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Apple has confirmed several problems including "increased battery drain" for some users who upgraded their iPhone to iOS 14. But ZDNet warns Apple's proposed solution "sounds pretty drastic." Forbes reports: In an official post, Apple reveals seven significant data and battery-related problems with iOS 14 and watchOS 7, and the company states the only fix is to "erase all content and settings from your iPhone". Breaking these down, Apple classifies six as related to its Activity, Health and Fitness apps as well as the broader problem of "Increased battery drain on your iPhone or Apple Watch." The latter will not be a surprise to anyone who has seen the growing number of complaints directed at the company's @AppleSupport Twitter account since iOS 14 was released... On the plus side, Apple's belief that these problems can be fixed without an iOS update is good news. That said, a complete data wipe is also the nuclear option, so Apple is not messing around... I would also be amazed if iOS 14.0.2 is not being fast tracked as we speak.

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A software company supporting hundreds of clinical trials — including coronavirus vaccine trials — has been hit by a ransomware attack that "has slowed some of those trials over the past two weeks," reports the New York Times. Employees "discovered that they were locked out of their data by ransomware..." eResearchTechnology (ERT) said clinical trial patients were never at risk, but customers said the attack forced trial researchers to track their patients with pen and paper. Among those hit were IQVIA, the contract research organization helping manage AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine trial, and Bristol Myers Squibb, the drugmaker leading a consortium of companies to develop a quick test for the virus. ERT has not said how many clinical trials were affected, but its software is used in drug trials across Europe, Asia and North America. It was used in three-quarters of trials that led to drug approvals by the Food and Drug Administration last year, according to its website. On Friday, Drew Bustos, ERT's vice president of marketing, confirmed that ransomware had seized its systems on September 20. As a precaution, Mr. Bustos said, the company took its systems offline that day, called in outside cybersecurity experts and notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "Nobody feels great about these experiences, but this has been contained," Mr. Bustos said. He added that ERT was starting to bring its systems back online on Friday and planned to bring remaining systems online over the coming days... One of ERT's clients, IQVIA, said it had been able to limit problems because it had backed up its data. Bristol Myers Squibb also said the impact of the attack had been limited, but other ERT customers had to move their clinical trials to move to pen and paper. The Times notes it's just one of "more than a thousand ransomware attacks on American cities, counties and hospitals over the past 18 months." Other interesting details from the article: ERT's vice president of marketing "declined to say whether the company paid its extortionists, as so many companies hit by ransomware now do." The attack follows what NBC News calls "one of the largest medical cyberattacks in United States history," taking down the computer systems of Universal Health Services at over 400 locations. "In May, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security warned that Chinese government spies were actively trying to steal American clinical research through cybertheft... More than a dozen countries have redeployed military and intelligence hackers to glean what they can about other nations' responses, according to security researchers." Two companies working on a coronavirus vaccine — Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson — emphasized to the Times that they weren't affected by ERT's issues, with a Pfizer spokesperson stressing they're not even using ERT's software.

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Slashdot reader spth writes: At a Canadian recycling firm hired by Apple to scrap about 600,000 Apple devices, 100,000 of them were actually resold to other companies that made working devices from the parts. Apple now sues the recycling company for the money made from the sale plus 31 million Canadian dollars. The recycling company claims that the devices were resold by three rogue employees that pocketed the profits. The re-sold devices included iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches, according to news reports, and though they were being re-sold in China, Apple still complains that at least 18% of the devices they'd shipped to the company they later found active on wireless carrier networks. Apple also says the re-sales dampened demand for new Apple products, hurt their brand by keeping products intended for destruction out on the market — and created a safety issue for consumers.

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An anonymous reader quotes Ars Technica: Sourcegraph, a company specializing in universal code search, polled more than 500 North American software developers to identify issues in code complexity and management. Its general findings are probably no surprise to most Ars readers — software has gotten bigger, more complex, and much more important in the past ten years — but the sheer scope can be surprising... When asked how the size of the codebase across their entire company, measured in megabytes and the number of repositories, has changed in the past decade, over half (51%) of software development stakeholders reported they have more than 100 times the volume of code they had 10 years ago. And a staggering 18% say they have 500 times more code. Ars also reports another surprising finding: 91% of the surveyed developers said their non-technology company "functions more like a technology company than it did ten years ago. "This won't surprise anyone who has noticed firms like Walmart Labs sponsoring open source technology conferences and delivering presentations."

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"Hello Chrome OS Community," posted one of Google's community managers Wednesday. "Thank you for raising this issue, and for your patience as we work to resolve this. Our team has identified the issue and is rolling out a fix to affected devices." The issue? ChromeOS users reported the latest updates "cause a Google Play Store service to utilize 100 percent of their CPUs..." according to TechRadar, "making their devices hot and leading to performance issues." As reported by BleepingComputer, after upgrading their devices to ChromeOS version 85.0.4183.108 and later users have faced a number of issues including apps that are running erratically, devices getting hot, fans running at high speed and batteries draining much too quickly. Upon investigating these issues further, users discovered that they were caused by the Google Play 'com.android.vending:download_service' utilizing 95 to 100 percent of their devices CPU for an extended period. This service is used to download new updates from the Google Play Store when they become available. However, a bug in the service causes the CPU to run at 100 percent power all of the time even when a new update is not available. Bleeping Computer reported last Sunday that the issues didn't affect all Chromebooks, but was reported by users of Acer Chromebooks, ASUS Chromebook Flip, and Galaxy Chromebooks. "One user stated they resolved this issue by rolling back to an older Google Play Store version."

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An anonymous reader quotes the Hollywood Reporter: Following the delay of more Hollywood tentpoles — including James Bond film No Time to Die — mega-movie theater chain Cineworld is planning to keep all of its locations in the U.K. and the U.S. closed for the time being, The Sunday Times reported on Saturday. The British-based company is the largest circuit in the U.K with more than 120 sites, and the second-largest in North America, where it operates roughly 540 locations under the Regal Cinemas banner. A substantial number of these theaters hadn't yet reopened after forced to go dark because of the coronavirus pandemic. Across Hollywood, the surprise Saturday-night headline prompted immediate concern that AMC Theatres and Cinemark Theates could soon follow suit. Variety reports: In the U.K., Cineworld, which declined to comment, is understood to be writing to Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden this weekend to explain that the exhibition sector is "unviable" due to studios delaying tentpoles as a result of anxious audiences steering clear of cinemas amid the global pandemic. The Cineworld closures will put up to 5,500 jobs at risk in the U.K. Sources indicate a reopening date hasn't yet been set, but cinemas could stay closed until 2021.... The delay is major blow to theaters, and there's a chance more could be forced to close given the lack of new content on the horizon. Pixar's "Soul" on Nov. 20 is now the next big movie slated for theatrical release. However, there are rumblings that Disney will move the animated adventure and possibly even put it on Disney Plus, the studio's subscription streaming service. Two Warner Bros. titles, "Wonder Woman 1984" and "Dune," are still set for December, though there's a chance those could be postponed again as well.

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Last week open-source advocate Eric S. Raymond argued Microsoft was quietly switching over to a Linux kernel that emulates Windows. "He's on to something," says ZDNet's contributing editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: I've long thought that Microsoft was considering migrating the Windows interface to running on the Linux kernel. Why...? [Y]ou can run standard Linux programs now on WSL2 without any trouble. That's because Linux is well on its way to becoming a first-class citizen on the Windows desktop. Multiple Linux distros, starting with Ubuntu, Red Hat Fedora, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED), now run smoothly on WSL2. That's because Microsoft has replaced its WSL1 translation layer, which converted Linux kernel calls into Windows calls, with WSL2. With WSL2 Microsoft's own Linux kernel is running on a thin version of the Hyper-V hypervisor. That's not all. With the recent Windows 10 Insider Preview build 20211, you can now access Linux file systems, such as ext4, from Windows File Manager and PowerShell. On top of that, Microsoft developers are making it easy to run Linux graphical applications on Windows... [Raymond] also observed, correctly, that Microsoft no longer depends on Windows for its cash flow but on its Azure cloud offering. Which, by the way, is running more Linux instances than it is Windows Server instances. So, that being the case, why should Microsoft keep pouring money into the notoriously trouble-prone Windows kernel — over 50 serious bugs fixed in the last Patch Tuesday roundup — when it can use the free-as-in-beer Linux kernel? Good question. He thinks Microsoft can do the math and switch to Linux. I think he's right. Besides his points, there are others. Microsoft already wants you to replace your existing PC-based software, like Office 2019, with software-as-a-service (SaaS) programs like Office 365. Microsoft also encourages you to move your voice, video, chat, and texting to Microsoft's Azure Communication Services even if you don't use Teams. With SaaS programs, Microsoft doesn't care what operating system you're running. They're still going to get paid whether you run Office 365 on Windows, a Chromebook, or, yes, Linux. I see two possible paths ahead for Windows. First, there's Linux-based Windows. It simply makes financial sense. Or, the existing Windows desktop being replaced by the Windows Virtual Desktop or other Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) offerings.... Google chose to save money and increase security by using Linux as the basis for Chrome OS. This worked out really well for Google. It can for Microsoft with — let's take a blast from the past — and call it Lindows as well.

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"A doctor notorious for claiming hydroxychloroquine is a 'cure' for COVID-19 has denounced White House doctors for not giving President Donald Trump the drug to treat his infection..." reports Newsweek. "Other unsubstantiated claims from Immanuel include declarations that fasting can cure those affected by 'witchcraft,' that having sex with demons while dreaming can cause gynecological problems and that certain medications contain the DNA of extraterrestrial aliens." Dr. Stella Immanuel, who gained fame in July after Trump retweeted a video showing her touting the malaria drug, expressed outrage in a series of tweets on Friday, condemning the medical decisions of "bozo doctors" who surrounded the president after he tested positive for COVID-19. "Instead of giving the president of the United States a known safe drug," Immanuel tweeted. "They gave him some experimental antibody stupidness. This is so dumb. Please potus family you guys wake up. Give him HCQ, Zpack & zinc asap." "Whoever told the president to stop taking HCQ should be punched in the face," she said in an earlier tweet. "This did not have to happened. I am so upset. This is our president for crying out loud. No one need to get sick or pcr positive." Leonard Schleifer, CEO of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, insisted that taking his company's experimental treatment, made of potentially virus-neutralizing antibodies, could see the president's condition improve within one week. Although the treatment is widely viewed as having potential, some medical experts have expressed less confidence in its effectiveness. Conley issued a second memorandum late Friday night, revealing that "in consultation with specialists, we have decided to initiate Remdesivir therapy" for Trump, referring to the antiviral drug that gained an emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over the summer after studies showed it could reduce the length of time a person is ill with COVID-19. Newsweek reminds its readers that early in the pandemic Trump did take a two-week course of hydroxychloroquine "as a preventative measure, hoping it would prevent his infection..."

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"Google is hiring to create a special Android security team that will be tasked with finding vulnerabilities in highly sensitive apps on the Google Play Store," reports ZDNet: "As a Security Engineering Manager in Android Security... Your team will perform application security assessments against highly sensitive, third party Android apps on Google Play, working to identify vulnerabilities and provide remediation guidance to impacted application developers," reads a new Google job listing posted on Wednesday. Applications that this new team will focus on include the likes of COVID-19 contact tracing apps and election-related applications, with others to follow, according to Sebastian Porst, Software Engineering Manager for Google Play Protect.

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Sam Baron, associate professor at Australian Catholic University, focuses on the connection between key topics in the philosophy of mathematics and the philosophy of time concerning temporal ontology. In a recent article in Gizmodo, he answers the ultimate question: Could our entire reality be part of a simulation created by some other beings? Let's assume these extraterrestrial beings have a computer on which our universe is being "simulated". Simulated worlds are pretend worlds — a bit like the worlds on Minecraft or Fortnite, which are both simulations created by us. If we think about it like this, it also helps to suppose these "beings" are similar to us. They'd have to at least understand us to be able to simulate us. By narrowing the question down, we're now asking: is it possible we're living in a computer simulation run by beings like us? University of Oxford professor Nick Bostrom has thought a lot about this exact question. And he argues the answer is "yes". Not only does Bostrom think it's possible, he thinks there's a decent probability it's true... According to Bostrom, if these simulated people (who are so much like us) don't realise they're in a simulation, then it's possible you and I are too. Suppose I guess we're not in a simulation and you guess we are. Who guessed best? Let's say there is just one "real" past. But these futuristic beings are also running many simulations of the past — different versions they made up. They could be running any number of simulations (it doesn't change the point Bostrom is trying to make) — but let's go with 200,000. Our guessing-game then is a bit like rolling a die with 200,000 sides. When I guess we are not simulated, I'm betting the die will be a specific number (let's make it 2), because there can only be one possible reality in which we're not simulated. This means in every other scenario we are simulated, which is what you guessed. That's like betting the die will roll anything other than 2. So your bet is a far better one. Professor Baron notes there's also two factors that decrease the likelihood of this hypothesis: How likely is it there are beings so advanced they can run simulations with people who are "conscious" like us in the first place? How likely is it such beings would run simulations even if they could? Maybe they have no interest in doing this. "Sadly, we don't have enough evidence to help us decide." Gizmodo doesn't indicate that professor Baron's came from a 9-year-old (as part of a series called "Curious Kids".) The 9-year-old's original wording of the question: "Is it possible the whole observable universe is just a thing kept in a container, in a room where there are some other extraterrestrial beings much bigger than us?"

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"Universities have been conscripted as the arbiters of opportunity, as the dispensers of the credentials, as the sorting machine," warns a Harvard political philosopher, in a new interview in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled "The Insufferable Hubris of the Well-Credentialed." The meritocratic hubris of elites is the conviction by those who land on top that their success is their own doing, that they have risen through a fair competition, that they therefore deserve the material benefits that the market showers upon their talents. Meritocratic hubris is the tendency of the successful to inhale too deeply of their success, to forget the luck and good fortune that helped them on their way. It goes along with the tendency to look down on those less fortunate, and less credentialed, than themselves. That gives rise to the sense of humiliation and resentment of those who are left out... Our credentialing function is beginning to crowd out our educational function. Students win admission to these places by converting their teenage years — or their parents converting their teenage years — into a stress-strewn gauntlet of meritocratic striving. That inculcates intense pressure for achievement. So even the winners in the meritocratic competition are wounded by it, because they become so accustomed to accumulating achievements and credentials, so accustomed to jumping through hoops and pleasing their parents and teachers and coaches and admissions committees, that the habit of hoop-jumping becomes difficult to break. By the time they arrive in college, many find it difficult to step back and reflect on what's worth caring about, on what they truly would love to study and learn. The habit of gathering credentials and of networking and of anticipating the next gateway in the ladder to success begins to interfere with the true reason for being in institutions of higher education, which is exploring and reflecting and questioning and seeking after one's passions. What might we do about it? I make a proposal in the book that may get me in a lot of trouble in my neighborhood. Part of the problem is that having survived this high-pressured meritocratic gauntlet, it's almost impossible for the students who win admission not to believe that they achieved their admission as a result of their own strenuous efforts. One can hardly blame them. So I think we should gently invite students to challenge this idea. I propose that colleges and universities that have far more applicants than they have places should consider what I call a "lottery of the qualified." Over 40,000 students apply to Stanford and to Harvard for about 2,000 places. The admissions officers tell us that the majority are well-qualified. Among those, fill the first-year class through a lottery. My hunch is that the quality of discussion in our classes would in no way be impaired. The main reason for doing this is to emphasize to students and their parents the role of luck in admission, and more broadly in success. It's not introducing luck where it doesn't already exist. To the contrary, there's an enormous amount of luck in the present system. The lottery would highlight what is already the case.

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"POSIX has been the standard file system interface for Unix-based systems (which includes Linux) since its launch more than 30 years ago," writes Enterprise Storage Forum, noting the POSIX-compliant Lustre file system "powers most supercomputers." Now Slashdot reader storagedude writes: POSIX has scalability and performance limitations that will become increasingly important in data-intensive applications like deep learning, but until now it has retained one key advantage over the infinitely scalable object storage: the ability to process data in memory. That advantage is now gone with the new mmap_obj() function, which paves the way for object storage to become the preferred approach to Big Data applications. POSIX features like statefulness, prescriptive metadata, and strong consistency "become a performance bottleneck as I/O requests multiply and data scale..." claims the article. "The mmap_obj() developers note that one piece of work still needs to be done: there needs to be a munmap_obj() function to release data from the user space, similar to the POSIX function."

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On Monday long-time Slashdot reader TorinEdge wrote that Microsoft "appears to have botched an internal Office365 cloud services rollout today, with outages confirmed up and down the West Coast of North America. Confirmed roll backs were good early omens, but in the end did not appear to be successful... Symptoms may include: All 365-related services flaking out, borking, alternately approving logins and confirming they definitely do not exist." CRN reported service was impacted for five hours. But on Thursday some users were now intermittently unable to access Microsoft Exchange from 12:52 a.m. until 10:50 p.m., "according to a Microsoft email update to Office 365 administrators..." "Some partners believe the tech giant is grappling with a DevOps crisis." "It looks like they are pushing out software updates that are causing the outages," said a channel source impacted by one of the outages. "They have so much going on right now, rolling Teams out at a breakneck pace. I think they are running into an issue where code tested out fine but there is a configuration problem when they deploy it." DevOps is a set of practices that, according to the Wikipedia definition, shortens the systems development life cycle and provides continuous delivery of code with high software quality... A senior executive for one of Microsoft's top partners, who did not want to be identified, said he sees both recent outages as clearly DevOps-related... "Microsoft is a development first company, well known in general for DevOps, so the question is: why is this happening?" said the executive. "I love Microsoft but why is a company that paid $7.5 billion for Github, the leading source code repository company in the world, getting taken down by code that is not being well tested or has a single point of failure. That is ridiculous. If we caused this kind of production outage for a customer we would be fired and possibly blacklisted from the ecosystem. We have to bat 1,000 as a partner." The lesson from the outages may well be that a company's DevOps is only as "good as the humans who configure it and execute upon it," said the executive. The executive said the outages will definitely have a ripple effect in the channel. "I bet the Google G Suite sales reps threw a party when they saw this," he said. "No cloud vendor is immune to downtime," Microsoft says in a statement quoted by CRN. "Our number one priority is to get to resolution as quickly as possible and ensure our customers stay updated along the way, as was the case here. "We continuously invest in the resilience of our platform and focus on learning from these incidents to ultimately reduce the impact of inevitable outages..."

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"Trials of a hydrogen-powered train are underway in the U.K.," reports CNBC: The HydroFLEX train — which has been developed by a team from the University of Birmingham and Porterbrook, a rolling stock firm — uses a fuel-cell which combines hydrogen and oxygen to generate electricity, heat and water... It's hoped that the technology will be available to retrofit trains already in use by the year 2023... Wednesday's news comes at the end of a month that's seen several interesting developments in the arena of hydrogen-powered transport. Last week, in airspace over England, a hydrogen fuel-cell plane capable of carrying passengers completed its maiden flight. A few days earlier, Airbus released details of three hydrogen-fueled concept planes, saying they could enter service by the year 2035. Earlier in the month ÖBB, the Austrian Federal Railways, said a hydrogen-powered train would commence a passenger service trial in southern areas of Lower Austria... According to the company, it can reach speeds of up to 140 kilometers per hour, is low-noise and "emits only steam and water."

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The Guardian reports: "Green hydrogen" made with wind and solar electricity could become the cheapest form of what the Australian government has described as a "transformative fuel" much faster than expected, analysts believe. Chinese manufacturers have reported making systems to create hydrogen with renewable energy for up to 80% less than official Australian estimates from just two years ago. Energy analysts said it suggested green hydrogen was likely to leapfrog hydrogen made with gas and coal as the most cost-effective form of the energy before the end of the decade, and by the time an industry could be developed at scale... Germany has dedicated more than A$15bn of Covid-19 stimulus spending to developing a domestic hydrogen industry, and has agreed with Australia to undertake a joint feasibility study into its potential as an energy source. The European Commission recently launched a strategy that positions green hydrogen as central to the continent's goal to reach "climate neutrality" — net zero emissions — by 2050... The hope is that hydrogen will prove an emissions-free alternative to coal and gas in industries that operate at incredibly high temperatures.

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"They're trolling us... we think. But how the hell did this get published?" asks Popular Mechanics. Slashdot reader worldofsimulacra shares their report: Scientists have uncovered a bizarre, indefensible paper that squeaked through peer review at what appears at first pass to be a legitimate medical journal... 13 listed authors from wildly different fields throw together a series of escalating falsehoods. "Recently, some scientists from NASA have claimed that there may be a black hole like structure at the centre of the earth," the abstract begins. It only gets crazier from there: "The earth's core is the biggest system of telecommunication which exchanges waves with all DNAs and molecules of water. Imaging of DNAs on the interior of the metal of the core produces a DNA black brane with around 109 times longer than the core of the earth which is compacted and creates a structure similar to a black hole or black brane. We have shown that this DNA black brane is the main cause of high temperature of core and magnetic of earth...." One of the theories to explain the paper is that it was generated using "peer-review-tricking" artificial intelligence, which shuffles key terms and phrases and glues them together into something almost coherent. Apparently you can't trust everything you read in the Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences. The paper's title? "A Black Hole at the Center of Earth Plays the Role of the Biggest System of Telecommunication for Connecting DNAs, Dark DNAs and Molecules of Water on 4+N- Dimensional Manifold." At the top of the paper, the journal has since appended a retraction, leading to a page warning "An internal investigation" has "raised sufficient evidence" that the paper is "not directly connected with the special issue Global Dermatology and contain inconsistent results... "We apologize to our audience about this unfortunate situation."

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ZDNet reports: At the Microsoft Build 2020 virtual developers' conference, CEO Satya Nadella announced that Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) 2.0 would soon support Linux GUIs and applications. That day is closer now than ever before. At the recent X.Org Developers Conference, Microsoft partner developer lead Steve Pronovost revealed that Microsoft has made it possible to run graphical Linux applications within WSL. It's always been possible to run Linux graphical programs such as the GIMP graphics editor, Evolution e-mail client, and LibreOffice on WSL. But it wasn't easy. You had to install a third-party X Window display server, such as the VcXsrv Windows X Server in Windows 10, and then do some tuning with both Windows and Linux to get them to work together smoothly. The X Window System underlies almost all Linux graphical user interfaces. Now, Microsoft has ported a Wayland display server to WSL. Wayland is the most popular X Window compatible server. In WSL2, it connects the graphical Linux applications via a Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) connection to the main Windows display. This means you can run Linux and Windows GUI applications simultaneously on the same desktop screen.... Craig Loewen, Microsoft WSL Program Manager, added in a Twitter thread that the key differences between using a third-party X server and the built-in Wayland server is that: "You don't need to start up or start the server, we'll handle that for you." In addition, it comes with "Lovely integration with Windows," such as drop shadows and Linux icon support. Loewen also said you can run a Linux web browser in it. "We haven't tested it extensively with a full desktop environment yet, as we want to focus on running often asked for apps first, and primarily IDEs [integrated development environment] so you can run those in a full Linux environment," he said. Don't get too excited about it just yet, though. Loewen continued, "We don't yet have an ETA for the beta channel, however, this work will be available in general for Insiders to try within the next couple of months."

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On Friday America's Department of Justice announced: Two leaders of one of the world's most notorious videogame piracy groups, Team Xecuter, have been arrested and are in custody facing charges filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle... The indictment alleges the defendants were leaders of a criminal enterprise that developed and sold illegal devices that hacked popular videogame consoles so they could be used to play unauthorized, or pirated, copies of videogames. The enterprise targeted popular consoles such as the Nintendo Switch, the Nintendo 3DS, the Nintendo Entertainment System Classic Edition, the Sony PlayStation Classic, and the Microsoft Xbox. "These defendants were allegedly leaders of a notorious international criminal group that reaped illegal profits for years by pirating video game technology of U.S. companies," said Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian C. Rabbitt of the Justice Department's Criminal Division. "These arrests show that the department will hold accountable hackers who seek to commandeer and exploit the intellectual property of American companies for financial gain, no matter where they may be located." "These defendants lined their pockets by stealing and selling the work of other video-game developers — even going so far as to make customers pay a licensing fee to play stolen games," said U.S. Attorney Brian Moran for the Western District of Washington. "This conduct doesn't just harm billion dollar companies, it hijacks the hard work of individuals working to advance in the video-game industry." "Theft of intellectual property hurts U.S. industry, game developers and exploits legitimate gaming customers, all of which threaten the legitimacy of the commercial video game industry," said Acting Special Agent in Charge Eben Roberts of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations, Seattle. "We are committed to working with our international partners to find criminals like these who steal copyrighted material and bring cyber criminals to justice...." According to the indictment, Team Xecuter at times cloaked its illegal activity with a purported desire to support gaming enthusiasts who wanted to design their own videogames for noncommercial use. However, the overwhelming demand and use for the enterprise's devices was to play pirated videogames.

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Roger Cochetti directed internet public policy for IBM from 1994 through 2000 and later served as Senior Vice-President & Chief Policy Officer for VeriSign and Group Policy Director for CompTIA. This week he warned about signs "that the once open, global internet is slowly being replaced by 200, nationally-controlled, separate internets." And, while these separate American, Chinese, Russian, Australian, European, British, and other "internets" may decide to have some things in common with each other, the laws of political gravity will slowly pull them further apart as interest groups in each country lobby for their own concerns within their own country. Moreover, we will probably see the emergence of a global alternate internet before long... As background, it's important to recognize that — by almost any measure — the global internet is controlled by businesses and non-profits subject to the jurisdiction of the United States government. Within a roughly 1,000-mile strip of land stretching from San Diego to Seattle lie most major internet businesses and network control or standards bodies (and those that aren't there likely lie elsewhere in the United States). So — as the governments of China, Russia and Iran never tire of explaining — while Americans constitute around 310 million out of the world's 4.3 billion internet users (around 8%), the U.S. government exercises influence or control over more than 70% of the internet's controls and services... China's ability to control the internet experience within its bordersx` between roughly 2005 and 2018 taught many other countries that doing so, even if costly, is possible. This lesson was not lost on Russia, Iran, Australia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the EU and many other countries, which began developing legal (and sometimes technical) means to control internet content within their borders. This legal/technical nationalization over the past decade was significantly boosted by the realization that it was actually not very difficult for a government to substantially shut down the internet within a territory... The first major step in the introduction of a new, China-centric internet may have taken place last year when China introduced to the UN's International Telecommunications Union a proposal for a new type of protocol that would connect networks in a way comparable to, but different from, the way that the internet protocols have done. This was quickly dubbed China's New IP, and it has been the subject of major controversy as the nations and companies decide how to react. Whether a new Chinese-centric internet is based on a new series of protocols or is simply based on a new set of internet domain names and numbers, it seems likely that this alternate internet will give national governments quite a bit more control over what happens within their territories than does the global, open internet. This feature will attract quite a few national governments to join in — not least Russia, Iran and perhaps Turkey and India. The combined market power of those participating countries would make it difficult for any global internet business to avoid such a new medium. The likely result being two, parallel global computer inter-networking systems... which is pretty much what Google CEO Eric Schmidt predicted.

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"The first image of a black hole, captured in 2019, has revealed more support for Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity," reports CNN, adding that the new finding suggests his theory is now 500 times harder to beat. [W]hile light can't escape the inside of a black hole, it's possible for light to make a getaway in a region around the event horizon, or point of no return. This in-between space can look like a shadow. Because black holes have such immense gravity, which curves space-time, it can actually act like magnifier that makes the black hole's shadow appear larger than it is. The research team measured this distortion and found that the size of this black hole's shadow aligns with the theory of relativity — or matter warping space-time to create gravity... "This is really just the beginning. We have now shown that it is possible to use an image of a black hole to test the theory of gravity," said Lia Medeiros, study coauthor and postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in New Jersey, in a statement. "This test will be even more powerful once we image the black hole in the center of our own galaxy and in future EHT observations with additional telescopes that are being added to the array...." "For the first time we have a different gauge by which we can do a test that's 500 times better, and that gauge is the shadow size of a black hole," said Feryal Özel, study coauthor and University of Arizona astrophysics professor. "When we obtain an image of the black hole at the center of our own galaxy, then we can constrain deviations from general relativity even further."

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