"Digital twin technology is one of the most significant disruptors of global manufacturing seen this century," argues Motor Trend, "and the automobile industry is embracing it in a big way." Roughly three-quarters of auto manufacturers are using digital twins as part of their vehicle development process, evolving not only how they design and develop new cars but also the way they monitor them, fix them, and even build them...

Nvidia, best known for its consumer graphics cards, also has a digital twin solution, called Omniverse, which manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz are using to design their manufacturing processes. "Their factory planners now have every single element in the factory that they can then put in that virtual digital twin first, lay it all out, and then operate it," Danny Shapiro, VP of automotive at Nvidia said. At that point, those planners can run the entire manufacturing process virtually, ensuring every conveyor feeds the next step in the process, identifying and addressing factory floor headaches long before production begins...

Software developers can run their solutions within digital twins. That includes the code at the lowest level, basic stuff that controls ignition timing within the engine for example, all the way up to the highest level, like touchscreens responding to user inputs. "We're not just simulating the operation outside the car, but the user experience," Nvidia's Shapiro said. "We can simulate and basically run the real software that would be running in that car and display it on the screens." By bringing all these systems together virtually, developers can find and solve issues earlier, preventing costly development delays or, worse yet, buggy releases...

Using unique identifiers, manufacturers can effectively create internal digital copies of vehicles that have been produced. Those copies can be used for ongoing tests and verifications, helping to anticipate things like required maintenance or susceptibility to part failures. By using telematics, in-car services that remotely communicate a car's status back to the manufacturer in real-time, these digital twins can be updated to match the real thing. "By monitoring tire health, tire grip, vehicle weight distribution, and other critical parameters, engineers can anticipate potential problems and schedule maintenance proactively, reducing downtime and extending the vehicle's lifespan," Tactile Mobility's Tzur said.

Roy Longbottom worked for the U.K. covernment's Central Computer Agency from 1960 to 1993, and "from 1972 to 2022 I produced and ran computer benchmarking and stress testing programs..." Known as the official design authority for the Whetstone benchmark), Longbottom writes that "In 2019 (aged 84), I was recruited as a voluntary member of Raspberry Pi pre-release Alpha testing team."

And this week — now at age 87 — Longbottom has created a web page titled "Cray 1 supercomputer performance comparisons with home computers, phones and tablets." And one statistic really captures the impact of our decades of technological progress.

"In 1978, the Cray 1 supercomputer cost $7 Million, weighed 10,500 pounds and had a 115 kilowatt power supply. It was, by far, the fastest computer in the world. The Raspberry Pi costs around $70 (CPU board, case, power supply, SD card), weighs a few ounces, uses a 5 watt power supply and is more than 4.5 times faster than the Cray 1."


Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader bobdevine for sharing the link.

"Electric cars are already upending America," argues a new article in the Atlantic, citing booming sales and new models that are "finally starting to push us into the post-gas age." Americans are on track to buy a record 1.44 million of them in 2023, according to a forecast by BloombergNEF, about the same number sold from 2016 to 2021 total. "This was the year that EVs went from experiments, or technological demonstrations, and became mature vehicles," Gil Tal, the director of the Electric Vehicle Research Center at UC Davis, told me.... Nearly 40 new EVs have debuted since the start of 2022, and they are far more advanced than their ancestors. For $40,000, the Hyundai Ioniq 6, released this year, can get you 360 miles on a single charge; in 2018, for only a slightly lower cost, a Nissan Leaf couldn't go half that distance....

All of these EVs are genuinely great for the planet, spewing zero carbon from their tailpipes, but that's only a small part of what makes them different. In the EV age, cars are no longer just cars. They are computers... The million-plus new EVs on the road are ushering in a fundamental, maybe existential, change in how to even think about cars — no longer as machines, but as gadgets that plug in and charge like all the others in our life. The wonderful things about computers are coming to cars, and so are the terrible ones: apps that crash. Subscription hell. Cyberattacks... If cars are gadgets now, then carmakers are also now tech companies. An industry that has spent a century perfecting the internal combustion engine must now manufacture lithium-ion batteries and write the code to govern them. Imagine if a dentist had to pivot from filling cavities to performing open-heart surgery, and that's roughly what's going on here.

"The transition to EVs is completely changing everything," Loren McDonald, an EV consultant, told me. "It's changing the people that automotive companies have to hire and their skills. It's changing their suppliers, their factories, how they assemble and build them. And lots of automakers are struggling with that...." Job cuts are already happening, and more may come — even after the massive autoworker strike this year that largely hinged on electrification. Such a big financial investment is needed to electrify the car industry that from July to September, Ford lost $60,000 for every EV it sold. Or peel back one more onion layer to car dealerships: Tesla, Rivian, and other EV companies are selling directly to consumers, cutting them out. EVs also require little service compared with gas vehicles, a reality that has upset many dealers, who could lose their biggest source of profit.

None of this is the future. It is happening right now.

"Since the 1960s engineers around the world have been fiddling with a novel type of jet called a rotating detonation engine (RDE), but it has never got beyond the experimental stage," reports the Economist.

"That could be about to change." GE Aerospace, one of the world's biggest producers of jet engines, recently announced it was developing a working version. Earlier this year America's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded a $29m contract to Raytheon, part of RTX, another big aerospace group, to develop an RDE called Gambit.

Both engines would be used to propel missiles, overcoming the range and speed limitations of current propulsion systems, including rockets and existing types of jet engines. However, if the companies are successful in getting them to work, RDEs might have a much broader role in aviation — including the possibility of helping revive supersonic air travel.

In a nutshell, an RDE "replaces fire with a controlled explosion", explains Kareem Ahmed, an expert in advanced aerospace engines at the University of Central Florida. In technical terms, this is because a jet engine relies on the combustion of oxygen and fuel, which is a subsonic reaction that scientists call deflagration. Detonation, by comparison, is a high-energy explosion that takes place at supersonic speeds. As a result it is a more powerful and potentially a more efficient way of producing thrust, the force that drives an aircraft forward...

By modifying an aircraft's fuselage and wings, engineers believe they can reduce the boom's impact on the ground below. Such work will help to determine whether or not future supersonic passenger planes will, like Concorde, be restricted to flying beyond the speed of sound only over oceans.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SpzToid for sharing the article.

TechCrunch argues that in 2023, "established technologies relied on by millions hit a chaos curve, making people realize how beholden they are to a proprietary platform they have little control over." The OpenAI fiasco in November, where the ChatGPT hit-maker temporarily lost its co-founders, including CEO Sam Altman, created a whirlwind five days of chaos culminating in Altman returning to the OpenAI hotseat. But only after businesses that had built products atop OpenAI's GPT-X large language models (LLMs) started to question the prudence of going all-in on OpenAI, with "open" alternatives such as Meta's Llama-branded family of LLMs well-positioned to capitalize.

Even Google seemingly acknowledged that "open" might trump "proprietary" AI, with a leaked internal memo penned by a researcher that expressed fears that open source AI was on the front foot. "We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI," the memo noted.

Elsewhere, Adobe's $20 billion megabucks bid to buy rival Figma — a deal that eventually died due to regulatory headwinds — was a boon for open source Figma challenger Penpot, which saw signups surge amid a mad panic that Adobe might be about to unleash a corporate downpour on Figma's proverbial parade. And when cross-platform game engine Unity unveiled a controversial new fee structure, developers went berserk, calling the changes destructive and unfair. The fallout caused Unity to do a swift about turn, but only after a swathe of the developer community started checking out open source rival Godot, which also now has a commercial company driving core development.
Thanks to wiggles (Slashdot reader #30,088) for sharing the article.

"Billions of people" uses social media every month, notes the Wall Street Journal.. But "fewer and fewer are actually posting."

Instead they're favoring "a more passive experience, surveys of users and research from data-analytics firms say." In an October report from data-intelligence company Morning Consult, 61% of U.S. adult respondents with a social-media account said they have become more selective about what they post. The reasons are varied: People say they feel they can't control the content they see. They have become more protective about sharing their lives online. They also say the fun of social media has fizzled. This lurker mentality is widespread, across Meta Platforms' Instagram and Facebook along with X and TikTok....

In a survey conducted in the U.S. this summer, research firm Gartner found more than half of respondents believed the quality of social media has declined in the past five years. They cited misinformation, toxicity and the proliferation of bots as reasons it has gotten worse. "The less you trust social-media brands, the less of a good experience you're having," says Gartner analyst Emily Weiss. Users are less likely to share opinions or insight into their lives since the community they are looking for isn't there, she adds. Ads and suggested posts have also sucked the joy out of apps, some users say... The algorithmic spotlight on creators and their hyper-curated content has made some users feel insecure and less likely to share their own photos and videos, says Kevin Tran, media and entertainment analyst at Morning Consult. In turn, some now think of social apps more as sources of entertainment, like YouTube or Netflix.

Gartner estimates that 50% of users will either abandon or significantly limit their interactions with social media in the next two years.
Any threat to interacting is a threat to business, the article notes, adding "The companies are responding." They are investing in more private user experiences like messaging, and making interactions more secure. And encouraging people to post to a more intimate audience — as with Instagram's recently expanded Close Friends feature... Meta responded to user complaints, saying it would continue to work on improving recommendations to help creators reach more people. The company added a snooze button that pauses suggested posts for 30 days at a time, and chronological feeds that temporarily only show posts from accounts people follow... Meta began shifting its resources toward messaging, including efforts to enable end-to-end encryption by default across all of its messaging services... TikTok has also shown signs of investing more in the messaging portion of its app, nudging users to chat with people they haven't messaged in a while.
When the Wall Street Journal posted their article on Threads, Adam Mosseri (head of Instagram) responded that "People are sharing to feeds less, but to Stories more," and "even more still" in Messages ("even photos and videos"). Mosseri also said that Instagram's Notes feature — basically a post where you cab specify a smaller subset of your followers to see it — "have quickly become a big thing, particularly for young people.

"So it's no so much that people are sharing less," Mosseri argued, "but rather than they're sharing differently."

NBC News reports that the Chinese spy balloon that flew across the U.S. in February "used an American internet service provider to communicate, according to two current and one former U.S. official familiar with the assessment."

it used the American ISP connection "to send and receive communications from China, primarily related to its navigation." Officials familiar with the assessment said it found that the connection allowed the balloon to send burst transmissions, or high-bandwidth collections of data over short periods of time.

The Biden administration sought a highly secretive court order from the federal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to collect intelligence about it while it was over the U.S., according to multiple current and former U.S. officials. How the court ruled has not been disclosed. Such a court order would have allowed U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct electronic surveillance on the balloon as it flew over the U.S. and as it sent and received messages to and from China, the officials said, including communications sent via the American internet service provider...

The previously unreported U.S. effort to monitor the balloon's communications could be one reason Biden administration officials have insisted that they got more intelligence out of the device than it got as it flew over the U.S. Senior administration officials have said the U.S. was able to protect sensitive sites on the ground because they closely tracked the balloon's projected flight path. The U.S. military moved or obscured sensitive equipment so the balloon could not collect images or video while it was overhead.
NBC News is not naming the internet service provider, but says it denied that the Chinese balloon had used its network, "a determination it said was based on its own investigation and discussions it had with U.S. officials." The balloon contained "multiple antennas, including an array most likely able to collect and geolocate communications," according to reports from a U.S. State Depratment official cited by NBC News in February. "It was also powered by enormous solar panels that generated enough power to operate intelligence collection sensors, the official said.

Reached for comment this week, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington told NBC News that the balloon was just a weather balloon that had accidentally drifted into American airspace.

Deliveries of the world's first mass-produced electric vehicle equipped with a sodium-ion battery will begin in January 2024. According to CarNewsChina, they're being produced by JAC Motors, a Volkswagen-backed Chinese automaker, through its new Yiwei EV brand. From the report: The Yiwei EV hatchback will have a cylindrical sodium-ion pack from Beijing-based HiNa Battery and adopt JAC's UE (Unitized Encapsulation) module technology. UE is also known as a honeycomb design because of its appearance. It is another battery structure concept like CATL's CTP (cell-to-pack) or BYD's Blade battery. Yiwei is a new EV brand under Anhui Jianghuai Automobile (JAC), established in 2023. JAC's parent company, Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group Holdings (JAG), is 50% state-owned, and 50% belongs to Volkswagen Group. The German automotive giant acquired its stake in 2020 in an unprecedented move to invest in China's state-owned car maker.

[...] In February 2023, JAC announced they were the first automaker to put the lithium-free sodium-ion battery on an electric vehicle. That EV was a Sehol E10X hatchback, and the Na+ battery had the following specifications: 25 kWh capacity, 120 Wh/kg energy density (single cell 140 Wh/kg), 3C to 4C charging (10% - 80% in 20 minutes), 252 km (157 miles) range for E10X, and HiNa NaCR32140 cell. Sehol was a brand under Volkswagen Anhui JV, which VW transferred to JAC in 2021. When the Yiwei brand was launched in May 2023, JAC announced that it would ditch the Sehol brand, and all vehicles are being rebadged to JAC or Yiwei. The pictures JAC released today tell us that the new sodium-ion-powered EV is the Sehol E10X. JAC hasn't yet confirmed the name of the new car under the Yiwei brand; it could be Yiwei E10X, but we have to wait for JAC's confirmation.

JAC recently pushed a lot into sodium-ion batteries R&D. During the Shanghai Auto Show in April 2023, the company showcased its first car under the Yiwei brand called Yiwei 3, which was equipped with a sodium-ion battery. However, the EV launched later in June, only with a classic LFP lithium battery, and promised the Na+ variant would come later. The Yiwei 3 is a compact hatchback that competes with Wuling Bingo, BYD Seagull, or ORA Funky Cat. It has two power train options, both front-wheel drive: 70 kW and 100 kW motor. The maximum cruising range is 505 km CLTC with a 51.5 kWh battery.

Chemists at a lab in Gloucertershire have developed a low carbon jet fuel made entirely from human sewage. James Hygate, Firefly Green Fuels CEO, said: "We wanted to find a really low-value feedstock that was highly abundant. And of course poo is abundant." The BBC reports: Independent tests by international aviation regulators found it was nearly identical to standard fossil jet fuel. Firefly's team worked with Cranfield University to examine the fuel's life cycle carbon impact. It concluded that Firefly's fuel has a 90% lower carbon footprint than standard jet fuel. Mr Hygate, who has been developing low-carbon fuels in Gloucestershire for 20 years, said although the new fuel was chemically just like fossil-based kerosene, it "has no fossil carbon, it's a fossil-free fuel."

"Of course energy would be used (in production), but when looking at the fuel's life cycle, a 90% saving is mind-blowing, so yes, we have to use energy but it is much lower compared to the production of fossil fuels," he added. [...] First, they create what they call "bio-crude." It looks like oil: thick, black, gloopy. Most importantly, it behaves like crude oil chemically. Dr Sergio Lima, who is also research director at Firefly Green Fuels, said: "What we are producing here is a fuel which is net zero." [...] The bio-kerosene is now being tested independently at the DLR Institute of Combustion Technology at the German Aerospace Center, working with Washington State University. Further future testing will also be carried out by the UK SAF (Sustainable Aviation Fuels) clearing House, based at University of Sheffield. First results have confirmed the fuel has near-identical chemical composition to A1 fossil jet fuel. The UK Department of Transport has awarded the team a 2 million pound research grant.

So they can make a test tube of kerosene in the lab. That is a long way from replacing kerosene in the world's airports. Mr Hygate has done his maths. Each human, he calculates, makes enough sewage in a year to produce 4-5 liters of bio jet fuel. To fly a passenger jet from London to New York would need the annual sewage of 10,000 people. And another 10,000 to come back. Put another way, the UK's total sewage supply would meet about 5% of the country's total aviation fuel demand. It may sound small, but he insists: "That's pretty exciting." "There's a 10% sustainable aviation fuel requirement, that's a legal mandate. And we could meet half of that with poo."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Social media companies collectively made over $11 billion in U.S. advertising revenue from minors last year, according to a study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health published on Wednesday. The researchers say the findings show a need for government regulation of social media since the companies that stand to make money from children who use their platforms have failed to meaningfully self-regulate. They note such regulations, as well as greater transparency from tech companies, could help alleviate harms to youth mental health and curtail potentially harmful advertising practices that target children and adolescents.

To come up with the revenue figure, the researchers estimated the number of users under 18 on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube in 2022 based on population data from the U.S. Census and survey data from Common Sense Media and Pew Research. They then used data from research firm eMarketer, now called Insider Intelligence, and Qustodio, a parental control app, to estimate each platform's U.S. ad revenue in 2022 and the time children spent per day on each platform. After that, the researchers said they built a simulation model using the data to estimate how much ad revenue the platforms earned from minors in the U.S. The platforms themselves don't make public how much money they earn from minors. [...]

According to the Harvard study, YouTube derived the greatest ad revenue from users 12 and under ($959.1 million), followed by Instagram ($801.1 million) and Facebook ($137.2 million). Instagram, meanwhile, derived the greatest ad revenue from users aged 13-17 ($4 billion), followed by TikTok ($2 billion) and YouTube ($1.2 billion). The researchers also estimate that Snapchat derived the greatest share of its overall 2022 ad revenue from users under 18 (41%), followed by TikTok (35%), YouTube (27%), and Instagram (16%). "As concerns about youth mental health grow, more and more policymakers are trying to introduce legislation to curtail social media platform practices that may drive depression, anxiety, and disordered eating in young people," said senior author Bryn Austin, professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. "Although social media platforms may claim that they can self-regulate their practices to reduce the harms to young people, they have yet to do so, and our study suggests they have overwhelming financial incentives to continue to delay taking meaningful steps to protect children."

Multi-link operations and the 6-GHz band promise more reliability than before. From a report: The key to a future Wi-Fi you can depend on is something called multi-link operations (MLO). "It is the marquee feature of Wi-Fi 7," says Kevin Robinson, president and CEO of the Wi-Fi Alliance. MLO comes in two flavors. The first -- and simpler -- of the two is a version that allows Wi-Fi devices to spread a stream of data across multiple channels in a single frequency band. The technique makes the collective Wi-Fi signal more resilient to interference at a specific frequency. Where MLO really makes Wi-Fi 7 stand apart from previous generations, however, is a version that allows devices to spread a data stream across multiple frequency bands. For context, Wi-Fi utilizes three bands-2.5 gigahertz, 5 GHz, and as of 2020, 6 GHz.

Whether MLO spreads signals across multiple channels in the same frequency band or channels across two or three bands, the goals are the same: dependability and reduced latency. Devices will be able to split up a stream of data and send portions across different channels at the same time -- which cuts down on the overall transmission time -- or beam copies of the data across diverse channels, in case one channel is noisy or otherwise impaired. MLO is hardly the only feature new to Wi-Fi 7, even if industry experts agree it's the most notable. Wi-Fi 7 will also see channel size increase from 160 megahertz to a new maximum of 320 MHz. Bigger channels means more throughput capacity, which means more data in the same amount of time.

That said, 320-MHz channels won't be universally available. Wi-Fi uses unlicensed spectrum -- and in some regions, contiguous 320-MHz chunks of unlicensed spectrum don't exist because of other spectrum allocations. In cases where full channels aren't possible, Wi-Fi 7 includes another feature, called puncturing. "In the past, let's say you're looking for 320 MHz somewhere, but right within, there's a 20-MHz interferer. You would need to look at going to either side of that," says Andy Davidson, senior director of technology planning at Qualcomm. Before Wi-Fi 7, you'd functionally be stuck with about a 160-MHz channel either above or below that interference.

Daihatsu, the Japanese automaker owned by Toyota, has halted domestic production after admitting it forged the results of safety tests for its vehicles for more than 30 years. From a report: The brand, best known for manufacturing small passenger cars, has stopped output at all four of its Japanese factories as of Tuesday, including one at its headquarters in Osaka, a spokesperson told CNN. The shutdown will last through at least the end of January, affecting roughly 9,000 employees who work in domestic production, according to the representative.

The move comes as Daihatsu grapples with a deepening safety scandal that Toyota says "has shaken the very foundations of the company." Last week, Daihatsu announced an independent third-party committee had found evidence of tampering with safety tests on as many as 64 vehicle models, including those sold under the Toyota brand. As a result, Daihatsu said it would temporarily suspend all domestic and international vehicle shipments and consult with authorities on how to move forward.

The scandal is another blow to the automaker, which had admitted in April to violating standards on crash tests on more than 88,000 cars, mostly sold under the Toyota brand in countries such as Malaysia and Thailand. In that case, "the inside lining of the front seat door was improperly modified" for some checks, while Daihatsu did not comply with regulatory requirements for certain side collision tests, it said in a statement at the time.

After falsified records for spare aircraft parts set off a frantic global search for suspect pieces, the aviation industry now faces another daunting task: adapting the archaic paperwork for 100 million components to the digital age. From a report: Since the middle of the year, maintenance shops and aerospace manufacturers have found thousands of engine parts with falsified records linked to a distributor called AOG Technics. Airlines from China to the US and Europe have had to pull planes from service and extract the dubious components, leaving jets grounded and racking up millions of dollars in costs.

The episode has prodded carriers and maintenance shops to bolster scrutiny of their vendors and the parts they receive. And it's given fresh weight to an ongoing push to digitize the paper-based records still prevalent in the industry to document the lifespan of every piece of an aircraft from the time that it's made to when it lands in a scrap heap. But any structural reforms to thwart would-be copycats of the scheme of which AOG is suspected are likely years away. The industry is accustomed to following standardized methods and only making fundamental changes after a detailed and often lengthy examination of potential safety risks -- and costs.

South Korea will start issuing new "digital nomad" visas starting Monday, which will allow some foreign residents to stay for up to two years while maintaining a job back home, officials said Friday. From a report: "To make remote work and vacation of foreigners in Korea smoother, we have decided to launch a new digital nomad visa," the Justice Ministry said, highlighting the rise of the "workcation" trend, where employees work remotely from a different location. "So far, foreigners were required to apply for tourist visas or just stay for less than 90 days without a visa for workcation in Korea. The new system will allow employees and employers in overseas firms to tour and work remotely in Korea for a longer period of time," it added.

Those seeking to apply must submit documents to the Korean embassy in their respective country proving that they earn an annual income of over 84.96 million won ($65,860). The figure is double the amount of Korea's gross national income per capita as of 2022, which stood at 42.48 million won. Applicants must submit additional documents including verification of employment, details of their criminal record and proof of private health insurance. They are required to hold private health insurance with coverage of at least 100 million won to ensure the ability to travel back home in an emergency situation. Applicants must also be 18 or older and have worked in their current field for at least a year.

Melbourne-based developer xssfox has championed a unique "diagonal mode" for monitors by utilizing Linux's xrandr (x resize and rotate) tool, finding a 22-degree tilt to the left to be the ideal angle for software development on her 32:9 aspect ratio monitor. As Tom's Hardware notes, Linux is the "only OS to support a diagonal monitor mode, which you can customize to any tilt of your liking." It begs the question, could 2024 be the year of the Linux diagonal desktop? From the report: Xssfox devised a consistent method to appraise various screen rotations, working through the staid old landscape and portrait modes, before deploying xrandr to test rotations like the slightly skewed 1 degree and an indecisive 45 degrees. These produced mixed results of questionable benefits, so the search for the Goldilocks solution continued. It turns out that a 22-degree tilt to the left was the sweet spot for xssfox. This rotation delivered the best working screen space on what looks like a 32:9 aspect ratio monitor from Dell. "So this here, I think, is the best monitor orientation for software development," the developer commented. "It provides the longest line lengths and no longer need to worry about that pesky 80-column limit."

If you have a monitor with the same aspect ratio, the 22-degree angle might work well for you, too. However, people with other non-conventional monitor rotation needs can use xssfox's javascript calculator to generate the xrandr command for given inputs. People who own the almost perfectly square LG DualUp 28MQ780 might be tempted to try 'diamond mode,' for example. We note that Windows users with AMD and Nvidia drivers are currently shackled to applying screen rotations using 90-degree steps. MacOS users apparently face the same restrictions.

Andy Maxwell reports via TorrentFreak: As the crew of Artemis 2 prepare to become the first humans to fly to the moon since 1972, the possibilities of space travel are once again igniting imaginations globally. More than 92% of internet users who want to learn more about this historic mission and the program in general are statistically likely to use Google search. Behind the scenes, however, the ability to find relevant content is under attack. Blundering DMCA takedown notices sent by a company calling itself DMCA Piracy Prevention Inc. claim to protect the rights of an OnlyFans/Instagram model working under the name 'Artemis'. Instead, keyword-based systems that fail to discriminate between copyright-infringing content and that referencing the word Artemis in any other context, are flooding towards Google. They contain demands to completely deindex non-infringing, unrelated content, produced by innocent third parties all over the world.

A recent deindexing demand dated December 13, 2022, lists DMCA Piracy Prevention Inc. of Canada as the sender. The name of the content owner is redacted but the notice itself states that the company represents a content creator performing under the name Artemis. The notice demands the removal of 3,617 URLs from Google search. If successful, those URLs would be completely unfindable by more than 92% of the world's population who use that search engine. [...] At least 9 of the first 20 URLs in the notice demand the removal of non-infringing articles and news reports referencing the Artemis space program. None have anything to do with the content the sender claims to protect. [...]

Theories as to who might own and/or operate DMCA Piracy Prevention Inc. aren't hard to find but the company does exist and is registered as a corporate entity in Canada. Registered at the same address is a company with remarkably similar details. BranditScan is a corporate entity operating in exactly the same market offering similar if not identical services. BranditScan has sent DMCA takedown notices to Google under three different notifier accounts.

Nvidia has throttled the performance of its GeForce RTX 4090 GPU by roughly 11%, allowing it to comply with U.S. sanctions and be sold in China. The Register reports: Dubbed the RTX 4090D, the device appeared on Nvidia's Chinese-market website Thursday and boasts performance roughly 10.94 percent lower than the model Nvidia announced in late 2022. This shows up in the form of lower core count, 14,592 CUDA cores versus 16,384 on versions sold outside of China. Nvidia also told The Register today the card's tensor core count has also been been cut down by a similar margin from 512 to 456 on the 4090D variant. Beyond this the card is largely unchanged, with peak clock speeds rated at 2.52 GHz, 24 GB of GDDR6x memory, and a fat 384-bit memory bus.

As we reported at the time, the RTX 4090 was the only consumer graphics card barred from sale in the Middle Kingdom following the October publication of the Biden Administration's most restrictive set of export controls. The problem was the card narrowly exceeded the performance limits on consumer cards with a total processing performance (TPP) of more than 4,800. That number is calculated by doubling the max number of dense tera-operations per second -- floating point or integer -- and multiplying by the bit length of the operation.

The original 4090 clocked a TPP of 5,285 performance, which meant Nvidia needed a US government-issued license to sell the popular gaming card in China. Note, consumer cards aren't subject to the performance density metric that restricts the sale of much less powerful datacenter cards like the Nvidia L4. As it happens, cutting performance by 10.94 percent is enough to bring the card under the metrics that trigger the requirement for the USA's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) to consider an export license. Nvidia notes that the 4090D can be overclocked by end users, effectively allowing customers to recover some performance lost by the lower core count. "In 4K gaming with ray tracing and deep-learning super sampling (DLSS), the GeForce RTX 4090D is about five percent slower than the GeForce RTX 4090 and it operates like every other GeForce GPU, which can be overclocked by end users," an Nvidia spokesperson said in an email.

Microsoft is working on significant updates to its Surface Pro and Surface Laptop lines. According to Windows Central, new devices "will be announced in the spring and will be marketed as Microsoft's first true next-gen AI PCs." From the report: For the first time, both Surface Pro and Surface Laptop will be available in Intel and Arm flavors, and both will have next-gen NPU (neural processing unit) silicon. Sources are particularly excited about the Arm variants, which I understand will be powered by a custom version of Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X Series chips. Internally, Microsoft is calling next-generation Arm devices powered by Qualcomm's new chips "CADMUS" PCs. These PCs are purpose-built for the next version of Windows, codenamed Hudson Valley, and will utilize many of the upcoming next-gen AI experiences Microsoft is building into the 2024 release of Windows. Specifically, Microsoft touts CADMUS PCs as being genuinely competitive with Apple Silicon, sporting similar battery life, performance, and security. The next Surface Pro and Surface Laptop are expected to be some of the first CADMUS PCs to ship next year in preparation for the Hudson Valley release coming later in 2024.

So, what's changing with the Surface Laptop 6? I'm told this new Surface Laptop will finally have an updated design with thinner bezels, rounded display corners, and more ports. This will be the first time that Microsoft's Surface Laptop line is getting a design refresh, which is well overdue. The Surface Laptop 6 will again be available in two sizes. However, I'm told the smaller model will have a slightly larger 13.8-inch display, up from 13.5 inches on the Surface Laptop 5. Sources say the larger model remains at 15-inches. I'm told Surface Laptop 6 will also have an expanded selection of ports, including two USB-C ports and one USB-A port, along with the magnetic Surface Connect charging port. Microsoft is also adding a haptic touchpad (likely with Sensel technology) and a dedicated Copilot button on the keyboard deck for quick access to Windows Copilot.

The next Surface Pro is also shaping into a big update, although not as drastic as the Surface Laptop 6. According to my sources, the most significant changes coming to Surface Pro 10 are mostly related to its display, which sources say is now brighter with support for HDR content, has a new anti-reflective coating to reduce glare, and now also sports rounded display corners. I've also heard that Microsoft is testing a version of Surface Pro 10 with a slightly lower-resolution 2160 x 1440 display, down from the 2880 x 1920 screen found on previous Surface Pro models. Sources say this lower-resolution panel is only being considered for lower-tier models, meaning the more expensive models will continue to ship with the higher-resolution display. Lastly, I also hear Microsoft is equipping the next Surface Pro with an NFC reader for commercial customers and a wider FoV webcam, which will be enhanced with Windows Studio Effects. It should also be available in new colors. I've also heard we may get an updated Type Cover accessory with a dedicated Copilot button for quick access to Windows Copilot.

Google has indicated that it is ready to settle a class-action lawsuit filed in 2020 over its Chrome browser's Incognito mode. From a report: Arising in the Northern District of California, the lawsuit accused Google of continuing to "track, collect, and identify [users'] browsing data in real time" even when they had opened a new Incognito window. The lawsuit, filed by Florida resident William Byatt and California residents Chasom Brown and Maria Nguyen, accused Google of violating wiretap laws.

It also alleged that sites using Google Analytics or Ad Manager collected information from browsers in Incognito mode, including web page content, device data, and IP address. The plaintiffs also accused Google of taking Chrome users' private browsing activity and then associating it with their already-existing user profiles. Google initially attempted to have the lawsuit dismissed by pointing to the message displayed when users turned on Chrome's incognito mode. That warning tells users that their activity "might still be visible to websites you visit."

Web software firm 37Signals has migrated off the cloud after spending $3.2 million on Amazon Web Services last year, said co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson, who is also the creator of Ruby on Rails. The Basecamp project management software-maker bought $600,000 of Dell servers and expects to save over $7 million in five years by running operations in-house. From a report: DHH likened clouds to "merchants of complexity" where they are incentivized to make things as complex as possible to keep customers hooked. He compared that to the original Internet, which was not built on complex cloud services geared for multi-tenancy, but rather on simpler tools such as Linux and PHP, which anyone could use without cost. This is not to say cloud has zero value for all use cases, [Kelsey] Hightower and DHH agreed.

Clouds make perfect sense in many cases, for start-ups that do not know how much infrastructure they will need, and also for enterprises with a lack of expertise and money to burn. For many companies in the middle, though a lot of profit margin can be recovered by reducing cloud costs and running things in-house instead, the two argued.