This week ZDNet dedicated an article to "the most popular Fedora Linux in years." Red Hat's community Linux distribution Fedora has always been popular with open-source and Linux developers, but this latest release, Fedora 34 seems to be something special. As Matthew Miller, Fedora Project Leader, tweeted, "The beta for F34 was one of the most popular ever, with twice as many systems showing up in my stats as typical."

Why? Nick Gerace, a Rancher software engineer, thinks it's because "I've never seen the project in a better state, and I think GNOME 40 is a large motivator as well. Probably a combination of each, from anecdotal evidence." He's onto something. When Canonical released Ubuntu 21.04 a few days earlier, their developers opted to stay with the tried and true GNOME 39 desktop. Fedora's people decided to go with GNOME 40 for their default desktop even though it's a radical update to the GNOME interface. Besides boasting a new look, GNOME 40 is based on the new GTK 4.0 graphical toolkit. Under the pretty new exterior, this update also fixed numerous issues and smoothed out many rough spots.

If you'd rather have another desktop, you can also get Fedora 34 with the newest KDE Plasma Desktop, Xfce 4.16, Cinnamon, etc. You name your favorite Linux desktop interface, Fedora will almost certainly deliver it to you... Another feature I like is that, since Fedora 33, the default file system is Btrfs. I find it faster and more responsive than ext4, perhaps the most popular Linux desktop file system. What's different this time around is that it now defaults to using Btrfs transparent compression. Besides saving significant storage space — typically from 20 to 40% — Red Hat also claims this increases the lifespan of SSDs and other flash media.
Although the article does point out that most users will never reach the end of that SSD lifespan (approximately ten years of normal use), it suggests that "developers, who might for example compile Linux kernels every day, might reach that point before a PC's usual end of useful life."

In a possibly related note, Linus Torvalds said this week in a new interview that "I use Fedora on all my machines, not because it's necessarily 'preferred', but because it's what I'm used to. I don't care deeply about the distribution — to me it's mainly a way to get Linux installed on a machine and get all my tools set up, so that I can then replace the kernel and work on just that."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PC Gamer: The Oculus Quest 2 is a hell of a lot of hardware for $299. In fact, we're convinced that Facebook is making a loss on each unit sold. Even so, that pricing is one of the main reasons it's the most popular headset on Steam and our pick as the best VR headset. Well, that and the ease of use. [...] The thing is, that price seems too good to be true, with no other manufacturer's VR headset close to the specs list of the Quest 2 -- in either tethered or standalone form -- hitting the same low, low price. That money gets you a robust virtual reality headset with 6GB of RAM, a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 CPU, 64GB of storage, 1832x1920 per eye display and a pair of controllers. [...]

But there's one factor that could potentially offset that price -- Facebook has access to a whole lot of your data. This is something the Oculus Quest 2 is upfront about: You absolutely need a Facebook account in order to use the device and it does have its data collection policies in black and white. Although what isn't quite so obvious is how much your data is worth to Facebook. At least it isn't without a tiny bit of digging.

There is another version of the Quest 2 that isn't as discounted as the consumer version, and that's the one aimed at businesses. The actual hardware is identical, but the difference is you don't need to login in with a Facebook account in order to use it. The price for this model? $799. There's also an annual fee of $180 that kicks in a year after purchase, which covers Oculus' business services and support, but that just muddies the waters a little. The point being, the Quest 2 for business, the headset from which Facebook can't access your data directly, costs $500 more. So that's looking essentially like the value the social media giant attributes to your data, which either seems like a lot or barely anything at all, depending on your stance. The Supplemental Oculus Data Policy outlines what sort of data is actually being collected when you use the Quest 2. Such things as your physical dimension, including your hand size, how big your play area is using the Oculus Guardian system, data on any content you create using the Quest 2, as well as more obvious stuff like your device ID and IP address.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The IRS is looking for help to break into cryptocurrency hardware wallets, according to a document posted on the agency website in March of this year. Many cryptocurrency investors store their cryptographic keys, which confer ownership of their funds, with the exchange they use to transact or on a personal device. Some folks, however, want a little more security and use hardware wallets -- small physical drives which store a user's keys securely, unconnected to the internet. The law enforcement arm of the tax agency, IRS Criminal Investigation, and more specifically its Digital Forensic Unit, is now asking contractors to come up with solutions to hack into cryptowallets that could be of interest in investigations, the document states.

"The decentralization and anonymity provided by cryptocurrencies has fostered an environment for the storage and exchange of something of value, outside of the traditional purview of law enforcement and regulatory organizations," the document reads. "There is a portion of this cryptographic puzzle that continues to elude organizations -- millions, perhaps even billions of dollars, exist within cryptowallets." The security of hardware wallets presents a problem for investigators. The document states that agencies may be in possession of a hardware wallet as part of a case, but may not be able to access it if the suspect does not comply. This means that authorities cannot effectively "investigate the movement of currencies" and it may "prevent the forfeiture and recovery" of the funds. "The explicit outcome of this contract is to tame the cybersecurity research into measured, repeatable, consistent digital forensics processes that can be trained and followed in a digital forensics' laboratory," the document says.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk wants to turn every home into a distributed power plant that would generate, store and even deliver energy back into the electricity grid, all using the company's products. TechCrunch reports: While the company has been selling solar and energy storage products for years, a new company policy to only sell solar coupled with the energy storage products, along with Musk's comments Monday, reveal a strategy that aims to scale these businesses by appealing to utilities. "This is a prosperous future both for Tesla and for the utilities," he said. "If this is not done, the utilities will fail to serve their customers. They won't be able to do it," Musk said during an investor call, noting the rolling blackouts in California last summer and the more recent grid failure in Texas as evidence that grid reliability has become a bigger concern.

Last week, the company changed its website to prevent customers from only buying solar or its Powerwall energy storage product and instead required purchasing a system. Musk later announced the move in a tweet, stating "solar power will feed exclusively to Powerwall" and that "Powerwall will interface only between utility meter and house main breaker panel, enabling super simple install and seamless whole house backup during utility dropouts." Musk's pitch is that the grid would need more power lines, more power plants and larger substations to fully decarbonize using renewables plus storage. Distributed residential systems -- of course using Tesla products -- would provide a better path, in Musk's view. His claim has been backed up in part by recent studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which found that the U.S. can reach a zero-carbon grid by more than doubling its transmission capacity, and another from Princeton University showing that the country may need to triple its transmission systems by 2050 to reach net-zero emissions.

Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and CEO of Twitter, tweeted Wednesday that bitcoin "incentivises renewable energy." And Elon Musk responded "True."

The BBC adds that the tweets came "despite experts warning otherwise." The cyrptocurrency's carbon footprint is as large as some of the world's biggest cities, studies suggest. But Mr Dorsey claims that could change if bitcoin miners worked hand-in-hand with renewable energy firms.

One expert said it was a "cynical attempt to greenwash" bitcoin. China, where more than two-thirds of power is from coal, accounts for more than 75% of bitcoin mining around the world...

The tweet comes soon after the release of a White Paper from Mr Dorsey's digital payment services firm Square, and global asset management business ARK Invest. Entitled "Bitcoin as key to an abundant, clean energy future", the paper argues that "bitcoin miners are unique energy buyers", because they offer flexibility, pay in a cryptocurrency, and can be based anywhere with an internet connection. "By combining miners with renewables and storage projects, we believe it could improve the returns for project investors and developers, moving more solar and wind projects into profitable territory," it said.

Author and bitcoin critic David Gerard described the paper as a "cynical exercise in bitcoin greenwashing".

"The reality is: bitcoin runs on coal," he told the BBC.... "Bitcoin mining is so ghastly and egregious that the number one job of bitcoin promoters is to make excuses for it — any excuse at all."

At today's Spring Loaded event, Apple unveiled a new version of the iPad Pro, equipped with the M1 chip that was first introduced on the company's Mac line. TechCrunch reports: The new chip sports an 8-core CPU, with performance up to 50% faster than the A12Z Bionic found on the previous generation. There's also an 8-core GPU, which it claims is up to 40% faster. The system can be decked out to up to 16 GB of RAM and 2 TB of storage. The device further blurs the line between the company's tablet and desktop offerings, as well as improved battery life now listed as "all day." The Pro also adds Thunderbolt support to the USB-C, which allows for a number of new features including external display support and wired transfers up to 40 Gbps.

As reported, the new tablet (12.9-inch only for now) features an improved display -- Liquid Retina XDR, according to Apple's marketing terms. Among other things that brings much improved high dynamic range. The display is powered by 10,000 micro-LED. That allows for a hugely improved contrast ratio and 1,000 nits of brightness, without hammering the battery life. The 11-inch version starts at $799 and the 12.9-inch, which adds the Liquid Retina display, starts at $1,099. Pre-orders on the tablets starts April 30 and the product is set to start shipping in the second half of May -- along with a number of other products introduced at today's show.

According to the Associated Press, Japan's government decided it will start releasing treated radioactive water accumulated at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean in two years. From the report: Under the basic plan adopted Tuesday by the ministers, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, also known as TEPCO, will start releasing the water in about two years after building a facility and compiling release plans adhering to safety requirements. It said the disposal of the water cannot be postponed further and is necessary to improve the environment surrounding the plant so residents can live there safely. TEPCO says its water storage capacity of 1.37 million tons will be full around fall of 2022. Also, the area now filled with storage tanks will have to be freed up for building new facilities needed for removing melted fuel debris from inside the reactors and for other decommissioning work that's expected to start in coming years.

In the decade since the tsunami disaster, water meant to cool the nuclear material has constantly escaped from the damaged primary containment vessels into the basements of the reactor buildings. To make up for the loss, more water has been pumped into the reactors to continue to cool the melted fuel. Water is also pumped out and treated, part of which is recycled as cooling water, and the remainder stored in 1,020 tanks now holding 1.25 million tons of radioactive water. Those tanks that occupy a large space at the plant interfere with the safe and steady progress of the decommissioning, Economy and Industry Minister Hiroshi Kajiyama said. The tanks also could be damaged and leak in case of another powerful earthquake or tsunami, the report said.

Releasing the water to the ocean was described as the most realistic method by a government panel that for nearly seven years had discussed how to dispose of the water. The report it prepared last year mentioned evaporation as a less desirable option. About 70% of the water in the tanks is contaminated beyond discharge limits but will be filtered again and diluted with seawater before it is released, the report says. According to a preliminary estimate, gradual releases of water will take more than 30 years but will be completed before the plant is fully decommissioned. Japan will abide by international rules for a release, obtain support from the International Atomic Energy Agency and others, and ensure disclosure of data and transparency to gain understanding of the international community, the report said. China blasted the Japanese government for being "extremely irresponsible," and warned that it might take action. "The Japanese side has yet to exhaust all avenues of measures, disregarded domestic and external opposition, has decided to unilaterally release the Fukushima plant's nuclear waste water without full consultation with its neighboring countries and the international community," the foreign ministry statement said. "This action is extremely irresponsible and will pose serious harm to the health and safety of the people in neighboring countries and the international community."

South Korea also isn't happy with Japan's decision. "The government expresses strong regret over the Japanese government's decision to release contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean," said Koo Yoon-cheol, head of South Korea's Office for Government Policy Coordination.

New submitter evaverdeazul shared this report from Japan Today: The Japanese government is poised to release treated radioactive water accumulated at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea despite opposition from fishermen, sources familiar with the matter said Friday. It will hold a meeting of related ministers as early as Tuesday to formally decide on the plan, a major development following over seven years of discussions on how to discharge the water used to cool down melted fuel at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

The treated water containing radioactive tritium, a byproduct of nuclear reactors, is said to pose little risk to human health because even if one drinks the water, so long as the tritium concentration is low, the amounts of tritium would not accumulate in the body and would soon be excreted. There is also no risk of external exposure even if the water comes in contact with skin. Still, concerns remain among Japan's fisheries industry and consumers as well as neighboring countries such as South Korea and China.

The government has said it cannot continue postponing a decision on the disposal issue, given that the storage capacity of water tanks at the Fukushima complex is expected to run out as early as fall next year. It asserts that space needs to be secured on the premises, such as for keeping melted fuel debris that will be extracted from the damaged reactors, to move forward with the decades-long process of scrapping the complex.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc (TEPCO) says it will take around two years for the discharge to start.

Joe_Dragon shares a report from The Register: A power outage kicked off a fire in web hosting biz WebNX's Ogden data center in Utah on Sunday, knocking the facility offline temporarily and leaving several servers in need of a rebuild. Kevin Brown, Fire Marshal for the US city's Fire Department told The Register in a phone interview that firefighters responded to a call on Sunday evening. The fire, he said, "originated in a generator in the building and spread to several servers." Brown said the facility's fire suppression system contained the blaze and that fire department personnel assisted with the cleanup. He said power was cut to the building until an electrical engineer could inspect the facility to make sure current could be restored safely, which he added is standard procedure. He also confirmed that some of Ogden City's IT services were down on Sunday and Monday as a result of the data center fire. "Sunday afternoon the city power was disrupted and, as designed, our backup generators automatically switched on," the company said in a Facebook post. "However, during that transition, one of our backup generators that had been recently tested and benchmarked specifically for this situation experienced a catastrophic failure, caught fire, and as a result initiated the fire suppression protocol."

"Some servers will have an extended outage as they may require rebuilds due to some water damage. Those builds have a high probability that data is intact." They added: "Customer's servers in one of our main bays were exposed to water and possible damage may have occurred. No fire damage was inflicted on customer servers."

MojoKid writes: The new 13-inch ThinkPad X1 Nano is the thinnest and lightest Lenovo ThinkPad ever in the brand's history. The machine weighs just 1.99 pounds (907 grams), while still sporting a fairly powerful Intel Core i7-1160G7 Tiger Lake quad-core CPU, up to a 1TB NVMe SSD, 16GB of 4267MHz LPDDR4X RAM and a 48 Whr battery. In the benchmarks, the machine holds its own for productivity and content creation tasks as well as a bit of light-duty gaming, versus heavier machines in its peer group. In terms of battery life, the new ThinkPad X1 Nano hangs pretty tough as well, offering about 7.5 hours of constant use up-time with HD video playback. With its 2K (2160X1350 -- 16:10) IPS Dolby Vision-certified display and top tier configuration, it doesn't come cheap, as you might imagine. The ThinkPad X1 Nano has a current starting price of $1,289 and tops out at $2,231 for its most powerful configuration with 1TB of fast SSD storage. Regardless, it's impressive what the machine can deliver in terms of features and performance in its weight class.

RockDoctor (Slashdot reader #15,477) wants to build a personal network-attached storage solution, maybe using a multiple-disk array (e.g., a RAID). But unfortunately, "My hardware pool is very shallow." I eBay'd a desktop chassis, whose motherboard claims (I discovered, on arrival) RAID capabilities. There, I have a significant choice — to use the on-board RAID, or do it entirely in software (e.g. OpenMediaVault)?

I'm domestic — a handful of terabytes — but I expect the answer to change as one goes through the petabytes into the exabytes. What do the dotters of the slash think?
Share your own thoughts in the comments. Is a hardware RAID better than a software RAID?

Apple said Wednesday that it will build a battery-based renewable energy storage facility in Central California near a solar energy installation that already provides energy for all of its facilities in the state. From a report: Apple said the project will store 240 megawatt-hours of energy, or enough to power more than 7,000 homes for one day. It is located next to the California Flats solar installation in southeastern Monterey County, about 100 miles southeast of Apple's Cupertino, California headquarters. The site sends 130-megawatts of electricity directly to Apple's California facilities during daylight hours but does not provide power during dark hours. Lisa Jackson, Apple's vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives, told Reuters in an interview the company intends to develop what it believes will be one of the largest battery-based storage systems in the United States.

"The challenge with clean energy -- solar and wind -- is that it's by definition intermittent," Jackson told Reuters. "If we can do it, and we can show that it works for us, it takes away the concerns about intermittency and it helps the grid in terms of stabilization. It's something that can be imitated or built upon by other companies."

An anonymous reader shares a report from Motherboard, written by Ben Munster: When you buy an NFT for potentially as much as an actual house, in most cases you're not purchasing an artwork or even an image file. Instead, you are buying a little bit of code that references a piece of media located somewhere else on the internet. This is where the problems begin. Ed Clements is a community manager for OpenSea who fields these kinds of problems daily. In an interview, he explained that digital artworks themselves are not immutably registered "on the blockchain" when a purchase is made. When you buy an artwork, rather, you're "minting" a new cryptographic signature that, when decoded, points to an image hosted elsewhere. This could be a regular website, or it might be the InterPlanetary File System, a large peer-to-peer file storage system.

Clements distinguished between the NFT artwork (the image) and the NFT, which is the little cryptographic signature that actually gets logged. "I use the analogy of OpenSea and similar platforms acting like windows into a gallery where your NFT is hanging," he said. "The platform can close the window whenever they want, but the NFT still exists and it is up to each platform to decide whether or not they want to close their window." [...] "Closing the window" on an NFT isn't difficult. NFTs are rendered visually only on the front-end of a given marketplace, where you see all the images on offer. All the front-end code does is sift through the alphanumeric soup on the blockchain to produce a URL that links to where the image is hosted, or less commonly metadata which describes the image. According to Clement: "the code that finds the information on the blockchain and displays the images and information is simply told, 'don't display this one.'"

An important point to reiterate is that while NFT artworks can be taken down, the NFTs themselves live inside Ethereum. This means that the NFT marketplaces can only interact with and interpret that data, but cannot edit or remove it. As long as the linked image hasn't been removed from its source, an NFT bought on OpenSea could still be viewed on Rarible, SuperRare, or whatever -- they are all just interfaces to the ledger. The kind of suppression detailed by Clements is likely the explanation for many cases of "missing" NFTs, such as one case documented on Reddit when user "elm099" complained that an NFT called "Big Boy Pants" had disappeared from his wallet. In this case, the user could see the NFT transaction logged on the blockchain, but couldn't find the image itself. In the case that an NFT artwork was actually removed at the source, rather than suppressed by a marketplace, then it would not display no matter which website you used. If you saved the image to your phone before it was removed, you could gaze at it while absorbing the aura of a cryptographic signature displayed on a second screen, but that could lessen the already-tenuous connection between NFT and artwork. If you're unable to find a record of the token itself on the Ethereum blockchain, it "has to do with even more arcane Ethereum minutiae," writes Ben Munster via Motherboard. He explains: "NFTs are generally represented by a form of token called the ERC-721. It's just as simple to locate this token's whereabouts as ether (Ethereum's in-house currency) and other tokens such as ERC-20s. The NFT marketplace SuperRare, for instance, sends tokens directly to buyers' wallets, where their movements can be tracked rather easily. The token can then generally be found under the ERC-721 tab. OpenSea, however, has been experimenting with a new new token variant: the ERC-1155, a 'multitoken' that designates collections of NFTs.

This token standard, novel as it is, isn't yet compatible with Etherscan. That means ERC-1155s saved on Ethereum don't show up, even if we know they are on the blockchain because the payments record is there, and the 'smart contracts' which process the sale are designed to fail instantly if the exchange can't be made. [...]"

In closing, Munster writes: "This is all illustrative of a common problem with Ethereum and cryptocurrencies generally, which despite being immutable and unhackable and abstractly perfect can only be taken advantage of via unreliable third-party applications."

Solar is becoming the cheapest option for new electricity in the world, but there's still room to improve. According to a new cost-reduction target announced today, the U.S. Department of Energy aims to cut utility-scale solar power plant costs by 60% by 2030. CleanTechnica reports: So, how does the DOE intend to help cut solar power costs so much by 2030? First of all, the U.S. DOE's Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) sees two materials used in solar cells as critical to this brighter solar future perovskites and cadmium telluride (CdTe). The department is [spending] $63 million to try to help with these solar cell innovation goals. In the DOE's own words:

- $40 million for perovskite R&D: Perovskites are a family of emerging solar materials that have potential to make highly efficient thin-film solar cells with very low production costs. DOE is awarding $40 million to 22 projects that will advance perovskite PV device and manufacturing research and developmentâ"as well as performance through the formation of a new $14 million testing center to provide neutral, independent validation of the performance of new perovskite devices.
- $3 million Perovskite Startup Prize: This new prize competition will speed entrepreneurs' path to commercializing perovskite technologies by providing seed capital for their newly formed companies.
- $20 million for CdTe thin films: The National Renewable Energy Laboratory will set up a consortium to advance cheaper CdTe thin-film solar technologies, which were developed in the United States and make up 20% of the modules installed in this country. This consortium will advance low-cost manufacturing techniques and domestic research capabilities, increasing opportunities for U.S. workers and entrepreneurs to capture a larger portion of the $60 billion global solar manufacturing sector.

"Today's announcement also supports several concentrating solar-thermal power (CSP) projects," the department notes. Here are details from the DOE:

- $33 million for CSP advances: The new funding opportunity also includes funding for improvements to the reliability and performance of CSP plants, which can dispatch solar energy whenever it is needed; identifies new solar applications for industrial processes, which contribute 20% of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions; and advances long-duration thermal-energy storage devices. Long-duration energy storage is critical to decarbonizing the electricity sector and couples well with CSP plants, but the cost must fall by a factor of two to unlock deployment.
- $25 million to demonstrate a next-generation CSP power plant: Sandia National Laboratories will receive funding to build a facility where researchers, developers, and manufacturers can test next-generation CSP components and systems and advance toward DOE's 2030 cost target of 5 cents/kWh for CSP plants.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: Smartphones have already obviated single-purpose gadgets like point-and-shoot cameras and MP3 players. Google today announced the Android Ready SE Alliance to make sure new phones have the underlying hardware to eventually replace car/home keys and wallets. "Emerging user features" -- digital keys, mobile driver's license (mDL), national ID, ePassports, and eMoney solutions (wallets) -- require two things. The first is tamper-resistant hardware, like the Pixel's Titan M chip, which makes possible tamper-resistant key storage for Android apps (to store data) called StrongBox. "All these features need to run on tamper-resistant hardware to protect the integrity of the application executables and a user's data, keys, wallet, and more," writes Google in a blog post. "Most modern phones now include discrete tamper-resistant hardware called a Secure Element (SE)."

Google has determined that "SE offers the best path for introducing these new consumer use cases in Android." To "accelerate adoption," the company and partners (Giesecke+Devrient, Kigen, NXP, STMicroelectronics, and Thales) today announced the Android Ready SE Alliance. Besides phones, StrongBox is also available for Wear OS, Android Auto Embedded, and Android TV. Google says it's currently focusing on digital car keys, mobile driver's license, and other identity credentials, with unnamed "Android OEMs adopting Android Ready SE for their devices."

Amazon has chosen Adam Selipsky to run its Amazon Web Services division. Currently, Selipsky is CEO of Salesforce-owned data-visualization software maker Tableau. Andy Jassy made the decision as the current head of AWS, after he was chosen to replace Jeff Bezos as CEO of Amazon. CNBC reports: Amazon rules the market for public cloud infrastructure that companies use to run internal and external applications, a modern alternative to relying on in-house servers, storage and networking equipment. In 2019 industry research company Gartner estimated that Amazon had 45% of the market, more than any other company, including Microsoft and Google. As such, Selipsky becomes the most visible person in the growing industry, perhaps second only to Jassy, who enters a bigger job when he becomes Amazon CEO in the third quarter.

Selipsky is one of the people several insiders had identified as a possible successor to Jassy. Selipsky had held a prominent position inside AWS, as vice president for sales, marketing and support, before leaving to run then-public Tableau in 2016. Salesforce bought Tableau for $15.7 billion in 2019.

The OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro are OnePlus' newest smartphones powered by Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 888 chipset. The flagship device is the OnePlus 9 Pro, featuring a 120Hz LPTO curved display, 8GB of RAM, 128GB storage, Hasselblad-branded cameras, and a starting price of $969. If that price is too much to stomach, the OnePlus 9 features slightly lower-end specs and a more affordable $729 starting price. The Verge has already called the OnePlus 9 Pro "the best Android alternative to Samsung." From the report: OnePlus spent much of its announcement talking about the cameras on the new phones, which have been developed in partnership with Hasselblad. OnePlus says the colors have been tuned to look more natural and that the ultrawide sensor on the 9 Pro and 9 is one of the biggest to ever ship on a smartphone. The ultrawide uses a 50-megapixel Sony IMX766 sensor that's 1/1.56" in size with an aperture of f/2.2. Meanwhile, the 9 Pro's main Sony IMX789 sensor has a resolution of 48 megapixels and is 1/1.43" in size. (The regular 9 has a Sony IMX689 sensor, but it has the same resolution of 48 megapixels.) Both have a 2-megapixel monochrome sensor and 16-megapixel selfie camera, but only the 9 Pro has an 8-megapixel telephoto.

As previously announced, the 9 Pro has a 1440p 120Hz curved display that makes use of LPTO technology to adjust its refresh rate between 1 and 120Hz based on the content being displayed on-screen, reducing power consumption by "up to 50 percent." OnePlus also claims it should feel more responsive to use in games that support its Hyper Touch technology. The screen has a maximum brightness of 1300 nits and supports HDR10+. Meanwhile, the OnePlus 9 has a flat rather than curved display. It's not LTPO, it's slightly less bright at 1,100 nits, and it's also lower resolution at 1080p. It's still got a refresh rate of 120Hz, however. Additionally, both phones support Warp Charge 65T, which OnePlus claims should be able to charge the phones' 4,500mAh batteries to 100 percent in under half an hour. The 9 Pro and 9 can also charge wirelessly at up to 50W and 15W, respectively. Both phones will go on sale on April 2nd, with preorders starting March 26th.

U.S. cloud services provide Box is exploring a sale amid pressure from hedge fund Starboard Value over its stock performance, Reuters citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: Redwood City, California-based Box has discussed a potential deal with interested buyers, including other companies and private equity firms, the sources said, cautioning that no sale of the company is certain. Reuters reported last month that Starboard was preparing to launch a board challenge against Box unless it took steps to boost value for shareholders. It has privately expressed disappointment that the company has failed to capitalize on the work-from-home trend during the COVID-19 pandemic, as many of its cloud computing peers have done.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Newshub: Victoria University of Wellington has accidentally deleted all files stored on its desktop computers affecting a "significant" number of staff members -- as well as some students. A spokesperson for the University confirmed to Newshub on Thursday that an unexpected issue wiped all files saved on the desktops. "The University's Digital Solutions team continues to work with all affected staff and students to recover access to files and in many cases the issues have been resolved," they said. "There are however, some affected staff and students who have not been able to recover access to files."

The aim of the data wipe was to clear inactive users' data by getting rid of profiles of students who no longer studied, reports student magazine Critic. Critic spoke to one Masters student who had heard of PHD students losing an entire year's worth of data. The university spokesperson said they apologized for the inconvenience caused and is investigating the issue to ensure it doesn't happen again.

"Three recently unearthed vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel, located in the iSCSI module used for accessing shared data storage facilities, could allow root privileges to anyone with a user account," reports SC Media: "If you already had execution on a box, either because you have a user account on the machine, or you've compromised some service that doesn't have repaired permissions, you can do whatever you want basically," said Adam Nichols, principal of the Software Security practice at GRIMM. While the vulnerabilities "are in code that is not remotely accessible, so this isn't like a remote exploit," said Nichols, they are still troublesome. They take "any existing threat that might be there. It just makes it that much worse," he explained. "And if you have users on the system that you don't really trust with root access it, it breaks them as well."

Referring to the theory that 'many eyes make all bugs shallow,' Linux code "is not getting many eyes or the eyes are looking at it and saying that seems fine," said Nichols. "But, [the bugs] have been in there since the code was first written, and they haven't really changed over the last 15 years...." That the flaws slipped detection for so long has a lot to do with the sprawl of the the Linux kernel. It "has gotten so big" and "there's so much code there," said Nichols. "The real strategy is make sure you're loading as little code as possible."

The bugs are in all Linux distributions, Nichols said, although the kernel driver is not loaded by default. Whether a normal user can load the vulnerable kernel module varies. They can, for instance, on all Red Hat based distros that GRIMM tested, he said. "Even though it's not loaded by default, you can get it loaded and then of course you can exploit it without any trouble...."

The bugs have been patched in the following kernel releases: 5.11.4, 5.10.21, 5.4.103, 4.19.179, 4.14.224, 4.9.260, and 4.4.260. All older kernels are end-of- life and will not receive patches.