North Korea has passed a law declaring itself to be a nuclear weapons state, according to state news agency KCNA. The country's leader Kim Jong-un called the decision "irreversible" and ruled out the possibility of any talks on denuclearisation, it said. From a report: The law also enshrines the country's right to use a pre-emptive nuclear strike to protect itself. Despite crippling sanctions, Pyongyang has conducted six nuclear tests between 2006 and 2017. It has continued to advance its military capability - in breach of United Nations Security Council resolutions - to threaten its neighbours and potentially even bring the US mainland within striking range. Mr Kim carried out long-range launches and nuclear tests in 2019 following two headline-grabbing but inconclusive summits with then US president Donald Trump. But talks between the countries have since stalled.

Although the Biden administration has indicated it's willing to talk to Pyongyang, it hasn't said whether President Joe Biden would meet Mr Kim. The White House also said its attempts to contact Pyongyang and overtures of help over its Covid outbreak had gone unanswered so far. The US reviewed its North Korea policy last year and reiterated that "complete denuclearisation" of the Korean peninsula was the goal. Mr Biden said he would pursue it with a mix of diplomacy and "stern deterrence". Mr Kim responded by saying his country must prepare for both "dialogue and confrontation."

The ship that would have become the world's largest cruise liner has been scrapped before it ever had the chance to take its maiden voyage. Gizmodo reports: Global Dream II was slated to carry 9,000 passengers and was built by German-Hong Kong shipbuilding firm MV Werften to the tune of nearly $US1.4 ($2) billion, according to the Daily Mail. It was nearly finished when the company went bankrupt at the start of this year. Since that happened, no buyer has stepped up to buy the 20-deck, 341.99 m-long monstrosity. That means it's now destined for the scrap heap. The Mail says that Global Dream II also features an outdoor waterpark and a movie theatre.

The capacity of this ship blows the second largest ship, the Oasis-class Wonder of the Sea which is owned and operated by Royal Caribbean, out of the water (I love a good pun). The Wonder of the Seas has a passenger capacity of only 6,988. Pathetic. Despite the $US1.4 ($2) billion put out to build this behemoth, the ship still needs about $US230,000,000 ($319,286,000) worth of work. Apparently, it is structurally complete, but equipment and passenger facilities still need to be finished. Eagle-eyed readers will have noted the "II" in the ship's name. Yes, there is a twin Global Dream, but it hasn't been given the ax... yet. The Mail reports that right now the two ships are being stored in a German shipyard in Wismar. However, that yard will soon be used to build military vessels. That means the Global Dreams have to be out of there by the end of next year.

The Financial Times tells how the head of a Ukrainian cybersecurity company recruited dozens of "high-level Ukrainian hackers" and borrowed a Starlink internet satellite for "the large-scale infiltration of internet-connected security cameras to surveil Russian-occupied territory, and honey-trapping Russian soldiers into revealing their bases." [T]hey hacked thousands of security and traffic cameras in Belarus and parts of Ukraine that Russia had occupied. To filter the information, the team wrote machine-learning code that helped them separate military movements from ordinary traffic, and they funnelled the information to the military via a public portal.

In one example, described to the Financial Times with photographs and locations, they identified a remote Russian base near occupied Melitopol in southern Ukraine. Then, using fake profiles of attractive women on Facebook and Russian social media websites, they tricked soldiers into sending photos that they geolocated, and shared with the Ukrainian military....

A few days later, they watched on TV as the base was blown up by Ukrainian artillery.

The US Army is taking delivery of a first batch of high-tech combat goggles made by Microsoft, citing encouraging results from testing in the field. From a report: Assistant Secretary for Acquisition Douglas Bush has "cleared the Army to begin accepting" some of the 5,000 sets of goggles, spokesman Jamal Beck said in a statement. Their delivery had been placed on hold over concern about the device's performance until more rigorous testing took place. Based on the test results so far the service "is adjusting its fielding plan to allow for time to correct deficiencies and also field to units that are focused on training activities," Beck said.

Microsoft's Integrated Visual Augmentation System, or IVAS, is expected to provide a "heads-up display" for U.S. ground forces, similar to those for fighter pilots. The system -- a customized version of Microsoft's HoloLens goggles -- would let commanders project information onto a visor in front of a soldier's face and would include features such as night vision. The Army projects spending as much as $21.9 billion over a decade on Microsoft's combat goggles, spare parts and support services if all options are exercised.

Chip designer Nvidia on Wednesday said that U.S. officials told it to stop exporting two top computing chips for artificial intelligence work to China, a move that could cripple Chinese firms' ability to carry out advanced work like image recognition and hamper a business Nvidia expects to generate $400 million in sales this quarter. Reuters reports: Nvidia shares fell 4% after hours. The company said the ban, which affects its A100 and H100 chips designed to speed up machine learning tasks, could interfere with completion of developing the H100, the flagship chip Nvidia announced this year. Nvidia said U.S. officials told it the new rule "will address the risk that the covered products may be used in, or diverted to, a "military end use" or "military end user" in China."

The announcement signals a major escalation of the U.S. crackdown on China's technological capabilities as tensions bubble over the fate of Taiwan, where chips for Nvidia and almost every other major chip firm are manufactured. [...] Nvidia said it had booked $400 million in sales of the affected chips this quarter to China that could be lost if Chinese firms decide not to buy alternative Nvidia products. It said it plans to apply for exemptions to the rule but has "no assurances" that U.S. officials will grant them. Stacy Rasgon, a financial analyst with Bernstein, said the disclosure signaled that about 10% of Nvidia's data center sales, which investors have closely monitored in recent years, were coming from China and that the hit to sales was likely "manageable" for Nvidia.

United Launch Alliance has been developing a heavy-lift space vehicle since 2014 (with investment from the U.S. military) called the Vulcan Centaur.

So CNN reports that the ashes of the late Star Trek actress Nichelle Nichols "will head to deep space on a Vulcan rocket." Nichols' cremated remains will be aboard the first Celestis Voyager Memorial Spaceflight, which will launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Celestis, Inc., is a private company that conducts memorial spaceflights. Among the remains also aboard the flight will be the ashes of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry; his wife, Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, who played various roles in the show and films; and James Doohan, who played Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in the films and TV series....

The spaceflight will travel beyond NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and into interplanetary deep space. In addition to cremated remains, capsules onboard will also carry complete human genome DNA samples from willing participants.

People can participate in the flight — by having DNA or loved ones' remains in a spaceflight container — for a price starting at $12,500, and reservations close August 31. (Celestis offers other voyages that don't travel as far, but can cost less than $5,000.) Ahead of the flight's liftoff, Celestis will host a three-day event with mission briefings, an astronaut-hosted dinner, launch site tours, an on-site memorial service and launch viewing. All events will be shown via webcast, according to Celestis.
An announcement on the flight's site invites fans of Nichelle Nichols to "share your own story about how she inspired you and it will be sent into deep space aboard the first Celestis Voyager Memorial Spaceflight — the Enterprise Flight, launching later in 2022."

Thursday Ukraine's largest nuclear power plant was cut off from the country's electricity grid, causing "widespread power outages across southern Ukraine," according to the New York Times. Friday afternoon it was reconnected to Ukraine's national power grid, the Times adds — "but its time offline renewed concerns about the safe operation of the plant..."

The Guardian notes it's the first such disconnection in nearly 40 years. Three other power lines connecting the reactors to the grid "had already been taken out during the war," though when the fourth and final line went out, "the plant still received supplies of electricity from one remaining backup line connected to the nearby conventional power plant." (Though two other lines to that power plant were already also down.) "Disconnecting the plant from the grid is dangerous because it raises the risk of catastrophic failure of the electricity-run cooling systems for its reactors and spent fuel rods.... If all external connections go down, it must rely on diesel-fuelled generators for power. If they break down, engineers only have 90 minutes to stave off dangerous overheating." (Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskiy pointed out that during the break in power, back-up diesel generators did indeed immediately kick in to ensure continuous power supply, according to Reuters.)

But is Russia executing a larger strategy here? Earlier, Russian engineers informed plant workers that the nuclear plant would be switched to Russia's power network in the event of an emergency, according to the head of Ukraine's atomic energy company. Speaking to the Guardian, he adds that the plant's workers were told that "The precondition for this plan was heavy damage of all lines which connect Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to the Ukrainian system" — and he worries that Russia is now attempting to create those preconditions.

He's not the only one thinking that. Voice of America interviewed a nuclear engineer at the plant who claims that Russian troops have several times "bombed places that cannot affect the safe operation of the power plant. I think that the Russians are trying to discredit the armed forces of Ukraine for the purpose of propaganda.... At the same time, the Russians deliberately damaged the high-voltage power lines that connect the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant with the Ukrainian power system.... [T]he Russians want to arrange a small accident and stop Zaporizhzhia for a short time, then supply us with electricity from Crimea and automatically switch the nuclear power plant to the Russian energy system."

He also claims to have seen Russian military equipment stored in the plant. For example, "Different types of Russian artillery and missile installations are located both inside the territory of the nuclear power plant and around it, on the perimeter, near the Kakhovka Reservoir."

The last power line connecting the reactors to the grid was disconnected by fires "caused by shelling," the Guardian reported.

The New York Times reports on the aftermath: Ukrainian engineers were able to restore damaged external power lines after repeated shelling on Thursday, ensuring the facility was able to meet its own power needs and continue to operate safely, according to Ukrainian and international officials, but efforts to reconnect it to the grid took longer. With fires raging around the plant, new shelling in and around the facility on a near daily basis and an exhausted and stressed team of Ukrainian engineers tasked with keeping the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant running safely, however, calls for international intervention grew louder.

Negotiations with Ukraine and Russia to allow safety experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit and inspect the plant appeared to be making progress, as U.N. officials indicated they expected an agreement soon. "We are in active consultations for an imminent I.A.E.A. mission," a spokesman for the agency said.

The stakes are high.

"Nowhere in the history of this world has a nuclear power plant become a part of a combat zone, so this really has to stop immediately," Bonnie Denise Jenkins, the State Department's under secretary for arms control and international security, told reporters in Brussels on Thursday. Russian actions, she said, "have created a serious risk of a nuclear incident — a dangerous radiation release — that could threaten not only the people and environment of Ukraine, but also affect neighboring countries and the entire international community."
Here's the opinion of that nuclear engineer at the Ukrainian nuclear plant (interviewed by Voice of America). "The expectation is that after the [International Atomic Energy] agency's conclusion, international pressure on Moscow will intensify, and Russia will be required to withdraw heavy weapons and troops from the nuclear power plant.

"I think this is unrealistic. The Russians will not leave here by their own will. Without a war, it is impossible."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Daily Beast: A star University of Maryland (UMD) professor built a machine-learning software "useful for surveillance" as part of a six-figure research grant from Chinese tech giant Alibaba, raising concerns that an American public university directly contributed to China's surveillance state. Alibaba provided $125,000 in funding to a research team led by Dinesh Manocha, a professor of computer science at UMD College Park, to develop an urban surveillance software that can "classify the personality of each pedestrian and identify other biometric features," according to research grant documents obtained via public records request. "These capabilities will be used to predict the behavior of each pedestrian and are useful for surveillance," the document read.

Manocha is a decorated scholar in the AI and robotics field who has earned awards and accolades from Google, IBM, and many others. His star status brings rewards: Maryland taxpayers paid $355,000 in salaries to the professor in 2021, according to government watchdog Open the Books. The U.S. military also provides lavish funding for the professor's research, signing a $68 million agreement with Manocha's lab to research military applications of AI technologies. But Maryland taxpayers and the U.S. military are not the only ones funding Manocha's research. In January 2018, the University of Maryland and Alibaba signed an 18-month research contract funding Manocha's research team. In the grant document obtained by The Daily Beast, Manocha's team pledged to "work closely with Alibaba researchers" to develop an urban surveillance software that can identify pedestrians based on their unique gait signatures. The algorithm would then use the gait signatures to classify pedestrians as "aggressive," "shy," "impulsive," and other personalities. The grant required UMD researchers to test the algorithm on videos provided by Alibaba and present their findings in person at Alibaba labs in China. The scholars also had to provide the C++ codebase for the software and the raw dataset as deliverables to Alibaba. The software's "clear implication is to proactively predict demonstrations and protests so that they might be quelled," Fedasiuk told The Daily Beast. "Given what we know now about China's architecture of repression in Xinjiang and other regions, it is clear Dr. Manocha should not have pitched this project, and administrators at UMD should not have signed off on it."

It's not just Alibaba that was interested in the professor's expertise. In January 2019 -- back when the Alibaba grant was still active -- Manocha secured a taxpayer-funded, $321,000 Defense Department grant for his research team. The two grants funded very similar research projects. The Alibaba award was titled "large-scale behavioral learning for dense crowds." Meanwhile, the DoD grant funded research into "efficient computational models for simulating large-scale heterogeneous crowds." Unsurprisingly, the research outputs produced by the two grants had significant overlap. Between 2019 and 2021, Manocha published multiple articles in the AI and machine-learning field that cited both the Alibaba and DoD grant. There is no evidence that Manocha broke the law by double-dipping from U.S. and Chinese funding sources to fund similar research projects. Nevertheless, the case still raises "serious questions about ethics in machine learning research," Fedasiuk said.

MIT Technology Review obtained Prince's investor presentation for the "RedPill Phone," which promises more than it could possibly deliver. From the report: Erik Prince's pitch to investors was simple -- but certainly ambitious: pay just 5 million euros and cure the biggest cybersecurity and privacy plagues of our day. The American billionaire -- best known for founding the notorious private military firm Blackwater, which became globally infamous for killing Iraqi civilians and threatening US government investigators -- was pushing Unplugged, a smartphone startup promising "free speech, privacy, and security" untethered from dominant tech giants like Apple and Google. In June, Prince publicly revealed the new phone, priced at $850. But before that, beginning in 2021, he was privately hawking the device to investors -- using a previously unreported pitch deck that has been obtained by MIT Technology Review. It boldly claims that the phone and its operating system are "impenetrable" to surveillance, interception, and tampering, and its messenger service is marketed as "impossible to intercept or decrypt."

Boasting falsely that Unplugged has built "the first operating system free of big tech monetization and analytics," Prince bragged that the device is protected by "government-grade encryption." Better yet, the pitch added, Unplugged is to be hosted on a global array of server farms so that it "can never be taken offline." One option is said to be a server farm "on a vessel" located in an "undisclosed location on international waters, connected via satellite to Elon Musk's StarLink." An Unplugged spokesperson explained that "they benefit in having servers not be subject to any governmental law." The Unplugged investor pitch deck is a messy mix of these impossible claims, meaningless buzzwords, and outright fiction. While none of the experts I spoke with had yet been able to test the phone or read its code, because the company hasn't provided access, the evidence available suggests Unplugged will fall wildly short of what's promised.

[...] The UP Phone's operating system, called LibertOS, is a proprietary version of Google's Android, according to an Unplugged spokesperson. It's running on an unclear mix of hardware that a company spokesperson says they've designed on their own. Even just maintaining a unique Android "fork" -- a version of the operating system that departs from the original, like a fork in the road -- is a difficult endeavor that can cost massive money and resources, experts warn. For a small startup, that can be an insurmountable challenge. [...] Another key issue is life span. Apple's iPhones are considered the most secure consumer device on the market due in part to the fact that the company offers security updates to some of its older phones for six years, longer than virtually all competitors. When support for a phone ends, security vulnerabilities go unaddressed, and the phone is no longer secure. There is no information available on how long UP Phones will receive security support. "There are two things happening here," says Allan Liska, a cyberintelligence analyst at the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. "There are the actual attempts to make real secure phones, and then there is the marketing BS. Distinguishing between those two can be really hard."

"When I worked in US intelligence, we [penetrated] a number of phone companies overseas," says Liska. "We were inside those phone companies. We could easily track people based on where they connected to the towers. So when you talk about being impenetrable, that's wrong. This is a phone, and the way that phones work is they triangulate to cell towers, and there is always latitude and longitude for exactly where you're sitting," he adds. "Nothing you do to the phone is going to change that."

The UP Phone is due out in November 2022.

sciencehabit writes: From the start of the pandemic, the Chinese government -- like many foreign researchers -- has vigorously rejected the idea that SARS-CoV-2 somehow originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and escaped. But over the past 2 years, it has also started to push back against what many regard as the only plausible alternative scenario: The pandemic started in China with a virus that naturally jumped from bats to an "intermediate" species and then to humans -- most likely at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan. Beijing was open to the idea at first. But today it points to myriad ways SARS-CoV-2 could have arrived in Wuhan from abroad, borne by contaminated frozen food or infected foreigners -- perhaps at the Military World Games in Wuhan, in October 2019 -- or released accidentally by a U.S. military lab located more than 12,000 kilometers from Wuhan. Its goal is to avoid being blamed for the pandemic in any way, says Filippa Lentzos, a sociologist at King's College London who studies biological threats and health security. "China just doesn't want to look bad," she says. "They need to maintain an image of control and competence. And that is what goes through everything they do."

The idea of a pandemic origin outside China is preposterous to many scientists, regardless of their position on whether the virus started with a lab leak or a natural jump from animals. There's simply no way SARS-CoV-2 could have come from some foreign place to Wuhan and triggered an explosive outbreak there without first racing through humans at the site of its origin. "The idea that the pandemic didn't originate in China is inconsistent with so many other things," says Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center who has argued for more intensive studies of the WIV lab accident scenario. "When you eliminate the absurd, it's Wuhan," says virologist Gregory Towers of University College London, who leans toward a natural origin. Yet Chinese researchers have published a flurry of papers supporting their government's "anywhere-but-here" position. Multiple studies report finding no signs of SARS-CoV-2 related viruses or antibodies in bats and other wild and captive animals in China. Others offer clues that the virus hitched a ride to China on imported food or its packaging. On the flip side, Chinese researchers are not pursuing -- or at least not publishing -- obvious efforts to trace the sources of the mammals sold at the Huanan market, which could yield clues to the virus' origins.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bleeping Computer: North Korean hackers from the Lazarus group have been using a signed malicious executable for macOS to impersonate Coinbase and lure in employees in the financial technology sector. The name of the false document was "Coinbase_online_careers_2022_07." When launched, it displays the decoy PDF above and loads a malicious DLL that ultimately allows the threat actor to send commands to the infected device. Security researchers at cybersecurity company ESET found that the hackers also had malware ready for macOS systems. They said that the malicious file is compiled for Macs with both Intel and Apple silicon, meaning that users of both older and newer models were targeted. In a thread on Twitter, they note that the malware drops three files [...].

ESET linked the recent macOS malware to Operation In(ter)ception, a Lazarus campaign that targeted high-profile aerospace and military organizations in a similar way. Looking at the macOS malware, the researchers noticed that it was signed on July 21 (as per the timestamp value) with a certificate issued in February to a developer using the name Shankey Nohria and team identifier 264HFWQH63. On August 12, the certificate had not been revoked by Apple. However, the malicious application was not notarized -- an automatic process that Apple uses to check software for malicious components. Compared to the previous macOS malware attributed to the Lazarus group of hackers, ESET researchers observed that the downloader component connects to a different command and control (C2) server, which was no longer responding at the time of the analysis.

The U.S. has identified intensifying technological competition with China as a top national-security threat. But a Commerce Department-led process that reviews U.S. tech exports to the country approves almost all requests and has overseen an increase in sales of some particularly important technologies, according to an analysis of trade data. From a report: Of the U.S.'s total $125 billion in exports to China in 2020, officials required a license for less than half a percent, Commerce Department data shows. Of that fraction, the agency approved 94%, or 2,652, applications for technology exports to China. The figures omit applications "returned without action," meaning their outcomes were uncertain. The result: The U.S. continues to send to China an array of semiconductors, aerospace components, artificial-intelligence technology and other items that could be used to advance Beijing's military interests.

The Commerce Department says it is focused on long-term, strategic competition with China and that it makes export-control decisions with its interagency partners in the Defense, State and Energy Departments. Critics say Commerce officials are improperly giving priority to U.S. commercial interests over national security and that an urgent regulatory revamp is necessary to respond to the threat from Beijing. For Steve Coonen, the Pentagon's former top China export-controls analyst, the high rate of approvals for licenses to sell tech with potential military use is evidence of significant policy failure.

The Russian space agency has unveiled a physical model of what a planned Russian-built space station will look like, suggesting Moscow is serious about abandoning the International Space Station (ISS) and going it alone. The Guardian reports: Russia wants to reduce its dependency on western countries and forge ahead on its own, or cooperate with countries such as China and Iran, after sanctions were imposed by the west as a result of the invasion of Ukraine. Roscosmos presented a model of the space station, nicknamed "Ross" by Russian state media, on Monday at a military-industrial exhibition outside Moscow.

Roscosmos said its space station would be launched in two phases, without giving dates. For the first phase a four-module space station would start operating. That would be followed by two more modules and a service platform, it said. That would be enough, when completed, to accommodate up to four cosmonauts and scientific equipment. Roscosmos has said the station would afford Russian cosmonauts a much wider view by which to monitor Earth than their current segment. Although designs for some of the station exist, design work is still under way on other segments.

Russian state media have suggested the launch of the first stage is planned for 2025-26 and no later than 2030. Launch of the second and final stage is planned for 2030-35, they have reported. The space station, as currently conceived, would not have a permanent human presence but would be staffed twice a year for extended periods. Dmitry Rogozin, the previous head of Roscosmos and a hardliner known for his tough statements against the west, has suggested the new space station could fulfil a military purpose if necessary.

At a military convention in Russia, a local company is showing off a robot dog that's carrying a rocket launcher. From a report: Russian news agency RIA Novosti today filmed the four-legged bot at the Army 2022 convention, which is taking place near Moscow and sponsored by the country's Ministry of Defense. The robot was recorded trotting along on the convention floor while wielding a rocket-propelled grenade launcher on its back. The robot is also capable of crouching on the floor, making it harder to spot, while it presumably waits to fire off a rocket. It remains unclear if the robot will ever be used on the field when Russia is locked in a war with Ukraine, and already using air-based drones at least for recon and targeting purposes. But according to RIA Novosti, the bot is dubbed the M-81 system and comes from a Russian engineering company called "Intellect Machine." The developers say the robot dog is being designed to both transport weapons and ammunition and fire them during combat missions.

On Thursday the International Atomic Energy Agency's director "warned that parts of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant had been knocked out due to recent attacks, risking an 'unacceptable' potential radiation leak," according to CNN: "IAEA experts believe that there is no immediate threat to nuclear safety," but "that could change at any moment," Grossi said.... Ukraine's nuclear agency Energoatom said 10 shells landed near the complex on Thursday, preventing a shift handover. "For the safety of nuclear workers, the buses with the personnel of the next shift were turned back to Enerhodar," the agency said. "Until the situation finally normalizes, the workers of the previous shift will continue to work."

Energoatom said radiation levels at the site remained normal, despite renewed attacks.

Several Western and Ukrainian officials believe that Russia is using the giant nuclear facility as a stronghold to shield their troops and mount attacks, because they assume Kyiv will not return fire and risk a crisis.
Later CNN added: Ukraine and Russia again traded blame after more shelling around the plant overnight on Thursday, just hours after the United Nations called on both sides to cease military activities near the power station, warning of the worst if they didn't.

"Regrettably, instead of de-escalation, over the past several days there have been reports of further deeply worrying incidents that could, if they continue, lead to disaster," UN secretary general, António Guterres, said in a statement....

Energoatom, Ukraine's state-run nuclear power company, accused Russian forces on Thursday of targeting a storage area for "radiation sources," and shelling a fire department nearby the plant. A day later, the company said in a statement on its Telegram account that the plant was operating "with the risk of violating radiation and fire safety standards."

Ukraine's Interior Minister, Denys Monastyrskyi, said Friday that there was "no adequate control" over the plant, and Ukrainian specialists who remained there were not allowed access to some areas where they should be.... Last weekend, shellfire damaged a dry storage facility — where casks of spent nuclear fuel are kept at the plant — as well as radiation monitoring detectors, making detection of any potential leak impossible, according to Energoatom. Attacks also damaged a high-voltage power line and forced one of the plant's reactors to stop operating.
Tonight the BBC reported on a response from Ukraine's president. In his nightly address on Saturday, Volodymyr Zelensky said any soldier firing on or from the plant would become "a special target" for Ukraine. He also accused Moscow of turning the plant into a Russian army base and using it as "nuclear blackmail"...

Zelenskiy added that "every day" of Russia's occupation of the plant "increases the radiation threat to Europe"....

A BBC investigation revealed earlier this week that many of the Ukrainian workers at the site are being kept under armed guard amid harsh conditions.
UPDATE (8/14): "Ukraine's military intelligence agency said that on Saturday, Russian artillery fire hit a pump, damaged a fire station and sparked fires near the plant that could not be immediately extinguished because of the damage to the fire station," reports the New York Times: Engineers say that yard-thick reinforced concrete containment structures protect the reactors from even direct hits. International concern, however, has grown that shelling could spark a fire or cause other damage that would lead to a nuclear accident.

The six pressurized water reactors at the complex retain most sources of radiation, reducing risks. After pressurized water reactors failed at the Fukushima nuclear complex in Japan in 2011, Ukraine upgraded the Zaporizhzhia site to enable a shutdown even after the loss of cooling water from outside the containment structures, Dmytro Gortenko, a former plant engineer, said in an interview....

"Locals are abandoning the town," said the former engineer, who asked to be identified by only his first name, Oleksiy, because of security concerns. Residents had been leaving for weeks, but the pace picked up after Saturday's barrages and fires, he said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For some people, the term "Ring Nation" might evoke a warrantless surveillance dystopia overseen by an omnipotent megacorp. To Amazon-owned MGM, Ring Nation is a clip show hosted by comedian Wanda Sykes, featuring dancing delivery people and adorable pets. Deadline reports that the show, due to debut on September 26, is "the latest example of corporate synergy at Amazon." Amazon owns household video security brand Ring, Hollywood studio MGM, and Big Fish, the producer of Ring Nation. Viral videos captured by doorbell cameras have been hot for a while now. You can catch them on late-night talk shows, the r/CaughtOnRing subreddit, and on millions of TikTok users' For You page. Amazon's media properties, perhaps sensing an opportunity to capitalize and soften Ring's image, are sallying forth with an officially branded offering.

Ring Nation will feature "neighbors saving neighbors, marriage proposals, military reunions and silly animals," Deadline writes. But Ring Nation might be aiming even higher, according to Ring founder Jamie Siminoff -- to something approaching a salve for our deeply divided nation. "Bringing the new community together is core to our mission at Ring, and Ring Nation gives friends and family a fun new way to enjoy time with one another," Siminoff told Deadline. "We're so excited to have Wanda Sykes join Ring Nation to share people's memorable moments with viewers." "Ring sharing its owners' moments with other viewers has been a contentious issue," notes Ars. Amazon's Ring can share footage with police during emergencies without consent and without warrants. The service has also reportedly partnered with hundreds of law enforcement agencies across the country to increase Ring installations and ease police access to footage.

In the near future, "Top Gun" may get a reboot. Roughly one year from now, fighter pilots will begin flying with helmets outfitted with visors that can augment reality and place digital replicas of enemy fighter jets in their field of vision. For the first time, pilots will get to fly in the air and practice maneuvering against imitations of highly advanced aircraft made by countries like China and Russia. From a report: It is also part of the U.S. military's investment of billions into virtual reality, artificial intelligence and algorithms to modernize the way it fights wars. The pilot training solution, created by military technology company Red6, will be rolled out to the Air Force first as part of its $70 million contract with the branch. Company and former military officials say the technology will be a safe, cheap and realistic way to ensure American pilots are prepared to battle the best fighter planes in the world.

"Better, faster, cheaper," said Daniel Robinson, founder and chief executive of Red6. "This is the way we'll train them in the future." The military wants new 'robot ships' to replace sailors during battle For decades, the way America trains its fighter pilots has changed little. Aviators from the Air Force and Navy often start their training flying on a Northrop T-38 jet, often using a similar syllabus to one that has been around since the 1960s. From there, they train on planes, such as F-22 or F-35 fighter jets, that they will fly during their career.

When a U.S. satellite passed over Russia's Plesetsk Cosmodrome, a Russian satellite was launched close behind it "with capabilities unknown," reports the Drive, adding that it's now "getting suspiciously close..." Russia has launched satellite 14F150 Nivelir into orbit under a mission dubbed Kosmos-2558, and its current orbital path could soon place it in close proximity to what is reported to be the spy satellite designated USA-326. Unconfirmed rumors that the asset will serve as an 'inspector' satellite to covertly spy on nearby spacecraft have begun to circulate online following the launch and would line up with Russia's known on-orbit anti-satellite weapons capabilities and developments.

Its exact purpose is unknown at present, but it has been described as an "inspector" satellite, a term that is often associated with so-called "killer satellites...." Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics, or @planet4589 on Twitter, has noted that Kosmos-2558's current orbital path will soon place it within 80 km of what is believed to be the USA 326 satellite. For reference, the Center for Astrophysics is a collaborative effort run jointly by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Harvard College Observatory....

USA-326 was launched in February of this year by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket out of Vandenberg Space Force Base, its mission designated NROL-87, which is a classified national security operation led by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in partnership with SpaceX. A press release shared by the NRO following the initial launch claimed that NROL-87 was designed, built, and now operated by the NRO to support its "overhead reconnaissance mission," which is largely centered around protecting national security through the exploitation of space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the story.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: If China were to invade Taiwan, the most-advanced chip factory in the world would be rendered "not operable," TSMC Chair Mark Liu said in an English-language interview with CNN this week. In the undated interview, Liu said that if Taiwan were invaded by China, the chipmaker's plant would not be able to operate because it relies on global supply chains. "Nobody can control TSMC by force. If you take a military force or invasion, you will render TSMC factory not operable," Liu said. "Because this is such a sophisticated manufacturing facility, it depends on real-time connection with the outside world, with Europe, with Japan, with U.S., from materials to chemicals to spare parts to engineering software and diagnosis." The remarks were aired as tensions between China and Taiwan have escalated in recent days as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visits the island. "The war brings no winners, everybody's losers," Liu said.

Liu compared a potential conflict in Taiwan to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, saying that while the two conflicts are very different, the economic impact to other countries would be similar. He encouraged political leaders to try to avoid war. "Ukraine war is not good for any of the sides, it's lose-lose-lose scenarios," Liu said. Liu said an invasion of the territory would cause economic turmoil for China, Taiwan and Western countries. He said that TSMC sells chips to consumer-facing Chinese companies that need the company's services and the supply of advanced computer chips. "How can we avoid war? How can we ensure that the engine of the world economy continues humming, and let's have a fair competition," Liu said. Further reading: US To Stop TSMC, Intel From Adding Advanced Chip Fabs In China

Just five weeks before his death in 2001, Douglas Adams made a mind-boggling pronouncement. "We are participating in a 3.5 billion-year program to turn dumb matter into smart matter..." He gave the keynote address for an embedded systems conference at San Francisco's Moscone Center... Adams dazzled the audience with a vision of a world where information devices are ultimately "as plentiful as chairs...." When the devices of the world were networked together, they could create a "soft earth" — a shared software model of the world assembled from all the bits of data. Communicating in real time, the soft earth would be alive and developing — and with the right instruments, humankind could just as easily tap into a soft solar system.
It's 21 years later, in a world where the long-time global software company Bohemia Interactive Simulations claims to be "at the forefront of simulation training solutions for defense and civilian organizations." And writing in VentureBeat, their chief commercial officer argues that "We do not yet have a shared imagination for the metaverse and the technology required to build it," complaining that big-tech companies "want to keep users reliant on their tech within a closed, commercialized ecosystem." I envision an open virtual world that supports thousands of simultaneous players and offers valuable, immersive use cases.

The scope of this vision requires an open cloud architecture with native support for cloud scalability. By prioritizing cloud development and clear goal-setting, military organizations have taken significant leaps toward building an actual realization of this metaverse. In terms of industry progress towards the cloud-supported, scalable metaverse, no organization has come further than the U.S. Army.

Their Synthetic Training Environment (STE) has been in development since 2017. The STE aims to replace all legacy simulation programs and integrate different systems into a single, connected system for combined arms and joint training. The STE fundamentally differs from traditional, server-based approaches. For example, it will host a 1:1 digital twin of the Earth on a cloud architecture that will stream high fidelity (photo-realistic) terrain data to connected simulations. New terrain management platforms such as Mantle ETM will ensure that all connected systems operate on exactly the same terrain data. For example, trainees in a tank simulator will see the same trees, bushes and buildings as the pilot in a connected flight simulator, facilitating combined arms operations.

Cloud scalability (that is, scaling with available computational power) will allow for a better real-world representation of essential details such as population density and terrain complexity that traditional servers could not support. The ambition of STE is to automatically pull from available data resources to render millions of simulated entities, such as AI-based vehicles or pedestrians, all at once.... [D]evelopers are creating a high-fidelity, digital twin of the entire planet.

Commercial metaverses created for entertainment or commercial uses may not require an accurate representation of the earth.... Still, the military metaverse could be a microcosm of what may soon be a large-scale, open-source digital world that is not controlled or dominated by a few commercial entities....

STE success will pave the way for any cloud-based, open-source worlds that come after it, and will help prove that the metaverse's value extends far beyond that of a marketing gimmick.