For a fraction of a second, 10 quadrillion watts of fusion power were produced this month by researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The author of The Star Builders: Nuclear Fusion and the Race to Power the Planet explains what might happen next: The aim of these experiments is — for now — to show proof of principle only: that energy can be generated. The team behind the success are very close to achieving this: they have managed a more than 1,000-fold improvement in energy release between 2011 and today. Prof Jeremy Chittenden, co-director of the Centre for Inertial Fusion Studies at Imperial College London, said last month that "The pace of improvement in energy output has been rapid, suggesting we may soon reach more energy milestones, such as exceeding the energy input from the lasers used to kickstart the process...." Many recent advances have been made with a different type of fusion device, the tokamak: a doughnut-shaped machine that uses a tube of magnetic fields to confine its fuel for as long as possible. China's Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (East) set another world record in May by keeping fuel stable for 100 seconds at a temperature of 120m degrees celsius — eight times hotter than the sun's core. The world's largest ever magnetic fusion machine, Iter, is under construction in the south of France and many experts think it will have the scale needed to reach net energy gain. The UK-based Joint European Torus (Jet), which holds the current magnetic fusion record for power of 67%, is about to attempt to produce the largest total amount of energy of any fusion machine in history. Alternative designs are also being explored: the UK government has announced plans for an advanced tokamak with an innovative spherical geometry, and "stellarators", a type of fusion device that had been consigned to the history books, are enjoying a revival having been enabled by new technologies such as superconducting magnets. This is a lot of progress, but it's not even the biggest change: that would be the emergence of private sector fusion firms. The recently formed Fusion Industry Association estimates that more than $2bn of investment has flooded into fusion startups. The construction of experimental reactors by these firms is proceeding at a phenomenal rate: Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which has its origins in MIT research, has begun building a demonstration reactor in Massachusetts; TAE Technologies has just raised $280m to build its next device; and Canadian-based General Fusion has opted to house its new $400m plant in the UK. This will be constructed in Oxfordshire, an emerging hotspot for the industry that is home to private ventures First Light Fusion and Tokamak Energy as well as the publicly funded Jet and Mast (Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak) Upgrade devices run by the UK Atomic Energy Authority... For now, publicly funded labs are producing results a long way ahead of the private firms — but this could change. "Whether commercial fusion energy is ready in time to help with global warming or not depends on us as a society and how badly we want — no, need — star power on our side," the author concludes. He also calls fusion energy "the only feasible way we can explore space beyond Earth's immediate vicinity."

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The Washington Post reports that the U.S. government "plans to expand its use of facial recognition to pursue criminals and scan for threats, an internal survey has found, even as concerns grow about the technology's potential for contributing to improper surveillance and false arrests." Ten federal agencies — the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Interior, Justice, State, Treasury and Veterans Affairs — told the Government Accountability Office they intend to grow their facial recognition capabilities by 2023, the GAO said in a report posted to its website Tuesday. Most of the agencies use face-scanning technology so employees can unlock their phones and laptops or access buildings, though a growing number said they are using the software to track people and investigate crime. The Department of Agriculture, for instance, said it wants to use it to monitor live surveillance feeds at its facilities and send an alert if it spots any faces also found on a watch list... The GAO said in June that 20 federal agencies have used either internally developed or privately run facial recognition software, even though 13 of those agencies said they did not "have awareness" of which private systems they used and had therefore "not fully assessed the potential risks ... to privacy and accuracy." In the current report, the GAO said several agencies, including the Justice Department, the Air Force and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, reported that they had used facial recognition software from Clearview AI, a firm that has faced lawsuits from privacy groups and legal demands from Google and Facebook after it copied billions of facial images from social media without their approval... Many federal agencies said they used the software by requesting that officials in state and local governments run searches on their own software and report the results. Many searches were routed through a nationwide network of "fusion centers," which local police and federal investigators use to share information on potential threats or terrorist attacks... U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials, who have called the technology "the way of the future," said earlier this month that they had run facial recognition scans on more than 88 million travelers at airports, cruise ports and border crossings. The systems, the officials said, have detected 850 impostors since 2018 — or about 1 in every 103,000 faces scanned.

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Megan Borovicka forget all about her Facebook account after 2013, reports the Washington Post. "But Facebook never forgot about her." The 42-year-old Oakland, California, lawyer never picked any "friends," posted any status updates, liked any photos or even opened the Facebook app on her phone. Yet over the last decade, Facebook has used an invisible data vacuum to suction up very specific details about her life — from her brand of underwear to where she received her paycheck... It isn't just the Facebook app that's gobbling up your information. Facebook is so big, it has convinced millions of other businesses, apps and websites to also snoop on its behalf. Even when you're not actively using Facebook. Even when you're not online. Even, perhaps, if you've never had a Facebook account. Here's how it works: Facebook provides its business partners tracking software they embed in apps, websites and loyalty programs. Any business or group that needs to do digital advertising has little choice but to feed your activities into Facebook's vacuum: your grocer, politicians and, yes, even the paywall page for this newspaper's website. Behind the scenes, Facebook takes in this data and tries to match it up to your account. It sits under your name in a part of your profile your friends can't see, but Facebook uses to shape your experience online. Among the 100 most popular smartphone apps, you can find Facebook software in 61 of them, app research firm Sensor Tower told me. Facebook also has trackers in about 25 percent of websites, according to privacy software maker Ghostery... Facebook got a notice when I opened Hulu to watch TV. Facebook knew when I went shopping for paint, a rocking chair and fancy beans. Facebook learned I read the websites What To Expect, Lullaby Trust and Happiest Baby. Over two weeks, Facebook tracked me on at least 95 different apps, websites and businesses, and those are just the ones I know about. It was as if Facebook had hired a private eye to prepare a dossier about my life. Why does Facebook think that's okay? The company emailed me answers about how its tracking technology works, but declined my requests to interview its chief privacy officer or other executives about its alleged monopoly.... Who in their right mind thought they were signing up for this much surveillance back when they first joined Facebook? The article points out that in 2014 Facebook began allowing its advertisers to target users based on websites they'd visited...and now also gathers more data about users from other companies. And "While many companies were using browser cookies, which could be easily cleared or blocked, Facebook tied what it learned to real identities — the names on our Facebook profiles." And beyond that, companies "can report other identifying information to Facebook like your email to help it figure out who you are... If you've never had a Facebook account at all? It may still be watching." It's a lucrative business, the Post points out. "In 2013, the average American's data was worth about $19 per year in advertising sales to Facebook, according to its financial statements. In 2020, your data was worth $164 per year." What does Facebook know about your off-Facebook activity? You can find out at this URL. If you just want to stop them from giving this information to advertisers, the right side of that page has an option to "Clear History — Disconnect off-Facebook activity history from your account." But you then have to also click "More Options" and then "Manage Future Activity" to also stop them from later matching up more of your off-Facebook activity to your profile for advertisers. If you try to select it, Facebook warns what you'll be missing — that "Keeping your future off-Facebook activity saved with your account allows us to personalize your experience." And proceeding anyways then generates a popup reminding you that "We'll still receive activity from the businesses and organizations you visit. It may be used for measurement purposes and to make improvements to our ads systems, but it will be disconnected from your account." And apparently your activity on Oculus isn't covered, and will still remain connected to your Facebook account.

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Two on the Aisle, 1927.

Local file-chooser dialog in HTML and JavaScript. This app opens a text file on the local computer and displays the file text in the JavaScript console.

CNET reports: A fossil discovered during a police raid in Brazil has turned out to be one of the best-preserved flying reptiles found yet, researchers say. The remains belong to a tapejarid, a toothless pterosaur from the early Cretaceous period known for its huge cranial crest composed partly of bone and partly of soft tissue. Skulls and partial skeletons of Brazilian tapejarids have turned up before, but this fossil was found with more than 90% of its skeleton intact, along with some soft tissue in place around the bones. "This fossil is special because it is the most complete pterosaur from Brazil and it brings new information about the anatomy and ecology of this animal," says Victor Beccari, co-author of a study on the find published Wednesday in the open-access journal PLOS One. Brazilian federal police found the tapejarid fossil while investigating an illegal fossil trade operation in 2013. They recovered 3,000 specimens kept in storage units in the states of São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro and transferred them to the Geosciences Institute of the University of São Paulo for study. Since 1942, Brazilian law has categorized fossils as state property, as they're considered part of the country's geological heritage and forbidden from being sold commercially. The tapejarid had a wingspan of more than 8 feet (2.5 meters) and stood 3.2 feet (1 meter) tall. Its head crest accounted for 40% of its height.

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"Academic researchers discover that nearly 40% of the code suggestions by GitHub's Copilot tool are erroneous, from a security point of view..." writes TechRadar: To help quantify the value-add of the system, the academic researchers created 89 different scenarios for Copilot to suggest code for, which produced over 1600 programs. Reviewing them, the researchers discovered that almost 40% were vulnerable in one way or another... Since Copilot draws on publicly available code in GitHub repositories, the researchers theorize that the generated vulnerable code could perhaps just be the result of the system mimicking the behavior of buggy code in the repositories. Furthermore, the researchers note that in addition to perhaps inheriting buggy training data, Copilot also fails to consider the age of the training data. "What is 'best practice' at the time of writing may slowly become 'bad practice' as the cybersecurity landscape evolves." Visual Studio magazine highlights another concern. 39.33 percent of the top options were vulnerable, the paper noted, adding that "The security of the top options are particularly important — novice users may have more confidence to accept the 'best' suggestion...." "There is no question that next-generation 'auto-complete' tools like GitHub Copilot will increase the productivity of software developers," the authors (Hammond Pearce, Baleegh Ahmad, Benjamin Tan, Brendan Dolan-Gavitt and Ramesh Karri) say in conclusion. "However, while Copilot can rapidly generate prodigious amounts of code, our conclusions reveal that developers should remain vigilant ('awake') when using Copilot as a co-pilot. Ideally, Copilot should be paired with appropriate security-aware tooling during both training and generation to minimize the risk of introducing security vulnerabilities.

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The Associated Press reports: Cuba's government said Thursday it will recognize — and regulate — cryptocurrencies for payments on the island. A resolution published in the Official Gazette said the Central Bank will set rules for such currencies and determine how to license providers of related services within Cuba. The popularity of such currencies has grown among a technologically savvy group in Cuba as it has become harder to use dollars, in part because of toughened embargo rules imposed under former President Donald Trump... Because [cryptocurrencies] can be used for long-distance transactions that are supposedly anonymous, they are often popular with people attempting to evade government regulations — presumably including U.S. restrictions on sending money to places such as Cuba.

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Slashdot reader Charlotte Web quotes CNN: Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder and former CEO of Theranos whose criminal trial is set to begin in a matter of days, is likely to defend herself by claiming she was the victim of a decade-long abusive relationship with her ex-boyfriend, also a former Theranos executive, court documents reveal. According to the newly unsealed documents, Holmes plans to have an expert testify about the psychological, emotional and sexual abuse she experienced from Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, who served as the company's COO, including the abusive tactics he allegedly used to "exert control" as well as the psychological impact. Balwani, according to a court filing, "adamantly denies" the claims. Holmes is also "likely to testify herself to the reasons why she believed, relied on, and deferred to Mr. Balwani," according to a filing from Holmes' attorney. In a separate filing from Balwani's attorneys, they acknowledge Holmes' plans to introduce evidence that Balwani verbally disparaged her, controlled what she ate, how she dressed, and who she interacted with, "essentially dominating her and erasing her capacity to make decisions." The filing calls the allegations "deeply offensive to Mr. Balwani" and "devastating personally to him...." Balwani, a former software executive, joined Theranos in 2009, becoming Holmes' second-in-command. Nearly 20 years Holmes' senior, the pair had met in 2002 on a trip to Beijing through Stanford University's Mandarin program. Balwani's case is slated to begin in 2022 after the completion of Holmes' trial.

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As I wrote yesterday, I really liked The Chair, but there was something in the story I wish they had explored. Spoilers follow. One of the faculty, a young white male superstar, is accused of being a Nazi by students. They have demonstrations. Make demands. The faculty freezes. He tries to respond, his colleagues tell him this never works, when men try to defend themselves, it only makes it worse. He's seen as not contrite. We see the issue only from the faculty standpoint, all we hear from students are slogans and soundbites. We do hear from one student who will be hurt by the takedown. We understand from the start that the professor is not a Nazi. As I watched the confrontation, I wondered if the individual students knew they're wrong. Why was this not explored? Do any of the students argue that they should help the professor instead of attacking? (He's a sympathetic character, his wife died recently.) I know this is TV and they're subject to the same dishonesty they're portraying (Netflix defends Nazis). As I said yesterday, the acting is great, the characters are appealing, it's a page-turner of a binge-watch. But with one small exception, the students are portrayed as flat angry unreasonable monsters. They can't be that single-minded, unconflicted, thoughtless. It left me feeling dissatisfied. Now that I've written it up, I can move on.

I like people who look like people.

An idea for the news industry to collaborate on. Sometimes a news org takes down the paywall on a story because it's important that everyone see it. Make an RSS feed that combines all such stories across all pubs. Make spreading the news even more efficient.

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 quotes a new press release from Massachusetts General Hospital: Cutting 20% of sugar from packaged foods and 40% from beverages could prevent 2.48 million cardiovascular disease events (such as strokes, heart attacks, cardiac arrests), 490,000 cardiovascular deaths, and 750,000 diabetes cases in the U.S. over the lifetime of the adult population, reports a study published in Circulation... More than two in five American adults are obese, one in two have diabetes or prediabetes, and nearly one in two have cardiovascular disease, with those from lower-income groups being disproportionately burdened. Their model suggests that after 10 years, America could save $4.28 billion in total net healthcare costs, and $118.04 billion over the lifetime of the current adult population (ages 35 to 79), according to the announcement. It also points out that America "lags other countries in implementing strong sugar-reduction policies." And the study's co-senior author (also a dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University) says their findings "suggest it's time to implement a national program with voluntary sugar reduction targets, which can generate major improvements in health, health disparities, and healthcare spending in less than a decade."

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Five years ago Linus Torvalds commemorated Linux's 25th anniversary in an interview with ZDNet's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols. Now that Linux is celebrating its 30th birthday, Vaughan-Nichols interviewed Torvalds again, who makes an important philosophical point: Trying to look at the bigger picture, Torvalds now thinks the period in early 1992 — when Linux switched to using the Gnu Public License version 2 (GPLv2) — was especially important. He recalls, "It wasn't the original license, but I'm convinced it's a big part of why Linux became so widespread. Not everybody loves the GPL, and I've had my own issues with the FSF [Free Software Foundation], but I do think the GPLv2 has been a huge deal, and people shouldn't dismiss the licensing issues." He adds: "I think the companies getting involved has been hugely important — and that may sound so obvious as to be trite and stupid, but some corners of the open-source community have been fairly negative to any commercial involvement." Torvalds points out that from its earliest days Linux has experienced "fairly continual" interest from major companies. The interview also revisits Linux's version control systems and the name Torvalds had originally chosen for the operating system back in 1991. ("Freax," for "Free Unix.") But 10 years ago, the same reporter got a surprise when he'd asked Torvalds where he thought Linux would be on its 40th birthday. Torvalds' answer? "Bah. I don't plan that far ahead. I can barely keep my calendar for the next week in mind. I really have no idea." So this week Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols instead asked Torvalds how he's envisioning his own future: Looking ahead, Torvalds sees himself keeping on. "I'm 51 years young, I enjoy what I'm doing. What would I do if I didn't do Linux? Puttering around in the garden? Not bloody likely. Slashdot reader juul_advocate shares some context. Torvalds was also contacted by IT Wire to get his thoughts on the 30th birthday of Linux. "There's literally a few people who are still active and around that got involved in '91..." Torvalds told them: "I like having been around for that long, and it's also nice how many other people have actually been around for almost that long... "But I just don't have anything new to say about it, I'm afraid. And while today is an anniversary date, it's not even the only one. This was the anniversary of the first public announcement, but it wasn't actually the actual first code drop. That came later — 17 September. "And even that second anniversary isn't the 'last' anniversary, because the Linux 0.01 code drop on 17 September was only privately announced to people who had shown some interest from the first announcement. "So the first actually public and real *announced* code drop was 5 October 1991, which is when 0.02 was dropped. So I actually have three anniversaries, and they are all equally valid in my mind."

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