Mark Tyson reports via Tom's Hardware: The German Navy is searching for a new storage system to replace the aging 8-inch (20cm) floppy disks which are vital to the running of its Brandenburg class F123 frigates. According to an official tender document, the ideal answer to the German Navy's problems would be a drop-in floppy disk replacement based upon a storage emulation system, reports Golem.de. Germany's Brandenburg class F123 frigates were commissioned in the mid 1990s, so it is understandable that floppy disks were seen as a handy removable storage medium. These drives are part of the frigates' data acquisition system and, thus "central to controlling basic ship functions such as propulsion and power generation," according to the source report.

The F123s are specialized in submarine hunting, and they are also being upgraded in terms of the weapon systems and weapon control systems. Swedish company Saab is the general contractor for the F123 modernizations. It won't be trivial to replace three decades old computer hardware seamlessly, while retaining the full functionality of the existing floppies. However, we note that other companies have wrestled similar problems in recent years. Moreover, there are plenty of emulator enthusiasts using technologies for floppy emulation solutions like Gotek drives which can emulate a variety of floppy drive standards and formats. There are other workable solutions already out there, but it all depends on who the German Navy chooses to deliver the project.

At its Galaxy Unpacked event today, Samsung unveiled a slew of new devices ushering in the "Next Frontier of Mobile AI." With "cross-device intelligence," each device has its own set of AI features that Samsung said will be personalized for users, good for humanity, and empowering for creators. Ars Technica's Kevin Purdy reports: Aiming to put its Galaxy AI onto your wrist and fingers, Samsung announced a seventh version of its Galaxy Watch, a rugged and larger Galaxy Watch Ultra, and the first version of a Galaxy Ring. [...] The Galaxy Watch 7 and Watch Ultra are strikingly similar to their inspirations: the Apple Watch Ultra and the previous Galaxy Watch, respectively. [...] The Galaxy Z Fold 6 ($1,900) and Z Flip 6 ($1,100) have the kinds of boosts from their prior models you might expect. There's a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip inside. The folding glass on both is supposedly stronger and now rated for IP48, which means dust resistance went from "X" (good luck) to "4" (1 mm and greater particles), which is still unfortunate at these price points, but that's life on the folding edge.

The outward-facing screen on the Z Fold 6 got a smidge bigger (6.2 to 6.3 inches), though it has the same inner display. Its cameras are much the same (50 megapixel main, 10 megapixel telephoto, 12 megapixel ultrawide), though the ultrawide claims better low-light performance. The Z Flip 6's most notable upgrade is its 4,000 mAh battery and a vapor cooling chamber inside. The base model gets 12GB of RAM instead of 8GB and 512GB of storage instead of 256GB on the base model.

There are other products not mentioned here announced by Samsung today, including its Galaxy Buds3 and Buds3 Pro, which are wireless earbuds that will remind you of certain other very popular wireless earbuds. What Samsung really had to pitch today was how its own Galaxy AI was the connective tissue between all of them. The screens on the Fold and Flip models are ideal for circling things to search them. The cameras can auto-zoom, the notes can be summarized, and translations, in particular, are everywhere. The watches and rings can track your health and suggest ways to make it better in all kinds of ways that merit a lot of disclosure about where all that data is going. Rick Osterloh, Google's devices and services chief, showed up to give a kind of Gemini blessing to Samsung's efforts.

Its FOSS writes: When it comes to Linux, we get to see some really cool, and sometimes quirky projects (read Hannah Montana Linux) that try to show off what's possible, and that's not a bad thing. One such quirky undertaking has recently surfaced, which sees a sophomore trying to one-up their friend, who had booted Linux off NFS. With their work, they have been able to run Arch Linux on Google Drive.
Their ultimate idea included FUSE (which allows running file-system code in userspace). The developer's blog post explains that when Linux boots, "the kernel unpacks a temporary filesystem into RAM which has the tools to mount the real filesystem... it's very helpful! We can mount a FUSE filesystem in that step and boot normally.... " Thankfully, Dracut makes it easy enough to build a custom initramfs... I decide to build this on top of Arch Linux because it's relatively lightweight and I'm familiar with how it work."
Doing testing in an Amazon S3 container, they built an EFI image — then spent days trying to enable networking... And the adventure continues. ("Would it be possible to manually switch the root without a specialized system call? What if I just chroot?") After they'd made a few more tweaks, "I sit there, in front of my computer, staring. It can't have been that easy, can it? Surely, this is a profane act, and the spirit of Dennis Ritchie ought't've stopped me, right? Nobody stopped me, so I kept going..." I build the unified EFI file, throw it on a USB drive under /BOOT/EFI, and stick it in my old server... This is my magnum opus. My Great Work. This is the mark I will leave on this planet long after I am gone: The Cloud Native Computer.

Despite how silly this project is, there are a few less-silly uses I can think of, like booting Linux off of SSH, or perhaps booting Linux off of a Git repository and tracking every change in Git using gitfs. The possibilities are endless, despite the middling usefulness.

If there is anything I know about technology, it's that moving everything to The Cloud is the current trend. As such, I am prepared to commercialize this for any company wishing to leave their unreliable hardware storage behind and move entirely to The Cloud. Please request a quote if you are interested in True Cloud Native Computing.

Unfortunately, I don't know what to do next with this. Maybe I should install Nix?

An anonymous reader shares a report: A new test version of Windows 11 is available for Windows Insiders on the Dev Channel with Build 26120.961, which rolls out a significant change: a new Windows Start menu. You'll immediately notice that Microsoft has redesigned the Microsoft user account display, moving it to the center of the Start menu as soon as you click on the username or profile picture.

This new "account manager" feature gives you quicker access to your various Microsoft accounts, such as Microsoft 365, Xbox Game Pass, and OneDrive cloud storage. To no surprise, Microsoft is using this prominent display to remind you of their own products and services. The difference to the current Windows 11 Start menu is obvious, as the following screenshot shows:

An anonymous reader shares a report: Sony plans to eventually stop producing consumer-grade recordable Blu-ray discs, but commercial products such as game and film Blu-rays will still be produced. Sony Group will lay off 250 employees at a division that produces recordable media discs, and start winding down the production of specific Blu-ray products, sources have told Japanese newspaper Mainichi.

However, contrary to recent reports, this decision will not affect Blu-ray discs that contain games, TV shows, or films. The staff reduction is happening to the Sony Sendai Technology Center, which produces recordable disc formats like CD-R, DVD-R, BD-R and archival discs for the Japanese region. Standard Blu-rays, 4K UHD discs, and PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Blu-ray discs--which are made at Sony's separate DADC (Digital Audio Disc Corporation) facility--will still be manufactured, shipped, and sold worldwide. In other words, physical media will not go anywhere anytime soon, despite the prevalence and growth of streaming and/or digital media.

"A federal grand jury has indicted an embattled Alzheimer's researcher for allegedly falsifying data to fraudulently obtain $16 million in federal research funding from the National Institutes of Health for the development of a controversial Alzheimer's drug and diagnostic test," writes Beth Mole via Ars Technica. "Wang is charged with one count of major fraud against the United States, two counts of wire fraud, and one count of false statements. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison for the major fraud charge, 20 years in prison for each count of wire fraud, and five years in prison for the count of false statements [...]." From the report: Hoau-Yan Wang, 67, a medical professor at the City University of New York, was a paid collaborator with the Austin, Texas-based pharmaceutical company Cassava Sciences. Wang's research and publications provided scientific underpinnings for Cassava's Alzheimer's treatment, Simufilam, which is now in Phase III trials. Simufilam is a small-molecule drug that Cassava claims can restore the structure and function of a scaffolding protein in the brain of people with Alzheimer's, leading to slowed cognitive decline. But outside researchers have long expressed doubts and concerns about the research.

In 2023, Science magazine obtained a 50-page report from an internal investigation at CUNY that looked into 31 misconduct allegations made against Wang in 2021. According to the report, the investigating committee "found evidence highly suggestive of deliberate scientific misconduct by Wang for 14 of the 31 allegations," the report states. The allegations largely centered around doctored and fabricated images from Western blotting, an analytical technique used to separate and detect proteins. However, the committee couldn't conclusively prove the images were falsified "due to the failure of Dr. Wang to provide underlying, original data or research records and the low quality of the published images that had to be examined in their place." In all, the investigation "revealed long-standing and egregious misconduct in data management and record keeping by Dr. Wang," and concluded that "the integrity of Dr. Wang's work remains highly questionable." The committee also concluded that Cassava's lead scientist on its Alzheimer's disease program, Lindsay Burns, who was a frequent co-author with Wang, also likely bears some responsibility for the misconduct.

In March 2022, five of Wang's articles published in the journal PLOS One were retracted over integrity concerns with images in the papers. Other papers by Wang have also been retracted or had statements of concern attached to them. Further, in September 2022, the Food and Drug Administration conducted an inspection of the analytical work and techniques used by Wang to analyze blood and cerebrospinal fluid from patients in a simufilam trial. The investigation found a slew of egregious problems, which were laid out in a "damning" report (PDF) obtained by Science. In the indictment last week (PDF), federal authorities were explicit about the allegations, claiming that Wang falsified the results of his scientific research to NIH "by, among other things, manipulating data and images of Western blots to artificially add bands [which represent proteins], subtract bands, and change their relative thickness and/or darkness, and then drawing conclusions" based on those false results.

The Los Angeles Times reports that "multiple projects seeking to remove carbon dioxide from the air have been launched across Los Angeles County: When completed, Project Monarch and its wastewater component, Pure Water Antelope Valley, will purify up to 4.5 million gallons of water each day and capture 25,000 tons of atmospheric CO2 each year. (The typical gasoline-powered automobile spews 4.6 tons of carbon each year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency).... But the Palmdale project isn't the only new carbon-capture development in L.A. County. On Friday, officials from CarbonCapture Inc. gathered in Long Beach to introduce the first commercial-scale U.S. direct air capture, or DAC, system designed for mass production. The unit, which resembles a shipping container, can remove more than 500 tons of atmospheric CO2 per year... The L.A.-based company also announced that it will mass-produce up to 4,000 of its DAC modules annually at a new facility in Mesa, Arizona. It joins similar efforts from L.A.-based Captura, which is working to remove CO2 from the upper ocean; L.A.-based Avnos, which produces water while capturing carbon; and L.A.-based Equatic, which is working to remove atmospheric CO2 using the ocean...

[Equatic's] San Pedro facility pumps seawater through a series of electric plates that separate the water into hydrogen and oxygen as well as acidic and alkaline streams of liquid. The alkaline, or base, stream is exposed to the atmosphere, where it mineralizes CO2 into carbonates that are then dissolved and discharged back into the ocean for permanent storage, operators say Additionally, the hydrogen produced by the process is carbon-negative, making it a source of renewable energy that can be used to fuel the CO2 removal process or sold to other users, said Edward Sanders, chief operating officer at Equatic.

Equatic announced this month that it will partner with a Canadian carbon removal project developer, Deep Sky, to build North America's first commercial-scale ocean-based CO2 removal plant in Quebec, following the success of its effort in Los Angeles as well as another facility in Singapore. While the San Pedro facility can capture about 40 tons of CO2 per year, the Quebec facility will capture about 100,000 tons per year, Sanders said.
Meanwhile, two new projects by direct air capture company Heirloom were announced this week in Louisiana. Those projects are "expected to remove hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon dioxide from the air per year," according to the Associated Press, "and store it deep underground... part of "a slew of carbon removal and storage projects that have been announced in Louisiana." Heirloom estimates that they will eventually remove 320,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year... The company uses limestone, a natural absorbent, to extract carbon dioxide from the air. Heirloom's technology reduces the time it takes to absorb carbon dioxide in nature from years to just three days, according to the company's press release. The carbon dioxide is then removed from the limestone material and stored permanently underground.
In May America's Energy department also announced $3.5 billion in funding for its carbon-capture program — four large-scale, regional direct air capture hubs "that each comprise a network of carbon dioxide removal projects..." The hubs will have the capacity to capture and then permanently store at least one million metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere annually, either from a single unit or from multiple interconnected units.
And Shell Canada has a pair of carbon capture projects in Alberta it expects to have operational toward the end of 2028, according to the CBC: The Polaris project is designed to capture about 650,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually from the Scotford complex. That works out to approximately 40 per cent of Scotford's direct CO2 emissions from the refinery and 22 per cent of its emissions from the chemicals complex.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has agreed to a plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department over his alleged role in one of the largest U.S. government breaches of classified material. As a result, he will avoid imprisonment in the United States. CNN reports: Under the terms of the new agreement (PDF), Justice Department prosecutors will seek a 62-month sentence -- which is equal to the amount of time Assange has served in a high-security prison in London while he fought extradition to the US. The plea deal would credit that time served, allowing Assange to immediately return to Australia, his native country. The plea deal must still be approved by a federal judge.

Assange had faced 18 counts from a 2019 indictment for his alleged role in the breach that carried a max of up to 175 years in prison, though he was unlikely to be sentenced to that time in full. Assange was being pursued by US authorities for publishing confidential military records supplied by former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in 2010 and 2011. US officials alleged that Assange goaded Manning into obtaining thousands of pages of unfiltered US diplomatic cables that potentially endangered confidential sources, Iraq war-related significant activity reports and information related to Guantanamo Bay detainees.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the OMG Ubuntu blog: Those of you who own a Framework Laptop 13 — consider me jealous, btw — or are considering buying one in the near future, you may be interested to know that a RISC-V motherboard option is in the works. DeepComputing, the company behind the recently-announced Ubuntu RISC-V laptop, is working with Framework Computer Inc, the company behind the popular, modular, and Linux-friendly Framework laptops, on a RISC-V mainboard.

This is a new announcement; the component itself is in early development, and there's no tentative price tag or pre-order date pencilled in... [T]he Framework RISC-V mainboard will use soldered memory and non-upgradeable eMMC storage (though it can boot from microSD cards). It will 'drop into' any Framework Laptop 13 chassis (or Cooler Master Mainboard Case), per Framework's modular ethos... Framework mentions DeepComputing is "working closely with the teams at Canonical and Red Hat to ensure Linux support is solid through Ubuntu and Fedora", which is great news, and cements Canonical's seriousness to supporting Ubuntu on RISC-V.
"We want to be clear that in this generation, it is focused primarily on enabling developers, tinkerers, and hobbyists to start testing and creating on RISC-V," says Framework's announcement. "The peripheral set and performance aren't yet competitive with our Intel and AMD-powered Framework Laptop Mainboards." They're calling the Mainboard "a huge milestone both for expanding the breadth of the Framework ecosystem and for making RISC-V more accessible than ever... DeepComputing is demoing an early prototype of this Mainboard in a Framework Laptop 13 at the RISC-V Summit Europe next week, and we'll be sharing more as this program progresses."

And their announcement included two additional updates:

• "Just like we did for Framework Laptop 16 last week, today we're sharing open source CAD for the Framework Laptop 13 shell, enabling development of skins, cases, and accessories."

• "We now have Framework Laptop 13 Factory Seconds systems available with British English and German keyboards, making entering the ecosystem more affordable than ever."

"We're eager to continue growing a new Consumer Electronics industry that is grounded in open access, repairability, and customization at every level."

Thomas Claburn reports via The Register: Once again, IBM has been sued for age discrimination, this time alongside spin-off Kyndryl, for allegedly cutting the jobs of older workers while creating similar positions for younger ones. The complaint [PDF] was filed on Tuesday in New York City, on behalf of five veteran executives and employees who collectively served the two corporations for more than 150 years. The IBM plaintiffs include: Michael Nolan, former Director of Strategy and Planning for IBM's Software Unit; Karla Bousquet, former VP, CEO of Events at IBM, Karla; Jay Zeltzer, former Business Automation Leader; and Teresa Cook, former VP of Client Experience. Randall Blanchard, former Services Account manager, is suing Kyndryl, having previously been with Big Blue.

Despite IBM chief global HR officer Nickel LaMoreaux's 2022 rejection of what she characterized as "false claims of systemic age discrimination," the lawsuit argues the mainframe titan is still targeting older workers. The legal filing cites a 2021 case, Townsley v. Int'l Bus. Machines Corp, in which executive Sam Ladah, who is accused of attempting "to keep ageist IBM executive level planning documents confidential," said those documents from five to six years earlier were still being used for hiring decisions. To further support the claim that the targeting of older workers continues to this day, the complaint says, "A recently leaked video of [CEO Arvind] Krishna confirms that IBM has continued its practice of using secretive top-down pressure to gerrymander its workforce to reflect the demographic preferences of its executives."

The 2023 video, published by conservative political activist James O'Keefe, appears to show Krishna tying manager bonuses to diversity targets in a context where such targets are alleged to be discriminatory. Basically, IBM has been accused of threatening to withhold bonuses from bosses if they don't hire a diverse enough range of techies -- more Hispanic and Black people -- leading to qualified candidates -- Asian people and others -- being ignored on the basis of their race. The latest lawsuit also points to Wimbish v. IBM, an age discrimination complaint filed in September by two human resources managers. "In their complaint, these fired HR managers alleged that IBM's HR still constantly consider an employee's 'runway' when determining if that worker would be terminated," the complaint says. "'Runway' is coded language for how long IBM HR expects an employee to remain at IBM before they retire, a direct proxy for age."

French electricity prices turned negative due to a drop in demand and a surge in renewable energy output, prompting the grid operator to request that Electricite de France (EDF) take several nuclear reactors offline. Fortune reports: While more clean power is needed across Europe to reach climate goals, soaring renewables output and a lack of battery storage mean reactors sometimes have to be turned off during periods of low demand. It's becoming increasingly common around weekends in France -- which gets about two-thirds of its electricity from its atomic fleet -- and also occurs in the Nordic region and Spain.

EDF halted its Golfech 2, Cruas 2 and Tricastin 1 nuclear plants, and plans to halt three others during the weekend. Some renewables producers will also have to curb generation to avoid paying a fee amid negative prices. French day-ahead power fell to -5.76 euros a megawatt-hour, the lowest in four years, in an auction on Epex Spot. Germany's equivalent contract dropped to 7.64 euros.

"Over at Fast Company, where we're celebrating 1994 Week, I wrote about the year of Peak CD-ROM, when excitement over the medium's potential was sky-high and the World Wide Web's audience still numbered in the extremely low millions," writes Slashdot reader and Fast Company technology editor Harry McCracken (harrymcc). "I cover once-famous products such as Microsoft's Encarta encyclopedia, the curse of shovelware, the rise of a San Francisco neighborhood known as 'Multimedia Gulch,' and why the whole dream soon came crashing down." Here's an excerpt from the article: Thirty years ago, a breakthrough technology was poised to transform how people stayed informed, entertained themselves, and maybe even shopped. I'm not talking about the World Wide Web. True, it was already getting good buzz among early adopter types. But even three years after going online, Tim Berners-Lee's creation was "still relatively slow and crude" and "limited to perhaps two million Internet users who have the proper software to gain access to it," wrote The New York Times' Peter H. Lewis in November 1994. At the time, it was the CD-ROM that had captured the imagination of consumers and the entire publishing industry. The high-capacity optical discs enabled mass distribution of multimedia for the first time, giving software developers the ability to create new kinds of experiences. Some of the largest companies in America saw them as media's next frontier, as did throngs of startups. In terms of pure mindshare, 1994 might have been the year of Peak CD, with 17.5 million CD-ROM drives and $590 million in discs sold, according to research firms Dataquest and Link Resources.

You already know that the frenzy didn't last. As the web got faster, slicker, and more readily accessible, CD-ROMs came to look pretty mundane, and eventually faded from memory. Myst, once the best-selling PC game of all time, might be the only 1990s disc that retains a prominent spot in our shared cultural consciousness. (Full disclosure: I do have a friend who can be relied upon to fondly bring up Microsoft's Cinemania movie guide about once a year for no apparent reason.) Revisiting the discs that defined the mid-1990s -- all of which are incompatible with modern operating systems -- isn't easy. To get some of them up and running again, I downloaded virtual CD-ROM files from the Internet Archive and used them with Windows 3.1 on my iPad Pro, courtesy of a piece of software Apple removed from the App Store in 2021. Spending time with titles such as Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia and It's a Wonderful Life Multi-Media Edition, three decades after they last commanded my attention, was a Proustian rush. You may not want to go to similar extremes. But would you indulge me as I wallow in enough CD-ROM nostalgia to get it out of my system?

A Zillow listing for a $2.4 million house in a Dallas suburb is grabbing attention for its 5,786-square-foot data center with immersion cooling tanks, massive server racks, and two separate power grids. Tom's Hardware reports: With a brick exterior, cute paving, and mini-McMansion arch stylings, the building certainly looks to be a residential home for the archetypal Texas family. Prospective home-buyers will thus be disappointed by the 0 bedroom, 1 bathroom setup, which becomes a warehouse-feeling office from the first step inside where you are met with a glass-shielded reception desk in a white-brick corridor. The "Crypto Collective" branding betrays the former life of the unit, which served admirably as a crypto mining base.

The purchase of the "upgraded turnkey Tier 2 Data Center" will include all of its cooling and power infrastructure. Three Engineered Fluids "SLICTanks," single-phase liquid immersion cooling tanks for use with dielectric coolant, will come with pumps and a 500kW dry cooler. The tanks are currently filled with at least 80 mining computers visible from the photos, though the SLICTanks can be configured to fit more machines. Also visible in proximity to the cooling array is a deep row of classic server racks and a staggering amount of networking.

The listing advertises a host of potential uses for future customers, from "AI services, cloud hosting, traditional data center, servers or even Bitcoin Mining". Also packed into the 5,786 square feet of real estate is two separate power grids, 5 HVAC units, a hefty amount of four levels of warehouse-style storage aisles, a lounge/office space, and a fully-paved backyard. In other good news, its future corporate residents will not have an HOA to deal with, and will only be 20 minutes outside of the heart of Dallas, sitting just out of earshot of two major highways.

A report from BleepingComputer notes that ASUS "has released a new firmware update that addresses a vulnerability impacting seven router models that allow remote attackers to log in to devices." But there's more bad news: Taiwan's CERT has also informed the public about CVE-2024-3912 in a post yesterday, which is a critical (9.8) arbitrary firmware upload vulnerability allowing unauthenticated, remote attackers to execute system commands on the device. The flaw impacts multiple ASUS router models, but not all will be getting security updates due to them having reached their end-of-life (EoL).

Finally, ASUS announced an update to Download Master, a utility used on ASUS routers that enables users to manage and download files directly to a connected USB storage device via torrent, HTTP, or FTP. The newly released Download Master version 3.1.0.114 addresses five medium to high-severity issues concerning arbitrary file upload, OS command injection, buffer overflow, reflected XSS, and stored XSS problems.

Security researchers say they believe financially motivated cybercriminals have stolen a "significant volume of data" from hundreds of customers hosting their vast banks of data with cloud storage giant Snowflake. TechCrunch: Incident response firm Mandiant, which is working with Snowflake to investigate the recent spate of data thefts, said in a blog post Monday that the two firms have notified around 165 customers that their data may have been stolen. It's the first time that the number of affected Snowflake customers has been disclosed since the account hacks began in April. Snowflake has said little to date about the attacks, only that a "limited number" of its customers are affected. The cloud data giant has more than 9,800 corporate customers, like healthcare organizations, retail giants and some of the world's largest tech companies, which use Snowflake for data analytics.

Microsoft has announced a new lineup of Xbox consoles, including an all-digital white Xbox Series X with a 1TB SSD, priced at $450. The company is also retiring the Carbon Black Series S, replacing it with a white version featuring a 1TB SSD and a $350 price point. Additionally, a new Xbox Series X with a disc drive and 2TB of storage will launch for $600.

The move comes as Microsoft continues to focus on digital gaming and subscription services like Game Pass, with reports suggesting that the PS5 is outselling Xbox Series consoles 2:1. The shift has led to minimal physical Xbox game sections in stores and some first-party titles, like Hellblade 2, not receiving physical releases. Despite rumors of a multiplatform approach, Microsoft maintains its commitment to its own gaming machines, promising a new "next-gen" console in the future, potentially utilizing generative-AI technology.

Further reading: Upcoming Games Include More Xbox Sequels - and a Medieval 'Doom'.

In November Google agreed to pay Canadian news publishers $100 million annually "in order to be exempt from the Online News Act, which compels tech companies to enter into agreements with news publishers," writes the Canadian Press.

On Friday Google "named the organization it has selected to distribute the $100 million..." The Canadian Journalism Collective will be responsible for ensuring eligible news organizations get their share of the money. The collective is a federally incorporated non-profit organization that was created for this purpose. It was founded in May by a group of independent publishers and broadcasters... "We hope these next steps will be completed as quickly as possible, so Canadian publishers and journalists can soon begin to receive the proceeds of this new contribution model," Google said in a blog entry posted on their website Friday...

The money will be distributed proportionately based on how many full time-journalists the companies employ. Small print and digital outlets can expect to receive about $17,000 per journalist that they employ, an official with the Canadian Heritage Department has said.
Google's money will go to 1,520 news organizations, according to Google's blog post — which describes the arrangement as "addressing our concerns with the Online News Act" and "a viable path to an exemption at a clear and commercially acceptable commitment level..." As part of this transition, we have advised partners in our Google News Showcase program (our online news experience and licensing program for news organizations) will cease to operate in Canada later this year as we transition to this new contribution model. We will be maintaining some Google News Initiative programming in Canada. This includes a range of collaborative tools and resources that can support the advancement of quality journalism. However, with our monetary contribution in Canada now streamlined into the new single collective model, these investments will be non-monetary in nature.

"Police and search and rescue forces worldwide are increasingly using robots to assist in carrying out their operations," writes Interesting Engineering. "Now, the Dutch police are looking at employing AI-powered autonomous robot dogs in drug lab raids to protect officers from criminal risks, hazardous chemicals, and explosions."

New Scientist's Matthew Sparkes (also a long-time Slashdot reader) shares this report: Dutch police are planning to use an autonomous robotic dog in drug lab raids to avoid placing officers at risk from criminals, dangerous chemicals and explosions. If tests in mocked-up scenarios go well, the artificial intelligence-powered robot will be deployed in real raids, say police. Simon Prins at Politie Nederland, the Dutch police force, has been testing and using robots in criminal investigations for more than two decades, but says they are only now growing capable enough to be practical for more...
Some context from Interesting Engineering: The police force in the Netherlands carries out such raids at least three to four times a week... Since 2021, the force has already been using a Spot quadruped, fitted with a robotic arm, from Boston Dynamics to carry out drug raids and surveillance. However, the Spot is remotely controlled by a handler... [Significant technological advancements] have prompted the Dutch force to explore fully autonomous operations with Spot.

Reportedly, such AI-enabled autonomous robots are expected to inspect drug labs, ensure no criminals are present, map the area, and identify dangerous chemicals... Initial tests by force suggest that Spot could explore and map a mock drug lab measuring 15 meters by 20 meters. It was able to find hazardous chemicals and put them away into a designated storage container.
Their article notes that Spot "can do laser scans and visual, thermal, radiation, and acoustic inspections using add-on payloads and onboard cameras." (A video from Boston Dynamics — the company behind Spot — also seems to show the robot dog spraying something on a fire.)

The video seems aimed at police departments, touting the robot dog's advantages for "safety and incident response":

• Enables safer investigation of suspicious packages
• Detection of hazardous chemicals
• De-escalation of tense or dangerous situations
• Get eyes on dangerous situations

It also notes the robot "can be operated from a safe distance," suggesting customers "Use Spot® to place cameras, radios, and more for tactical reconnaissance."

A worker at a retail store in an airport has been charged with stealing thousands of dollars in electronics and clothing, reports the Washington Post. But what's more interesting is what led to his arrest...

A woman showed up at his home looking for the missing luggage that she'd tracked with her Apple Watch. CNN reports: Paola Garcia told CNN affiliate WPLG in Miami that she usually takes her suitcase onboard, but this time, she was told she had to check it. Garcia waited at least two hours for her pink roller bag, which contained an Apple MacBook, Apple iPad, Apple Watch, jewelry, high-end woman's clothing and toiletries. It never came out on the luggage belt. In her WPLG interview, Garcia said that Spirit Airlines told her that her luggage had been sent to her house. The luggage never came.

But Garcia explored another avenue with her own electronic tracker. Garcia, not named in the affidavit, later pinged the electronic items inside the bag to try and locate them, and the ping showed them at an address in Fort Lauderdale, the affidavit said... While at the house, she took video and still pictures, where she saw "several pieces of luggage in the front of the home," none of which were her own, the affidavit said. Garcia told WPLG that she dialed 911. "The first thing I remember the police told me is: 'What are you doing here? This is so dangerous for you to be here.' "

When a detective with the Broward County Sheriff's Office searched the address within the airport's employee databases, he found that Bazile reportedly lived at the address. Bazile was listed as working at a Paradies Lagardère Travel Retail store at the airport and was working on the day of the theft, according to the affidavit.
So apparently when the airline said the luggage had been sent to her house — they were wrong. In fact when police contacted a store manager, "he provided the detective with internal CCTV footage from the day of the incident," CNN reports, "which allegedly showed Bazile entering the store's storage room with a pink shell roller bag, matching the description of the stolen bag, and rummaging through the luggage, the affidavit said.

"He then appeared to take the MacBook and other smaller items out of the luggage and put them in other bags."

Solar power in California has reached a new record output, briefly surpassing 100% of power demand. It comes just days after the state exceeded 100% of energy demand with renewables (wind, solar and hydro) over a record 45 days straight, and 69 out of 75. CleanTechnica reports: As you can see [here], at its peak, solar power was providing 102.1% of electricity demand in California. Together, wind, water, and solar peaked at 136.4% of electricity demand! [...] The best news is that California seems to quickly be chopping the duck curve down to size. [...] The solution for the duck curve is clear: energy storage. Store that bursting solar energy produced in the middle of the day and gradually use it in the evening as the sun goes down and electricity demand rises. The good news is that California has been making progress on this very fast! Look at the graph [here] regarding electricity generation from natural gas and note the line for 2023 versus the line for 2024. [...]

The overall story is that California renewable energy continues to lead the way forward. Solar power is now peaking at more than 100% of electricity demand, renewables as a whole are peaking at 134% electricity demand, the duck curve has been shaved down to basically no duck curve at all (but you could now call the battery charge/discharge curve a duck curve), and the whole state (and world) is benefitting. Get ready for more records in the days to come. We're still a few weeks away from the summer solstice. Further reading: Battery-Powered California Faces Lower Blackout Risk This Summer