The nightly email is available as an RSS feed.

One of China's top science research institutes has suspended an academic after finding that his "fully independently developed" programming language was based on a widely-used precursor, Python [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From a report: Liu Lei, a researcher at the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, announced last week that his research group had "independently" developed a new programming language, named Mulan after the legendary heroine, and touted as having "applications for artificial intelligence and the internet of things." Days later, Mr Liu wrote an apology to domestic media for "exaggerating" his achievements. Mr Liu admitted that Mulan was based on Python, a programming language whose components are freely available under an "open-source" licence, and that it was primarily designed for teaching programming to children, not for AI applications.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This is amazing. I read a story at the NY Post saying Fairway is filing for Chapter 7. It's a much-loved grocery chain in NYC. I posted a link on Facebook, because I know a few people who go there and got a link to a Twitter post from the company saying they're fine, no plans to shut down. Can't wait to find out what happened here.

Tesla's market value has climbed above Volkswagen AG's for the first time to more than $100 billion. From a report: The electric-car maker's shares jumped as much as 4.6% shortly after the open of regular trading Wednesday. At the early intraday high of $572.11, Tesla's market capitalization was roughly $103.1 billion, exceeding Volkswagen's $99.8 billion and trailing only Toyota Motor. While Musk's skeptics view as absurd Tesla being worth more than a carmaker that sold almost 30 times as many vehicles last year, Volkswagen's Herbert Diess isn't one of those cynics. He's been arguably the most vocal CEO running a traditional carmaker to acknowledge that Tesla's expansion heralds a radical shakeup of the more than century-old auto industry.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Doc's mission is Customer Commons.

The UN has called for an immediate investigation into the "possible involvement" of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the hacking of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' iPhone in 2018, UN experts said in a statement Wednesday. From a report: "The information we have received suggests the possible involvement of the Crown Prince in surveillance of Mr. Bezos, in an effort to influence, if not silence, The Washington Post's reporting on Saudi Arabia," the statement said. "The alleged hacking of Mr. Bezos's phone, and those of others, demands immediate investigation by US and other relevant authorities, including investigation of the continuous, multi-year, direct and personal involvement of the Crown Prince in efforts to target perceived opponents." The UN statement concerns forensic investigations into the claim by Bezos -- the world's wealthiest man and owner of the Washington Post -- that the Saudi government carried out a cyberattack against him to extract large amounts of data from his phone, including nude photos sent to his mistress.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New Delhi is inching closer to recommending regulations that would require social media companies and instant messaging app providers to help law enforcement agencies identify users who have posted content -- or sent messages -- it deems questionable, TechCrunch reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: India will submit the suggested change to the local intermediary liability rules to the nation's apex court later this month. The suggested change, the conditions of which may be altered before it is finalized, currently says that law enforcement agencies will have to produce a court order before exercising such requests, sources who have been briefed on the matter said. But regardless, asking companies to comply with such a requirement would be "devastating" for international social media companies, a New Delhi-based policy advocate told TechCrunch on the condition of anonymity. WhatsApp executives have insisted in the past that they would have to compromise end-to-end encryption of every user to meet such a demand -- a move they are willing to fight over.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After almost seven years, Nintendo has won a patent case that involved the original Wii. On Tuesday, the company announced that a federal court in Dallas ruled in its favor against iLife Technologies, overturning an earlier 2017 decision that would have forced Nintendo to pay out $10.1 million in damages. Engadget reports: The original suit, which was brought against Nintendo of America in 2013, alleged that the company used iLife's technology to create the Wii's motion-sensing controller. The patent that was at the center of the case described a technology designed to detect when a person falls and monitor babies for symptoms of sudden infant death syndrome. iLife had initially sought $144 million in total damages and an injunction against Nintendo. In this latest ruling, however, the court decided that iLife's claim wasn't specific enough.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

First the government insists that Apple help police to access the data on encrypted phones. This is already underway. Then, the next steps:

• A new app from the US government manages your identity and social credit. It's like a passport and wallet in one.
• You can't quit or uninstall it.
• You can't turn off location services or its access to the microphone and camera.
• You will use it to vote.
• It's required that you carry it at all times. Charged.

The new luxury accommodations will be in the rare parts of the world where there is no internet access. You can go to these places to rendezvous with forbidden friends and lovers.

The new national anthem: Back in the USSR.

Last night's emails went out late. Sorry. A glitch in the system. This time it was my software, not detecting an error and re-trying. It may be time for a revision to the mail-sending software.

China's Five-hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) -- the world's largest and most sensitive radio telescope -- is now operational. The telescope was completed in 2016 -- 20 years after it was first proposed -- but has been undergoing testing and commissioning since then. Phys.Org reports: FAST's nickname is Tianyan, which means "Eye of the Sky" or "Eye of Heaven." It's built in a natural depression in Guizhou, Southwest China. Among other things, its scientific goals are to study pulsars. FAST has already discovered two of those, in August 2017. FAST's name is not exactly accurate. Though it does have a 500 meter diameter, only 300 meters of it is used at any one time. The telescope is active and can change so that one 300 meter segment is focused on the receiver. According to Xinhua, all the technical indicators from FAST are meeting or exceeding planned levels. FAST is a powerful radio telescope, and scientists think it will make some major discoveries, especially in its first couple of years. FAST will also perform two sky surveys, which will take about five years. It'll take another 10 years just to analyze all that data. Still, there's room for flexibility in the telescope's operational schedule to pursue any surprises that come up. The surveys will take up about half of the telescope's observing time, leaving room for objectives like searching for exoplanets with magnetic fields, which are probably crucial for life.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With Half-Life: Alyx launching in March 2020, Valve is offering gamers the opportunity to play every Half-Life game on Steam for free. "This is basically a two-month-long trial; you won't get to keep these games," notes The Verge. "Every game is compatible with Windows, Linux, and macOS (though all of these games are 32-bit apps, which means they don't work on macOS 10.15 Catalina)." From the report: This promotion includes the original Half-Life (the Source version of the game with added physics to make it feel more modern to play, not the beautiful remaster Black Mesa) and its expansions, Half-Life: Blue Shift and Half-Life: Opposing Force. Also available for free is Half-Life 2 and its two episodic expansions. (According to Valve, Half-Life: Alyx takes place before the events of Half-Life 2.) Valve's Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, its tech demo for HDR lightning, isn't included in this promotion. You can view all the Half-Life games on Steam and start downloading them here.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dilbert readers - Please visit Dilbert.com to read this feature. Due to changes with our feeds, we are now making this RSS feed a link to Dilbert.com.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Today's example of smart stuff going dumb comes courtesy of Under Armour, which is effectively rendering its fitness hardware line very expensive paperweights. The company quietly pulled its UA Record app from both Google Play and Apple's App Store on New Year's Eve. In an announcement dated sometime around January 8, Under Armour said that not only has the app been removed from all app stores, but the company is no longer providing customer support or bug fixes for the software, which will completely stop working as of March 31. Under Armour launched its lineup of connected fitness devices in 2016. The trio of trackers included a wrist-worn activity monitor, a smart scale, and a chest-strap-style heart rate monitor. The scale and wristband retailed at $180 each, with the heart monitor going for $80. Shoppers could buy all three together in a $400 bundle called the UA HealthBox. The end of the road is nigh, it seems, and all three products are about to meet their doom as Under Armour kills off Record for good. Users are instead expected to switch to MapMyFitness, which Under Armour bills as "an even better tracking experience." The company also set the UA Record Twitter account to private, effectively taking it offline to anyone except the 133 accounts it follows. Current device owners also can't export all their data. While workout data can be exported and transferred to some other tracking app, Record users cannot capture weight or other historical data to carry forward with them.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The 2.2 billion-year-old asteroid impact may explain the end of an ice age, scientists say.