New submitter xhonza writes: New OpenBSD version. String of good news. Some of the new changes, as highlighted by Phoronix, include: - FFS2 file-system improvements including using 64-bit timestamps and block numbers by default for new installs. - Support for the Raspberry Pi 4 on ARM64 while improving the Raspberry Pi 3 support too. Raspberry Pi 2/3 support has also improved for OpenBSD ARMv7. - Better support for Rockchip systems like the Pinebook Pro. - Various SMP improvements including better AMD SMT/Core/Package detection. - A wide variety of different hardware driver improvements, including Intel AX200 WiFi device support. - A FIDO driver introduced for FIDO/U2F security keys support. - Fixed handling of USB 2.0 devices when in use on different USB 3.0 controllers. - The PowerPC OpenBSD build switched over to Clang as its default code compiler. - Various dhclient fixes. - Various security improvements. The changelog, announcement, and list of mirrors can be found at their respective links.

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After a year of weathering criticism from tech workers, politicians, and activists over its oil industry contracts, Google has stated that it will not create new custom A.I. or machine learning algorithms that would help the oil and gas industry enhance its ability to extract fossil fuels. From a report: "We will not ... build custom A.I./ML algorithms to facilitate upstream extraction in the oil and gas industry," a Google spokesperson said in a statement provided to OneZero. The declaration comes in response to a new Greenpeace report that details 14 separate contracts between three of the biggest tech companies -- Google, Amazon, and Microsoft -- and major oil firms. Over the last two years, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services have inked deals with firms like Exxon, Chevron, and Total to use A.I. and automation to accelerate fossil fuel exploration and extraction, linking the last generation of the world's richest, most powerful companies with the newest. Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have built web portals to entice oil and gas clients, and each company has set up divisions aimed at winning business from the oil industry. With a surfeit of disorganized, backlogged data, tapering production rates, and deep financial reserves, major oil corporations are attractive clients to cloud service providers.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: The coronavirus pandemic has forced countries around the world to enact strict lockdowns, seal borders and scale back economic activities. Now, an analysis published Tuesday finds that these measures contributed to an estimated 17 percent decline in daily global carbon dioxide emissions compared to daily global averages from 2019. It's a worldwide drop that scientists say could be the largest in recorded history. At the height of coronavirus confinements in early April, daily carbon dioxide emissions around the world decreased by roughly 18.7 million tons compared to average daily emissions last year, falling to levels that were last observed in 2006, according to the new study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change. Drastic changes in transportation, industrial activities and air travel in nations under lockdowns could also fuel a decrease in this year's annual carbon emissions of up to 7 percent, the study found. Though significant, scientists say these declines are unlikely to have a long-term impact once countries return to normal unless governments prioritize investments and infrastructure to reduce harmful emissions. "Globally, we haven't seen a drop this big ever, and at the yearly level, you would have to go back to World War II to see such a big drop in emissions," said Corinne Le Quere, a professor of climate change science at the University of East Anglia in the U.K., and the study's lead author. "But this is not the way to tackle climate change -- it's not going to happen by forcing behavior changes on people. We need to tackle it by helping people move to more sustainable ways of living." The sharpest decline in carbon emissions came from reduced traffic from cars, buses and trucks, which made up 43 percent of the total decrease. Although emissions from air travel fell by 60 percent, it made up a much smaller portion of the overall decreases because air travel typically accounts for only 2.8 percent of yearly global carbon emissions.

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"The Joe Rogan Experience," one of podcasting's longest-running and most popular shows, will be launching on Spotify exclusively this year. From a report: The Rogan-hosted comedy talk-show series will debut on Spotify on Sept. 1, 2020, on a nonexclusive basis -- before becoming exclusive to the platform later later in 2020 under the multiyear licensing deal. With Rogan, Spotify has landed one of the podcasting biz's whales. It currently ranks as the No. 2 most popular show on Apple Podcasts (after Barstool Sports' "Call Her Daddy"), per Podcast Insights. A source familiar with the deal said Rogan became sold on Spotify's ability to build his audience worldwide, after initially resisting distributing the podcast on the platform because he saw it as primarily a music service. In addition to the podcast, JRE also produces corresponding video episodes, which will also be available on Spotify as in-app "vodcasts." Rogan announced the deal on social media Tuesday, touting Spotify as "the largest audio platform in the world." Marco Arment of Instapaper and Tumblr fame, who also built podcast app Overcast, which supports every podcast and is vocal supporter of open podcasting system, said in a tweet, "What Joe Rogan is going to find out -- after it's too late -- is that moving an existing, open, free show behind a proprietary wall results in massive audience loss. I hope he at least leaves his public feed up so he can return to it when his Spotify exclusivity fails."

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In the world of online spying, great power lies with those who can get their hands on the data flowing through the world's Internet infrastructure. So the fact that Germany is home to one of the world's biggest Internet exchange points -- where data crosses between the networks that make up the Internet -- has given a lot of power to the country's equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency. From a report: The Bundesnachrichtendienst, or BND, gets to freely sift through all the foreign traffic passing through that exchange junction in search of nuggets that can be shared with overseas partners such as the NSA. But now, that power is in jeopardy, thanks to a Tuesday ruling from Germany's constitutional court. The case was brought about by journalists who report on human rights in conflict zones, and don't want German spies potentially identifying their sources there and sharing that information with other countries. Germany's Federal Constitutional Court ruled that foreigners also benefit from privacy protections under Germany's constitution, so the surveillance conducted on them by Germany's spy agency needs to respect their rights. The legislation in question, which was introduced in 2016, does nothing of the sort. Indeed, those rules trample over foreigners' rights in a variety of ways, the court said: they allow mass surveillance rather than targeted surveillance; there's not enough oversight of the spying; there are no protections for journalists and lawyers, as there should be; and there aren't enough restrictions or safeguards when it comes to sharing the information with the likes of the NSA.

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Google has released today version 83 of its Chrome web browser, one of the most feature-packed Chrome updates released since the browser's initial launch back in 2009. From a report: Today's v83 release includes a slew of new features. These include enhanced privacy controls, new settings for managing cookie files, a new Safety Check option, support for tab groups, new graphics for web form elements, a new API for detecting barcodes, and a new anti-XSS security feature, among many many others. The reason why Chrome 83 includes so many features is because Google canceled the Chrome 82 release due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. As a result, some of the Chrome 82 features were pushed into Chrome 83, while others were rescheduled for later this year.

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Facebook and Instagram are making their biggest push yet into online shopping with Facebook Shops, which allows businesses to turn their Facebook and Instagram pages into online storefronts for their fans and followers. From a report: Facebook, as with pretty much all its recent product updates, is billing the feature as one that will further help small businesses affected by the economic fallout of COVID-19. But the update, which is starting to roll out now, is also the company's biggest move into e-commerce yet. With Shops, business owners can create a dedicated "shop" section of their Facebook or Instagram page and build out a catalog of their products for users to browse and buy. Importantly, most actual purchases won't be happening on Facebook. Product listings will direct to a business' existing website -- unless it's one of a handful of companies using Instagram's in-app checkout feature.

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phalse phace shares a report: So much for Walmart's big and expensive effort to take on Amazon with a digitally-native brand. Amid the coronavirus crisis and its impact on the retail industry, today the retail giant quietly announced in its quarterly report that it would be discontinuing Jet.com, the online-only marketplace that it acquired when it was just over one year old for $3 billion (plus $300 million in earn-outs over time), as it struggles to bring its e-commerce operations into that black after reportedly seeing a loss of $2 billion in the division in 2019 and shifting how to deliver its e-commerce strategy: by betting on giant stores, rather than online warehouses, as the hubs of its online delivery model. Jet.com's fate was disclosed as part of a Walmart's Q1 earnings report, in which the company said it saw growth of less than 10% in its core US market, and said that it would be withdrawing guidance for fiscal 2021. The company tried to put a positive spin on the news despite those numbers highlighting how it helped its digital transformation. "Due to continued strength of the Walmart.com brand, the company will discontinue Jet.com," the company said in a short statement. "The acquisition of Jet.com nearly four years ago was critical to accelerating our omni strategy."

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At Build 2020 today, Microsoft gave developers a slew of new tools to coax them into using Windows over macOS or Linux. From a report: Windows Terminal is now out of preview for enterprises, and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) 2 is getting support for GPUs, Linux GUI apps, and a simplified install experience. Microsoft even released a Windows Package Manager in preview. Windows 10 runs on 1 billion monthly active devices (PCs, Xbox One consoles, and HoloLens devices), making it a massive platform for developers to target. [...] Microsoft today released Windows Terminal 1.0, which means it is stable for enterprise use. The open source application features multiple tabs, panes, tear-away windows, shortcuts, Unicode and UTF-8 character support, emojis, ligatures, extensions, GPU-accelerated text rendering engine, and custom themes, styles, and configurations. Windows Terminal is for users of PowerShell, Cmd, WSL, and other command-line tools. Microsoft also unveiled WSL improvements today, including support for GPUs, Linux GUI apps, and a simplified install experience. WSL is a compatibility layer for running Linux binary executables natively on Windows. Microsoft first shared it was working on WSL 2 a year ago at Build 2019. WSL 2 is slated to arrive in the next major Windows 10 update coming later this month (brilliantly called the Windows 10 May 2020 Update), but it won't have these new features. In the second half of the year, WSL 2 will get support for GPU compute workflows.

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I just got something neat working, integrated PagePark with Forever. So now I can create a sub-folder of the domains folder, and put a Node app in it. PP will see it when it boots, and launch the app with Forever, running as a package, with no UI. PagePark told it what port to run on via process.env.PORT, which is a standard. That's how PP, which is foremost an HTTP server, knows how to route requests to the app. I've always suspected this is where Forever belongs, but it took a few iterations over a couple of years to get to this place. The pieces all snap in place. Further, I did it on a server without Dropbox running on it. The Linux version of Dropbox is an unmaintained mess. Almost qualifies as a virus. It feels so much more solid not depending on it.

I’ve been programming almost exclusively in JavaScript since 2013. I’ve mastered callbacks, have no use for promises and most of the other fancy new stuff. I believe in minimal languages. The bloat in JavaScript is undermining what was attractive about it, it was a consensus platform. Having a common syntax for programming cuts costs, makes it easier and therefore more likely to share ideas, and avoid the setbacks that come from reinventing the wheel. Now it's splitting up into a lot of different syntaxes. Next thing they're going let you define your own syntax and we'll be right back where we were before everything coalesced around JavaScript. It takes a worse-is-better language to be the consensus. As a messy hairball that means different things to different people, it doesn't serve much of a purpose at all. However, I am invested, and am sticking with the core syntax I use, maybe others will do the same.

Viruses on computers and viruses in the real world are interesting to compare. Right now I don't know if my computer, a Mac, has a virus, but there are no obvious symptoms of it being infected. That does not mean it's not infected. When there's a virus going around, it screws up everything. Back in the 00s when viruses were running wild on Windows machines, I was a Windows user. Over time you learned how to defend against them. For example, when they offer you an ad-free version of an app, you say no. That was just the beginning. We were always trying to keep our computers virus-free, but eventually the viruses would figure out a way around our defenses, and we'd be spending all our time fighting it, until we got our machine uninfected, or at least without symptoms. So, the way we're dealing with the new coronavirus is the way computer newbies deal with computer viruses. I know because I have supported a virus neophyte, my mom. The current US govt is behaving pretty much the way she would. She didn't want to learn the rules, and she wanted to pretend it was okay, get back to business as usual (checking her email, writing a blog post). All the while she's got something watching and recording her every move and looking for a chance to infect some other computer.

The SD Association announced today that SD cards are about to get faster than ever, thanks to the SD 8.0 Specification. From a report: With SD Express technology, which is based on NVMe and PCIe, you will eventually be able to buy an SD card with speeds nearing 4GB/s! "SD Express uses the well-known PCIe 4.0 specification and the latest NVMe specification (up to version 1.4) defined by PCI-SIG and NVM Express, respectively. SD 8.0 specification provides two transfer speed options for SD Express memory cards. The two transfer speeds are accomplished by supporting either PCIe 3.0 x2 or PCIe 4.0 x1 architectures with up to ~2GB/s and with PCIe 4.0 x2 technology with up to 4GB/s. SD Express cards offering PCIe 4.0 x1 architecture use the same form factor as defined for SD 7.0 specification cards with a second row of pins to deliver transfer speeds up to 2 GB/s. SD Express cards supporting dual PCIe lanes (PCIe 3.0 x2 or PCIe 4.0 x2 technologies) have three rows of pins," said the SD Association.

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An analysis shows a huge daily CO2 drop, but a return to car travel may see emissions rebound.

Apple is acquiring older movies and shows for its TV+ streaming service, aiming to build a back catalog of content that can better stack up against the huge libraries available on Netflix, Hulu and Disney+. From a report: The company's video-programming executives have taken pitches from Hollywood studios about licensing older content for TV+ and have bought some shows and movies, according to people familiar with the matter. The move represents a subtle strategy shift for Apple TV+, which launched in November with a lineup of original programs. The company plans to keep TV+ focused on original shows, and hasn't yet acquired any huge franchises or blockbusters for its back catalog, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private.

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