India restricted import of laptops, tablets, other personal computers and servers on Thursday, the local Ministry of Commerce and Industry said in an amendment, saying it will impose a licensing requirement for imports in a move that analysts say appears to be aimed at boosting the local manufacturing efforts.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton has been saying for months that 2023 would be a "recovery year" for Raspberry Pi supply -- the single-board computer, once known for its easy availability and affordability, has been hit with supply shortages for years. Hundreds of thousands of Pi boards were still being manufactured every month, but many were going to commercial buyers rather than retailers and end users. More recently, those manufacturing numbers have climbed from 400,000 monthly units to 600,000 to 800,000 to 1 million, a level that Upton says can be sustained "for as long as is necessary to clear our remaining customer backlogs and return to free availability." We're now seeing very early signs that supply is returning to normal, at least for some Pi models. UK-based Pi reseller Pimoroni announced today that it was lifting some purchase limitations on 2GB and 4GB Raspberry Pi 4 boards and Pi Zero W boards (not, apparently, the more recent Pi Zero 2 W). The rpilocator stock tracker account has also noted that its number of automated stock alerts has decreased recently "because Pis are staying in stock longer," noting that Pimoroni and The Pi Hut had (and still have) multiple Pi 4 variants in stock. Even as stock returns to normal, we'll still be dealing with the aftereffects of the shortage for some time to come; the "temporary" price increase for the 2GB Pi 4 board still hasn't been reverted, and Upton's past comments have implied that the company has put off the development of the Pi 5 to allow stock of current models to return to normal (the Pi 4 was introduced just over four years ago). Other retailers still have purchasing restrictions in place. And some models and retailers will clearly recover more quickly than others.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

India has confirmed that an object that washed up on a Western Australian beach recently was from one of its rockets. The BBC reports: The giant metal dome was found at Green Head beach, about 250km (155 miles) north of Perth, in mid-July -- prompting speculation about its origins. India's space agency spokesman told the BBC on Monday it was from one of its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicles (PSLV). Sudhir Kumar added that it would be up to Australia to decide what to do with the object. He did not comment further. His comments came after the Australian Space Agency (ASA) on Wednesday said that the object was "most likely" the third stage of a PSLV, which are used by India to launch satellites into orbit. The ASA said it was working with India's space agency to "determine next steps, including considering obligations under the United Nations space treaties." According to the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, countries are required to return any "foreign" space objects found in their territory to the owners. Western Australia has already indicated it would be happy to keep it. The state's premier, Roger Cook, suggested to local media that the object could be stored in the state museum alongside debris from Nasa's Skylab station, which was discovered in 1979. Locals said they might be interested in turning it into a local tourist attraction, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Paul Voosen writes via Science: Regulations imposed in 2020 by the United Nations's International Maritime Organization (IMO) have cut ships' sulfur pollution by more than 80% and improved air quality worldwide. The reduction has also lessened the effect of sulfate particles in seeding and brightening the distinctive low-lying, reflective clouds that follow in the wake of ships and help cool the planet. The 2020 IMO rule "is a big natural experiment," says Duncan Watson-Parris, an atmospheric physicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "We're changing the clouds." By dramatically reducing the number of ship tracks, the planet has warmed up faster, several new studies have found. That trend is magnified in the Atlantic, where maritime traffic is particularly dense. In the shipping corridors, the increased light represents a 50% boost to the warming effect of human carbon emissions. It's as if the world suddenly lost the cooling effect from a fairly large volcanic eruption each year, says Michael Diamond, an atmospheric scientist at Florida State University. The natural experiment created by the IMO rules is providing a rare opportunity for climate scientists to study a geoengineering scheme in action -- although it is one that is working in the wrong direction. Indeed, one such strategy to slow global warming, called marine cloud brightening, would see ships inject salt particles back into the air, to make clouds more reflective. In Diamond's view, the dramatic decline in ship tracks is clear evidence that humanity could cool off the planet significantly by brightening the clouds. "It suggests pretty strongly that if you wanted to do it on purpose, you could," he says. The findings are available in a new preprint in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP).

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A group of Internet service providers that won government grants are asking the Federal Communication Commission for more money or an "amnesty window" in which they could give up grants without penalty. The ISPs were awarded grants to build broadband networks from the FCC's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), which selected funding recipients in December 2020. A group calling itself the "Coalition of RDOF Winners" has been meeting with FCC officials about their requests for more money or an amnesty window, according to several filings submitted to the commission. The group says broadband construction costs have soared since the grants were announced. They asked for extra money, quicker payments, relief from letter of credit requirements, or an amnesty window "that allows RDOF winners to relinquish all or part of their RDOF winning areas without forfeitures or other penalties if the Commission chooses not to make supplemental funds available or if the amount of supplemental funds the Commission does make available does not cover an RDOF Winner's costs that exceed reasonable inflation," a July 31 filing said. A different group of ISPs urged the FCC to reject the request, saying that telcos that win grants by pledging to build networks at a low cost are "gaming" the system by seeking more money afterward. So far, the FCC leadership seems reluctant to provide extra funding. The commission could issue fines to ISPs that default on grants -- the FCC recently proposed $8.8 million in fines against 22 RDOF applicants for defaults. The Coalition of RDOF Winners doesn't include every ISP that was granted money from the program. But exactly which and how many ISPs are in the coalition is a mystery.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta on Wednesday introduced its open-source AI tool called AudioCraft that will help users to create music and audio based on text prompts. Reuters reports: The AI tool is bundled with three models, AudioGen, EnCodec and MusicGen, and works for music, sound, compression and generation, Meta said. MusicGen is trained using company-owned and specifically licensed music, it added. From Meta's press release: The AudioCraft family of models are capable of producing high-quality audio with long-term consistency, and they're easy to use. With AudioCraft, we simplify the overall design of generative models for audio compared to prior work in the field -- giving people the full recipe to play with the existing models that Meta has been developing over the past several years while also empowering them to push the limits and develop their own models. AudioCraft works for music, sound, compression, and generation -- all in the same place. Because it's easy to build on and reuse, people who want to build better sound generators, compression algorithms, or music generators can do it all in the same code base and build on top of what others have done. Having a solid open source foundation will foster innovation and complement the way we produce and listen to audio and music in the future. With even more controls, we think MusicGen can turn into a new type of instrument -- just like synthesizers when they first appeared.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Steam Survey results for July 2023 were just published and it points to a large and unexpected jump in the Linux gaming marketshare. Phoronix reports; According to these new numbers from Valve, the Linux customer base is up to 1.96%, or a 0.52% jump over June! That's a huge jump with normally just moving 0.1% or so in either direction most months... It's also near an all-time high on a percentage basis going back to the early days of Steam on Linux when it had around a 2% marketshare but at that time the Steam customer size in absolute numbers was much smaller a decade ago than it is now. So if the percentage numbers are accurate, this is likely the largest in absolute terms that the Linux gaming marketshare has ever been. When looking at the Steam Linux breakdown, the SteamOS Holo that powers the Steam Deck is now accounting for around 42% of all Linux gamers on Steam. Meanwhile, AMD CPU marketshare among Linux gamers has reached 69%. The Steam Survey results for July show Windows 10 64-bit losing 1.56% marketshare and Linux gaining the healthy 0.52% of that. This is also the first time the Linux gaming marketshare outpasses Apple macOS on Steam!

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google's long-running project to split up ChromeOS and its Chrome browser is currently in beta and should be live in the stable channel later this month. The flags that turn on the feature by default were spotted by Kevin Tofel from About Chromebooks. Ars Technica reports: The project is called "Lacros" which Google says stands for "Linux And ChRome OS." This will split ChromeOS's Linux OS from the Chrome browser, allowing Google to update each one independently. Google documentation on the project says, "On Chrome OS, the system UI (ash window manager, login screen, etc.) and the web browser are the same binary. Lacros separates this functionality into two binaries, henceforth known as ash-chrome (system UI) and lacros-chrome (web browser)." Part of the project involves sprucing up the ChromeOS OS, and Google's docs say, "Lacros can be imagined as 'Linux chrome with more Wayland support.'" On the browser side, ChromeOS would stop using the bespoke Chrome browser for ChromeOS and switch to the Chrome browser for Linux. The same browser you get on Ubuntu would now ship on ChromeOS. In the past, turning on Lacros in ChromeOS would show both Chrome browsers, the outgoing ChromeOS one and the new Linux one. Lacros has been in development for around two years and can be enabled via a Chrome flag. Tofel says his 116 build no longer has that flag since it's the default now. Google hasn't officially confirmed this is happening, but so far, the code is headed that way.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes: Today, the US Treasury Department announced that taxpayers will have the choice to go paperless for all Internal Revenue Service (IRS) correspondence in the upcoming 2024 filing season. By 2025, the IRS plans to achieve paperless processing for all tax returns, still accepting paper documents but immediately digitizing them, to "cut processing times in half" and "expedite refunds by several weeks," the Treasury Department said. "The IRS receives about 76 million paper tax returns and forms and 125 million pieces of correspondence, notice responses, and non-tax forms each year, and its limited capability to accept these forms digitally or digitize paper it receives has prevented the IRS from delivering the world-class service taxpayers deserve," the Treasury Department said. By accelerating paperless processing, the IRS expects to simplify how Americans access their taxpayer data and save millions historically spent on storing more than a billion documents. Digitization can also help eliminate errors, the Treasury Department said, which can "result from manually inputting data from paper returns." And it will help taxpayers more quickly get answers to questions, as IRS customer service employees "do not currently have easy access to the information from paper returns." Starting in 2024, they will. Next filing season, taxpayers will have the option to e-file 20 additional tax forms among the most commonly submitted when amending returns, including forms used to submit information on things like identity theft or proof of eligibility for "key credits and deductions that help low-income households." "Taxpayers who want to submit paper returns and correspondence can continue to do so," the Treasury Department said, but "all paper will be converted into digital form as soon as it arrives at the IRS." In 2024, the IRS estimates that "more than 94 percent of individual taxpayers will no longer ever need to send mail to the IRS." Once taxpayers arrive at the 2025 filing season, they'll have the option to e-file "an additional 150 of the most used non-tax forms," the Treasury Department said, which "will be available in digital, mobile-friendly formats that make them easy for taxpayers to complete and submit." The IRS prioritized mobile-friendly formats because the agency estimates that "15 percent of Americans rely solely on mobile phones for their Internet access." "When combined with an improved data platform, digitization and data extraction will enable data scientists to implement advanced analytics and pattern recognition methods to pursue cases that can help address the tax gap, including wealthy individuals and large corporations using complex structures to evade taxes they owe," the Treasury Department added.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cory Doctorow, author, digital rights advocate, and co-editor of the blog Boing Boing, has launched a Kickstarter campaign for his next book, called The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation. "The book presents an array of policy solutions aimed at dismantling the monopolistic power of Big Tech, making the internet a more open and user-focused space," writes Boing Boing's Mark Frauenfelder. "Key among these solutions is the concept of interoperability, which would allow users to take their apps, data, and content with them when they decide to leave a service, thus reducing the power of tech platforms." From Cory's Medium article announcing the Kickstarter: I won't sell my work with DRM, because DRM is key to the enshittification of the internet. Enshittification is why the old, good internet died and became "five giant websites filled with screenshots of the other four" (h/t Tom Eastman). When a tech company can lock in its users and suppliers, it can drain value from both sides, using DRM and other lock-in gimmicks to keep their business even as they grow ever more miserable on the platform. Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. The Internet Con isn't just an analysis of where enshittification comes from: it's a detailed, shovel-ready policy prescription for halting enshittification, throwing it into reverse and bringing back the old, good internet.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kenya's Ministry of the Interior has issued a decree suspending Worldcoin enrollment in the country, citing concerns with the "authenticity and legality" of its activities in the areas of security, financial services and data protection. TechCrunch reports: The suspension covers both Worldcoin and "any other entity that may be similarly engaging the people of Kenya" and will remain in place until the authorities determine "the absence of any risks to the general public whatsoever." Up until today, Kenya had one of the largest collections of venues -- at least 18, according to the company's directory last week -- where you could visit an "Orb," as the company's spherical and mirrored iris scanners are called, "and verify your World ID." Now there is only one listed -- after Orb operators, overwhelmed by the huge turnout, shifted their stations on Sunday to Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC), a bigger ground in Kenya's capital that could accommodate the thousands of people streaming in. "Relevant security, financial service and data protection agencies have commenced inquiries and investigations to establish the authenticity and legality of the aforesaid activities, and the safety and protection of the data being harvested, and how the harvesters intend to use the data," said Kithure Kindiki, Kenya's cabinet secretary for the ministry of interior and national administration. The news come amid separate reports that Worldcoin plans to expand its operations to sign up more users globally and allow other organizations to use its iris-scanning and identity-verifying technology. Further reading: Sam Altman's Worldcoin Eyeball-Scanning Crypto Project Launches

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: China's cyberspace regulator said on Wednesday children under the age of 18 should be limited to a maximum of two hours a day on their smartphones, sending shares in tech companies tumbling. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said it wanted providers of smart devices to introduce so-called minor mode programs that would bar users under 18 from accessing the internet on mobile devices from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Providers would also have to set time limits under the proposed reforms, the CAC said. Users aged 16 to 18 would be allowed two hours a day, children aged eight to 16 would get one hour while children under eight would be allowed just eight minutes. But the CAC said service providers should allow parents to opt out of the time limits for their youngsters. Xia Hailong, a lawyer at the Shanghai Shenlun law firm, said it'll take "a lot of effort and additional costs" for internet companies to implement these new regulatory requirements. "And the risk of non-compliance will also be very high. So I believe that many internet companies may consider directly prohibiting minors from using their services."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Environmental campaigners have called on the government to learn from its own successes after official figures showed the use of single-use supermarket plastic bags had fallen 98% since retailers in England began charging for them in 2015. From a report: Annual distribution of plastic carrier bags by seven leading grocery chains plummeted from 7.6bn in 2014 to 133m last year, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said on Monday. Rebecca Pow, the minister for environmental quality and resilience, said the policy had "helped to stop billions of single-use carrier bags littering our neighbourhoods or heading to landfill." The government claimed the average person in England now bought just two single-use carrier bags a year from major retailers. Campaigners welcomed the finding but said the statistic did not account for all types of plastic bag . They also questioned the timing of the announcement, made as experts said plans for 100 new North Sea oil and gas wells, announced the same day by the prime minister would "send a wrecking ball through the UK's climate commitments." A 5p charge for carrier bags was introduced in English supermarkets in 2015. In 2021, the charge was increased to 10p and extended to all businesses. Since then, the number of plastic bags used across all retailers had fallen 35%, from 627m in 2019-20 to 406m in 2022-23, Defra said. Wales had introduced a 5p charge in 2011, Northern Ireland followed suit in 2013 and Scotland did so in 2014. Scotland and Northern Ireland have since raised their charges to 10p and 25p respectively.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google's AI-powered Search Generative Experience is getting a big new feature: images and video. From a report: If you've enabled the AI-based SGE feature in Search Labs, you'll now start to see more multimedia in the colorful summary box at the top of your search results. Google's also working on making that summary box appear faster and adding more context to the links it puts in the box. SGE may still be in the "experiment" phase, but it's very clearly the future of Google Search. "It really gives us a chance to, now, not always be constrained in the way search was working before," CEO Sundar Pichai said on Alphabet's most recent earnings call. "It allows us to think outside the box." He then said that "over time, this will just be how search works." The SGE takeover raises huge, thorny questions about the very future of the web, but it's also just a tricky product to get right. Google is no longer simply trying to find good links for you every time you search -- it's trying to synthesize and generate relevant, true, helpful information. Video in particular could go a long way here: Google has integrated YouTube more and more into search results over the years, linking to a specific chapter or moment inside a video that might help you with that "why is my dryer making that noise" query.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A ban on most kinds of traditional bulbs renews a cultural squabble between regulatory efforts to curb energy consumption and the very American impulse to do whatever one wants in one's domicile. The New York Times: The switchboard at Lightbulbs.com, a (pretty self-explanatory) e-commerce website, lit up with panicked callers on Tuesday, who all wanted to know if the news was true. Had the government just banned the sale of incandescent bulbs? Yes, mostly. Was this decision part of an elaborate political plot? No, mostly. Just what were fans of incandescent lighting supposed to do now? EBay, maybe? Much like its cousin, the gas stove, the humble light bulb has become a flashpoint in a cultural squabble between environmental regulatory efforts and the very American impulse to do whatever one wants in one's domicile. But unlike the gas stove debate, which grew so heated (sorry) that it drew legislation from Republicans hoping to protect the noble but possibly dangerous appliance, the ban on the sale of most incandescent bulbs went quietly into effect on August 1. (The Biden administration denied trying to ban gas stoves.) The response to the bulb ban was more of a whimper than a battle cry. "Thomas Edison brought the incandescent light bulb to the masses, and in 2023 Joe Biden banned it in America," officials with the Republican Party of New Mexico wrote in a tweet. "The Biden administration's government overreach continues." Other critics were more concerned about the quality of light affecting their quality of life: "I often stay up late at my desk, and the warm glow of the lamp is like company as I read and write. Ugh. There are people in power who are dedicated to sucking all joy out of the world," Joseph Massey, a self-described "not woke" writer, tweeted.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rains that pummelled Beijing in recent days were the heaviest since records began 140 years ago, the city's weather service has said, as China faced accusations that it had undermined key climate talks with other countries. From a report: Storm Doksuri, a former super typhoon, swept northwards over China after hitting southern Fujian province last week, following its battering of the Philippines. The average rainfall for the entire month of July was dumped on Beijing in just 40 hours, with heavy rains pummelling the capital and surrounding areas since Saturday. "The maximum [amount] of rainfall recorded during this storm, which was 744.8 millimetres, occurred at the Wangjiayuan reservoir in Changping," the Beijing Meteorological Service said, adding it was the "heaviest rainfall in 140 years." The extreme weather comes as China's foreign ministry denied reports that it obstructed discussions on tackling climate change at G20 meetings in India last week, calling the accusations "completely inconsistent with the facts."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Airbus is forming a joint venture with US start-up Voyager to compete to build a replacement for the International Space Station, an internationally funded laboratory in space that is due to be decommissioned by the end of the decade. From a report: The deal announced on Wednesday formalises the partnership unveiled in January on Voyager's Starlab project and will see Airbus replace US defence company Lockheed Martin as its main industrial partner. Starlab is one of the frontrunners in a race launched by Nasa four years ago to develop commercial alternatives to the ISS, which was launched 23 years ago and orbits some 420 kms above the earth. The ISS is an international collaboration, funded by national space agencies from the US, EU, Canada, Japan and Russia. Since its launch it has hosted 258 astronauts and cosmonauts from 20 countries. Among the other contenders in the race trying to build a replacement is Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, which is leading a consortium offering a 30,000 sq ft "ecosystem" of different habitats and services for industry, research and tourism. Nasa has allocated $550mn to four consortiums in the first phase of the competition, which will examine the spacecraft design and the business cases of each contender. The US agency has insisted each be commercially viable.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Worldcoin will expand its operations to sign up more users globally and aims to allow other organisations to use its iris-scanning and identity-verifying technology, a senior manager for the company behind the project told Reuters. From the report: "We are on this mission of building the biggest financial and identity community that we can," said Ricardo Macieira, general manager for Europe at Tools For Humanity, the San Francisco and Berlin-based company behind the project. Macieira said Worldcoin would continue rolling out operations in Europe, Latin America, Africa and "all the parts of the world that will accept us." Worldcoin's website mentions various possible applications, including distinguishing humans from artificial intelligence, enabling "global democratic processes" and showing a "potential path" to universal basic income, although these outcomes are not guaranteed. Most people interviewed by Reuters at sign-up sites in Britain, India and Japan last week said they were joining in order to receive the 25 free Worldcoin tokens the company says verified users can claim.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An Australian Senate committee has recommended a ban on the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok from federal government devices be extended to China's most popular social media platform, WeChat. From a report: The Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media also recommended in a report late Tuesday that social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter should become more transparent or be fined. Committee chair James Paterson said on Wednesday the report's recommendations would make Australia a more difficult target for the serious foreign interference risks that the nation faced. "It tackles both the problems posed by authoritarian-headquartered social media platforms like TikTok and WeChat and Western-headquartered social media platforms being weaponized by the actions of authoritarian governments including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter," Paterson told reporters.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As corporate leaders call for an end to pandemic-era remote work arrangements, unions in Australia are setting a precedent and fighting back, taking to court the country's biggest bank and wrangling with the federal government to demand WFH, as it is known, to become the norm. From a report: "All the deep changes in the Australian labour market have come out of crises. When you have a jolt, you never return to the way the world was," said John Buchanan, head of the University of Sydney's Health and Work Research Network. "We're always ahead of the pack in the English-speaking world, say compared to the UK, US, New Zealand." Empowered by the lowest unemployment rate in half a century, staff at Commonwealth Bank of Australia took the A$170 billion ($114 billion) lender to the industrial tribunal to challenge a directive to work from the office half of the time.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.