| OpenWRT One Released: First Router Designed Specifically For OpenWrt Dec 1st 2024, 02:14, by EditorDavid Friday the Software Freedom Conservancy announced the production release of the new OpenWrt One network router — designed specifically for running the Linux-based router OS OpenWrt (a member project of the SFC). "This is the first wireless Internet router designed and built with your software freedom and right to repair in mind. "The OpenWrt One will never be locked down and is forever unbrickable." This device services your needs as its owner and user. Everyone deserves control of their computing. The OpenWrt One takes a great first step toward bringing software rights to your home: you can control your own network with the software of your choice, and ensure your right to change, modify, and repair it as you like. The OpenWrt One demonstrates what's possible when hardware designers and manufacturers prioritize your software right to repair; OpenWrt One exuberantly follows these requirements of the copyleft licenses of Linux and other GPL'd programs. This device provides the fully copyleft-compliant source code release from the start. Device owners have all the rights as intended on Day 1; device owners are encouraged to take full advantage of these rights to improve and repair the software on their OpenWrt One. Priced at US$89 for a complete OpenWrt One with case (or US$68.42 for a caseless One's logic board), it's ready for a wide variety of use cases... This new product has completed full FCC compliance tests; it's confirmed that OpenWrt met all of the FCC compliance requirements. Industry "conventional wisdom" often argues that FCC requirements somehow conflict with the software right to repair. SFC has long argued that's pure FUD. We at SFC and OpenWrt have now proved copyleft compliance, the software right to repair, and FCC requirements are all attainable in one product! You can order an OpenWrt One now! Since today is the traditional day in the USA when folks buy gifts for love ones, we urge you to invest in a wireless router that can last! We do expect that for orders placed today, sellers will deliver by December 22 in most countries... Regardless of where you buy from, for every purchase of a new OpenWrt One, a US$10 donation will go to the OpenWrt earmarked fund at Software Freedom Conservancy. Your purchase not only improves your software right to repair, but also helps OpenWrt and SFC continue to improve the important software and software freedom on which we all rely! LWN.net points out that OpenWrt has also "served as the base on which a lot of network-oriented development (including the bufferbloat-reduction work) has been done." The OpenWrt One was designed to be a functional network router that would serve as a useful tool for the development of OpenWrt itself. To that end, the hope was to create a device that was entirely supported by upstream free software, and which was as unbrickable as it could be... The OpenWrt One comes with a two-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor, 1GB of RAM, and 256MB of NAND flash memory. There is also a separate, read-only 16MB NOR flash array in the device. Normally, the OpenWrt One will boot and run from the NAND flash, but there is a small switch in the back that will cause it to boot from the NOR instead. This is a bricking-resistance feature; should a software load break the device, it can be recovered by booting from NOR and flashing a new image into the NAND array. .. After booting into the new image, the One behaved like any other OpenWrt router... What could be more interesting is seeing this router get into the hands of developers and enthusiasts who will use it to make OpenWrt (and other small-system distributions) better. Long-time Slashdot reader dumfrac writes: The intent to build the device was announced on the OpenWRT forums earlier this year. It is based on MediaTek MT7981B (Filogic 820) SoC and MediaTek MT7976C dual-band WiFi 6 chipset and the board is made by Banana Pi. A poll to select the logo was run in April on the OpenWRT forums, and now the hardware is available for purchase. .   Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | Oceans Cool the Climate More Than We Thought, Study Finds Nov 30th 2024, 23:23, by EditorDavid "Polar oceans constitute emission hotspots during the summer," according to a new paper published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Science Advances. "And including those sea-to-air fluxes in an atmospheric chemistry-climate model "results in a net radiative effect that has far-reaching implications." The research was led by a team of scientists from Spain's Institute of Marine Sciences and the Blas Cabrera Institute of Physical Chemistry, according to an announcement from the UK's University of East Anglia: Researchers have quantified for the first time the global emissions of a sulfur gas produced by marine life, revealing it cools the climate more than previously thought, especially over the Southern Ocean. The study, published in the journal Science Advances, shows that the oceans not only capture and redistribute the sun's heat, but produce gases that make particles with immediate climatic effects, for example through the brightening of clouds that reflect this heat. It broadens the climatic impact of marine sulfur because it adds a new compound, methanethiol, that had previously gone unnoticed. Researchers only detected the gas recently, because it used to be notoriously hard to measure and earlier work focussed on warmer oceans, whereas the polar oceans are the emission hotspots... Their findings represent a major advance on one of the most groundbreaking theories proposed 40 years ago about the role of the ocean in regulating the Earth's climate. This suggested that microscopic plankton living on the surface of the seas produce sulfur in the form of a gas, dimethyl sulphide, that once in the atmosphere, oxidizes and forms small particles called aerosols. Aerosols reflect part of the solar radiation back into space and therefore reduce the heat retained by the Earth. Their cooling effect is magnified when they become involved in making clouds, with an effect opposite to, but of the same magnitude as, that of the well-known warming greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide or methane. The researchers argue that this new work improves our understanding of how the climate of the planet is regulated by adding a previously overlooked component and illustrates the crucial importance of sulfur aerosols. They also highlight the magnitude of the impact of human activity on the climate and that the planet will continue to warm if no action is taken. The article includes this quote from one of the study's lead authors (Dr. Charel Wohl from the university's Centre for Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences). "Climate models have greatly overestimated the solar radiation actually reaching the Southern Ocean, largely because they are not capable of correctly simulating clouds. The work done here partially closes the longstanding knowledge gap between models and observations." And the university's announcement argues that "With this discovery, scientists can now represent the climate more accurately in models that are used to make predictions of +1.5 degrees C or +2 degrees C warming, a huge contribution to policy making." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news. Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | Bitcoin Heads for Nearly 40% November Gain, Edging Closer to $100,000 Nov 30th 2024, 21:50, by EditorDavid November 5: Bitcoin's price reaches an all-time high of $74,200. November 11: Bitcoin sets a new record of $84,000. November 12: Bitcoin pushes past $90,000. And Friday, CNBC reported: Bitcoin is on pace to post a 38% gain for November, according to Coin Metrics, which would make the month its best since February, when it gained 45% following the launch of spot bitcoin ETFs... Bulls expect bitcoin's price to reach $100,000 by the end of 2024 and potentially double by the end of 2025. Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | New Cosmological Model Proposes Dark Matter Production During Pre-Big Bang Inflation Nov 30th 2024, 20:50, by EditorDavid To explain the origins of dark market, a new model of the universe has been proposed by researchers, reports Phys.org. "Their idea is that dark matter would be produced during a infinitesimally short inflationary phase when the size of the universe quickly expanded exponentially..." Although inflation is mostly accepted by cosmologists as part of the Big Bang picture based on some evidence (though there is meaningful dissent), the driver of inflation is still unknown... [T]o-date research has not considered the possibility that a significant [amount] of dark matter could be produced during the inflationary expansion and not be diluted away. In the paper's WIFI model — Warm Inflation via ultraviolet Freeze-In — dark matter is created through small and rare interactions with particles in a hot, energetic environment. It contains a new mechanism where this production occurs just before the Big Bang, during cosmic inflation, leading to dark matter being formed much earlier than in existing theories... "The thing that's unique to our model is that dark matter is successfully produced during inflation," said Katherine Freese, Director of the Weinberg Institute of Theoretical Physics and the Texas Center for Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics at The University of Texas at Austin and lead author of the paper. "In most [other] models, anything that is created during inflation is then 'inflated away' by the exponential expansion of the universe, to the point where there is essentially nothing left." In this new mechanism, all the dark matter that we observe today could have been created during that brief, pre-Big Bang period of inflation. The quantum field driving inflation, the inflation, loses some of its energy to radiation, and this radiation, in turn, produces dark matter particles via the freeze-in mechanism.... The WIFI [Warm Inflation via ultraviolet Freeze-In] model cannot yet be confirmed by observations. But a key part of the scenario, warm inflation, will be tested over the next decade by the so-called cosmic microwave background experiments. Confirming warm inflation would be a significant step for the WIFI model's dark matter production scenario. "What was before inflation? Physicists have no idea." Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | WordPress Anti-Spam Plugin Vulnerability Exposes 200,000 Sites to RCE Attacks Nov 30th 2024, 19:34, by EditorDavid "A flaw in a WordPress anti-spam plugin with over 200,000 installations allows rogue plugins to be installed on affected websites," reports Search Engine Journal. The authentication bypass vulnerability lets attackers gain full access to websites without a username or password, according to the article, and "Security researchers rated the vulnerability 9.8 out of 10, reflecting the high level of severity..." The flaw in the Spam protection, Anti-Spam, FireWall by CleanTalk plugin, was pinpointed by security researchers at Wordfence as caused by reverse DNS spoofing... [T]he attackers can trick the Ant-Spam plugin that the malicious request is coming from the website itself and because that plugin doesn't have a check for that the attackers gain unauthorized access... Wordfence recommends users of the affected plugin to update to version 6.44 or higher. Thanks to Slashdot reader bleedingobvious for sharing the news. Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | US Insurers Are Still Charging for HIV Prevention Pills That Should Be Free Nov 30th 2024, 18:34, by EditorDavid The Washington Post reports on tens of thousands of Americans "forced to pay for medication" to prevent the HIV infections, "despite federal requirements guaranteeing free access to treatment...according to multiple studies and interviews with medical professionals, activists and patients." Insurance companies are skirting rules compelling them to pay for pre-exposure prophylaxis treatment, known as PrEP, researchers and HIV advocacy organizations say — leaving patients to shell out hundreds of dollars each year for medication co-pays, doctor visits and screenings required to stay on drugs that reduce the risk of contracting HIV through sex by 99 percent. Under the Affordable Care Act, commercial insurers must cover certain preventive health services. This is supposed to include at least one form of oral PrEP and related health services, such as regular testing for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, for people at increased risk of contracting HIV, according to 2021 guidance from the Biden administration. Responding to complaints that patients were still being charged, the Biden administration in October released new guidance instructing private insurers to cover all forms of PrEP without prior authorization, including new long-acting injections. Nearly a third of a national sample of 325 health coverage plans on government insurance marketplaces did not include PrEP on their lists of covered preventive services, according to the AIDS Institute, a New York-based nonprofit. Between 20 and 30 percent of PrEP users with commercial insurance still had to pay for it despite the coverage mandate, with an average cost of $227 for 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Government regulators have been slow to crack down on insurer violations, activists say, creating a barrier to getting more at-risk Americans on the medication. The CDC estimates that only a third of the more than 1 million people who could benefit from PrEP have received a prescription, according to its most recent data. The issue appears to be lax enforcement against insurers who break rules, a policy advocate told the newspaper. America's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which enforces regulations for preventive care, "said it takes enforcement seriously and recently found two insurance plans in violation of coverage requirements following consumer complaints." And the Post spoke to an official at America's Labor Department, who said they were investigating a complaint against a large insurance company, but "said the agency does not have enough staff to conduct proactive investigations and lacks the authority to sue and penalize insurers that break the rules." Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | Threads Adds 35 Million More Members in November - But Bluesky's Traffic is Surging Nov 30th 2024, 17:34, by EditorDavid At the start of November Threads had 275 million members. But in 30 days it's apparently increased another 12%, reports The Verge: Threads has accrued over 35 million signups so far in November and is "going on three months with more than a million signups a day," Meta spokesperson Alec Booker told The Verge in an email today. 20 million of those signups have come since November 14th, as Axios notes... At the same time, Bluesky has seen a surge of interest. The platform grew to 15 million users earlier this month and continued to add about a million signups per day for several days. It now sits at over 22 million users. Dave Earley, audience editor at Guardian Australia, says that traffic to TheGuardian.com from BlueSky "is already 2x that of Threads." [T]hat's on a straight threads.net vs bsky.app referral comparison. BUT! 75-80% of tracked referral from owned Bluesky account posts is NOT being attributed to bsky.app, so I'm certain organic traffic would be undercounting by that much as well. By which I mean, I'm pretty sure traffic from bsky.app to theguardian.com is *significantly* higher than the very obvious 2x that of Threads. That post was in response to one by a platform VP for the Boston Globe newspaper, who'd reported that traffic from Bluesky to bostonglobe.com "is already 3x that of Threads, and we are seeing 4.5x the conversions to paying digital subscribers." And Axios notes that Bluesky's growth "has spurred inbound interest for a new investment round, just weeks after raising $15 million in Series A funding, per Axios' Dan Primack." In response, Threads "rolled out a series of changes over the past week in what was seen as an attempt to keep an edge over Bluesky," reports The Hill: The changes included a new custom feed feature, which gives users the ability to build their feeds around the topics and people they are most interested in. Bluesky lets users make their own lists and feeds and set their own content moderation preferences. The platform also rolled out a few "long-overdue improvements" to its search and trending now features and its algorithm. Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | YouTube is Full of Old, Unseen Home Videos. Now You Can Watch Them at Random Nov 30th 2024, 16:34, by EditorDavid From a new web project called IMG_0001: Between 2009 and 2012, iPhones had a built-in "Send to YouTube" button in the Photos app. Many of these uploads kept their default IMG_XXXX filenames, creating a time capsule of raw, unedited moments from random lives. Inspired by Ben Wallace, I made a bot that crawled YouTube and found 5 million of these videos! Watch them below, ordered randomly. The Washington Post reports that it's the same 22-year-old software engineer who created Bop Spotter — that phone on a telephone pole using the Shazam app to identify songs people play in public. And his new site includes only videos "posted before 2015, with fewer than 150 views each and durations shorter than 150 seconds." In about 12 hours total, Walz said, he coded a website that takes millions of these unedited, raw videos from more than nine years ago and serves them to viewers at random. The resulting project, titled IMG_0001 and hosted on his personal website, plays out like a glimpse into different worlds: Hit play and your first video may show teenagers practicing a dance in a high school hallway. That wraps up, and it rolls into footage of a dog frolicking in a snowy backyard... Viewers were gripped by the videos' unfiltered nature, a contrast to the heavily produced and camera-aware content found on TikTok and YouTube today. Writer Ryan Broderick wrote in his newsletter Garbage Day that the project is "beautiful, haunting, funny, and sort of magical. Like staring into a security camera of the past." Mashable's Tim Marcin called it "the kind of authenticity that's all too rare online these days." The website has more than 280,000 views and millions of video plays, Walz said — meaning plenty of viewers are sticking around to watch many of the videos. The article includes an intesting observation from Christian Sandvig, a digital media professor at the University of Michigan. "The people who made the video might not even remember that they shared them!" Read more of this story at Slashdot. | |
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