Long-time Slashdot reader UnderAttack writes: IoT devices are often stitched together from various odd libraries and features. The SANS Internet Storm Center has a story about a cat feeder that not only appears to reach out to Baidu.com every five minutes but also uses a vulnerable DNS library that uses repeating query ids allowing for simple spoofing not seen since the early dark years of DNS
The article, by a SANS.edu dean of research, concludes that "Some networking libraries use 'baidu.com' for internet connectivity checks. Even if the DNS lookup succeeds, there is no actual outbound connection in this case. The device is happy as long as an IP address is returned."

China plans to break its own record for the world's largest wind farm by constructing a new one before 2025 that could power more than 13 million homes. Interesting Engineering reports: The 14th five-year plan for Chaozhou, China's Guangdong province, was released last week, outlining the city's ambitious plans for a 43.3 gigawatt (GW) project in the Taiwan Strait. Work on the project will begin "before 2025." It will surpass the largest wind farm in the world once it is finished, according to Guangdong province officials. The 10-kilometer-long farm, which will have thousands of strong wind turbines, will operate between 75 and 185 kilometers (47 and 115 miles) offshore. And because of the region's distinctive topographical features and windy location, these turbines will be able to run between 43 percent to 49 percent of the time, meaning 3,800 to 4,300 hours each year.

A gigawatt is one billion watts, and 3 million solar panels are required to produce one gigawatt of power. 100 million LEDs or 300,000 typical European homes may each be powered by one gigawatt. The facility's 43.3 GW of power-generating capacity could supply electricity to 13 million households, which is equal to 4.3 billion LED lights, as per Euronews. The Jiuquan Wind Power base in China, a huge facility with a 20 gigawatt capacity, presently holds the distinction of being the world's largest wind farm.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Hong Kong is pivoting toward a friendlier regulatory regime for cryptocurrencies with a plan to legalize retail trading, contrasting with the city's skeptical stance of recent years and the ban in place in mainland China. A planned mandatory licensing program for crypto platforms set to be enforced in March next year will allow retail trading, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the information isn't public. Regulators are seeking to allow listings of bigger tokens but won't endorse specific coins like Bitcoin or Ether, the people said, adding the details and timetable have yet to be finalized as a public consultation is due first.

The government is expected to flesh out its recently stated goal of creating a top crypto hub at a fintech conference starting Monday. The push comes amid a broader drive to restore Hong Kong's credentials as a finance center after years of political turmoil and Covid curbs sparked a talent exodus. [...] The upcoming regime for listing tokens on retail exchanges is likely to include criteria such as their market value, liquidity and membership of third-party crypto indexes, the people familiar said. That's similar to the approach for structured products such as warrants, they added. "Introducing mandatory licensing in Hong Kong is just one of the important things regulators have to do," said Gary Tiu, executive director at crypto firm BC Technology Group Ltd. "They can't forever effectively close the needs of retail investors."

Despite warnings from intelligence agencies, Germany's government is set to approve a Chinese takeover of a German company's microchips production facility. Reuters reports: German outlet Handelsblatt reported Thursday that the deal -- which would see a takeover of the semiconductor production of Dortmund-based Elmos by Sweden's Silex, a wholly owned subsidiary of China's Sai Microelectronics -- was set to get the green light against security advice. The deal is currently being reviewed by the German economy ministry. A final decision on approval is expected within the next few weeks.

Elmos is one of Germany's smaller semiconductor companies, which mainly produces chips for the automotive industry. Silex plans to take over the plant for 85 million euros. Elmos will use the investment to give up its own production and instead process chips bought from contract manufacturers. The German government says that the technology Elmos uses is old and not to expect any outflow of critical know-how to China. The German security authorities, on the other hand, argued that they are not only concerned about exiting knowledge, but also that China is systematically increasing its chip production capacities. According to Handelsblatt, they advised the government to block the deal. The president of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) also recently warned that China is deliberately buying into strategic industries in order to exert pressure on other countries.

Government officials believe that surveillance operations by foreign powers and weather balloons or other airborne clutter explain most recent incidents of unidentified aerial phenomenon -- government-speak for U.F.O.s -- as well as many episodes in past years. From a report: The sightings have puzzled the Pentagon and intelligence agencies for years, fueling theories about visiting space aliens and spying by a hostile nation using advanced technology. But government officials say many of the incidents have far more ordinary explanations. Intelligence agencies are set to deliver a classified document to Congress by Monday updating a report made public last year that said nearly all of the incidents remain unexplained. The original document looked at 144 incidents between 2004 and 2021 that were reported by U.S. government sources, mostly American military personnel.

This article is based on interviews with American officials familiar with the findings of the Pentagon and intelligence agencies' examination of the incidents. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the classified work. Some of the incidents have been formally attributed to Chinese surveillance -- with relatively ordinary drone technology -- and others are also thought to be connected to Beijing. China, which has stolen plans for advanced fighter planes, wants to learn more about how the United States trains its military pilots, according to American officials.

Elon Musk has "added [Twitter] to his business empire after months of legal skirmishes," writes The Verge's Elizabeth Lopatto, citing reports from CNBC, The Washington Post and Insider. From the report: Musk's first move on Thursday was to oust Parag Agrawal, who was Twitter's last CEO as a public company. Chief financial officer Ned Segal and Vijaya Gadde, the company's policy chief whom Musk had publicly criticized have also reportedly left the building. Sean Edgett, the general counsel, is also gone, The New York Times reports, adding that at least one of these executives was walked out by security. Chief customer officer Sarah Personette was also fired, Insider reports. The execs received handsome payouts for their trouble, Insider reports: Agrawal got $38.7 million, Segal got $25.4 million, Gadde got $12.5 million, and Personette, who tweeted yesterday about how excited she was for Musk's takeover, got $11.2 million

Questions still remain about what Musk plans to do with Twitter now that he owns it, though he's made a number of public comments. The Washington Post reported that Musk planned to cull 75 percent of Twitter's employees, citing estimates given to prospective Twitter investors. Musk told Twitter staffers that the 75 percent figure was inaccurate, Bloomberg reported. In Musk's text messages, provided during discovery to Twitter's lawyers, he and entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, a friend of his, discussed cutting staff by requiring a return to office. "Day zero," Calacanis texted Musk. "Sharpen your blades boys." Requiring Twitter employees to return to offices would mean 20 percent of the staff would leave voluntarily, Calacanis wrote. Also, Calacanis told Musk, "Twitter CEO is my dream job."

Twitter also faces challenges to its free speech stance in court, as the Supreme Court agreed to take up two cases that will determine its liability for illegal content. Musk, who is also CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has suggested he'll change the way Twitter's moderation works, potentially relaxing the kinds of policies that saw former President Donald Trump permanently banned from the platform. Although Musk has said that his Twitter acquisition is "not a way to make money," he's reportedly raised ideas for cost cutting and increasing revenue. Governments and corporations could be charged a "slight cost" to use Twitter, and there could be job cuts on the table to improve the company's bottom line. Some of Twitter's current employees have criticized Musk's plans for the platform as "incoherent" and lacking in detail. More broadly, Musk has talked about using Twitter to create "X, the everything app." This is a reference to China's WeChat app, which started life as a messaging platform, but has since grown to encompass multiple businesses, from shopping to payments to gaming. "You basically live on WeChat in China," Musk told Twitter employees in June. "If we can recreate that with Twitter, we'll be a great success."

Seagate, the biggest maker of computer hard drives, said it's eliminating about 3,000 jobs and that big buyers of technology are cutting orders on concerns the economy is worsening. From a report: "Global economic uncertainties and broad-based customer inventory corrections worsened in the latter stages of the September quarter, and these dynamics are reflected in both near-term industry demand and Seagate's financial performance," Chief Executive Officer Dave Mosley said in a statement. "We have taken quick and decisive actions to respond to current market conditions and enhance long-term profitability, including adjusting our production output and annual capital expenditure plans."

Separately, Seagate said it has been accused by the US Commerce Department of violating US export rules by selling hard drives to a sanctioned entity. Reuters reported that the entity was Huawei. The company denied it violated the rules. The US company's push back may prove a test of tightening restrictions against the provision of technology to China by the Biden administration, which has cited national security concerns in actions it's taken against companies such as Huawei. Most of the actions to date have focused on semiconductor technology.

Intel Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger said that recently imposed U.S. restrictions on semiconductor-industry exports to China were inevitable as America seeks to maintain technological leadership in competition with China. From a report: Speaking at The Wall Street Journal's annual Tech Live conference, Mr. Gelsinger said the restrictions, which require chip companies to obtain a license to export certain advanced artificial-intelligence and supercomputing chips as well as equipment used in advanced manufacturing, are part of a necessary shift of chip supply chains. "I viewed this geopolitically as inevitable," Mr. Gelsinger said. "And that's why the rebalancing of supply chains is so critical." His comments Monday followed high-profile public lobbying of Congress to pass the bipartisan Chips and Science Act, which extends nearly $53 billion in subsidies for research and development and to build or expand fabs in the U.S., in July. Mr. Gelsinger was a leading advocate for the legislation.

Mr. Gelsinger has embarked on a massive expansion of chip plants, referred to as fabs. The company has announced plans to erect new facilities in Ohio, Germany and elsewhere since Mr. Gelsinger took over last year at a combined cost potentially topping $100 billion. "Where the oil reserves are defined geopolitics for the last five decades. Where the fabs are for the next five decades is more important," Mr. Gelsinger said Monday. Mr. Gelsinger said the ambition for efforts to boost domestic chip manufacturing in Western countries was to shift from about 80% in Asia to about 50% by the end of the decade, with the U.S. taking 30% and Europe the remaining 20%. "We would all feel so good" if that were to happen, he said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: Plastic recycling rates are declining even as production shoots up, according to a Greenpeace USA report out Monday that blasted industry claims of creating an efficient, circular economy as "fiction." Titled "Circular Claims Fall Flat Again," the study found that of 51 million tons of plastic waste generated by U.S. households in 2021, only 2.4 million tons were recycled, or around five percent. After peaking in 2014 at 10 percent, the trend has been decreasing, especially since China stopped accepting the West's plastic waste in 2018.

According to Greenpeace USA's survey, only two types of plastic are widely accepted at the nation's 375 material recovery facilities. The first is polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is commonly used in water and soda bottles; and the second is high density polyethylene (HDPE), seen in milk jugs, shampoo bottles and cleaning product containers. These are numbered "1" and "2" according to a standardized system in which there are seven plastic types. But being recyclable in theory doesn't mean products are being recycled in practice.

The report found that PET and HDPE products had actual reprocessing rates of 20.9 percent and 10.3 percent, respectively -- both down slightly from Greenpeace USA's last survey in 2020. Plastic types "3" through "7" -- including children's toys, plastic bags, produce wrappings, yogurt and margarine tubs, coffee cups and to-go food containers -- were reprocessed at rates of less than five percent. Despite often carrying the recycling symbol on their labels, products that use plastic types "3" through "7" fail to meet the Federal Trade Commission classification of recyclable. This is because recycling facilities for these types aren't available to a "substantial majority" of the population, defined as 60 percent, and because the collected products are not being used in the manufacturing or assembly of new items. According to the report, these are the five main reasons why plastic recycling is a "failed concept": 1.) Plastic waste is generated in vast quantities and is extremely difficult to collect -- as becomes clear during what the report called ineffective "volunteer cleanup stunts" funded by nonprofits such as "Keep America Beautiful."
2.) Even if it were all collected, mixed plastic waste cannot be recycled together, and it would be "functionally impossible to sort the trillions of pieces of consumer plastic waste produced each year," the report said.
3.) The recycling process itself is environmentally harmful, exposing workers to toxic chemicals and itself generating microplastics.
4.) Recycled plastic carries toxicity risks through contamination with other plastic types in collection bins, preventing it from becoming food-grade material again.
5.) The process of recycling is prohibitively expensive. Greenpeace called on corporations to support a Global Plastics Treaty, which United Nations members agreed to create in February, and move toward refill and reuse strategies.

The US unsealed charges claiming two Chinese intelligence officers tried to obstruct a criminal investigation of Huawei , and alleged others were working on behalf of a "foreign power" to try procure technology and recruit spies. Bloomberg reports: The charges were part of a series of recently unsealed cases the Justice Department announced Monday that officials said had disrupted criminal activity being conducted by the People's Republic of China. Ten of the 13 individuals charged were Chinese intelligence individuals, according to FBI Director Chris Wray. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco added that the case involving alleged obstruction of a US probe of a telecommunications company -- which the DOJ wouldn't identify -- exposes the connection between the Chinese government and its companies. She said the telecom giant tried to "unlawfully gain an edge" to undermine the US investigation, and shows why Chinese companies shouldn't be trusted to handle the personal data of Americans.

In a complaint made public Monday, the US claims Guochun He and Zheng Wang worked on behalf of the Chinese government to target the US, from 2019 until the present, for the benefit of the company. A person familiar with the matter confirmed it is Huawei. The US claims He and Wang bribed a law enforcement employee to provide what they believed was confidential information about witnesses, evidence and possible additional charges to be filed against the technology giant. He paid the employee $61,000 in Bitcoin, according to the criminal complaint. In a separate action, four people were charged in federal court in New Jersey with conspiracy to act as an illegal agent of a foreign government. The conspiracy allegedly involved Chinese intelligence officers posing as academics to recruit US law enforcement workers and others in seeking help procuring fingerprint technology and equipment for the US. They also allegedly pressured one former official to stop protests in the US along the 2008 Olympic torch route, according to court filings.

In addition, the Justice Department announced that seven people from China were charged in an indictment unsealed in the Eastern District of New York last week with conspiring to harass a Chinese citizen living in the US in hopes of causing the person to return. The actions were allegedly part of an effort by China, called "Operation Fox Hunt," to force the repatriation of alleged fugitives living in other countries. In the case involving the Huawei probe, the complaint includes conversations between He and Wang and a US government employee working as a double agent under supervision of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They were using an encrypted messaging program that is not identified.

Thursday a Forbes senior writer reported: A China-based team at TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, planned to use the TikTok app to monitor the personal location of some specific American citizens, according to materials reviewed by Forbes.

The team behind the monitoring project — ByteDance's Internal Audit and Risk Control department — is led by Beijing-based executive Song Ye, who reports to ByteDance cofounder and CEO Rubo Liang. The team primarily conducts investigations into potential misconduct by current and former ByteDance employees. But in at least two cases, the Internal Audit team also planned to collect TikTok data about the location of a U.S. citizen who had never had an employment relationship with the company, the materials show.

It is unclear from the materials whether data about these Americans was actually collected; however, the plan was for a Beijing-based ByteDance team to obtain location data from U.S. users' devices.
Challenging the article, TikTok responded on Twitter that their service "does not collect precise GPS location information from U.S. users, meaning TikTok could not monitor U.S. users in the way the article suggested." But Forbes' senior writer thinks that's a misleading denial, writing on Twitter that "We never mentioned GPS in the story. In fact, we quoted their spokesperson saying they collect approximate location via IP address. Not using GPS does not mean they could not use that approximate location to monitor certain individuals."

TikTok also acknowledged on Twitter that they do have a team that will "acquire information they need to conduct internal investigations of violations of the company codes of conduct," but says the team follows a specific set of policies and processes "as is standard in companies across our industry." In Forbes' article, TikTok spokesperson Maureen Shanahan said that TikTok collects approximate location information (based on IP addresses) to "among other things, help show relevant content and ads to users, comply with applicable laws, and detect and prevent fraud and inauthentic behavior."

But Forbes' senior writer said in their article that "the material reviewed by Forbes indicates that ByteDance's Internal Audit team was planning to use this location information to surveil individual American citizens, not to target ads or any of these other purposes." The Internal Audit and Risk Control team runs regular audits and investigations of TikTok and ByteDance employees, for infractions like conflicts of interest and misuse of company resources, and also for leaks of confidential information. Internal materials reviewed by Forbes show that senior executives, including TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, have ordered the team to investigate individual employees, and that it has investigated employees even after they left the company.
TikTok's response on Twitter? Behavior like that would be a firing ofference. "Any use of internal audit resources as alleged by Forbes would be grounds for immediate dismissal of company personnel."

TikTok also said on Twitter that their service "has never been used to 'target' any members of the U.S. government, activists, public figures or journalists, nor do we serve them a different content experience than other users." The response of Forbes' senior writer? "I'm glad they say TikTok hasn't been used to 'target' some specific groups. I am nonetheless concerned that they planned to use it to monitor specific Americans, which is what we reported.

"Also, for what it's worth, they didn't answer this question when we asked it to them on Wednesday.... Neither TikTok nor ByteDance denied anything we reported, either in the pre-publication process, when we told them what we planned to report and asked for comment, or since then. They have also not requested a story update."

Thanks to Slashdot reader koavf for submitting the story

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: As the US escalates its campaign to undermine the Chinese semiconductor industry, Europe is trying -- with some success -- to avoid becoming collateral damage. At the center of the maneuvering is ASML, the Dutch manufacturer of chipmaking equipment and Europe's most valuable tech company. It's one of the very few producers of the sophisticated lithography machines needed to make midgrade semiconductors, and the only manufacturer of the equipment needed to make the most cutting-edge chips. That puts ASML in the spotlight for policymakers. ASML has never sold its extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, or EUVs, to Chinese clients. The Biden administration, as part of its attempt to keep China from developing the capability to make advanced semiconductors, has been trying to push the Dutch government to withhold ASML's older machines called immersion deep ultraviolet lithography machines, or DUVs, that can be used in combination with other technology to make advanced chips.

The European Commission, as well as the Dutch and German governments, have undertaken a coordinated lobbying campaign to oppose restrictions on a critical European company while US competitors continue to do business with Chinese companies, according to officials who spoke under the condition of anonymity because the talks are sensitive. They've argued in part that such restrictions are now pointless given that ASML, which generated 15% of its revenue in China last year, has already sold many of these machines to Chinese companies. When the US did push ahead in early October with more severe restrictions against doing business in China, its specific policies came as a relief to ASML and its political supporters. ASML wasn't hit directly by the new restrictions, which did make it harder for its US peers, such as Applied Materials and Lam Research, to sell advanced chip gear to China. Both companies warned investors that the new restrictions would significantly affect their financial performance.

The US Department of Commerce, which is responsible for the majority of rulemaking and enforcement, won't comment directly on specific companies or its negotiations with other governments. ASML is not an American company, limiting the US's power over its operations. But it commonly uses parts from the US, which gives Washington a degree of leverage. In the past, export controls have applied to products when at least 25% of their components are sourced from the US. But senior US officials now say products that contain any US components or intellectual property could be subjected to Washington's export approval process. Such a broad interpretation of the rules would be difficult for a company like ASML to work around. "Europeans feared the new US policy would include provisions affecting immersion DUVs," adds Bloomberg. According to SML's chief executive officer, Peter Wennink, the company's initial assessment is that the new restrictions don't apply to ASML's products shipped out of the Netherlands. Roger Dassen, the chief financial officer, also said the direct impact is fairly limited, thanks to "the fact that we are a European company with limited US technology in it." However, Bloomberg notes ASML's shares "dropped as much as 19% in the days after the Oct. 7 announcement, although they partially recovered after it posted strong earnings."

"The US runs the risk of setting off a confrontation with Europe if it chooses to go ahead with new restrictions on immersion DUV machines," concludes the report. "It's unclear what chance officials have to convince their Dutch counterparts to impose additional restrictions on DUV sales, but there's little doubt the two allies aren't yet on the same page. China is the Netherlands's third-biggest trading partner after Germany and Belgium."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The Biden administration is exploring the possibility of new export controls that would limit China's access to some of the most powerful emerging computing technologies, according to people familiar with the situation. The potential plans, which are in an early stage, are focused on the still-experimental field of quantum computing, as well as artificial intelligence software, according to the people, who asked not to be named discussing private deliberations. Industry experts are weighing in on how to set the parameters of the restrictions on this nascent technology, they said. The efforts, if implemented, would follow separate restrictions announced earlier this month aimed at stunting Beijing's ability to deploy cutting-edge semiconductors in weapons and surveillance systems.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, in a speech last month on technology, competitiveness and national security, referred to "computing-related technologies, including microelectronics, quantum information systems and artificial intelligence" as among developments "set to play an outsized importance over the coming decade." He also noted the importance of export controls to "maintain as large of a lead as possible" over adversaries. Expanding the wall around advanced technologies risks further antagonizing China and forcing other countries to pick sides between the world's two top economies. The new ideas have been shared with US allies, according to the people. Officials are still determining how to frame the controls on quantum computing, which will probably focus on the level of output and the so-called error correction rate, the people said. [...] The Biden administration is also working on an executive order for an outbound investment review mechanism that would scrutinize money heading to certain Chinese technologies, and the quantum computing and artificial intelligence controls could be included, one of the people said. That could incorporate some aspects similar to a measure pushed by senators Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, and John Cornyn, a Texas Republican.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: TikTok users would still risk having personal data exposed to hacking and espionage by China even if the Biden administration forges a security agreement designed to spare the video platform from a total US ban. That's the conclusion of former national security officials and other experts as the Justice Department reviews an accord that would keep the popular video-streaming app, which is owned by China's ByteDance, accessible to its millions of US users.

TikTok has been under US scrutiny since 2019 over concerns that Chinese actors might tap those users' information for espionage or other harmful purposes. "They built the whole system in China," said Stewart Baker, a national security lawyer at Steptoe & Johnson LLP. "Unless they're going to rebuild the system in the United States at great expense, sooner or later, when something goes wrong, there's going to turn out to be only one engineer who knows how to fix it. And he or she is likely to be in China." This analysis of the agreement is based on interviews with former national security officials, lawyers who have worked on similar deals and experts who have studied data security, social media platforms and telecommunications companies. There's no indication a decision has been made.

TikTok is routing all its US user traffic through servers maintained by Oracle and the database giant is auditing the app's algorithms. Still, additional restrictions on how US user data is stored and accessed will be necessary -- and might not resolve US security concerns no matter how strong a deal looks on paper, the experts said. The experts' skepticism is shared by Senator Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. He said he's aware of the conversations around TikTok and couldn't give details. Nonetheless, he said the company has "a big mountain to climb with me to prove the case that it can really be safe." Warner said China has a bad track record on protecting users' privacy. "They've shown repeatedly the ability to create this surveillance state that ought to scare the dickens out of all of us." He added that it's much harder today to wall off TikTok's data technically or ban it outright than it was five or six years ago as the popularity of the app has surged. "The burden of proof that you can really segregate American data, particularly if the code is still being written in China -- that would be a tough case to make." Brooke Oberwetter, a spokesperson for TikTok, said that while the company would not comment on the specifics of its discussions with the US government, "We are confident that we are on a path to fully satisfy all reasonable U.S. national security concerns."

Oberwetter said that while some employees based in China would have access to public data posted by users, they would not have access to private user information, and their use of the public data -- including videos and comments -- would be very limited.

BMW says it will make batteries for its electric vehicles at a factory in South Carolina in the latest move by a major automaker to localize EV production in the United States. The Verge reports: The German company plans to invest $1.7 billion in the US, including $1 billion for EV production at BMW's Spartanburg plant and $700 million for a new battery-assembly facility in nearby Woodruff. By 2030, BMW says it will have at least six electric models in production in the US. Establishing a US-based EV plant will allow BMW's upcoming line of plug-in vehicles to qualify for the federal EV tax credit.

BMW said it is partnering with Envision AESC on its plans for a dedicated battery plant in South Carolina. The Japan-based energy company will produce round lithium-ion battery cells specifically designed for BMW's next-gen EV platform. When it's completed, the battery factory will have an annual capacity of 30 gigawatt-hours (GWh). BMW has also announced plans to build EV production facilities in Europe and China to meet demand. The company currently has several electric models for sale, including the i4 sedan and iX SUV.

The failure rate of semiconductors shipped from China to Russia has increased by 1,900 percent in recent months, according to Russian national business daily Kommersant. The Register reports: Quoting an anonymous source, Kommersant states that before Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine the defect rate in imported silicon was two percent. Since that war commenced, Russian manufacturers have apparently faced 40 percent failure rates. Even a two percent defect rate is sub-optimal, because products made of many components can therefore experience considerable quality problems. Forty percent failure rates mean supplies are perilously close to being unfit for purpose.

According to Kommersant, Russian electronics manufacturers are not enjoying life at all because, on top of high failure rates, gray market gear doesn't flow with the same speed as legit kit and supply chains are currently very kinked indeed inside Russia. The newspaper lays the blame on economic sanctions that have seen many major businesses quit Russia. Gray market distributors and other opportunistic operators have been left as the only entities willing to deal with Russian businesses. Gray market folks are not renowned for their sterling customer service nor their commitment to quality. They get away with it because buyers of products with -- ahem -- unconventional origins self-incriminate if they complain to authorities. Perhaps they're even dumping dud product on Russian buyers, knowing that they can't easily access alternatives.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from STAT: Research at Boston University that involved testing a lab-made hybrid version of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is garnering heated headlines alleging the scientists involved could have unleashed a new pathogen. There is no evidence the work, performed under biosecurity level 3 precautions in BU's National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories, was conducted improperly or unsafely. In fact, it was approved by an internal biosafety review committee and Boston's Public Health Commission, the university said Monday night. But it has become apparent that the research team did not clear the work with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which was one of the funders of the project. The agency indicated it is going to be looking for some answers as to why it first learned of the work through media reports.

Emily Erbelding, director of NIAID's division of microbiology and infectious diseases, said the BU team's original grant applications did not specify that the scientists wanted to do this precise work. Nor did the group make clear that it was doing experiments that might involve enhancing a pathogen of pandemic potential in the progress reports it provided to NIAID. "I think we're going to have conversations over upcoming days," Erbelding told STAT in an interview. Asked if the research team should have informed NIAID of its intention to do the work, Erbelding said: "We wish that they would have, yes." The research has been posted online as a preprint (PDF), meaning it has not yet been peer-reviewed. The senior author is Mohsan Saeed, from BU's National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories. STAT reached out to Saeed on Monday but had not received a response by the time this article was published.

In the paper Saeed and colleagues reported on research they conducted that involved creating a hybrid or chimeric virus -- in which the spike protein of an Omicron version of SARS-2 was fused to a virus of the Wuhan strain, the original version that emerged from China in 2020. Omicron viruses first emerged in late 2021 and have since splintered into multiple different sub variants. The goal of the research was to determine if the mutations in the Omicron spike protein were responsible for this variant's increased ability to evade the immunity to SARS-2 that humans have built up, and whether the changes led to Omicron's lower rate of severity. The testing actually showed, though, that the chimeric virus was more lethal to a type of lab mice than Omicron itself, killing 80% of the mice infected. Importantly, the original Wuhan strain killed 100% of mice it was tested in. The conclusion of the study is that mutations in the spike protein of the Omicron variant are responsible for the strain's ability to evade immunity people have built up via vaccination, infections, or both, but they are not responsible for the apparent decrease in severity of the Omicron viruses. The university disputed the claims made by some media outlets that the work had created a more dangerous virus, saying: "In fact, this research made the virus [replication] less dangerous." They noted that other research groups have conducted similar work.

"That 80% kill rate, that headline doesn't tell the whole story," Erbelding said. "Because Wuhan" -- the original strain -- "killed all the mice." The fatality rate seen in this strain of mice when they were infected with these viruses raises questions about how good a model they are for what happens when people are infected with SARS-2. The Wuhan strain killed less than 1% of people who were infected.

Following increased U.S. export controls against working with Chinese companies, Apple has halted plans to use YMTC chips in the iPhone. AppleInsider reports: According to Nikkei Asia, YMTC flash memory is at least 20% cheaper than that of rivals, and the company's 128-layer 3D NAND chips are the most advanced by a Chinese company. They remain reportedly one or two generations behind the chips made by Micron and Samsung, both of which are known to be working with Apple. Nikkei Asia claims that Apple had completed is months-long testing and verification. Political pressure and criticism from US policymakers made it abandon the plan.

"The products have been verified, but they did not go into the production lines when mass production of the new iPhone began," an unspecified source told Nikkei Asia. Reportedly, the intention had been to initially use YMTC chips only for iPhones being sold in China. Another unnamed source, though, claimed that Apple was considering ultimately buying 40% of all its worldwide iPhone NAND flash memory from the company. "YMTC is government-subsidized so they can really outprice competitors," said another source.

President Xi Jinping's call for China to "win the battle" in core technologies could signal an overhaul in Beijing's approach to advancing its tech industry, with more state-led spending and intervention to counter U.S. pressures, analysts say. From a report: Achieving self-reliance in technology featured prominently in Xi's full work report to kick off the once-every-five-years Communist Party Congress, with four mentions versus none in 2017. The term "technology" was referred to 40 times, up from 17 times in the report from the 2017 congress. While the report did not mention any other countries or specific sectors for that goal, it comes days after Washington imposed sweeping new regulations aimed at undermining China's efforts to develop its own chip industry. HSBC analysts said their takeaway was that increased spending in China, particular in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) fields, and policy support was likely. Iris Pang, chief economist for Greater China at ING, said Xi's remarks addressed "the urgent need for talent and promoting self-sufficiency in technological advancement."

"We believe that this echoes to the U.S.'s CHIPS Act," Pang said, referring to the U.S. regulations. "As such research spending on semiconductor technology should increase. Typically, policies are released after such important events in China." In his speech, Xi listed a slew of industries where he described China as having achieved breakthroughs over the past decade, including large aircraft, space flight, satellite navigation - all of which rely on copious state support. No mention was made of semiconductors, an area where China has funnelled billions of dollars in government funds but was also seen to have been given more lee-way in using market-led approaches versus other sectors.

After 170 days in space, four astronauts splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean on Friday, bringing an end to a successful NASA-SpaceX mission to the International Space Station. From a report: Following two days of weather delays, SpaceX's Crew Dragon Freedom returned to Earth off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, beneath clear blue skies and into mild seas. The spacecraft's descent through Earth's atmosphere appeared to be nominal, with two drogue parachutes deploying on schedule, followed by four clean main parachutes, allowing Dragon to splash down at about 25 km per hour. "SpaceX, from Freedom, thank you for an incredible ride up to orbit and an incredible ride home," Kjell Lindgren, the NASA commander of the spacecraft, said after landing.

Lindgren led a mission that included NASA astronauts Bob Hines and Jessica Watkins, as well as European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti. Upon landing, the spacecraft was met by two SpaceX "fast boats" that secured the toasty-looking vehicle before it was brought on board the Megan recovery ship, named after Megan McArthur, an astronaut aboard an earlier SpaceX flight. This mission, Crew-4, was the fourth operational mission flown by SpaceX for NASA. Earlier this month, the Crew-5 mission launched four astronauts to the space station, where they will remain for about six months. Including an initial demonstration mission in 2020, and two private spaceflights -- Inspiration4 and Axiom-1 -- Crew Dragon has now carried 30 people into orbit.

In a little more than two years, SpaceX has surpassed the total number of astronauts launched into orbit by China, whose human spaceflight program dates back to 2003; and in the time Crew Dragon has been operational, it has exceeded even the Russian Soyuz vehicle in terms of the total number of people flown into space during that period. Over the last two years Dragon had a few flaws, including an intermittently problematic toilet and a lagging parachute on one flight, but NASA officials have been extremely pleased with the vehicle's performance. It has safely returned the United States' capability of human spaceflight, which had been lost since the space shuttle's retirement. Had Dragon not been available, NASA would have been in the uncomfortable position of relying on Russia for crew transport amid the Ukraine war.