"A story from The Verge reports on Foxconn's substantially scaled-back plans for the heavily subsidized Wisconsin "Gigafactory," writes Slashdot reader kimanaw. Here's an excerpt from the report: The details of the deal were famously written on the back of a napkin when [Foxconn chairman Terry Gou] and the Republican governor first met: a $3 billion state subsidy in return for Foxconn's $10 billion investment in a Generation 10.5 LCD manufacturing plant that would create 13,000 jobs. [...] But what seemed so simple on a napkin has turned out to be far more complicated and messy in real life. As the size of the subsidy has steadily increased to a jaw-dropping $4.1 billion, Foxconn has repeatedly changed what it plans to do, raising doubts about the number of jobs it will create. Instead of the promised Generation 10.5 plant, Foxconn now says it will build a much smaller Gen 6 plant, which would require one-third of the promised investment, although the company insists it will eventually hit the $10 billion investment target. And instead of a factory of workers building panels for 75-inch TVs, Foxconn executives now say the goal is to build "ecosystem" of buzzwords called "AI 8K+5G" with most of the manufacturing done by robots. Shortly after the Wisconsin deal was signed, Walker was touting the Foxconn deal in campaign-style speeches across the state. But by October 2017, just a month after the legislature passed the Foxconn deal, a poll showed only 38 percent of the people in southeastern Wisconsin, where the plant would be located, thought the plant would be a net positive for the state. This was followed by March 2018 poll, which showed that 66 percent of people in the state believed their local businesses wouldn't benefit from the Foxconn deal, and only 25 percent thought it would be beneficial. This was dreadful news for Walker, who suddenly stopped talking about Foxconn. He didn't even mention the deal in a November 2017 speech announcing his run for re-election. It was also bad news for Foxconn, as every Democrat running for governor proceeded to condemn the deal. Both Walker and Foxconn now needed to sell this deal to the voters.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The Trump FCC has declared towns and cities that vote to build their own broadband networks an "ominous threat to the First Amendment." The claims were made last week during a speech given at the telecom-funded Media Institute by FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly. In his speech, O'Rielly insinuated, without evidence, that community owned and operated broadband networks would naturally result in local governments aggressively limiting American free speech rights. "I would be remiss if my address omitted a discussion of a lesser-known, but particularly ominous, threat to the First Amendment in the age of the Internet: state-owned and operated broadband networks," claimed O'Rielly. In his speech, O'Rielly highlighted efforts by the last FCC, led by former boss Tom Wheeler, to encourage such community-run broadband networks as a creative solution to private sector failure. O'Rielly subsequently tried to claim, without evidence, that encouraging such networks would somehow result in government attempts to censor public opinion. "Municipalities such as Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Wilson, North Carolina, have been notorious for their use of speech codes in the terms of service of state-owned networks, prohibiting users from transmitting content that falls into amorphous categories like 'hateful' or "threatening," O'Rielly claimed. The closest O'Rielly gets to supporting evidence appears to be a 2015 white paper written by Professor Enrique Armijo for the ISP-funded Free State Foundation. That paper similarly alleges that standard telecom sector language intended to police "threatening, abusive or hateful" language somehow implies community-run ISPs are more likely to curtail user speech. But municipal broadband experts say the argument has no basis in fact.

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It never crossed my mind that Twitter should eliminate RT. It's a jarring idea.

With the in-development Linux 4.20 kernel, it is now effectively VLA-free. From a report: The variable-length arrays (VLAs) that can be convenient and part of the C99 standard but can have unintended consequences. VLAs allow for array lengths to be determined at run-time rather than compile time. The Linux kernel has long relied upon VLAs in different parts of the kernel -- including within structures -- but going on for months now (and years if counting the kernel Clang'ing efforts) has been to remove the usage of variable-length arrays within the kernel. The problems with them are: 1. Using variable-length arrays can add some minor run-time overhead to the code due to needing to determine the size of the array at run-time. 2. VLAs within structures is not supported by the LLVM Clang compiler and thus an issue for those wanting to build the kernel outside of GCC, Clang only supports the C99-style VLAs. 3. Arguably most importantly is there can be security implications from VLAs around the kernel's stack usage.

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One thing I know for sure, if you want to lead a rebirth of blogging, the first thing to do is to start blogging. The resurrection will not be led by non-bloggers.

Reminds me of a public debate I had with Yochai Benkler many years ago. I was stating something like this, that the best software is developed by users. He asked if you had to have cancer to develop a treatment. He stumped me with that. ;-)

My response, many years later, is that blogging is not a disease, not something to be avoided, and the tools we have for it are for human expression. A scientist would not understand the language of the human blogger if she weren't herself a blogger.

On the other hand a cancer researcher has to think like the disease, not the human. There is no chance (as far as I can imagine) for the doctor to become the cancer. So the treatments have to be developed without the first-hand experience of being a user.

Supporters of jailed pro-Iranian cleric Ibrahim Zakzaky were marching in Abuja to call for the release of their leader.

Another mass shooting in the United States has claimed the lives of 11 in a Pittsburgh synagogue.

In response to a story about Google paying and protecting former executive Andy Rubin following an investigation into sexual misconduct, a group of 200 Google employees are organizing a "women's walk." From a report: A group of more than two hundred engineers at Google are organizing a company-wide "women's walk" walkout for later this week to protest recent revelations about the search giant's protection of employees that had allegedly engaged in sexual misconduct, according to four people familiar with the situation inside Google. The protest, which is expected to happen on Thursday, comes in light of a story by the New York Times last week into the misbehavior of Android creator Andy Rubin and other executives at the company, some of whom still have positions of prominence at Google. Google gave Rubin a reported $90 million exit package in 2014, following an investigation into an allegation that he had coerced another employee to perform oral sex on him. That investigation reportedly found that allegation to be credible.

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A new study shows that rising temperatures drive the disappearance of mountain-top bird species in Peru.

Alphabet's Google announced on Monday that it would grant about $25 million globally next year to humanitarian and environmental projects seeking to use artificial intelligence (AI) to speed up and grow their efforts. The company said its efforts were not a reaction to the recent tech pushback. From a report: The "AI Impact Challenge" is meant to inspire organizations to ask Google for help in machine learning, a form of AI in which computers analyze large datasets to make predictions or detect patterns and anomalies. Google's rivals Microsoft and Amazon tout "AI for good" initiatives too. Focusing on humanitarian projects could aid Google in recruiting and soothe critics by demonstrating that its interests in machine learning extend beyond its core business and other lucrative areas, such as military work.

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Senior official charged with fighting sabotage also says that Iran recently neutralised a new version of Stuxnet.

British finance secretary revealed plans to increase spending if Brexit deal agreed and introduce tax on tech giants.

dmoberhaus writes: Researchers have found that if Bitcoin is adopted at rates similar to technologies like credit cards, its energy consumption could increase global temperatures by 2C in just 16 years. This is well beyond the limit of catastrophic climate change proposed by the UN. Motherboard spoke to an expert on Bitcoin and energy about the study's implications.

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City's Jewish leaders publish open letter to US president demanding that that he stops rhetoric against minorities.

Technology giants will have to pay more tax in the UK under new regulations unveiled by the local government today. From a report: In his budget statement this afternoon, Chancellor Phillip Hammond revealed a two percent "digital services tax" on large tech firms such as Amazon, Facebook and Google. From April 2020, large social media platforms, search engines and online marketplaces will pay a 2 percent tax on the revenues they earn which are linked to UK users. The tax follows increasing pressure from both the public and politicians to take action against multi-billion dollar firms paying low rates of tax in the UK. Both Google and Facebook have been criticised for paying little taxes in previous years, largely by centering their UK operations in Ireland to avoid higher charges. Revealing the tax in Parliament, Hammond said that it will be, "carefully designed to ensure it is established tech giants -- rather than our tech start-ups - that shoulder the burden of this new tax."

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