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"Japan's first moon mission has likely come to an end after a surprising late-game comeback," reports Mashable, "with the spacecraft taking one last photo of its surroundings before the deep-freeze of night... showing ominous shadows cast upon a slope of the Shioli crater, its landing site on the near side of the moon." Since Monday, the spacecraft has analyzed rocks around the crater with a multi-band spectral camera. JAXA picked the landing spot because of what it could tell scientists about the moon's formation... The special camera completed its planned observation, able to study more targets than originally expected, according to an English translation of a news release from the space agency... "Based on the large amount of data we have obtained, we are proceeding with (analyses) to identify rocks and estimate the chemical composition of minerals, which will help solve the mystery of the origin of the moon," JAXA said in a statement translated by Google... The spacecraft has now entered a dormant state, prompted by nightfall on the moon. Because one rotation of the moon is about 27 Earth days, the so-called "lunar night," when the moon is no longer receiving sunlight, lasts about two weeks. Not much can survive the -270 degrees Fahrenheit brought on by darkness — not even robots. In this freezing temperature, soldered joints on hardware and mechanical parts break, and batteries die. But rest assured, the JAXA team will try to communicate with its scrappy moon lander when the sun rises again. In mid-week Japan's space agency posted that "Although SLIM was not designed for the harsh lunar nights, we plan to try to operate again from mid-February, when the Sun will shine again on SLIM's solar cells." Later they posted that they'd sent a command to turn on SLIM's communicator again "just in case, but with no response, we confirmed SLIM had entered a dormant state. This is the last scene of the Moon taken by SLIM before dusk."

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James Cameron tells Vanity Fair's Nick Bilton that his experience with Apple's Vision Pro "was religious. I was skeptical at first. I don't bow down before the great god of Apple, but I was really, really blown away... I think it's not evolutionary; it's revolutionary. And I'm speaking as someone who has worked in VR for 18 years." He explained that the reason it looks so real is because the Apple Vision Pro is writing a 4K image into my eyes. "That's the equivalent of the resolution of a 75-inch TV into each of your eyeballs — 23 million pixels." To put that into perspective, the average 4K television has around 8 million pixels. Apple engineers didn't slice off a rectangle from the corner of a 4K display and put it in the Apple Vision Pro. They somehow compressed twice as many pixels into a space as small as your eyeball. This, to people like Cameron who have been working in this space for two decades, "solves every problem." But even with all this wonder, with 23 million pixels that are so clear and crisp that you can't tell reality from a digital composite of it.... the more I've used the Apple Vision Pro over the past two weeks, the more one glaring problem revealed itself to me. It's not the weight (which is a problem but will come down over time), or the size (which will shrink with each iteration), or the worry that it will drive us to consume more content alone (almost half of Americans already watch TV alone). Or how tech giants like Meta, Netflix, Spotify, and Google are currently withholding their apps from the device. (Content creators may come around once the consumers are there, and some, like Disney, are already embracing the device, making 150 movies available in 3D, including from mega-franchises like Star Wars and Marvel.) And it's not even the price, because if Apple wanted to, the company could subsidize the cost of the Apple Vision Pro and it would have about as much financial impact as Cook losing a nickel between his couch cushions. I'm talking about something that I don't see a solution for... I can see a day when we all can't imagine living without an augmented reality. When we're enveloped more and more by technology, to the point that we crave these glasses like a drug, like we crave our iPhones today but with more desire for the dopamine hit this resolution of AR can deliver. I know deep down that the Apple Vision Pro is too immersive, and yet all I want to do is see the world through it. "I'm sure the technology is terrific. I still think and hope it fails," one Silicon Valley investor said to me. "Apple feels more and more like a tech fentanyl dealer that poses as a rehab provider." Harsh words, but he feels what we all feel, a slave to our smartphone, and he's seen this play before and he knows what the first act is like, and the second act, and he knows how it ends. Political blogger Taegan Goddard says the Vision Pro "offers a glimpse of how we might use computers in the future. If you're skeptical — and many people are — you need to try it before drawing any conclusions. It's hard to explain unless you've worn it. But I can assure you, it's mind-blowing." Apple CEO Tim Cook tells Bilton "You can actually lay on your sofa and put the displays on your ceiling if you wish. I watched the third season of Ted Lasso on my ceiling and it was unbelievable!" Dan Ives, a senior analyst at the investment firm Wedbush Securities, tells Bilton, "We think a few years from now it'll resemble sunglasses and be less than $1,500."

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The VC fund Neo "identifies awesome young engineers, includes them in a community of tech veterans, and invests in companies they start or join," TechCrunch explained in 2018. Long-time Slashdot reader theodp notes that Neo is also benefiting from the education non-profit Code.org: Eleven years ago, Neo Founder and CEO Ali Partovi together with twin brother Hadi (Code.org CEO and a Neo investor) publicly launched the nonprofit Code.org (backed and advised by big tech companies). With the support of prominent tech giant leaders and their companies, Code.org pushed coding into K-12 classrooms (NYT, alt.) and now boasts that "591,636 teachers have signed up to teach our intro courses on Code Studio and 19,177,297 students are enrolled," helping to build a pipeline of "college students who excel at CS". Neo taps into this pipeline, and it looks like others also betting on their success include Neo investors tied to Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, and Uber — including Code.org boosters Bill Gates, Satya Nadella, Reid Hoffman, Jeff Wilke, Sheryl Sandberg, Eric Schmidt. "I love meeting more and more @Neo founders and Neo scholar candidates who learned to code on Code.org," Neo CEO Ali Partovi tweeted last summer. in November Partovi welcomed "32 exceptional CS students" chosen from over 1,000 applicants to be Neo Scholars, "a year-long program of events, trips, and mentorship, as well as long-term membership in our community."

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The Verge reports that Threads is "booming," according to figures shared by Mark Zuckerberg on Meta's earnings call, with 130 million active users a month. TechCrunch reports: Threads is continuing to grow, having tripled its downloads month-over-month in December, which gave it a place in the top 10 most downloaded apps for the month across both the App Store and Google Play... Threads famously had a record-breaking launch, reaching 100 million registered users within its first five days. However, the app saw its daily downloads decline starting last September through the end of the year. But in December, Threads once again returned to growth, likely due to the push Meta had given the app by displaying promos on Facebook that featured Threads' viral posts. Today, there are an estimated 160 million Threads users, according to one tracker... The app could also be benefiting from its move into the "fediverse" — the social network comprised of interconnected servers that communicate via the ActivityPub protocol, like Mastodon... In addition, Threads recently announced the launch of an endpoint, allowing developers of third-party apps and websites to use a dynamic URL to refill text into the Threads composer. For example, there's now a website where anyone can generate Threads share links and profile badges. Marketing tool provider Shareaholic also just launched Threads Share buttons for websites, including both desktop and mobile sites. This flurry of activity around Threads is helping to move the app up in the chart rankings, though some inorganic boosts from Meta itself are likely also responsible for the jump in downloads, given the size.

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The BBC reports: Police in Washington state say an old rusted rocket found in a local man's garage is an inert nuclear missile. On Wednesday, a military museum in Ohio called police in the city of Bellevue to report an offer of a rather unusual donation. The police then sent a bomb squad to the potential donor's home... In a press release, police say the device is "in fact a Douglas AIR-2 Genie (previous designation MB-1), an unguided air-to-air rocket that is designed to carry a 1.5 kt W25 nuclear warhead". However, there was no warhead attached, meaning there was never any danger to the community. Bellevue Police Department spokesman Seth Tyler, told BBC News on Friday that the device was "just basically a gas tank for rocket fuel". He called the event "not serious at all... In fact, our bomb squad member asked me why we were releasing a news release on a rusted piece of metal," he said... The man told police that the rocket belonged to a neighbour who had died, and was originally purchased from an estate sale. Citing a Seattle Times article, the BBC notes that "The first and only live firing of the Genie rocket was in 1957, according to the newspaper, and production of it ended in 1962."

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"My goal is to have a firewall that I trust," writes Slashdot reader eggegick, "not a firewall that comes from the manufacture that might have back doors." I'm looking for a cheap mini PC I can turn into a headless Linux-based wireless and Ethernet router. The setup would be a cable modem on the Comcast side, Ethernet out from the modem to the router and Ethernet, and WiFi out to the home network. Two long-time Slashdot readers had suggestions. johnnys believes "any old desktop or even a laptop will work.... as long as you have a way to get a couple of (fast or Gigabit) Ethernet ports and a good WiFi adapter... " Cable or any consumer-grade broadband doesn't need exotic levels of throughput: Gigabit Ethernet will not be saturated by any such connection... You can also look at putting FOSS firewall software like DD-WRT or OpenWrt on consumer-grade "routers". Such hardware is usually set up with the right hardware and capabilities you are looking for. Note however that newer hardware may not work with such firmwares as the FCC rules about controlling RF have caused many manufacturers to lock down firmware images. And you don't necessarily need to roll your own with iptables: There are several BSD or Linux-based FOSS distributions that do good firewall functionality. PFSense is very good and user-friendly, and there are others. OpenBSD provides an exceptionally capable enterprise-level firewall on a secure platform, but it's not designed to be user-friendly. Long-time Slashdot reader Spazmania agrees the "best bet" is "one of those generic home wifi routers that are supported by DD-WRT or OpenWrt." It's not uncommon to find something used for $10-$20. And then install one or the other, giving a Linux box with full control. Add a USB stick so you have enough space for all the utilities. I just went through the search for mini-PCs for a project at work. The main problem is that almost all of them cool poorly, and that significantly impairs their life span.I finally found a few at the $100 price point that cooled acceptably... and they disappeared from the market shortly after I bought the test units, replaced with newer models in the $250 ballpark. Share your own thoughts and experiences in the comments. Can you roll your own home router?

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"In the last few years, the U.S. has seen a boom in cryptocurrency mining," writes Ars Technica. But they add that the U.S. government "is now trying to track exactly what that means for the consumption of electricity. Specifically, a crucial branch of the U.S. Department of Energy. "While its analysis is preliminary, the Energy Information Agency (EIA) estimates that large-scale cryptocurrency operations are now consuming over 2 percent of the U.S.'s electricity." That's roughly the equivalent of having added an additional state to the grid over just the last three years." While there is some small-scale mining that goes on with personal computers and small rigs, most cryptocurrency mining has moved to large collections of specialized hardware. While this hardware can be pricy compared to personal computers, the main cost for these operations is electricity use, so the miners will tend to move to places with low electricity rates. The EIA report notes that, in the wake of a crackdown on cryptocurrency in China, a lot of that movement has involved relocation to the U.S., where keeping electricity prices low has generally been a policy priority. One independent estimate made by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance had the US as the home of just over 3 percent of the global bitcoin mining at the start of 2020. By the start of 2022, that figure was nearly 38 percent... The EIA decided it needed a better grip on what was going on... To better understand the implications of this major new drain on the U.S. electric grid, the EIA will be performing monthly analyses of bitcoin operations during the first half of 2024. The Energy Information Agency identified 137 bitcoin mining operators, of which 101 responded to inquiries about their full-capacity power supply. "If running all-out, those 101 facilities would consume 2.3 percent of the US's average power demand," the article points out. And they add that in at least five instances, the Agency found bitcoin operators had "moved in near underutilized power plants and sent generation soaring again... "These are almost certainly fossil fuel plants that might be reasonable candidates for retirement if it weren't for their use to supply bitcoin miners."

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Nicholas Wise is a fluid dynamics researcher who moonlights as a scientific fraud buster, reports Science magazine. And last June he "was digging around on shady Facebook groups when he came across something he had never seen before." Wise was all too familiar with offers to sell or buy author slots and reviews on scientific papers — the signs of a busy paper mill. Exploiting the growing pressure on scientists worldwide to amass publications even if they lack resources to undertake quality research, these furtive intermediaries by some accounts pump out tens or even hundreds of thousands of articles every year. Many contain made-up data; others are plagiarized or of low quality. Regardless, authors pay to have their names on them, and the mills can make tidy profits. But what Wise was seeing this time was new. Rather than targeting potential authors and reviewers, someone who called himself Jack Ben, of a firm whose Chinese name translates to Olive Academic, was going for journal editors — offering large sums of cash to these gatekeepers in return for accepting papers for publication. "Sure you will make money from us," Ben promised prospective collaborators in a document linked from the Facebook posts, along with screenshots showing transfers of up to $20,000 or more. In several cases, the recipient's name could be made out through sloppy blurring, as could the titles of two papers. More than 50 journal editors had already signed on, he wrote. There was even an online form for interested editors to fill out... Publishers and journals, recognizing the threat, have beefed up their research integrity teams and retracted papers, sometimes by the hundreds. They are investing in ways to better spot third-party involvement, such as screening tools meant to flag bogus papers. So cash-rich paper mills have evidently adopted a new tactic: bribing editors and planting their own agents on editorial boards to ensure publication of their manuscripts. An investigation by Science and Retraction Watch, in partnership with Wise and other industry experts, identified several paper mills and more than 30 editors of reputable journals who appear to be involved in this type of activity. Many were guest editors of special issues, which have been flagged in the past as particularly vulnerable to abuse because they are edited separately from the regular journal. But several were regular editors or members of journal editorial boards. And this is likely just the tip of the iceberg. The spokesperson for one journal publisher tells Science that its editors are receiving bribe offers every week.. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article..

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Linus Torvalds had "some robust exchanges" on the Linux kernel mailing list with a contributor from Google. The subject was inodes, notes the Register, "which as Red Hat puts it are each 'a unique identifier for a specific piece of metadata on a given filesystem.'" Inodes have been the subject of debate on the Linux Kernel Mailing list for the last couple of weeks, with Googler Steven Rostedt and Torvalds engaging in some robust exchanges on the matter. In a thread titled, "Have the inodes all for files and directories all be the same," posters noted that inodes may still have a role when using tar to archive files. Torvalds countered that inodes have had their day. "Yes, inode numbers used to be special, and there's history behind it. But we should basically try very hard to walk away from that broken history," he wrote. "An inode number just isn't a unique descriptor any more. We're not living in the 1970s, and filesystems have changed." But debate on inodes continued. Rostedt eventually suggested that inodes should all have unique numbers... In response... Torvalds opened: "Stop making things more complicated than they need to be." Then he got a bit shouty. "And dammit, STOP COPYING VFS LAYER FUNCTIONS. It was a bad idea last time, it's a horribly bad idea this time too. I'm not taking this kind of crap." Torvalds's main criticism of Rostedt's approach is that the Google dev didn't fully understand the subject matter — which Rostedt later acknowledged. "An inode number just isn't a unique descriptor any more," Torvalds wrote at one point. "We're not living in the 1970s, and filesystems have changed."

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The New York Times reports on a potential fix for global warming being proiposed by "a small but growing number of astronomers and physicists... the equivalent of a giant beach umbrella, floating in outer space. " The idea is to create a huge sunshade and send it to a far away point between the Earth and the sun to block a small but crucial amount of solar radiation, enough to counter global warming. Scientists have calculated that if just shy of 2% of the sun's radiation is blocked, that would be enough to cool the planet by 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 Fahrenheit, and keep Earth within manageable climate boundaries. The idea has been at the outer fringes of conversations about climate solutions for years. But as the climate crisis worsens, interest in sun shields has been gaining momentum, with more researchers offering up variations. There's even a foundation dedicated to promoting solar shields. A recent study led by the University of Utah explored scattering dust deep into space, while a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is looking into creating a shield made of "space bubbles." Last summer, Istvan Szapudi, an astronomer at the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii, published a paper that suggested tethering a big solar shield to a repurposed asteroid. Now scientists led by Yoram Rozen, a physics professor and the director of the Asher Space Research Institute at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, say they are ready to build a prototype shade to show that the idea will work. To block the necessary amount of solar radiation, the shade would have to be about 1 million square miles, roughly the size of Argentina, Rozen said. A shade that big would weigh at least 2.5 million tons — too heavy to launch into space, he said. So, the project would have to involve a series of smaller shades. They would not completely block the sun's light but rather cast slightly diffused shade onto Earth, he said. Rozen said his team was ready to design a prototype shade of 100 square feet and is seeking between $10 million and $20 million to fund the demonstration. "We can show the world, 'Look, there is a working solution, take it, increase it to the necessary size," he said... Rozen said the team was still in the predesign phase but could launch a prototype within three years after securing funds. He estimated that a full-size version would cost trillions (a tab "for the world to pick up, not a single country," he said) but reduce the Earth's temperature by 1.5 Celsius within two years. "We at the Technion are not going to save the planet," Rozen said. "But we're going to show that it can be done."

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It was discovered that runc, a command line client for running applications packaged according to the Open Container Format (OCF), was suspectible to multiple container breakouts due to an internal file descriptor leak.

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/DSA-5615-1

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ProPublica: Over the last decade, police departments across the U.S. have spent millions of dollars equipping their officers with body-worn cameras that record what happens as they go about their work. Everything from traffic stops to welfare checks to responses to active shooters is now documented on video. The cameras were pitched by national and local law enforcement authorities as a tool for building public trust between police and their communities in the wake of police killings of civilians like Michael Brown, an 18 year old black teenager killed in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. Video has the potential not only to get to the truth when someone is injured or killed by police, but also to allow systematic reviews of officer behavior to prevent deaths by flagging troublesome officers for supervisors or helping identify real-world examples of effective and destructive behaviors to use for training. But a series of ProPublica stories has shown that a decade on, those promises of transparency and accountability have not been realized. One challenge: The sheer amount of video captured using body-worn cameras means few agencies have the resources to fully examine it. Most of what is recorded is simply stored away, never seen by anyone. Axon, the nation's largest provider of police cameras and of cloud storage for the video they capture, has a database of footage that has grown from around 6 terabytes in 2016 to more than 100 petabytes today. That's enough to hold more than 5,000 years of high definition video, or 25 million copies of last year's blockbuster movie "Barbie." "In any community, body-worn camera footage is the largest source of data on police-community interactions. Almost nothing is done with it," said Jonathan Wender, a former police officer who heads Polis Solutions, one of a growing group of companies and researchers offering analytic tools powered by artificial intelligence to help tackle that data problem. The Paterson, New Jersey, police department has made such an analytic tool a major part of its plan to overhaul its force. In March 2023, the state's attorney general took over the department after police shot and killed Najee Seabrooks, a community activist experiencing a mental health crisis who had called 911 for help. The killing sparked protests and calls for a federal investigation of the department. The attorney general appointed Isa Abbassi, formerly the New York Police Department's chief of strategic initiatives, to develop a plan for how to win back public trust. "Changes in Paterson are led through the use of technology," Abbassi said at a press conference announcing his reform plan in September, "Perhaps one of the most exciting technology announcements today is a real game changer when it comes to police accountability and professionalism." The department, Abassi said, had contracted with Truleo, a Chicago-based software company that examines audio from bodycam videos to identify problematic officers and patterns of behavior. For around $50,000 a year, Truleo's software allows supervisors to select from a set of specific behaviors to flag, such as when officers interrupt civilians, use profanity, use force or mute their cameras. The flags are based on data Truleo has collected on which officer behaviors result in violent escalation. Among the conclusions from Truleo's research: Officers need to explain what they are doing. "There are certain officers who don't introduce themselves, they interrupt people, and they don't give explanations. They just do a lot of command, command, command, command, command," said Anthony Tassone, Truleo's co-founder. "That officer's headed down the wrong path." For Paterson police, Truleo allows the department to "review 100% of body worn camera footage to identify risky behaviors and increase professionalism," according to its strategic overhaul plan. The software, the department said in its plan, will detect events like uses of force, pursuits, frisks and non-compliance incidents and allow supervisors to screen for both "professional and unprofessional officer language." There are around 30 police departments currently use Truleo, according to the company. Christopher J. Schneider, a professor at Canada's Brandon University who studies the impact of emerging technology on social perceptions of police, is skeptical the AI tools will fix the problems in policing because the findings might be kept from the public just like many internal investigations. "Because it's confidential," he said, "the public are not going to know which officers are bad or have been disciplined or not been disciplined."

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Jennifer Ouellette reports via Ars Technica: A typical lawn sprinkler features various nozzles arranged at angles on a rotating wheel; when water is pumped in, they release jets that cause the wheel to rotate. But what would happen if the water were sucked into the sprinkler instead? In which direction would the wheel turn then, or would it even turn at all? That's the essence of the "reverse sprinkler" problem that physicists like Richard Feynman, among others, have grappled with since the 1940s. Now, applied mathematicians at New York University think they've cracked the conundrum, per a recent paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters -- and the answer challenges conventional wisdom on the matter. "Our study solves the problem by combining precision lab experiments with mathematical modeling that explains how a reverse sprinkler operates," said co-author Leif Ristroph of NYU's Courant Institute. "We found that the reverse sprinkler spins in the 'reverse' or opposite direction when taking in water as it does when ejecting it, and the cause is subtle and surprising." [...] Enter Leif Ristroph and colleagues, who built their own custom sprinkler that incorporated ultra-low-friction rotary bearings so their device could spin freely. They immersed their sprinkler in water and used a special apparatus to either pump water in or pull it out at carefully controlled flow rates. Particularly key to the experiment was the fact that their custom sprinkler let the team observe and measure how water flowed inside, outside, and through the device. Adding dyes and microparticles to the water and illuminating them with lasers helped capture the flows on high-speed video. They ran their experiments for several hours at a time, the better to precisely map the fluid-flow patterns. Ristroph et al. found that the reverse sprinkler rotates a good 50 times slower than a regular sprinkler, but it operates along similar mechanisms, which is surprising. "The regular or 'forward' sprinkler is similar to a rocket, since it propels itself by shooting out jets," said Ristroph. "But the reverse sprinkler is mysterious since the water being sucked in doesn't look at all like jets. We discovered that the secret is hidden inside the sprinkler, where there are indeed jets that explain the observed motions." A reverse sprinkler acts like an "inside-out rocket," per Ristroph, and although the internal jets collide, they don't do so head-on. "The jets aren't directed exactly at the center because of distortion of the flow as it passes through the curved arm," Ball wrote. "As the water flows around the bends in the arms, it is slung outward by centrifugal force, which gives rise to asymmetric flow profiles." It's admittedly a subtle effect, but their experimentally observed flow patterns are in excellent agreement with the group's mathematical models.

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Although hydrogen-dedicated renewable energy capacity is expected to increase by 45 GW between 2022 and 2028, the estimates are 35% lower than what the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasted a year ago. Reuters reports: There is growing political momentum for low-emission hydrogen but actual implementation has been held up by uncertain demand outlooks, a lack of clarity in regulatory frameworks, and a lack of infrastructure to deliver hydrogen to end users, the IEA said in an emailed response to questions. Slow progress on real-world implementation "is a consequence of barriers that could be expected in a sector that needs to build up new and complex value chains," the IEA said. Uncertainties have been exacerbated by inflation and sluggish policy implementation. Expected renewable energy capacity for hydrogen production represents just 7% of the capacity pledged for the same period and one tenth the sum of government targets for 2030, IEA said in its report. Around 75% of expected capacity is based in three countries, with China taking the lion's share, followed by Saudi Arabia and the United States, the IEA says.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing that nine PFAS, also known as "forever chemicals," be categorized as hazardous to human health. The EPA signed a proposal Wednesday that would deem the chemicals "hazardous constituents" under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. For the agency to consider a substance a hazardous constituent, it has to be toxic or cause cancer, genetic mutation or the malformations of an embryo. The full list of the nine substances can be found here. The agency cited various studies in which forever chemicals were found to cause a litany of "toxic effects" in humans and animals, including, but not limited to cancer, a decreased response to vaccinations, high cholesterol, decrease in fertility in women, preeclampsia, thyroid disorders and asthma, the EPA said. Short for "per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances," PFAS cover thousands of man-made chemicals. PFAS are often used for manufacturing purposes, such as in nonstick cookware, adhesives, firefighting foam, turf and more. PFAS have been called "forever chemicals" because they break down very slowly and can accumulate in people, animals and the environment. Further reading: 'Forever Chemicals' Taint Nearly Half of US Tap Water, Study Estimates

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Kyle Orland reports via Ars Technica: Even massive Sega fans would be forgiven for not being too familiar with the Sega AI Computer. After all, the usually obsessive documentation over at Sega Retro includes only the barest stub of an information page for the quixotic, education-focused 1986 hardware. Thankfully, the folks at the self-described "Sega 8-bit preservation and fanaticism" site SMS Power have been able to go a little deeper. The site's recently posted deep dive on the Sega AI Computer includes an incredible amount of well-documented information on this historical oddity, including ROMs for dozens of previously unpreserved pieces of software that can now be partially run on MAME. [...] While the general existence of the Sega AI Computer has been known in certain circles for a while, detailed information about its workings and software was extremely hard to come by, especially in the English-speaking world. That began to change in 2014 when a rare Yahoo Auctions listing offered a boxed AI Computer along with 15 pieces of software. The site was able to crowdfund the winning bid on that auction (which reportedly ran the equivalent of $1,100) and later obtained a keyboard and more software from the winner of a 2022 auction. SMS Power notes that the majority of the software it has uncovered "had zero information about them on the Internet prior to us publishing them: no screenshots, no photos or scans of actual software." Now, the site's community has taken the trouble to preserve all those ROMs and create a new MAME driver that already allows for "partial emulation" of the system (which doesn't yet include a keyboard, tape drive, or speech emulation support). That dumped software is all "educational and mostly aimed at kids," SMS Power notes, and is laden with Japanese text that will make it hard for many foreigners to even tinker with. That means this long-lost emulation release probably won't set the MAME world on fire as 2022's surprise dump of Marble Madness II did. Still, it's notable how much effort the community has put in to fill a formerly black hole in our understanding of this corner of Sega history. SMS Power's write-up of its findings is well worth a full look, as is the site's massive Google Drive, which is filled with documentation, screenshots, photos, contemporaneous articles and ads, and much more.

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In an effort to boost tourism and innovation, Japan will launch a new visa program for digital nomads, allowing remote workers to work in the country for up to six months while enjoying sightseeing trips. Tech Times reports: Starting from the end of March, Japan will introduce a unique visa status aimed at IT engineers and remote workers employed by overseas companies. The program is designed to cater to the evolving work landscape, recognizing the surge in digital nomads-individuals who can seamlessly work from anywhere in the world. Nikkei Asia (paywalled) tells us that to be eligible for this digital nomad visa, applicants must boast an annual income of at least 10 million yen ($68,000). Citizens from 50 countries and regions, including the U.S., Australia, and Singapore, which have existing visa waiver agreements with Japan, can apply. Private health insurance is a prerequisite, ensuring the well-being of the visa holders during their stay. Self-employed individuals engaged in overseas business can also benefit from this innovative program. Moreover, they have the option to bring their family members along, provided they are covered by private health insurance. While the program offers the freedom to explore Japan, it has unique conditions. Digital nomads under this visa will not receive a residence card or certificate, limiting access to specific government benefits. The visa is non-renewable, requiring reapplication after a six-month interval, and applicants must spend that time outside the country. Japan joins the ranks of over 50 countries issuing digital nomad visas. Notably, South Korea allows up to two years, while Taiwan offers a three-year stay, with the possibility of permanent residency. The diverse offerings cater to digital nomads' varied needs and preferences, seeking a balance between work and exploration.

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Ivan Mehta reports via TechCrunch: Nearly a week after Apple announced big changes to the App Store because of the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) rules, the company said that the market represents 7% of its global App Store revenues. The company's chief financial officer Luca Maestri said that the monetary impact of these changes will depend on choices made by developers to adopt different systems. "A lot will depend on the choices that will be made. Just to keep it in context, the changes applied to the EU market, which represents roughly 7% of our global app store revenue," he said in reply to an analyst's question. Because of DMA, Apple has to allow alternative app stores and let developers use third-party payment processors. The company plans to charge a core tech fee if an app crosses a million annual downloads across different app stores. Amid these changes, Apple noted a record quarter for App Store revenues. The company's overall services revenue was $23.1 billion with an 11% jump year-on-year. Apple continued its narrative of defending the App Store and its commission ecosystem by saying that it provides the best privacy and security. CEO Tim Cook emphasized that the company will fall short of providing the best experience to users because of these changes. "If you think about what we've done over the years is, we've really majored on privacy, security and usability. And we've tried our best to get as close to the past in terms of the things that are -- that people love about our ecosystem as we can, but we are going to fall short of providing the maximum amount that we could supply, because we need to comply with the regulation," he said.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A California teenager prosecutors say is responsible for hundreds of swatting attacks around the United States was exposed after law enforcement pieced together a digital trail left on some of the internet's largest platforms, according to court records released this week. Alan Winston Filion, a 17-year-old from Lancaster, California, faces four felony charges in Florida's Seminole County related to swatting, or fake threats called into the police to provoke a forceful response, according to Florida state prosecutors. Police arrested Filion on January 18, and he was extradited to Seminole County this week. Filion's arrest, first reported by WIRED on January 26, marks the culmination of a multi-agency manhunt for the person police claim is responsible for swatting attacks on high schools, historically black colleges and universities, mosques, and federal agents, and for threats to bomb the Pentagon, members of the United States Senate, and the US Supreme Court. Ultimately, a YouTube channel, Discord chats, and usernames related to The Lord of the Rings helped lead authorities to Filion's doorstep. Florida prosecutors charged Filion with four felony counts, including three related to allegedly making false reports to law enforcement and one for unlawful use of a two-way radio for "facilitating or furthering an act of terrorism" that authorities say targeted people based on race, religion, or other protected classes. While prosecutors alleged that Filion "is responsible for hundreds of swatting and bomb threat incidents throughout the United States," the charges Filion faces relate to a single May 12, 2023, swatting attack against the Masjid Al Hayy Mosque in Sanford, Florida. [...] At 2 pm EST on Wednesday, Filion shuffled into a Seminole County courtroom and stood quietly as the judge read the charges against him. He is currently being held without bond.

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According to a job listing spotted by AFTVNews, Amazon makes it clear that the company plans to ditch Android for its own "VegaOS" operating system. "The new platform is said to rely on React Native and would require new apps to be built," reports 9to5Google. From the report: As spotted by AFTVNews, a job listing from Amazon was looking for a "Fire TV Experience Software Development Engineer." The job listing's description makes it abundantly clear that a key part of the role is focused on the transition from Android to the rumored "VegaOS," because it quite literally says that's what is happening, with Amazon saying that Fire TV is transitioning from "FOS/Android" (Fire OS/Android) to "native/Rust" and even explicitly mentioning React Native. The listing, which has since been removed, provides extremely strong evidence of Amazon's plans, which is probably why it was so quickly removed.

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