Elon Musk's Boring Company just won approval from local officials to move forward with building a network of vehicle tunnels underneath Las Vegas. The Verge reports: Elon Musk's Boring Company just won approval from local officials to move forward with building a network of vehicle tunnels underneath Las Vegas. The Boring Company already operates a small version of this "Teslas in Tunnels" system underneath the Las Vegas Convention Center, which opened earlier this year and involves two 0.8-mile tunnels. But Musk's startup proposed a massive city-wide expansion in December 2020 that largely lines up with what Clark County officials approved Wednesday.

The system that was approved involves 29 miles of tunnels and 51 stations. Clark County says as many as 57,000 passengers will be able to travel through it per hour and that no taxpayer money will be spent to build it. The Boring Company previously said that it would foot the bill for building the main tunnels but planned to ask hotel casinos or other businesses that want a station to pay for those construction costs. Each one of those stops has to go through its own permitting process, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Three dogs that are trapped near the erupting Cumbre Vieja volcano on the Canary Islands may soon be saved by a drone. Gizmodo reports: The poor, emaciated pups have been stuck in a yard surrounded by lava for a month. The volcano began erupting in September for the first time in 50 years, forcing thousands of people to evacuate, and the eruption is still ongoing. Spanish drone operator Aerocamaras said last Thursday that it had a plan to rescue the dogs. It could fly drones over to the yard with food for the pups and a camera that could help operators on the ground find the best to airlift them. Once the animals had some time to get used to the machines, the drones would drop cargo nets over them to pick them up one by one and carry them to safety.

On Wednesday, Aerocamaras' Jaime Pereira confirmed that the company had officially received permission from authorities to carry out the rescue mission. To get the state's blessing, the firm had to complete a test mission that consisted of a quarter-mile (1.2-kilometer) flight with the drone supporting a load of 33 pounds (15 kilograms), which it did successfully. Still, the mission will be treacherous. "It is very difficult, technically it is the most complicated thing we have done by far," Pereira told the Spanish broadcaster Telecinco. "We are risking a lot."

For one, the cargo net for the rescue mission is designed to hold about 50 pounds (24 kilograms), enough to transport one dog at a time. The operators have to be sure to time their lift-off perfectly to avoid picking up more than one dog and having them fall. Pereira also told Reuters that the drone only has 8 minutes of battery life, meaning the trips will have to be meticulously planned and executed: The operator will have only 4 minutes to get the dog into the net, and another 4 minutes to fly them back to safe ground. "What we don't want is to run out of battery when flying over the lava," he said. The expedition will mark a series of high-stakes first. "It's the first time an animal is being rescued with a drone and the first time it has to be captured," Pereira told Reuters.

CEOs and other managers are increasingly under the microscope as some investors use artificial intelligence to learn and analyze their language patterns and tone, opening up a new frontier of opportunities to slip up. Reuters reports: In late 2020, according to language pattern software specialist Evan Schnidman, some executives in the IT industry were playing down the possibility of semiconductor chip shortages while discussing supply-chain disruptions. All was fine, they said. Yet the tone of their speech showed high levels of uncertainty, according to an algorithmic analysis designed to spot hidden clues in -- ideally unscripted -- spoken words. "We found that IT sector executives' tone was inconsistent with the positive textual sentiment of their remarks," said Schnidman, who advises two fintech companies behind the analysis.

Within months of the comments, companies including Volkswagen and Ford were warning about a severe shortage of chips hitting output. Share prices in auto and industrial firms fell. IT executives now said there was a supply squeeze. Schnidman holds that computer-driven quant funds accessing scores assigned to the tone of the managers' words, versus scores assigned to the written words, would have been better positioned before the industry turmoil. Some investors nonetheless see the technology -- known as natural language processing (NLP) -- as one new tool to gain an edge over rivals, according to Reuters interviews with 11 fund managers that are using or trialling such systems. They say traditional financial data and corporate statements are so heavily mined nowadays that they offer little value.

Google today released Chrome v95, the latest version of its popular web browser and a version that contains several changes that will likely cause problems for a considerable part of its users. The problematic changes include: removing support for File Transfer Protocol (FTP) URLs -- ftp://
removing support for the Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) standard, used in old-generation security keys (Chrome will only support FIDO2/WebAuth security keys going forward)
adding file size limits for browser cookies
removing support for URLs with non-IPv4 hostnames ending in numbers, such as http://example.0.1

In addition to breaking changes, Chrome 95 also comes with a new UI component called the "Side Panel," which can be used to view the Chrome browser's Reading List and Bookmarks.

Facebook is planning to change its company name next week to reflect its focus on building the metaverse, The Verge reports, citing an unnamed source. From the report: The coming name change, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to talk about at the company's annual Connect conference on October 28th, but could unveil sooner, is meant to signal the tech giant's ambition to be known for more than social media and all the ills that entail. The rebrand would likely position the blue Facebook app as one of many products under a parent company overseeing groups like Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and more.

Major retailers, including Amazon and Ikea, are beginning to clean up their shipping pollution. From a report: A group of companies pledged yesterday that by 2040, they'll only contract ships using zero-carbon fuels to move their goods. Both Ikea and Amazon were among the 15 companies responsible for the most maritime import pollution in 2019, according to one recent analysis. Joining Amazon and Ikea in the commitment are Unilever, Michelin, and clothing retailer Inditex, which owns Zara and other brands. German retailer Tchibo, Patagonia, sports gear company Brooks Running, and FrogBikes are part of the deal, too. The aim is to leave behind heavy fuel oil in favor of alternatives that don't release planet-heating carbon dioxide emissions. But there will still be plenty of hurdles ahead to rein in shipping pollution. "This will be a catalyzing force and a game-changer for the industry to really push for the decarbonization of the sector," says Kendra Ulrich, shipping campaigns director at the environmental nonprofit Stand.earth, which was one of the authors of the 2019 import pollution report.

District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine is adding Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to a lawsuit over the Cambridge Analytica data-mining scandal. From a report: Racine announced the addition on Twitter this morning, saying his investigation had revealed that Zuckerberg was "personally involved in decisions related to Cambridge Analytica and Facebook's failure to protect user data." The 2018 lawsuit accuses Facebook (and now Zuckerberg) of misrepresenting its policies around third-party data access and compromising user privacy with lax protections. The attorney general's office alleges that Facebook violated the Consumer Protection Procedures Act and seeks civil damages for the offense. A judge allowed the case to proceed despite Facebook's efforts to halt it in 2019.

U.S. memory chip maker Micron Technology will build a new factory at its Japanese production site in Hiroshima at a cost of 800 billion yen ($7.0 billion), the Nikkan Kogyo newspaper reported on Wednesday. Reuters: The new facility will make DRAM chips, which are widely used in data centres, with production set to begin in 2024, the report said, without citing sources. COVID-19 pandemic stay-at-home demand for electronic devices is causing shortages of non-memory chips that has forced some manufacturers, such as automakers and smartphone makers, to curtail production. That has also reduced sales of DRAM memory chips, but some industry watchers expect demand to rebound helped by an expansion of data centres.

Gold and precious metals are to be extracted from old phones and laptops by Britain's coin-maker. From a report: The Royal Mint plans to introduce a world-first technology to the UK to recycle gold from electronic waste. Fewer than one fifth of electronic waste ends up being recycled, estimates show. The mint's chief executive Anne Jessopp said the technology would help to "make a genuine impact on one of the world's greatest environmental challenges." The Royal Mint has signed an agreement with Canadian start-up Excir to recover 99% and more of gold from devices' circuit boards. It said the chemistry selectively targets and extracts precious metals from circuit boards in seconds.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The UK government has announced plans to launch a $551 million (400 million pounds) package of investment alongside the US billionaire Bill Gates to boost the development of new green technologies. Boris Johnson said the deal would help power a "green industrial revolution" and develop emerging technologies that were currently too expensive to be commercially successful but were essential to hitting the government's climate goals. Speaking at a Global Investment Summit at the Science Museum in London on Tuesday, the prime minister said the partnership would help develop UK technology related to carbon capture and storage, long-term battery life, jet zero (zero-carbon aviation) and green hydrogen technology.

"I think these are all technologies that have massive potential but are currently underinvested in, by comparison with some others," Johnson said. "We will only achieve our ambitious climate goals if we rapidly scale up new technologies in areas like green hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuels -- technologies that seemed impossible just a few years ago." The UK has already pledged at least £200m to the development of new British green technologies. Gates announced on Tuesday that he would match the commitment via Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, a coalition of private investors he leads in funding innovative approaches to tackling the climate crisis.

Microsoft continues to baby-step around the obvious, but it has officially deprecated the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) as it pushes the desktop-focused Windows App SDK (formerly called Project Reunion) and WinUI 3 as the future of Windows application development. Paul Thurrott reports: For those unclear on the matter, the Windows App SDK basically takes key UWP technologies and new technologies like WinUI 3 that will not be backported to UWP and makes them available to developers in a way that is not tied to specific Windows releases (as was the case with individual UWP features). In this way, Microsoft can "deliver on the agility and backward compatibility developers need to reach across the entire Windows ecosystem" while not leaving developers behind. Going forward, UWP will only receive "bug, reliability, and security fixes," and not new features, Microsoft says, indicating that it is now deprecated. Developers with UWP apps in the market who "are happy with [the] current functionality in UWP" can of course continue to keep using UWP. But those who want "the latest runtime, language, and platform features," including WinUI 3, WebView 2, .NET 5, full compatibility with Windows 10 version 1809 or newer, and any upcoming new features will have to migrate their apps to the Windows App SDK.

Akamai researchers have analyzed 10,000 JavaScript samples including malware droppers, phishing pages, scamming tools, Magecart snippets, cryptominers, etc. At least 26% of them use some form of obfuscation to evade detection, indicating an uptick in the adoption of this basic yet effective technique. BleepingComputer reports: Obfuscation is when easy-to-understand source code is converted into a hard to understand and confusing code that still operates as intended. Threat actors commonly use obfuscation to make it harder to analyze malicious scripts and to bypass security software. Obfuscation can be achieved through various means like the injection of unused code into a script, the splitting and concatenating of the code (breaking it into unconnected chunks), or the use of hexadecimal patterns and tricky overlaps with function and variable naming.

But not all obfuscation is malicious or tricky. As the report explains, about 0.5% of the 20,000 top-ranking websites on the web (according to Alexa), also use obfuscation techniques. As such, detecting malicious code based on the fact that is obfuscated isn't enough on its own, and further correlation with malicious functionality needs to be made. This mixing with legitimate deployment is precisely what makes the detection of risky code challenging, and the reason why obfuscation is becoming so widespread in the threat landscape.

As Paul Thurrott reports, Brave is removing Google Search as its default search engine. From the report: Going forward, the Brave web browser will default to Brave Search. "Brave Search has grown significantly since its release last June, with nearly 80 million queries per month," Brave CEO and co-founder Brendan Eich says. "Our users are pleased with the comprehensive privacy solution that Brave Search provides against Big Tech by being integrated into our browser. As we know from experience in many browsers, the default setting is crucial for adoption, and Brave Search has reached the quality and critical mass needed to become our default search option, and to offer our users a seamless privacy-by-default online experience."

Brave Search is built on top of an independent index, and doesn't track users, their searches, or their clicks, the firm says. And starting with Brave 1.3 on desktop and Android, and Brave 1.32 on iOS, it will be the default search engine in the browser, instead of Google, in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. It is also replacing Qwant in France and DuckDuckGo in Germany, and Brave says that more locales will be added in the next several months. Existing users can keep their chosen search engine default, of course, and new users who prefer other search engines can configure as needed. Brave Search doesn't display ads today, but the free version of the service will soon be ad-supported. An ad-free Premium version is coming "in the near future," Brave says. Along with this search engine news, Brave announced the Web Discovery Project (WDP), "which it describes as a privacy-preserving system for users to anonymously contribute data to improve Brave Search results," writes Thurrott. "The WDP is an opt-in feature that protects user privacy and anonymity by ensuring that contributed data is not linked to individuals, their devices, or any set of users." It has a GitHub repo available to help you learn more about this system.

Today, Google has officially launched Android 12 for select Pixel devices. The Verge reports: It's available to install right now on Pixel 3 and up, including the Pixel 3A, Pixel 4, Pixel 4A, Pixel 4A 5G, the Pixel 5, and the Pixel 5A. It'll launch on the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, as well. Android 12 will be coming later this year to Samsung Galaxy, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Tecno, Vivo, and Xiaomi devices.

The most noticeable feature in Android 12 is the new Material You design, which lets you go a little deeper to tweak the look of the homescreen to your liking. It's more expressive than previous versions of Android, with tools to let you coordinate colors that can extend across app icons, pull-down menus, widgets, and more. Speaking of widgets, many of those have been updated to match the new look, and Google shared today that by the end of October, it plans to have over a dozen new or refreshed widgets available for its first-party apps. Google has published a blog post detailing more features available in this release, including the "Pixel-first" features like Material You.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from People: Doctors around the world are seeing a rise in cases of tic-like behaviors in teen girls, which they believe could be caused by watching TikTok videos about Tourette syndrome. Pediatric hospitals have reported an increase in teen girls coming in after developing tics, sudden twitches or noises that are a common symptom of Tourette syndrome, during the pandemic. The sudden rise is unusual, with tics typically occurring in boys, not girls. Experts in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia studied the patients for months and consulted between hospitals, finding that the common factor between the girls was an interest in watching TikTok videos from influencers who said they have Tourette syndrome, The Wall Street Journal reported.

According to the outlet, Texas Children's Hospital said they've had around 60 teens come in with tics since March 2020, compared to just one or two a year before then, while at Johns Hopkins University Tourette's Center, the number of patients reporting tic-like behaviors has jumped from 2 to 3% a year to 10 to 20%. And Rush University Medical Center in Chicago had 20 patients with tics over just four months this year, compared to 10 all of last year. Researchers from pediatric hospitals around the world found that referrals for tic-like behaviors soared during the pandemic, especially in girls aged 12 to 25, they wrote in a study published in August in the journal Movement Disorders. Since March 2020, referrals in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany and Australia went from 1 to 2% to 20 to 35%. The researchers wrote that they've seen a "similarity between the tics or tic-like behaviors shown on social media and the tic-like behaviors of this group of patients." Another group of doctors say they "believe this to be an example of mass sociogenic illness," where people are copying the behaviors they see in the videos. Doctors recommend therapy to treat kids experiencing these symptoms. They also advise parents to require their teens to "take a social media break or block Tourette videos on their TikTok account," adds the report.

Alongside today's release of the new Pixel 6 smartphones, Google has again upgraded one of the device's most basic -- but often overlooked -- functions: the ability to make phone calls. From a report: In previous years, Google Assistant learned to screen your calls and make your reservations by phone via a technology called Duplex. Last year, it learned how to wait on hold for you, too. Today, Google is expanding some of these existing features and adding new ones -- including a tool that shows you the best time to call a business and a new Duplex-powered feature for navigating businesses' phone trees. With the Phone app on Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, a new feature called "Wait Times" will display the projected time it will take to get through to a person when dialing a toll-free number. You'll be able to see this information before you place the call now only for the present time, but also for the rest of the week. This information may allow you to make a better decision about when to place the call. [...] Another new addition is the "Direct My Call" feature, which will help you get through complicated phone trees when you dial a business. Instead of listening and trying to remember the many options presented (e.g. "Press 1 for hours and locations"), Google Assistant will translate the automated messages for you.

This morning, at the company's virtual hardware event, Google is finally showing us what it means to pick up and start over again. From a report: In many ways, the Pixel 6 marks the most radical departure in the history of Google's flagship devices -- and its most serious attempt to take the fight to Samsung and Apple. The company gave us our first glimpse of the device back in August. It was a surprisingly complete look at a device it would take another three and a half months to announce. Hardware head Rick Osterloh primarily focused on chips, design and the fact that Google was becoming the latest company to buck its reliance on Qualcomm by building its own in-house chip, Tensor. And now it is. The Tensor had landed, alongside the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro it powers. I have the latter in my possession, and it's immediately clear that this is a radically new direction for the Pixel line. Google's clearly gone in a premium direction with the new device, which shares more common DNA with the likes of Samsung's devices than any of the Pixels we've seen to date.

The Pixel 6 sports a 6.4-inch FHD+ OLED at 411 ppi -- that bit, at least, is keeping with mid-range specs. The Pro bumps it up to a 6.7-inch QHD+ at 512 ppi. Those displays have refresh rates of 90 and 120 Hz, respectively, protected by a Gorilla Glass Victus cover, which curves on the edges. [...] The 6 supports two lenses: a 50-megapixel wide-angle camera and 12-megapixel on the 6, plus a 48 megapixel telephoto on the 6 Pro. That last one does 4x optical or up to 20x Super Res, though even with computational photography, things are going to degrade pretty quickly. The front-facing camera, meanwhile, is eight megapixels on the 6 and 11 megapixels on the 6 Pro, with 84- and 94-degree fields of view, respectively. [...] The company has addressed some of the battery issues that plagued earlier models. The 6 and 6 Pro feature 4,614 and 5,003mAh batteries, respectively -- that's a nice jump from the Pixel 5's 4,080mAh (which, in turn, was a nice jump from the Pixel 4). The Pixel 6 starts at $599 and the Pixel 6 Pro starts at $899.

Facebook's crypto wallet Novi is inching forward with a "small pilot" in the U.S. and Guatemala, according to a tweet thread by David Marcus. From a report: The wallet project, which gatecrashed the crypto world in 2019 alongside a digital token dubbed Libra (now Diem), represents one of Facebook's attempts to lean into the fast-growing crypto market as well as the market for payments and remittances. As uncertainty hangs over Diem, Novi moved ahead with Pax Dollar for the pilot. The Block first reported that the project was weighing such a deal in August. Still, Marcus said that Novi's "support for Diem hasn't changed and we intend to launch Novi with Diem once it receives regulatory approval and goes live. Beyond the pilot, our business model is clear," Marcus added.

For its 60th anniversary, Fisher-Price announced a special edition Chatter telephone that can make and receive real phone calls. Engadget reports: Before you start planning on where to display it at your home, know that it doesn't work as a landline unit. It connects to your iOS or Android phone via Bluetooth instead and has to be within 15 feet of your mobile device to work. You'll get nine hours of talk time on the Chatter phone on a single charge, and it comes with a speakerphone button. Other than the features that make it a working device, this Chatter for grown-ups looks just like its toy counterpart with its rotary dial, red handset and wheels. [...] You can get the fully functional Chatter for $60 exclusively from Best Buy's website, starting today until supplies last.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: California company Radiant has secured funding to develop a compact, portable, "low-cost" one-megawatt nuclear micro-reactor that fits in a shipping container, powers about 1,000 homes and uses a helium coolant instead of water. Founded by ex-SpaceX engineers, who decided the Mars colony power sources they were researching would make a bigger impact closer to home, Radiant has pulled in $1.2 million from angel investors to continue work on its reactors, which are specifically designed to be highly portable, quick to deploy and effective wherever they're deployed; remote communities and disaster areas are early targets.

The military is another key market here; a few of these could power an entire military base in a remote area for four to eight years before expending its "advanced particle fuel," eliminating not just the emissions of the current diesel generators, but also the need to constantly bring in trucks full of fuel for this purpose. Those trucks will still have to run -- up until the point where the military ditches diesel in all its vehicles -- but they'll be much less frequent, reducing a significant risk for transport personnel. Radiant says its fuel "does not melt down, and withstands higher temperatures when compared to traditional nuclear fuels." Using helium as the coolant "greatly reduces corrosion, boiling and contamination risks," and the company says it's received provisional patents for ideas it's developed around refueling the reactors and efficiently transporting heat out of the reactor core.