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

Lockheed Martin may see more than $800 million in payments withheld through next June until it wins approval for the software powering its most advanced version of the F-35, according to newly disclosed delivery figures. From a report: The No. 1 US defense contractor is on tap to finish production of about 52 of the upgraded TR-3 model fighter jets by Dec. 31 and approximately 12 per month after that, or 72 more by June 30, for as many as 124 jets, according to the data released Monday by Russ Goemaere, the Pentagon's spokesman on the F-35.

The Pentagon is withholding $7 million per aircraft until the new software is validated because the aircraft are being placed in storage until then. At 124 jets, that's $868 million. Last month, the Defense Department withheld $7 million on each of the first four upgraded F-35s. The aircraft needs the delay-plagued software upgrade to function fully with new cockpit hardware before it can carry more precise weapons and gather more information on enemy aircraft and air defenses. The upgrade will increase processing power 37 times and memory 20 times over the F-35's current capabilities.

Popular Science reports that America's Department of Energy "is providing a nearly $400 million loan to a startup aimed at scaling the manufacturing and deployment of a zinc-based alternative to rechargeable lithium batteries."

If realized, Eos Energy's utility- and industrial-scale zinc-bromine battery energy storage system could provide cheaper, vastly more sustainable options for the country's burgeoning renewable power infrastructure... Unlike lithium-ion and lithium iron phosphate batteries, alternatives such as the Eos Z3 design rely on zinc-based cathodes alongside a water-based electrolyte, notes MIT Technology Review. This important distinction both increases their stability, as well as makes it incredibly difficult for them to support combustion. Zinc-bromine batteries meanwhile also boast lifespans as long as 20 years, while existing lithium options only manage between 10 and 15 years. What's more, zinc is considered the world's fourth most produced metal...

The U.S. Department of Energy also notes that "over time," Eos expects to source almost all of its materials within the U.S., thus better insulating its product against the market volatility and supply chain issues. While the Department of Energy previously issued similar loans to battery recycling and geothermal energy projects, last week's announcement marks the first funding offered to a manufacturer of lithium-battery alternatives.
MIT's article notes that Eos's semi-autonomous facility in Pennsylvania already produces around 540 megawatt-hours annually — and it isn't operating at full capacity. This new loan could boost factory toward full-power. The $398-million loan funds "up to four state-of-the-art production lines," according to the announcement from the U.S. Energy Department.

It notes that the technology is "specifically designed for long-duration grid-scale stationary battery storage that can assist in meeting the energy grids' growing demand with increasing amounts of renewable energy penetration." If finalized, the project is expected to manufacture 8 GWh of storage capacity annually by 2026. That is enough to provide electricity to over 300,000 average U.S. homes instantaneously or meet the annual electricity needs of approximately 130,000 homes if fully charged and discharged daily. The project is expected to create up to 50 union contractor construction jobs and as many as 650 new operations jobs when at full operational capacity...

Critically, Eos batteries are non-flammable and do not require active cooling to operate. The batteries can achieve 100% depth of discharge...

"12 people account for the lion's share of anti-vaccination propaganda posted to three of the leading social media outlets," NPR reported in 2021, citing a study from a London-based group opposed to online hate and disinformation."

But this week Ars Technica reports that one of those 12 "lost a lawsuit attempting to force YouTube to provide access to videos that were removed from the platform after YouTube banned his channels." Joseph Mercola had tried to argue that YouTube owed him more than $75,000 in damages for breaching its own user contract and denying him access to his videos. However, in an order dismissing Mercola's complaint, U.S. magistrate judge Laurel Beeler wrote that according to the contract Mercola signed, YouTube was "under no obligation to host" Mercola's content after terminating his channel in 2021 "for violating YouTube's Community Guidelines by posting medical misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines."

"The court found no breach because 'there is no provision in the Terms of Service that requires YouTube to maintain particular content' or be a 'storage site for users' content,'" Beeler wrote. Because Mercola's contract with YouTube was found to be enforceable and "YouTube had the discretion to take down content that harmed its users," Beeler said that Mercola did not plausibly plead claims for breach of contract or unjust enrichment.

Mercola's complaint was dismissed without leave to amend.
Thanks to ArchieBunker (Slashdot reader #96,909) for sharing the article.

According to Android specialist Mishaal Rahman, Android miscalculates the storage space taken up by system components, leading to inflated system storage utilization and potentially misleading users. Chandraveer Mathur writes via Android Police. From the report: We usually rely on Android's storage utilization utility to find apps and files eating up storage space, so we can uninstall or delete them if required. However, Android specialist Mishaal Rahman discovered that Google's calculation of the space consumed by Android system components is flawed. He executed shell commands to create a 3GB file in the /data/media/0 storage directory, which isn't a file path used for Android system files. However, the phone's storage breakdown showed a marked 3GB increase under the System heading, suggesting the OS suddenly became bigger.

This happens because Android calculates system storage as the space used up by anything other than what's covered by other categories in the storage breakdown, including audios, videos, images, documents, trash, and games. This means the System heading in the break doesn't just include Android system files. Android 14 also uses this dangerously flawed logic for calculating storage usage. Moreover, the Files app by Google also shows similar storage utilization by Android system components, perhaps because it uses the same incredulous attribution logic. By association, all other Android skins use flawed calculation of used storage space, but Samsung reportedly fixed this issue with the One UI 6 update. After running similar ADB commands as in the previous experiment, Rahman could confirm the increased utilization showed up under the Other files heading in the storage breakdown, instead of the System heading.

Cerabyte, a technology startup pioneering ceramic nanolayer-based storage, claims it will usher in the "Yottabyte Era" and disrupt the $500 billion storage market in the process. Tom's Hardware reports: More specifically, its roadmaps sketch out CeraMemory cartridges (2025-30) storing between 10 PB and 100 PB, and its CeraTape (2030-35) with up to 1 EB capacity per tape. According to the startup, these new formats are poised to address density, performance, and access paradigms, as well as the cost and sustainability demands of datacenters. Cerabyte, a German storage startup, has published an abstract from its upcoming presentation at the 2023 Storage Developer Conference in Fremont, California (h/t Blocks and Files). Here, for the first time, it will detail how it will introduce CeraMemory with inorganic nanolayers, using 50-100 atoms thick ceramics to store information. Scaling ceramic data storage technology from 100nm to 3nm bit sizes will scale the corresponding data density from GB/cm2 to units measured in TB/cm2, reckons Cerabyte.

To record data to CeraMemory, Cerabyte says that a laser beam or particle beam structures data matrices similar to QR codes. Data reading can be done with equipment using high-resolution microscopic imaging techniques or electron beam microscopy. Initially, there will be no need for particle beams/electron microscopy, as those technologies will only be required later in the roadmaps at the highest densities. In its abstract from the 'Ceramic Nano Memory -- Data Storage for the Yottabyte Era' presentation, Cerabyte says its technology can read and write data at GB/s class speeds. These read/write technologies are "low power," according to the storage startup. Another seemingly excellent inherent property of ceramic storage is the touted media durability and longevity. On its website, Cerabyte says that its media can last "5,000+ years" and that the data stored can ensure through "a wide temperature range of -273C (-460F) to 300C (570F)." We have used quotes here, as those are extraordinary figures. Additionally, it is boasted that CeraMemory is resistant to corrosive, acidic, radioactive environments and EMP disruption.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Toyota says a recent disruption of operations in Japan-based production plants was caused by its database servers running out of storage space. On August 29th, it was reported that Toyota had to halt operations on 12 of its 14 Japan-based car assembly plants due to an undefined system malfunction. As one of the largest automakers in the world, the situation caused production output losses of roughly 13,000 cars daily, threatening to impact exports to the global market.

In a statement released today on Toyota's Japanese news portal, the company explains that the malfunction occurred during a planned IT systems maintenance event on August 27th, 2023. The planned maintenance was to organize the data and deletion of fragmented data in a database. However, as the storage was filled to capacity before the completion of the tasks, an error occurred, causing the system to shut down. This shutdown directly impacted the company's production ordering system so that no production tasks could be planned and executed.

Toyota explains that its main servers and backup machines operate on the same system. Due to this, both systems faced the same failure, making a switchover impossible, inevitably leading to a halt in factory operations. The restoration came on August 29th, 2023, when Toyota's IT team had prepared a larger capacity server to accept the data that was partially transferred two days back. This allowed Toyota's engineers to restore the production ordering system and the plants to resume operations.

"France and Germany lead the camps in disagreeing on the future of nuclear in Europe," write two climate policy journalists. On the Energy Post blog they explore why — citing energy experts and politicians.

Germany "ultimately completed its nuclear exit in April 2023," while France "has the highest share of nuclear in the energy mix of any country in the world." [A] major concern is that more nuclear means less renewables, at a time when wind and solar need all the scale they can get... In a joint attempt to provide greater technical clarity on the nuclear power debate, French think tank IDDRI and German Agora Energiewende set out in 2018 to understand how nuclear energy will influence the transformation of energy systems in both countries. They found that if a high share of coal or nuclear based conventional power capacity stays online in both countries, this will likely to delay the time when market prices allow renewable power operators to cover their production costs and run the operations at a profit. They also found that exporting surplus electricity with conventional plants bites into renewable power investments abroad. At the same time, the growing share of renewables would eventually render most conventional plants unprofitable. "In order to avoid stranded assets, it is essential to gradually reduce conventional capacities," the bi-national report concluded...

Xavier Moreno, president of French think tank Ecological Realities and Energy Mix Study Circle (Cereme) and former vice president of French utility company Suez, said the all-renewables approach was complicated by a lack of viable electricity storage technologies. "Technically speaking, it would be necessary to store up to 20 percent to be able to smoothen renewable power supply." Those who believe that this will be possible through a combination of different storage options are chasing "a dream," Moreno argued.
The issue comes up when trading power in Europe's integrated energy market: should gate closure times be based on a decentralised, flexible renewables-based system, or a centralised grid based on nuclear baseloads? Rainer Hinrichs-Rahlwes, European policy expert for the German Renewable Energy Federation lobby group, says "Nuclear power plants and their inflexible output can cause grid congestion, the opposite of what is needed to accommodate large shares of wind and solar in a modern and flexible grid system."

The article notes that France plans to eliminate coal use by 2038, and already has one of the lowest emissions per head of any rich country. But "In mid-2023, 800 French scientists warned against the risks of the country's new nuclear programme, pointing to unresolved questions of radioactive waste management, which remain largely unresolved in most of the EU, including in France. The scientists also warned against risks of accidental contamination or meltdown."

Thanks to Slashdot reader AleRunner for submitting the article.

Microsoft has patented an AI-powered backpack design featuring a plethora of sensors that may include cameras, microphones, GPS, and a compass. Tom's Hardware reports: Additionally, Microsoft thinks it may be useful to add in LEDs and speakers, as well as a haptic actuator, into the straps. Some real-time processing is deemed necessary to the smart wearable. Thus, various recognition modules are proposed to provide image, text, speech, facial, and cognitive recognition. As well as real-time monitors feeding data to the built-in processing power for AI smarts, the system housed in the backpack also will boast a recording device (using on-board storage), wireless connectivity, battery power / charging and more.

With all the above sensing and processing on your person, in the backpack, it is envisioned that wearers will benefit from AI enhanced object identification and analysis, nearby device interaction, and be able to gain contextual insights. A flow chart shows how the backpack and its data feed might work alongside personal computers and cloud servers. Other illustrations show the wandering backpack wearer navigating a ski resort, and checking out supermarket prices, as well as considering booking concert tickets. Sometimes the user may interact with the backpack's on-board AI via speech, e.g. "Hey Backpack, add this poster to my calendar." Alternatively some AI actions or contextual tasks may be instigated by interacting with sensors on the straps. You can view the patent application here.

Dell and Samsung are the latest beneficiaries of the current frenzy of speculation surrounding anything AI related, with both vendors seeing a rise in share prices related to their future AI prospects. From a report: Shares in Dell were said to be up 8 percent in extended trading following the Round Rock company releasing its results for the second quarter of its financial year 2024. These showed that revenue was $22.9 billion, down 13 percent on the same period last year. However, this figure was also up 10 percent on the previous quarter, with the company attributing this growth to rising demand for AI-optimized servers, as well as its PowerStore and PowerFlex storage systems. AI accounted for 20 percent of server revenue in the first half of the year, Dell said.

Similarly, Dell said it is seeing growth in demand for its workstations designed to help organizations run complex AI workloads locally, with its commercial client revenue hitting $10.6 billion. This accounted for the lion's share of the Client Solutions Group second quarter revenue of $12.9 billion, which was down 16 percent year-on-year but up 8 percent on the last quarter. Dell vice chairman and chief operating officer Jeff Clarke said that the company continued to focus on the most profitable segments of the market where he claimed Dell has a leading position.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the New York: In 2017, Michael Moritz, a billionaire venture capitalist, sent a note to a potential investor about what he described as an unusual opportunity: a chance to invest in the creation of a new California city. The site was in a corner of the San Francisco Bay Area where land was cheap. Moritz and others had dreams of transforming tens of thousands of acres into a bustling metropolis that, according to the pitch, could generate thousands of jobs and be as walkable as Paris or the West Village in New York.

He painted a kind of urban blank slate where everything from design to construction methods and new forms of governance could be rethought. And it would all be a short distance from San Francisco and Silicon Valley... Since then, a company called Flannery Associates has been buying large plots of land in a largely agricultural region 60 miles northeast of San Francisco. The company, which has little information public about its operations, has committed more than $800 million to secure thousands of acres of farmland, court documents show. One parcel after another, Flannery made offers to every landowner for miles, paying several times the market rate, whether the land had been listed for sale or not...

Brian Brokaw, a representative for the investor group, said in a statement that the group was made up of "Californians who believe that Solano County's and California's best days are ahead." He said the group planned to start working with Solano County residents and elected officials, as well as with Travis Air Force Base, next week... The land that Flannery has been purchasing is not zoned for residential use, and even in his 2017 pitch, Moritz acknowledged that rezoning could "clearly be challenging" — a nod to California's notoriously difficult and litigious development process. To pull off the project, the company will almost certainly have to use the state's initiative system to get Solano County residents to vote on it. The hope is that voters will be enticed by promises of thousands of local jobs; increased tax revenue; and investments in infrastructure like parks, a performing arts center, shopping, dining and a trade school.
Moritz's 2017 email had argued their project "should relieve some of the Silicon Valley pressures we all feel — rising home prices, homelessness, congestion etc."

SFGate estimates the group now owns 52,000 acres — "an empire that is nearly double the size of the city of San Francisco" — and notes that some details emerged when the group filed a document to repond to a lawsuit. "It claims it told landowners that they could keep 'existing income streams from wind energy and natural gas storage,' could 'continue using these properties rent-free for decades,' and would receive 'significant grants from Flannery for charitable giving, to be used at the [landowners'] discretion to support local schools and other non-profits.'"

"Tech billionaires reportedly backing mysterious Solano County land grab," reads the headline on SFGate's latest article: SFGATE reported earlier this week that a survey had circulated to Solano County residents asking for their opinions on the potential development of "a new city with tens of thousands of new homes, a large solar energy farm, orchards with over a million new trees, and over ten thousand acres of new parks and open space."

"The green energy revolution still faces a huge obstacle: a lack of long-term, cost-efficient renewable storage," writes the Washington Post.

But then they check in on a Finnish start-up running the world's first commercial-scale sand battery, which uses solar panels and wind turbines to heat sand-filled vats (up to 1,000 degrees) to back up district heating networks: The sand can hold onto the power for weeks or months at a time — a clear advantage over the lithium ion battery, the giant of today's battery market, which usually can hold energy for only a number of hours.

Unlike fossil fuels, which can be easily transported and stored, solar and wind supplies fluctuate. Most of the renewable power that isn't used immediately is lost. The solution is storage innovation, many industry experts agree. In addition to their limited capacity, lithium ion batteries, which are used to power everything from mobile phones to laptops to electric vehicles, tend to fade with every recharge and are highly flammable, resulting in a growing number of deadly fires across the world. The extraction of cobalt, the lucrative raw material used in lithium ion batteries, also relies on child labor. U.N. agencies have estimated that 40,000 boys and girls work in the industry, with few safety measures and paltry compensation. These serious environmental and human rights challenges pose a problem for the electric vehicle industry, which requires a huge supply of critical minerals.

So investors are now pouring money into even bigger battery ventures. More than $900 million has been invested in clean storage technologies since 2021, up from $360 million the year before, according to the Long Duration Energy Storage Council, an organization launched after that year's U.N. climate conference to oversee the world's decarbonization. The group predicts that by 2040, large-scale, renewable energy storage investments could reach $3 trillion. That includes efforts to turn natural materials into batteries. Once-obscure start-ups, experimenting with once-humble commodities, are suddenly receiving millions in government and private funding. There's the multi-megawatt CO2 battery in Sardinia, a rock-based storage system in Tuscany, and a Swiss company that's moving massive bricks along a 230-foot tall building to store and generate renewable energy. One Danish battery start-up, which stores energy from molten salt, is sketching out plans to deploy power plants in decommissioned coal mines across three continents...

But in order to succeed, natural batteries will need to provide the same kind of steady power as fossil fuels, at scale. Whether that can be achieved remains to be seen, say energy experts. And the industry may be subject to the same pitfalls that loom over the renewables energy sector at large: Projects will need to be constructed from scratch, and they might only be adopted in developed countries that can afford such experimentation. Lovschall-Jensen, the CEO of a Danish molten salt-based storage start-up called Hyme, says the challenge will be maintaining the same standards to which the modern world has become accustomed: receiving power, on demand, with the flip of a switch.

He believes that natural batteries, though still in their infancy, can serve that goal.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: A buzzy startup offering financial infrastructure to crypto companies has found itself bankrupt primarily because it can't gain access to a physical crypto wallet with $38.9 million in it. The company also did not write down recovery phrases, locking itself out of the wallet forever in something it has called "The Wallet Event" to a bankruptcy judge. Prime Trust pitches itself as a crypto fintech company designed to help other startups offer crypto retirement plans, know-your-customer interfaces, ensure liquidity, and a host of other services. It says it can help companies build crypto exchanges, payment platforms, and create stablecoins for its clients. The company has not had a good few months. In June, the state of Nevada filed to seize control of the company because it was near insolvency. It was then ordered to cease all operations by a federal judge because it allegedly used customers' money to cover withdrawal requests from other companies.

The company filed for bankruptcy, and, according to a filing by its interim CEO, which you really should read in full, the company offers an "all-in-one solution for customers that remains unmatched in the marketplace." A large problem, among more run-of-the-mill crypto economy problems such as "lack of operational and spending oversight" and "regulatory issues," is the fact that it lost access to a physical wallet it was keeping a tens of millions of dollars in, and cannot get back into it. [...] For several years, the company then took customer deposits into this address, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. In December, 2021, "when a customer requested a significant withdrawal of ETH that the company could not fulfill [from other wallets,]" it went to withdraw it from this hardware wallet. "It was around this time that they discovered that the Company did not have the Wallet Access Devices and thus, could not access the cryptocurrency stored in the 98f Wallet."

The company then, for several months, had to "use $76,367,247.90 in the aggregate to purchase ETH to fund customer withdrawals." The money stuck in the wallet is currently worth $38.9 million as of August 22, it claimed. It is worth mentioning that the company did not tell regulators or customers about this issue for months after it discovered the problem. The company has still not solved this issue: "The Company remains unable to access the 98f Wallet," it wrote. "The investigation continues." Prime Trust swears in its filing that this was an "aberrant" event and "extremely unlikely to occur again."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A federal judge yesterday granted Google's motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee (RNC), which claims that Google intentionally used Gmail's spam filter to suppress Republicans' fundraising emails. An order (PDF) dismissing the lawsuit was issued yesterday by US District Judge Daniel Calabretta. The RNC is seeking "recovery for donations it allegedly lost as a result of its emails not being delivered to its supporters' inboxes," Calabretta noted. But Google correctly argued that the lawsuit claims are barred by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the judge wrote. The RNC lawsuit was filed in October 2022 in US District Court for the Eastern District of California.

"While it is a close case, the Court concludes that... the RNC has not sufficiently pled that Google acted in bad faith in filtering the RNC's messages into Gmail users' spam folders, and that doing so was protected by Section 230. On the merits, the Court concludes that each of the RNC's claims fail as a matter of law for the reasons described below," he wrote. Calabretta, a Biden appointee, called it "concerning that Gmail's spam filter has a disparate impact on the emails of one political party, and that Google is aware of and has not yet been able to correct this bias." But he noted that "other large email providers have exhibited some sort of political bias" and that if Google did not filter spam, it would harm its users by subjecting them "to harmful malware or harassing messages. On the whole, Google's spam filter, though in this instance imperfect, is not morally blameworthy."

The RNC was given leave to amend another claim that alleged intentional interference with prospective economic relations under California law. The judge dismissed the claim as follows: "The RNC argues that Google's conduct was independently wrongful because '(1) it is political discrimination against the RNC, (2) it is dishonest to Google's users and the public, and (3) Google repeatedly lied about it.' As established above, political discrimination is not prohibited by California anti-discrimination laws and so Google's alleged discrimination would not be unlawful. The latter two reasons do not provide a 'determinable legal standard' under which the Court could find the conduct wrongful; they rest on a 'nebulous' theory of wrongfulness which other courts have rejected." The RNC "has failed to establish that Defendant's alleged interference constituted a separate, independently 'wrongful act' that would be an appropriate predicate offense" but "will be granted leave to amend this claim to establish that Defendant's conduct was unlawful by some legal measure," Calabretta wrote. Google said in a statement: "We welcome the Court's finding that there are no plausible allegations that Gmail's spam filters discriminate for political purposes. We will continue investing in spam-filtering technologies that protect people from unwanted emails while still allowing senders to reach the inboxes of users who want their messages."

Dropbox, a provider of online data storage, is ending its unlimited option, saying a small handful of customers were using massive amounts of resources that had the potential to degrade the cloud service for the rest of its clients. From a report: The company's highest-tier "all the space you need" storage plan will be capped at about 5 terabytes per user for new customers, the company said in a blog post.

While the plan was designed for businesses, some clients were instead using it for cryptocurrency mining, pooling storage with strangers, or re-selling the cloud service, Dropbox said. These uses "frequently consume thousands of times more storage than our genuine business customers, which risks creating an unreliable experience for all of our customers," the company said. [...] The change follows Alphabet's Google removing "as much storage as you need" product branding for its highest-tier Workspace plan in May, according to copies of its website hosted on the Wayback Machine.

Last week we wrote about a lawsuit against Western Digital that alleged that the firm's solid state drive didn't live up to its marketing promises. More lawsuits have been filed against the company since. ArsTechnica: On Thursday, two more lawsuits were filed against Western Digital over its SanDisk Extreme series and My Passport portable SSDs. That brings the number of class-action complaints filed against Western Digital to three in two days. In May, Ars Technica reported about customer complaints that claimed SanDisk Extreme SSDs were abruptly wiping data and becoming unmountable. Ars senior editor Lee Hutchinson also experienced this problem with two Extreme SSDs. Western Digital, which owns SanDisk, released a firmware update in late May, saying that currently shipping products weren't impacted. But the company didn't mention customer complaints of lost data, only that drives could "unexpectedly disconnect from a computer."

Further, last week The Verge claimed a replacement drive it received after the firmware update still wiped its data and became unreadable, and there are some complaints on Reddit pointing to recent problems with Extreme drives. All three cases filed against Western Digital this week seek class-action certification (Ars was told it can take years for a judge to officially state certification and that cases may proceed with class-wide resolutions possibly occurring before official certification). Ian Sloss, one of the lawyers representing Matthew Perrin and Brian Bayerl in a complaint filed yesterday, told Ars he doesn't believe class-action certification will be a major barrier in a case "where there is a common defect in the firmware that is consistent in all devices." He added that defect cases are "ripe for class treatment."

"Italian producers of parmesan cheese have been fighting against imitations for years," writes the Wall Street Journal, adding "Their latest trick to beat counterfeiters is edible microchips.

"Now, makers of Parmigiano-Reggiano, as the original parmesan cheese is officially called, are slapping the microchips on their 90-pound cheese wheels as part of an endless cat-and-mouse game between makers of authentic and fake products." New methods to guarantee the origin of products are being used across the EU. Some wineries are putting serial numbers, invisible ink and holograms on their bottles. So-called DNA fingerprinting of milk bacteria pioneered in Switzerland, which isn't in the EU, is now being tested inside the bloc as a method for identifying cheese. QR codes are also proliferating, including on individual portions of pre-sliced Prosciutto di San Daniele, a raw ham similar to Prosciutto di Parma. A smartphone can be used to show information such as how long the prosciutto has been aged and when it was sliced... The new silicon chips, made by Chicago-based p-Chip, use blockchain technology to authenticate data that can trace the cheese as far back as the producer of the milk used.

The chips have been in advanced testing on more than 100,000 Parmigiano wheels for more than a year. The consortium of producers wants to be sure the chips can stand up to Parmigiano's aging requirement, which is a minimum of one year and can exceed three years for some varieties... The p-Chips can withstand extreme heat or cold, can be read through ice and can withstand years of storage in liquid nitrogen. They have outperformed RFID chips, which are larger, can be more difficult to attach to products, are more fragile and can't survive extreme temperatures, according to p-Chip Chief Technology Officer Bill Eibon. Parmigiano producers also use QR codes, but the codes are easily copied and degrade during the cheese's aging process.

A robot heats the Parmigiano wheel's casein label — a small plaque made of milk protein that is widely used in the cheese industry — and then inserts the chip on top. A hand-held reader can grab the data from the chips, which cost a few cents each and are similar to the ones that some people have inserted under the skin of their pets. The chips can't be read remotely. In lab tests, the chips sat for three weeks in a mock-up of stomach acid without leaking any dangerous material. Eibon went a step further, eating one without suffering any ill effects, but he isn't touting that lest p-Chip face accusations it is tracking people, something that isn't possible because the chips can't be read remotely and can't be read once they are ingested.

"We don't want to be known as the company accused of tracking people," said Eibon. "I ate one of the chips and nobody is tracking me, except my wife, and she uses a different method."
Merck KGaA will soon be using the same chips, the article points out, and the chips "are also being tested in the automotive industry to guarantee the authenticity of car parts.

"The chips could eventually be used on livestock, crops or medicine stored in liquid nitrogen."

Amazon is adding a new charge for third-party sellers who ship their own products instead of paying for the company's fulfillment services. CNBC reports: Beginning Oct. 1, members of Amazon's Seller Fulfilled Prime program will pay the company a 2% fee on each product sold, according to a notice sent to merchants last week, which was viewed by CNBC. Previously, there was no such fee for sellers. "We're updating our requirements for Seller Fulfilled Prime to ensure that it provides customers a great and consistent Prime experience," the notice states. An Amazon spokesperson told CNBC in a statement that the company instituted a fee for SFP members due to the costs of developing and running the program.

The SFP program, launched in 2015, allows third-party merchants to sell their products with the Prime badge without paying for Amazon's fulfillment services, known as Fulfillment By Amazon. The SFP program hasn't attracted as many users as FBA has, given that sellers are expected to meet the company's Prime delivery standards, such as speedy shipping and weekend service. In June, Amazon reopened sign-ups for the invite-only program, after it suspended enrollment in SFP in 2019. The e-commerce giant also charges sellers a referral fee between 8% and 15% on each sale. Sellers may also pay for things like warehouse storage, packing and shipping, as well as advertising fees.

Western Digital was sued on Tuesday on behalf of a California resident who claims the solid state drive he bought from the manufacturer was defective and that the storage slinger shipped kit that didn't live up to its marketing promises. The Register reports: The complaint [PDF], filed in federal court in San Jose, California, where the storage giant is based, alleges the Western Digital SanDisk 2TB Extreme Pro SSD purchased by plaintiff Nathan Krum in May for $180 failed because of an undisclosed flaw, which also affects SanDisk Extreme Pro, Extreme Portable, Extreme Pro Portable, and WD My Passport SSD models since January 2023, it's claimed. The complaint [PDF], filed in federal court in San Jose, California, where the storage giant is based, alleges the Western Digital SanDisk 2TB Extreme Pro SSD purchased by plaintiff Nathan Krum in May for $180 failed because of an undisclosed flaw, which also affects SanDisk Extreme Pro, Extreme Portable, Extreme Pro Portable, and WD My Passport SSD models since January 2023, it's claimed.

The complaint asserts Western Digital customers "have widely reported drive failures and data loss." Krum, in his filing, believes Western Digital is aware of the problem and not doing enough about it. "The SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD hard drives, which are also sold under the WD My Passport brand, have a firmware issue that causes them to disconnect or become unreadable by computers," he claimed, adding that his drive was among those that stopped working as expected.

It is alleged the drives can break down in various ways, including randomly disconnecting from their host, which could result in information not being saved correctly or file-system corruption. In any case, people find they can no longer access their stored documents, making the SSDs worthless and useless, it is claimed. [...] Chris Cantrell, an attorney at Doyle Lowther LLP who is representing the plaintiffs, told The Register it's not yet clear how many SanDisk SSDs experienced data loss though there are more than a few people who share his client's experience. "While Western Digital appears to have attempted to fix the issue with a firmware update, it does not appear to have fixed the issue," Cantrell added. "This is what prompted us to file this lawsuit on behalf of affected SanDisk SSD purchasers. We anticipate adding additional named plaintiffs from other states over the next few weeks." The complaint alleges breach of contract, violation of consumer protection law, and misleading advertising, among other claims, and seeks damages, legal costs, and other relief.

What to make of the news that early research appears unable to duplicate the much-ballyhooed claims for the LK99 superconductor?

"The episode revealed the intense appetite in Silicon Valley for finding the next big thing," argues the Washington Post, "after years of hand-wringing that the tech world has lost its ability to come up with big, world-changing innovations, instead channeling all its money and energy into building new variations of social media apps and business software..." [M]any tech leaders are nervous that the current focus on consumer and business software has led to stagnation. A decade ago, investors prophesied that self-driving cars would take over the roads by the mid-2020s — but they are still firmly in the testing phase, despite billions of dollars of investment. Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology have had multiple hype cycles of their own, but have yet to fundamentally change any industry, besides crime and money laundering. Tech meant to help mitigate climate change, like carbon capture and storage, has lagged without major advances in years. Meanwhile, Big Tech companies used their huge cash hoards to snap up smaller competitors, with antitrust regulators only recently beginning to clamp down on consolidation. Over the last year, as higher interest rates have cut into the amount of venture capital and slowing growth has caused companies to pull back spending, a massive wave of layoffs has swept the industry, and companies such as Google that previously said they'd invest some of their profits in big, risky ideas have turned away from such "moonshots..."

Room-temperature superconductors would be especially relevant to the tech industry right now, which is busy burning billions of dollars on new computer chips and the energy costs to run them to train the AI models behind tools like ChatGPT and Google's Bard. For years, computer chips have gotten smaller and more efficient, but that progress has run up against the limits of the physical world as transistors get so small some are now just one atom thick.