People will confess all sorts of things to podcasters, from their unpopular political beliefs or embarrassing romantic mishaps to their worst fears. But there's one revelation certain guests will never disclose -- namely, that they're paying thousands of dollars just to be interviewed on the show. From a report: Welcome to the golden era of pay-for-play podcasting, when guests pay handsomely to be interviewed for an entire episode. In exchange, the host gets some revenue, fills out the programming calendar, and might bag a future advertiser. Determining exactly how widespread the practice is can be tricky. Disclosures, if included at all, might last only a few fleeting seconds in an hourlong interview, and various hosts use different language to describe the nature of such relationships. What percentage of shows accepts payment in exchange for airtime is also difficult to say. According to nearly a dozen interviews with industry sources, it appears the practice is particularly popular among podcasts in the wellness, cryptocurrency, and business arenas. In an age when social media influencers routinely get paid for mentioning a brand in an Instagram post or YouTube video, this marriage of convenience shouldn't come as a complete shock. Still, not everyone thinks it's a good idea. "As someone who's making money for that type of advertorial content, it should be disclosed," says Craig Delsack, a New York-based media lawyer. "It's just good practice and builds trust with the podcaster. It can't be the Wild West." US regulators also agree that consumers might be misled when they don't know a media mention only occurred in exchange for compensation. Even so, the phenomenon appears to be thriving in podcasting. Online platform Guestio has raised more than $1 million to build a marketplace devoted entirely to brokering paid guest appearances. On Guestio, the flow of money sometimes reverses direction, and a podcaster provides payment to land a particularly coveted guest such as boxer Manny Pacquiao, who charges $15,000 for an appearance.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: If China were to invade Taiwan, the most-advanced chip factory in the world would be rendered "not operable," TSMC Chair Mark Liu said in an English-language interview with CNN this week. In the undated interview, Liu said that if Taiwan were invaded by China, the chipmaker's plant would not be able to operate because it relies on global supply chains. "Nobody can control TSMC by force. If you take a military force or invasion, you will render TSMC factory not operable," Liu said. "Because this is such a sophisticated manufacturing facility, it depends on real-time connection with the outside world, with Europe, with Japan, with U.S., from materials to chemicals to spare parts to engineering software and diagnosis." The remarks were aired as tensions between China and Taiwan have escalated in recent days as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visits the island. "The war brings no winners, everybody's losers," Liu said. Liu compared a potential conflict in Taiwan to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, saying that while the two conflicts are very different, the economic impact to other countries would be similar. He encouraged political leaders to try to avoid war. "Ukraine war is not good for any of the sides, it's lose-lose-lose scenarios," Liu said. Liu said an invasion of the territory would cause economic turmoil for China, Taiwan and Western countries. He said that TSMC sells chips to consumer-facing Chinese companies that need the company's services and the supply of advanced computer chips. "How can we avoid war? How can we ensure that the engine of the world economy continues humming, and let's have a fair competition," Liu said. Further reading: US To Stop TSMC, Intel From Adding Advanced Chip Fabs In China

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Using monthly vehicle registration data, Axios is tracking the transition to electric vehicles in the United States. What they found is that a handful of states are driving nearly all the country's electric car adoption. From the report: California -- no surprise -- leads the U.S. in electric vehicle ownership, accounting for 39% of all EVs registered nationwide. Look more closely at the numbers, however, and it turns out EVs represent less than 2% of all vehicles on the road in the Golden State. [...] 4.6% of the new vehicles registered in the U.S. this past May were electric, according to the [S&P Global Mobility's] most recent data. That's more than double EVs' share of monthly registrations in May 2021 (1.9%). EVs still account for only about 0.6% of all registered vehicles in the U.S. Take California's EVs away, and it's just 0.4%. As of April 1, Florida has the second-highest share of the country's EVs, at 6.7%. Then comes Texas (5.4%), Washington (4.4%), and New York (3.6%). Yet, EVs account for only 1% or less of all vehicles within each of these states. Besides California, the states or areas with the highest share of EVs within their own borders: Hawaii (1.3%), and the District of Columbia (1.2%). "Tesla's brand loyalty more than doubled in the month of May and was higher than any brand in the industry, including Toyota and Ford," S&P Global Mobility analyst Tom Libby tells Axios, noting that the Ford Mustang Mach-E, Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6 are growing in popularity. "We're just seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of what's coming," says Libby.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scientists have discovered dark matter around galaxies that existed about 12 billion years ago, the earliest detection yet of this mysterious substance that dominates the universe. Space.com reports: The findings, achieved by a collaboration led by researchers from Japan's Nagoya University, suggest that dark matter in the early universe is less 'clumpy' than predicted by many current cosmological models. If further work confirms this theory, it could change scientists' understanding of how galaxies evolve and suggest that the fundamental rules governing the cosmos could have been different when the 13.7 billion-year-old universe was just 1.7 billion years old. The key to mapping dark matter in the very early universe the cosmic microwave background (CMB), a sort of fossil radiation left over from the Big Bang that is distributed throughout the entire cosmos. [...] The team combined lensing distortions of a large sample of ancient galaxies with those of the CMB to detect dark matter dating back to when the universe was just 1.7 billion years old. And this ancient dark matter paints a very different cosmic picture. "For the first time, we were measuring dark matter from almost the earliest moments of the universe," [University of Tokyo assistant professor Yuichi Harikane said in the statement]. "12 billion years ago, things were very different. You see more galaxies that are in the process of formation than at the present; the first galaxy clusters are starting to form as well." These clusters can be comprised of between 100 and 1,000 galaxies bound to large amounts of dark matter by gravity. "Our finding is still uncertain," Harikane said. "But if it is true, it would suggest that the entire model is flawed as you go further back in time. This is exciting because if the result holds after the uncertainties are reduced, it could suggest an improvement of the model that may provide insight into the nature of dark matter itself." The team will continue to collect data to assess whether the Lambda-CDM model conforms to observations of dark matter in the early universe or if the assumptions behind the model need to be revised.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Scientists at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and their collaborators have used DNA to overcome a nearly insurmountable obstacle to engineer materials that would revolutionize electronics. One possible outcome of such engineered materials could be superconductors, which have zero electrical resistance, allowing electrons to flow unimpeded. That means that they don't lose energy and don't create heat, unlike current means of electrical transmission. Development of a superconductor that could be used widely at room temperature -- instead of at extremely high or low temperatures, as is now possible -- could lead to hyper-fast computers, shrink the size of electronic devices, allow high-speed trains to float on magnets and slash energy use, among other benefits. One such superconductor was first proposed more than 50 years ago by Stanford physicist William A. Little. [...] One possible way to realize Little's idea for a superconductor is to modify lattices of carbon nanotubes, hollow cylinders of carbon so tiny they must be measured in nanometers -- billionths of a meter. But there was a huge challenge: controlling chemical reactions along the nanotubes so that the lattice could be assembled as precisely as needed and function as intended. [Edward H. Egelman, Ph.D., of UVA's Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics] and his collaborators found an answer in the very building blocks of life. They took DNA, the genetic material that tells living cells how to operate, and used it to guide a chemical reaction that would overcome the great barrier to Little's superconductor. In short, they used chemistry to perform astonishingly precise structural engineering -- construction at the level of individual molecules. The result was a lattice of carbon nanotubes assembled as needed for Little's room-temperature superconductor. [...] The lattice they built has not been tested for superconductivity, for now, but it offers proof of principle and has great potential for the future, the researchers say. The findings have been published in the journal Science.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MicroStrategy co-founder Michael Saylor gave up his chief executive officer title and said he'll focus more on Bitcoin after the enterprise-software maker reported a loss of more than $1 billion related to the second-quarter plunge in the price of the cryptocurrency. Bloomberg reports: Saylor, who founded the Tysons Corner, Virginia-based company in 1989, will continue to serve as executive chairman as retains its Bitcoin buying strategy. MicroStrategy President Phong Le will take on the chief executive role. The company also filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to register 450,000 shares. MicroStrategy took a $917.8 million impairment charge related to the decline in the value of the Bitcoin it holds. Bitcoin tumbled 59% in the quarter, and traded about 45% lower than the price at the end of the year-earlier period. Revenue dropped to $122.1 million. Analysts polled by Bloomberg expected revenue of $123.25 million in the second quarter. Net quarterly loss of $1.062 billion compared with a loss of $299.3 million in the same quarter of last year. The quarterly loss is almost exactly twice the company's revenue in the last 12 months. As of June 30, the carrying value of the company's 129,699 Bitcoins was $1.988 billion, the company said, reflecting the cumulative impairment loss of $1.989 billion. The cumulative amount is now more than Bitcoin on the company's balance sheet. "MicroStrategy's original strategy and consulting business needs full-time attention," said Henry Elder, head of decentralized finance at Wave Financial. "Now Michael can focus on what he does best, promoting Bitcoin. And the company can focus on making more money to buy more Bitcoin. They are basically doubling down."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Raspberry Pi 4 has hit a major graphics milestone, adding support for a more modern Vulkan 3D APIa. Ars Technica reports: Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton announced the Pi 4's Vulkan 1.2 conformance on Monday. Support isn't available yet in downloadable Pi-friendly operating systems but should be coming soon. For most people using their Pi as a server, a DIY controller, or a light desktop, Vulkan 1.2 conformance won't be noticeable. Desktop graphics on the standard Raspberry Pi OS are powered by OpenGL, the older graphics API that Vulkan is meant to replace. There is one group that benefits, says Upton: games and other 3D Android applications. Android uses Vulkan as its low-overhead graphics API. As with most Raspberry Pi advancements, there could be unforeseen opportunities unleashed by this seemingly tiny change. Vulkan 1.2 support gives developers the same 3D-graphics interface (if not anywhere near the same power) as 2019 NVIDIA graphics cards, 2020 Intel chips with integrated graphics, and dozens of other devices. With a Vulkan 1.0 driver installed, developer Iago Toral was able in 2020 to get the original Quake trilogy mostly running on a Pi 4, with not-too-shabby frame rates.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US consumer spending on video game products has fallen by $1.78 billion in Q2, according to market research firm NPD. Overall, spending in video gaming in the US totaled $12.35 billion in the recent quarter, down 13 percent year over year. The Verge reports: The findings follow both Microsoft and Sony reporting revenue declines in gaming as the pandemic growth slows. [...] While overall spending on gaming has clearly declined across the industry in Q2, subscription content "was the only segment to post positive gains," according to NPD. That growth is despite Sony launching its revamped PlayStation Plus subscriptions at the end of the quarter. Hardware unit sales were led by Nintendo Switch in the second quarter, according to NPD, with the PS5 generating the highest dollar sales. Despite the declines in spending amid high rates of inflation and following a big period of growth "consumer spending continues to trend above pre-pandemic levels," says Mat Piscatella, games industry analyst at NPD. "However, unpredictable and quickly changing conditions may continue to impact the market in unexpected ways in the coming quarters."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: The head of WhatsApp will not compromise the security of its messenger service to bend to the UK government's efforts to scan private conversations. Will Cathcart, who has been at parent company Meta for more than 12 years and head of WhatsApp since 2019, told the BBC that the popular communications service wouldn't downgrade or bypass its end-to-end encryption (EE2E) just for British snoops, saying it would be "foolish" to do so and that WhatsApp needs to offer a consistent set of standards around the globe. "If we had to lower security for the world, to accommodate the requirement in one country, that ... would be very foolish for us to accept, making our product less desirable to 98 percent of our users because of the requirements from 2 percent," Cathcart told the broadcaster. "What's being proposed is that we -- either directly or indirectly through software -- read everyone's messages. I don't think people want that." Strong EE2E ensures that only the intended sender and receiver of a message can read it, and not even the provider of the communications channel nor anyone eavesdropping on the encrypted chatter. The UK government is proposing that app builders add an automated AI-powered scanner in the pipeline -- ideally in the client app -- to detect and report illegal content, in this case child sex abuse material (CSAM). The upside is that at least messages are encrypted as usual when transmitted: the software on your phone, say, studies the material, and continues on as normal if the data is deemed CSAM-free. One downside is that any false positives mean people's private communications get flagged up and potentially analyzed by law enforcement or a government agent. Another downside is that the definition of what is filtered may gradually change over time, and before you know it: everyone's conversations are being automatically screened for things politicians have decided are verboten. And another downside is that client-side AI models that don't produce a lot of false positives are likely to be easily defeated, and are mainly good for catching well-known, unaltered CSAM examples.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

France, Italy and Spain are stepping up pressure on the European Commission to come up with legislation that ensures Big Tech firms partly finance telecoms infrastructure in the bloc, a document showed on Monday. This was the first time the three governments have expressed their joint position on the issue. Reuters reports: EU regulators said in May they were analyzing the question of whether tech giants Alphabet's Google, Meta and Netflix should shoulder some of the costs of upgrading telecoms networks. In a joint paper, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, the three governments said the six largest content providers accounted for 55% of internet traffic. "This generates specific costs for European telecom operators in terms of capacity, at a time they are already hugely investing in the most costly parts of the networks with 5G and Fiber-To-The-Home," the document said. It urged that European telecom networks and large online content providers pay fair shares of network costs. "We call for a legislative proposal ... ensuring all market players contribute to digital infrastructure costs," the document said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Today, the long-running PC and gaming accessory maker Logitech announced plans to launch its own cloud gaming handheld device. Android Authority reports: Logitech stated it will partner on the software side with China-based Tencent Games for the new device. It is also working with Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming and Nvidia's GeForce Now cloud gaming services so that its device should support hundreds of high-end PC and console games out of the box. It's possible that other cloud gaming services like Google's Stadia and Amazon's Luna could support the device as well, but no concrete details on that just yet. No other details have been revealed, but there is a web page Logitech set up where you can enter your email to receive further updates.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Forbes: According to cyber security firm Volexity, the threat research team has found the North Korean 'SharpTongue' group, which appears to be part of, or related to, the Kimsuky advanced persistent threat group, deploying malware called SHARPEXT that doesn't need your Gmail login credentials at all. Instead, it "directly inspects and exfiltrates data" from a Gmail account as the victim browses it. This quickly evolving threat, Volexity says it is already on version 3.0 according to the malware's internal versioning, can steal email from both Gmail and AOL webmail accounts, and works across three browsers: Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and a South Korean client called Whale. The U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, CISA, reports that Kimsuky has been operating since 2012, and is "most likely tasked by the North Korean regime with a global intelligence gathering mission." While CISA sees Kimsuky most often targeting individuals and organizations in South Korea, Japan, and the U. S., Volexity says that the SharpTongue group has frequently been seen targeting South Korea, the U. S. and Europe. The common denominator between them is that the victims often " work on topics involving North Korea, nuclear issues, weapons systems, and other matters of strategic interest to North Korea." The report says that SHARPEXT differs from previous browser extensions deployed by these hacking espionage groups in that it doesn't attempt to grab login credentials but bypasses the need for these and can grab email data as the user reads it. The good news is that your system needs to be compromised by some means before this malicious extension can be deployed. Unfortunately, we know all too well that system compromise is not as difficult as it should be. Once a system has been compromised by phishing, malware, unpatched vulnerabilities, whatever, the threat actors can install the extension using a malicious VB script that replaces the system preference files. Once that's done and the extension runs quietly in the background, it is tough to detect. The user logs in to their Gmail account from their normal browser on the expected system. The security researchers recommend "enabling and analyzing PowerShell ScriptBlock logging" to detect whether you've been targeted by this attack, reports Forbes. Additionally, they recommend reviewing installed extensions regularly, especially looking for ones you don't recognize or are not available from the Chrome Web Store.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Digital attacks against Taiwanese government websites ahead of U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi's arrival in Tapei on Tuesday were likely launched by Chinese activist hackers rather than the Chinese government, a cybersecurity research organisation said. From a report: The website of Taiwan's presidential office was targeted by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on Tuesday and was at one point malfunctioning, the office said in a statement. Access to the website was restored within about 20 minutes of the attack, the statement said. Taiwanese government agencies were monitoring the situation in the face of "information warfare," a spokesperson later added. A government portal website and Taiwan's foreign ministry website were also temporarily taken offline on Tuesday. In a statement, the foreign ministry said both websites had been hit with up to 8.5 million traffic requests a minute from a "large number of IPs from China, Russia and other places."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The collapse in cryptocurrencies is easing supply of the most sought after watches on the second-hand market, depressing prices for hard-to get-Patek Philippe and Rolex models. From a report: The supply of trophy watches such as the Rolex Daytona or Patek Nautilus 5711A "is now much larger," online-watch trading platform Chrono24 said in an emailed statement. The recent swoon in cryptocurrency valuations "has directly impacted pricing of luxury watches from brands like Rolex and Patek Philippe," said the company, which is based in Karlsruhe, Germany, and has more than half a million watches listed for sale on its website. The price decline for the most sought after models is the latest indication that the once soaring second-hand luxury watch market is starting to lose pace. Surging valuations for crypto currencies had minted a new class of luxury buyers, leading to an unprecedented price increase for models particularly from brands like Rolex, Audemars Piguet and Patek. Now that many digital tokens have been hammered, these consumers are going into reverse.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Andrew R Chow and Chad De Guzman, reporting for Time: Samerson Orias was working as a line cook last year in the rural Philippines when his friend told him he could make way more money playing a new video game. Orias was earning about 4,000 pesos a month (about $80, a little less than half the national minimum wage) making takoyaki -- Japanese octopus balls. His friend told him he and others were pocketing up to $600 a month playing Axie Infinity, a game fueled by cryptocurrency and NFTs. Orias, now 26, desperately needed an escape hatch from his financial woes: his mother had had a stroke and required medication, and electricity and grocery bills were stacking up. So he plunged into Axie, doing battle with cartoon monsters for hours deep into the night. He soon began earning cryptocurrency, which he converted into pesos, allowing him to take better care of his mother and his home. At the same time, thousands of young people in the Philippines were jumping headlong into the game. For a brief moment at the peak of crypto's astonishing 2021 boom, these young Filipino players were fulfilling a longtime dream of crypto's most ardent evangelists: that "play-to-earn" blockchain games like Axie could lead the way to a more equitable, opportunity-rich global economy. Fourteen months later, most Filipino players, including Orias, have exited the game nursing anger and anxiety -- and, in some cases, thousands of dollars down. Orias grew to hate playing the game. It was boring and stressful, he says, a common refrain among the dozen players TIME interviewed for this story. "I felt fatigued all the time. I became more aggressive in every aspect of my life," he says. The story of Orias and Axie Infinity serves as a cautionary tale for crypto and its bombastic rhetoric about changing the world. Many crypto thought leaders, when rebutting criticism about the unsavory aspects of the space, point to its impact in developing countries. But Orias and others say that Axie Infinity reinforced predatory systems and gave them false hope. Innovative metaverse ideas like Axie Infinity offer immense promise -- but also tangible peril for those who feel they have no other option but to take the plunge into the digital unknown. The game initially made a huge impact in the Philippines. At one point, players there made up 40% of the game's user base.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Eleven people who ran and promoted cryptocurrency firm Forsage are facing charges of operating a pyramid and Ponzi scheme that raised more than $300 million from millions of investors in the U.S. and elsewhere, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission. From a report: The Forsage executives posted videos that promised huge returns for investors, with one calling it "a powerful long-term source of passive income" and telling viewers, "Forsage means fast and furious." But securities regulators allege the service's founders weren't providing an investment strategy, but rather running a pyramid scheme, where investors made money by recruiting others. Also, earlier investors were paid through the money invested by newer customers, the hallmark of a classic Ponzi structure. The charges underscore the financial risks of a sector that has drawn a fair share of fraudsters and scammers, aside from the massive price plunges that cryptocurrencies have experienced this year. In the case of Forsage, the service was created in 2020 and targeted retail investors who wanted to enter into crypto transactions via so-called "smart contracts" that operated on the ethereum, tron and binance blockchains. In addition to the four founders, the SEC also charged three U.S.-based promoters hired by Forsage to tout the service as well as several members of the Crypto Crusaders, a promotional group for the service, the SEC said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Solid state drives use far less power than hard disc drives. But a new study unexpectedly reveals that their lifetime carbon footprint is much higher than their hard disc cousins, raising difficult questions for the computer industry. From a report: The benefits of SSDs over HDDs are legion. They are smaller, mechanically simpler, faster to read and write data than their hard disc cousins. They are also more energy efficient. So with many computer manufacturers and datacenter operators looking to reduce their carbon footprints, it's easy to imagine that all this makes the choice of memory easy. But all is not as it seems, say Swamit Tannu at University of Wisconsin in Madison and Prashant Nair at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. SSDs have a dirty secret. Tannu and Nair have measured the carbon footprint per gigabyte of these devices across their entire lifetimes and, unexpectedly, it turns out that SSDs are significantly dirtier. "Compared to SSDs, the embodied [carbon] cost of HDDs is at least an order of magnitude lower," say the researchers. Tannu and Nair come to their conclusion by adding up the amount of carbon emitted throughout the estimated 10-year lifespans of these devices. This includes the carbon emitted during manufacture, during operation, for transportation and for disposal. The carbon emitted during operation is straightforward to calculate. To read and write data, HDDs consume 4.2 Watts versus 1.3W for SSDs. The researchers calculate that a 1 terabyte HDD emits the equivalent of 159 kilograms of carbon dioxide during a 10-year operating lifespan. By comparison, a 1 terabyte SSD emits just 49.2 kg over 10 years. But SSDs are significantly more carbon intensive to manufacture. That's because the chip fabrication facilities for SSDs operate at extreme temperatures and pressures that are energy intensive to maintain. And bigger memories require more chips, which increases the footprint accordingly. All this adds up to a significant carbon footprint for SSD manufacture. Tannu and Nair calculate that manufacturing a 1 terabyte SSD emits the equivalent of 320 kg of carbon dioxide. By comparison, a similar HDD emits just 40 kg. So the lifetime footprint for a 1 terabyte SSD is 369.2 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent versus 199 kg for an HDD. So HDDs are much cleaner. That's a counterintuitive result with important implications. At the very least, it suggests that computer manufacturers and cloud data storage operators should reconsider the way they use SSDs and HDDs. For example, almost 40 per cent of the carbon footprint of a desktop computer comes from its SSD, compared to just 4 per cent from the CPU and 11 per cent from the GPU.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In the US government's ongoing campaign to protect data in the age of quantum computers, a new and powerful attack that used a single traditional computer to completely break a fourth-round candidate highlights the risks involved in standardizing the next generation of encryption algorithms. From a report: Last month, the US Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, selected four post-quantum computing encryption algorithms to replace algorithms like RSA, Diffie-Hellman, and elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman, which are unable to withstand attacks from a quantum computer. In the same move, NIST advanced four additional algorithms as potential replacements pending further testing in hopes one or more of them may also be suitable encryption alternatives in a post-quantum world. The new attack breaks SIKE, which is one of the latter four additional algorithms. The attack has no impact on the four PQC algorithms selected by NIST as approved standards, all of which rely on completely different mathematical techniques than SIKE.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook's parent company Meta and major US hospitals violated medical privacy laws with a tracking tool that sends health information to Facebook, two proposed class-action lawsuits allege. From a report: The lawsuits, filed in the Northern District of California in June and July, focus on the Meta Pixel tracking tool. The tool can be installed on websites to provide analytics on Facebook and Instagram ads. It also collects information about how people click around and input information into those websites. An investigation by The Markup in early June found that 33 of the top 100 hospitals in the United States use the Meta Pixel on their websites. At seven hospitals, it was installed on password-protected patient portals. The investigation found that the tool was sending information about patient health conditions, doctor appointments, and medication allergies to Facebook.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With the 2022 Flash Memory Summit taking place this week, not only is there a slew of solid-state storage announcements in the pipe over the coming days, but the show is also increasingly a popular venue for discussing I/O and interconnect developments as well. Kicking things off on that front, on Monday the OpenCAPI and CXL consortiums issued a joint announcement that the two groups will be joining forces, with the OpenCAPI standard and the consortium's assets being transferred to the CXL consortium. From a report: With this integration, CXL is set to become the dominant CPU-to-device interconnect standard, as virtually all major manufacturers are now backing the standard, and competing standards have bowed out of the race and been absorbed by CXL. Pre-dating CXL by a few years, OpenCAPI was one of the earlier standards for a cache-coherent CPU interconnect. The standard, backed by AMD, Xilinx, and IBM, among others, was an extension of IBM's existing Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (CAPI) technology, opening it up to the rest of the industry and placing its control under an industry consortium. In the last six years, OpenCAPI has seen a modest amount of use, most notably being implemented in IBM's POWER9 processor family. Like similar CPU-to-device interconnect standards, OpenCAPI was essentially an application extension on top of existing high speed I/O standards, adding things like cache-coherency and faster (lower latency) access modes so that CPUs and accelerators could work together more closely despite their physical disaggregation.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.