Google has introduced Chromebook Plus, a new certification that's meant to help shoppers identify high-quality Chromebooks to buy. From a report: Much like Intel's Evo program for Windows PCs, the Chromebook Plus branding will be awarded to laptops that meet a set of minimum requirements. The idea is that even a shopper who's not familiar with PC specs can see the "Chromebook Plus" label on a product and be assured that Google thinks it's a good product. Chromebook Plus devices must have:

An Intel Core (i3 or higher) or AMD Ryzen 7000 CPU
An IPS panel with at least 1080p resolution
A 1080p webcam
8GB of RAM
128GB of storage

There's an interesting absence here: battery life. In fact, the phrase "battery life" does not appear once in Google's press release. Curious! I asked Google spokesperson Peter Du about this, and he provided the following statement: "All Chromebooks are required to meet a 10 hours battery life requirement based on internal testing standards. While not a new requirement for Chromebook Plus like the 1080p screen or 8GB of RAM, Chromebook Plus laptops must also adhere to this."

Researchers from several U.S. institutions are collaborating "to develop and test an implantable device able to sense signs of the kind of inflammation associated with cancer," reports CBS News, "and delivery therapy when needed." Northwestern said the implant could significantly improve outcomes for patients with ovarian, pancreatic and other difficult-to-treat cancers — potentially cutting cancer-related deaths in the U.S. in half. "Instead of tethering patients to hospital beds, IV bags and external monitors, we'll use a minimally invasive procedure to implant a small device that continuously monitors their cancer and adjusts their immunotherapy dose in real time," said Rice University bioengineer Omid Veiseh. "This kind of 'closed-loop therapy' has been used for managing diabetes, where you have a glucose monitor that continuously talks to an insulin pump. But for cancer immunotherapy, it's revolutionary."
The project and team are named THOR, an acronym for "targeted hybrid oncotherapeutic regulation..." explains an announcement from Johns Hopkins. "THOR's proposed implant, or 'hybrid advanced molecular manufacturing regulator,' goes by the acronym HAMMR..."

The project will take five and a half years, and includes funding for a first-phase clinical trial treating recurrent ovarian cancer slated to begin in the fourth year. The research is funded by America's newly-established Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), according to a statement from the agency, representing its "commitment to supporting Cancer Moonshot goals of decreasing cancer deaths and improving the quality of life for patients..."

And they're also funding two more projects: The Synthetic Programmable bacteria for Immune-directed Killing in tumor Environments (SPIKEs) project, led by a team at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, aims to develop an inexpensive and safe therapy using bacteria specifically selected for tumor-targeting. Through SPIKEs, researchers intend to engineer bacteria that can recruit and regulate tumor-targeting immune cells, boosting the body's ability to fight off cancer without side-effects from traditional medications. Up to $19 million is allocated towards SPIKEs.

An additional project, with up to $50 million in potential funding inclusive of options, seeks to map cancer cell biomarkers to drastically improve multi-cancer early detection (MCED) and streamline clinical intervention when tumors are still small. Led by the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, the Cancer and Organ Degradome Atlas (CODA) project aims to understand the cellular profiles unique to diseased cancer cells. The CODA platform intends to develop a suite of biosensor tools that can reliably recognize a range of cancer-specific markers and, ultimately, produce a highly precise, accurate, and cost-effective MCED test that can identify common cancers when they are most treatable.
In a statement, ARPA-H's director said that "With these awards, we hope to see crucial advancements in patient-tailored therapies, better and earlier tumor detection methods, and cell therapies that can help the immune system target cancer cells for destruction."

"We're committed to developing AI responsibly," says Google's VP of Trust, "guided by our AI principles and in line with our consumer privacy commitment. However, we've also heard from web publishers that they want greater choice and control over how their content is used for emerging generative AI use cases."

And so, Mashable reports, "Websites can now choose to opt out of Google Bard, or any other future AI models that Google makes." Google made the announcement on Thursday introducing a new tool called Google-Extended that will allow sites to be indexed by crawlers (or a bot creating entries for search engines), while simultaneously not having their data accessed to train future AI models. For website administrators, this will be an easy fix, available through robots.txt — or the text file that allows web crawlers to access sites...

OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, recently launched a web crawler of its own, but included instructions on how to block it. Publications like Medium, the New York Times, CNN and Reuters have notably done so.
As Google's blog post explains, "By using Google-Extended to control access to content on a site, a website administrator can choose whether to help these AI models become more accurate and capable over time..."

Wednesday the Free Software Foundation celebrated "the 40th anniversary of the GNU operating system and the launch of the free software movement," with an announcement calling it "a turning point in the history of computing.

"Forty years later, GNU and free software are even more relevant. While software has become deeply ingrained into everyday life, the vast majority of users do not have full control over it... " On September 27, 1983, a computer scientist named Richard Stallman announced the plan to develop a free software Unix-like operating system called GNU, for "GNU's not Unix." GNU is the only operating system developed specifically for the sake of users' freedom, and has remained true to its founding ideals for forty years. Since 1983, the GNU Project has provided a full, ethical replacement for proprietary operating systems. This is thanks to the forty years of tireless work from volunteer GNU developers around the world.

When describing GNU's history and the background behind its initial announcement, Stallman (often known simply as "RMS") stated, "with a free operating system, we could again have a community of cooperating hackers — and invite anyone to join. And anyone would be able to use a computer without starting out by conspiring to deprive his or her friends."

"When we look back at the history of the free software movement — or the idea that users should be in control of their own computing — it starts with GNU," said Zoë Kooyman, executive director of the FSF, which sponsors GNU's development. "The GNU System isn't just the most widely used operating system that is based on free software. GNU is also at the core of a philosophy that has guided the free software movement for forty years."

Usually combined with the kernel Linux, GNU forms the backbone of the Internet and powers millions of servers, desktops, and embedded computing devices. Aside from its technical advancements, GNU pioneered the concept of "copyleft," the approach to software licensing that requires the same rights to be preserved in derivative works, and is best exemplified by the GNU General Public License (GPL). As Stallman stated, "The goal of GNU was to give users freedom, not just to be popular. So we needed to use distribution terms that would prevent GNU software from being turned into proprietary software. The method we use is called 'copyleft.'"

The free software community has held strong for forty years and continues to grow, as exemplified by the FSF's annual LibrePlanet conference on software freedom and digital ethics.

Kooyman continues, "We hope that the fortieth anniversary will inspire hackers, both old and new, to join GNU in its goal to create, improve, and share free software around the world. Software is controlling our world these days, and GNU is a critique and solution to the status quo that we desperately need in order to not have our technology control us."
"In honor of GNU's fortieth anniversary, its organizational sponsor the FSF is organizing a hackday for families, students, and anyone interested in celebrating GNU's anniversary. It will be held at the FSF's offices in Boston, MA on October 1."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide whether state laws that seek to regulate Facebook, TikTok, X and other social media platforms violate the Constitution. The justices will review laws enacted by Republican-dominated legislatures and signed by Republican governors in Florida and Texas. While the details vary, both laws aim to prevent the social media companies from censoring users based on their viewpoints. The court's announcement, three days before the start of its new term, comes as the justices continue to grapple with how laws written at the dawn of the digital age, or earlier, apply to the online world.

The justices had already agreed to decide whether public officials can block critics from commenting on their social media accounts [...]. Separately, the high court also could consider a lower-court order limiting executive branch officials' communications with social media companies about controversial online posts. The new social media cases follow conflicting rulings by two appeals courts, one of which upheld the Texas law, while the other struck down Florida's statute. By a 5-4 vote, the justices kept the Texas law on hold while litigation over it continues.

"Nissan will make the switch to full electric by 2030 in Europe. We believe it is the right thing to do for our business, our customers and for the planet," said Nissan's chief executive Makoto Uchida. The announcement comes despite the UK postponing its 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars to 2035. The BBC reports: In an interview with the BBC, Mr Uchida said the company was aiming to bring down the cost of electric vehicles for customers, so that they were no more expensive than petrol and diesel cars. "It may take a bit of time, but we are looking at the next few years," he said. "We are looking at it from the point of view of the technology, from the point of view of cooperating with suppliers, and of course working with the government on how we can deliver that kind of cost competitiveness to the consumer," Mr Uchida added. Will that price parity happen by 2030? "That's what we're aiming for," confirmed Mr Uchida.

Mr Uchida also said that the company was fast-tracking a different kind of battery technology, known as all-solid-state batteries (ASSB), which are lighter, cheaper, and quicker to charge. "We are going to have a pilot plant for ASSB in Japan from next year, and we want to ensure they can be mass produced by 2028," he said. "There are a lot of challenges with this, but we do have a solution, and we are on track [to meet that target]", he added.

Starting on November 1st, Disney Plus will begin restricting password sharing in Canada. The Verge reports: Disney has not provided many details on how it plans to enforce this policy -- its email merely states that "we're implementing restrictions on your ability to share your account or login credentials outside of your household." The announcement reads more like a strong finger wag than anything else. "You may not share your subscription outside of your household," reads the company's updated Help Center.

A new "account sharing" section in the Canadian subscriber agreement also notes that the company may "analyze the use of your account" and that failing to comply with the agreement could lead to account limits or termination. After Netflix started cracking down on password sharing in the U.S., it resulted in the "four single largest days of U.S. user sign-ups since January 2019," according to Variety. The streaming giant later went on to add 2.6 million U.S. subscribers in July.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: Today, there are over 110 million Farsi speakers worldwide," explained tech-backed nonprofit Code.org in Tuesday's announcement of its new multi-year 'Code.org in Farsi' initiative. "While the majority of native speakers live in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan, there are millions living as immigrants, migrants, and refugees around the world. With the Code.org in Farsi initiative, Farsi-speaking students will have the same access to our curricula that is already available to students in all other major languages of the world."

The announcement closes with a statement regarding Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) compliance considerations: "As a U.S. nonprofit, Code.org is subject to laws regarding sanctions with Iran. After consulting with U.S. legal counsel experienced in the Iranian Sanctions and Translations Regulations (ITSR), Code.org believes that it may fund, prepare, and distribute the Farsi Translations of CS Curriculum in the United States and elsewhere around the world, including within Iran. The ITSR provides an exemption for "information and informational materials" (the IIM Exemption) and Code.org believes that this exemption will fully shield its funding, preparation, and distribution of the Farsi Translations and thus enable its Farsi Translations effort to proceed in full compliance with U.S. economic sanctions requirements.

OpenAI says ChatGPT is "no longer limited to data before September 2021." It can now browse the internet to provide you with up-to-date information, "complete with direct links to sources." From the announcement: Since the original launch of browsing in May, we received useful feedback. Updates include following robots.txt and identifying user agents so sites can control how ChatGPT interacts with them. Browsing is particularly useful for tasks that require up-to-date information, such as helping you with technical research, trying to choose a bike, or planning a vacation.

Browsing is available to Plus and Enterprise users today, and we'll expand to all users soon. To enable, choose Browse with Bing in the selector under GPT-4.

The next-generation of Meta Quest hardware is here, and Meta announced a bunch of software news alongside the Quest 3 VR headset hardware reveal at its Connect conference. One such announcement was the debut of Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming service on Meta Quest 3, which is actually a huge boon for fans of the Facebook owner's mixed reality gear. From a report: The Xbox Cloud Gaming implementation in Quest resembles a lot of how Apple showed its own vision for mixed reality with the Vision Pro headset: It's primarily a virtual screen that can float in either a virtual or mixed reality space, which appears to be reposition-able and resizable, but which basically works exactly as you'd expect an Xbox game to work with a large TV. This is a key acknowledgement on the part of Meta that while immersive, native gaming is undoubtedly a draw for users, so too is a more traditional gaming experience that basically just benefits from taking place in your own private face-mounted theater.

Walmart is expanding its offerings of prepaid phone plans with MobileX, a wireless service launched earlier this year by Boost cofounder Peter Adderton. Walmart will be MobileX's first and exclusive retail partner, the companies said in an announcement Tuesday. From a report: MobileX, which uses Verizon's network through a wholesale agreement, will be available on Walmart's website and in stores starting Tuesday, the companies said. It will offer unlimited pay-as-you go plans starting at $14.88 per month, and a lower-cost plan with customizable offerings starting at $4.08 a month. An artificial intelligence-powered guide that can anticipate a customer's data needs can customize plans tailored to their usage, the company said in a statement. [...] Walmart gives MobileX, which launched online in February, more visibility as a low-cost alternative to more expensive monthly plans from the big three wireless carriers. Still, cheap mobile services have had a difficult time dislodging people from more expensive plans. Many subscribers are locked into two and three-year phone payment plans and even those that could switch say the hassle is not worth the savings.

Lenovo launched the first foldable laptop in 2020, but the first real era of foldable PCs is only starting to unfold now. From a report: Today, LG became the latest OEM to announce a foldable-screen laptop, right after HP announced its first attempt, the Spectre Foldable PC, earlier this month. LG only announced the Gram Fold in South Korea thus far. A Google translation of LG's Korean announcement said the laptop is 9.4-mm (0.37-inches) thick when unfolded and used like a 17-inch tablet. Alternatively, the OLED PC can be folded in half to use like an approximately 12.2-inch laptop. In the latter form, a virtual keyboard can appear on the bottom screen, and you can dock a Bluetooth keyboard to the bottom screen or pair a keyboard with the system wirelessly. The screen has 1920Ã--2560 pixels for a pixel density of 188.2 pixels per inch.

One draw of foldable PCs is supposed to be portability. The Gram Fold weighs 2.76 pounds (1,250g), which is even lighter than LG's latest Gram clamshell laptop (2.9 pounds). According to Android Authority, LG's laptop will have an Intel Core i5-1335U, which has 8 Efficient cores (E-cores) at up to 3.4 GHz, two Performance cores (P-cores) at up to 4.6 GHz, 12 threads, and 12MB of cache. The PC is also supposed to have 16GB of RAM, a 512GB NVMe SSD, a 72 Wh battery, Wi-Fi 6E, and two USB-C ports. LG is claiming 99.5 percent DCI-P3 color coverage with the laptop.

[...] It's also possible we'll see similar designs from other laptop brands, as panel supplier LG Display announced today that it will start mass production of 17-inch foldable OLED laptop panels. The foldable OLED is made with what LG Display calls a Tandem OLED structure, using two-stack OLED technology, "which adds an extra organic emitting layer to deliver brighter screens while effectively dispersing energy across OLED components for optimal stability and longer lifespans," LG Display's announcement said. LG Display first entered mass production of foldable (13.3-inch) laptop panels in 2020. However, foldable PCs didn't immediately take off then, despite the panel being used in Lenovo's 2020 ThinkPad X1 Fold. Foldable PCs lacked the software support that Windows 11 now affords with its Snap windows layouts that make organizing windows across dual or folded screens more intuitive.

America's Department of Defense recently exercised a contract option with X-energy, a private nuclear reactor engineering company, seeking "a thorough analysis of design options" for a transportable micro nuclear reactor. The Department says its ultimate goal is "a reactor design which is ready for licensing by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for both commercial ventures and military resiliency."

Their announcement also notes that additional work is already underway by another company, BWX Technologies, on a prototype micro reactor: "Due to their extraordinary energy density, nuclear reactors have the potential to serve multiple critical functions for meeting resiliency needs in contested logistical environments," said Dr. Jeff Waksman, Project Pele program manager. "By developing two unique designs, we will provide the Services with a broad range of options as they consider potential uses of nuclear power for both Installation and Operational energy applications in the near future."

The Defense Department uses approximately 30 Terawatt-hours of electricity per year and more than 10 million gallons of fuel per day — levels that are only expected to increase due to anticipated electrification of the vehicle fleet and maturation of future energy-intensive capabilities. A safe, small, transportable nuclear reactor would address this growing demand with a resilient, carbon-free energy source that does not add to the Defense Department's fuel needs, while supporting mission-critical operations in remote and austere environments...

"The Strategic Capabilities Office specializes in adapting commercial technology for military purposes," said Jay Dryer, director. "By nurturing and developing multiple micro reactor designs, SCO will not just provide options for the military Services, but will also help jumpstart a truly competitive commercial marketplace for micro reactors."

"Since 2022, Google has worked with iFixit to offer official repair parts and guides for virtually all of the company's Pixel releases," according to the blog 9to5Google, which in June confirmed this would continue with Google's Pixel Fold. (They called the announcement "notable, as it will be the first foldable to date with support for DIY repair options.")

But Ars Technica has a warning about Google's "biggest and most expensive phone." The good news is Google has indeed started offering OEM replacement parts for the $1,800 phone on the repair site iFixit.

The bad news is a repair kit for the phone's inner display, a 7.6-inch flexible OLED screen, "will cost you a whopping $900." Even the "part only" option for $900 is the entire top half of the Pixel Fold. We're talking the display, the bezels around it, the entire metal frame and sides of the phone, the all-important hinge, side buttons, fingerprint sensor, and a whole bunch of wires. You wouldn't buy this and connect it to your original phone; you would part out your original phone and move a few pieces over into this, like the motherboard, batteries, cameras, and back plate...

The outer screen is a much more reasonable $160, while the rear glass cover and camera bump is $70. The batteries — there are two, remember — will run you $50 each...

Once you get the parts you need, it really feels like iFixit went all out in the guide department, with 32 different guides and "techniques" detailing how to disassemble the Pixel Fold.

Unity has announced some key changes to its widely panned Runtime Fee policy, which spawned both derision and confusion from developers and the gaming community at large when it was unveiled earlier this month. From a report: It's easing up on some big aspects of the previously announced charges, removing the fee from the Unity Personal tier entirely, although it still remains in a revised form on the Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise tiers. In short, as originally announced, starting on Jan. 1, 2024, Unity would start charging developers a small fee every time someone downloads a game built on Unity's game engine after a certain threshold for minimum revenue and install count.

The different tiers of Unity plans - Unity Personal/Unity Plus, Unity Pro, and Unity Enterprise - had different thresholds and, per the original announcement, smaller developers using Unity Personal/Unity Plus would have to pay Unity $0.20 per install once their game passes $200,000 in revenue over the last 12 months and 200,000 life-to-date installs. Unity announced today, however, that there will be no Runtime Fee on games built on Unity Personal, which will remain free. They will also be increasing financial theshold of Unity Personal from $100,000 to $200,000 and will remove the requirement to use the Made with Unity splash screen.

The U.S. Treasury Department and China's Ministry of Finance launched a pair of economic working groups on Friday in an effort to ease tensions and deepen ties between the nations. From a report: Led by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Vice Premier He Lifeng, the working groups will be divided into economic and financial segments. The working groups will "establish a durable channel of communication between the world's two largest economies," Yellen said in a series of tweets detailing the announcement. She said the groups will "serve as important forums to communicate America's interests and concerns, promote a healthy economic competition between our two countries with a level playing field for American workers and businesses."

The announcement follows a string of high-ranking administration officials' visits to China this year, which sets the stage for a possible meeting between President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in November at an Asia-Pacific economic conference in San Francisco. China is one of the United States' biggest trading partners, and economic competition between the two nations has increased in recent years. The two finance ministers have agreed to meet at a "regular cadence," the Treasury Department said in a news release.

Simon Hill, reporting for Wired: Every new hardware announcement is always described as "the best ever," but Amazon's new Eero Max 7 mesh might just be a real leap forward. This is Eero's first tri-band mesh router that utilizes the latest Wi-Fi 7 standard, promising roughly double the speeds of its previous flagship system up to 4.3 Gigabits per second. Theoretically, you can download a 4K movie in 10 seconds. The router has a larger design than its predecessor, which allows for more antennas, cooling without the need for a fan, and space for four Ethernet ports. But all this comes at a hefty price -- a single Eero Max 7 costs a whopping $600. It's early days for Wi-Fi 7, so as new models come out, we'll see these prices dramatically drop.

The Eero Max 7 supports the 2.4-GHz, 5-GHz, and 6-GHz bands and is fully backward compatible with all previous Wi-Fi versions; it runs the same TrueMesh software and app as other Eero systems, so it can be mixed and matched with any existing Eeros you have. However, you won't be able to take advantage of those Wi-Fi 7 upgrades and speeds without a Wi-Fi 7-supported device, which there are very few of right now. A common criticism of Eero routers (and most mesh Wi-Fi systems) is the lack of Ethernet ports. The Eero Pro 6E only offered two ports rated at 2.5 Gbps and 1 Gbps. Despite the Eero Max 7's larger size, it's still recognizably an Eero finished in shiny white plastic, but it's much larger than previous releases. That allows for four Ethernet ports, two rated at 10 Gbps and two at 2.5 Gbps. Accounting for packet overhead, tethered speeds max out at 9.4 Gbps.

Intel has taken the wraps off its forthcoming next-gen Meteor Lake processors following its successful 12th (Alder Lake) and 13th Gen (Raptor Lake) processors with its new E- and P-core design. WindowsCentral: Its first chip built on the Intel 4 process node with Foveros 3D packaging, Intel calls Meteor Lake its "biggest architectural shift in 40 years" and that it will "lay the foundation for innovations for the PC," as noted by Tim Wilson, VP, Design and Engineering Group and GM, SoC Design at Intel. Meteor Lake is Intel's next-gen CPU and the first built on the Intel 4 process, which is part of Intel's long-term goal of "5 nodes in 4 years." Previous generation naming would suggest it would be called Intel 14th Gen, but Intel is moving away from its older naming schema. Some reports have suggested Meteor Lake may reflect a reboot in generation numbers. Current rumors suggest Intel 14th Gen is simply a refresh of Raptor Lake, although Meteor Lake may play a part in that for laptops.

Meteor Lake processors are expected to ship in late 2023 or early 2024 in new laptops with thinner and lighter designs, better cooling, and much better battery life. The significant change for Meteor Lake is what Intel calls disaggregation, which means the breaking down of core components into separate 'tiles' on the SoC. Meteor Lake features four Tiles, including:
Compute Tile: New E-core and P-core microarchitecture, built on Intel 4 process technology
SoC Tile: Low power island E-cores, NPU, Wi-Fi 6E/7, native HDMI 2.1 and 8K HDR AV1 support
Graphics Tile: Integrated Intel Arc architecture
IO Tile: Thunderbolt 4 (and presumably Thunderbolt 5) and PCIe Gen5

Under an agreement announced Monday, Joby Aviation will build hundreds of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft in the same Ohio river valley where the Wright brothers pioneered human flight. The Associated Press reports: Joby's decision to locate its first scaled manufacturing facility at a 140-acre (57-hectare) site at Dayton International Airport delivers on two decades of groundwork laid by the state's leaders, Republican Lt. Gov. Jon Husted said. Importantly, the site is near Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and the headquarters of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratories. The Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, lived and worked in Dayton. In 1910, they opened the first U.S. airplane factory there. To connect the historical dots, Joby's formal announcement Monday took place at Orville Wright's home, Hawthorn Hill, and concluded with a ceremonial flypast of a replica of the Wright Model B Flyer.

Joby's production aircraft is designed to transport a pilot and four passengers at speeds of up to 200 miles (321.87 kilometers) per hour, with a maximum range of 100 miles (160.93 kilometers). Its quiet noise profile is barely audible against the backdrop of most cities, the company said. The plan is to place them in aerial ridesharing networks beginning in 2025. The $500 million project is supported by up to $325 million in incentives from the state of Ohio, its JobsOhio economic development office and local government. With the funds, Joby plans to build an Ohio facility capable of delivering up to 500 aircraft a year and creating 2,000 jobs. The U.S. Department of Energy has invited Joby to apply for a loan to support development of the facility as a clean energy project.

Panos Panay, the chief product officer at Microsoft leading Windows development and the company's Surface line, is leaving Microsoft. From a report: In an announcement on Monday, Microsoft told employees: "After nearly 20 years at the company, Panos Panay has decided to leave Microsoft." Panay first joined Microsoft in 2004 as a group program manager. After overseeing the company's Surface line, Panay became the company's chief product officer in 2018, where he led the development of Windows 11.