Esper: The world's biggest tech companies have lost confidence in one of the Internet's behind-the-scenes gatekeepers. Microsoft, Mozilla, and Google are dropping TrustCor Systems as a root certificate authority in their products. Starting in Chrome version 111 for desktops, the browser will no longer trust certificates issued by TrustCor Systems. The same change is coming to Android, but unlike Chrome for desktops, Android's root certificate store can't be updated independently of the OS, meaning it'll take some time for the certificate changes to roll out. Thankfully, that may no longer be the case in Android 14, as Google is preparing to implement updatable root certificates in the next release.

The New York Times cites predictions from American's Defense Department that China could surpass U.S. space capabilities as soon as 2045. "I think it's entirely possible they could catch up and surpass us, absolutely," said the staff director of the United States Space Force. "The progress they've made has been stunning — stunningly fast."

But in a new article this week, the newspaper notes that China recenty sent space probes to the moon and to Mars — and invited foreign media to the launch of its space station in November — and looks back over decades of development: Thirty years ago, the Chinese government initiated a secret plan for its space program, including a key goal of building a space station by 2020. At the time, the country was 11 years from sending its first astronaut into space, and its space efforts were going through a rough patch: Chinese rockets failed in 1991, 1992, 1995 and twice in 1996. The worst failure, in 1996, was a rocket that tipped to the side, flew in the wrong direction and exploded 22 seconds after launch, showering a Chinese village with falling wreckage and flaming fuel that killed or injured at least 63 people.

While grand spaceflight plans of some nations have ended up many years behind schedule, China completed the assembly in orbit of its Tiangong space station in late October, only 22 months later than planned. And on Nov. 29, the Shenzhou 15 mission blasted off from China's Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center deep in the Gobi Desert and took three astronauts to the space station to begin permanent occupancy of the outpost.
The article notes that the U.S. Congress "ended up banning American space agencies in 2011 from spending any money to cooperate in space with China, except in limited circumstances."

But today Zhou Jianping, chief designer of China's crewed space program, asserts that "within a few years, we will be able to achieve the reuse of re-entry capsules for our new generation spaceships." Sending a person to Mars is an even bigger prize for China. It has placed an emphasis on shortening the duration of such a trip, perhaps with nuclear propulsion instead of conventional rocket engines. Officials are also determined that any journey will be a round-trip from which all astronauts return alive and in good health.... With nuclear propulsion, the trip could be trimmed to 500 days, Mr. Zhou said, without predicting whether China would adopt that approach.

A new Pentagon office set up to track reports of unidentified flying objects has received "several hundreds" of new reports, but no evidence so far of alien life, the agency's leadership told reporters Friday. The Associated Press reports: The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) was set up in July and is responsible for not only tracking unidentified objects in the sky, but also underwater or in space -- or potentially an object that has the ability to move from one domain to the next. The office was established following more than a year of attention on unidentified flying objects that military pilots have observed but have sometimes been reluctant to report due to fear of stigma.

In June 2021 the Office of the Director of National Intelligence reported that between 2004 and 2021, there were 144 such encounters, 80 of which were captured on multiple sensors. Since then, "we've had lots more reporting," said anomaly office director Sean Kirkpatrick. When asked to quantify the amount, Kirkpatrick said "several hundreds." An updated report from the Director of National Intelligence that will provide specific figures on new reports received since 2021 is expected by the end of the year, the officials said.

Slashdot reader hackingbear writes: Peter Wennink, the chief executive of ASML Holding NV, the Dutch semiconductor equipment maker, on Tuesday questioned whether a U.S. push to get the Netherlands to adopt new rules restricting exports to China make sense. "He said that following U.S. pressure, the Dutch government has already restricted ASML from exporting its most advanced lithography machines to China since 2019, something he said has benefited U.S. companies selling alternative technology," reports Reuters. "He said that while 15% of ASML's sales are in China, at U.S. chip equipment suppliers 'it is 25 or sometimes more than 30%.'"

In response to U.S. claims that advanced chips owned by China pose a threat to national security due to military applications and the rise of artificial intelligence, Wennink said: "What constitutes national security is for Americans to determine. But it is common knowledge that chip technology for purely military applications is usually ten, fifteen years old. The technology used to make such chips can still be sold to China. Artificial intelligence requires the most advanced chips. They are made with EUV and are therefore not produced in China. But those chips are simply sold, also to the Chinese. American chip manufacturers have no problem with China as a customer."

The US government is blacklisting Yangtze Memory Technologies, Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group and dozens of other Chinese tech companies, ratcheting up a trade conflict between the world's two largest economies. From a report: The Department of Commerce is placing the companies on the so-called entity list, meaning that anyone seeking to supply them with US technology will require a license from Washington -- something that will likely be difficult to get. Bloomberg News previously reported that the US was preparing to add the companies to the list. The latest restrictions are part of a push to limit China's access to advanced chipmaking and artificial intelligence technology, which the US wants to keep away from the Asian nation's military. In October, the Biden administration unveiled sweeping measures that limit what US companies can sell to the country -- and it's been pushing for allies to go along with the plan.

The idea is to severely restrict China's "ability to leverage artificial intelligence, advanced computing, and other powerful, commercially available technologies for military modernization and human rights abuses," Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Alan Estevez said in a statement. "This work will continue, as will our efforts to detect and disrupt Russia's efforts to obtain necessary items and technologies for its brutal war against Ukraine, including from Iran." Yangtze Memory and Shanghai Micro were added to the list out of concern that they'll work with Huawei, Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology and other companies that the US has decided are either a risk to national security or support oppression by the Chinese government. The two companies are key to China's efforts to build a domestic chipmaking business and wean itself off imports, particularly those from the US. In all, 36 companies are joining the entity list.

"Almost all clothing is made by hand due to robots' inability to handle limp fabrics," writes Slashdot reader jonzornow. "A new approach avoids these issues by temporarily stiffening fabric. A robotic system developed to use this technique is now heading to its first factory for testing." Reuters reports: Work at Siemens grew out of efforts to create software to guide robots that could handle all types of flexible materials, such as thin wire cables, said [Eugen Solowjow, who heads a project at a Siemens lab in San Francisco that has worked on automating apparel manufacturing since 2018.], adding that they soon realized one of the ripest targets was clothing. The global apparel market is estimated to be worth $1.52 trillion, according to independent data platform Statista. Siemens worked with the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing Institute in Pittsburgh, created in 2017 and funded by the Department of Defense to help old-line manufacturers find ways to use the new technology. They identified a San Francisco startup with a promising approach to the floppy fabric problem. Rather than teach robots how to handle cloth, the startup, Sewbo Inc., stiffens the fabric with chemicals so it can be handled more like a car bumper during production. Once complete, the finished garment is washed to remove the stiffening agent.

"Pretty much every piece of denim is washed after it's made anyway, so this fits into the existing production system," said Zornow, Sewbo's inventor. This research effort eventually grew to include several clothing companies, including Levi's and Bluewater Defense LLC, a small U.S.-based maker of military uniforms. They received $1.5 million in grants from the Pittsburgh robotics institute to experiment with the technique. [...] Sanjeev Bahl, who opened a small jeans factory in downtown Los Angeles two years ago called Saitex, has studied the Sewbo machines and is preparing to install his first experimental machine. Leading the way through his factory in September, he pointed to workers hunched over old-style machines and said many of these tasks are ripe for the new process. "If it works," he said, "I think there's no reason not to have large-scale (jeans) manufacturing here in the U.S. again."

The United States Air Force (USAF) has successfully tested its first prototype hypersonic missile. Space.com reports: The service's new AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon, or ARRW ("Arrow") is expected to be the United States military's first hypersonic weapon to reach operational status. The exact speed of the AGM-183A isn't known, although the Lockheed Martin-designed weapon is said to be based on previous test vehicles built by DARPA that have an alleged maximum speed of Mach 20, or 15,000 mph (24,000 kph). The successful ARRW test was conducted on Friday (Dec. 9) in a training range off the coast of California, according to a USAF statement released Monday (Dec. 12). "This test was the first launch of a full prototype operational missile," officials wrote in the statement. "Following the ARRW's separation from the aircraft, it reached hypersonic speeds greater than five times the speed of sound, completed its flight path and detonated in the terminal area. Indications show that all objectives were met."

According to the U.S. Air Force, the missile is designed to "hold fixed, high-value, time-sensitive targets at risk in contested environments," meaning it will be used to target pre-determined assets on the ground such as fixed missile sites, radar stations, air defense installations, infrastructure facilities or even adversary headquarters buildings -- basically anything important in a battlefield environment that can't be moved and needs to be destroyed quickly. [...] Now that the ARRW has successfully flown, it's likely the service could reevaluate its plans to scrap planned purchases of the AGM-183A. The AGM-183A is what is known as a boost-glide vehicle, which refers to warheads or projectiles that glide toward their targets after being lofted by a rocket booster.

Japan and the Netherlands have agreed in principle to join the US in tightening controls over the export of advanced chipmaking machinery to China, Bloomberg News reported according to people familiar with the matter, a potentially debilitating blow to Beijing's technology ambitions. From the report: The two countries are likely to announce in the coming weeks that they'll adopt at least some of the sweeping measures the US rolled out in October to restrict the sale of advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment, according to the people, who asked not to be named because they are not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. The Biden administration has said the measures are aimed at preventing Beijing's military from obtaining advanced semiconductors.

The three-country alliance would represent a near-total blockade of China's ability to buy the equipment necessary to make leading-edge chips. The US rules restricted the supply from American gear suppliers Applied Materials, Lam Research and KLA. Japan's Tokyo Electron and Dutch lithography specialist ASML Holding are the two other critical suppliers that the US needed to make the sanctions effective, making their governments' adoption of the export curbs a significant milestone. "There's no way China can build a leading-edge industry on their own. No chance," said Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon.

Google, Oracle, Microsoft and Amazon will share in the Pentagon's $9 billion contract to build its cloud computing network, a year after accusations of politicization over the previously announced contract and a protracted legal battle resulted in the military starting over in its award process. The Associated Press reports: The Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability is envisioned to provide access to unclassified, secret and top-secret data to military personnel all over the globe. It is anticipated to serve as a backbone for the Pentagon's modern war operations, which will rely heavily on unmanned aircraft and space communications satellites, but will still need a way to quickly get the intelligence from those platforms to troops on the ground. The contract will be awarded in parts, with a total estimated completion date of June 2028, the Pentagon said in a statement.

Last July, the Pentagon announced it was cancelling its previous cloud computing award, then named JEDI. At the time, the Pentagon said that due to delays in proceeding with the contract, technology had changed to the extent that the old contract, which was awarded to Microsoft, no longer met DOD's needs. It did not mention the legal challenges behind those delays, which had come from Amazon, the losing bidder. Amazon had questioned whether former President Donald Trump's administration had steered the contract toward Microsoft due to Trump's adversarial relationship with Amazon's chief executive officer at the time, Jeff Bezos. A report by the Pentagon's inspector general did not find evidence of improper influence, but it said it could not determine the extent of administration interactions with Pentagon decision-makers because the White House would not allow unfettered access to witnesses. "It's the most important cloud deal to come out of the Beltway," said analyst Daniel Ives, who monitors the cloud industry for Wedbush Securities. "It's about the Pentagon as a reference customer. It says significant accolades about what they think about that vendor, and that's the best reference customer you could have in that world."

Elon Musk's SpaceX is expanding its Starlink satellite technology into military applications with a new business line called Starshield. CNBC reports: "While Starlink is designed for consumer and commercial use, Starshield is designed for government use," the company wrote on its website. Few details are available about the intended scope and capabilities of Starshield. The company hasn't previously announced tests or work on Starshield technology.

On its website, SpaceX said the system will have "an initial focus" on three areas: Imagery, communications and "hosted payloads" -- the third of which effectively offers government customers the company's satellite bus (the body of the spacecraft) as a flexible platform. The company also markets Starshield as the center of an "end-to-end" offering for national security: SpaceX would build everything from the ground antennas to the satellites, launch the latter with its rockets, and operate the network in space.

SpaceX notes that Starshield uses "additional high-assurance cryptographic capability to host classified payloads and process data securely," building upon the data encryption it uses with its Starlink system. Another key feature: the "inter-satellite laser communications" links, which the company currently has connecting its Starlink spacecraft. It notes that the terminals can be added to "partner satellites," so as to connect other companies' government systems "into the Starshield network."

You can read the news in Military Times magazine. "Coming just after the 25th anniversary of the release of the cult classic Starship Troopers (November 1997), Offworld Industries and Sony Pictures Consumer Projects are bringing the fight against the Arachnids to a computer near you."

An official announcement and gameplay teaser were released for the upcoming game this week. "Starship Troopers: Extermination is a co-op FPS that puts you on the far-off front lines of an all-out battle against the Bugs!" explains its page on Steam. "Squad up, grab your rifle, and do your part as an elite Deep Space Vanguard Trooper set to take back planets claimed by the Arachnid threat!"

The page says an "Early Access" launch is planned for 2023: In Starship Troopers: Extermination, our vision is to show a galactic war between the Federation and the Arachnid Empire. After our initial launch and throughout the course of Early Access development, players will get to engage with exciting new updates that expand upon the in-game universe, and provide feedback through the Steam Community Hub that our developers can take into consideration.... [W]e will be sharing an exciting and robust roadmap with content already planned for 2023. Throughout Early Access we will provide players with more weapons, an updated class leveling system as well as progression achievements and unlockable skins for both weapons and armor. Additionally we will be adding vehicles special call in attacks including massive Orbital Strikes to help during missions. On the enemy side we will be adding more bugs, flying enemies, and boss battles that require complex player coordination to accomplish.

As we progress in development, our goal is to then begin ongoing planetary battles where the player can explore new items and enemies introduced in previous updates as an epic war breaks out. This transition adds a new world as we head to the completion of Early Access. The intent throughout Early Access is to convey that this part of our development cycle is the beginning of the war and the battle will only increase in complexity and ferocity as we move to full release.

Starship Troopers: Extermination is expected to be in Early Access for approximately 1 year. The full version of Starship Troopers: Extermination will span multiple worlds to liberate them from the Arachnid Threat. This will include additional weapons, enemies types, class progression upgrades, community events, and encounters. The player will have a more diverse roster of customization options allowing them to tailor their Troopers to fit their playstyle and experience." Starship Troopers: Extermination will launch with a massive map on Planet Valaka. Up to twelve players can team up to complete side and main missions before escaping to the extraction zone. We'll have more to share closer to the Early Access launch in 2023!

We plan to work closely with the community on Steam's Community Hub and in the official Starship Troopers: Extermination Discord as we add features, tune gameplay, and develop new content.
"Starship Troopers is in a league of its own when it comes to 90s science fiction films," writes Boing Boing's Devin Nealy. "Despite serving as an adaptation of the Robert A. Heinlein book, Starship Troopers forges a unique identity through its striking visuals and deft use of satire."

Noting the two "pretty weak" straight-to-video sequels (and two more CGI-animated films), Nealy argues that "Until the franchise finds a creative team that can properly capture the essence of the first film, a video game might be the best option for the series."

The U.S. Army allocated millions of dollars to sponsor a wide range of esports tournaments, individual high profile Call of Duty streamers, and Twitch events in the last year to specifically grow its audience with Gen-Z viewers, and especially women and Black and Hispanic people, according to internal Army documents obtained by Motherboard. From the report: In many cases the sponsorships ultimately did not happen -- the Army ordered a stop of all spending with Call of Duty's publisher Activision after the company faced a wave of sexual harrassment complaints. But the documents provide much greater insight into the Army's goals and intentions behind its planned integrations with Call of Duty and other massive entertainment franchises.

"Audience: Gen-Z Prospects (A18-24)," one section of the documents read. "Focus on the growth of females, Black & Hispanics." Motherboard obtained the documents through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A table included in the documents lists the funds the Army planned to spend on various platforms, events, and streamers. At the top, is Twitch and its HBCU [Historically Black Colleges and Universities] Showdown. Previous seasons of this esports league had players compete in Madden and NBA games. The Army planned to spend $1 million on sponsoring the event. The documents show that the U.S. military considered gaming and, in particular, Call of Duty, as a potentially useful branding and recruiting tool.

America's newest nuclear stealth bomber is making its public debut after years of secret development and as part of the Pentagon's answer to rising concerns over a future conflict with China. From a report: The B-21 Raider is the first new American bomber aircraft in more than 30 years. Almost every aspect of the program is classified. Ahead of its unveiling Friday at an Air Force facility in Palmdale, California, only artists' renderings of the warplane have been released. Those few images reveal that the Raider resembles the black nuclear stealth bomber it will eventually replace, the B-2 Spirit.

The bomber is part of the Pentagon's efforts to modernize all three legs of its nuclear triad, which includes silo-launched nuclear ballistic missiles and submarine-launched warheads, as it shifts from the counterterrorism campaigns of recent decades to meet China's rapid military modernization. China is on track to have 1,500 nuclear weapons by 2035, and its gains in hypersonics, cyber warfare, space capabilities and other areas present "the most consequential and systemic challenge to U.S. national security and the free and open international system," the Pentagon said this week in its annual China report.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: Major web browsers moved Wednesday to stop using a mysterious software company that certified websites were secure, three weeks after The Washington Post reported its connections to a U.S. military contractor. Mozilla's Firefox and Microsoft's Edge said they would stop trusting new certificates from TrustCor Systems that vouched for the legitimacy of sites reached by their users, capping weeks of online arguments among their technology experts, outside researchers and TrustCor, which said it had no ongoing ties of concern. Other tech companies are expected to follow suit.

The Post reported on Nov. 8 that TrustCor's Panamanian registration records showed the same slate of officers, agents and partners as a spyware-maker identified this year as an affiliate of Arizona-based Packet Forensics, which has sold communication interception services to U.S. government agencies for more than a decade. One of those contracts listed the "place of performance" as Fort Meade, Md., the home of the National Security Agency and the Pentagon's Cyber Command. The case has put a new spotlight on the obscure systems of trust and checks that allow people to rely on the internet for most purposes. Browsers typically have more than a hundred authorities approved by default, including government-owned ones and small companies, to seamlessly attest that secure websites are what they purport to be."Certificate Authorities have highly trusted roles in the internet ecosystem and it is unacceptable for a CA to be closely tied, through ownership and operation, to a company engaged in the distribution of malware," Mozilla's Kathleen Wilson wrote to a mailing list for browser security experts. "Trustcor's responses via their Vice President of CA operations further substantiates the factual basis for Mozilla's concerns."

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 Tuesday night to approve a controversial policy that would allow police to deploy robots capable of using lethal force in extraordinary circumstances, according to multiple reports. From a report: The Washington Post reports the vote came after a heated debate on a policy that would allow officers to use ground-based robots to kill "when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and officers cannot subdue the threat after using alternative force options or de-escalation tactics." The Post says the measure still requires a second vote next week and the mayor's approval.

"There could be an extraordinary circumstance where, in a virtually unimaginable emergency, they might want to deploy lethal force to render, in some horrific situation, somebody from being able to cause further harm," Supervisor Aaron Peskin said at the board meeting, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. But Supervisors Dean Preston, Hillary Ronen and Shamann Walton voted against the policy, the Chronicle reported. "There is serious potential for misuse and abuse of this military-grade technology, and zero showing of necessity," Preston said at the meeting. Ultimately, the board adopted an amendment requiring one of two high-ranking San Francisco Police Department leaders to authorize any use of a robot for lethal force, according to the Chronicle.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Bohemia Interactive, the Czech Republic based developer of the military simulator game Arma 3, has published a blog and a video it hopes will help it with a unique problem. Footage from the video game known for its realism has gone viral several times since the game's release in 2013 as people have tried to pass off clips of the military simulation as footage of real war. This happens a lot, so often that there are multiple debunking stories on Reuters and the Associated Press specifically about debunking viral clips of war footage. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February, the problem has gotten much worse. The invasion is the largest ground war in Europe in a generation and people around the world gobble up every scrap of information they can. Pranksters and fraudsters have taken to uploading clips from Arma 3 to capitalize on that need for information.

Arma 3 is a hyper realistic military simulation and sandbox. It's meant to be a realistic modeling of real world conflict. It's even teamed up with the International Committee of the Red Cross to release DLC that details the after effects of armed conflict. A sister studio, Bohemia Interactive Simulations, broke from the company in 2013 and makes simulations for the Pentagon using similar technology. The game is also a sandbox with a vibrant modding scene (PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds began its life as an Arma 3 mod) that allows players to customize the game however they want. That devotion to realism and open platform has made Arma 3 the perfect platform to use to create fake war footage. "While it's flattering that Arma 3 simulates modern war conflicts in such a realistic way, we are certainly not pleased that it can be mistaken for real-life combat footage and used as war propaganda," Pavel Krizka, PR Manager of Bohemia Interactive, said in a November 28 press release. "It has happened in the past (Arma 3 videos allegedly depicted conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria, Palestine, and even between India and Pakistan), but nowadays this content has gained traction in regard to the current conflict in Ukraine."

The life cycle is almost always the same. An Arma 3 nerd uploads something to YouTube and other people pull the video, edit it to make it look more realistic, then pass it off as actual footage of the conflict. The footage goes viral then the fact-checkers come in and tell everyone it's a video game. Bohemia Interactive issues a statement and then everyone waits for the next fake to come along. "We've been trying to fight against such content by flagging these videos to platform providers (FB, YT, TW, IG etc.), but it's very ineffective," Krizka said in the press release. "With every video taken down, ten more are uploaded each day. We found the best way to tackle this is to actively cooperate with leading media outlets and fact-checkers (such as AFP, Reuters, and others), who have better reach and the capacity to fight the spreading of fake news footage effectively." Some of the tells of fake footage include a low resolution, a shaky camera, and/or a night setting. "They're often without sound, don't feature people in motion, and sometimes still include the HUD elements from the video game," adds Motherboard. "There's typically unnatural particle effects, unrealistic vehicles, uniforms, and equipment."

"We have seen many Arma players pointing out mistakenly identified footage, which helps viewers understand what they're seeing," said Bohemia Interactive. "Thank you for helping!"

From the BBC: "Individuals associated with the U.S. military" are linked to an online propaganda campaign, Meta's latest adversarial-threat report says....

On Facebook, 39 accounts, 16 pages, and two groups were removed, as well as 26 accounts on Instagram, for violating the platforms' policy against "coordinated inauthentic behaviour". "This network originated in the United States," Meta wrote. It focused on countries including Afghanistan, Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Somalia, Syria, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Yemen — and mirrored tactics commonly used in propaganda campaigns against the West...

Some of those supporting the U.S. had posed as independent media outlets and some had tried to pass off content from legitimate outlets, such as BBC News Russian, as their own. The operation ran across many internet services, including Twitter, YouTube, Telegram, VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, according to Meta. "Although the people behind this operation attempted to conceal their identities and coordination, our investigation found links to individuals associated with the US military," its report says.
The article adds that experts believe the campaign "was largely ineffective."

The U.S. Navy was found guilty of piracy and is ordered to pay a software company $154,400 for a lawsuit filed back in 2016. Gizmodo reports: The company, Bitmanagement Software GmbH, filed a complaint against the Navy, accusing the military branch of copyright infringement. GmbH claimed they had issued 38 copies of their 3D virtual reality software, BS Contact Geo, but while they were still in negotiations for additional licenses, the Navy installed the software onto at least 558,466 machines between 2013 and 2015. In the court filing (PDF), GmbH claimed, "Without Bitmanagement's advance knowledge or consent, the Navy installed BS Contact Go onto hundreds of thousands of computers. Bitmanagement did not license or otherwise authorize these uses of its software, and the Navy has never compensated Bitmanagement for these uses of Bitmanagement's software."

The company sued the Navy for nearly $600 million for "willful copyright infringement" of the software which, according to the vendor's website, is a 3D viewer that "enables you to visualize and interact with state of the art 2D/3D content," and is based on digital data captured from "various sources (land surveys, CAD, satellite imagery, airborne laser scanning, etc)." The court filings stated that after GmbH filed the lawsuit in July 2016, the Navy uninstalled the BS Contact Geo software from all of its computers and "subsequently reinstalled the software on 34 seats, for inventory purposes." GmbH wrote in the court filing, "The government knew or should have known that it was required to obtain a license for copying Bitmanagement software onto each of the devices that had Bitmanagement software installed. The government nonetheless failed to obtain such licenses."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The San Francisco Police Department is currently petitioning the city's Board of Supervisors for permission to deploy robots to kill suspects that law enforcement deems a sufficient threat that the "risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option available to SFPD." The draft policy, which was written by the SFPD itself, also seeks to exclude "hundreds of assault rifles from its inventory of military-style weapons and for not include personnel costs in the price of its weapons," according to a report from Mission Local.

As Mission Local notes, this proposal has already seen significant opposition from both within and without the Board. Supervisor Aaron Peskin, initially pushed back against the use of force requirements, inserting "Robots shall not be used as a Use of Force against any person," into the policy language. The SFPD removed that wording in a subsequent draft, which I as a lifelong San Francisco resident did not know was something that they could just do. The three-member Rules Committee, which Peskin chairs, then unanimously approved that draft and advanced it to the full Board of Supervisors for a vote on November 29th. Peskin excused his decision by claiming that "there could be scenarios where deployment of lethal force was the only option."

The police force currently maintains a dozen fully-functional remote-controlled robots, which are typically used for area inspections and bomb disposal. However, as the Dallas PD showed in 2016, they make excellent bomb delivery platforms as well. Bomb disposal units are often equipped with blank shotgun shells used to forcibly disrupt an explosive device's internal workings, though there is nothing stopping police from using live rounds if they needed, as Oakland police recently acknowledged to that city's civilian oversight board.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company plans to bring its most advanced technology to Arizona, the founder of the chip giant said Monday. From a report: TSMC's plans come as tensions between Washington and Beijing are rising over chips, with President Joe Biden imposing a sweeping set of controls on the sale of advanced chips and chip-making equipment to Chinese firms. Taiwan, a self-governing democracy that the Chinese Communist Party claims as its own territory despite having never controlled it, has also faced growing military aggression from Beijing in recent months -- throwing a spotlight on the critical role the island plays in the global chipmaking industry. TSMC accounts for an estimated 90% of the world's super-advanced computer chips, supplying tech giants including Apple and Qualcomm.

"Chips are very important products," TSMC's founder Morris Chang said Monday at a press briefing in Taipei. "It seems that people are only starting to realize this recently, and as a result, lots of people out there are envious of Taiwan's chip manufacturing." Chang has retired but remains an influential force within the industry. [...] Advances in chip manufacturing require etching ever-smaller transistors on to silicon wafers. Chang said its plant in Arizona will produce 3-nanometer chips, TSMC's most advanced technology. In 2020, the company had already committed at least $12 billion to build its first facility in Arizona. At the time, the tech giant had said that the facility will "utilize TSMC's 5-nanometer technology for semiconductor wafer fabrication" and "create over 1,600 high-tech professional jobs directly." Production is expected to begin in 2024.