An anonymous reader shared this report from Boston.com. On Thursday, Massachusetts Attorney general Andrea Campbell "began enforcing the state's new right-to-repair law following years of bitter debate and a wildly expensive ballot initiative that was approved by voters in 2020." In a nutshell, the law requires automakers selling cars in the state to provide customers and independent repair businesses with access to a type of information called "telematics." The term refers to information that is first detected by a car and then transmitted wirelessly elsewhere. This information can be used to easily ascertain problems with a vehicle...

Now, new car dealers must tell buyers what kind of data is being collected by a car's telematics system and provide them with a way to access that data. It must also be accessible to independent auto repair shops. If this does not happen, car owners and repairs shops can sue carmakers either triple damages or $10,000, whichever is greater. Manufacturers must equip vehicles starting with model year 2022 with a standardized platform for telematics data that owners can access through a mobile application. Owners can then make this information available to independent repair shops and dealers...

The lawsuit has yet to be resolved, and last week carmakers asked US District Judge Douglas Woodlock to issue a temporary restraining order that would prevent Campbell from enforcing the law. In a hearing Woodlock took issue with the law, calling its goal "likely unattainable" and that its enforcement could harm carmakers, according to the Globe. But ultimately Woodlock said that he would not block enforcement.

"The people have voted on this and that's the result," he said. "I am loath to impose my own views on the initiative."

Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: In April a tourist in Hawaii followed GPS driving directions straight into a harbor. And one month later, another tourist did the exact same thing — driving into the same harbor. One onlooker remembers "screaming the whole time to get her attention but her GPS had told her to go there, so she drove right in."

When asked if they'd add warning signs, a state government spokeperson said no. "It's really clear that it is a ramp and it leads directly into the water." Although an information specialist for Hawaii's Department of Transportation did offer future tourists this advice.

"If you see a body of water, don't drive towards it."

Linux computer vendor System76 shared some news in a recent blog post. "We prefer to disable the Intel Management Engine wherever possible to reduce the amount of closed firmware running on System76 hardware. We've resolved a coreboot bug that allows the Intel ME (Management Engine) to once again be disabled."

Phoronix reports that the move will "benefit their latest Intel Core 13th Gen 'Raptor Lake' wares as well as prior generation devices." Intel ME is disabled for their latest Raptor lake laptops and most older platforms with some exceptions like where having a silicon issue with Tiger Lake. System76 has also added a new firmware setup menu option for enabling/disabling UEFI Secure Boot. The motivation here with making it easier to toggle Secure Boot is for allowing Windows 11 support with SB active while running System76 Open Firmware.

ARM has joined the Linux Foundation's Open Programmable Infrastructure project, "a community-driven initiative focused on creating a standards-based open ecosystem for next-generation architectures and frameworks" based on programmable processor technologies like DPUs (Data Processing Units) and IPUs (Infrastructure Processing Units).

From the Linux Foundation's announcement: Launched in June 2021 under the Linux Foundation, the project is focused on utilizing open software and standards, as well as frameworks and toolkits, to enable the rapid adoption of DPUs. Arm joins other premier members including Dell Technologies, F5, Intel, Keysight Technologies, Marvell, Nvidia, Red Hat, Tencent, and ZTE. These member companies work together to create an ecosystem of blueprints and standards to ensure that compliant DPUs work with any server.

DPUs are used today to accelerate networking, security, and storage tasks. In addition to performance benefits, DPUs help improve data center security by providing physical isolation for running infrastructure tasks. DPUs also help to reduce latency and improve performance for applications that require real-time data processing. As DPUs create a logical split between infrastructure compute and client applications, the manageability of workloads within different development and management teams is streamlined.

"Arm has been contributing to the OPI Project for a while now," said Kris Murphy, Chair of the OPI Project Governing Board and Senior Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat. "Now, as a premier member, we are excited that they're bringing their leadership to the Governing Board and expertise to the technical steering committee and working groups. Their participation will help to ensure that the DPU components are optimized for programmable infrastructure solutions."

"Across network, storage, and security applications, DPUs are already proving the power efficiency and capex benefits of specialized processing technology," said Marc Meunier, director of ecosystem development, Infrastructure Line of Business, Arm and member of OPI Governing Board. "As a premier member of the OPI project, we look forward to contributing our expertise in heterogeneous computing and working with other leaders in the industry to create solution blueprints and standards that pave the way for successful deployments."

"The DPU market offers an opportunity for us to change how infrastructure services can be deployed and managed," Arpit Joshipura, General Manager, Networking, Edge, and IoT, the Linux Foundation. "With collaboration across software and hardware vendors representing silicon devices and the entire DPU software stack, the OPI Project is creating an open ecosystem for next generation data centers, private clouds, and edge deployments."

Swiss start-up Sun-Ways has developed a concept to install solar panels between train tracks, using a specially built train to "unroll" the panels during the night when fewer trains are running. Fast Company reports: As wild as it all sound, Sun-Ways actually has two competitors. Greenrail and Bankset Energy, respectively located in Italy and England, are already testing similar concepts. But Sun-Ways stands out in two ways. For one, it uses standard-size panels, whereas the others use smaller panels that are placed on top of crossties. And unlike its competitors, Sun-ways doesn't require manual installation. It has a train for that!

Sun-ways is putting this idea to the test during a $560,000 pilot project in Western Switzerland. The pilot, which is slated for this summer, will trial a version of the mechanism using a regular train that's been retrofitted for the occasion. Running on a 140-foot stretch near the city of Neuchatel, the train will install about 60 solar panels, turning the gap between train tracks into a reflective black ribbon.

For now, 100% of the electricity generated by the solar panels will go straight to the grid to power nearby households. But eventually, the team is planning to use some of that electricity to power the very trains that run above the panels. According to Danichert, 5,000 kilometers of "solar rails" (which is the current length of the entire Swiss railroad network) can generate 1 gigawatt of energy per year, or enough energy to power about 750,000 homes. Considering there are over 1 million kilometers of railway tracks worldwide, the potential could be huge, even if the system can't be installed on every one of those tracks. But most importantly, it wouldn't take up any space from farmland or forests, and it wouldn't ruin any landscapes.

Windows Insiders in the Dev and Canary channels now have access to an updated version of MS Paint, featuring dark mode support and more granular zoom settings. The update also introduces a zoom slider in the lower-right corner of the app, a new Settings page, new keyboard shortcuts, and "many accessibility and usability improvements to dialogs throughout the app." Ars Technica reports: Paint's new dark mode is only subtly different from the version that Microsoft promised and pulled back in August 2021. If anything, the dark mode we're getting looks a little darker, and the app makes wider use of the "Mica" material that picks up a subtle color tint from your desktop wallpaper.

Updates to the Paint app are notable partly because the app went without updates for so long, and Microsoft even went so far as to announce the end of its development in 2017. The features that have been added to the app during the Windows 11 era have been relatively minor, all things considered, but minor updates are much better than the decade-plus of inactivity the app was subjected to before. Other longstanding built-in Windows apps like Notepad, Sound Recorder, and Media Player have gotten similar attention over the last two years.

New submitter terrorubic shares a report from Reuters: The United States said it will stop providing Russia some notifications required under the New START arms control treaty from Thursday, including updates on its missile and launcher locations, to retaliate for Moscow's 'ongoing violations' of the accord. In a fact sheet on its website, the State Department said it would also stop giving Russia telemetry information - remotely gathered data about a missile's flight - on launches of U.S. intercontinental and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has not formally withdrawn from the treaty, which limits deployed strategic nuclear arsenals. On Feb. 21, he said Russia would suspend participation, imperiling the last pillar of U.S.-Russian arms control. Signed in 2010 and due to expire in 2026, the New START treaty caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the countries can deploy. Under its terms, Moscow and Washington may deploy no more than 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads and 700 land- and submarine-based missiles and bombers to deliver them. "The State Department said it continues to notify Russia of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and submarine ballistic missile (SLBM) launches in accordance with the 1988 Ballistic Missile Launch Notifications Agreement, and of strategic exercises in accordance with a separate 1989 accord," notes Reuters.

New submitter Peppercopia writes: CTV News is reporting that Meta will begin testing the blocking of news sites in Canada. If the argument is that the social media giants are unfairly benefitting from content from Canadian news organizations, this move should be moot as the 'stealing' would now be stopping. Unfortunately the opposite is likely the case, and the news organizations will find out how important the free traffic and promotion they are getting from social media giants really is. It feels a bit like killing the golden goose to get the eggs. The move is designed to "work out the kinks" before permanently blocking news on its platforms when the Canadian government passes the Online News Act. According to CTV News, the test "will affect up to five percent of its 24 million Canadian users."

"The company says the randomly selected users won't be able to see some content including news links as well as reels, which are short-form videos, and stories, which are photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours." Media organizations will be chosen at random.

In a blog post today, YouTube said it will stop removing content that "advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in the 2020 and other past US Presidential elections." The online video platform says that the "ability to openly debate political ideas, even those that are controversial or based on disproven assumptions, is core to a functioning democratic society -- especially in the midst of election season." The Verge reports: YouTube first introduced its election misinformation policy in December 2020, which barred users from posting content that spread false claims about the integrity of US elections. The platform says it has removed "thousands" of videos since implementing the policy. "In the current environment, we find that while removing this content does curb some misinformation, it could also have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm," YouTube states. "As with any update to our policies, we carefully deliberated this change."

Despite the policy reversal, YouTube says it will continue to enforce rules that prevent users from discouraging others from participating in an election. It will also take action against content that aims to mislead users about the time, place, or requirements for voting as well as content that disputes the validity of mail-in voting. Additionally, YouTube says it still prominently surfaces content from "authoritative sources" in search results and recommendations.

In a support document today, Microsoft announced its ending support for Cortana on Windows in late 2023. "Cortana continues to live on in Outlook mobile, Teams mobile, Teams display, and Teams rooms," notes XDA Developers. From the report: In the support document announcing the end of the Cortana era, Microsoft notes that you'll still be able to access AI experiences in Windows 11, and calls out Windows Copilot by name. Alongside that, there's the new Bing, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and voice access in Windows, the last of which lets you control your PC with your voice.

The writing has been on the wall for Cortana for some time now. It was first introduced as a virtual assistant for Windows Phone 8.1, back in 2014, competing with the likes of Apple's Siri. In 2015, it launched on the desktop with Windows 10, and then it started to feel like Microsoft was putting Cortana everywhere. It started showing up in apps like Office and such, similar to what we're seeing with Copilot now. There were third-party Cortana devices too, like the Harman Kardon Invoke smart speaker and the Johnson Controls Glas thermostat, both of which are no longer supported.

Soon after it started becoming apparent that Cortana wouldn't compete with Amazon Alexa, Microsoft started to roll back. Cortana was stripped out of Windows, becoming a standalone app rather than something you found in the taskbar. For a couple of years now, it's just kind of lived as an app on Windows 11, with no news arriving about any kinds of new features. Now is the era of Bing Chat and Copilot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Now more than a year into the tech "correction," the denial phase is over. There appears to be a broad consensus that lower valuations are here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. But for well-capitalized private companies, it can take a while for the dominos to fall. We've started to see once highly valued businesses sell for disappointing outcomes or shut down altogether. There's a term for these erstwhile unicorns that have seen their valuations crash: unicorpses.

We're starting to see businesses that were valued at hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars on paper, evaporate. While last year saw ill-fated failures for fintech business Fast and crypto money mis-manager FTX, the pace of unicorn deaths seems to be accelerating. Just last week we saw the fire sale of truck software business Embark, which went public in 2021 via a SPAC, valued at $4.25 billion. It sold to a private buyer for just over $70 million. Then there was the case of Plastiq, a highly valued lending and payments business that was supposed to go public via a SPAC last year, but failed to list. The company has now filed for bankruptcy. Not to mention, Elizabeth Holmes finally went to jail this week for her famously fraudulent business, Theranos.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Over the past 24 hours, several news outlets reported a now-retracted story claiming that the US Air Force had run a simulation in which an AI-controlled drone "went rogue" and "killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective." The US Air Force has denied that any simulation ever took place, and the original source of the story says he "misspoke." The story originated in a recap published on the website of the Royal Aeronautical Society that served as an overview of sessions at the Future Combat Air & Space Capabilities Summit that took place last week in London.

In a section of that piece titled "AI -- is Skynet here already?" the authors of the piece recount a presentation by USAF Chief of AI Test and Operations Col. Tucker "Cinco" Hamilton, who spoke about a "simulated test" where an AI-enabled drone, tasked with identifying and destroying surface-to-air missile sites, started to perceive human "no-go" decisions as obstacles to achieving its primary mission. In the "simulation," the AI reportedly attacked its human operator, and when trained not to harm the operator, it instead destroyed the communication tower, preventing the operator from interfering with its mission.

Google Wallet on Android is finally getting ready for your digital driver's license and other US state IDs. Google says the feature is rolling out this month, and it will slowly start bringing states online this year. From a report: Of course, your state has to be one of the few that actually supports digital IDs. Google says Maryland residents can use the feature right now and that "in the coming months, residents of Arizona, Colorado and Georgia will join them." The road to digital driver's license support has been a long one, with the "Identity Credential API" landing in Android 11 back in 2020. Since then it has technically been possible for states to make their own ID app.

Now Google Wallet, Google's re-re-reboot of its payment app, is providing a first-party way to store an ID on your phone. Some parts of the Identity Credential API landed in Google Play Services (Google's version-agnostic brick of APIs), so Wallet supports digital IDs going back to Android 8.0, which covers about 90 percent of Android devices. Maryland has supported Digital IDs on iOS for a while, which gives us an idea of how this will work. An NFC transfer is enough to beam your credentials to someone, where you can just tap against a special NFC ID terminal and confirm the transfer with your fingerprint. Wallet has an NFC option, along with a "Show code" option that will show the traditional driver's license barcode.

Apple's savings account, a partnership with Goldman Sachs, launched in April to great fanfare. Some customers say it has been hard to get their money out. From a report: Nathan Thacker, who lives outside Atlanta, had been trying to transfer $1,700 from his Apple account to JPMorgan Chase since May 15. Each time he called Goldman's customer service department, he said, he was told to give it a few more days. The money arrived in his Chase account Thursday morning, he said, after The Wall Street Journal contacted Goldman about his and other customers' experiences. Others said they also had trouble transferring money from their new Apple accounts. Customer service representatives at Goldman, which holds the deposits, sometimes gave differing responses about what to do, they said. Sometimes, their money appeared to have simply vanished, not showing up in their Apple account or in the account they were trying to move it to.

[...] On brand-new accounts, like Apple's, transfers that make up a large share of the overall balance can trigger anti-money-laundering alerts or other security concerns that require additional review, according to people in the AML field. Those delays usually last five or so days, they said. It can also be a red flag when a customer tries to transfer a large amount of money from a newly opened savings account into an account that is different from the one where the money originally came from.

PC makers from Lenovo to Samsung are pinning their hopes for reviving laptop sales on upgraded displays. From a report: At the Computex show in Taiwan this week, every major local electronics brand showed off new laptop models with OLED displays, the same technology used in smartphones. Asustek Computer, Acer, Gigabyte Technology and Micro-Star International all expanded their portfolios, hoping to drive an upgrade cycle and revive flagging sales. OLED produces more vibrant colors, greater uniformity and superior contrast compared to conventional LCD technology, but it uses more energy and comes at a higher cost. It's become the universal standard on smartphones, after debuting on the highest-end devices, and Samsung's display subsidiary has been advocating its proliferation to larger form factors. "At Asus, we believe that OLED panels are truly the future of laptop displays," Asus co-chief executive officer Samson Hu told Bloomberg.

The Taipei-based company, led by Hu and fellow engineer S.Y. Hsu, has a 55% share of the OLED notebook market today, having introduced its first such models two years ago. But it's a small market: OLED represents about 3% of notebook shipments, according to Asus' data. Cost is a key issue: a 15.6-inch OLED panel commands a price 2.5 to 3 times higher than a comparable LCD screen, according to IDC analyst Annabelle Hsu. Companies pass at least some of that expense to consumers: an Asus Vivobook 15 with OLED and some other upgrades costs $699 versus $549 for the LCD model. Part of the problem is that there's a practical monopoly over the category: Samsung Display has more than 99% of the laptop OLED market. Asus' co-CEOs said they hope suppliers like BOE or LG Display enter the fray to drive down prices.

An anonymous reader shares a report: During the pandemic, when many workers saw their teams only via videoconference, Mark Zuckerberg's embrace of virtual reality seemed somewhat reasonable. The company renamed itself Meta Platforms and prioritized bringing about the "metaverse," a digital immersive world where people could meet up and do things together -- including their jobs -- while wearing VR headsets at home. Meta is still selling this vision to corporate customers, as well as consumers. The company debuted its Quest 3 headset on Thursday. Apple is expected to unveil an ambitious version that will compete with Meta on Monday.

But so far, Meta isn't practicing what it preaches. Employees across the organization generally aren't using the headsets -- especially not for work meetings, according to 11 current and former employees. Even those in the VR part of the organization don't use it regularly for work, said one former employee, who, like the others, declined to be named discussing internal culture. Meta only provides headsets to employees if they've signed up for an internal program to test new features before the public. Otherwise, they get a discount, the people said. Some teams -- including policy head Nick Clegg's -- tried experimental VR meetings, only to abandon the practice after finding it uncomfortable and glitchy, one of the people said. Some of the glitches may be attributed to the testing program.

Meta Platforms employees assigned to an office will have to start coming in three days a week starting in September, as the company shifts to a more structured hybrid schedule. From a report: The move won't affect workers who currently have remote positions, Meta said in a statement Thursday. The three-day mandate only applies to workers already in an office some days. It will take effect Sept. 5. "We're confident people can make a meaningful impact both from the office and at home," a Meta spokesperson said. The change is meant to foster "the collaboration, relationships and culture necessary for employees to do their best work," the spokesperson said.

Amazon has been talking with wireless carriers about offering low-cost or possibly free nationwide mobile phone service to Prime subscribers, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing people familiar with the situation. From a report: The company is negotiating with Verizon, T-Mobile US and Dish Network to get the lowest possible wholesale prices. That would let it offer Prime members wireless plans for $10 a month or possibly for free and bolster loyalty among its biggest spending customers, the people said, who requested anonymity to discuss a private matter. The talks have been going on for six to eight weeks and have also included AT&T at times, but the plan may take several more months to launch and could be scrapped, one person said.

The Japanese space agency (JAXA) and NASA plan to launch a satellite made of wood in 2024. The Independent reports: The high durability of wood in space was recently tested and confirmed at the International Space Station (ISS) by an international group of scientists led by those from Kyoto University. Their experiments showed wood samples tested at the ISS for durability underwent minimal deterioration and maintained good stability. Preliminary inspection, including strength tests and crystal structural analyses, of the wood samples was also done once they were brought back to Earth from the ISS by Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata.

Despite extreme conditions in space, including temperature changes and exposure to intense cosmic rays and dangerous solar particles for 10 months, tests found no changes in the samples, such as cracking, warping, peeling or surface damage, according to a recent Kyoto University statement. The retrieved wood specimens were tested and showed no deformation after space exposure and also did not undergo any mass change before and after space exposure, scientists said.

The international research group has determined that the satellite LignoSat, slated to be jointly launched in 2024 by Nasa and Japan's space agency Jaxa, will likely use Magnolia wood -- "Hoonoki" in Japanese. Magnolia, researchers said, has relatively high workability, dimensional stability and overall strength, making its properties ideal for the mission. Wood also has some benefits compared to complex alloys used in space vehicles, as it is environmentally friendly, easier to produce and can be disposed off better at the end of a satellite's life. Such wooden satellites may also be designed to completely burn up on re-entry into the atmosphere and even if small fragments did survive, they may decompose easily.

North America has emerged as the fastest-growing market for new battery cell manufacturing factories, driven by incentives provided by the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), according to a report by Clean Energy Associates. Electrek reports: CEA says that China is still the leading battery cell manufacturing hub, but its share will decline in "coming years." Europe has seen delays and cancellations of several planned battery factories, mostly due to high energy prices and other countries' pro-clean energy and EV manufacturing policies luring projects away. Global EV battery usage increased by 72% in just a year, from 2021 to 2022. And going forward, CEA forecasts an impressive two-year 186% growth rate on the 1,706 GWh of batteries produced in 2022.

The reason is obvious for the rapid increase in battery factories: The International Energy Agency's "Global EV Outlook 2023" reports that EV sales exceeded 10 million in 2022, and 14% of all new cars sold were electric in 2022 -- up from around 9% in 2021 and less than 5% in 2020. And battery and EV manufacturing are only going to continue to experience huge growth.