SpaceX has introduced Starlink Aviation, promising 350Mbps broadband with unlimited data for each airplane it's installed in. From a report: "Starlink can deliver up to 350Mbps to each plane, enabling all passengers to access streaming-capable Internet at the same time," the company said. "With latency as low as 20 ms, passengers can engage in activities previously not functional in flight, including video calls, online gaming, virtual private networks and other high data rate activities." Starlink said the airplane service will use a "low-profile Aero Terminal" with "an electronically steered phased array antenna, which enables new levels of reliability, redundancy and performance."

It has a "simplified design" that "enables installations during minimal downtime and combines well with other routine maintenance checks," Starlink says. The service hardware also includes two wireless access points. There's a one-time hardware cost of $150,000, not including installation. "The installation can be performed by your current maintenance organization or Starlink can recommend experienced and qualified installers," Starlink says.

An anonymous reader shares a report: We've said it before, and we'll say it again: USB-C is confusing. A USB-C port or cable can support a range of speeds, power capabilities, and other features, depending on the specification used. Today, USB-C can support various data transfer rates, from 0.48Gbps (USB 2.0) all the way to 40Gbps (USB4, Thunderbolt 3, and Thunderbolt 4). Things are only about to intensify, as today the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) published the USB4 Version 2.0 spec. It adds optional support for 80Gbps bidirectional bandwidth as well as the optional ability to send or receive data at up to 120Gbps.

The USB-IF first gave us word of USB4 Version 2.0 in September, saying it would support a data transfer rate of up to 80Gbps in either direction (40Gbps per lane, four lanes total), thanks to a new physical layer architecture (PHY) based on PAM-3 signal encoding. For what it's worth, Intel also demoed Thunderbolt at 80Gbps but hasn't released an official spec yet. USB4 Version 2.0 offers a nice potential bump over the original USB4 spec, which introduced optional support for 40Gbps operation. You just have to be sure to check the spec sheets to know what sort of performance you're getting. Once USB4 Version 2.0 products come out, you'll be able to hit 80Gbps with USB-C passive cables that currently operate at 40Gbps, but you'll have to buy a new cable if you want a longer, active 80Gbps.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In July, Reddit jumped on the NFT train, launching an NFT-based marketplace that allows users to purchase blockchain-based profile pictures for a fixed rate. Given the general sentiment around NFTs today, you might assume -- like me -- that the experiment ended poorly. But the opposite's the case apparently .

Today during a panel at TechCrunch Disrupt, Reddit chief product officer Pali Bhat revealed that over three million Redditors have used Reddit's Vault blockchain wallet to create over three million crypto wallets to date. Most of those -- 2.5 million -- were created to purchase NFT avatars that can be used as profile pics on the platform, he said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Today, tech archivist Jason Scott announced a new website called Discmaster that lets anyone search through 91.7 million vintage computer files pulled from CD-ROM releases and floppy disks. The files include images, text documents, music, games, shareware, videos, and much more. The files on Discmaster come from the Internet Archive, uploaded by thousands of people over the years. The new site pulls them together behind a search engine with the ability to perform detailed searches by file type, format, source, file size, file date, and many other options.

Discmaster is the work of a group of anonymous history-loving programmers who approached Scott to host it for them. Scott says that Discmaster is "99.999 percent" the work of that anonymous group, right down to the vintage gray theme that is compatible with web browsers for older machines. Scott says he slapped a name on it and volunteered to host it on his site. And while Scott is an employee of the Internet Archive, he says that Discmaster is "100 percent unaffiliated" with that organization.

One of the highlights of Discmaster is that it has already done a lot of file format conversion on the back end, making the vintage files more accessible. For example, you can search for vintage music files -- such as MIDI or even digitized Amiga sounds -- and listen to them directly in your browser without any extra tools necessary. The same thing goes for early-90s low-resolution video files, images in obscure formats, and various types of documents. "It's got all the conversion to enable you to preview things immediately," says Scott. "So there's no additional external installation. That, to me, is the fundamental power of what we're dealing with here." "The value proposition is the value proposition of any freely accessible research database," Scott told Ars Technica. "People are enabled to do deep dives into more history, reference their findings, and encourage others to look in the same place."

"[Discmaster] is probably, to me, one of the most important computer history research project opportunities that we've had in 10 years," says Scott. "It's not done. They've analyzed 7,000 and some-odd CD-ROMs. And they're about to do another 8,000."

"Everyone visiting Qatar for the World Cup needs to install spyware on their phone," writes security researcher Bruce Schneier. His comments are in response to an article from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK), reporting: Everyone traveling to Qatar during the football World Cup will be asked to download two apps called Ehteraz and Hayya. Briefly, Ehteraz is an covid-19 tracking app, while Hayya is an official World Cup app used to keep track of match tickets and to access the free Metro in Qatar. In particular, the covid-19 app Ehteraz asks for access to several rights on your mobile., like access to read, delete or change all content on the phone, as well as access to connect to WiFi and Bluetooth, override other apps and prevent the phone from switching off to sleep mode.

The Ehteraz app, which everyone over 18 coming to Qatar must download, also gets a number of other accesses such as an overview of your exact location, the ability to make direct calls via your phone and the ability to disable your screen lock. The Hayya app does not ask for as much, but also has a number of critical aspects. Among other things, the app asks for access to share your personal information with almost no restrictions. In addition, the Hayya app provides access to determine the phone's exact location, prevent the device from going into sleep mode, and view the phone's network connections. It remains to be seen whether Qatar will strictly enforce the installation of these apps. "I know people who visited Saudi Arabia when that country had a similarly sketchy app requirement," says Schneier. "Some of them just didn't bother downloading the apps, and were never asked about it at the border."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Flights into the Dallas area are being forced to take older, cumbersome routes and a runway at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport was temporarily closed after aviation authorities said GPS signals there aren't reliable. The Federal Aviation Administration said in an emailed statement Tuesday it's investigating the possible jamming of the global-positioning system that aircraft increasingly use to guide them on more efficient routes and to runways. So far, the agency has found "no evidence of intentional interference," it said. American Airlines, the primary carrier at DFW, said the GPS issue is not affecting its operations. Southwest Airlines, which flies from nearby Love Field, said it also isn't experiencing any disruptions. The FAA reopened the closed runway earlier on Tuesday.

The GPS problem -- despite the lack of impact -- highlights the risk of widespread reliance on the weak GPS radio signals from space used for everything from timing stock trades to guiding jetliners. The FAA occasionally warns pilots in advance of military testing that may degrade the GPS signals and pilots sometimes report short-lived problems, but the interference in Dallas is atypical, said Dan Streufert, founder of the flight-tracking website ADSBexchange.com. "In the US, it's very unusual to see this without a prior notice," Streufert said in an interview. ADSBExchange.com monitors aircraft data streams that indicate the accuracy of the GPS signals they are receiving and the website began seeing problems around Dallas on Monday, he said. The military has told the FAA it isn't conducting any operations that would interfere with GPS in that area, said a person familiar with the situation who wasn't authorized to speak publicly about it. The primary way FAA's air-traffic system tracks planes is based on GPS, but older radars and radio-direction beacons have remained in place as backups.

A new report from The Information details more changes Google CEO Sundar Pichai's budget cuts are having across the company, with some divisions surviving and others getting ominous resource cuts. From a report: First, we have news that the hardware division, other than losing laptops, seems mostly safe. Google's biggest Android partner, Samsung, is in decline in many established markets, and Apple is hitting an all-time high in US market share last quarter. The report says Google views Apple as more of a problem than it has in the past, thanks to worries that regulators might shut down the usual multi-billion-dollar Google/Apple agreement to put Google Search on iPhones. If iPhones stop showing Google ads, the rise of Apple and fall of Samsung is one of the few things that could actually be a major problem for Google's revenue.

According to the report, Google views itself as the solution to this problem. As a hedge against what the report calls the "further decline" of Samsung, Google is "doubling down" on its investment in Pixel hardware. Google is apparently doing this by "moving product development and software engineering staff working on features for non-Google hardware to work on Google-branded devices." The goal here is to not spend more money, so Google is apparently sacrificing partner devices to focus on the Pixel division. So what projects are seeing cuts? Google TV is one, with the report saying: "Executives also have discussed moving some product managers working on Google TV software for television sets" to Wear OS and the Pixel Tablet. This is the only OS called out as specifically receiving less OS development. A lot of this report seems to focus on cuts to Google Assistant's support for specific form factors, which is strange since Google Assistant is more or less the same on every platform. The whole point of the Assistant is one reliable, predictable voice assistant that lives everywhere, and it's not clear what platform-specific support needs to be done other than whipping up an app that can receive audio and read back results.

News outlet The Wire is investigating its own reporting amid an explosive dispute with Meta. From a report: Last week, The Wire, a small but gutsy Indian news outlet, seemed to land one explosive punch after another on Meta, the social media giant that owns Instagram and Facebook. The California company had given an influential official from India's ruling party the extraordinary power to censor Instagram posts that he didn't like, The Wire reported, citing a document leaked by a Meta insider. A day later, The Wire reported that Meta executives were scrambling to find the mole who leaked the story, citing a new internal email the publication had obtained.

Finally, after Meta executives denied both reports on social media -- and, in an unusual move, insisted that The Wire's documents appeared fabricated -- The Wire released a lengthy rebuttal on Saturday that the outlet said would lay to rest any doubts about its reporting. It did not. Instead, The Wire is now investigating itself. The publication said Tuesday it launched an internal review of its stories about Meta, adding a new twist to a sensational dispute between a reputed Indian news organization and a powerful Silicon Valley company -- a clash that has captivated the technology and media industries in both India and the United States.
UPDATE (10/23): The Wire has retracted their story.

Microsoft announced layoffs across multiple divisions on Monday. From a report: Microsoft declined to say how many jobs had been cut, but a source said the layoffs numbered under 1000. The cuts occurred across a variety of levels, teams and parts of the world. Multiple laid-off workers turned to Twitter and Blind, among other online forums, to share that their job had been cut.

DuckDuckGo is rolling out its web browsing app for Mac users as an open beta test. Designed for privacy, the app was announced back in April as a closed beta, but is now available for all Mac users to try before its official public launch. From a report: The desktop browser includes the same built-in protections we've seen already featured in DuckDuckGo's mobile apps, combining DuckDuckGo's search engine, defenses against third-party tracking, cookie pop-up protection, and its popular one-click data clearing 'Fire Button.' Some additional features have been added to the browser (version 0.30) since its original announcement.

Now users can try Duck Player, a feature that protects users from targeted ads and cookies while watching YouTube content. Ads viewed within the Duck Player will not be personalized, which DuckDuckGo claims actually removed most YouTube ads as a result during testing. YouTube will still register your views, but content watched through Duck Player won't contribute to your YouTube advertising profile. Pinned tabs and a new bookmarks bar have been included to address feedback from early beta testing, as well as a way to view your locally stored browsing history. DuckDuckGo's Cookie Consent Pop-Up Manager is also available which works on about 50 percent of sites (with more to come) to automatically choose the most private option and spare users from the annoying pop-up messages. The app also lets you activate DuckDuckGo Email Protection on the desktop to better protect your inbox with email tracker blocking.

Meta has been ordered to sell gif platform Giphy for the second time by the UK competition regulator, bringing an end to the $315mn deal following a two-year antitrust battle. From a report: The Competition and Markets Authority said on Tuesday that Meta's purchase of New York-based Giphy -- the biggest provider of animated images known as gifs to social networks -- would "limit choice for UK social media users and reduce innovation in UK display advertising." The CMA first told Meta to unwind the deal last November, but was forced by the Competition Appeal Tribunal in July to reconsider its conclusion after it upheld one of the social media company's grounds of appeal.

The CMA's final decision underlines the pressure on Silicon Valley's biggest technology companies from the UK regulator, which has broad powers to intervene in tie-ups touching British consumers even when the parties are based overseas. The Giphy deal marked the first time the regulator had moved to dismantle a completed Big Tech deal. Meta on Tuesday said it was "disappointed by the CMA's decision" but accepted the ruling as "the final word on the matter."

Last Friday, Google announced the release of KataOS, a security-minded operating system focused on embedded devices running ambient machine learning workloads. As Phoronix notes, it uses the Rust programming language and is "built atop the seL4 microkernel as its foundatin." From Google's Open-Source Blog: As the foundation for this new operating system, we chose seL4 as the microkernel because it puts security front and center; it is mathematically proven secure, with guaranteed confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Through the seL4 CAmkES framework, we're also able to provide statically-defined and analyzable system components. KataOS provides a verifiably-secure platform that protects the user's privacy because it is logically impossible for applications to breach the kernel's hardware security protections and the system components are verifiably secure. KataOS is also implemented almost entirely in Rust, which provides a strong starting point for software security, since it eliminates entire classes of bugs, such as off-by-one errors and buffer overflows.

The current GitHub release includes most of the KataOS core pieces, including the frameworks we use for Rust (such as the sel4-sys crate, which provides seL4 syscall APIs), an alternate rootserver written in Rust (needed for dynamic system-wide memory management), and the kernel modifications to seL4 that can reclaim the memory used by the rootserver. KataOS code is being worked on via GitHub under the AmbiML umbrella.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Bernard Arnault, the CEO of luxury brand LVMH -- known for expensive labels like Louis Vuitton -- is the world's second-richest man according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index. He currently clocks in at a net worth of $133 billion, beating out Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' paltry $130 billion. He's also been harangued on Twitter for his consistent use of private jets. French accounts that use planes' transponder signals and publicly accessible information have tracked Arnault's and other rich folks' use of private jets to reveal just how much wasteful flying time is used by the world's wealthiest.

In September, the Twitter account laviodebernard (Bernard's Plane) wrote that Arnault's plane had been de-registered in France. The account wrote "The LVMH private jet has not been registered in France since September 1, 2022. Still no word from Bernard Arnault or LVMH on the subject of private jets. So Bernard, are we hiding?" Apparently, that's just what Arnault has been doing. On the LVMH-owned podcast released Monday, Arnault admitted that the LVMH group "had a plane, and we sold it." He added: "The result now is that no one can see where I go because I rent planes when I use private planes."

Antoine Arnault, the second scion of the world's second richest man, a LVMH board member and director of communications for Louis Vuitton, also said during the podcast that other people knowing where their company jet is could give competitors an edge. He also told French news channel 5's a Vous last week "This plane is a work tool." As translated by Bloomberg, the younger Arnault added that the company sold the plane over the summer.

President Xi Jinping's call for China to "win the battle" in core technologies could signal an overhaul in Beijing's approach to advancing its tech industry, with more state-led spending and intervention to counter U.S. pressures, analysts say. From a report: Achieving self-reliance in technology featured prominently in Xi's full work report to kick off the once-every-five-years Communist Party Congress, with four mentions versus none in 2017. The term "technology" was referred to 40 times, up from 17 times in the report from the 2017 congress. While the report did not mention any other countries or specific sectors for that goal, it comes days after Washington imposed sweeping new regulations aimed at undermining China's efforts to develop its own chip industry. HSBC analysts said their takeaway was that increased spending in China, particular in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) fields, and policy support was likely. Iris Pang, chief economist for Greater China at ING, said Xi's remarks addressed "the urgent need for talent and promoting self-sufficiency in technological advancement."

"We believe that this echoes to the U.S.'s CHIPS Act," Pang said, referring to the U.S. regulations. "As such research spending on semiconductor technology should increase. Typically, policies are released after such important events in China." In his speech, Xi listed a slew of industries where he described China as having achieved breakthroughs over the past decade, including large aircraft, space flight, satellite navigation - all of which rely on copious state support. No mention was made of semiconductors, an area where China has funnelled billions of dollars in government funds but was also seen to have been given more lee-way in using market-led approaches versus other sectors.

Drew DeVault, prolific FOSS blogger and hacker behind SourceHut, Sway, wlroots, and many other projects, writes in a blog post: I have relied on ffmpeg for many tasks and for many years. It has always been there to handle any little multimedia-related task I might put it to for personal use -- re-encoding audio files so they fit on my phone, taking clips from videos to share, muxing fonts into mkv files, capturing video from my webcam, live streaming hacking sessions on my own platform, or anything else I can imagine. It formed the foundation of MediaCrush back in the day, where we used it to optimize multimedia files for efficient viewing on the web, back when that was more difficult than "just transcode it to a webm."

ffmpeg is notable for being one of the first large-scale FOSS projects to completely eradicate proprietary software in its niche. Virtually all multimedia-related companies rely on ffmpeg to do their heavy lifting. It took a complex problem and solved it, with free software. The book is now closed on multimedia: ffmpeg is the solution to almost all of your problems. And if it's not, you're more likely to patch ffmpeg than to develop something new. The code is accessible and the community are experts in your problem domain.

ffmpeg is one of the foremost pillars of achievement in free software. It has touched the lives of every reader, whether they know it or not. If you've ever watched TV, or gone to a movie, or watched videos online, or listened to a podcast, odds are that ffmpeg was involved in making it possible. It is one of the most well-executed and important software projects of all time.

Mark Zuckerberg, writing in a Facebook post: WhatsApp is far more private and secure than iMessage, with end-to-end encryption that works across both iPhones and Android, including group chats. With WhatsApp you can also set all new chats to disappear with the tap of a button. And last year we introduced end-to-end encrypted backups too. All of which iMessage still doesn't have.

Kanye West, the rapper who also also goes by the name Ye, has reached an agreement to buy "uncancelable free speech platform" Parler, the two said in a statement Monday, in a move they said will help individuals express their conservative opinions freely. From a report: As part of the deal, financial terms of which were not disclosed, Parler has agreed to sell fully to West but the social network will continue to receive technical support from Parlement Technologies, including access to its private cloud services and its data center infrastructure. The deal is expected to close in the ongoing quarter. West, who has accused Meta and Twitter of censoring him in recent weeks, said in a statement: "In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves."

Wikipedia describes Homestar Runner as "a blend of surreal humour, self-parody, and references to popular culture, in particular video games, classic television, and popular music." But after launching in 2000, the web-based cartoon became a cultural phenomenon, co-creator Mike Chapman remembered in 2017: On the same day we received a demo of a song that John Linnell from They Might Be Giants recorded for a Strong Bad Email and a full-size working Tom Servo puppet from Jim Mallon from Mystery Science Theater 3000.... The Homestar references in the Buffy and Angel finales forever ago were huge. And there was this picture of Joss Whedon in a Strong Bad shirt from around that time that someone sent us that we couldn't believe. Years later, a photo of Geddy Lee from Rush wearing a Strong Bad hat on stage circulated which similarly freaked us out. We have no idea if he knew what Strong Bad was, but our dumb animal character was on his head while he probably shredded 'Working Man' so I'll take it!
After a mutli-year hiatus starting around 2009, the site has only been updating sporadically — and some worried that the end of Flash also meant the end of the Flash-based cartoon and its web site altogether. But on the day Flash Player was officially discontinued — December 31st, 2020 — a "post-Flash update" appeared at HomestarRunner.com: What happened our website? Flash is finally dead-dead-dead so something drastic had to be done so people could still watch their favorite cartoons and sbemails with super-compressed mp3 audio and hidden clicky-clicky easter eggs...!

[O]nce you click "come on in," you'll find yourself in familiar territory thanks to the Ruffle Project. It emulates Flash in such a way that all browsers and devices can finally play our cartoons and even some games.... Your favorite easter eggs are still hidden and now you can even choose to watch a YouTube version if there is one.

Keep in mind, Ruffle is still in development so not everything works perfectly. Games made after, say 2007, will probably be pretty janky but Ruffle plans on ulitmately supporting those too one day. And any cartoons with video elements in them (Puppet Jams, death metal) will just show you an empy box where the video should be. But hang in there and one day everything will be just like it was that summer when we got free cable somehow and Grandma still lived in the spare bedroom.
And since then, new content has quietly been appearing at HomestarRunner.com. (Most recently, Thursday the site added a teaser for an upcoming Halloween video.)

The Homestar Runner wiki is tracking this year's new content, which includes:

• Strong Bad livestreaming his play of a text adventure (titled "Disk 4 of 12 — Vampire's Castle") on September 19th
• Strong Sad streaming a demo of the expando deck for Trogdor!! The Board Game (July 2)
• A Twitch parody in which Strong Bad livestreams a speedrun on a horrific beef-themed game (titled "Strong-Play: Marzipan Beef Reverser") on April 25th
• A new Strong Bad Email on April 1st

And past videos are now also being uploaded on the site's official YouTube channel.

In 2017 Google committed $1 billion to a program called "Grow with Google," and in 2018 launched "Google Career Certificates."

Fortune looks at the success of those programs — and their newest evolution: These online educational programs are focused on helping learners land jobs that are in high demand, including in digital marketing, IT support , data analytics, project management, and UX design. More than 300,000 people have graduated from Google's Career Certificates program, and 75% of these grads report they've found a new job, higher pay, or a promotion within six months of completing of the program.

Today, Grow with Google takes this program a step further by developing university-industry partnerships. Grow with Google tells Fortune exclusively of the launch of its partnerships with top universities to offer specialized career certificates. These specialized programs build on Grow with Google's existing programs, but offer more industry-specific take on the material....

The specializations include:

- Fundamentals of Data Analytics in the Public Sector with R by the University of Michigan
- Construction Management by Columbia Engineering
- Financial Analysis — Skills for Success by the University of Illinois' Gies School of Business
- Sustainability Analyst Fundamentals by Arizona State University.

"This is really a tipping point for higher ed," says Lisa Gevelber, founder of Grow with Google. "Educational institutions have always been the place that people went from the world of classroom learning to the world of work. But what we're seeing here is higher ed really adopting more innovative, flexible models to make sure that students of all sorts have access to the knowledge to be successful in the workforce...."

The courses were developed by industry experts at Google, along with faculty at the hosting universities. Industry employers were also asked for input on important course content.
After finishing courses, students gain access to an online list of the jobs that the program qualifies them for. This includes listings from Google's 150-employer consortium that specifically hire graduates of Google Career Certificate programs — including Google itself.

Gevelber explains to Fortune that "At the end of the day, no one is taking a class to take a class. They're all taking this class to get a real economic outcome for their family. We want to ensure they have the skills they need and employers are laying and waiting to hire them."

"Food service employees at the autonomous driving company Waymo are forming a union," reports NBC News, calling it "the latest push by support workers to organize at Silicon Valley's most prominent companies." The cafeteria workers at the Mountain View-based company cite the high cost of living in the Bay Area and the lack of strong benefits while working for one of the world's most valuable companies. Waymo is owned by Google parent company, Alphabet.

The workers are employed by Sodexo, which contracts service work for Google and other companies. Organizers say they have a majority of union cards signed from the roughly two dozen-person bargaining unit....

Workers say the $24 an hour they make from the company is not enough to live adequately in the Bay Area. They also cite the prohibitive cost of the company's health plan, which has a $5,000 deductible. The living wage in the San Jose-Sunnyvale area is $27.74 for a single adult, and $52.74 for a single adult with a child, according to MIT's living wage calculator.... The workers are part of Silicon Valley's ranks of contractors who support and supplement the work at tech companies. Union campaigns have coursed through the industry as tech company profits — and the cost of living in the Bay Area — have escalated steeply in recent years.

At Google, more than 4,000 of these workers have joined unions since 2018, including 2,300 cafeteria workers at its headquarters and satellite offices in the Bay Area in 2019, according to Unite Here.... "[Workers] see all the money around tech," said D. Taylor, the president of Unite Here. "And that's great. But they want to have a piece of the American dream."
Ironically, one of the workers said they were inspired by Hasan Piker, who NBC News describes as "a leftist Twitch streamer and political commentator" with large followings on Twitter — and on Google-owned YouTube.