According to new findings from the Millennium Cohort study, almost half of British teenagers say they feel addicted to social media. The Guardian reports: The latest research, by Dr Amy Orben's team at the University of Cambridge, used data from the Millennium Cohort study which is tracking the lives of about 19,000 people born in 2000-2002 across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. When the cohort were aged 16-18 they were asked, for the first time, about social media use. Of the 7,000 people who responded, 48% said they agreed or strongly agreed with the statement "I think I am addicted to social media." A higher proportion of girls (57%) agreed compared to boys (37%), according to the data shared with the Guardian.

Scientists said this did not mean that these people are actually suffering from a clinical addiction, but that expressing a perceived lack of control suggests a problematic relationship. "We're not saying the people who say they feel addicted are addicted," said Georgia Turner, a graduate student leading the analysis. "Self-perceived social media addiction is not [necessarily] the same as drug addiction. But it's not a nice feeling to feel you don't have agency over your own behavior. It's quite striking that so many people feel like that and it can't it be that good."

"Social media research has largely assumed that [so-called] social media addiction is going to follow the same framework as drug addiction," said Turner. Orben's team and others argue that this is likely to be oversimplistic and are investigating whether the teenagers cluster into groups whose behavioral can be predicted by other personality traits. It could be that, for some, their relationship is akin to a behavioral addiction, but for others their use could be driven by compulsive checking, others may be relying on it to cope with negative life experiences, and others may simply be responding to negative social perceptions about "wasting time" on social media.

reg writes: Twenty-five years ago today, CmdrTaco innocently posted a story entitled "Collection of Fun Video Clips" in the days of T1 lines and invited anyone with the bandwidth to check it out. Even though the term "Slashdot Effect" had already been coined, this was the first time it took down a site. The site owner got a personal call from their ISP, which was later reported in the comments, where he also noted that he was writing a novella called "She Hates My Futon." Many old timers started reading that, although it's never been finished, despite having a Good Reads page, a Facebook page, and several promises that he'll complete it.

Genuine parts for the Google Pixel 8 and 8 Pro are now available on iFixit's Pixel parts store. "The Pixel 8 is the first Google phone with seven years of major OS updates, and Google previously said these parts will be in stock for seven years to match, so the phone sounds like it will be a longevity champion," reports Ars Technica's Ron Amadeo. From the report: The most common replacement will probably be the screen, which costs $160 for the Pixel 8 and $230 for the Pixel 8 Pro. The product described as a "rear case" is the entire aluminum body of the phone, with the rear glass, camera bar, camera cover glass, side buttons, and charging coil. The Pixel 8 version of this will run you $143, while the 8 Pro version is $173. The batteries are both $43.

If your camera breaks, get ready for some serious sticker shock: The Pixel 8 Pro rear camera assembly is $200 for the bundled set of three cameras. Interestingly, the Pixel 8 also has $200 worth of camera parts despite having one less camera by skipping the complicated periscope zoom lens. The Pixel 8 parts come in separate pieces: $143 for the main camera and $63 for the ultra-wide. Along with the $43 front camera, a Pixel 8 is $700 and has $243 worth of camera parts!

Other than that, there are various small adhesive and thermal strips. There's no replacement motherboard available, which is a shame since that's probably the first thing that would break from water damage. (Phone motherboards contain your IMEI number used for things like billing and theft blocklisting, and the industry doesn't have a good solution for repairing these.) Since the USB port is part of the motherboard, there's no official repair method. The Google Pixel 8 Parts store is available here.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Facebook recently rolled out a new "Link History" setting that creates a special repository of all the links you click on in the Facebook mobile app. Users can opt-out, but Link History is turned on by default, and the data is used for targeted ads. The company pitches Link History as a useful tool for consumers "with your browsing activity saved in one place," rather than another way to keep tabs on your behavior. With the new setting you'll "never lose a link again," Facebook says in a pop-up encouraging users to consent to the new tracking method. The company goes on to mention that "When you allow link history, we may use your information to improve your ads across Meta technologies."

Facebook promises to delete the Link History it's created for you within 90 days if you turn the setting off. According to a Facebook help page, Link History isn't available everywhere. The company says it's rolling out globally "over time." This is a privacy improvement in some ways, but the setting raises more questions than it answers. Meta has always kept track of the links you click on, and this is the first time users have had any visibility or control over this corner of the company's internet spying apparatus. In other words, Meta is just asking users for permission for a category of tracking that it's been using for over a decade. Beyond that, there are a number of ways this setting might give users an illusion of privacy that Meta isn't offering. "The Link History doesn't mention anything about the invasive ways Facebook monitors what you're doing once you visit a webpage," notes Gizmodo's Thomas Germain. "It seems the setting only affects Meta's record of the fact that you clicked a link in the first place. Furthermore, Meta links everything you do on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and its other products. Unlike several of Facebook's other privacy settings, Link History doesn't say that it affects any of Meta's other apps, leaving you with the data harvesting status quo on other parts of Mark Zuckerberg's empire."

"Link History also creates a confusing new regime that establishes privacy settings that don't apply if you access Facebook outside of the Facebook app. If you log in to Facebook on a computer or a mobile browser instead, Link History doesn't protect you. In fact, you can't see the Link History page at all if you're looking at Facebook on your laptop."

According to NBC, law enforcement in California can't ticket driverless cars for traffic violations, thanks to a legal loophole requiring an actual driver in the car. NBC Bay Area reports: An internal memo from San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott, obtained by the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit, instructs officers that "no citation for a moving violation can be issued if the [autonomous vehicle] is being operated in a driverless mode." Scott added, "Technology evolves rapidly and, at times, faster than legislation or regulations can adapt to the changes."

While autonomous vehicles in California have received parking citations, the state's transportation laws appear to leave driverless vehicles immune from receiving any type of traffic ticket stemming from moving violations. "I think it sends a message that it's not a level playing field, that fairness is not the priority," said Michael Stephenson, the founder and senior attorney of Bay Area Bicycle Law, a law firm that specializes in representing cyclists in accident cases.

Stephenson said that driverless vehicles don't exactly fit into the state's current legal framework and that California needs new laws to appropriately govern the evolving technology. "We're perhaps trying to shove a square peg into a round hole," he said. "We are very much in the Wild West when it comes to driverless cars." The report notes that other states have rewritten traffic laws to allow ticketing of driverless cars. "Texas, which rivals California as another popular testing ground for autonomous vehicles, changed its transportation laws in 2017 to adapt to the emerging technology," reports NBC. "According to the Texas Transportation Code, the owner of a driverless car is 'considered the operator' and can be cited for breaking traffic laws 'regardless of whether the person is physically present in the vehicle.'"

"Arizona, another busy site for autonomous vehicles, took similar steps," adds NBC. "In revising its traffic laws, Arizona declared the owner of an autonomous vehicle 'may be issued a traffic citation or other applicable penalty if the vehicle fails to comply with traffic or motor vehicle laws.'"

An anonymous reader shares a report: A court in Washington, D.C., has been stuck with a tough, maybe impossible question: What does full moon face emoji mean? Let me explain: In the summer of 2022, Ryan Cohen, a major investor in Bed Bath & Beyond, responded to a tweet about the beleaguered retailer with this side-eyed-moon emoji. Later that month, Cohen -- hailed as a "meme king" for his starring role in the GameStop craze -- disclosed that his stake in the company had grown to nearly 12 percent; the stock price subsequently shot up. That week, he sold all of his shares and walked away with a reported $60 million windfall.

Now shareholders are suing him for securities fraud, claiming that Cohen misled investors by using the emoji the way meme-stock types sometimes do -- to suggest that the stock was going "to the moon." A class-action lawsuit with big money on the line has come to legal arguments such as this: "There is no way to establish objectively the truth or falsity of a tiny lunar cartoon," as Cohen's lawyers wrote in an attempt to get the emoji claim dismissed. That argument was denied, and the court held that "emojis may be actionable."

The humble emoji -- and its older cousin, the emoticon -- has infiltrated the corporate world, especially in tech. Last month, when OpenAI briefly ousted Sam Altman and replaced him with an interim CEO, the company's employees reportedly responded with a vulgar emoji on Slack. That FTX, the failed cryptocurrency exchange once run by Sam Bankman-Fried, apparently used these little icons to approve million-dollar expense reports was held up during bankruptcy proceedings as a damning example of its poor corporate controls. And in February, a judge allowed a lawsuit to move forward alleging that an NFT company called Dapper Labs was illegally promoting unregistered securities on Twitter, because "the 'rocket ship' emoji, 'stock chart' emoji, and 'money bags' emoji objectively mean one thing: a financial return on investment."

Mozilla closed out 2023 with a report that dodges its flatlining browser market share and Mozilla.social beta in favor of calls for a faster pace from its highly paid CEO. From a report: According to the company's filings, Mitchell Baker's compensation went from $5,591,406 in 2021 to $6,903,089 in 2022. It's quite the jump considering that revenues declined from $527,585,000 to $510,389,000 in the same period. Despite the executive payout, Firefox continues to trail Google and even Microsoft in desktop browser market share. While it has not suffered any catastrophic losses, neither has it made any significant gains.

Baker, however, would very much like to speed things up and says in the State of Mozilla report: "The pace is not enough, the impact is not enough." Unsurprisingly for a technology company, the report is heavy on AI going mainstream where Mozilla reckons it can make an impact in the technology, particularly with regard to open source developers and privacy. Mozilla's adventures in AI? The organization says it has 15 engineers working on open source large language models and is working on use cases in the healthcare space. Moez Draief, managing director of Mozilla.ai, said: "There's a lot of structured data work in that industry that will feed the language models; we don't have to invent it."

Tesla topped Norway's car sales for a third straight year in 2023, extending its lead over rivals despite an ongoing conflict between the U.S. electric vehicle maker and the Nordic region's powerful labour unions. From a report: Almost five out of six new cars sold in Norway last year were powered by battery only, with Tesla's share of the overall market rising to 20.0% from 12.2%, registration data showed on Tuesday. Electric vehicles accounted for 82.4% of new vehicles sold in 2023, up from 79.3% in 2022, the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) said. Seeking to become the first nation to end the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2025, oil-producing Norway exempts fully electric vehicles from many taxes imposed on internal combustion engine rivals, although some levies were introduced in 2023.

A Nobel Prize-winning labor market economist has cautioned younger generations against piling into studying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects, saying as "empathetic" and creative skills may thrive in a world dominated by artificial intelligence. From a report: Christopher Pissarides, professor of economics at the London School of Economics, said that workers in certain IT jobs risk sowing their "own seeds of self-destruction" by advancing AI that will eventually take the same jobs in the future. While Pissarides is an optimist on AI's overall impact on the jobs market, he raised concerns for those taking STEM subjects hoping to ride the coattails of the technological advances.

He said that despite rapid growth in the demand for STEM skills currently, jobs requiring more traditional face-to-face skills, such as in hospitality and healthcare, will still dominate the jobs market. "The skills that are needed now -- to collect the data, collate it, develop it, and use it to develop the next phase of AI or more to the point make AI more applicable for jobs -- will make the skills that are needed now obsolete because it will be doing the job," he said in an interview. "Despite the fact that you see growth, they're still not as numerous as might be required to have jobs for all those graduates coming out with STEM because that's what they want to do." He added, "This demand for these new IT skills, they contain their own seeds of self destruction."

On December 15 GitHub declared end-of-life for its "hackable text editor" Atom. But Long-time Slashdot reader BrendaEM wants to remind everyone that after the announcement of Atom's sunset, "the community came together to keep Atom alive."

First there was the longstanding fork Atom-Community. But "due to differences in long-term goals for the editor, a new version was born: Pulsar."

From the Pulsar web site: Pulsar [sometimes referred to as Pulsar-Edit] aims to not only reach feature parity with the original Atom, but to bring Pulsar into the 21st century by updating the underlying architecture, and supporting modern features.

With many new features on the roadmap, once Pulsar is stable, it will be a true, Community-Based, Hackable, Text Editor.
"Of course, the user interface is much of the same," writes the blog Its FOSS, and it's cross-platform (supporting Linux, macOS, and Windows).

"The essentials seem to be there with the documentation, packages, and features like the ability to install packages from Git repositories..."

Long-time tech entrepreneur Anil Dash predicts a big shift in the digital landscape in 2024. And "regular internet users — not just the world's tech tycoons — may be the ones who decide how it goes." The first thing to understand about this new era of the internet is that power is, undoubtedly, shifting. For example, regulators are now part of the story — an ironic shift for anyone who was around in the dot com days. In the E.U., tech giants like Apple are being forced to hold their noses and embrace mandated changes like opening up their devices to allow alternate app stores to provide apps to consumers. This could be good news, increasing consumer choice and possibly enabling different business models — how about mobile games that aren't constantly pestering gamers for in-app purchases? Back in the U.S., a shocking judgment in Epic Games' (that's the Fortnite folks') lawsuit against Google leaves us with the promise that Android phones might open up in a similar way.

That's not just good news for the billions of people who own smartphones. It's part of a sea change for the coders and designers who build the apps, sites, and games we all use. For an entire generation, the imagination of people making the web has been hemmed in by the control of a handful of giant companies that have had enormous control over things like search results, or app stores, or ad platforms, or payment systems. Going back to the more free-for-all nature of the Nineties internet could mean we see a proliferation of unexpected, strange new products and services. Back then, a lot of technology was created by local communities or people with a shared interest, and it was as likely that cool things would be invented by universities and non-profits and eccentric lone creators as they were to be made by giant corporations....

In that era, people could even make their own little social networks, so the conversations and content you found on an online forum or discussion were as likely to have been hosted by the efforts of one lone creator than to have come from some giant corporate conglomerate. It was a more democratized internet, and while the world can't return to that level of simplicity, we're seeing signs of a modern revisiting of some of those ideas.
Dash's article (published in Rolling Stone) ends with examples of "people who had been quietly keeping the spirit of the human, personal, creative internet alive...seeing a resurgence now that the web is up for grabs again. "

• Digital artist Everest Pipkin

• The School for Poetic Computation (which Dash describes as "an eccentric, deeply charming, self-organized school for people who want to combine art and technology and a social conscience.")

• Mask On Zone, "a collaboration with the artist and coder Ritu Ghiya, which gives demonstrators and protesters in-context guidance on how to avoid surveillance."

• There's projects and tools from makers like Stefan Bohacek, Darius Kazemi, and Elan Kiderman Ullendorff (including Youtune ("a stream of relatively unviewed original songs posted to YouTube.")

Dash concludes that "We're seeing the biggest return to that human-run, personal-scale web that we've witnessed since the turn of the millennium, with enough momentum that it's likely that 2024 is the first year since then that many people have the experience of making a new connection or seeing something go viral on a platform that's being run by a regular person instead of a commercial entity.

"It's going to make a lot of new things possible..."

A big thank-you for submitting the article to long-time Slashdot reader, DrunkenTerror.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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