Firefox 130 introduces several enhancements, including improved local translation handling, better Android page load performance, and the WebCodecs API for low-level audio/video processing on desktop platforms. Notably, it also supports third-party AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Google Gemini via the new Firefox Labs feature. Phoronix reports: The WebCodecs API is particularly useful for web-based apps like video/audio editors and video conferencing that may want control over individual frames of a video stream or audio chunks. For any web software interested in that low-level audio/video encode/decode handling there is now WebCodecs API working on the Firefox desktop builds. As for the third-party AI chatbots, here's what Mozilla's Ian Carmichael said back in June: "If you want to use AI, we think you should have the freedom to use (or not use) the tools that best suit your needs. Instead of juggling between tabs or apps for assistance, those who opt-in will have the option to access their preferred AI service from the Firefox sidebar to summarize information, simplify language, or test their knowledge, all without leaving their current web page."

You can learn more about Firefox 130 via developer.mozilla.org. Binaries for Linux can be found at Mozilla.org.

Sweden's Enerpoly has opened the world's first zinc-ion battery megafactory near Stockholm, aiming for a 100 MWh annual capacity by 2026. "According to Enerpoly, this megafactory will serve Europe's needs for safe energy storage, and also utilize an all-European supply chain to boot," reports New Atlas. From the report: If you're wondering why Enerpoly is bothering with zinc-ion and not lithium-ion batteries, it's because the former is a better choice for storage in several ways:

- They use a water-based electrolyte, which makes them non-flammable, and reduces the risk of fires and explosions.
- They're less expensive, because zinc is far more abundant than lithium (which is difficult and expensive to extract), and easier to handle. They can also operate across a wider temperature range and require less maintenance, making them cheaper than lithium-ion options.
- They're more eco-friendly for the same reason. In contrast, extracting lithium currently requires extensive mining as well as the use of massive evaporation ponds before processing even begins.
- They're said to last a whole lot longer. According to the International Zinc Association, a nonprofit trade association which counts Enerpoly as a member, zinc-based batteries can last up to 20 years, while lithium batteries manage about 12 years. The downside? They have a lower energy density than something like a Tesla 4680 battery, making them ideal for applications like load shifting and grid resilience.

An anonymous reader quotes a Bloomberg article, written by Jason Leopold: The aurora borealis, or northern lights, is a colorful display in the night sky that comes from geomagnetic storms in space. When charged particles from the sun smash into the Earth's upper atmosphere, they create bright, kaleidoscopic ribbons of light, typically in polar regions. Really big solar action can interfere with GPS systems and power grids. That's exactly what happened on May 10, when there were three "coronal mass ejections" (my future metal band name) that produced one of the most powerful solar storms in 500 years, hence the dazzling, polychromatic sky visible even from South America. Turns out, the extreme space weather also disrupted life on Earth.

Six days after the northern lights, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with NOAA. I was curious how the agency reacted to the atmospheric event and whether the public deserved to be concerned. I asked NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center and National Weather Service for a wide range of records, including emails, photographs, satellite images and threat assessments. A couple of weeks ago, NOAA turned over some interesting documents. The short version is, while we marveled at the light show, scientists were concerned. According to one internal memo, the geomagnetic storm was an "extreme," rare event and if NOAA scientists hadn't been on their game it could have been catastrophic.

A May 14, three-page after action memo disseminated by Clinton Wallace, the director of the Space Weather Prediction Center, described the storm's impact and explained the celestial phenomenon. He said "Solar Cycle 25," a phase of solar sunspot activity that began in December 2019 and continues through 2030, "has been more active than anticipated, with an intense surge in solar activity marking the beginning of May." "A large group of unstable sunspots on the Sun's surface unleashed several powerful solar flares, immediately affecting the Earth's outer atmosphere and causing disruptions in high-frequency (HF) radio communications," he wrote. "This had significant implications for trans-oceanic aviation, which relies heavily on HF radio for communication over long distances."

On May 9, a day before the northern lights extravaganza, staff at the Space Weather Prediction Center "activated" the North American Electric Reliability Corp. hotline to make sure the regulator was prepared. Wallace's memo said NERC gave about 3,000 electric utility companies a six-hour head start to get ready. The space weather officials also advised the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on preparedness. Wallace wrote in his memo that the storm caused "significant disruptions across multiple sectors, including navigation, power grids, aviation, and satellite operations." He also noted that the severity of the geomagnetic storm "underscored the interconnectedness and vulnerability of modern infrastructure to space weather." Although Wallace said the space weather scientists took steps to mitigate any potential disaster, their work "highlighted areas for improvement in preparedness and response." He didn't elaborate.

The Verge's Jess Weatherbed reports: The organization behind National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is being slammed online after it claimed that opposing the use of AI writing tools is "classist and ableist." On Saturday, NaNoWriMo published its stance on the technology, announcing that it doesn't explicitly support or condemn any approach to writing. "We believe that to categorically condemn AI would be to ignore classist and ableist issues surrounding the use of the technology, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege," NaNoWriMo said, arguing that "not all brains" have the "same abilities" and that AI tools can reduce the financial burden of hiring human writing assistants.

NaNoWriMo's annual creative writing event is the organization's flagship program that challenges participants to create a 50,000-word manuscript every November. Last year, the organization said that it accepts novels written with the help of AI apps like ChatGPT but noted that doing so for the entire submission "would defeat the purpose of the challenge." This year's post goes further. "We recognize that some members of our community stand staunchly against AI for themselves, and that's perfectly fine," said NaNoWriMo in its latest post advocating for AI tools. "As individuals, we have the freedom to make our own decisions."

The post has since been lambasted by writers across platforms like X and Reddit, who, like many creatives, believe that generative AI tools are exploitive and devalue human art. Many disabled writers also criticized the statement for inferring that they need generative AI tools to write effectively. Meanwhile, Daniel Jose Older, a lead story architect for Star Wars: The High Republic, announced that he was resigning from the NaNoWriMo Writers Board due to the statement. "Generative AI empowers not the artist, not the writer, but the tech industry," Star Wars: Aftermath author Chuck Wendig said in response to NaNoWriMo's stance. "It steals content to remake content, graverobbing existing material to staple together its Frankensteinian idea of art and story."

Intel's slumping share price could cost it a spot in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Reuters reports: Analysts and investors said Intel was likely to be removed from the Dow, pointing to a near 60% decline in the company's shares this year that has made it the worst performer on the index and left it with the lowest stock price on the price-weighted Dow. The chipmaker's shares slid about 7% on Tuesday amid a broader market selloff, with the Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index (.SOX) down nearly 6%, following reports of lower chip sales globally in July.

A removal from the index will hurt Intel's already bruised reputation. The company has missed out on the artificial intelligence boom after passing on an OpenAI investment and losses are mounting at the contract manufacturing unit that the chipmaker has been building out in hopes of challenging TSMC. To fund a turnaround, Intel suspended dividend and announced layoffs affecting 15% of its workforce during its earnings report last month. But some analysts and a former board member believe the moves might be too little, too late for the chipmaker.

In the days following Brazil's shutdown of X, the decentralized social networking startup Bluesky added over 2 million new users, up from just half a million as of Friday. "This rapid growth led some users to encounter the occasional error that would state there were 'Not Enough Resources' to handle requests, as Bluesky engineers scrambled to keep the servers stable under the influx of new sign-ups," reports TechCrunch's Sarah Perez. From the report: As new users downloaded the app, Bluesky jumped to becoming the app to No. 1 in Brazil over the weekend, ahead of Meta's X competitor, Instagram Threads. According to app intelligence firm Appfigures, Bluesky's total downloads soared by 10,584% this weekend compared to last, and its downloads in Brazil were up by a whopping 1,018,952%. The growth seems to be having a halo effect, as downloads outside Brazil also rose by 584%, the firm noted. In part, this is due to Bluesky receiving downloads in 22 countries where it had barely seen any traction before.

In terms of absolute downloads, countries that saw the most installs outside Brazil included the U.S., Portugal, the U.K., Canada and Spain. Those with the most download growth, however, were Portugal, Chile, Argentina, Colombia and Romania. Most of the latter group jumped from single-digit growth to growth in the thousands. Bluesky's newcomers have actively engaged on the platform, too, driving up other key metrics.

As one Bluesky engineer remarked, the number of likes on the social network grew to 104.6 million over the past four-day period, up from just 13 million when compared with a similar period just a week ago. Follows also grew from 1.4 million to 100.8 million while reposts grew from 1.3 million to 11 million. As of Monday, Bluesky said it had added 2.11 million users during the past four days, up from 26,000 users it had added in the week-ago period. In addition, the company noted it had seen "significantly more than a 100% [daily active users] increase." On Tuesday, Bluesky told TechCrunch the number is now 2.4 million and continues to grow "by the minute."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Thursday, ABC announced an upcoming TV special titled, "AI and the Future of Us: An Oprah Winfrey Special." The one-hour show, set to air on September 12, aims to explore AI's impact on daily life and will feature interviews with figures in the tech industry, like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Bill Gates. Soon after the announcement, some AI critics began questioning the guest list and the framing of the show in general. [...] Critics of generative AI ... question the utility of the technology, its perceived environmental impact, and what they see as blatant copyright infringement.

"Sure is nice of Oprah to host this extended sales pitch for the generative AI industry at a moment when its fortunes are flagging and the AI bubble is threatening to burst," tweeted author Brian Merchant, who frequently criticizes generative AI technology in op-eds, social media, and through his "Blood in the Machine" AI newsletter. "The way the experts who are not experts are presented as such what a train wreck," replied artist Karla Ortiz, who is a plaintiff in a lawsuit against several AI companies. "There's still PLENTY of time to get actual experts and have a better discussion on this because yikes." On Friday, Ortiz created a lengthy viral thread on X that detailed her potential issues with the program, writing, "This event will be the first time many people will get info on Generative AI. However it is shaping up to be a misinformed marketing event starring vested interests (some who are under a litany of lawsuits) who ignore the harms GenAi inflicts on communities NOW." The AI TV special will feature "some of the most important and powerful people in AI," said ABC. They include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, YouTube creator Marques Brownlee, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin from the Center for Humane Technology, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and author Marilynne Robinson.

The show will air on September 12 on ABC (and a day later on Hulu) in the U.S.

According to Mark Gurman, Apple's upcoming M4 Mac mini will undergo a major redesign, dropping USB-A ports entirely in favor of five USB-C ports. The new design will also feature front ports for the first time, an internal power supply, and retain Ethernet, HDMI, and the headphone jack.

"As I've been reporting for several months now, the Mac is in for a big transition to M4 chips -- starting around the end of this year and extending into the first half or so of 2025," writes Gurman in a newsletter for Bloomberg. "Apple plans to kick things off soon with a new Mac mini, iMac and MacBook Pro. Of those models, the Mac mini will get the most dramatic new design, its first major overhaul since 2010. Just to put that in perspective: The last time there was a Mac mini redesign, preorders of the iPhone 4 had just began."

According to Bloomberg (paywalled), Nvidia has received a subpoena from the U.S. Department of Justice as the regulator seeks evidence that the AI computing company violated antitrust laws. "The antitrust watchdog had previously delivered questionnaires to companies, and is now sending legally binding requests," notes Reuters. "Officials are concerned that the chipmaker is making it harder to switch to other suppliers and penalizes buyers that do not exclusively use its artificial intelligence chips."

The development follows a push by progressive groups last month, who criticized Nvidia's bundling of software and hardware, claiming it stifles innovation and locks in customers. In July, French antitrust regulators announced plans to charge the company for alleged anti-competitive practices.

Developing...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The Dutch data protection watchdog on Tuesday issued facial recognition startup Clearview AI with a fine of $33.7 million over its creation of what the agency called an "illegal database" of billion of photos of faces. The Netherlands' Data Protection Agency, or DPA, also warned Dutch companies that using Clearview's services is also banned. The data agency said that New York-based Clearview "has not objected to this decision and is therefore unable to appeal against the fine."

But in a statement emailed to The Associated Press, Clearview's chief legal officer, Jack Mulcaire, said that the decision is "unlawful, devoid of due process and is unenforceable." The Dutch agency said that building the database and insufficiently informing people whose images appear in the database amounted to serious breaches of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. "Facial recognition is a highly intrusive technology, that you cannot simply unleash on anyone in the world," DPA chairman Aleid Wolfsen said in a statement. "If there is a photo of you on the Internet -- and doesn't that apply to all of us? -- then you can end up in the database of Clearview and be tracked. This is not a doom scenario from a scary film. Nor is it something that could only be done in China," he said. DPA said that if Clearview doesn't halt the breaches of the regulation, it faces noncompliance penalties of up to $5.6 million on top of the fine. Mulcaire said Clearview doesn't fall under EU data protection regulations. "Clearview AI does not have a place of business in the Netherlands or the EU, it does not have any customers in the Netherlands or the EU, and does not undertake any activities that would otherwise mean it is subject to the GDPR," he said.

PlayStation hero shooter Concord will be taken offline on September 6, 2024 and all players will receive a full refund, Sony announced Tuesday. From a report: Announced on the PlayStation Blog, director Ryan Ellis said "while many qualities of the experience resonated with players, we also recognize that other aspects of the game and our initial launch didn't land the way we'd intended."

Concord will therefore be taken offline so Sony and developer Firewalk Studios can "explore options, including those that will better reach our players." The game will be removed from sale immediately and anyone who purchased on the PlayStation Store or PlayStation Direct will be refunded to their original payment methods. Those who purchased on Steam and the Epic Games Store will be refunded in the coming days. Firewalk Studios' AA shooter was released less than two weeks ago on August 23.

Google has released Android 15 for developers, with support for Pixel phones expected in the coming weeks. The update will roll out to compatible devices from Samsung, Motorola, OnePlus, and other manufacturers in the following months.

Key features of Android 15 include single-tap passkeys, theft detection, improved multitasking for large-screen devices, and app access limitations. The update also enhances TalkBack, Android's screen reader, with Gemini AI integration for audio descriptions of images. Google is expanding its Circle to Search feature with song identification capabilities and extending earthquake alerts to all U.S. states and six territories. The alerts use data from Android devices' accelerometers to detect potential seismic activity, complementing traditional seismometer readings in states with access to the USGS ShakeAlert system.

The YubiKey 5, the most widely used hardware token for two-factor authentication based on the FIDO standard, contains a cryptographic flaw that makes the finger-size device vulnerable to cloning when an attacker gains brief physical access to it, researchers said Tuesday. ArsTechnica: The cryptographic flaw, known as a side channel, resides in a small microcontroller that's used in a vast number of other authentication devices, including smartcards used in banking, electronic passports, and the accessing of secure areas. While the researchers have confirmed all YubiKey 5 series models can be cloned, they haven't tested other devices using the microcontroller, which is SLE78 made by Infineon and successor microcontrollers known as the Infineon Optiga Trust M and the Infineon Optiga TPM. The researchers suspect that any device using any of these three microcontrollers and the Infineon cryptographic library contain the same vulnerability.

YubiKey-maker Yubico issued an advisory in coordination with a detailed disclosure report from NinjaLab, the security firm that reverse-engineered the YubiKey 5 series and devised the cloning attack. All YubiKeys running firmware prior to version 5.7 -- which was released in May and replaces the Infineon cryptolibrary with a custom one -- are vulnerable. Updating key firmware on the YubiKey isn't possible. That leaves all affected YubiKeys permanently vulnerable.

U.S. oilfield services firm Halliburton said on Tuesday an unauthorized third party had accessed and removed data from its systems, providing details regarding the cyberattack in August. From a report: The company said it is evaluating the nature and scope of information that was removed, but added that the incident is not reasonably likely to have a material impact. Halliburton declined to comment in response to Reuters' requests for additional information on the nature of data removed and expenses incurred due to the cyber incident. It also did not immediately confirm whether it had been contacted by the hackers. U.S energy firms have suffered multiple cyberattacks, including ransomware attacks, in recent years. In 2021, Colonial Pipeline was forced to pay $4.4 million in ransom as its executives were not sure about the severity of the breach.

Intel launched its new Core Ultra 200V-series processors on Tuesday, promising significant improvements in power efficiency, performance, and battery life over competitors and previous generations. The company claims the chips offer "historic x86 power efficiency" and the "world's fastest mobile CPU cores." The processors, available for pre-order in OEM systems and shipping September 24, feature four Lion Cove P-cores and four Skymont E-cores with boost speeds up to 5.1 GHz.

Intel says the chips deliver up to 20.1 hours of battery life, Tom's Hardware reports, outperforming Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite by nearly two hours and AMD's chips by almost four hours. Intel asserts a 30% faster gaming performance than competing processors and highlighted compatibility issues with Qualcomm's chips, noting that nearly two dozen games used for benchmarking failed to run on X Elite chips. The company claims up to 64% advantage in single-threaded performance over Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite and up to 33% over AMD Strix Point HX370.

Mobile phones are not linked to brain and head cancers, a comprehensive review of the highest quality evidence available commissioned by the World Health Organization has found. From a report: Led by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (Arpansa), the systematic review examined more than 5,000 studies from which the most scientifically rigorous were identified and weak studies were excluded. The final analysis included 63 observational studies in humans published between 1994 and 2022, making it "the most comprehensive review to date," the review lead author, associate prof Ken Karipidis, said. "We concluded the evidence does not show a link between mobile phones and brain cancer or other head and neck cancers."

Published on Wednesday, the review focused on cancers of the central nervous system (including brain, meninges, pituitary gland and ear), salivary gland tumours and brain tumours. The review found no overall association between mobile phone use and cancer, no association with prolonged use (if people use their mobile phones for 10 years or more), and no association with the amount of mobile phone use (the number of calls made or the time spent on the phone).

Japan has recorded its hottest summer on record after a sweltering three months marked by thousands of instances of "extreme heat," with meteorologists warning that unseasonably high temperatures will continue through the autumn. From a report: The average temperature in June, July and August was 1.76C higher than the average recorded between 1991 and 2020, the Japan meteorological agency said, according to Kyodo news agency. It was the hottest summer since comparable records were first kept in 1898 and tied the record set in 2023, the agency said. Japan has recorded 8,821 instances of "extreme heat" -- a temperature of 35C or higher -- so far this year, easily beating the previous record of 6,692 set in 2023, it added. The brutal heat was not confined to Japan. Swathes of China logged the hottest August on record, the weather service said.

The hot weather prompted delays to the start of the new school year in some Chinese cities. State media reported on Tuesday that some schools and universities in Jiangxi, Chongqing, and Sichuan provinces had pushed the return to school out to 9 September, citing high temperatures. China Daily said Chongqing authorities had extended school holidays for all kindergarten, primary and secondary schools, and at least a dozen colleges and universities, "to ensure the safety and health of teachers and students amid the extreme heat."

Nvidia dominates the chips at the center of the AI boom. It wants to conquer almost everything else that makes those chips tick, too. From a report: Chief Executive Jensen Huang is increasingly broadening his company's focus -- and seeking to widen its advantage over competitors -- by offering software, data-center design services and networking technology in addition to its powerful silicon brains. More than a supplier of a valuable hardware component, he is trying to build Nvidia into a one-stop shop for all the key elements in the data centers where tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT are created and deployed -- or what he calls "AI factories."

Huang emphasized Nvidia's growing prowess at data-center design following an earnings report Wednesday that exceeded Wall Street forecasts. The report came days after rival AMD agreed to pay nearly $5 billion to buy data-center design and manufacturing company ZT Systems to try to gain ground on Nvidia. "We have the ability fairly uniquely to integrate to design an AI factory because we have all the parts," Huang said in a call with analysts. "It's not possible to come up with a new AI factory every year unless you have all the parts." It is a strategy designed to extend the business success that has made Nvidia one of the world's most valuable companies -- and to insulate it from rivals eager to eat into its AI-chip market share, estimated at more than 80%. Gobbling up more of the value in AI data centers both adds revenue and makes its offerings stickier for customers.

[...] Nvidia is building on the effectiveness of its 17-year-old proprietary software, called CUDA, which enables programmers to use its chips. More recently, Huang has been pushing resources into a superfast networking protocol called InfiniBand, after acquiring the technology's main equipment maker, Mellanox Technologies, five years ago for nearly $7 billion. Analysts estimate that InfiniBand is used in most AI-training deployments. Nvidia is also building a business that supplies AI-optimized Ethernet, a form of networking widely used in traditional data centers. The Ethernet business is expected to generate billions of dollars in revenue within a year, Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress said Wednesday. More broadly, Nvidia sells products including central processors and networking chips for a range of other data-center equipment that is fine-tuned to work seamlessly together.

Scientists have finally solved a long-standing mystery about the geologic process behind these large pieces of gold found in quartz rock. From a report: Gold has always been a hot commodity. But these days, finding a nugget isn't too tricky: Much of the world's gold is mined from natural veins of quartz, a glassy mineral that streaks through large chunks of Earth's squashed-up crust. But the geologic process that put gold nuggets there in the first place was a mystery. Now, a new study published today in Nature Geoscience has come up with a convincing, and surprising, answer: electricity, and earthquakes -- lots of them.

Those nuggets owe their existence to the strange electrical properties of common quartz. When squished or jiggled, the mineral generates electricity. That drags gold particles out of fluid in Earth's crust. The particles crystallize out as grains of gold -- and, over time, with enough electrical stimulation, those grains bloom into nuggets. "If you shake quartz, it makes electricity. If you make electricity, gold comes out," says Christopher Voisey, a geologist at Monash University in Australia and the lead author of the new paper. Earthquakes are the most likely natural source of that shaking, and the team's lab experiments show that earthquakes can make gold nuggets.

The idea that gold nuggets appear because of electricity instead of a more conventional geologic process is, at first, a peculiar thought. But "it makes complete sense," says Thomas Gernon, a geoscientist at the University of Southampton in England and who was not involved with the new work. Quartz veins host a disproportionate number of gold nuggets and their environments experience plenty of earthquakes.

Canva, a popular online design platform, plans to significantly increase prices for some of its business subscriptions next year, citing the addition of generative AI features. The company's Teams subscription, which supports multiple users, will see price hikes of up to 300% in some regions. From a report: Subscribers to Canva Teams, which is targeted at businesses with several users, were emailed late last week to notify them of the price increase, which amounts to a three-times jump. A spokesperson for Canva said the price rise was due in part to the introduction of a number of new features on the Canva platform, including many powered by AI and generative AI.