Sony is rolling out a big new PS5 update today, just over a month after it first started testing the changes in a beta. From a report: The update adds Dolby Atmos, lets you mute that annoying bootup beep, and even supports pairing a second controller as an assist one to let you help friends or family complete a game. Sony is also expanding its PS Remote Play app to Google's Chromecast with Google TV (4K), allowing you to stream games from a PS5 or PS4 to Android TV OS 12 devices. The Dolby Atmos support comes in the form of Sony's 3D Audio implementation (Tempest 3D AudioTech). It's compatible with Dolby Atmos devices like sound bars, TVs, or home theater systems. Media apps like Netflix can also update their apps on PS5 soon to support Dolby Atmos audio. You can now mute the PS5 beep sound that chirps when you turn the console on or off, or even when it goes into rest mode after being idle. If you just want to adjust the volume of the beep there's now an option for that, too. One of the most useful additions is the ability to use a second DualSense controller for assistance. "You can now assign a second controller to one account as an assist controller, and use two controllers to operate your PS5 console as if you were using a single controller," explains Hideaki Nishino, senior vice president of platform experience at Sony Interactive Entertainment. "This feature introduces a new way for you to enjoy games collaboratively with others or help a friend or child navigate a particularly challenging section of a game."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mozilla has released emergency security updates to fix a critical zero-day vulnerability exploited in the wild, impacting its Firefox web browser and Thunderbird email client. From a report: Tracked as CVE-2023-4863, the security flaw is caused by a heap buffer overflow in the WebP code library (libwebp), whose impact spans from crashes to arbitrary code execution. "Opening a malicious WebP image could lead to a heap buffer overflow in the content process. We are aware of this issue being exploited in other products in the wild," Mozilla said in an advisory published on Tuesday. Mozilla addressed the exploited zero-day in Firefox 117.0.1, Firefox ESR 115.2.1, Firefox ESR 102.15.1, Thunderbird 102.15.1, and Thunderbird 115.2.2. Even though specific details regarding the WebP flaw's exploitation in attacks remain undisclosed, this critical vulnerability is being abused in real-world scenarios.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The ring/silent switch has been on the iPhone since the very first one was announced in 2007 by Steve Jobs, but now the writing is on the wall for the device's last significant moving part. From a report: With its replacement by a haptic "action button," it's just a matter of time before the rest of the lineup is as smooth as a pebble from the river. At today's iPhone event, the no doubt long-contemplated change was announced with little fanfare, selling the new button as a customizable shortcut to anything the user wants. Launch the camera, or an assistance feature, or a particular app, etc. Seems useful in some ways, especially for accessibility. But I mourn the loss of this switch the way I do every time they compromise the hardware design of Apple devices. Removing TouchID is one such choice I still hold out hope they will reverse. The haptic touchpads in MacBooks is not something I enjoy compared to the actual depression of the originals, though it's probably a net benefit repair-wise. The attempt to unify under a single port was unsuccessful in everything but driving dongle sales. They have tried and failed to kill the magnetic power connector.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China flagged security problems with iPhones while saying it isn't barring purchases, the government's first comments on the topic after news reports that authorities are moving to restrict the use of Apple products in sensitive departments and state-owned companies. From a report: "We noticed that there have been many media reports about security incidents concerning Apple phones," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a regular press briefing in Beijing on Wednesday, without elaborating. China plans to expand a ban on the use of iPhones to a plethora of state-backed companies and agencies, Bloomberg News has reported, a sign of growing challenges for Apple in its biggest foreign market and global production base. Several agencies have begun instructing staff not to bring their iPhones to work. "China has not issued laws and regulations to ban the purchase of Apple or foreign brands' phones," Mao said, adding that the government attaches "great importance" to security and that all companies operating in China need to abide by its laws and regulations.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Unity, the tech company behind one of the most popular engines for creating video games, is scrambling to clarify how a price increase for its services will work, after its announcement Tuesday morning broadly infuriated the game development community. From a report: The fees, which Unity said are essential for funding development of its tech, left many game makers wondering if having a hit game through Unity would cost them more money than they could make. Developers spoke throughout the day of delaying their games to switch to rival Epic Games' Unreal Engine or other services on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. But by the evening, Unity exec Marc Whitten was updating Axios on the policies, potentially defusing some concerns raised by game creators. The new "Runtime Fee" announced Tuesday morning is tied to a player's installations of a game, an action that previously didn't cost developers anything. With Unity's new plan, developers who use Unity's free tier of development services would owe Unity $0.20 per installation once their game hit thresholds of 200,000 downloads and earn $200,000 in revenue. Developers paying over $2,000 a year for a Unity Pro plan would have to hit higher thresholds and would be charged with lower fees. The newfee system will begin at the start of 2024. [...] After initially telling Axios earlier Tuesday that a player installing a game, deleting it and installing it again would result in multiple fees, Unity's Whitten told Axios that the company would actually only charge for an initial installation. (A spokesperson told Axios that Unity had "regrouped" to discuss the issue.) He hoped this would allay fears of "install-bombing," where an angry user could keep deleting and re-installing a game to rack up fees to punish a developer.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An unnamed CIA whistleblower has made the dramatic allegation that half a dozen analysts there were bribed to reject the theory that COVID-19 resulted from a research-related leak of a new coronavirus, according to a press release today from the office of the Republican leading a congressional investigation into the pandemic. The allegation was strongly rejected in a CIA statement released hours later. Science.org: A majority of U.S. intelligence agencies has so far concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic mostly likely started when SARS-CoV-2 jumped from an infected animal host into people; a wildlife market in Wuhan, China, has received intense attention from researchers as the potential source. But the Department of Energy and FBI so far have favored the so-called lab-leak hypothesis, even though none of the agencies has expressed high confidence in their conclusions on COVID-19's origin. CIA, for example, had reportedly said it was "unable to determine" whether SARS-CoV-2 made a direct jump from animals to humans -- or came from a lab. Now, Representative Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), who chairs the House of Representatives's Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, says his panel and the House's Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have heard testimony from a whistleblower "who presents as a highly credible senior-level CIA officer." According to the press release, the whistleblower testified that only the most senior analyst of a seven-member CIA team investigating the origin of COVID-19 supported the zoonotic transmission theory. The whistleblower alleged the other six team members supporting the lab origin then received "a significant monetary incentive to change their position," wrote Wenstrup and Representative Mike Turner (R-OH), who chairs the intelligence panel. In response to emailed questions from Science, CIA Director of Public Affairs Tammy Kupperman Thorp challenged the whistleblower's account: "At CIA we are committed to the highest standards of analytic rigor, integrity, and objectivity. We do not pay analysts to reach specific conclusions. We take these allegations extremely seriously and are looking into them. We will keep our Congressional oversight committees appropriately informed," she wrote in the agency's statement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The US accounts for more than a third of the expansion of global oil and gas production planned by mid-century, despite its claims of climate leadership, research has found. Canada and Russia have the next biggest expansion plans, calculated based on how much carbon dioxide is likely to be produced from new developments, followed by Iran, China and Brazil. The United Arab Emirates, which is to host the annual UN climate summit this year, Cop28 in Dubai in November, is seventh on the list. The data, in a report from the campaign group Oil Change International, also showed that five "global north countries" -- the US, Canada, Australia, Norway and the UK -- will be responsible for just over half of all the planned expansion from new oil and gas fields to 2050. Greenhouse gas emissions from all of the oil and gas expansion that is planned in the next three decades would be more than enough to drive global temperatures well beyond the limit of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels that countries agreed in 2021 at Cop26 in Glasgow, the report found.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

India's road transport minister on Tuesday warned local and foreign automakers to either cut production of polluting diesel vehicles or face higher taxes and levies, setting alarm bells ringing in the world's third-largest car market. From a report: Here are some facts about India's automotive market, the biggest after China and the United States, where players such as Maruti Suzuki, Tata Motors and foreign giants such as Mercedes and Volkswagen operate. In India, about four million passenger vehicles were sold in the fiscal year that ended in March, according to data from the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers. Petrol vehicles have been the top sellers in recent years -- increasing their market share to around 68.4% in January-July 2023 from 42.5% in 2014, according to data from automotive market intelligence provider JATO Dynamics. Cost-conscious Indians are preferring to buy petrol cars as they are cheaper than diesel, even though diesel cars offer better fuel efficiency. In the luxury segment, though, which includes cars and SUVs made by Mercedes, BMW and Audi, petrol variants have accounted for 62% of sales so far this year, down from 68% in 2021, according to JATO Dynamics. Tuesday's warning from minister Nitin Gadkari targeted diesel carmakers, whose market share has seen a steady decline to nearly 18% of passenger vehicles in January-July this year from 47.9% in 2014. But when it comes to luxury cars, diesel variants remain in vogue, with their market share rising to 33% so far this year from 31% in 2021.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The cofounder and main promoter of the $4 billion OneCoin pyramid scheme was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in one of the first and biggest criminal frauds involving cryptocurrency. Bloomberg: Karl Sebastian Greenwood, 46, was sentenced in New York Tuesday, after pleading guilty in December to creating and promoting a phony cryptocurrency. Greenwood was the wingman of Ruja Ignatova, the so-called "Cryptoqueen" and most wanted crypto fugitive in the world. US District Judge Edgardo Ramos called the fraud "massive in many respects," noting that OneCoin had no blockchain, no real cryptocoin and no trading market. Victims could not withdraw their investments and most face the likelihood they'll never get any of their money back. "At base, it involved nothing more than old-fashioned snake oil," the judge said. Greenwoood's sentencing closes one chapter of the OneCoin case, which authorities describe as one of the largest pyramid schemes in history. It impacted 3.5 million victims across the globe and foreshadowed a broader crackdown on crime in the cryptocurrency markets.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple just announced its new high-end iPhones: the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max. The Verge: They're made of titanium, they have Action Buttons, and Apple promises they're the most powerful smartphones Apple has ever made. The 15 Pro starts at $999 with 128GB of storage, and the Pro Max at $1,199 with 256GB of storage. Both will be available for preorder this Friday and on sale September 22nd. This year's Pro has a 6.1-inch screen, and the Pro Max has a 6.7-inch display -- same as the new iPhone 15 and 15 Plus. Both are powered by the A17 Pro chip, which Apple says has the fastest performance in any smartphone and can even challenge some high-end PCs. Along with a redesigned GPU, Apple seems to think these devices could be poised to level up the kinds of games you can play on your phone.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Companies choose Alphabet's Google as the default search engine for their browsers and smartphones because it is the best one, and not because of a lack of competition, a Google lawyer said Tuesday at the start of a high-stakes antitrust trial in Washington. From a report: Consumers use Google "because it delivers value to them, not because they have to," John Schmidtlein, a partner at Williams & Connolly LLP who is representing the company, said during his opening statements on the first day of the trial. "Users today have more search options and ways to access information online than ever before." Schmidtlein pushed back on claims by US Justice Department antitrust enforcers that Google has used its market power -- and billions of dollars in exclusive deals with web browsers -- to illegally block rivals. Users have choices, and it's easy to switch, he said. For example, Microsoft pre-selects its own search engine, Bing, on Windows PCs, yet most PC users switch to Google because it's a better product, he said. Web browsers offered by Apple and Mozilla, which makes Firefox, have long chosen a default search engine in exchange for a revenue-share that helps pay for innovations, Schmidtlein said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Inditex is racing to iron bugs out of a new anti-shoplifting system for its Zara stores, slightly delaying its rollout partly because the security tags were easy to identify and remove in initial tests, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: Chief Executive Officer Oscar Garcia Maceiras unveiled the new technology in March and pledged to roll it out for tests in all Zara stores worldwide over the summer. The system relies on tiny chips known as RFID, doing away with the hard plastic tags on garments that require checkout clerks to remove them. The new technology has run into teething issues. Staff in several countries have raised concerns to management that the technology may actually make theft easier, according to the people, who asked not to be identified.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has just announced the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus, and the big news is a USB-C port. From a report: We've been waiting for the day that the iPhone would switch to the widely used USB-C standard instead of Apple's proprietary Lightning connector. Apple confirmed last year that it would make the change to USB-C to comply with the European Union's upcoming regulations, and the iPhone 15 is now the first iPhone to make the switch. The iPhone 15 is priced starting at $799 for a 128GB model and the iPhone 15 Plus starts at $899 for a 128GB version. USB-C is good news, but if you were hoping for a totally new iPhone 15 design, well, that's not happening this year. This year's iPhone looks largely the same as the iPhone 14 before it, with the iPhone 15 continuing to use a 6.1-inch display. All models of the iPhone 15 will come with the Dynamic Island. That's the pill-shaped cutout that first debuted on the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, providing a new way to see certain notifications and interact with apps. The iPhone 15 also has an OLED Super Retina display, which supports Dolby Vision content with 1,600 nits of brightness. The peak brightness of this display is 2,000 nits in sunlight, double that of the iPhone 14.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The World Bank poured billions of dollars into fossil fuels around the world last year despite repeated promises to refocus on shifting to a low-carbon economy, research has suggested. From a report: The money went through a special form of funding known as trade finance, which is used to facilitate global transactions. Urgewald, a campaign group that tracks global fossil fuel finance, found that the World Bank supplied about $3.7bn in trade finance in 2022 that was likely to have ended up funding oil and gas developments. Heike Mainhardt, the author of the research, called for reform of the World Bank and its private finance arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), to make such transactions more transparent and to exclude funding for fossil fuels from its lending. "They can't say that they are aligned with the Paris agreement, because there isn't enough transparency to be able to tell," she said. Fossil fuel companies would take advantage of this, she added. "They can see that they can access public money this way, without drawing attention to themselves, and they're very clever, so they will do this," she told the Guardian. Trade finance is a form of funding more opaque than standard project finance. Whereas project finance usually flows to governments, organisations or consortiums for a particular well-defined purpose and is relatively easy to track, trade finance is more diffuse.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Major corporations from oil and gas companies to retail giants would have to disclose their direct greenhouse gas emissions as well as those that come from activities like employee business travel under legislation passed Monday by California lawmakers, the most sweeping mandate of its kind in the nation. From a report: The legislation would require thousands of public and private businesses that operate in California and make more than $1 billion annually to report their direct and indirect emissions. The goal is to increase transparency and nudge companies to evaluate how they can cut their emissions. "We are out of time on addressing the climate crisis," Democratic Assemblymember Chris Ward said. "This will absolutely help us take a leap forward to be able to hold ourselves accountable." The legislation was one of the highest profile climate bills in California this year, racking support from major companies that include Patagonia and Apple, as well as Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the United Nations convention behind the 2015 Paris climate agreement. The bill would still need final approval by the state Senate before it can reach Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. Lawmakers backing the bill say a large number of companies in the state already disclose some of their own emissions. But the bill is a controversial proposal that many other businesses and groups in the state oppose and say will be too burdensome.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.