The administrators of the Node Package Manager (npm), the largest package repository of the JavaScript ecosystem, said they enrolled the maintainers of the top 100 most popular libraries (based on the number of dependencies) into their mandatory two-factor authentication (2FA) procedure. From a report: npm, which is owned by GitHub, enforced this new security requirement starting yesterday, February 1, 2022. "Maintainers who do not currently have 2FA enabled will have their web sessions revoked and will need to set up 2FA before they can take specific actions with their accounts, such as changing their email address or adding new maintainers to projects," the GitHub security team said in a blog post. The move represents the second phase of a major push from the npm team to secure developer accounts, which have been getting hijacked in recent years and used to push malware inside legitimate JavaScript libraries. In many cases, the accounts are hacked because project maintainers use simple-to-guess passwords or reused passwords that were previously leaked via breaches at other companies. The first phase of this process took place between December 7, 2021, and January 4, 2022, when the npm team rolled out a new feature called "enhanced login verification" for all npm package maintainers.

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Since its inception, Facebook's user growth has essentially been up and to the right. But on Wednesday, it reported its first-ever quarterly decline of daily users globally, along with lower-than-expected ad growth that sent its stock plunging roughly 20 percent. From a report: The massive stock drop, which instantly wiped out roughly $200 billion in market value, shows that Facebook's corporate rebrand to Meta isn't enough to distract investors from the problems in its core business of social media. Not only was user growth across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp essentially flat last quarter, but the main Facebook app lost 1 million daily users in North America, where it makes the most money through advertising. That drop led to an overall decrease in daily users of Facebook globally, which a company spokesperson confirmed is the first sequential decline in the company's history. That drop to 1.929 billion daily users from 1.93 billion the prior quarter is likely a reflection of Facebook's increasing lack of relevance with young people.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Hackers have stolen more than $324 million in cryptocurrency from Wormhole, the developers behind the popular blockchain bridge confirmed Wednesday. The platform provides a connection that allows for the transfer of cryptocurrency between different decentralized-finance blockchain networks. Wormhole said in a series of tweets Wednesday afternoon that thieves made off with 120,000 wETH, or wrapped Ethereum, worth nearly $324 million at current exchange rates. The platform's network was also taken offline for maintenance. This is one of the largest crypto thefts of all time and the second-largest theft from a DeFi service, blockchain analysis firm Elliptic said in a statement. UPDATE: All $320 million in funds have been restored.

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The International Space Station (ISS) will continue its operations until 2030 before heading for a watery grave at the most remote point in the Pacific, Nasa confirmed in a new transition plan this week. The Guardian reports: More than 30 years after its 1998 launch, the ISS will be "de-orbited" in January 2031, according to the space agency's budget estimates. Once out of orbit the space station will make a dramatic descent before splash landing in Point Nemo, which is about 2,700km from any land and has become known as the space cemetery, a final resting place for decommissioned space stations, old satellites, and other human space debris. Also known as the "Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility" or the "South Pacific Ocean Uninhabited Area," the region around the space cemetery is known for its utter lack of human activity. It's "pretty much the farthest place from any human civilization you can find," as NASA put it. Nasa said it plans to continue future space research by buying space and time for astronaut scientists on commercial spacecraft.

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A group of researchers at University College London (UCL) have used an MRI scanner to guide a tiny magnetic "seed" through the brain to heat and destroy cancer cells. Interesting Engineering reports: The novel breakthrough cancer therapy, which has been tested on mice, is called "minimally invasive image-guided ablation," or MINIMA, according to the study published in Advanced Science. It consists of ferromagnetic thermoseeds, which are basically 2mm metal spheres, that are guided to a tumor using magnetic propulsion generated by an MRI scanner and then remotely heated to kill nearby cancer cells. If this technique translates to humans, it could help to combat difficult-to-reach brain tumors by establishing "proof-of-concept" for precise treatment of cancers like glioblastoma, the most common form of brain cancer, and prostate, which could benefit from less invasive therapies. The UCL researchers demonstrated the three major components of MINIMA to a high level of accuracy: precise seed imaging, navigation through brain tissue using a customized MRI system (tracked to within 0.3 mm accuracy), and eradicating the tumor in a mouse model by heating it. The researchers used an MRI machine to direct 2mm diameter metal spheres, which were implanted superficially into the tissue, then navigated to the tumors. Then, they were heated to destroy the cells. "Using an MRI scanner to deliver a therapy in this way allows the therapeutic seed and the tumor to be imaged throughout the procedure, ensuring the treatment is delivered with precision and without having to perform open surgery," explained lead author Rebecca Baker at the UCL Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging, in a press release. "This could be beneficial to patients by reducing recovery times and minimizing the chance of side effects."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: A team of researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently announced in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they had engineered a new rubber-like solid substance that has surprising qualities. It can absorb and release very large quantities of energy. And it is programmable. Taken together, this new material holds great promise for a very wide array of applications, from enabling robots to have more power without using additional energy, to new helmets and protective materials that can dissipate energy much more quickly. "Imagine a rubber band," says Alfred Crosby, professor of polymer science and engineering at UMass Amherst and the paper's senior author. "You pull it back, and when you let it go, it flies across the room. Now imagine a super rubber band. When you stretch it past a certain point, you activate extra energy stored in the material. When you let this rubber band go, it flies for a mile." This hypothetical rubber band is made out of a new metamaterial -- a substance engineered to have a property not found in naturally occurring materials -- that combines an elastic, rubber-like substance with tiny magnets embedded in it. This new "elasto-magnetic" material takes advantage of a physical property known as a phase shift to greatly amplify the amount of energy the material can release or absorb. A phase shift occurs when a material moves from one state to another: think of water turning into steam or liquid concrete hardening into a sidewalk. Whenever a material shifts its phase, energy is either released or absorbed. And phase shifts aren't just limited to changes between liquid, solid and gaseous states -- a shift can occur from one solid phase to another. A phase shift that releases energy can be harnessed as a power source, but getting enough energy has always been the difficult part. "To amplify energy release or absorption, you have to engineer a new structure at the molecular or even atomic level," says Crosby. However, this is challenging to do and even more difficult to do in a predictable way. But by using metamaterials, Crosby says that "we have overcome these challenges, and have not only made new materials, but also developed the design algorithms that allow these materials to be programmed with specific responses, making them predictable."

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The nation's first stretch of road to wirelessly charge electric vehicles while they're in motion will begin testing next year in Detroit. Axios reports: "Electrified" roadways, which have wireless charging infrastructure under the asphalt, could keep EVs operating around the clock, with unlimited range -- a big deal for transit buses, delivery vans, long-haul trucks and even future robotaxis. In-road charging could also help pave the way for more widespread EV adoption by relieving consumers of the need to stop and plug in their cars. Electreon Wireless, an Israeli company whose plug-free charging infrastructure is already being tested in Europe, will deploy its first U.S. pilot in Detroit's Michigan Central district, a new mobility innovation hub near downtown. The electrified road, up to a mile long, would allow EVs to charge whether they're stopped or moving, and should be ready for testing in 2023. The state will contribute $1.9 million toward the project, which will also be supported by Ford Motor, DTE Energy and the city of Detroit. Wireless EV charging systems use magnetic frequency to transfer power from coils buried underground to a receiver pad attached to the car's underbelly. An EV can pull into a designated parking place with an underground charging pad and add electricity the same way a smartphone charges wirelessly. Along an electrified road, vehicles with wireless charging capability can suck up energy as they drive, but for all other cars, it's an ordinary road. Wireless charging can add $3,000 to $4,000 to an already pricey EV, notes Meticulous Research. Electreon, which is working with carmakers to add receivers to their vehicles, aims to get the cost down to $1,000 or $1,500, Stefan Tongur, Electreon's vice president of business development, tells Axios. Users would likely access the feature through a monthly subscription, he noted.

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After a years-long process, data protection officials across the European Union have ruled that Europe's ad tech industry has been operating unlawfully. Engadget reports: The decision, handed down by Belgium's APD (.PDF) and agreed by regulators across the EU, found that the system underpinning the industry violated a number of principles of the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). The Irish Council for Civil Liberties has declared victory in its protracted battle against the authority which administers much of the advertising industry on the continent: IAB Europe. At the heart of this story is the use of the Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF), a standardized process to enable publishers to sell ad-space on their websites. This framework, set by IAB Europe, is meant to provide legal cover -- in the form of those consent pop-ups which blight websites -- enabling a silent, digital auction system known-as Real-Time Bidding (RTB). But both the nature of the consent given when you click a pop-up, and the data collected as part of the RTB process have now been deemed to violate the GDPR, which governs privacy rights in the bloc. The APD has ruled that any and all data collected as part of this Real-Time Bidding process must now be deleted. This could have fairly substantial implications for many big tech companies with their own ad businesses, including Google and Facebook, as well as big data companies. It may also have a large impact on many media platforms and publishers on the continent who will now need to address the fallout from the finding. Regulators have also handed down an initial fine of 250,000 euros to IAB Europe and ordered the body to effectively rebuild the ad-tech framework it currently uses. This includes making the system GDPR compliant (if such a thing is possible) and appoint a dedicated Data Protection Officer. Until now, IAB Europe has maintained that it did not create any personal data, and said in December that it was a standards setter and trade association, rather than a data processor in its own right. IAB Europe says the ruling did not ban the use of Transparency and Consent Frameworks, adding that it's looking to reform the process and "submit the Framework for approval as a GDPR transnational Code of Conduct." According to Engadget, [I]t may launch a legal challenge to fight the accusation that it is a data controller, a decision it says will "have major unintended negative consequences going well beyond the digital advertising industry."

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An intelligence panel investigating the cause of a spate of mysterious incidents that have struck dozens of US officials across the globe has said that some of the episodes could "plausibly" have been caused by "pulsed electromagnetic energy" emitted by an external source, according to an executive summary of the panel's findings released Wednesday. CNN reports: But the panel stopped short of making a definitive determination, saying only that both electromagnetic energy and, in limited circumstances, ultrasound could explain the key symptoms -- highlighting the degree to which the murky illness known colloquially as "Havana Syndrome" has remained one of the intelligence community's most stubborn mysteries. "We've learned a lot," an intelligence official familiar with the panel's work told reporters, speaking on anonymity under terms set by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. "While we don't have the specific mechanism for each case, what we do know is if you report quickly and promptly get medical care, most people are getting well." The scientific panel emphasized that the cases it studied were "genuine and compelling," noting that some incidents have affected multiple people in the same space and clinical samples from a few victims have shown signs of "cellular injury to the nervous system." An executive summary of the panel's work provided new details about how the government is categorizing cases as possible Havana Syndrome, a clinically vague illness that has long frustrated firm diagnosis because victims have suffered from such a diverse array of symptoms. Although officials declined to say how many cases the panel examined as part of its inquiry, they said they studied cases that met four "core characteristics": the acute onset of sounds or pressure, sometimes in only one ear or on one side of the head; simultaneous symptoms of vertigo, loss of balance and ear pain; "a strong sense of locality or directionality"; and the absence of any known environmental or medical conditions that could have caused the other symptoms. Both pulsed electromagnetic energy, "particularly in the radiofrequency range," and ultrasonic arrays could feasibly cause the four core symptoms, the panel found. Both could originate from "a concealable source." But ultrasound can't travel through walls, the panel found, "restricting its applicability to scenarios in which the source is near the target." Sources of radiofrequency energy, on the other hand, are known to exist, "could generate the required stimulus, are concealable, and have moderate power requirements," the panel said. "Using nonstandard antennas and techniques, the signals could be propagated with low loss through air for tens to hundreds of meters, and with some loss, through most building materials." But intelligence officials familiar with the panel's work emphasized that important information gaps remained, forestalling them from reaching firmer conclusions. The experts panel also ruled out so-called psycho-social factors. They also ruled out "ionizing radiation, chemical and biological agents, infrasound, audible sound, ultrasound propagated over large distances, and bulk heating from electromagnetic energy." "The panel made seven recommendations, including developing better biomarkers that are 'more specific and more sensitive for diagnosis and triage' of cases," reports CNN. "It also recommended utilizing 'detectors' and obtaining 'devices to aid research.' Finally, officials urged swift action by medical officials whenever a case is reported, emphasizing that individuals who have been treated immediately after an event have improved."

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If you've been watching any TV over the past few months, chances are you've seen Crypto.com's ad featuring Matt Damon. It's an expensive advertisement, complete with top-notch CGI and heady phrases like "History is filled with almosts" and "Fortune favors the brave." Jody Rosen dissects Damon's crypto push in a New York Times piece titled, "Why Is Matt Damon Shilling for Crypto? An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: The burden of spreading that gospel has been placed on the beefy shoulders of Matt Damon, whom Crypto.com hired as its "brand ambassador" in advance of a $100 million global marketing push. Damon is just the latest A-list star who has taken to hawking crypto. Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen have appeared in commercials for the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, a Crypto.com competitor in which they have an equity stake. On Twitter, Reese Witherspoon is a vocal booster ("Crypto is here to stay"), and Snoop Dogg, an NFT aficionado, offers investing advice ("Buy low stay high!"). There is something unseemly, to put it mildly, about the famous and fabulously wealthy urging crypto on their fans. Cryptocurrencies, after all, are in many cases not so much currencies as speculative thingamabobs -- digital tokens whose value is predicated largely on the idea that someone will take them off your hands at a higher price than it cost you to acquire them. Entertainers and athletes have ample money to risk in speculative bubbles; their millions of admirers don't have that luxury and may be left holding the bag when a bubble bursts. [...] The cryptocurrency industry's marketing efforts are focused on young people, especially young men. Surveys have shown that some 40 percent of all American men ages 18 to 29 have invested in, traded or used a form of cryptocurrency. [...] Damon offers a particular kind of appeal to that demographic. His star power is based on brains and brawn; he can recite magniloquent phrases while also giving the impression that he could fillet an enemy, Jason Bourne style, armed with only a Bic pen. In the ad, his words are high-flown -- all that stuff about history and bravery -- but they amount to a macho taunt: If you're a real man, you'll buy crypto. The bleakness of that pitch is startling. In recent weeks, while watching televised sports -- where the Crypto.com spot airs repeatedly, alongside commercials for other crypto platforms and an onslaught of ads for sports-gambling apps -- I could not shake the feeling that culture has taken a sinister turn: that we've sanctioned an economy in which tech start-ups compete, in broad daylight, to lure the vulnerable with get-rich-quick schemes. Yet what's most unsettling about the commercial is the pitch it doesn't make. Traditionally, an advertisement offers an affirmative case for its product, a vision of the fulfillment that will come if you wear those jeans or drive that truck. This ad doesn't bother. It shows a brief glimpse of a young couple locking eyes in a nightclub -- an insinuation, I guess, that crypto has sex appeal. But the ad builds inexorably toward that final shot of Mars, where Matt Damon's astronaut was marooned in a hit film and where Elon Musk, the world's second-richest man and a crypto enthusiast, says he plans to build a colony to survive the end of civilization on Earth. "We live in troubled times," writes Rosen in closing. "The young, in particular, may feel that they are peering over the edge, economically and existentially. This ad's message for them seems to be that the social compact is ruptured, that the old ideals of security and the good life no longer pertain." "What's left are moonshots, big swings, high-stakes gambles. You might bet a long-shot parlay or take a flier on Dogecoin. Maybe someday you'll hitch a ride on Elon Musk's shuttle bus to the Red Planet. The ad holds out the promise of 'fortune,' but what it's really selling is danger, the dark and desperate thrills of precarity itself -- because, after all, what else have we got? You could call it truth in advertising."

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After Alphabet shelved plans to build its own city and wound down the company in charge of the project, a group of former employees is carrying on its legacy. Bloomberg reports: Their startup, Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners LLC, is pursuing ambitious infrastructure projects, including the construction of specialized roads for self-driving cars, a sprawling smart grid project and the implementation of technology to help cities build 5G wireless networks. On Wednesday, the company plans to announce it raised $400 million from StepStone Group Inc., a private-market investment firm whose focuses include infrastructure. The deal values the business, known as SIP, at $1.25 billion, said a person familiar with the terms who asked not to be identified because they're private. The idea for SIP came from Sidewalk Labs, the smart-city company that Google created in 2015. Sidewalk's flagship project was Quayside, a plan to develop a 12-acre site in Toronto to showcase various high-tech urban ideas. Building a city from scratch made sense as a way for Google's parent company to experiment with urban innovation, said Jonathan Winer, SIP's co-founder and co-chief executive officer. However, "There were a number of infrastructure systems that needed innovation now, not in 10 years," he said. In 2019, he and several other Sidewalk employees left to form SIP with a plan to build large, technically sophisticated projects. Alphabet and the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan funded the effort as its only investors. [...] SIP is set up in an unusual way for a startup, operating sometimes as a sort of venture capital firm and other times as an operator building projects itself. This allows it to pursue a wider range of projects, Winer said. Among them is a 40-mile highway between Detroit and Ann Arbor, Michigan, designed for autonomous and connected vehicles. Michigan's state government unveiled the plan in 2020, and Winer said the first stretch of road will open this year. He's in talks with other states about similar developments, he said. SIP has also invested $100 million a project in California that uses smart thermostats and plugs to compensate customers for reducing their energy use at times of high demand. Much of SIP's business involves working with governments. [...] In addition to being an investor, Alphabet is an active participant in several SIP projects. Waymo, Alphabet's self-driving car unit, is on the advisory board of the Michigan highway project. Google's Nest thermostats work with the California program. "We benefit tremendously from Alphabet's technology and insight," said Winer. "And sometimes that insight translates into some kind of business transaction."

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The government of El Salvador on Monday rejected a recommendation by the International Monetary Fund to drop Bitcoin as legal tender in the Central American country. ABC News reports: Treasury Minister Alejandro Zelaya angrily said that "no international organization is going to make us do anything, anything at all." Zelaya told a local television station that Bitcoin is an issue of "sovereignty." "Countries are sovereign nations and they take sovereign decisions about public policy," he said. The IMF recommended last week that El Salvador dissolve the $150 million trust fund it created when it made the cryptocurrency legal tender and return any of those unused funds to its treasury. The agency cited concerns about the volatility of Bitcoin prices, and the possibility of criminals using the cryptocurrency. After nearly doubling in value late last year, Bitcoin has plunged in value. Zelaya said El Salvador has complied with all financial transaction and money laundering rules.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The FBI has confirmed that it obtained NSO Group's powerful Pegasus spyware, suggesting that it bought access to the Israeli surveillance tool to "stay abreast of emerging technologies and tradecraft." In a statement released to the Guardian, the bureau said it had procured a "limited license" to access Pegasus for "product testing and evaluation only," and suggested that its evaluation of the tool partly related to security concerns if the spyware fell into the "wrong hands." The bureau also claimed it had never used Pegasus in support of any FBI investigation. "There was no operational use in support of any investigation, the FBI procured a limited license for product testing and evaluation only," it said. The statement marks a direct acknowledgment by the FBI that it acquired Pegasus, one of the world's most sophisticated hacking tools. [...] A person with close knowledge of the FBI deal, who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity, claimed that it occurred after a "long process" of negotiations between US officials and NSO. It is claimed one disagreement centered on how much control NSO would retain over its software. The source claimed that NSO usually kept sensors on its technology so that the company could be alerted in Israel if the technology was moved by a government client. But the source claimed the FBI did not want the technology to be fitted with sensors that would have allowed NSO to track its physical location. The source also claimed that the FBI did not want NSO's own engineers to install the technology and did not want to integrate the spyware into its own systems. Ultimately, it is understood that NSO and the FBI agreed to keep the technology in a large container. The FBI was also concerned about possible "leakage" of any data to another foreign intelligence service, the source said. The source claimed the Pegasus license was acquired by the FBI using a financial "vehicle" that was not easily identified as being linked to the bureau. In the end, the source claimed, the FBI did not actually use Pegasus. "They weren't using it at all. Like, not even switching it on. But they kept paying for it, and they wanted to renew. It was a one-year test project and it cost about $5 million, and they renewed for another $4 million," the source claimed. "But they didn't use it." In response to the claims, the FBI said: "The FBI works diligently to stay abreast of emerging technologies and tradecraft -- not just to explore a potential legal use but also to combat crime and to protect both the American people and our civil liberties. That means we routinely identify, evaluate, and test technical solutions and problems for a variety of reasons, including possible operational and security concerns they might pose in the wrong hands. There was no operational use in support of any investigation, the FBI procured a limited license for product testing and evaluation only."

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Astronomers have discovered a captive asteroid shadowing Earth in its orbit. From a report: The asteroid, known as 2020 XL5, is only the second of its type ever seen, shepherded by Earth's gravity into an orbit that is locked in synchrony with our planet's. It has not shared our orbit for long -- a few centuries, probably. And it will not be there in the far future. Simulations indicate that 2020 XL5 will slip out of Earth's grasp within 4,000 years and head into the wider solar system. But its presence offers a tantalizing glimpse of what else might be out there in the local gravitational whirlpools. Some bits might date back to the beginning of the solar system -- shades of the building blocks that coalesced into our planet. "These objects are not as exotic as we think," said Toni Santana-Ros, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Barcelona in Spain and an author of a paper describing the discovery, which was published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

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Almost no corals on the planet will escape severe bleaching once global heating reaches 1.5C, according to a new study of the world's reefs. From a report: Reefs in areas currently regarded as cooler refuges will be overwhelmed at 1.5C of heating, and just 0.2% of reefs will escape at least one bleaching outbreak every decade, according to the research. The team of scientists from the University of Leeds, Texas Tech University and James Cook University used the latest climate model projections to confirm that 1.5C of global heating "will be catastrophic for coral reefs." Corals bleach when ocean temperatures are too high for too long. Algae that provide corals with much of their food and colour separate from the coral during heat stress. Severe bleaching can kill corals, but they can recover from milder outbreaks if there are several years with no further heatwaves. The world's oceans are heating due mostly to the burning of fossil fuels. The study comes as the world's biggest coral reef system, the Great Barrier Reef off Australia's Queensland coast, is on the verge of another mass coral bleaching event. In the study, the team analysed climate projections across all of the world's shallow-water coral reefs, which constitute the vast majority of reefs and provide habitat, tourism revenue and coastal protection. About 84% of the world's corals exist in areas that are expected to bleach less than once a decade and are regarded as "thermal refugia," the study said. But the analysis suggests at 1.5C of global heating, only 0.2% of the area covered by reefs is in water cool enough to avoid bleaching at least once every five years -- a frequency considered too short to allow corals to recover.

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Disappointed with the lack of US response to the Hermit Kingdom's attacks against US security researchers, one hacker took matters into his own hands. From a report For the past two weeks, observers of North Korea's strange and tightly restricted corner of the internet began to notice that the country seemed to be dealing with some serious connectivity problems. On several different days, practically all of its websites -- the notoriously isolated nation only has a few dozen -- intermittently dropped offline en masse, from the booking site for its Air Koryo airline to Naenara, a page that serves as the official portal for dictator Kim Jong-un's government. At least one of the central routers that allow access to the country's networks appeared at one point to be paralyzed, crippling the Hermit Kingdom's digital connections to the outside world. Some North Korea watchers pointed out that the country had just carried out a series of missile tests, implying that a foreign government's hackers might have launched a cyberattack against the rogue state to tell it to stop saber-rattling. But responsibility for North Korea's ongoing internet outages doesn't lie with US Cyber Command or any other state-sponsored hacking agency. In fact, it was the work of one American man in a T-shirt, pajama pants, and slippers, sitting in his living room night after night, watching Alien movies and eating spicy corn snacks -- and periodically walking over to his home office to check on the progress of the programs he was running to disrupt the internet of an entire country. Just over a year ago, an independent hacker who goes by the handle P4x was himself hacked by North Korean spies. P4x was just one victim of a hacking campaign that targeted Western security researchers with the apparent aim of stealing their hacking tools and details about software vulnerabilities. He says he managed to prevent those hackers from swiping anything of value from him. But he nonetheless felt deeply unnerved by state-sponsored hackers targeting him personally -- and by the lack of any visible response from the US government. So after a year of letting his resentment simmer, P4x has taken matters into his own hands.

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In a tech world still hindered by component shortages, choices have to be made. And in the world of laptops, it seems that choice is Windows-based devices over those running Chrome OS. From a report: IDC on Monday released early data from its latest Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. It pointed to a sharp 63.6 percent decline in Chromebook shipments, which the IDC defines as "shipments to distribution channels or end users, in Q4 2021 (4.8 million shipments) compared to Q4 2020 with (13.1 million shipments)." In addition to market saturation, supply issues also hurt Chromebook shipments, as the industry still struggles with a deficit of PC components, from CPUs to integrated circuits for Wi-Fi modules and power management. "Supply has also been unusually tight for Chromebooks as component shortages have led vendors to prioritize Windows machines due to their higher price tags, further suppressing Chromebook shipments on a global scale," Jitesh Ubrani, research manager with IDC's Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers, said in a statement accompanying Monday's announcement.

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Using a novel polymerization process, MIT chemical engineers have created a new material that they say is stronger than steel and as light as plastic, and can be easily manufactured in large quantities. MIT News: The new material is a two-dimensional polymer that self-assembles into sheets, unlike all other polymers, which form one-dimensional, spaghetti-like chains. Until now, scientists had believed it was impossible to induce polymers to form 2D sheets. Such a material could be used as a lightweight, durable coating for car parts or cell phones, or as a building material for bridges or other structures, says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and the senior author of the new study. "We don't usually think of plastics as being something that you could use to support a building, but with this material, you can enable new things," he says. "It has very unusual properties and we're very excited about that." The researchers have filed for two patents on the process they used to generate the material, which they describe in a paper appearing today in Nature. MIT postdoc Yuwen Zeng is the lead author of the study. {olymers, which include all plastics, consist of chains of building blocks called monomers. These chains grow by adding new molecules onto their ends. Once formed, polymers can be shaped into three-dimensional objects, such as water bottles, using injection molding. Polymer scientists have long hypothesized that if polymers could be induced to grow into a two-dimensional sheet, they should form extremely strong, lightweight materials. However, many decades of work in this field led to the conclusion that it was impossible to create such sheets. One reason for this was that if just one monomer rotates up or down, out of the plane of the growing sheet, the material will begin expanding in three dimensions and the sheet-like structure will be lost. However, in the new study, Strano and his colleagues came up with a new polymerization process that allows them to generate a two-dimensional sheet called a polyaramide. For the monomer building blocks, they use a compound called melamine, which contains a ring of carbon and nitrogen atoms. Under the right conditions, these monomers can grow in two dimensions, forming disks. These disks stack on top of each other, held together by hydrogen bonds between the layers, which make the structure very stable and strong.

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Ferrari NV, already an automaking icon in the real world, is now looking to bolster its brand also in the metaverse. From a report: The Italian maker of luxury cars has set up a department focusing on digital services that's exploring opportunities arising from the space that blends virtual reality, gaming and social media, Chief Executive Officer Benedetto Vigna said Wednesday. The push also includes technologies such as blockchain and non-fungible tokens. "It's important to look into new technologies that could help our brand," Vigna said during a conference call with analysts. Ferrari is working on new tech partnerships, he said.

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The EU is taking a "Europe First" approach to technological standardization. From a report: The European Commission on Wednesday presented a plan to bolster its influence in creating global technology standards, as the bloc currently risks falling behind in global standardization organizations, where tech giants, government regulators and experts gather to set rules for how emerging technology works -- everything from the internet to batteries, connected devices and beyond. Faced with the U.S.' market dominance and China's aggressive attempts to rewrite global rules, the EU wants to raise its game. "We need to make sure we're not just a standard-taker. We need to be a standard-setter," said Thierry Breton, the EU's industry commissioner. The new strategy comes at the start of a bumper year for standard-setting, which often happens out of the public eye, in industry-dominated groups packed with technical experts. Deals struck in organizations like the U.N.'s International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) define how technology is implemented across the world. The ITU's flagship conference is scheduled for September in Budapest, when a new secretary-general will be named. Meanwhile, other international groups are working quickly to set standards for artificial intelligence, green technology and other major sectors, with companies and government officials tussling over which technologies will dominate the digital economy in the coming decade. The EU's plan follows its industrial strategy, released in March 2020, which already showed the bloc wants to set up competing policy initiatives to defend its companies against rivals from China and the U.S. that benefit from large-scale investment and subsidy schemes.

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