $90), depending on how long they've been paying Apple for iCloud services. "Anyone who has 'obtained' iCloud services, including non-paying users, over the nine-year timeframe since the Consumer Rights Act came into force on October 1st, 2015," will be included in the claim. U.K.-based consumers will have to opt-out if they do not want to be included. "Consumers who live outside the U.K. and believe they are eligible to be included must actively opt-in to join the action," adds TechCrunch.

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A new study reveals that late work is judged more negatively than on-time submissions, even if delays are minimal or pre-communicated. "The findings suggest that, while you might be tempted to take the maximum allotted time to put the finishing touches to a report, submission or piece of work, the extra effort might not be appreciated by colleagues if it comes at the expense of punctual delivery," reports The Guardian. From the report: The study surveyed thousands of people in the US and UK, including managers, executives, human resources personnel and others whose jobs included an element of evaluating others. Participants were asked to rate pieces of work, such as advertising flyers, art, business proposals, product pitches, photography and news articles. But first, they were told it was either submitted early, on deadline or late. "Late" work was consistently rated as worse in quality than when people were told the same work was completed early or on time. The difference was equivalent to including an objective shortcoming such as not meeting a word count. A missed deadline led evaluators to believe an employee had less integrity, and they reported they would be less willing to work with or assign tasks to that person in the future. "Everyone saw the exact same art contest entry, school submission or business proposal, but they couldn't help but use their knowledge of when it came in to guide their evaluation of how good it was," said Maglio, who co-authored the study with David Fang of Stanford University. Those who eagerly submit work early should be advised that this does not appear to earn a boost in opinion, according to the report in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. It also didn't matter how late the work was submitted, with one day or one week delays viewed just as negatively -- and that remained the case if the employee gave their manager advance warning. The latest study suggests that it is this inability to plan realistically that is frowned on, with factors beyond an employee's control, such as jury duty, not viewed as negatively. "If the reason why you missed the deadline was beyond your control, you as the employee should let your manager know," said Maglio. "That seems to be one of the few instances in which people cut you a break."

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During a public joint hearing today titled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth," four experts testified that the U.S. is running secret UAP programs, including crash retrieval and reverse-engineering programs for advanced nonhuman technology. Although the Pentagon maintains there's no evidence of alien spacecraft, witnesses like Luis Elizondo and Michael Gold argue that UAPs represent an intelligence enigma and call for open, stigma-free study to address potential security concerns and unknown scientific possibilities. NPR reports: Tim Gallaudet, retired rear admiral, U.S. Navy; CEO of Ocean STL Consulting, LLC "Confirmation that UAPs are interacting with humanity came for me in January 2015," Gallaudet said in his written testimony (PDF). He describes being part of a pre-deployment naval exercise off the U.S. East Coast that culminated in the famous "Go Fast" video, in which a Navy F/A-18 jet's sensors recorded "an unidentified object exhibiting flight and structural characteristics unlike anything in our arsenal." He was among a group of commanders involved in the exercise who received an email containing the video, which was sent by the operations officer of Fleet Forces Command, Gallaudet said. "The very next day, the email disappeared from my account and those of the other recipients without explanation," he said. Luis Elizondo, author and former Department of Defense official Elizondo's written testimony (PDF) was brief and alleged that a secretive arms race is playing out on the global stage. "Let me be clear: UAP are real," he wrote. "Advanced technologies not made by our Government -- or any other government -- are monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe. Furthermore, the U.S. is in possession of UAP technologies, as are some of our adversaries." Elizondo is a former intelligence officer who later "managed a highly sensitive Special Access Program on behalf of the White House and the National Security Council," according to his official bio (PDF). "By 2012, [Elizondo] was the senior ranking person of the DOD's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a secretive Pentagon unit that studied unidentified anomalous phenomena," his bio states, adding that he resigned in 2017. Michael Gold, former NASA associate administrator of space policy and partnerships; member of NASA UAP Independent Study Team Gold's written testimony (PDF) stressed the need for government agencies and academics to "overcome the pernicious stigma that continues to impede scientific dialogue and open discussions" about unexplained phenomena. "As the saying goes, the truth is out there," Gold said, "we just need to be bold enough and brave enough to face it." Michael Shellenberger, founder of Public, a news outlet on the Substack platform Shellenberger's testimony (PDF) ran to some 214 pages, including a lengthy timeline of UAP reports from 1947 to 2023. Shellenberger pressed the White House and Congress to act, calling for the adoption of UAP transparency legislation and cutting funds for any related programs that aren't disclosed to lawmakers. "UAP transparency is bi-partisan and critical to our national security," his written testimony stated. You can watch the proceeding here.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: There's a general consensus that we won't be able to consistently perform sophisticated quantum calculations without the development of error-corrected quantum computing, which is unlikely to arrive until the end of the decade. It's still an open question, however, whether we could perform limited but useful calculations at an earlier point. IBM is one of the companies that's betting the answer is yes, and on Wednesday, it announced a series of developments aimed at making that possible. On their own, none of the changes being announced are revolutionary. But collectively, changes across the hardware and software stacks have produced much more efficient and less error-prone operations. The net result is a system that supports the most complicated calculations yet on IBM's hardware, leaving the company optimistic that its users will find some calculations where quantum hardware provides an advantage. [...] Wednesday's announcement was based on the introduction of the second version of its Heron processor, which has 133 qubits. That's still beyond the capability of simulations on classical computers, should it be able to operate with sufficiently low errors. IBM VP Jay Gambetta told Ars that Revision 2 of Heron focused on getting rid of what are called TLS (two-level system) errors. "If you see this sort of defect, which can be a dipole or just some electronic structure that is caught on the surface, that is what we believe is limiting the coherence of our devices," Gambetta said. This happens because the defects can resonate at a frequency that interacts with a nearby qubit, causing the qubit to drop out of the quantum state needed to participate in calculations (called a loss of coherence). By making small adjustments to the frequency that the qubits are operating at, it's possible to avoid these problems. This can be done when the Heron chip is being calibrated before it's opened for general use. Separately, the company has done a rewrite of the software that controls the system during operations. "After learning from the community, seeing how to run larger circuits, [we were able to] almost better define what it should be and rewrite the whole stack towards that," Gambetta said. The result is a dramatic speed-up. "Something that took 122 hours now is down to a couple of hours," he told Ars. Since people are paying for time on this hardware, that's good for customers now. However, it could also pay off in the longer run, as some errors can occur randomly, so less time spent on a calculation can mean fewer errors. Despite all those improvements, errors are still likely during any significant calculations. While it continues to work toward developing error-corrected qubits, IBM is focusing on what it calls error mitigation, which it first detailed last year. [...] The problem here is that using the function is computationally difficult, and the difficulty increases with the qubit count. So, while it's still easier to do error mitigation calculations than simulate the quantum computer's behavior on the same hardware, there's still the risk of it becoming computationally intractable. But IBM has also taken the time to optimize that, too. "They've got algorithmic improvements, and the method that uses tensor methods [now] uses the GPU," Gambetta told Ars. "So I think it's a combination of both."

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Wi-Fi 8 (also known as IEEE 802.11bn Ultra High Reliability) is expected to arrive around 2028, prioritizing an enhanced user experience over speed by optimizing interactions between devices and access points. While it retains similar bandwidth specifications as the previous standard, Wi-Fi 8 aims to improve network efficiency, reducing interference and congestion for a more reliable and adaptive connection. PCWorld's Mark Hachman reports: As of Nov. 2024, MediaTek believes that Wi-Fi 8 will look virtually identical to Wi-Fi 7 in several key areas: The maximum physical layer (PHY) rate will be the same at 2,880Mbps x 8, or 23Gbits/s. It will also use the same four frequency bands (2, 4, 5, and 6GHz) and the same 4096 QAM modulation across a maximum channel bandwidth of 320MHz. (A Wi-Fi 8 router won't get 23Gbps of bandwidth, of course. According to MediaTek, the actual peak throughput in a "clean," or laboratory, environment is just 80 percent or so of the hypothetical peak throughput, and actual, real-world results can be far less.) Still, put simply, Wi-Fi 8 should deliver the same wireless bandwidth as Wi-Fi 7, using the same channels and the same modulation. Every Wi-Fi standard has also been backwards-compatible with its predecessors, too. What Wi-Fi 8 will do, though, is change how your client device, such as a PC or a phone, interacts with multiple access points. Think of this as an evolution of how your laptop talks to your home's networking equipment. Over time, Wi-Fi has evolved from communications between one laptop and a router, across a single channel. Channel hopping routed different clients to different bands. When Wi-Fi 6 was developed, a dedicated 6GHz channel was added, sometimes as a dedicated "backhaul" between your home's access points. Now, mesh networks are more common, giving your laptop a variety of access points, channels, and frequencies to select between. For a detailed breakdown of the upcoming advancements coming to Wi-Fi 8, including Coordinated Spatial Reuse, Coordinated Beamforming, and Dynamic Sub-Channel Operation, read the full article.

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The FBI raided Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan's Manhattan apartment, seizing his phone and electronic devices. A source close to the matter told The New York Post it was politically motivated due to Polymarket's successful prediction of Trump's election win. It's "grand political theater at its worst," the source said. "They could have asked his lawyer for any of these things. Instead, they staged a so-called raid so they can leak it to the media and use it for obvious political reasons." Although no charges were filed, the raid has sparked controversy, with speculation of political retribution and concerns over potential market manipulation, as Polymarket faces scrutiny both in the U.S. and from French regulators. The New York Post reports: Coplan was not arrested and has not been charged, a Polymarket spokesperson told The Post on Wednesday evening. "Polymarket is a fully transparent prediction market that helps everyday people better understand the events that matter most to them, including elections," the rep said. "We charge no fees, take no trading positions, and allow observers from around the world to analyze all market data as a public good." Coplan posted on X after his run-in with the feds: "New phone, who dis?" Polymarket does not allow trading in the US, though bettors can bypass the ban by accessing the site through VPN. The FBI's investigation comes a week after Coplan said Polymarket is planning to return to the US. [...] In 2022, the online gambling platform was forced to pause its trading in the US and pay a $1.4 million penalty to settle charges with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that it had failed to register with the agency. [In France, regulators are investigating Polymarket's compliance with national gambling laws, with concerns about unauthorized gambling activities within the country.] A Fortune report published a week before the election found widespread evidence of wash-trading on Polymarket. "Polymarket's Terms of Use expressly prohibit market manipulation," a Polymarket spokesperson told Fortune in a statement.

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Bluesky has reached 15 million users, driven by a recent surge in U.S. signups following the presidential election. It's currently the top free app on iOS. The Verge reports: The platform, which rests on the decentralized AT Protocol, added about a million new users in the last week. Bluesky COO Rose Wang recently told The Verge that the "majority" of new users flocking to the platform have been from the US. Meta's Threads is still outpacing Bluesky, having recently hit 275 million monthly users and growing at a rate of over a million signups per day. But Bluesky offers a very different experience. Both are ad-free (for now), but whereas Threads uses a single Meta-made algorithmic feed, Bluesky offers user-created algorithmic feeds in addition to its "Discover" and "Popular With Friends" ones.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The classic PC games market is "in a sorry state," according to DRM-free and classic-minded storefront GOG. Small games that aren't currently selling get abandoned, and compatibility issues arise as technology moves forward or as one-off development ideas age like milk. Classic games are only 20 percent of GOG's catalog, and the firm hasn't actually called itself "Good Old Games" in 12 years. And yet, today, GOG announces that it is making "a significant commitment of resources" toward a new GOG Preservation Program. It starts with 100 games for which GOG's own developers are working to create current and future compatibility, keeping them DRM-free and giving them ongoing tech support, along with granting them a "Good Old Game: Preserved by GOG" stamp. GOG is not shifting its mission of providing a DRM-free alternative to Steam, Epic, and other PC storefronts, at least not entirely. But it is demonstrably excited about a new focus that ties back to its original name, inspired in some part by its work on Alpha Protocol. "We think we can significantly impact the classics industry by focusing our resources on it and creating superior products," writes Arthur Dejardin, head of sales and marketing at GOG. "If we wanted to spread the DRM-free gospel by focusing on getting new AAA games on GOG instead, we would make little progress with the same amount of effort and money (we've been trying various versions of that for the last 5 years)." What kind of games? Scanning the list of Good Old Games, most of them are, by all accounts, both good and old. Personally, I'm glad to see the Jagged Alliance games, System Shock 2, Warcraft I & II, Dungeon Keeper Gold and Theme Park, SimCity 3000 Unlimited, and the Wing Commander series (particularly, personally, Privateer). Most of them are, understandably, Windows-only, though Mac support extends to 34 titles so far, and Linux may pick up many more through Proton compatibility, beyond the 19 native titles to date. [...] [I]f you see the shiny foil-ish GOG badge on a game, it's an assurance that GOG has done all it can to bring forward a classic title. It's important work, too. "Preserving" games doesn't just mean locking a stable media in a vault, but keeping games accessible, and playable.

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