A startup called Operation Bluebird is petitioning the US Patent and Trademark Office to strip X Corp of the "Twitter" and "tweet" trademarks, hoping to relaunch a new Twitter with the old brand, bird logo, and "town square" vibe. "The TWITTER and TWEET brands have been eradicated from X Corp.'s products, services, and marketing, effectively abandoning the storied brand, with no intention to resume use of the mark," the petition states. "The TWITTER bird was grounded." Ars Technica reports: If successful, two leaders of the group tell Ars, Operation Bluebird would launch a social network under the name Twitter.new, possibly as early as late next year. (Twitter.new has created a working prototype and is already inviting users to reserve handles.)

Michael Peroff, an Illinois attorney and founder of Operation Bluebird, said that in the intervening years, more Twitter-like social media networks have sprung up or gained traction -- like Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky. But none have the scale or brand recognition that Twitter did prior to Musk's takeover. "There certainly are alternatives," Peroff said. "I don't know that any of them at this point in time are at the scale that would make a difference in the national conversation, whereas a new Twitter really could."

Similarly, Peroff's business partner, Stephen Coates, an attorney who formerly served as Twitter's general counsel, said that Operation Bluebird aims to recreate some of the magic that Twitter once had. "I remember some time ago, I've had celebrities react to my content on Twitter during the Super Bowl or events," he told Ars. "And we want that experience to come back, that whole town square, where we are all meshed in there." "Mere 'token use' won't be enough to reserve the mark," said Mark Lemley, a Stanford Law professor and expert in trademark law. "Or [X] could defend if it can show that it plans to go back to using Twitter. Consumers obviously still know the brand name. It seems weird to think someone else could grab the name when consumers still associate it with the ex-social media site of that name. But that's what the law says."

Longtime Slashdot reader Randseed writes: With the likes of Google Nest, Ring, and others cooperating with law enforcement, I started to look for affordable wireless IP security cameras that I can put around my house. Unfortunately, it looks like almost every thing now incorporates some kind of cloud-based slop. All I really want is to put up some cameras, hook them up to my LAN, and install something like ZoneMinder. What are the most economical, wireless IP security cameras that I can set up with my server?

An investigation has revealed how stablecoins -- cryptocurrencies pegged to the US dollar that exist largely beyond traditional financial oversight -- have become a practical tool for criminals and sanctioned individuals to move funds across borders almost instantly and convert them back into spendable money, often without detection.

A Chainalysis report from February estimated that up to $25 billion in illicit transactions involved stablecoins last year. A New York Times reporter tested the system by converting $40 cash at a crypto ATM in Weehawken, New Jersey, into stablecoins and then using a Telegram bot to generate a Visa payment card without any identity verification. The card-issuing service, WantToPay, is incorporated in Hong Kong and led by a Russian entrepreneur in Thailand; it advertises to Russians blocked by US sanctions. Britain last month arrested members of a billion-dollar money laundering network that had purchased a bank in Kyrgyzstan to convert proceeds from drug trafficking and human trafficking into Tether, the most popular stablecoin.

Further reading: China's Central Bank Flags Money Laundering and Fraud Concerns With Stablecoins.

Tech giants including Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon have all extended the estimated useful lives of their servers and AI equipment over the past five years, sparking a debate among investors about whether these accounting changes are artificially inflating profits. Meta this year increased its depreciation timeline for most servers and network assets to 5.5 years, up from four to five years previously and as little as three years in 2020. The company said the change reduced its depreciation expense by $2.3 billion for the first nine months of 2025. Alphabet and Microsoft now use six-year periods, up from three in 2020. Amazon extended to six years by 2024 but cut back to five years this year for some servers and networking equipment.

Michael Burry, the investor portrayed in "The Big Short," called extending useful lives "one of the more common frauds of the modern era" in an article last month. Meta's total depreciation expense for the nine-month period was almost $13 billion against pretax profit exceeding $60 billion.

India is weighing a proposal to mandate always-on satellite tracking in smartphones for precise government surveillance -- an idea strongly opposed by Apple, Google, Samsung, and industry groups. Reuters reports: For years, the [Prime Minister Narendra Modi's] administration has been concerned its agencies do not get precise locations when legal requests are made to telecom firms during investigations. Under the current system, the firms are limited to using cellular tower data that can only provide an estimated area location, which can be off by several meters.

The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), which represents Reliance's Jio and Bharti Airtel, has proposed that precise user locations should only be provided if the government orders smartphone makers to activate A-GPS technology -- which uses satellite signals and cellular data -- according to a June internal federal IT ministry email. That would require location services to always be activated in smartphones with no option for users to disable them. Apple, Samsung, and Alphabet's Google have told New Delhi that should not be mandated, said three of the sources who have direct knowledge of the deliberations.

A measure to track device-level location has no precedent anywhere else in the world, lobbying group India Cellular & Electronics Association (ICEA), which represents both Apple and Google, wrote in a confidential July letter to the government, which was viewed by Reuters. "The A-GPS network service ... (is) not deployed or supported for location surveillance," said the letter, which added that the measure "would be a regulatory overreach." Earlier this week, Modi's government was forced to rescind an order requiring smartphone makers to preload a state-run cyber safety app on all devices after public backlash and privacy concerns.

Netflix is buying Warner Bros. Discovery in an $82.7 billion deal that gives it HBO, iconic franchises, and major studio infrastructure. "Warner Bros. shareholders will receive $27.75 a share in cash and stock in Netflix," notes Bloomberg. "The total equity value of the deal is $72 billion, while the enterprise value of the deal is about $82.7 billion." From the report: Prior to the closing of the sale, Warner Bros. will complete the planned spinoff of its networks division, which includes cable channels such as CNN, TBS and TNT. That transaction is now expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2026, Netflix said in a statement. With the purchase, Netflix becomes owner of the HBO network, along with its library of hit shows like The Sopranos and The White Lotus. Warner Bros. assets also include its sprawling studios in Burbank, California, along with a vast film and TV archive that includes Harry Potter and Friends.

Netflix said it expects to maintain Warner Bros.' current operations and build on its strengths, including theatrical releases for films, a point that had been a cause of concern in Hollywood. Netflix said the deal will allow it to "significantly expand" US production capacity and invest in original content, which will create jobs and strengthen the entertainment industry. Still, the combination is also expected to create "at least $2 billion to $3 billion" in cost savings per year by the third year, according to the statement. U.S. Senator Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah who leads the Senate antitrust committee, said the acquisition "should send alarm to antitrust enforcers around the world."

"Netflix built a great service, but increasing Netflix's dominance this way would mean the end of the Golden Age of streaming for content creators and consumers," Lee wrote in a post on X.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren called it an antitrust "nightmare" that would harm workers and consumers. "A Netflix-Warner Bros would create one massive media giant with control of close to half of the streaming market -- threatening to force Americans into higher subscription prices and fewer choices over what and how they watch, while putting American workers at risk," Warren said on Friday. "It would mean more price hikes, ads, & cookie cutter content, less creative control for artists, and lower pay for workers," she said in a post on X. "The media industry is already controlled by a few corporations with too much power to censor free speech. The gov't must step in."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: A few years ago, Paul Wieland, a 44-year-old information technology professional living in New York's Adirondack Mountains, was wrapping up a home renovation when he ran into a hiccup. He wanted to be able to control his new garage door with his smartphone. But the options available, including a product called MyQ, required connecting to a company's internet servers. He believed a "smart" garage door should operate only over a local Wi-Fi network to protect a home's privacy, so he started building his own system to plug into his garage door. By 2022, he had developed a prototype, which he named RATGDO, for Rage Against the Garage Door Opener. He had hoped to sell 100 of his new gadgets just to recoup expenses, but he ended up selling tens of thousands. That's because MyQ's maker did what a number of other consumer device manufacturers have done over the last few years, much to the frustration of their customers: It changed the device, making it both less useful and more expensive to operate.

Chamberlain Group, a company that makes garage door openers, had created the MyQ hubs so that virtually any garage door opener could be controlled with home automation software from Apple, Google, Nest and others. Chamberlain also offered a free MyQ smartphone app. Two years ago, Chamberlain started shutting down support for most third-party access to its MyQ servers. The company said it was trying to improve the reliability of its products. But this effectively broke connections that people had set up to work with Apple's Home app or Google's Home app, among others. Chamberlain also started working with partners that charge subscriptions for their services, though a basic app to control garage doors was still free.

While Mr. Wieland said RATGDO sales spiked after Chamberlain made those changes, he believes the popularity of his device is about more than just opening and closing a garage. It stems from widespread frustration with companies that sell internet-connected hardware that they eventually change or use to nickel-and-dime customers with subscription fees. "You should own the hardware, and there is a line there that a lot of companies are experimenting with," Mr. Wieland said in a recent interview. "I'm really afraid for the future that consumers are going to swallow this and that's going to become the norm." [...] For Mr. Wieland, the fight isn't over. He started a company named RATCLOUD, for Rage Against the Cloud. He said he was developing similar products that were not yet for sale.

During last month's KubeCon North America in Atlanta, Kubernetes maintainers announced the upcoming retirement of Ingress NGINX. "Best-effort maintenance will continue until March 2026," noted the Kubernetes SIG Network and the Security Response Committee. "Afterward, there will be no further releases, no bugfixes, and no updates to resolve any security vulnerabilities that may be discovered." In a recent op-ed for The Register, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols reflects on the decision and speculates about what might have prevented this outcome: Ingress NGINX, for those who don't know it, is an ingress controller in Kubernetes clusters that manages and routes external HTTP and HTTPS traffic to the cluster's internal services based on configurable Ingress rules. It acts as a reverse proxy, ensuring that requests from clients outside the cluster are forwarded to the correct backend services within the cluster according to path, domain, and TLS configuration. As such, it's vital for network traffic management and load balancing. You know, the important stuff.

Now this longstanding project, once celebrated for its flexibility and breadth of features, will soon be "abandonware." So what? After all, it won't be the first time a once-popular program shuffled off the stage. Off the top of my head, dBase, Lotus 1-2-3, and VisiCalc spring to my mind. What's different is that there are still thousands of Ingress NGINX controllers in use. Why is it being put down, then, if it's so popular? Well, there is a good reason. As Tabitha Sable, a staff engineer at Datadog who is also co-chair of the Kubernetes special interest group for security, pointed out: "Ingress NGINX has always struggled with insufficient or barely sufficient maintainership. For years, the project has had only one or two people doing development work, on their own time, after work hours, and on weekends. Last year, the Ingress NGINX maintainers announced their plans to wind down Ingress NGINX and develop a replacement controller together with the Gateway API community. Unfortunately, even that announcement failed to generate additional interest in helping maintain Ingress NGINX or develop InGate to replace it." [...]

The final nail in the coffin was when security company Wix found a killer Ingress NGINX security hole. How bad was it? Wix declared: "Exploiting this flaw allows an attacker to execute arbitrary code and access all cluster secrets across namespaces, which could lead to complete cluster takeover." [...] You see, the real problem isn't that Ingress NGINX has a major security problem. Heck, hardly a month goes by without another stop-the-presses Windows bug being uncovered. No, the real issue is that here we have yet another example of a mission-critical open source program no one pays to support...

An anonymous reader shares a report: India's telecoms ministry has privately asked all smartphone makers to preload all new devices with a state-owned cyber security app, a government order showed, a move set to spark a tussle with Apple, which typically dislikes such directives.

[...] The November 28 order, seen by Reuters, gives major smartphone companies 90 days to ensure that the government's Sanchar Saathi app is pre-installed on new mobile phones, with a provision that users cannot disable it. [...] In the order, the government said the app was essential to combat "serious endangerment" of telecom cyber security from duplicate or spoofed IMEI numbers, which enable scams and network misuse.

In his mid-20s, Lu Heng "got an idea that has made him a lot richer," writes the Wall Street Journal.

He scooped up 10 million unused IP addresses, mostly form Africa, and then leases them to companies, mostly outside Africa, "that need them badly." [A]round half of internet traffic continues to use IPv4, because changing to IPv6 can be expensive and complex and many older devices still need IPv4. Companies including Amazon, Microsoft and Google still want IPv4 addresses because their cloud-hosting businesses need them as bridges between the IPv4 and IPv6 worlds... Africa, which has been slower to develop internet infrastructure than the rest of the world, is the only region that still has some of the older addresses to dole out... He searches for IPv4 addresses that aren't being used — by ISPs or anyone else that holds them — and uses his Hong Kong-based company, Larus, to lease them out to others.

In 2013, Lu registered a new company in the Seychelles, an African archipelago in the Indian Ocean, to apply for IP addresses from Africa's internet registry, called the African Network Information Centre, or Afrinic. Between 2013 and 2016, Afrinic granted that company, Cloud Innovation, 6.2 million IPv4 addresses. That's more addresses than are assigned to Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation. A single IPv4 address can be worth about $50 on its transfer to a company like Larus, which leases it onward for around 5% to 10% of that value annually. Larus and its affiliate companies, Lu said, control just over 10 million IPv4 addresses. The architects of the internet don't appear to have contemplated the possibility that anyone would seek to monetize IP addresses...

Lu's activities triggered a showdown with Africa's internet registry. In 2020, after what it said was an internal review, Afrinic sent letters to Lu and others seeking to reclaim the IP addresses they held. In Lu's case, Afrinic said he shouldn't be using the addresses outside Africa. Lu responded that he wasn't violating rules in place when he got the addresses... After some back-and-forth, Lu sued Afrinic in Mauritius to keep his allocated addresses, eventually filing dozens of lawsuits... One of the lawsuits that Lu filed in Mauritius prompted a court there to freeze Afrinic's bank accounts in July 2021, effectively paralyzing the organization and eventually sending it into receivership. The receivership choked off distributions of new IPv4 addresses, leaving the continent's service providers struggling to expand capacity...

In September, Afrinic elected a new board. Since then, some internet-service providers have been granted IPv4 addresses.

"A year after launching a commercial robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi, Chinese autonomous vehicle technology company WeRide and partner Uber can finally call that service driverless," reports TechCrunch.

A company official hailed it as "a historic transportation milestone, as the first driverless AV deployment outside of the U.S. or China." But TechCrunch notes that's just the beginning: Uber has spent the past two years locking up partnerships with 20 autonomous vehicle technology companies in various countries, including the United States, Europe, and the Middle East.

Those partnerships have expanded beyond the realm of robotaxis as well. Uber's deals span the full range of self-driving applications, including delivery and trucking. This year alone, it announced partnerships withAnn Arbor, Michigan-basedMay MobilityandVolkswagen, Chinese self-driving firms Momenta,Pony.ai, and Baidu, as well as a recent deal to create a premium robotaxi service using Lucid Gravity SUVs equipped with a self-driving system from San Francisco-based startup Nuro.

These deals are finally beginning to materialize into commercial services. For instance, Uber and Waymo launched a robotaxi service earlier this year in Austin. Now, Uber has expanded to the Middle East with WeRide in Abu Dhabi — with even more cities to come, including Dubai. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi forecast in the company's third-quarter earnings report that there would be autonomous vehicle deployments on the Uber network in at least 10 cities by the end of 2026. Uber and WeRide have previously shared plans to expand to 15 cities throughout the Middle East and Europe, eventually scaling to thousands of robotaxis. That would represent a massive leap for WeRide, which today has more than 150 robotaxis in the region.

Hyperloop One ceased operations in December 2023, notes CNN. "Yet nearly two years on, in other parts of the world, hyperloop projects are ongoing." For example, Rotterdam-based Hardt Hyperloop has a cool web site — and the company's managing director tells CNN that hyperloops are the only "actionable, sustainable solution to replace short-haul air travel" over distances greater than 300 miles. "It's 90% more efficient than air travel, operational expenses and maintenance costs are much lower than conventional high-speed railways and, as an enclosed, autonomous system, it's not affected by external factors such as bad weather or strikes." Rail-friendly Europe appears to be the new hyperloop hub, with four companies dedicated to it... Europe's Hyperloop Development Program (HDP) is a public-private partnership backed by EU funding and the private sector. HDP's vision is to have the first set of commercially viable hyperloop lines open by 2035-40, followed by a route network by 2050. It estimates that a 15,000-mile network linking 130 of Europe's major cities could shift 66% of short-haul flight passengers to hyperloop by 2050, saving between 113 million and 242 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Core network hubs would be scattered across the continent from London to Berlin, Madrid to Belgrade, and Sofia to Athens, while loops would serve the Iberian Peninsula, the Baltic States and Scandinavia, the Balkans and Central and Eastern Europe. The cost? A cool 981 billion euros, or $1.1 trillion, according to HDP estimates...

[T]hose behind the EU-backed HDP project are hoping to have a full-scale test track of up to 3 miles operational by the end of 2029, followed by a 20-30 mile twin-tube "Living Lab" which would replicate all aspects of day-to-day operation and public service, slated to be up and running by 2034. Elsewhere, Hyperloop Italia is investing in a demonstration line between Venice and Padua costing up to €800 million ($929 million) which could be ready by 2029, while Germany, Spain, India and China are also investigating trial routes to establish the viability of the technology.
And meanwhile China and Japan are also building "maglev" (magnetic levitation) train lines, the article points out — though it also includes this quote from rail expert and author Christian Wolmar. "Hyperloop is unworkable. The infrastructure it needs would be amazingly expensive to build and it can't deliver the capacity to compete with high-speed railways or airlines.

"It doesn't integrate with existing transport modes, the infrastructure required to reach city centers would cause intolerable noise and disruption. And there are doubts over energy costs, capacity and passenger safety if something goes wrong at such high speeds....

"[T]he economics of it just don't work."

Greek authorities shut down an IPTV piracy operation on Santorini, arresting a reseller and referring 68 end users for prosecution. TorrentFreak reports: A new legal framework to tackle online infringement in Greece went live just a couple of months ago, and reports of prosecutions are already coming in. Early September, it was reported that a man from Sparta faces prosecution and a fine of up to 6,000 euros for two IPTV piracy offenses. The suspect, reportedly a cafe owner, was targeted at his workplace on a Saturday, allegedly in front of customers. One told local media that they believed that complaints of the cafe engaging in "unfair competition" preceded the untimely visit.

The Cybercrime Prosecution Directorate launched their operation in the early hours of November 19. The Athens-based unit targeted a network that sold illicit access to premium pay-TV via IPTV subscriptions. The raid, conducted on Santorini, one of the Cyclades islands, resulted in the arrest of a 48-year-old, who, from police reports, appears to be a reseller for a larger network. Customers were reportedly charged 50 euros for 3 months subscription or 100 euros for 6 months. Sales and management were handled by the 48-year-old via an online platform known as a 'panel,' while remote and in-person support were available as part of the service.

The impact of the raid was visible on the islands, locals said. According to a local report, hundreds of users in hotels, cafes, and residences on Santorini and beyond, found themselves suddenly without access to cheap TV. Apparently few areas were untouched by the disruption, such was local reliance on illegal streams.

China launched an uncrewed Shenzhou 22 spacecraft to serve as an emergency lifeboat for three astronauts aboard the Tiangong space station after a docked return craft was found to have a cracked window likely caused by space debris. "A Long March 2F rocket fired its engines and lifted off with the Shenzhou 22 spacecraft, carrying cargo instead of a crew, at 11:11 pm EST Monday (04:11 UTC Tuesday)," reports Ars Technica. "The spacecraft docked with the Tiangong station nearly 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the Earth about three-and-a-half hours later." From the report: Chinese engineers worked fast to move up the launch of the Shenzhou 22, originally set to fly next year. On November 4, astronauts discovered one of the two crew ferry ships docked to the Tiangong station had a damaged window, likely from an impact with a small fragment of space junk. [...] Now, 20 days after the saga began, the Tiangong outpost again has a lifeboat for its long-term residents. Astronauts Zhang Lu, Fu Wei, and Zhang Hongzhang will return to Earth on the Shenzhou 22 spacecraft next year, soon after the arrival of their three replacements.

The Tiangong astronauts will head outside the station on a spacewalk to inspect the damaged window on Shenzhou 20. Eventually, Shenzhou 20 will depart Tiangong and reenter the atmosphere with cargo. Assuming a smooth landing, Chinese engineers will have an opportunity to get a closer look at the damage on the ground to inform the design of future spacecraft. A preliminary assessment of the window indicates the crack is in the outermost layer of heat-insulating glass in Shenzhou 20's porthole window, according to Chinese state media. Engineers on the ground conducted simulations and wind tunnel ablation tests to determine whether the window might fail during reentry. "The results showed that the cracks would still propagate further," reported CCTV, China's government-run television network. "We held review meeting, and everyone agreed that ensuring the safe return of the astronauts was too risky with the glass damaged," Zhou said.

While this crew is just one month into their planned six-month expedition, an emergency could force them to leave the station and return home at any time. Although remote, another collision with space junk, a major systems failure, or a medical emergency involving one of the astronauts could trigger an evacuation. That's why Chinese officials wanted to quickly launch Shenzhou 22 to give the crew a ticket home.The International Space Station follows the same policy, with SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft and Russian Soyuz ships serving as lifeboats until their crews' scheduled return to Earth.

Plex is beginning to enforce new restrictions on remote streaming for its TV apps, requiring either a Plex Pass or the cheaper Remote Watch Pass to watch media from servers outside your home network. How-To Geek reports: Plex is now rolling out the remote watch changes to its Roku TV app. This means that you will need a Plex Pass or Remote Watch Pass for your Plex account if you want to stream media from a server outside your home. If you're only watching media from your own server on the same local network as your Roku device, or the owner of the server you're streaming from has Plex Pass, you don't have to do anything.

Plex says this change will come to the other TV apps in 2026, such as Fire TV, Apple TV, and Android TV. Presumably, that will happen when the redesigned app arrives on those platforms. Roku was just the first TV platform to get the new app, which caused a wave of complaints from users about removed functionality and a more clunky redesign. Plex is addressing some of those complaints with more updates, but adding another limitation at the same time isn't a great look.

The Remote Watch Pass costs $2 per month or $20 per year, but there's no lifetime purchase option. You can also use a Plex Pass, which normally costs $7 per month, $70 per year, or $250 for a lifetime license. However, there's currently a 40% off sale for Plex Pass subscriptions.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Hacker conferences -- like all conventions -- are notorious for giving attendees a parting gift of mystery illness. To combat "con crud," New Zealand's premier hacker conference, Kawaiicon, quietly launched a real-time, room-by-room carbon dioxide monitoring system for attendees. To get the system up and running, event organizers installed DIY CO2 monitors throughout the Michael Fowler Centre venue before conference doors opened on November 6. Attendees were able to check a public online dashboard for clean air readings for session rooms, kids' areas, the front desk, and more, all before even showing up. "It's ALMOST like we are all nerds in a risk-based industry," the organizers wrote on the convention's website. "What they did is fantastic," Jeff Moss, founder of the Defcon and Black Hat security conferences, told WIRED. "CO2 is being used as an approximation for so many things, but there are no easy, inexpensive network monitoring solutions available. Kawaiicon building something to do this is the true spirit of hacking." [...]

Kawaiicon's work began one month before the conference. In early October, organizers deployed a small fleet of 13 RGB Matrix Portal Room CO2 Monitors, an ambient carbon dioxide monitor DIY project adapted from US electronics and kit company Adafruit Industries. The monitors were connected to an Internet-accessible dashboard with live readings, daily highs and lows, and data history that showed attendees in-room CO2 trends. Kawaiicon tested its CO2 monitors in collaboration with researchers from the University of Otago's public health department. The Michael Fowler Centre is a spectacular blend of Scandinavian brutalism and interior woodwork designed to enhance sound and air, including two grand pou -- carved Mori totems -- next to the main entrance that rise through to the upper foyers. Its cathedral-like acoustics posed a challenge to Kawaiicon's air-hacking crew, which they solved by placing the RGB monitors in stereo. There were two on each level of the Main Auditorium (four total), two in the Renouf session space on level 1, plus monitors in the daycare and Kuracon (kids' hacker conference) areas. To top it off, monitors were placed in the Quiet Room, at the Registration Desk, and in the Green Room.

Kawaiicon's attendees could quickly check the conditions before they arrived and decide how to protect themselves accordingly. At the event, WIRED observed attendees checking CO2 levels on their phones, masking and unmasking in different conference areas, and watching a display of all room readings on a dashboard at the registration desk. In each conference session room, small wall-mounted monitors displayed stoplight colors showing immediate conditions: green for safe, orange for risky, and red to show the room had high CO2 levels, the top level for risk. Colorful custom-made Kawaiicon posters by New Zealand artist Pepper Raccoon placed throughout the Michael Fowler Centre displayed a QR code, making the CO2 dashboard a tap away, no matter where they were at the conference. Resources, parts lists, and assembly guides can be found here.

With some animated graphics, CNN "reimagined" what three of America's busiest air and road travel routes would look like with high-speed trains, for "a glimpse into a faster, more connected future." The journey from New York City to Chicago could take just over six hours by high-speed train at an average speed of 160 mph, cutting travel time by more than 13 hours compared with the current Amtrak route... The journey from San Francisco to Los Angeles could be completed in under three hours by high-speed train... The journey from Atlanta to Orlando could be completed in under three hours by high-speed train that reaches 160 mph, cutting travel time by over half compared with driving...

While high-speed rail remains a fantasy in the United States, it is already hugely successful across the globe. Passengers take 3 billion trips annually on more than 40,000 miles of modern high-speed railway across the globe, according to the International Union of Railways. China is home to the world's largest high-speed rail network. The 809-mile train journey from Beijing to Shanghai takes just four and a half hours... In Europe, France's Train a Grand Vitesse (TGV) is recognized as a pioneer of high-speed rail technology. Spain soon followed France's success and now hosts Europe's most extensive high-speed rail network...

[T]rain travel contributes relatively less pollution of every type, said Jacob Mason of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, from burning less gasoline to making less noise than cars and taking up less space than freeways. The reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is staggering: Per kilometer traveled, the average car or a short-haul flight each emit more than 30 times the CO2 equivalent than Eurostar high-speed trains, according to data from the UK government.

A California judge has shut down a decade-long surveillance program in which Sacramento's utility provider shared granular smart-meter data on 650,000 residents with police to hunt for cannabis grows. The EFF reports: The Sacramento County Superior Court ruled that the surveillance program run by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) and police violated a state privacy statute, which bars the disclosure of residents' electrical usage data with narrow exceptions. For more than a decade, SMUD coordinated with the Sacramento Police Department and other law enforcement agencies to sift through the granular smart meter data of residents without suspicion to find evidence of cannabis growing. EFF and its co-counsel represent three petitioners in the case: the Asian American Liberation Network, Khurshid Khoja, and Alfonso Nguyen. They argued that the program created a host of privacy harms -- including criminalizing innocent people, creating menacing encounters with law enforcement, and disproportionately harming the Asian community.

The court ruled that the challenged surveillance program was not part of any traditional law enforcement investigation. Investigations happen when police try to solve particular crimes and identify particular suspects. The dragnet that turned all 650,000 SMUD customers into suspects was not an investigation. "[T]he process of making regular requests for all customer information in numerous city zip codes, in the hopes of identifying evidence that could possibly be evidence of illegal activity, without any report or other evidence to suggest that such a crime may have occurred, is not an ongoing investigation," the court ruled, finding that SMUD violated its "obligations of confidentiality" under a data privacy statute. [...]

In creating and running the dragnet surveillance program, according to the court, SMUD and police "developed a relationship beyond that of utility provider and law enforcement." Multiple times a year, the police asked SMUD to search its entire database of 650,000 customers to identify people who used a large amount of monthly electricity and to analyze granular 1-hour electrical usage data to identify residents with certain electricity "consumption patterns." SMUD passed on more than 33,000 tips about supposedly "high" usage households to police. [...] Going forward, public utilities throughout California should understand that they cannot disclose customers' electricity data to law enforcement without any "evidence to support a suspicion" that a particular crime occurred.

Longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares a report from 404 Media: The Ukrainian Army is knocking a once-hyped Russian superweapon out of the sky by jamming it with a song and tricking it into thinking it's in Lima, Peru. The Kremlin once called its Kh-47M2 Kinzhal ballistic missiles "invincible." Joe Biden said the missile was "almost impossible to stop." Now Ukrainian electronic warfare experts say they can counter the Kinzhal with some music and a re-direction order. [...] Kinzhals and other guided munitions navigate by communicating with Russian satellites that are part of the GLONASS system, a GPS-style navigation network. Night Watch uses a jamming system called Lima EW to generate a disruption field that prevents anything in the area from communicating with a satellite. Many traditional jamming systems work by blasting receivers on munitions and aircraft with radio noise. Lima does that, but also sends along a digital signal and spoofs navigation signals. It "hacks" the receiver it's communicating with to throw it off course.

Night Watch shared pictures of the downed Kinzhals with 404 Media that showed a missile with a controlled reception pattern antenna (CRPA), an active antenna that's meant to resist jamming and spoofing. "We discovered that this missile had pretty old type of technology," Night Watch said. "They had the same type of receivers as old Soviet missiles used to have. So there is nothing special, there is nothing new in those types of missiles." Night Watch told 404 Media that it used this Lima to take down 19 Kinzhals in the past two weeks. First, it replaces the missile's satellite navigation signals with the Ukrainian song "Our Father Is Bandera."

Any digital noise or random signal would work to jam the navigation system, but Night Watch wanted to use the song because they think it's funny. "We just send a song... we just make it into binary code, you know, like 010101, and just send it to the Russian navigation system," Night Watch said. "It's just kind of a joke. [Bandera] is a Ukrainian nationalist and Russia tries to use this person in their propaganda to say all Ukrainians are Nazis. They always try to scare the Russian people that Ukrainians are, culturally, all the same as Bandera." Once the song hits, Night Watch uses Lima to spoof a navigation signal to the missiles and make them think they're in Lima, Peru. Once the missile's confused about its location, it attempts to change direction. These missiles are fast -- launched from a MiG-31 they can hit speeds of up to Mach 5.7 or more than 4,000 miles per hour -- and an object moving that fast doesn't fare well with sudden changes of direction.

An Ohio IT contractor pleaded guilty to breaking into his former employer's network after being fired, impersonating another worker and using a PowerShell script to reset 2,500 passwords -- an act that locked out thousands of employees and caused more than $862,000 in damage. He faces up to 10 years in prison. The Register reports: Maxwell Schultz, 35, impersonated another contractor to gain access to the company's network after his credentials were revoked. Announcing the news, US attorney Nicholas J. Ganjei did not specify the company in question, which is typical in these malicious insider cases, although local media reported it to be Houston-based Waste Management.

The attack took place on May 14, 2021, and saw Schultz use the credentials to reset approximately 2,500 passwords at the affected organization. This meant thousands of employees and contractors across the US were unable to access the company network. Schultz admitted to running a PowerShell script to reset the passwords, searching for ways to delete system logs to cover his tracks -- in some cases succeeding -- and clearing PowerShell window events, according to the Department of Justice.

Prosecutors said the attack caused more than $862,000 worth of damage related to employee downtime, a disrupted customer service function, and costs related to the remediation of the intrusion. Schultz is set to be sentenced on Jan 30, 2026, and faces up to ten years in prison and a potential maximum fine of $250,000.