In a period of less than nine months, Google received requests to remove over a billion links to pirate sites from its search engine. This is a significant increase compared to recent years, but not necessarily a new trend. More than a quarter of all reported links, relating to a single website, were sent by MindGeek, the parent company of PornHub. TorrentFreak reports: Google first started to keep track of these takedown notices at the beginning of the last decade. In the spring of 2012, Google launched its Transparency Report which publishes all DMCA requests the company receives, including the targeted links and their senders. This provided fuel for hundreds of news reports as well as academic research. A few days ago, Google reached a new milestone when it processed the seven billionth removal request. It's a mind-boggling number that comes less than a year after the six billionth takedown was recorded.

Looking more closely at the timeline, we see that a billion URLs were reported to Google search in less than nine months. For comparison, it took twice as long to go from five to six billion, suggesting that the takedown volume picked up again after a previously reported decline. There's no denying the recent surge in reported links but much of the increase was generated by a single rightsholder in an effort to remove a particular pirate operation from Google search.

Around the start of the year MG Premium began to increase its takedown efforts. The company is an intellectual property vehicle of the MindGeek conglomerate, known for popular adult sites such as PornHub. One of MG Premium's main goals is to shut down âunlicensed' sites or at least make when unfindable. [...] The surge is clearly visible in the graph above and at times the company was averaging more than two million takedown requests per day. More recently the volume has come down a bit, but it's been a major contributor to Google's takedown uptick.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: Scientists have discovered that the Sun produces higher energy light than was thought possible. An unusual type of telescope detected gamma rays with energies of over 1 tera electron volt (TeV), at least five times more energetic than previously known. The Sun emits light spanning a wide range of energies, from infrared through visible light and up to ultraviolet. It was previously predicted that the Sun could produce gamma rays -- electromagnetic radiation with the highest energy -- through interactions with cosmic rays from distant sources, but these would rarely reach Earth to be detectable. A few decades later, these gamma rays were eventually detected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in 2011. With more and more observations over the years since, Fermi found that the Sun was producing around seven times more gamma rays than had been predicted. Their energies were detected at up to 200 giga electron volts (GeV), which is the upper limit that Fermi can pick up.

So for the new study, scientists used a different instrument that's sensitive beyond that limit. The instrument in question is called the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory (HAWC), and it works in a way unlike your everyday telescope. It's made up of a series of 300 big tanks filled with 200 tons of water each. When gamma rays hit molecules in the Earth's atmosphere, they create a cascade of lower energy particles, and these can interact with the water molecules in those big tanks. Sensitive instruments keep watch for these interactions, and scientists can work backwards to calculate the energy of the original gamma ray. Using HAWC data gathered between 2015 and 2021, the researchers discovered that the Sun was producing gamma rays with energies well beyond that which Fermi detected. They were reaching energies on the scale of TeV, with some spiking to almost 10 TeV. Exactly how the Sun produces them remains a mystery, the team says, but further research will investigate how their energy gets so high and what role the Sun's magnetic field might play. The research was published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Treasure hunters are aiming to prove there were tons of loot in the ground in Pennsylvania -- and that the government took it. WSJ: Dennis Parada points to a weedy spot where he believes the Federal Bureau of Investigation dug up nine tons of Civil War-era gold, worth more than $500 million, and made off with it in the middle of the night. The patch of ground halfway up a mountain in western Pennsylvania lies at the heart of the treasure hunter's quest to recover the trove and prove it was snatched from under his nose. The matter is now playing out in federal court.

At 70, he has been chasing the Dents Run gold for more than 40 years. "It's definitely a major coverup," says Parada, who has the mustache of a 19th-century gambler and smokes his cigarettes down to a stub. Tales of lost Civil War-era gold have stirred imaginations for generations though few fortunes have been made. One exception was a pile of more than 700 gold coins minted in the mid-1800s that a farmer unearthed in a Kentucky cornfield earlier this year.

In April 1865, Confederate President Jefferson Davis fled Richmond, Va., with gold that would be worth millions today. Union troops later seized a large portion in Georgia, but that was then stolen at gunpoint. Other stories of lost Confederate gold abound in the South. People across the U.S. have hunted for lost rebel treasure in Virginia, Georgia, Arkansas, Missouri -- and the bottom of Lake Michigan. The searches have inspired novels and films, including "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly," starring Clint Eastwood. Far less attention has been paid to tales of Union gold.

Paramount said on Monday it had reached a deal to sell Simon and Schuster, one of the biggest and most prestigious publishing houses in the United States, to the private-equity firm KKR, in a major changing of the guard in the books business. From a report: The deal, for $1.62 billion, will put control of the cultural touchstone behind authors like Stephen King and Bob Woodward in the hands of a financial buyer with an expanding presence in the publishing industry. While private equity investors have had a significant footprint in the book business --different firms have owned literary agencies, publishing houses and the retailer Barnes & Noble -- the acquisition of one of the largest publishers in the country vastly increases the hold of financial interests in the business.

[...] Since Simon & Schuster was first put up for sale in 2020, many in the publishing industry have fretted over where the company might land. A sale to another publisher would mean the new management would understand the book business. But it would also mean further consolidation in the industry, with potentially fewer players available to bid on big books, and the chance of layoffs as redundant jobs were eliminated. It could also raise regulatory scrutiny: Paramount's first attempt to sell Simon & Schuster, to Penguin Random House in 2020, was derailed by government antitrust concerns.

Britain faces being left with no hope of meeting its crucial climate crisis goals and losing its status as a world leader in offshore wind energy without an urgent overhaul of government support, ministers are being warned. From a report: The sudden halting of one of the country's biggest offshore windfarm projects last month could signal a "tipping point" in the construction of new sites unless ministers intervene, a number of senior energy industry figures told the Observer.

They warn that a swathe of new projects, which Britain is relying on to meet key climate targets, could also become economically unviable under the existing regime. While the industry has been hit by huge price inflationary pressures, it warns that the government has failed to adjust the scheme that guarantees the price it is paid for energy. "If the government doesn't do something, there's a very real risk that, come September, just before party conferences, the story won't just be about getting rid of the 'green crap' -- it'll be about failing to deliver on the projects they've already said that they wanted," said one industry insider.

Iraq's telecoms ministry said it has blocked the Telegram messaging app over national security concerns and in order to preserve the integrity of users' personal data, which it said the app had mishandled. From a report: The app is widely used in Iraq for messaging but also as a source of news and for sharing content. Some channels contain large amounts of personal data including the names, addresses and family ties of Iraqis. The ministry said in a statement it had asked the app to close down "platforms that leak the data of the official state institutions and the personal data of citizens... but the company did not respond and did not interact with any of these requests."

After a hurricane hit Florida, 484 buildings just at the Tyndall Air Force base were destroyed or damaged beyond repair. Five years later, it's part of a $5 billion, nine-year rebuilding effort the Washington Post describes as rare "blank slate." The plan is "not merely to rebuild it, but to construct what the U.S. military calls 'the installation of the future,' which will be able to withstand rising seas, stronger storms and other threats..." The rebuild at Tyndall, which is expected to continue into 2027, marks the largest military construction project undertaken by the Pentagon. "Think of it as the Air Force throwing its Costco card down on the table and buying buildings in bulk," said Michael Dwyer, deputy chief of the Natural Disaster Recovery Division. A dizzying array of new technologies and approaches have been incorporated into the effort, from semiautonomous robot dogs patrolling the grounds to artificial intelligence software designed to detect and deter any armed person who enters the base.

But the most robust funding is aimed at making Tyndall more efficient, connected and resilient in the face of a warming world. Structures under construction — from dormitory complexes to a child care center to hangars that will house three new squadrons of the F-35A Lightning II later this year — are being built to withstand winds in excess of 165 mph. Steel frames, high-impact windows, concrete facades and roofing with additional bracing are among the features meant to weather the stronger storms to come.

At nearby Panama City, sea level rise has accelerated in recent years, with federal data showing seas have risen there more than 4 inches since 2010. Planners factored in the potential for as much as 7 feet of sea level rise by the end of the century, and as a result placed the "vast majority" of new buildings at elevations that should be safe from storm surges for decades, Dwyer said. In addition, sensors placed near the low spots of buildings will send alerts the moment a flood threatens. The Air Force also has created a "digital twin" of Tyndall — essentially, a virtual duplicate of the base that allows officials to simulate how roads, buildings and other infrastructure would hold up in different scenarios, such as a hurricane or historic rainfall events.
Other efforts include restoring the beach's 10-foot sand dunes and its rocky shoreline, along with "the installation of submerged oyster reef breakwater that can reduce wave energy and erosion."

But the article points out that the Air Force also has a second hope for their base: "that the lessons unfolding here can be replicated at other bases around the world that will face — or already are facing — similar threats...

The Australian news service 9News reports on the "strongest sign yet" that Australia is headed toward a "totally cashless society... the number of notes in circulation officially declining for the first time since dollars and cents were introduced in 1966." According to data from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), more than a billion dollars worth of physical cash disappeared from circulation in the last financial year, a shift that's likely to make life more difficult for the elderly and for those in the regions. Authorities say less cash will also hurt the nation's criminals, who rely heavily on its use, making it harder for them to make transactions undetected...

The RBA's survey of consumers' payment trends revealed that a third of Aussies now consider themselves "low cash users" — meaning they claim to use cash for less than 20 per cent of all their in-person transactions. In 2019, about half of the nation's residents were reported as such... It's expected that cash use will continue to decrease in the coming years, similar to the use of cheques, which are set to wrap up completely in the country by 2030.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: This is straight out of science fiction. The technology is absolutely incredible..." says a woman who received an AI-powered bionic arm. "I'm just absolutely in awe of the technology and excited about the future prospects this will give me."

The short video clip (produced by the BBC) also features the woman's doctor explaining that "the top section is customized to fit...with electrodes there recording the unique pattern of movement, that then talk to a little computer inside the forearm that then, through AI, build data and record those movements to tell the arm what to do."

A GoFundMe campaign had raised £296,613 (about $378,121 USD) to purchase the bionic arm — and last week the grateful recipient shared a long-awaited status update. "It's here. It fits. It works...! 6 months after I first signed up in the clinic I have my bionic arm. State of the art, tailored to my body, the price of a very nice sports car. 24h in and I'm already putting it to good use. The feeling of freedom is unbeatable. Being able to carry things in 2 hands! Open a bottle! Give my husband a 2 arm hug!

"I wouldn't have been able to do this without you, you believed in me since the very beginning. You stood by me in my darkest hour. THANK YOU."

Recently science author Sam Kean reviewed In a Flight of Starlings, a "slender, uneven collection of essays by Giorgio Parisi about his life in physics, from his student days in Rome to the work that won him a share of the 2021 Nobel Prize in physics."

But the reviewer makes an interesting point: As someone who writes about science history, I have long grumbled about how misleading modern scientific papers are. I understand the need to present scientific findings in a clean, concise way, but the papers also omit all the false starts, blind alleys, broken equipment, and dumb mistakes that beset real scientific research every day. By omitting all the human stuff, the papers fail to explain how science really gets done. Parisi raises a related complaint — that scientific papers omit all sense of intuition. Indeed, the best sections of the book explore the role of intuition in scientific thinking.

He quotes a friend who says that "a good mathematician understands immediately which mathematical statements are true and which are false, whereas a bad mathematician has to try to prove them in order to know." The same applies to science: the early stages of any project are chaotic, and the data can be confusing and even contradictory. Scientists need intuition to cut through the mess and focus on the most promising explanations. Much of this intuition is unconscious and, while still grounded in physical brain processes, remains murky and hard to reconstruct. And for whatever reason, that vagueness makes scientists uncomfortable. "In almost all texts written by scientists," Parisi notes, "these themes are taboo."

So it's refreshing to see a scientist, especially one of Parisi's stature, honestly discuss the fuzzy side of scientific thinking, and not just during the early, groping stages but in the technical phases of a project, too. "The physicist sometimes uses mathematics ungrammatically," he admits, "a license that we grant to poets" as well... In a Flight of Starlings, Parisi writes, "is my attempt to convey to a wide readership something of the beauty, importance, and cultural value of modern science." Does he succeed? At times, yes... Perhaps it's not unlike the hodgepodge of science itself, then...

Is natural gas really a cleaner alternative to coal and oil? That claim "is facing increasing scrutiny," writes Slashdot reader sonlas: One significant concern with natural gas is the release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, during its extraction, production, transportation, and processing. Methane is approximately 30 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO2 over a 100-year period. (And methane leaks can occur at various stages of the gas supply chain, from wellhead emissions during drilling and extraction to leakage during transportation and distribution.) Additionally, intentional venting or flaring of methane also contributes to the problem.

An article published in Environmental Research Letters challenges the assumption that natural gas is a cleaner energy source compared to coal or oil. Their study takes into account the full lifecycle emissions of natural gas, including methane leakage rates, and arrives at a different conclusion. With a methane leakage rate of 7.5% and other relevant factors considered, the greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas can be on par with or even exceed those of coal. Even a lower methane leakage rate of 2% can diminish the environmental advantage of natural gas significantly.

A key aspect of this study is its focus on real-world methane leakage rates. Aerial measurements conducted in various oil and gas production regions in the U.S. revealed substantial methane leak rates ranging from 0.65% to a staggering 66.2%. (Similar leakage rates have been identified in other parts of the world.) These findings raise serious concerns about the climate impact of natural gas and cast doubt on its role as a so-called "transition energy" in the quest for cleaner and more sustainable energy sources, especially liquefied natural gas...

This complicates the search for sustainable energy solutions, especially in Europe where gas was included in the green taxonomy following a push from Germany.

A new analysis "shows that over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential is available along the U.S. coastline," capable of fulfilling up to 25% of U.S. energy demand in 2050. (And it could also add $1.8 trillion in economy-boosting investment, while employing up to 390,000 workers.)

This new analysis comes from Berkeley researchers, who worked with nonprofit clean energy research firm GridLab and climate policy think tank Energy Innovation, reports the Verge: The Biden administration has committed to halving the nation's emissions by the end of the decade and has plans to source electricity completely from carbon pollution-free energy by 2035. Adding to that urgency, U.S. electricity demand is forecast to nearly triple by 2050, according to the Berkeley report. On top of a growing economy, the clean energy transition means electrifying more vehicles and homes — all of which put more stress on the power grid unless more power supply comes online at a similar pace.

To meet that demand and hit its climate goals, the report says the U.S. has to add 27 gigawatts of offshore wind and 85 GW of land-based wind and solar each year between 2035 and 2050. That timeline might still seem far away, but it's a big escalation of the Biden administration's current goal of deploying 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030. Europe, with an electricity grid about 70% the size of the U.S., already has about as much offshore wind capacity as the Biden administration hopes to build up by the end of the decade. Right now, wind energy makes up just over 10% of the U.S. electricity mix, and nearly all of that comes from land-based turbines...

For now, the U.S. has just two small wind farms off the coasts of Rhode Island and Virginia. Construction started on the foundations for the nation's first commercial-scale wind farm off Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, in June... Project costs have gone up with higher interest rates and rising prices for key commodities like steel, Heatmap reports. That's led to power purchase agreements falling through for some projects in early development, including plans in Rhode Island for an 884-megawatt wind farm that alone would have added more than 20 times as much generation capacity as the U.S. has today from offshore wind. Developers are struggling to make projects profitable without passing costs on to consumers...

The study found a modest 2 to 3 percent increase in wholesale electricity costs with ambitious renewable energy deployment. But renewable energy costs have fallen so dramatically in the past that the researchers think those costs could wind up being smaller over time.
The report points out that wind energy complements solar, by producing the most wind energy right when demand is peaking (in the summertime on the West Coast, and during the winter on the East Coast).

In February of 1994 Jon "maddog" Hall interviewed a young Linus Torvalds (then just 24). Nearly three decades later — as Hall approaches his 73rd birthday — he's shared a long essay looking back, but also assessing today's controversy about Red Hat's licensing of RHEL. A (slightly- condensed] excerpt: [O]ver time some customers developed a pattern of purchasing a small number of RHEL systems, then using the "bug-for-bug" compatible version of Red Hat from some other distribution. This, of course, saved the customer money, however it also reduced the amount of revenue that Red Hat received for the same amount of work. This forced Red Hat to charge more for each license they sold, or lay off Red Hat employees, or not do projects they might have otherwise funded. So recently Red Hat/IBM made a business decision to limit their customers to those who would buy a license from them for every single system that would run RHEL and only distribute their source-code and the information necessary on how to build that distribution to those customers. Therefore the people who receive those binaries would receive the sources so they could fix bugs and extend the operating system as they wished.....this was, and is, the essence of the GPL.

Most, if not all, of the articles I have read have said something along the lines of "IBM/Red Hat seem to be following the GPL..but...but...but... the community! "

Which community? There are plenty of distributions for people who do not need the same level of engineering and support that IBM and Red Hat offer. Red Hat, and IBM, continue to send their changes for GPLed code "upstream" to flow down to all the other distributions. They continue to share ideas with the larger community. [...]

I now see a lot of people coming out of the woodwork and beating their breasts and saying how they are going to protect the investment of people who want to use RHEL for free [...] So far I have seen four different distributions saying that they will continue the production of "not RHEL", generating even more distributions for the average user to say "which one should I use"? If they really want to do this, why not just work together to produce one good one? Why not make their own distributions a RHEL competitor? How long will they keep beating their breasts when they find out that they can not make any money at doing it? SuSE said that they would invest ten million dollars in developing a competitor to RHEL. Fantastic! COMPETE. Create an enterprise competitor to Red Hat with the same business channels, world-wide support team, etc. etc. You will find it is not inexpensive to do that. Ten million may get you started.

My answer to all this? RHEL customers will have to decide what they want to do. I am sure that IBM and Red Hat hope that their customers will see the value of RHEL and the support that Red Hat/IBM and their channel partners provide for it. The rest of the customers who just want to buy one copy of RHEL and then run a "free" distribution on all their other systems no matter how it is created, well it seems that IBM does not want to do business with them anymore, so they will have to go to other suppliers who have enterprise capable distributions of Linux and who can tolerate that type of customer. [...]

I want to make sure people know that I do not have any hate for people and companies who set business conditions as long as they do not violate the licenses they are under. Business is business.

However I will point out that as "evil" as Red Hat and IBM have been portrayed in this business change there is no mention at all of all the companies that support Open Source "Permissive Licenses", which do not guarantee the sources to their end users, or offer only "Closed Source" Licenses....who do not allow and have never allowed clones to be made....these people and companies do not have any right to throw stones (and you know who you are).

Red Hat and IBM are making their sources available to all those who receive their binaries under contract. That is the GPL.

For all the researchers, students, hobbyists and people with little or no money, there are literally hundreds of distributions that they can choose, and many that run across other interesting architectures that RHEL does not even address.
Hall answered questions from Slashdot users in 2000 and again in 2013.

Further reading: Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst answering questions from Slashdot readers in 2017.

"For the second time this year, Wells Fargo acknowledged that deposits were not showing up in customers' accounts," reports NBC News: In an emailed statement Friday morning, a Wells Fargo representative said the issue was affecting a "limited number of customers," and that "the vast majority" of instances had been resolved before noon, while the "few remaining" would be resolved soon. This week's incident mirrored one encountered by Wells Fargo customers in March, which the company then blamed on an unspecified "technical issue...."

Customers nationwide appeared to be affected by this week's outage. Jeani Cortez, a single, disabled, self-employed accountant and Alaska resident, says she was supposed to have paid her rent, gas, electric and internet payments for the month by now with funds she deposited Wednesday. She said she was told Friday by a Wells Fargo representative that she would not be able to access her deposit for another three to five business days. She'd earlier been told that Wells Fargo could send her a letter to give to her creditors; that too has not arrived.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press: A judge has ordered criminal charges dropped against the final executive accused of lying about problems building two nuclear reactors in South Carolina that were abandoned without generating a watt of power. The judge tossed the charges Wednesday because ratepayers of the utility that lost billions of dollars on the project were improperly allowed on the grand jury that indicted Westinghouse Electric Co. executive Jeffrey Benjamin. But federal judge Mary Geiger Lewis also ruled that nothing is stopping prosecutors from properly seeking another indictment. "We're not going away," said assistant U.S. Attorney Winston Holliday, who said prosecutors are still reviewing the ruling to decide their next steps...

The project fell apart in 2017 after nearly a decade of work, when executives and regulators determined construction of the reactors was so hopelessly behind schedule they could not get nearly $2 billion of tax breaks needed to help pay for the work. SCANA contracted with Westinghouse to build the reactors. Prosecutors said Benjamin , who was in charge of major projects, knew of delays and cost overruns but lied to regulators, utility executives and others. The lies led to electric rate increases while keeping the price of SCANA's stock from plummeting...

Two former SCANA executives have been sentenced to federal prison after pleading guilty to their roles in lying to ratepayers, regulators and investors. Former CEO Kevin Marsh received two years while chief operating officer Stephen Byrne was sentenced to 15 months. Former Westinghouse project director Carl Churchman has pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents investigating the project's failure and is awaiting sentencing.

Bram Moolenaar was Vim's creator/maintainer/benevolent-dictator for life. Early this morning his family shared sad news on the Vim-announce Google Group. "It is with a heavy heart that we have to inform you that Bram Moolenaar passed away on 3 August 2023." Moolenaar was 62 years old, and died from "a medical condition that progressed quickly over the last few weeks."

"Bram dedicated a large part of his life to VIM and he was very proud of the VIM community that you are all part of."

Anyone who's used Vim has seen evidence of Moolenaar's generosity. "Vim is Charityware," Moolenaar wrote in its pioneering license. "You can use and copy it as much as you like, but you are encouraged to make a donation for needy children in Uganda." Moolenaar pioneered the concept of charityware decades ago, and also helped to popularize its adoption. To this day Vim users can still view the license by typing the command :help Uganda or :help ICCF. And Vim's sponsor FAQ notes that "Each registered Vim user and sponsor who donates at least 10 euro will be able to vote for new features."

Moolenaar's personal web site also includes photos from his travels around the world, and YouTube has some videos of talks and interviews with Moolenaar.

He was still committing changes to Vim up until a month ago.

In the comments below long-time Slashdot reader bads shares a link to a post from long-time Vim contributor Christian Brabandt : Bram was a great leader to the Vim community and I really enjoyed working with him over the past years, since I became involved with the development of Vim almost 20 years ago.

Bram was of great inspiration in creating a great community, helping people with his charity and he was a great mentor. And now he left too soon. We lost a great leader and I regret never having met him in person.

However to all of the community: I will continue and I hope all of the other contributors will also keep up the good work. I do have access to the Vim homepage and the Vim organization (not sure if all the rights, but I am sure we will work on the details in the near future...) I hope together we will be able to continue successfully.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ProPublica: The Environmental Protection Agency approved a component of boat fuel made from discarded plastic that the agency's own risk formula determined was so hazardous, everyone exposed to the substance continually over a lifetime would be expected to develop cancer. Current and former EPA scientists said that threat level is unheard of. It is a million times higher than what the agency usually considers acceptable for new chemicals and six times worse than the risk of lung cancer from a lifetime of smoking. Federal law requires the EPA to conduct safety reviews before allowing new chemical products onto the market. If the agency finds that a substance causes unreasonable risk to health or the environment, the EPA is not allowed to approve it without first finding ways to reduce that risk. But the agency did not do that in this case. Instead, the EPA decided its scientists were overstating the risks and gave Chevron the go-ahead to make the new boat fuel ingredient at its refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Though the substance can poison air and contaminate water, EPA officials mandated no remedies other than requiring workers to wear gloves, records show.

ProPublica and the Guardian in February reported on the risks of other new plastic-based Chevron fuels that were also approved under an EPA program that the agency had touted as a "climate-friendly" way to boost alternatives to petroleum-based fuels. That story was based on an EPA consent order, a legally binding document the agency issues to address risks to health or the environment. In the Chevron consent order, the highest noted risk came from a jet fuel that was expected to create air pollution so toxic that 1 out of 4 people exposed to it over a lifetime could get cancer. In February, ProPublica and the Guardian asked the EPA for its scientists' risk assessment, which underpinned the consent order. The agency declined to provide it, so ProPublica requested it under the Freedom of Information Act. The 203-page risk assessment revealed that, for the boat fuel ingredient, there was a far higher risk that was not in the consent order. EPA scientists included figures that made it possible for ProPublica to calculate the lifetime cancer risk from breathing air pollution that comes from a boat engine burning the fuel. That calculation, which was confirmed by the EPA, came out to 1.3 in 1, meaning every person exposed to it over the course of a full lifetime would be expected to get cancer.

Another serious cancer risk associated with the boat fuel ingredient that was documented in the risk assessment was also missing from the consent order. For every 100 people who ate fish raised in water contaminated with that same product over a lifetime, seven would be expected to develop cancer -- a risk that's 70,000 times what the agency usually considers acceptable. When asked why it didn't include those sky-high risks in the consent order, the EPA acknowledged having made a mistake. This information "was inadvertently not included in the consent order," an agency spokesperson said in an email. [...] The risk assessment makes it clear that cancer is not the only problem. Some of the new fuels pose additional risks to infants, the document said, but the EPA didn't quantify the effects or do anything to limit those harms, and the agency wouldn't answer questions about them. Some of these newly approved toxic chemicals are expected to persist in nature and accumulate in living things, the risk assessment said. That combination is supposed to trigger additional restrictions under EPA policy, including prohibitions on releasing the chemicals into water. Yet the agency lists the risk from eating fish contaminated with several of the compounds, suggesting they are expected to get into water. When asked about this, an EPA spokesperson wrote that the agency's testing protocols for persistence, bioaccumulation and toxicity are "unsuitable for complex mixtures" and contended that these substances are similar to existing petroleum-based fuels. The EPA did address the concerns in June when it proposed a rule that "would require companies to contact the agency before making any of 18 fuels and related compounds listed in the Chevron consent order," notes ProPublica. "The EPA would then have the option of requiring tests to ensure that the oil used to create the new fuels doesn't contain unsafe contaminants often found in plastic, including certain flame retardants, heavy metals, dioxins and PFAS. If approved, the rule will require Chevron to undergo such a review before producing the fuels, according to the EPA."

Capella Space's synthetic aperture radar satellites are falling back to Earth much sooner than than the three years they were anticipated to operate, according to publicly available satellite data. TechCrunch reports: The startup has launched a total of ten small satellites to low Earth orbit since 2018, including eight in its family of "Whitney"-class spacecraft. Five of these satellites have reentered the atmosphere since the end of January of this year, including three of the Whitneys. Those Whitney sats were in orbit for less than two-and-a-half years; one, Capella-5, was in orbit for less than two years. That leaves five of the constellation in orbit, including the Capella-9 and Capella-10 launched on March 16, which are operating at an altitude of around 584 km and 588 km, respectively.

According to filings with the Federal Communication Commission, the propulsion system of Capella-9 was built by Phase Four. At least one of the satellites that has reentered prematurely, Capella-5, also used Phase Four propulsion. In that same filing from March 2022, Capella said its Capella-9 satellite would operate at an orbital altitude of 525 km, and maintain an altitude between 475-575 km for three years. It seems this is the typical mission profile of Capella satellites. But Capella-7 and Capella-8, launched in January 2022, appear to be now operating below 400 kilometers, and will likely deorbit in a matter of weeks to a few months. The unexpected decay could be due to a problem with the propulsion system, or a systematic miscalculation of its requirements.

"Probably they [Capella-7 and Capella-8] will reenter in Sep-Oct or so," astronomer and analyst Jonathan McDowell said when reviewing the data at TechCrunch's request. "I suspect propulsion failures but certainly it isn't clear." In a statement to TechCrunch, Capella CEO Payam Banazadeh confirmed that some of the satellites have been deorbiting faster than expected "due to the combination of increased drag due to much higher solar activity than predicted by NOAA and less than expected performance from our 3rd party propulsion system." "We have upgraded our propulsion system on all future satellites to account for these facts, including the launch of our next generation satellite Acadia-1, currently scheduled for launch on August 5th 2023. We plan to launch eight of our next generation Acadia satellites over the next 12 months," he added.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Jordi Van DenBussche used to devote every waking hour to building his presence on social media. The gaming creator, better known as Kwebbelkop, would labor 24/7 onhis YouTube channelcoming up with video ideas, shooting them, distributing them. He did this while courting brand deals and doing the other work integral to his survival on the platform. Five years ago, he ran into a problem. "Every time I wanted to take a holiday or I needed some time for myself, I couldn't really do that, because my entire business would stop," he says. It's an issue known as the "key person problem." Without Van Den Bussche on camera, the entire Kwebbelkop enterprise didn't work. He was too busy making videos to think about how to scale his business, and too tired to create videos. He needed a break: Around 2018, like many other YouTubers, he experienced significant burnout.

The burnout sparked a change in mindset. He began thinking about what would benefit him and what would benefit the creator industry -- which often relies on milking the on-camera presence of an individual until they reach a breaking point, then finding another person seeking fame and fortune. He came up with a solution: a series of AI tools designed to create and upload videos, practically without his involvement. "I'm retired from being an influencer," he says. "I've had a lovely career. I had a lot of fun. I want to take things to the next level. And that means making this brand live on forever."

Van Den Bussche's AI influencer platform, which launched this week after a suitably excitable level of hype on Twitter from its creator, is his attempt to make that happen. It comprises two versions of an AI tool. The first is trained on a creator's likeness -- their on-camera performances and what they say in videos -- and is used to create new content. It appears to be similar to Forever Voices,the controversial AI tool behind the CarynAI virtual influencer, which outsourced maintaining connections with fans on behalf of creators. The other involves simplifying the act of creation as much as possible by taking simple prompts -- such as "turn this article into a video formatted like an interview involving two people" -- and producing the end result. (The latter is similar toa tool called QuickVid, which has seen some early adoption.) Van Den Bussche won't reveal much about how the tools were built, but regardless of their origins they're coming at a critical time for generative AI and its impacts on how people work. And Van Den Bussche's way of doing things could have lasting impacts on creators on YouTube and beyond.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Austria's leader is proposing to enshrine in the country's constitution a right to use cash, which remains more popular in the Alpine nation than in many other places. Chancellor Karl Nehammer said in a statement on Friday that "more and more people are concerned that cash could be restricted as a means of payment in Austria." His office said that the "uncertainty" is fueled by contradictory information and reports. "People in Austria have a right to cash," Nehammer said. [...]

The chancellor's proposal, according to his office, involves a "constitutional protection of cash as a means of payment," ensuring that people can still pay with cash, and securing a "basic supply" of cash in cooperation with Austria's central bank. Austria is one of 20 countries that are part of the euro area. Nehammer said he has instructed Finance Minister Magnus Brunner to work on the proposal and plans to hold a round table with the ministries concerned, finance industry representatives and the central bank in September. "Everyone should have the opportunity to decide freely how and with what he wants to pay," he said. "That can be by card, by transfer, perhaps in future also with the digital euro, but also with cash. This freedom to choose must and will remain."

Freedom Party leader Herbert Kickl accused Nehammer of stealing his party's ideas and argued that the chancellor's "suddenly discovered love of cash" was meant only "to secure his political survival." The biggest opposition party in the current parliament, the center-left Social Democrats, has called for at least one ATM in every municipality and accused Nehammer of "pure populism." "Even if we write the word 'cash' into the constitution 100 times, there won't be a single ATM more in Austria," said the head of its parliamentary group, Philip Kucher.