| FCC Delays Enforcement of Prison Call Pricing Limits Jul 1st 2025, 16:01 by msmash The FCC will suspend enforcement of rules that would lower prison phone and video call prices until April 1st, 2027. Trump-appointed FCC Chair Brendan Carr said that prisons won't have to comply with the pricing regulations [PDF], reversing plans to implement the caps this year. The rules would have dropped the price of a 15-minute phone call to 90 cents in larger prisons. Current fees can reach as high as $11.35 for a 15-minute call, which the FCC described in 2024 as "exorbitant." Four states -- Connecticut, California, Minnesota, and Massachusetts -- have made prison calls free. Former President Joe Biden signed the Martha Wright-Reed law in 2023, allowing the FCC to regulate prison call rates. The agency voted to adopt the new rates last year, with rules set to take effect on a staggered basis starting January 1st, 2025. Carr said the regulations are "leading to negative, unintended consequences" and would make caps "too low" to cover "required safety measures." FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez criticized the delay, stating the Commission "is now stalling, shielding a broken system that inflates costs and rewards kickbacks to correctional facilities."   Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | Proton Joins Antitrust Lawsuit Against Apple's App Store Practices Jul 1st 2025, 15:20 by msmash Encrypted communications provider Proton has joined an antitrust lawsuit against Apple, filing a legal complaint that claims the company's App Store practices harm developers, consumers, and privacy. The Switzerland-based firm joined a group of Korean developers who sued Apple in May rather than filing a separate case. Proton asked the US District Court for Northern California to require Apple to allow alternative app stores, expose those stores through its own App Store, permit developers to disable Apple's in-app payment system, and provide full access to Apple APIs. The company added a privacy-focused argument to typical antitrust complaints, contending that Apple's pricing model particularly penalizes companies that refuse to harvest user data. Developers of free apps typically sell user data to cover costs, while privacy-focused companies like Proton must charge subscriptions for revenue, making Apple's commission cuts more burdensome. Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | NIH-Funded Science Must Now Be Free To Read Instantly Jul 1st 2025, 14:40 by msmash Starting today, researchers funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) will be required to make their scientific papers available to read for free as soon as they are published in a peer-reviewed journal. That's according to the agency's latest public-access policy, aimed at making federally funded research accessible to taxpayers. From a report: Established under former US president Joe Biden, the policy was originally set to take effect on 31 December for all US agencies, but the administration of Biden's successor, Donald Trump, has accelerated its implementation for the NIH, a move that has surprised some scholars. That's because, although the Trump team has declared itself a defender of taxpayer dollars, it has also targeted programmes and research projects focused on equity and inclusion for elimination. And one of the policy's main goals is to ensure equitable access to federally funded research. The move means that universities will have less time to advise their researchers on how to comply with the policy, says Peter Suber, director of the Harvard Open Access Project in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There is usually "some confusion or even some non-compliance after a new policy takes effect, but I think universities will eventually get on top of that," he says. Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | Automakers Clash With India Over 'Aggressive' Emission Limits Jul 1st 2025, 14:00 by msmash India's automakers are opposing the government's proposal to cut car emissions by 33% from 2027, calling the target "too aggressive" in a formal submission to the power ministry. The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers warned the plan risks billions of rupees in penalties and threatens future investments in the $137-billion auto sector. The proposal represents more than twice the pace of India's previous emission reduction target and forms part of the third phase of Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency norms first introduced in 2017. The industry body wants a more gradual 15% reduction target and opposes different standards for small versus heavy vehicles. Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | US Government Takes Down Major North Korean 'Remote IT Workers' Operation Jul 1st 2025, 13:00 by BeauHD An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Monday that it had taken several enforcement actions against North Korea's money-making operations, which rely on undercover remote IT workers inside American tech companies to raise funds for the regime's nuclear weapons program, as well as to steal data and cryptocurrency. As part of the DOJ's multi-state effort, the government announced the arrest and indictment of U.S. national Zhenxing "Danny" Wang, who allegedly ran a years-long fraud scheme from New Jersey to sneak remote North Korean IT workers inside U.S. tech companies. According to the indictment, the scheme generated more than $5 million in revenue for the North Korean regime. [...] From 2021 until 2024, the co-conspirators allegedly impersonated more than 80 U.S. individuals to get remote jobs at more than 100 American companies, causing $3 million in damages due to legal fees, data breach remediation efforts, and more. The group is said to have run laptop farms inside the United States, which the North Korean IT workers could essentially use as proxies to hide their provenance, according to the DOJ. At times, they used hardware devices known as keyboard-video-mouse (KVM) switches, which allow one person to control multiple computers from a single keyboard and mouse. The group allegedly also ran shell companies inside the U.S. to make it seem like the North Korean IT workers were affiliated with legitimate local companies, and to receive money that would then be transferred abroad, the DOJ said. The fraudulent scheme allegedly also involved the North Korean workers stealing sensitive data, such as source code, from the companies they were working for, such as from an unnamed California-based defense contractor "that develops artificial intelligence-powered equipment and technologies." Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | How Robotic Hives and AI Are Lowering the Risk of Bee Colony Collapse Jul 1st 2025, 10:00 by BeauHD alternative_right shares a report from Phys.Org: The unit -- dubbed a BeeHome -- is an industrial upgrade from the standard wooden beehives, all clad in white metal and solar panels. Inside sits a high-tech scanner and robotic arm powered by artificial intelligence. Roughly 300,000 of these units are in use across the U.S., scattered across fields of almond, canola, pistachios and other crops that require pollination to grow. [...] AI and robotics are able to replace "90% of what a beekeeper would do in the field," said Beewise Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Saar Safra. The question is whether beekeepers are willing to switch out what's been tried and true equipment. [...] While a new hive design alone isn't enough to save bees, Beewise's robotic hives help cut down on losses by providing a near-constant stream of information on colony health in real time -- and give beekeepers the ability to respond to issues. Equipped with a camera and a robotic arm, they're able to regularly snap images of the frames inside the BeeHome, which Safra likened to an MRI. The amount of data they capture is staggering. Each frame contains up to 6,000 cells where bees can, among other things, gestate larvae or store honey and pollen. A hive contains up to 15 frames and a BeeHome can hold up to 10 hives, providing thousands of data points for Beewise's AI to analyze. While a trained beekeeper can quickly look at a frame and assess its health, AI can do it even faster, as well as take in information on individual bees in the photos. Should AI spot a warning sign, such as a dearth of new larvae or the presence of mites, beekeepers will get an update on an app that a colony requires attention. The company's technology earned it a BloombergNEF Pioneers award earlier this year. "There's other technologies that we've tried that can give us some of those metrics as well, but it's really a look in the rearview mirror," [said Zac Ellis, the senior director of agronomy at OFI, a global food and ingredient seller]. "What really attracted us to Beewise is their ability to not only understand what's happening in that hive, but to actually act on those different metrics." Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | 'Space Is Hard. There Is No Excuse For Pretending It's Easy' Jul 1st 2025, 07:00 by BeauHD "For-profit companies are pushing the narrative that they can do space inexpensively," writes Slashdot reader RUs1729 in response to an opinion piece from SpaceNews. "Their track record reveals otherwise: cutting corners won't do it for the foreseeable future." Here's an excerpt from the article, written by Robert N. Eberhart: The headlines in the space industry over the past month have delivered a sobering reminder: space is not forgiving, and certainly not friendly to overpromising entrepreneurs. From iSpace's second failed lunar landing attempt (making them 0 for 2) to SpaceX's ongoing Starship test flight setbacks -- amid a backdrop of exploding prototypes and shifting goalposts -- the evidence is mounting that the commercialization of space is not progressing in the triumphant arc that press releases might suggest. This isn't just a series of flukes. It points to a structural, strategic and cultural problem in how we talk about innovation, cost and success in space today. Let's be blunt: 50 years ago, we did this. We sent humans to the moon, not once but repeatedly, and brought them back. With less computational power than your phone, using analog systems and slide rules, we achieved feats of incredible precision, reliability and coordination. Today's failures, even when dressed up as "learning opportunities," raises the obvious question: Why are we struggling to do now what we once achieved decades ago with far more complexity and far less technology? Until very recently, the failure rate of private lunar exploration efforts underscored this reality. Over the past two decades, not a single private mission had fully succeeded -- until last March when Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander touched down on the moon. It marked the first fully successful soft landing by a private company. That mission deserves real credit. But that credit comes with important context: It took two decades of false starts, crashes and incomplete landings -- from Space IL's Beresheet to iSpace's Hakuto-R and Astrobotic's Peregrine -- before even one private firm delivered on the promise of lunar access. The prevailing industry answer -- "we need to innovate for lower cost" -- rings hollow. What's happening now isn't innovation; it's aspiration masquerading as disruption... "This is not a call for a retreat to Cold War models or Apollo-era budgets," writes Eberhart, in closing. "It's a call for seriousness. If we're truly entering a new space age, then it needs to be built on sound engineering, transparent economics and meaningful technical leadership -- not PR strategy. Let's stop pretending that burning money in orbit is a business model." "The dream of a sustainable, entrepreneurial space ecosystem is still alive. But it won't happen unless we stop celebrating hype and start demanding results. Until then, the real innovation we need is not in spacecraft -- it's in accountability." Robert N. Eberhart, PhD, is an associate professor of management and the faculty director of the Ahlers Center for International Business at the Knauss School of Business of University of San Diego. He is the author of several academic publications and books. He is also part of Oxford University's Smart Space Initiative and contributed to Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory. Before his academic career, Prof. Eberhart founded and ran a successful company in Japan. Read more of this story at Slashdot. | |
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