The Verge reports: Firefox's latest update brings native support for Macs that run on Apple's Arm-based silicon, Mozilla announced on Tuesday. Mozilla claims that native Apple silicon support brings significant performance improvements: the browser apparently launches 2.5 times faster and web apps are twice as responsive than they were on the previous version of Firefox, which wasn't native to Apple's chips... Firefox's support of Apple's Arm-based processors follows Chrome, which added support for Apple's new chips shortly after the M1-equipped MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and Mac mini were released in November. Firefox 84 will also be the very last release to support Adobe Flash, notes ZDNet, calling both developments "a reminder of the influence Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has had and continues to exert on software and hardware nine years after his death." Jobs wrote off Flash in 2010 as successful Adobe software but one that was a 'closed' product "created during the PC era — for PCs and mice" and not suitable for the then-brand-new iPad, nor any of its prior iPhones. Instead, Jobs said the future of the web was HTML5, JavaScript and CSS. At the end of this year Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Apple Safari also drop support for Flash. Senior Apple execs recently reflected in an interview with Om Malik what the M1 would have meant to Jobs had been alive today. "Steve used to say that we make the whole widget," Greg Joswiak, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing told Malik. "We've been making the whole widget for all our products, from the iPhone, to the iPads, to the watch. This was the final element to making the whole widget on the Mac." ZDNet also notes that Firefox 84 offers WebRender, "Mozilla's faster GPU-based 2D rendering engine" for MacOS Big Sur, Windows devices with Intel Gen 6 GPUs, and Intel laptops running Windows 7 and 8. "Mozilla promises it will ship an accelerated rendering pipeline for Linux/GNOME/X11 users for the first time." Firefox now also uses "more modern techniques for allocating shared memory on Linux," writes Mozilla, "improving performance and increasing compatibility with Docker." And Firefox 85 will include a new network partitioning feature to make it harder for companies to track your web surfing.

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Application-security company Veracode "has released the 11th volume of its annual State of Software Security report, and its findings reveal that flawed applications are the norm, open-source libraries are increasingly untrustworthy, and it's taking a long time to patch problems," reports TechRepublic. The top three security flaws — like last year — are still information leakage, cryptographic issues, and CRLF injection: The report found a full 76% of apps contained flaws, and 24% of apps have flaws considered highly severe. Some 70% of apps are inheriting security flaws from their open-source libraries, but it's important to note that only 30% of apps have more security bugs in their open-source libraries than in code written in-house, suggesting that it isn't solely open-source projects that are to blame... In terms of how bugs are being resolved, Veracode found that 73% of the bugs it found as part of the report were patched, which is a big improvement over previous years, when that number was in the mid-50% range. Despite that good sign, it's still taking an average of six months to close half of discovered flaws... Veracode also released a heatmap of the worst bugs in the most popular languages. Interestingly enough, the language with the least use of open-source libraries is also the one with the most bugs: PHP. Looking at the heatmap, it's easy to spot which of the five popular languages included has the worst security. Following PHP is C++, then Java, .Net, JavaScript, and Python. The latter two are, doing considerably better than the competition, with the worst flaws in each only being found in roughly 30% of apps. Compared to PHP with 74.6% of its apps vulnerable to cross-site scripting, JavaScript and Python are security powerhouses.

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Forbes reports: Nuclear advocates see a vast market for reactors in carbon capture and carbon-based products, not only for the next generation of reactors in development, but also for the aging dinosaurs they evolved from... The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in San Luis Obispo, California, for example, is slated to shut down in 2024 and 2025. "If the waste heat from that plant was being combined with electricity production you could be removing 20 million tons per year of carbon from the atmosphere," said Kirsty Gogan, co-founder of Energy for Humanity, at an EarthX panel on Wednesday. "Right now what's happening is these big gigawatt-scale depreciating assets — they're making baseload, clean, emissions-free power, but we're just throwing away the heat, right? Those nuclear plants could be more useful, making a big contribution toward that responsibility we all have to go negative. "We all try to be neutral, but it ain't good enough. We have to take responsibility for the carbon that's already in the atmosphere and go negative." That's just one possibility. For example, the article also suggests nuclear energy could be used to generate sustainable aviation fuel (currently made mostly from biomass) from smokestack carbon. Slashdot reader ogcricket notes the article is based on an hour-long EarthX panel that's now available on YouTube.

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"A new satellite from Capella Space was described as "pretty creepy" by Bustle's technology site Input: Like other hunks of metal currently orbiting Earth, the Capella-2 satellite's onboard radar system makes it capable of producing ludicrously high-resolution visuals from its data. More unconventional is the service Capella has launched to match: the government or private customers can, at any time, request a view of anything on the planet that's visible from the sky... The Capella-2's system of cameras and sensors is nothing short of magnificent. The satellite uses something called Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), a technology used by NASA since the 1970s, to detect the Earth's surface through even the densest of clouds. SAR sends a 9.65 GHz radio signal toward the Earth and interprets the signal as it returns, using that data to form a visual... The Capella-2 is now the highest-resolution commercial SAR satellite in the world, capable of 50 cm x 50 cm resolution imaging. Other satellites are only capable of resolution up to about five meters.... Once Capella's full squadron of satellites is airborne, the company will have the ability to quickly snap views of just about any place in the world. That power could quickly be abused if left unchecked. The article notes Capella already has a contract with the U.S. Air Force, adding "It's not much of a stretch to imagine high-resolution SAR technology turning into a tool for national surveillance... "Right now there's just one Capella-2 satellite roaming around in the atmosphere, so that functionality is somewhat limited. Capella plans to launch six additional satellites with similar capabilities in the next year." In response on Friday Capella Space penned a blog post reminding readers that their satellite "does not see through buildings," and that at 50-centimeter resolution "What it cannot do...is see people, license plates or reveal any personally identifiable information. Unlike other technologies that have recently been under scrutiny for privacy infringement such as cell phone geolocation data or automatic license plate readers, SAR imaging specializes in a macro view of the world to see the general patterns of life. "Our company was founded on the belief that technology in space can significantly benefit life on Earth, and invading privacy does not help that mission. Part of that also means thoroughly vetting our customers and partners to ensure they will use our information for ethical purposes."

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Long-time Slashdot reader lee1 shares his recent article from LWN: On November 26, version 6.1 of GNU Octave, a language and environment for numerical computing, was released. There are several new features and enhancements in the new version, including improvements to graphics output, better communication with web services, and over 40 new functions... In the words of its manual: GNU Octave is a high-level language primarily intended for numerical computations. It is typically used for such problems as solving linear and nonlinear equations, numerical linear algebra, statistical analysis, and for performing other numerical experiments. Octave is free software distributed under the GPLv3. The program was first publicly released in 1993; it began as a teaching tool for students in a chemical engineering class. The professors, James B. Rawlings and John G. Ekerdt, tried to have the students use Fortran, but found that they were spending too much time trying to get their programs to compile and run instead of working on the actual substance of their assignments... Octave became part of the GNU project in 1997... Octave, written in C, C++, and Fortran, soon adopted the goal and policy of being a fully compatible replacement for MATLAB. According to the Octave Wiki, any differences between Octave and MATLAB are considered to be bugs, "in general", and most existing MATLAB scripts will work unmodified when fed to Octave, and vice versa... When octave is started in the terminal it brings up an interactive prompt. The user can type in expressions, and the results are printed immediately.

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One day after they were uploaded, RubyGems discovered and removed two malicious packages that had been designed to steal cryptocurrency from unsuspecting users by installing a clipboard hijacker, reports Bleeping Computer, citing research by open-source security firm Sonatype. Fortunately, while the packages were downloaded a total of 142 times, "At this time, none of the cryptocurrency addresses have received any funds." These packages were masquerading as a bitcoin library and a library for displaying strings with different color effects. A clipboard hijacker monitored the Windows clipboard for cryptocurrency addresses, and if one is detected, replaces it with an address under the attacker's control. Unless a user double-checks the address after they paste it, the sent coins will go to the attacker's cryptocurrency address instead of the intended recipient... The base64 encoded string is a VBS file that is executed to create another malicious VBS file and configure it to start automatically when a user logs into Windows. This VBS script is the clipboard hijacker and is stored at C:\ProgramData\Microsoft Essentials\Software Essentials.vbs to impersonate the old Microsoft Security Essentials security software. The clipboard hijacking script monitors the Windows clipboard every second and check if it contains a Bitcoin address, an Ethereum address, or a raw Monero address.

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fahrbot-bot quotes an article from Science Alert: Nothing keeps time like the beating heart of an atom. But even the crisp tick-tock of a vibrating nucleus is limited by uncertainties imposed by the laws of quantum mechanics. Several years ago, researchers from MIT and the University of Belgrade in Serbia proposed that quantum entanglement could push clocks beyond this blurry boundary. Now, we have a proof of concept in the form of an experiment. Physicists connected together a cloud of ytterbium-171 atoms with streams of photons reflected from a surrounding hall of mirrors and measured the timing of their tiny wiggles. Their results show that entangling atoms in this way could speed up the time-measuring process of atomic nuclei clocks, making them more precise than ever. In principle, a clock based on this new approach would lose just 100 milliseconds since the dawn of time itself.

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Facebook added banner ads criticizing Apple into some of its iOS apps, 9to5Mac reports, in its ongoing war against Apple's new privacy changes: By tapping the Learn More button, the app opens an article written by Facebook in which the company says Apple's policies announced at WWDC 2020 with iOS 14 will "harm the growth of business and the free internet." Facebook refers both to the new App Store privacy labels and also an option in iOS 14 that prevents apps from tracking users. The fact that Facebook is now showing these messages in its iOS apps criticizing Apple demonstrates that the company is trying to get popular appeal to change Apple's mind about its new App Store privacy rules. That's because Facebook is one of the companies that will be most impacted by Apple's new privacy policies as its social networks rely heavily on ads and personal data from users. In a statement to 9to5Mac, Apple said it doesn't want to force Facebook to change its business model, but the company expects Facebook to be more transparent about how it collects data from users and let them choose whether or not to offer such data.

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Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: At a McDonald's restaurant in Georgia, an angry customer in the drive-through lane threw his drink at the pregnant fast-food worker who had served him. "She was crying and covered in ice and soda and syrup..." remembers another driver in the next car parked in the line. "[C]overed in syrup all over her shoes, pants, and shirt." That driver created an online fundraiser for the fast-food worker, ultimately raising $1,700 within 24 hours which was later presented to the fast-food worker. "She gave me the envelope and I couldn't do nothing but cry," the worker told CNN later, "because I wasn't expecting that." The driver also publicized a registry for baby supplies (along with the Cash App handle for future donations), but insisted to CNN that it wasn't doing anything special. "I just saw somebody being mistreated and I didn't like what I saw."

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Reuters reports: A new strain of coronavirus identified in the United Kingdom is up to 70% more infectious but it is not thought to be more deadly and vaccines should still be effective, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and scientists said on Saturday.... "This is early data and it's subject to review. But it's the best that we have at the moment and we have to act on information as we have it, because this is now spreading very fast. Prime minister Johnson also announced new and tougher lockdown restrictions for millions of people in the U.K., according to Reuters, which elsewhere reports the following known facts about the new variant: - The new variant is thought to have first occurred in mid-September in London or Kent, in the southeast of England. - UK analysis suggests it may be up to 70% more transmissible than the old variant, which could increase the reproduction "R" rate by 0.4... - The new variant contains 23 different changes, many of them associated with alterations in a protein made by the virus. Patrick Vallance, the UKâ(TM)s chief scientific adviser, said this was an unusually large number of changes... - In London, 62% of cases were due to the new variant in the week of Dec. 9. That compared to 28% three weeks earlier. In London, the overall infection rate doubled in the last week.

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Slashdot reader destinyland writes: The U.S. Space Force celebrated its one-year anniversary Friday with a new announcement: that members of this branch of the military will be referred to as "guardians." They're describing it as "A name chosen by space professionals, for space professionals." The site Space.com notes that the phrase is a nod to the original long-standing "Space Command" branch of the Air Force (founded in 1982), whose motto had been "Guardians of the High Frontier." In other news, the Space Force now has one member who is actually in outer space — astronaut Michael Hopkins. Launched by SpaceX to the International Space Station in the Crew-1 capsule, Hopkins agreed to join the Space Force in a ceremony in space which a Space Force official said would "spotlight the decades-long partnership" between NASA and America's Defense Department (which oversees its armed forces). NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine pointed out that 60% of the astronaut corps comes from the military, according to Space.com, which adds that "At least one other member of NASA's active astronaut corps, Air Force Col. Nick Hague, has also requested to transfer to the Space Force."

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i-programmer reports: The Jakarta EE Working Group has announced that javax is now officially and finally renamed as jakarta with the release of the Jakarta EE 9 Platform and Web Profile specifications and related TCKs. The announcement was made during the JakartaOne Livestream virtual conference, and the group said that the release "provides a new baseline for the evolution and innovation of enterprise Java technologies under an open, vendor-neutral, community-driven process." The move from Java EE to Jakarta EE was necessary because while Oracle handed over the open source version of Java to the Eclipse Foundation, it kept the names 'Java' and 'javax' and refused permission for their use... The initial release doesn't include support for Java SE (Standard Edition) 11, the latest long-term support release of the standard Java platform. This will be added in a release in the next few weeks.

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Long-time Slashdot reader cusco writes: In the first return of a lunar sample since the Soviets in 1976, the Chang'e 5 spacecraft landed Thursday in Inner Mongolia with 2 kilograms of material drilled from as much as two meters below the surface... On December 3, the ascent stage took off from the moon with the sample, docking with the orbiter three days later. After jettisoning the ascent stage the orbiter returned to Earth and was recovered December 17. Here's a (fairly bad) video of the drilling and sample acquisition, and a video of the recovery, with an IR camera shot showing the hot lander and what appears to be a fox running past. China's 23-day mission makes it only the third country to return samples from the moon, reports the South China Morning Post, while the drill sites are "believed to be much younger than that of the locations sampled by the Americans and the Russians..." Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday said space exploration knew no limits and called for new interplanetary exploration to turn China into a major power in space and realise national rejuvenation, as well as the peaceful use of space... The lander vehicle of the Chang'e 5 also for the first time unfolded a Chinese five-star national flag on the moon and will hold it there permanently, as it was abandoned after being used as a launch pad for the ascending vehicle... With the successful completion of the mission, the Chang'e lunar programme aims to land Chinese astronauts on the nearest celestial body by 2030, and set up a permanent research space on the south pole of the moon in the future. China's space ambition goes beyond the moon. It sent a probe to Mars in July, and is preparing to launch a Chinese space station next year.

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"On Friday, Nintendo and Universal Studios Japan took the veil off a years-in-the-making project: the very first Nintendo-themed theme park," reports Ars Technica (in an article shared by long-time Slashdot reader mprindle): And who better to introduce the world to this life-sized walk through of all things Mario than the character's creator himself, longtime Nintendo developer and designer Shigeru Miyamoto... Many of the park's decorations and objects can be interacted with by park visitors who wear a special wristband, dubbed the Power-Up Band, which includes an Amiibo-like NFC chip. Press its sensor near park objects like a Super Mario coin block, and a new virtual item will appear in a synced Super Nintendo World app on your smartphone. Exactly how these virtual items will affect your visit to Super Nintendo World remains unclear, but Miyamoto-san hinted to surprising attractions and hidden interactable panels for park visitors to discover in person. (Additionally, those Power-Up Bands will double as Amiibo for compatible hardware, like Nintendo Switch.) Only one "ride" received a showcase in the video, albeit a brief one: a Mario Kart race against Bowser. It's hosted inside a replica of Bowser's castle, and visitors will sit in one of a series of Mario-styled go-karts that appear to be linked on a rollercoaster-like track, as opposed to freely controllable. Exactly what visitors will see on that ride remains unclear, but previous news about the ride's augmented reality (AR) elements was reinforced with the first official look at the park's AR glasses, which come attached to a Super Mario hat. The park opens in Japan on February 4, 2021, according to Ars, followed by later launches at Universal Studios in in Singapore, and at its U.S. locations in Orlando, Florida and Los Angeles.

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The last time the price of bitcoin hit $20,000 was December of 2017. But Matt Luongo, the CEO of a crypto venture builder, points out to NBC News that this time the market is seeing "significant, high-conviction plays from [a few] large funds and even CEOs of publicly traded companies." "Names like Guggenheim Partners, [hedge fund managers] Paul Tudor Jones and Stan Druckenmiller, and the recent support from Michael Saylor at Microstrategies and Jack Dorsey at Square and Twitter are telling," he said. S&P Dow Jones also announced this month that it will launch cryptocurrency indices in 2021, paving the way for cryptocurrencies to become more mainstream investments. Beyond the swing of high-profile supporters, there isn't a way to tell who is buying bitcoin. However, the number of new bitcoin addresses, the unique identifiers where the assets are sent, recently hit a record of 25,000 per hour for the first time since January 2018, according to data intelligence firm Glassnode. Luongo ultimately argues to NBC that "This growth represents real adoption, and it won't disappear when the next bubble bursts." To get a counter-balancing second opinion, NBC also spoke to the creator of the YouTube channel "Crypto Bobby," who also notes that PayPal (as well as the stock-trading app Robinhood) have also added support for bitcoin. Sometimes NBC refers to the two men as "crypto enthusiasts" — but other times they're just referred to as "experts."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: In October, Wisconsin denied Foxconn subsidies because it had failed to build the LCD factory specified in its contract with the state. As The Verge reported, it had created a building one-twentieth the size of the promised factory, taken out a permit to use it for storage, and failed to employ anywhere near the number of employees the contract called for. Nevertheless, Foxconn publicly objected "on numerous grounds" to Wisconsin's denial of subsidies. Documents obtained through a records request show Foxconn's rationale: it doesn't think it was specifically promising to build an LCD factory at all. According to a November 23rd letter to the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), Foxconn does not think the factory specified in the contract, an enormous Generation 10.5 LCD fabrication facility, was actually a "material" part of the contract. ("Material" is a legal term that means relevant or significant.) "As you confirmed on November 10, 2020, the only reason the WEDC made the determination that the Recipients are ineligible for tax credits is because the WEDC believes the Recipients have failed to carry out the 'Project,'" Foxconn wrote. "Thus, WEDC's determination of ineligibility is based off its belief that the Generation 10.5 TFT-LCD Fabrication Facility is a material term of the Agreement." Rather, Foxconn claimed it and WEDC had a "mutual understanding" that it would build something more vaguely defined, "a transformational and sustainable high-tech manufacturing and technology ecosystem in Wisconsin that brings long-term investment and jobs." However, Foxconn did express openness to amending its contract to allow for more flexibility in what it was building in exchange for lower subsidies. [...] WEDC ended the letter by reiterating it was open to amending the contract to reflect Foxconn's current plans. [...] But such an amendment hinges, as always, on Foxconn telling Wisconsin what it is actually building.

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Boeing officials "inappropriately coached" test pilots during recertification efforts after two fatal 737 MAX crashes killed 346 people, according to a lengthy congressional report released on Friday. Reuters reports: The report from the Senate Commerce Committee Republican staff said testing this year of a key safety system known as MCAS tied to both fatal crashes was contrary to proper protocol. The committee concluded Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Boeing officials "had established a pre-determined outcome to reaffirm a long-held human factor assumption related to pilot reaction time ... It appears, in this instance, FAA and Boeing were attempting to cover up important information that may have contributed to the 737 MAX tragedies." The report citing a whistleblower who alleged Boeing officials encouraged test pilots to "remember, get right on that pickle switch" prior to the exercise that resulted in pilot reaction in approximately four seconds, while another pilot in a separate test reacted in approximately 16 seconds. The report also noted Southwest Airlines was able to operate more than 150,000 flights carrying 17.2 million passengers on jets without confirmation that required maintenance had been completed. The Senate report said the Southwest flights "put millions of passengers at potential risk." Boeing said Friday it takes "seriously the committee's findings and will continue to review the report in full."

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On Monday, December 21, Jupiter and Saturn will merge in the night sky in an astronomical event known as a "Great Conjunction," appearing closer to one another than they have since Galileo's time in the 17th century. NASA reports: The planets regularly appear to pass each other in the solar system, with the positions of Jupiter and Saturn being aligned in the sky about once every 20 years. What makes this year's spectacle so rare, then? It's been nearly 400 years since the planets passed this close to each other in the sky, and nearly 800 years since the alignment of Saturn and Jupiter occurred at night, as it will for 2020, allowing nearly everyone around the world to witness this "great conjunction." The closest alignment will appear just a tenth of a degree apart and last for a few days. On the 21st, they will appear so close that a pinkie finger at arm's length will easily cover both planets in the sky. The planets will be easy to see with the unaided eye by looking toward the southwest just after sunset. From our vantage point on Earth the huge gas giants will appear very close together, but they will remain hundreds of millions of miles apart in space. And while the conjunction is happening on the same day as the winter solstice, the timing is merely a coincidence, based on the orbits of the planets and the tilt of the Earth. For those who would like to see this phenomenon for themselves, here's what to do: - Find a spot with an unobstructed view of the sky, such as a field or park. Jupiter and Saturn are bright, so they can be seen even from most cities. - An hour after sunset, look to the southwestern sky. Jupiter will look like a bright star and be easily visible. Saturn will be slightly fainter and will appear slightly above and to the left of Jupiter until December 21, when Jupiter will overtake it and they will reverse positions in the sky. - The planets can be seen with the unaided eye, but if you have binoculars or a small telescope, you may be able to see Jupiter's four large moons orbiting the giant planet.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The average cost of a lithium-ion battery pack fell to $137 per kWh in 2020, according to a new industry survey from BloombergNEF. That's an inflation-adjusted decline of 13 percent since 2019. The latest figures continue the astonishing progress in battery technology over the last decade, with pack prices declining 88 percent since 2010. Large, affordable batteries will be essential to weaning the global economy off fossil fuels. Lithium-ion batteries are the key enabling technology for electric vehicles. They're also needed to smooth out the intermittent power generated by windmills and solar panels. But until recently, batteries were simply too expensive for these applications to make financial sense without mandates and subsidies. Now, that is becoming less and less true. BloombergNEF estimates that battery-pack prices will fall to $100 per kWh by 2024. Specifically, BloombergNEF projects that battery pack prices will fall to $58 per kWh in 2030 and to $44 per kWh in 2035. That's roughly the level necessary for BEVs to be price-competitive with conventional cars without subsidies. Given that electric vehicles are cheap to charge and will likely require less maintenance than a conventional car, they will be an increasingly compelling option over the next decade.

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Cryptocurrency brokerage Coinbase said Thursday that it has filed a draft registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, paving the way for plans for an eventual initial public offering. CNN reports: The announcement comes as interest in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has soared during the coronavirus pandemic. Investors have found such currencies attractive as the US dollar weakens. Bitcoin has been smashing its own price records and recently surpassed the symbolic $20,000-a-coin milestone. It has since continued to climb higher, and was last trading just shy of $23,000, according to data provider Refinitiv. Coinbase was launched in 2012, according to its website, and "more than 35 million people in over 100 countries trust Coinbase to buy, sell, store, use and earn cryptocurrency." The company indicates it has more than $25 billion in assets on the platform and more than $320 billion in total volume traded.

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