Shameless Plug

MicroStrategy's Big Bet On Bitcoin Went Stratospheric Published on January 01, 2025 at 03:15AM MicroStrategy has transformed into a "bitcoin treasury company," investing billions in bitcoin through debt and equity issuance, driving its stock price up nearly 400% in 2024 despite declining software revenues and heightened financial risks. The Guardian reports: In the summer of 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic upended economies around the world, an obscure U.S. software firm decided to diversify. MicroStrategy, whose head office is situated next to a shopping mall and metro station in Tysons Corner, Virginia, had decided the steady business of "software as a service" was not racy enough. Instead, it would branch out by investing up to $250 million in alternative assets -- "stocks, bonds, commodities such as gold, digital assets such as bitcoin or other asset types." Less than five years later, that bitcoin side hustle has gone stratospheric. MicroStrategy...

US Army Soldier Arrested In AT&T, Verizon Extortions Published on January 01, 2025 at 02:35AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: Federal authorities have arrested and indicted a 20-year-old U.S. Army soldier on suspicion of being Kiberphant0m, a cybercriminal who has been selling and leaking sensitive customer call records stolen earlier this year from AT&T and Verizon. As first reported by KrebsOnSecurity last month, the accused is a communications specialist who was recently stationed in South Korea. Cameron John Wagenius was arrested near the Army base in Fort Hood, Texas on Dec. 20, after being indicted on two criminal counts of unlawful transfer of confidential phone records. The sparse, two-page indictment (PDF) doesn't reference specific victims or hacking activity, nor does it include any personal details about the accused. But a conversation with Wagenius' mother -- Minnesota native Alicia Roen -- filled in the gaps. Roen said that prio...

Is 2025 the Year of the Linux Desktop? Published on January 01, 2025 at 01:50AM The long-anticipated "year of the Linux desktop" could see renewed interest in 2025 as Microsoft's planned end of support for Windows 10 approaches, potentially driving users to explore alternatives. With Windows 10 reaching end of support in October 2025, many users will face decisions about upgrading hardware for Windows 11 or considering different operating systems entirely. Linux distributions have evolved to offer increasingly polished desktop experiences, with improving hardware compatibility and familiar user interfaces. 2024 saw Linux adoption grow thanks to the Steam Deck's success, reaching a 4.04% market share in December, up from 3.85% during the same time last year. More Linux laptops, improved gaming compatibility, and growing awareness of its benefits also contributed to its steady rise. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Legacy Airlines Are Now Coming For Your Carry-on Bag Published on January 01, 2025 at 01:15AM Traditional airlines worldwide are rapidly eliminating long-standing perks from their basic fares, blurring the line between full-service and budget carriers, according to industry analysis of 90 major airlines. Air Canada's decision to ban standard carry-on luggage for its lowest-fare passengers from January 3 marks the latest rollback, joining United Airlines, Finnair, and others. Most legacy carriers, including British Airways, Air France, and Lufthansa, have already stripped checked baggage and seat selection from basic fares, signaling an industry-wide shift toward budget airline practices. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple TV Plus Is Free This Weekend Published on December 31, 2024 at 04:10AM In a press release today, Apple said their TV Plus subscription service will be free this weekend (January 3 through January 5). From the press release: Apple TV+ is ringing in the New Year by offering an all-access pass to customers all around the world. Enjoy Apple TV+ for free the first weekend of 2025 (January 3 through January 5), Apple TV+ will be free on any device where Apple TV+ is available. All you need is an Apple ID to see what all the buzz is about. "A full weekend may be enough to binge some of Apple's top shows, including Severance, which has its hotly anticipated season 2 launching on January 17th," notes The Verge's Umar Shakir. "The free days could also help potential subscribers get a taste of Apple's eclectic mix of sci-fi shows, such as the space race drama For All Mankind, postapocalyptic thriller Silo, and the Godzilla serial Monarch: Legacy of Monsters....

The Average American Spent 2.5 Months On Their Phone In 2024 Published on December 31, 2024 at 03:30AM Americans check their phones an average of 205 times a day, a 42.3% increase from last year. Millennials are leading the charts in frequency, attachment, and anxiety over phone use, while Gen Z spends the most time daily on their devices at over six hours. PCMag reports: There's a good chance that you're currently reading this article on your phone. If you're like one of the Americans surveyed by Reviews.org, this is one of 205 times today that you'll be checking the device in your hand. To spare you opening the calculator app, that's about once every five minutes you are awake or two and a half full months out of your year. That's an alarming 42.3% rise from last year when the reviews company asked the same question and found people checked their phones 144 times per day. Some of the ways they spend those 205 moments are: - 80.6% check their phones within th...

Siberian Power Company Finds Illegal Crypto Mining 'Farm' On Its Own Property Published on December 31, 2024 at 02:10AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from Crypto News: Power providers in the Siberian crypto mining hotspot of Irkutsk have discovered an illegal mining "farm" operating on their own property. The Irkutsk Region Prosecutor-General's Office posted on VK, explaining that an unnamed Irkutsk-based "electric grid supply organization" was "found illegally providing a plot of land" to crypto miners. The prosecutors explained that the state had set aside the plot to help provide "public utilities." Instead, however, the unnamed company leased the land to crypto miners, who built a "mining farm" on the property. The office said that it had fined the power provider 330 thousand rubles (over $3,120) and censured the firm. Prosecutors have also opened an administrative case against the power company. The report notes...

South Korea To Inspect Boeing Aircraft as It Struggles To Find Cause of Plane Crash Published on December 31, 2024 at 01:48AM South Korean officials said Monday they will conduct safety inspections of all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by the country's airlines, as they struggle to determine what caused a plane crash that killed 179 people a day earlier. From a report: Sunday's crash, the country's worst aviation disaster in decades, triggered an outpouring of national sympathy. Many people worry how effectively the South Korean government will handle the disaster as it grapples with a leadership vacuum following the recent successive impeachments of President Yoon Suk Yeol and Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, the country's top two officials, amid political tumult caused by Yoon's brief imposition of martial law earlier this month. New acting President Choi Sang-mok on Monday presided over a task force meeting on the crash and instructed authorities to conduct an em...

Are We Better Prepared Now for Another Pandemic? Published on December 30, 2024 at 03:29AM When it comes to the possibility of a bird flu outbreak, America's Centers for Disease Control recently issued a statement that the risk to the public "remains low." But even in the event of a worst-case scenario, New York magazine believes "We may be more equipped for another pandemic than you think..." In 2023, more than half of people surveyed said that their lives had not returned to normal since the COVID outbreak, and a surprising number — 47 percent — said they now believe their lives will never return to normal. But do we really know how a new pandemic would go and how we would handle it? Things are different this time — and in ways that aren't all bad. Unlike with COVID in the spring of 2020, millions of doses of bird-flu vaccines at various stages of testing sit in government stockpiles, and more are on the way. There are also already tests that work, thoug...

Finland Finds Drag Marks Near Broken Undersea Cable. Russia's 'Shadow Fleet' Suspected Published on December 30, 2024 at 02:28AM Reuters reports: Finnish police said on Sunday they had found tracks that drag on for dozens of kilometres along the bottom of the Baltic Sea where a tanker carrying Russian oil is suspected of breaking a power line and four telecoms cables with its anchor... A break in the 658 megawatt (MW) Estlink 2 power cable between Finland and Estonia occurred at midday on Wednesday, leaving only the 358 MW Estlink 1 linking the two countries, grid operators said. They said Estlink 2 might not be back in service before August. In an interesting twist, the New York Times reports that the ship "bears all the hallmarks of vessels belonging to Russia's shadow fleet, officials said, and had embarked from a Russian port shortly before the cables were cut." If confirmed, it would be the first known instance of a shadow fleet vessel being used to int...

'Y2K Seems Like a Joke Now, But in 1999 People Were Freaking Out' Published on December 30, 2024 at 01:27AM NPR remembers when the world "prepared for the impending global meltdown" that might've been, on December 31, 1999 — and the possible bug known as Y2K: The Clinton administration said that preparing the U.S. for Y2K was probably "the single largest technology management challenge in history." The bug threatened a cascade of potential disruptions — blackouts, medical equipment failures, banks shutting down, travel screeching to a halt — if the systems and software that helped keep society functioning no longer knew what year it was... Computer specialist and grassroots organizer Paloma O'Riley compared the scale and urgency of Y2K prep to telling somebody to change out a rivet on the Golden Gate Bridge. Changing out just one rivet is simple, but "if you suddenly tell this person he now has to change out all the rivets on the bridge and he...

'Did Anything Good Happen in 2024? Actually, Yes!' Published on December 30, 2024 at 12:27AM The Washington Post shares some good news from 2024: Researchers were able to detect a significant dip in atmospheric levels of hydrochlorofluorocarbons — harmful gases that deplete the ozone layer — for the first time, almost 30 years after countries first agreed to phase out the chemicals. A new satellite launched in March to track and publicly reveal the biggest methane polluters in the oil and gas industry — an important step in tackling the greenhouse gas that accounts for almost a third of global warming. The NASA/Carbon Mapper satellite, which measures CO2 and methane emissions, also launched, providing detailed images from individual oil and gas facilities across the world. Back on Earth, the world's largest plant for pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere opened in Iceland. Norway became the first country to have more electric than gas-powered vehicles, while one Ja...

'Universal Basic Income' Isn't a Silver Bullet, Says Lead Researcher on Sam Altman's Study Published on December 29, 2024 at 03:04AM Business Insider reports: The lead researcher for Sam Altman's basic-income study says guaranteed no-strings payments are not a silver bullet for issues facing lower-income Americans. Elizabeth Rhodes, the research director for the Basic Income Project at Open Research, told Business Insider that while basic-income payments are "beneficial in many ways," the programs also have "clear limitations...." Rhodes headed up one of the largest studies in the space, which focused specifically on those on low incomes rather than making universal payments to adults across all economic demographics. The three-year experiment, backed by OpenAI boss Altman, provided 1,000 low-income participants with $1,000 a month without any stipulations for how they could spend it.... The initial findings, released in July, found that recipi...

What Happens to Relicensed Open Source Projects and Their Forks? Published on December 29, 2024 at 02:04AM A Linux Foundation project focused on understanding the health of the open source community just studied the outcomes for three projects that switched to "more restrictive" licenses and then faced community forks. The data science director for the project — known as Community Health Analytics in Open Source Software (or CHAOSS) — is also an OpenUK board member, and describes the outcomes for OpenSearch, Redis with fork Valkey, and Terraform: The relicensed project (Redis) had significant numbers of contributors who were not employed by the company, and the fork (Valkey) was created by those existing contributors as a foundation project... The Redis project differs from Elasticsearch and Terraform in the number of contributions to the Redis repository from people who were not employees of Redis. In the year leading up to the relicense, when Redis was still open source, ...

Magnus Carlsen Quits Chess Tournament After Refusing to Change Out of Jeans Published on December 29, 2024 at 01:04AM Magnus Carlsen quit the World Rapid Chess Championship on Friday, reports CNN, "after he refused to change out of the jeans he was wearing..." "Carlsen, the world champion from 2013 until 2023, allegedly replied, 'I'm out, f*** you,' after being informed that he would not be permitted to continue," reports the Hindustan Times. The International Chess Federation (or FIDE) "said in a statement that Carlsen breached the tournament's dress code by wearing jeans," reports CNN: As a result, Carlsen would not have been paired for round nine, though he could have returned for the rest of the tournament had he not decided to walk away, per Chess.com. Since he had performed poorly in the earlier rounds, there was little chance that Carlsen could have defended his title regardless.... The standoff became "a matter of principle...

New York Passes Law Making Fossil Fuel Companies Pay $75 Billion for 'Climate Superfund' Published on December 29, 2024 at 12:04AM Thursday New York's governor signed new legislation "to hold polluters responsible for the damage done to our environment" by establishing a Climate Superfund that's paid for by big fossil-fuel companies. The money will be used for "climate change adaptation," according to New York state senator Liz Krueger, who notes that the legislation follows "the polluter-pays model" used in America's already-existing federal and state superfund laws. Spread out over 25 years, the legislation collects an average of $3 billion each year — or $75 billion — "from the parties most responsible for causing the climate crisis — big oil and gas companies." "The Climate Change Superfund Act is now law, and New York has fired a shot that will be heard round the world: the companies most responsible for the climat...

South Korean Crypto-Boss Do Kwon To Be Extradited To US Published on December 28, 2024 at 02:10AM Montenegro has approved the extradition of cryptocurrency entrepreneur Do Kwon to the United States over his role in the collapse of TerraUSD and Luna tokens, which wiped out $40 billion from investors and destabilized global crypto markets. The BBC reports: "The Minister of Justice, Bojan Bozovic, issued a decision approving the extradition of the accused, Kwon Do Hyung, to the United States of America," the Ministry of Justice announced said in a statement. "It was concluded that the majority of the criteria prescribed by law favor the extradition request from the competent authorities of the United States of America," the statement said. It added that Kwon had consented to be extradited to both South Korea and the United States. In February, US regulators charged Kwon and his company Terraform Labs with "orchestrating a multi-billion dollar crypto asset securi...

Hertz Continues EV Purge Published on December 28, 2024 at 01:30AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Apparently Hertz's purging of electric vehicles from its fleet isn't going fast enough for the car rental giant. A Reddit user posted an offer they received from Hertz to buy the 2023 Tesla Model 3 they had been renting for $17,913. Hertz originally went strong into EVs, announcing a plan to buy 100,000 Model 3s for its fleet by the end of 2021, but 16 months later had acquired only half that amount. The company found that repair costs -- especially for Teslas, which averaged 20 percent more than other EVs -- were cutting into its profit margins. Customer demand was also not what Hertz had hoped for; last January, it announced plans to sell off 20,000 EVs. Asking its customers if they want to purchase their rentals isn't a new strategy for Hertz. "By connecting our rental customers who opt into our emails to our sales channels, we're not only ...

Chinese Hackers Breach Ninth US Telecoms Group in Espionage Campaign Published on December 28, 2024 at 12:20AM A ninth U.S. telecommunications company has been compromised in a Chinese espionage campaign that targeted private communications, particularly around Washington D.C., White House Deputy National Security Adviser Anne Neuberger said Friday. The intrusion, part of the "Salt Typhoon" operation that previously hit eight telecom firms, allowed hackers to access customer call records and private messages. While the total number of affected Americans remains unclear, many targets were government officials and political figures in the Washington-Virginia area. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft Bundling Practices Focus of Federal Antitrust Probe Published on December 27, 2024 at 09:10AM The Federal Trade Commission has launched a broad antitrust investigation into Microsoft's business practices, focusing on how the company bundles its Office products with cybersecurity and cloud computing services. The probe follows ProPublica reporting that revealed Microsoft offered free temporary upgrades of federal agencies' software licenses to include advanced cybersecurity features, leading to long-term contracts once the trial period ended. The strategy helped Microsoft expand its government business while displacing competitors in both cybersecurity and cloud computing markets. The investigation includes scrutiny of Microsoft's identity management product Entra ID, formerly Azure Active Directory. The FTC has issued a civil investigative demand compelling the company to turn over information. The probe represents one of FTC Chair Lina Khan's final moves be...

Trump Transition Leaders Call For Eased Tech Immigration Policy Published on December 27, 2024 at 06:57AM theodp writes: In 2012, now-Microsoft President Brad Smith unveiled Microsoft's National Talent Strategy, a two-pronged strategy that called for tech visa restrictions to be loosened to allow tech companies to hire non-U.S. citizens to fill jobs until more American schoolchildren could be made tech-savvy enough to pass hiring standards. Shortly thereafter, tech-backed nonprofit Code.org emerged (led by Smith's next-door neighbor Hadi Partovi with Smith as a founding Board member) with a mission to ensure that U.S. schoolchildren started receiving 'rigorous' computer science education instruction. Around the same time, Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us PAC launched (with support from Smith, Partovi, and other tech leaders) with a mission to reform tech visa policy to meet tech's need for talent. Fast forward to 2024, and Newsweek reports the debate over tech immigra...

Windows 11 Installation Media Bug Causes Security Update Failures Published on December 27, 2024 at 04:59AM Microsoft is warning that Windows 11 installations using USB or CD media created with October or November 2024 security updates may be unable to receive future security patches. The bug affects version 24H2 installations made between October 8 and November 12, but does not impact systems updated through Windows Update or the Microsoft Update Catalog. Microsoft advised users to rebuild installation media using December 2024 patches while it works on a permanent fix for the issue, which primarily affects business and education environments. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scientists Explore Longevity Drugs For Dogs That Could Also 'Extend Human Life' Published on December 26, 2024 at 11:54PM U.S. biotech startup Loyal plans to launch a lifespan-extending drug for dogs in early 2024, potentially offering insights into human longevity. The San Francisco-based company has secured $125 million in funding for LOY-002, a beef-flavored daily pill designed to extend canine lifespans by at least one year. The drug works by targeting age-related metabolic changes and insulin regulation, according to Loyal CEO Celine Halioua. Simultaneously, the Dog Aging Project is studying rapamycin, an immunosuppressant drug, which preliminary research suggests could add three years to dogs' lives. Researchers believe these canine studies could accelerate human longevity research, though experts note the lack of standardized aging biomarkers remains a significant hurdle for human trials. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Russia Bans Crypto Mining in Multiple Regions, Citing Energy Concerns Published on December 26, 2024 at 06:00AM The Russian government has banned crypto mining in ten regions for a period of six years, according to reporting by the state-owned news agency Tass. Engadget adds: Russia has cited the industry's high power consumption rates as the primary reason behind the ban. Crypto is particularly power-hungry, as mining operations already account for nearly 2.5 percent of US energy use. This ban takes effect on January 1 and lasts until March 15, 2031. The country's Council of Ministers has also stated that additional bans may be required in other regions during periods of peak energy demand. It could also go the other way. The ban could be temporarily lifted or altered in certain regions if a government commission examines changes in energy demand and deems it necessary. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Porch Pirates Are Now Raising the Price You Pay at Checkout Published on December 26, 2024 at 04:31AM Lost deliveries, shipping delays and theft on the front porch have become such growing problems that companies are making consumers pay for package protection. From a report: Tens of thousands of online retailers now offer the service for a few dollars per order. The fees go to young companies -- Route and Corso, to name two -- that promise to make customers whole without charging the merchant if a delivery doesn't arrive. Consumers are finding that retailers either ask them to pay for package protection or draw a harder line when it comes to replacing a missing item. Some retailers are making the fees mandatory, spreading the burden of package theft among all customers. To know whether you are paying the fee, review your order before you press purchase. Sometimes it is named after the company offering protection, and sometimes it is called shipping insurance or package protectio...