Last week, Kotaku reported on a new project, called Insignia, "that aims to recreate the original Xbox Live service, potentially restoring online play to many dozens of classic Xbox games that fell offline when the original Xbox Live service closed on April 15, 2010." From the report: The project's announcement on the r/originalxbox subreddit came from SoullessSentinel, a screen name of one Luke Usher. Usher is well known in the vintage Xbox community as the lead developer of Cxbx-Reloaded, arguably the most advanced PC-based emulator of the 2001 Xbox hardware. (Microsoft's classic console has proven notoriously tricky to emulate over the years.)

As a demonstration of Insignia's progress, Usher shared a video depicting the creation of a new Xbox Live account via the Xbox's system UI. It's a cool trick, as this process has not been technically possible since the online service's April 2010 closure. (In a cheeky touch, the video names the newly created account HiroProtagonist, the Gamertag of Xbox co-creator J Allard.) Insignia will work with normal, unmodded consoles, provided the user can perform a one-time process to retrieve their unit's internal encryption keys. Long-existing Xbox soft-mod techniques, which require physical copies of exploitable games like Splinter Cell or MechAssault but do not necessarily alter the console's hardware or operating system, should suffice for accomplishing this key retrieval. Once that initial setup's completed, Usher envisions a more or less vanilla Xbox Live experience, complete with matchmaking, voice chat, messaging, and almost everything else you might remember. (One exception would come in a lack of proprietary game DLC, which Insignia and its developers lack rights to distribute.) Anti-cheating measures are also in the works, as well as reporting and banning mechanisms for truly bad actors. The project works by using a DNS man-in-the-middle maneuver to redirect all of Xbox Live's original server calls to new addresses that point to Insignia's work-in-progress infrastructure.

"The current plan is for Insignia to be a centralized service run by Usher and associates," reports Kotaku. "He believes keeping it centralized will prevent player populations from diluting across multiple third-party servers, and that it will not be much of a resource burden." "The server," he noted, "is used for authentication, matchmaking, storing friends lists, etc. but actual game traffic is usually P2P between Xboxes, so the requirements for our server are pretty low."

An anonymous reader quotes Engadget: Texas Instruments' graphing calculators have a reputation as hobbyist devices given their program support, but they just lost some of their appeal. Cemetech has learned (via Linus Tech Tips) that Texas Instruments is pulling support for assembly- and C-based programs on the TI-84 Plus CE and its French counterpart, the TI-83 Premium CE. Install the latest firmware for both (OS 5.6 and OS 5.5 respectively) and you'll not only lose access to those apps, but won't have a way to roll back.

The company explained the move as an effort to "prioritize learning and minimize any security risks." It's to reduce cheating, to put it another way... While this could please teachers worried that students will use apps to cheat during exams, enthusiasts are unsurprisingly mad. This reduces the amount of control programmers have over their calculator apps.

The State of Software Security (SOSS): Open Source Edition "analyzed the component open source libraries across the Veracode platform database of 85,000 applications which includes 351,000 unique external libraries," reports TechRepublic. "Chris Eng, chief research officer at Veracode, said open source software has a surprising variety of flaws." "An application's attack surface is not limited to its own code and the code of explicitly included libraries, because those libraries have their own dependencies," he said. The study found that 70% of applications have a security flaw in an open source library on an initial scan.
Other findings from the report:

• The most commonly included libraries are present in over 75% of applications for each language.

• 47% of those flawed libraries in applications are transitive.

• More than 61% of flawed libraries in JavaScript contain vulnerabilities without corresponding common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs).

• Fixing most library-introduced flaws can be done with a minor version upgrade.

• Using any given PHP library has a greater than 50% chance of bringing a security flaw along with it.

The Trump administration "has discussed whether to conduct the first U.S. nuclear test explosion since 1992," reports the Washington Post, "in a move that would have far-reaching consequences for relations with other nuclear powers and reverse a decades-long moratorium on such actions, said a senior administration official and two former officials familiar with the deliberations." The matter came up at a meeting of senior officials representing the top national security agencies last Friday, following accusations from administration officials that Russia and China are conducting low-yield nuclear tests — an assertion that has not been substantiated by publicly available evidence and that both countries have denied.

A senior administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the sensitive nuclear discussions, said that demonstrating to Moscow and Beijing that the United States could "rapid test" could prove useful from a negotiating standpoint as Washington seeks a trilateral deal to regulate the arsenals of the biggest nuclear powers. The meeting did not conclude with any agreement to conduct a test, but a senior administration official said the proposal is "very much an ongoing conversation."

Another person familiar with the meeting, however, said a decision was ultimately made to take other measures in response to threats posed by Russia and China and avoid a resumption of testing... During the meeting, serious disagreements emerged over the idea, in particular from the National Nuclear Security Administration, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
The Post points out that since 1945 "at least eight countries have collectively conducted about 2,000 nuclear tests, of which more than 1,000 were carried out by the United States.

"The environmental and health-related consequences of nuclear testing moved the process underground, eventually leading to near-global moratorium on testing in this century with the exception of North Korea."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: The University of California board of regents voted Thursday to stop using the SAT and ACT college admissions exams (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), reshaping college admissions in one of the largest and most prestigious university systems in the country and dealing a significant blow to the multibillion-dollar college admission testing industry. The unanimous 23-to-0 vote ratified a proposal put forward last month by UC President Janet Napolitano to phase out the exams over the next five years until the sprawling UC system can develop its own test.

The battle against standardized tests has raged for years because minority students score, on average, lower than their white classmates. Advocates argue that the exams are an unfair admission barrier to those students because they often cannot pay for pricey test preparation. [...] Ms. Napolitano's proposal allows four years for the UC system to develop a new exam. If it fails to create or adopt one, then it likely would cease to use any exam, said Robert Schaeffer, public education director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, known as FairTest, which has fought against standardized testing for 30 years. Mr. Schaeffer said he doesn't believe a new exam will be implemented. "It appears very unlikely that they will be able to design an instrument that is more accurate and fairer than relying on applicants' high school records," Mr. Schaeffer said. "And, if a new test somehow meets those goals promoters would face massive adoption barriers, including persuading UC and the rest of the admissions world that a third test is truly needed or useful."

A spokesman for the College Board, which oversees the SAT, said the organization's "mission remains the same: to give all students, and especially low-income and first-generation students, opportunities to show their strength. We must also address the disparities in coursework and classrooms that the evidence shows most drive inequity in California."

New submitter xhonza writes: New OpenBSD version. String of good news. Some of the new changes, as highlighted by Phoronix, include:
- FFS2 file-system improvements including using 64-bit timestamps and block numbers by default for new installs.
- Support for the Raspberry Pi 4 on ARM64 while improving the Raspberry Pi 3 support too. Raspberry Pi 2/3 support has also improved for OpenBSD ARMv7.
- Better support for Rockchip systems like the Pinebook Pro.
- Various SMP improvements including better AMD SMT/Core/Package detection.
- A wide variety of different hardware driver improvements, including Intel AX200 WiFi device support.
- A FIDO driver introduced for FIDO/U2F security keys support.
- Fixed handling of USB 2.0 devices when in use on different USB 3.0 controllers.
- The PowerPC OpenBSD build switched over to Clang as its default code compiler.
- Various dhclient fixes.
- Various security improvements.

The changelog, announcement, and list of mirrors can be found at their respective links.

destinyland shares an update about Billy Mitchell, the intense dark-haired videogame champion in the 2007 documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Last year the videogame record-keepers at Twin Galaxies revoked Billy Mitchell's entire lifetime's worth of videogame high scores after an online discussion argued videotapes of three of Mitchell's performances suggested they'd been achieved using a MAME emulator. Electronic Gaming Monthly reports that Mitchell has since streamed games on Twitch "obtaining scores equal to those that had been disputed, broadcast live from public venues," but the record-keepers also banned Mitchell for life from ever submitting any new high scores.

Ars Technica reports that Mitchell recently updated his defamation lawsuit against Twin Galaxies, while they've counter-filed a motion to dismiss it which is now scheduled to be heard on July 6. They argue that ruling in Mitchell's favor "would have chilling effects on the freedom of speech." But in March Billy updated his lawsuit to call their accusation "libelous on its face," saying that Twin Galaxies "at least implied [that he was a cheater], so that any reasonable reader would understand Twin Galaxies has called Mitchell a cheater who deserved punishment by stripping him of all his Twin Galaxies records and banning him for life from submitting further records." Ars Technica writes:

Mitchell takes particular issue with Twin Galaxies' alleged refusal to consider "25 sworn affidavits" from eyewitnesses supporting his claims, in favor of an exclusive focus on "scientific" evidence. Twin Galaxies founder Walter Day is quoted saying that he "find[s] it unexplainable that my testimony as the founder and former owner is disregarded, while others, specifically the ones against Billy, are embraced...."

Twin Galaxies' motion highlights that the 3,770-post dispute thread surrounding Mitchell's Donkey Kong scores (which is now included in its entirety in the court record) was viewed nearly 2.4 million times as of March 14... "Twin Galaxies believes that this was the most professionally documented and thoroughly investigated video game score of all time," Twin Galaxies owner Jason Hall said in his public declaration...

Court proceedings are "not the forum for [Mitchell] to get revenge," Twin Galaxies argues, claiming that its statements regarding Mitchell were "protected activity" under the First Amendment, and Mitchell's suit "seeks to chill the expression of free speech."
In the 1985 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records, Mitchell simultaneously held the highest scores for six different video games — Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong, Jr., Centipede, and Burger Time. Because Twin Galaxies now refuses to recognize any of Mitchell's previous records, Guinness has now also expunged those records from its publication.

In 1999 CmdrTaco noted Billy's perfect game of Pac-Man. Though no questions were ever raised about that legendary game, the 2019 edition of Guinness's record book still demoted it to a new section called "Records That Never Were."

In 2001, Slashdot covered Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's description of Linux as "a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches."

This week during a chat with MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, Microsoft's current president Brad Smith admitted that "Microsoft was on the wrong side of history when open-source exploded at the beginning of the century." "And I can say that about me personally. The good news is that, if life is long enough, you can learn...that you need to change.

"Today, Microsoft is the single largest contributor to open-source projects in the world when it comes to businesses. When we look at GitHub, we see it as the home for open-source development, and we see our responsibility as its steward to make it a secure, productive home for [developers]."

Netflix is working to restore streaming quality in various European countries following government requests for the company to reduce bandwidth usage out of fear that it was putting too much stress on broadband connections. The Verge reports: People in Denmark, Norway, Germany, and other countries reported noticing an uptick in streaming bitrate, according to FlatpanelsHD. Netflix confirmed to the website that it is "working with ISPs to help increase capacity." The company did not say which countries have restored bitrate for higher-quality streaming and which ones haven't. "In the last month alone we have added four times the normal capacity," a spokesperson told FlatpanelsHD. "As conditions improve we will lift these limitations." Other streaming services will likely follow suit, with some already reportedly upping the streaming quality. Apple Insider reports that Apple restored higher bitrates to increase streaming quality for people using Apple TV Plus late last month.

Ivan Mehta, writing for The Next Web: For years, IDEs (Integrated Development Environment) have tried to make development quicker by predicting the next part of a developer's code. Now, startups like Codota are using AI to help developers with code completion on any code editor. The Israel-based startup was found in 2015 by Dror Weiss and Eran Yahav. Codota's free-to-use autocomplete plug-in supports major languages such as Java, Python, Javascript, PHP, and Rust across major IDEs such as Eclipse and Android Studio. Yahav told me that Codota differs from other code completion AIs as it's able to predict the next token completion by leaning on an AI-based code 'dictionary.'

Charlotte Web writes: Since 2001 the TIOBE Index has been ranking top results for the search query +"<language> programming" on the top 25 search engines. "This month, C moved up past Java and entered the number one position," reports JAXenter.

"There's a new number one. (Or, should we say an old number one?)"

"Java and C were already very close in April, but this month C surpasses Java again," explains Paul Jansen CEO TIOBE Software. He also points out that the last time C was number one was back in 2015, suggesting that today embedded software languages like C and C++ "are gaining popularity because these are used in software for medical devices."

"On another note, it is also worth mentioning that Rust is really getting close to the top 20 now (from #27 to #21 within one month)."

"Perl, on the other hand, might be on its way off of the charts," argues JAXenter, "if it continues its downward trend. This month it saw a rate of change of -0.51%. It is currently number 18 on the list, but in May 2019 it was number 13."
Python also passed C++ to take the #3 spot, while C# overtook Visual Basic for the #5 spot. ("Classic Visual Basic" also lost the #16 spot to PL/SQL).

Even PHP rose a notch, pushing past SQL to take the #8 spot, and Scratch also moved up one, overtaking Objective C for the #19 position.

Three U.S. senators today urged Comcast to open all of its Wi-Fi hotspots to children who lack Internet access at home during the pandemic. Ars Technica reports: A letter (PDF) from Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) says that Comcast recently refused a request to do so because it would cause congestion for subscribers. But the senators argue that "Comcast's excuse simply does not add up." Comcast has been praised by advocates for its pandemic response, which includes two free months of home-Internet service for new low-income subscribers, temporary suspension of its data cap, and making many of its hotspots free to the general public. But while Comcast opened up 1.5 million hotspots located at businesses and other public areas, there's another category of Comcast Wi-Fi hotspots that still require a Comcast login and subscription. Those are the hotspots that are enabled by default on Xfinity routers used by home-Internet subscribers.

Since 2013, Xfinity gateways have broadcasted a separate network that other Comcast subscribers can log in to with a Comcast username and password. Unless you've disabled the functionality, anyone within range of your Comcast router can get Internet access if they have a Comcast subscription or have paid for a temporary Wi-Fi pass. Wyden, Harris, and Booker argue that Comcast should open these hotspots to children without Internet access during the pandemic so that kids can get free broadband at home instead of having to go to a parking lot or other public places. In the letter, the senators ask Comcast to answer a list of questions by May 22. They also want the company to provide specific details on how opening up the hotspots would affect network performance.

"Please identify the specific performance issues that you anticipate would impact Comcast subscribers and their ability to get the level of service for which they pay if Comcast removed the paywall on its residential public Wi-Fi networks," the senators wrote. "For each issue you identify, please explain why the use today of a subscriber's public network by someone who has purchased an access pass from Comcast does not cause the same problem."

Inkscape, the free and open-source vector graphics editor, has released version 1.0 for Linux, Windows, and macOS. It comes after three years in development and over 16 years after Inkscape's initial release. BetaNews reports: "Built with the power of a team of volunteers, this open source vector editor represents the work of many hearts and hands from around the world, ensuring that Inkscape remains available free for everyone to download and enjoy. In fact, translations for over 20 languages were updated for version 1.0, making the software more accessible to people from all over the world. A major milestone was achieved in enabling Inkscape to use a more recent version of the software used to build the editor's user interface (namely GTK+3). Users with HiDPI (high resolution) screens can thank teamwork that took place during the 2018 Boston Hackfest for setting the updated-GTK wheels in motion," explains the developers.

The devs further explain, "The extensions system has undergone some fundamental changes in version 1.0. Over the years, Inkscape users have become used to working with third-party extensions, such as various ones used for laser cutting and exporting to file formats which are not a native part of Inkscape. While outreach to extension developers was undertaken as Inkscape migrates towards Python 3 and a more logical and fully tested extensions API (now hosted in a separate repository), not all third-party extensions have been brought forward to be compatible yet. This will mean that 1.0 may not allow some users to continue with their normal extensions workflow." The blog post, official release notes, and download page are available at their respective links.

According to research published in the journal AIP Advances, scientists have created a prototype jet engine that compresses air and ionizes it with microwaves, generating plasma that thrusts it forward. ScienceAlert reports: There's a long way to go between a proof-of-concept prototype and installing an engine in a real plane. But the prototype was able to launch a one-kilogram (2.2-pound) steel ball 24 millimeters (almost one inch) into the air. That's the same thrust, proportional to scale, as a conventional jet engine. "Our results demonstrated that such a jet engine based on microwave air plasma can be a potentially viable alternative to the conventional fossil fuel jet engine," lead researcher and Wuhan University engineer Jau Tang said in a press release.

"The race for a vaccine to combat the new coronavirus is moving faster than researchers and drugmakers expected," reported Dow Jones News Services this week, "with Pfizer Inc. joining several other groups saying that they had accelerated the timetable for testing and that a vaccine could be ready for emergency use in the fall." Pfizer said Tuesday it will begin testing of its experimental vaccine in the U.S. as early as next week. On Monday, Oxford University researchers said their vaccine candidate could be available for emergency use as early as September if it passes muster in studies, while biotech Moderna Inc. said it was preparing to enter its vaccine into the second phase of human testing... If the vaccine shows signs of working safely in the study, Moderna said the third and final phase of testing could start in the fall. The company said it could seek FDA approval to sell the vaccine by year's end, if it succeeds in testing...

Merck & Co., a longtime maker of vaccines, said it is talking to potential partners about three different technologies to manufacture coronavirus vaccines... Johnson & Johnson said earlier this month it shaved months off the usual timelines for developing a vaccine, and expects to start human testing of a coronavirus candidate as soon as September, with possible availability on an emergency-use basis in early 2021.
SFGate also reports that GlaxoSmithKline and the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi "expect their vaccine will be ready for human testing in the second half of 2020."

And the Associated Press notes that America's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) "is tracking at least 86 active different approaches among pharmaceutical companies, academic researchers and scientists around the globe." Dr. Peter Marks, director of the agency's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, adds "We expect about two dozen more to enter clinical trials by this summer and early fall."

"Data from connected scale users suggests Americans, on average, are not gaining weight during lockdowns," writes long-time Slashdot reader pfhlick.

The Washington Post reports: Withings, the maker of popular Internet-connected scales and other body-measurement devices, studied what happened to the weight of some 450,000 of its American users between March 22 — when New York ordered people home — and April 18. Despite concerns about gaining a "quarantine 15," the average user gained 0.21 pounds during that month... Over the same March-April period in 2019, Withings said its American users gained slightly less weight — 0.19 pounds on average — though fewer people had the scales last year...

Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University — who wasn't involved with the Withings analysis — said he found the results a bit disappointing. "With the shutdown of the restaurants, I thought the numbers would have gotten better," he said. Home-cooked meals tend to be healthier than dining out.
Withings' numbers varied slightly for other countires. But citing a professor of medicine at Stanford, the article notes that average weight gains may be misleading, since some people "may be hitting their groove during stay-at-home orders by embracing cooking and taking up jogging. But others could be using food to cope with stress and gaining large amounts of weight." In fact, 37% of the scale owners gained more than a pound. (Which, if my math is correct, suggests that the other 63% had to lose at least .13 pounds.)

The article also notes that for buyers of Withings' scales, "contributing aggregate data is a condition included in its terms of service; its customers don't get the option to opt out if they want to use Withings products."

Mike Bouma is Slashdot reader #85,252. (And judging by his Slashdot profile, he was also a participant in the short-lived Amiga webring.) He writes: KK of the demo scene group Altair is making a Doom clone for the Amiga 500. The system requirements are a mere 7 Mhz Amiga 500 with 1 MB of RAM!

Have a look:

Dread Ep 01 — making "Doom" clone for Amiga 500

Dread Ep 02 — "Doom" clone for Amiga 500 — Laying out the map...

You can find KK/Altair at the English Amiga Board.

This week U.S. president Donald Trump suspended America's $900 million annual contribution to the World Health Organization. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, called Trump's move a "crime against humanity...."

The Hill reports: "Every scientist, every health worker, every citizen must resist and rebel against this appalling betrayal of global solidarity," he added...

The American Medical Association (AMA) late Tuesday called Trump's decision a "dangerous step in the wrong direction" and urged him to reconsider. "Fighting a global pandemic requires international cooperation and reliance on science and data. Cutting funding to the WHO — rather than focusing on solutions — is a dangerous move at a precarious moment for the world," the AMA said in a statement. European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, meanwhile, said Wednesday that there was "no reason justifying" Trump's move...

And Bill Gates said in a tweet that halting funding to the WHO amid a world health crisis "is as dangerous as it sounds."

"Their work is slowing the spread of COVID-19 and if that work is stopped no other organization can replace them," the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist added. "The world needs @WHO now more than ever."
Agreeing with Bill Gates was 95-year-old former U.S. president Jimmy Carter. Newsweek quotes Carter's newly-released statement calling the WHO "the only international organization capable of leading the effort to control this virus."

The head of the United Nations also called the WHO "absolutely critical to the world's efforts to win the war against COVID-19."

While criticizing the WHO, this week an article in the Atlantic called president Trump's moves "a transparent effort to distract from his administration's failure to prepare for the COVID-19 pandemic." The Democrats speaker of the House added that Trump's decision "is dangerous, illegal and will be swiftly challenged."

But the science magazine Nature still published an editorial harshly criticizing Trump's attempt to defund the WHO. "[E]ven talk of doing so in the middle of a global health and economic crisis cannot be condemned strongly enough." They argue that withholding America's funds "will place more lives at risk and ensure that the world takes longer to emerge from this crisis... It is right that researchers, funders and governments have been protesting against Trump's decision, and they must continue to do so in the strongest terms."

And Newsweek also published the comments of the WHO's Director-General, who had this message for its critics. "[O]ur focus, my focus, is on stopping this virus and saving lives... This is a time for all of us to be united in our common struggle against a common threat, a dangerous enemy.

"When we're divided, the virus exploits the cracks between us."

An anonymous reader quotes SFGate: The statewide order to shelter in place that went into effect on March 20 had a beneficial side-effect: Accidents, injuries and fatalities on California roadways were cut in half, saving the state and residents of California $1 billion, according to a UC Davis study.

In the 22 days after the shelter-in-place order (March 21-April 11), there was an average of 450 vehicle collisions per day throughout the state, according to the study conducted by the Road Ecology Center at UC Davis. During the same period in 2019, there were 1,128 collisions per day. In the 22 days prior to sheltering in place, there were 1,056 accidents per day...

"The reduction in numbers of all collisions, injury, and fatal collision was equivalent to a $40 million/day savings in costs and about $1 billion in savings since the Governor's order went into effect," the study concluded. The figures were calculated using Federal Highway Administration data, which includes savings from "property damage, treatment of injuries, lost time at work, emergency responses, insurance claims, and the equivalent cost of a life."
California has ordered some insurance companies to refund premiums paid in March and April for car accidents.

A new report from the American Wind Energy Association says wind is now the largest single source of electricity in Iowa. The Des Moines Register reports: According to the trade association's Wind Powers America 2019 Annual Report, Iowa is now generating more than 10,000 megawatts of wind energy, accounting for more than 40% of the state's electricity. Wind became the leading source of electricity in both Iowa and Kansas this year, making them the first states to reach that benchmark. Previously, coal-fired power generation had been Iowa's main source of electricity. Projects in Iowa added the second-most wind power capacity of any state in 2019, behind only Texas. The report also says Iowa is second in the nation in total wind industry jobs, with more than 9,000. The state's total economic investment in wind energy grew by $3 billion to reach $19 billion -- also second in the nation. Texas leads both categories.