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Xbox boss Phil Spencer has said that he isn't sure if 8K resolution will ever be standard for video games, calling it "aspirational technology." From a report: Talking to Wired, Spencer said," I think 8K is aspirational technology. The display capabilities of devices are not really there yet. I think we're years away from 8K being -- if it ever is -- standard in video games." Spencer's comments come despite the Xbox Series X being able to support 8K output. However, while it may technically be able to push video at a resolution of 7680 x 4320, there are more factors to consider, chiefly being if anyone even has an 8K television or monitor to view such visuals on. According to Wired's chat with Liz Hamren, head of gaming engineering at Xbox, Microsoft's data suggests that 4K TV adoption is less than what publishers may think, and so that suggests 8K adoption is still years away at least.

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An anonymous reader writes: Google today launched Chrome 86 for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. Chrome 86 brings password protections for Android and iOS, VP9 for macOS Big Sur, autoupgrades for insecure forms, focus indicator improvements, and a slew of developer features. You can update to the latest version now using Chrome's built-in updater or download it directly from google.com/chrome. With over 1 billion users, Chrome is both a browser and a major platform that web developers must consider. In fact, with Chrome's regular additions and changes, developers have to stay on top of everything available -- as well as what has been deprecated or removed. Chrome 86, for example, deprecates support for FTP URLs, starting with 1% of users and ramping up to 100% by Chrome 88.

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Apple just sent out invites for its upcoming hardware event, all but confirming the arrival of the next iPhone. From a report: The event is scheduled nearly a month to the day after the its last big event, which gave us the Apple Watch Series 6 and two new iPads. A new iPhone was conspicuously absent from the proceedings -- not an entirely unexpected turn of events, of course. CEO Tim Cook confirmed earlier this year that there would be a delay the arrival of the company's new flagship, owing to COVID-19 hardware supply chain issues. The iPhone 12 is set to finally deliver 5G connectivity to Apple's product line, coupled with a new design, chip and a push to OLED for all entries in the line.

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Microsoft said on Monday that Iranian state-sponsored hackers are currently exploiting the Zerologon vulnerability in real-world hacking campaigns. From a report: Successful attacks would allow hackers to take over servers known as domain controllers (DC) that are the centerpieces of most enterprise networks and enable intruders to gain full control over their targets. The Iranian attacks were detected by Microsoft's Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) and have been going on for at least two weeks, the company said today in a short tweet. MSTIC linked the attacks to a group of Iranian hackers that the company tracks as MERCURY, but who are more widely known under their monicker of MuddyWatter. The group is believed to be a contractor for the Iranian government working under orders from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran's primary intelligence and military service.

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Facebook on Tuesday removed a post from President Trump in which he falsely claimed that Covid-19 is less deadly than the seasonal flu. From a report: Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed the company removed the post for breaking its rules on Covid-19 misinformation. President Trump has, by his own admission, played down the threat of Covid-19. Now, while battling his own bout of the disease, he has continued to dishonestly downplay the severity of the virus. His post on Tuesday falsely equated Covid-19 to the seasonal flu. Twitter has shielded the post with a label and is preventing users from retweeting the post.

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Google today announced that G Suite is being rebranded as Google Workspace. In another nod to the Google brand, four-color icons are coming to the Workspace productivity apps: Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Meet. From a report: Workspace is also getting new features, like linked previews, smart chips, Doc creation in rooms, and Meet picture-in-picture. Oh, and there are new pricing tiers, so you can't say it's just a rebrand. In July, Google started integrating Chat, Meet, Docs, and the rest into Gmail. Along with the new name, that integrated experience is now generally available to all paying Workspace customers. Google is promising to bring Workspace to education, nonprofit customers, and consumers "in the coming months." "Work is no longer a physical place that we go to, necessarily," Google Workspace VP Javier Soltero said yesterday in a press briefing. "Even though we've had mobile technology in the past, and people have been able to do some work on the go. The idea that we're able to build and run organizations, governments, financial institutions, any size of business, and do it in a way that doesn't require a physical presence that was previously referred to as an office will stay with us. Not because we will never return to offices, but because I think it's important to note that work will take place everywhere in between and that those offices will take on a different role."

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Europe's top court has delivered another slap-down to indiscriminate government mass surveillance regimes. From a report: In a ruling today the CJEU has made it clear that national security concerns do not exclude EU Member States from the need to comply with general principles of EU law such as proportionality and respect for fundamental rights to privacy, data protection and freedom of expression. However the court has also allowed for derogations, saying that a pressing national security threat can justify limited and temporary bulk data collection and retention -- capped to 'what is strictly necessary.' While threats to public security or the need to combat serious crime may also allow for targeted retention of data provided it's accompanied by 'effective safeguards' and reviewed by a court or independent authority.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: An independent panel that assesses the safety of NASA activities has raised serious questions about the space agency's plan to test flight software for its Moon missions. During a Thursday meeting of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, one of its members, former NASA Flight Director Paul Hill, outlined the panel's concerns after speaking with managers for NASA's first three Artemis missions. This includes a test flight of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft for Artemis I, and then human flights on the Artemis II and III missions. Hill said the safety panel was apprehensive about the lack of "end-to-end" testing of the software and hardware used during these missions, from launch through landing. Such comprehensive testing ensures that the flight software is compatible across different vehicles and in a number of different environments, including the turbulence of launch and maneuvers in space. "The panel has great concern about the end-to-end integrated test capability plans, especially for flight software," Hill said. "There is no end-to-end integrated avionics and software test capability. Instead, multiple and separate labs, emulators, and simulations are being used to test subsets of the software." The safety panel also was struggling to understand why, apparently, NASA had not learned its lessons from the recent failed test flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, Hill said. (Boeing is also the primary contractor for the Space Launch System rocket's core stage). Prior to a test flight of the Starliner crew capsule in December 2019, Boeing did not run integrated, end-to-end tests for the mission that was supposed to dock with the International Space Station. Instead of running a software test that encompassed the roughly 48-hour period from launch through docking to the station, Boeing broke the test into chunks. As a result, the spacecraft was nearly lost on two occasions and did not complete its primary objective of reaching the orbiting laboratory.

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced today that the company expects shortages for the Nvidia RTX 3080 and 3090 graphics cards will continue to for the remainder of the year. The Verge reports: During a Q&A with press to cover its GTC announcements, Huang responded to the continuous shortages for both graphics cards. "I believe that demand will outstrip all of our supply through the year," Huang said. The RTX 3080 and 3090 had extremely rough launches, with both cards selling out within minutes of preorders going live, but Huang says the issue is not with supply but rather the demand of both GPUs. "Even if we knew about all the demand, I don't think it's possible to have ramped that fast," Huang said. "We're ramping really really hard. Yields are great, the product's shipping fantastically, it's just getting sold out instantly." Nvidia has apologized for the launch of the RTX 3080 and the limited supply of the cards. The company plans to launch the $499 RTX 3070, but the release date has been pushed to October 29th "in the hopes that the company can work with retailers to get the cards to more customers on launch day," reports The Verge.

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On Saturday, Venice successfully trialed its long-awaited flood barriers during the first acqua alta of the season. CNN reports: A previous trial in July, overseen by Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, had gone well -- but that was in good weather, at low tide. Earlier trials had not managed to raise all 78 gates in the barriers that have been installed in the Venetian lagoon. Against all the odds, it worked. At 12.05 p.m., high tide, St Mark's Square -- which starts flooding at just 90 centimeters, and should have been knee-deep -- was pretty much dry, with only large puddles welling up around the drains. The square's cafes and shops, which often have to close for hours on end, remained open. And in the northern district of Cannaregio, Sebastian Fagarazzi's home stayed dry. The defense system is called MOSE, the Italian for Moses, a name derived from the more functional Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico, meaning Electromagnetic Experimental Module. It consists of 78 flood barriers installed in the seabed at the lagoon's three main entrance points. When the high tide arrives, they can rise to form a dam, stopping the Adriatic Sea surging into the lagoon and flooding the city.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from CleanTechnica: After analyzing the most recent data from two of America's largest electricity markets -- ERCOT in Texas and PJM in the Northeast -- the Rocky Mountain Institute has come to a startling conclusion. Renewables are muscling in on natural gas as the preferred choice for new electricity generation. In fact, according to RMI, what happened to coal is now happening to gas. What is needed, the organization argues, is a move away from the monopoly markets that have been the norm in the utility industry for more than 100 years and toward more open competition. Because when renewables compete head to head with thermal generation, they win hands down 95% of the time. The data doesn't lie. RMI looked at the interconnection queues for both ERCOT and PJM and found over the past two years there has been a dramatic shift away from building new gas fired generating plants and toward more renewable energy projects. Interconnection queues track new generation projects proposed to be added to regional grid. That information provides a leading indicator of market trends for new power plants. Not all projects in these queues are ultimately built, but the mix of resources in the queue represents the investments the market is prioritizing, according to RMI. [...] RMI finds that since 2018, the queue for clean energy projects has more than doubled while the queue for gas projects has been cut in half. In all, more than $30 billion worth of gas projects have been canceled or abandoned. Currently, the capacity of wind, solar, and storage projects slated for construction in ERCOT and PJM is ten times greater than for new gas projects. "Though COVID-19 may be contributing to some recent decline in planned gas additions, it's not the only driver," says RMI. "The trend has been building for years and investors more broadly are now waking up to the implications. For example, just five years ago in ERCOT, the interconnection queue contained an even split between proposed gas and renewables generation capacity. However, gas capacity in the queue started falling steadily in 2015, well before the COVID-19 pandemic and associated economic downturn. Meanwhile, renewable energy and storage projects in the queue have continued to grow even during the pandemic." "Therefore, it is likely that a more fundamental driver is at play -- raw economics, driven by the continually falling costs of clean energy and the associated risks of investment in new gas-fired capacity."

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Regal Cinemas, a subsidiary of Cineworld Group, said it will shut down all 536 locations on Thursday until further notice. The closure reflects "an increasingly challenging theatrical landscape" due to the COVID-19 pandemic and is temporary, the chain said. NPR reports: Regal is shutting down theaters again less than two months after it started to reopen U.S. locations in late August. The decision was announced after the James Bond franchise's No Time to Die was shelved until 2021, further pushing back a release that had already been delayed. Roughly 40,000 Regal employees across the U.S. now face a work furlough, the company told NPR. More than 5,000 employees in the U.K. will also be affected, the BBC reported. "This is not a decision we made lightly, and we did everything in our power to support a safe and sustainable reopening in the U.S.," said Mooky Greidinger, CEO of Cineworld, noting the chain's safety precautions for staff and moviegoers. In a statement, Greidinger emphasized that "there has been no evidence to date linking any COVID cases with cinemas." He also aired frustration that Regal can't yet operate in New York state, a key U.S. market, although some indoor venues such as bowling alleys and casinos have been allowed to resume business. "The prolonged closures have had a detrimental impact on the release slate for the rest of the year, and, in turn, our ability to supply our customers with the lineup of blockbusters they've come to expect from us," Greidinger said. "As such, it is simply impossible to continue operations in our primary markets."

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U.S. chipmaker Nvidia pledged Monday to build a $52 million supercomputer in Cambridge, England, weeks after announcing it intends to buy British rival Arm for $40 billion. CNBC reports: The supercomputer -- named "Cambridge-1" and intended for artificial intelligence (AI) research in health care -- is being unveiled by Nvidia founder and Chief Executive Jensen Huang at the company's GTC 2020 conference on Monday. "Tackling the world's most pressing challenges in health care requires massively powerful computing resources to harness the capabilities of AI," Huang will say in his keynote. "The Cambridge-1 supercomputer will serve as a hub of innovation for the U.K., and further the groundbreaking work being done by the nation's researchers in critical healthcare and drug discovery." Expected to launch by the end of the year, the Cambridge-1 machine will be the 29th most powerful computer in the world and the most powerful in Britain, Nvidia said. Researchers at GSK, AstraZeneca, Guy's and St Thomas' NHS (National Health Service) Foundation Trust, King's College London and Oxford Nanopore will be able to use the supercomputer to try to solve medical challenges, including those presented by the coronavirus. Nvidia said Cambridge-1 will have 400 petaflops of "AI performance" and that it will rank in the top three most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world. A petaflop is a measure of a computer's processing speed.

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Nvidia has debuted the Jetson Nano 2GB, a new developer kit for students and hobbyists with an interest in robotics. ZDNet reports: The Jetson Nano 2GB is geared towards robotics enthusiasts, students, and educators that want to enter the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. Nvidia says the entry-level Jetson Nano 2GB has been priced at $59 -- including online tutorials and certification -- to "make AI easily accessible for all." The Jetson Nano 2GB is a small package with a punch: not only supported by the Nvidia JetPack software development kit (SDK), the device also comes with Nvidia container runtime and a full Linux environment suitable for software development. In addition, the Jetson Nano 2GB is powered by CUDA-X, a collection of libraries and tools designed to support AI-based features, data processing, machine learning (ML), and deployment. Nvidia says that this combination "allows developers to package their applications for Jetson with all its dependencies into a single container that is designed to work in any deployment." Free online training and certification are on offer, alongside open source projects, tutorials, and how-tos already contributed by thousands of Jetson developers. It's currently available for pre-order, but orders won't start shipping until the end of the month.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Exxon Mobil has been planning to increase annual carbon-dioxide emissions by as much as the output of the entire nation of Greece, an analysis of internal documents reviewed by Bloomberg shows, setting one of the largest corporate emitters against international efforts to slow the pace of warming. The drive to expand both fossil-fuel production and planet-warming pollution comes at a time when some of Exxon's rivals, such as BP Plc and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, are moving to curb oil and zero-out emissions. Exxon's own assessment of its $210 billion investment strategy shows yearly emissions rising 17% by 2025, according to the internal documents. The largest U.S. oil producer has never made a commitment to lower oil and gas output or set a date by which it will become carbon neutral, and its near-term plans have been disrupted by fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic. Exxon has also never publicly disclosed its forecasts for its own emissions. But the planning documents show for the first time that Exxon has carefully assessed the direct emissions it expects from the seven-year investment plan adopted in 2018 by Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods. The additional 21 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year that would result from ramping up production dwarfs Exxon's projections for its own efforts to reduce pollution, such as deploying renewable energy and burying some carbon dioxide. The report notes that these internal estimates "reflect only a small portion of Exxon's total contribution to climate change," and don't take into account emissions "from customers burning fuel in vehicles or other end uses." "That means the full climate impact of Exxon's growth strategy could likely be five times the company's estimate -- or about 100 million tons of additional carbon dioxide -- had the company accounted for so-called Scope 3 emissions. If its plans are realized, Exxon would add to the atmosphere the annual emissions of a small, developed nation, or 26 coal-fired power plants."

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Aighearach shares a report from Reuters: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday sued John McAfee, creator of the eponymous anti-virus software, alleging that he made over $23.1 million in undisclosed compensation from recommending seven cryptocurrency offerings on Twitter that were materially false and misleading. The regulator, which is seeking a trial by jury, alleged that from at least November 2017 through February 2018, McAfee recommended cryptocurrencies that he was paid to promote, while falsely denying "he was being paid by the issuers." The SEC is seeking to impose on McAfee a civil penalty as well as disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, with interest. The agency also wants to ban him permanently from serving as an officer or director of any listed company or any company that files reports to the agency. "Poor John, surely he's misunderstood," writes Slashdot reader Aighearach. "John, come talk to us, do another Slashdot interview and tell your side! We're here for you, and we have people who can do your taxes while you..." Slashdot reader Aighearach adds that McAfee is also facing charges for evading taxes and willfully failing to file tax returns. "John McAfee might not be able to give an interview about his SEC troubles after all, now that he's on his way to the Big House," writes Aighearach.

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Spotify has rolled out a useful new feature today for iOS and Android that allows users to search for songs by its lyrics. 9to5Mac reports: When you're not sure the name of a song/artist, music recognition apps like Shazam are great if a song is playing. However, they don't work near as well if you're just trying to sing a couple of the lyrics into your phone. In those cases, it's common to search the web for the lyrics before heading to your music service to play or add the track. Now Spotify has simplified that problem as the service on both iOS and Android has added the handy option to type in lyrics to search for songs. Spotify designer Lina shared the news on Twitter this morning.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: A Tesla hacker has revealed what Tesla's driver-facing camera in Model 3 and Model Y is looking for -- hinting at driver monitoring feature. When Tesla launched the Model 3, it equipped the vehicle with a standard cabin-facing camera located in the rearview mirror. At the time, the automaker said that the camera wasn't active and it would be used in the future. CEO Elon Musk said that it would be used to prevent people from vandalizing cars when they are being driven automatically on Tesla's upcoming self-driving robotaxi network. For almost 3 years, the camera was not used in the Model 3 and Model Y vehicles until earlier this year when Tesla activated the camera for the first time. Now Tesla hacker 'green', known for revealing many features in Tesla's software, has discovered what events the automaker is trying to detect with the driver-facing camera: BLINDED; DARK; EYES_CLOSED; EYES_DOWN; EYES_NOMINAL; EYES_UP; HEAD_DOWN; HEAD_TRUNC; LOOKING_LEFT; LOOKING_RIGHT; PHONE_USE; SUNGLASSES_EYES_LIKELY_NOMINAL; and SUNGLASSES_LIKELY_EYES_DOWN. Tesla's only active driver monitoring feature when Autopilot is engaged is detecting if torque is being applied to the wheel. Several other driver-assist systems, like GM's Supercruise, are using cabin-facing cameras to make sure drivers are looking at the road. Tesla started collecting images and clips for research purposes, but only with consent from the drivers: "Help Tesla continue to develop safer vehicles by sharing camera data from your vehicle. This update will allow you to enable the built-in cabin camera above the rearview mirror. If enabled, Tesla will automatically capture images and a short video clip just prior to a collision or safety event to help engineers develop safety features and enhancements in the future. As usual, you can adjust your data sharing preferences by tapping Controls > Safety &Security > DATA Sharing > Camera Analytics."

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Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures have delayed the release of "Dune," the sci-fi epic from director Denis Villeneuve. It will no longer premiere Dec. 18 and is now slated to debut in theaters Oct. 1, 2021. From a report: The move was expected after the studio pushed "Wonder Woman 1984" back from early October to Christmas Day, putting the comic book sequel's big screen debut one week ahead of "Dune." In normal circumstances, but especially during the pandemic, Warner Bros. wouldn't cannibalize ticket sales for a fellow studio release. Also accelerating the news: James Bond sequel "No Time to Die," which was originally set to launch at the end of November, was pushed back to 2021. That decision prompted Regal, the second-biggest U.S. theater chain, to close down its venues after reopening in August. If major movies continue to vacate their release dates, other circuits may be forced to shut down again as well.

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At least 14m tonnes of plastic pieces less than 5mm wide are likely sitting at the bottom of the world's oceans, according to an estimate based on new research. From a report: Analysis of ocean sediments from as deep as 3km suggests there could be more than 30 times as much plastic at the bottom of the world's ocean than there is floating at the surface. Australia's government science agency, CSIRO, gathered and analysed cores of the ocean floor taken at six remote sites about 300km off the country's southern coast in the Great Australian Bight. Researchers looked at 51 samples and found that after excluding the weight of the water, each gram of sediment contained an average of 1.26 microplastic pieces. Microplastics are 5mm or less in diameter and are mostly the result of larger plastic items breaking apart into ever smaller pieces. Stemming the tide of plastic entering the world's waterways and ocean has emerged as a major international challenge. Dr Denise Hardesty, a principal research scientist at CSIRO and a co-author of the research published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, told the Guardian that finding microplastic in such a remote location and at such depths "points to the ubiquity of plastics, no matter where you are in the world."

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