A new analysis from the Pew Research Center finds that "the share of Americans who go online, use social media or own key devices has remained stable the past two years." From the report: The share who say they have broadband internet service at home currently stands at 65% -- nearly identical to the 67% who said this in a survey conducted in summer 2015. And when it comes to desktop or laptop ownership, there has actually been a small dip in the overall numbers over the last two years -- from 78% in 2016 to 73% today. A contributing factor behind this slowing growth is that parts of the population have reached near-saturation levels of adoption of some technologies. Put simply, in some instances there just aren't many non-users left. For example, nine-in-ten or more adults younger than 50 say they go online or own a smartphone. And a similar share of those in higher-income households have laptops or desktops.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A lone engineer has succeeded in doing what Uber's top lawyers and expert witnesses could not -- overturning most of a foundational patent covering arch-rival Waymo's lidar laser ranging devices. Following a surprise left-field complaint by Eric Swildens, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has rejected all but three of 56 claims in Waymo's 936 patent, named for the last three digits of its serial number. The USPTO found that some claims replicated technology described in an earlier patent from lidar vendor Velodyne, while another claim was simply "impossible" and "magic." The 936 patent played a key role in last year's epic intellectual property lawsuit with Uber. In December 2016, a Waymo engineer was inadvertently copied on an email from one of its suppliers to Uber, showing a lidar circuit design that looked almost identical to one shown in the 936 patent.

The patent describes how a laser diode can be configured to emit pulses of laser light using a circuit that includes an inductor and a gallium nitride transistor. That chance discovery helped spark a lawsuit in which Waymo accused Uber of patent infringement and of using lidar secrets supposedly stolen by engineer Anthony Levandowski. In August 2017, Uber agreed to redesign its Fuji lidar not to infringe the 936 patent. Then, in February 2018, Waymo settled the remaining trade secret theft allegations in exchange for Uber equity worth around $245 million and a commitment from Uber not to copy its technology. "This includes an agreement to ensure that any Waymo confidential information is not being incorporated in Uber hardware and software," said a Waymo spokesperson at the time. That redesign now seems to have been unnecessary, says Swildens, the engineer who asked the USPTO to take a closer look at 936. "Waymo's claim that Uber infringed the 936 patent was spurious, as all the claims in the patent that existed at the time of the lawsuit have been found to be invalid," he said. Uber told Ars that despite the ruling, it would not be redesigning its lidars yet again. Swildensj, an employee at a small cloud computing startup, reportedly "spent $6,000 of his own money to launch a formal challenge to 936," reports Ars. "In March, an examiner noted that a re-drawn diagram of Waymo's lidar firing circuit showed current passing along a wire between the circuit and the ground in two directions -- something generally deemed impossible. 'Patent owner's expert testimony is not convincing to show that the path even goes to ground in view of the magic ground wire, which shows current moving in two directions along a single wire,' noted the examiners dryly."

"As I investigated the 936 patent, it became clear it was invalid due to prior art for multiple reasons," Swildens told Ars. "I only filed the reexamination because I was absolutely sure the patent was invalid."

Brian Fagioli, writing for BetaNews: When you buy a System76 computer today, you aren't buying a machine manufactured by the company. Instead, the company works with other makers to obtain laptops, which it then loads with a Linux-based operating system -- Ubuntu or its own Pop!_OS. There's nothing really wrong with this practice, but still, System76 wants to do better. The company is currently working to manufacture its own computers ("handcrafted") right here in the USA. By doing this, System76 controls the entire customer experience -- software, service, and hardware.

This week, the company announces that the fruits of its labor -- an "open-source computer" -- will be available to pre-order in October. Now, keep in mind, this does not mean the desktop will be available next month. Hell, it may not even be sold in 2018. With that said, pre-ordering will essentially allow you to reserve your spot. To celebrate the upcoming computer, System76 is launching a clever animated video marketing campaign.

"Imagine an artificial-intelligence-driven military drone capable of autonomously patrolling the perimeter of a country or region and deciding who lives and who dies, without a human operator. Now do the same with tanks, helicopters and biped/quadruped robots." A United Nations conference recently decided not to ban these weapons systems outright, but to revisit the topic in November.

So a MarketWatch columnist looked at how these weapons systems could go bad -- and argues the risks are greater than simply fooling the AI into malfunctioning. What about hijacking...? In warfare, AI units can function autonomously, but in the end they need a way to communicate with one another and to transfer data to a command center. This makes them vulnerable to hacking and hijacking. What would happen if one of these drones or robots was hijacked by an opposite faction and started firing on civilians? A hacker would laugh. Why? Because he wouldn't hijack just one. He would design a self-propagating virus that would spread throughout the AI network and infect all units in the vicinity, as well as those communicating with them. In a split second, an entire squad of lethal autonomous weapons systems would be under enemy control... Every machine can be overridden, tricked, hijacked and manipulated with an efficiency that's unheard of in the realm of human-operated traditional weaponry.

However, the U.S. government remains oblivious. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has already announced a $2 billion development campaign for the next wave of technologically advanced AI (dubbed "AI Next"). One of the goals is to have the machines "acquire human-like communication and reasoning capabilities, with the ability to recognize new situations and environments and adapt to them." I may be overreaching here, but the UN meeting on one end and this announcement on the other, make me think that the U.S. government isn't just pro-robotic -- it may already have a lethal autonomous weapons ace up its sleeve.
The article ends with a question: What do you think about killer robots replacing human combatants?

And what would happen if killer robots got hijacked?

Long-time Slashdot reader necro81 writes: Reported in the NYTimes and in Phys.org: NantEnergy, a company backed by California billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, announced Wednesday that it has developed a rechargeable zinc-air battery that can store energy at far less cost than lithium-ion. The technology avoids some of the downsides of li-ion, like flammability and the use of cobalt.

Unlike many battery-related announcements, this one is backed by real-world use. Over the past several years, NantEnergy has deployed their batteries for stationary, micro-grid and cell-tower use in nine countries — about 55 MWh of capacity so far. They claim they can now take commercial orders, for delivery next year, at less than $100/kWh of capacity, which is one-half to one-fifth the cost of available lithium-ion grid storage.

Sophia Chen reporting for Science Magazine: In a small basement laboratory, Harry Levine, a Harvard University graduate student in physics, can assemble a rudimentary computer in a fraction of a second. There isn't a processor chip in sight; his computer is powered by 51 rubidium atoms that reside in a glass cell the size of a matchbox. To create his computer, he lines up the atoms in single file, using a laser split into 51 beams. More lasers -- six beams per atom -- slow the atoms until they are nearly motionless. Then, with yet another set of lasers, he coaxes the atoms to interact with each other, and, in principle, perform calculations.

It's a quantum computer, which manipulates "qubits" that can encode zeroes and ones simultaneously in what's called a superposition state. If scaled up, it might vastly outperform conventional computers at certain tasks. But in the world of quantum computing, Levine's device is somewhat unusual. In the race to build a practical quantum device, investment has largely gone to qubits that can be built on silicon, such as tiny circuits of superconducting wire and small semiconductors structures known as quantum dots. Now, two recent studies have demonstrated the promise of the qubits Levine works with: neutral atoms. In one study, a group including Levine showed a quantum logic gate made of two neutral atoms could work with far fewer errors than ever before. And in another, researchers built 3D structures of carefully arranged atoms, showing that more qubits can be packed into a small space by taking advantage of the third dimension. Chen goes on report on the startups -- ColdQuanta and Atom Computing -- that are working to build fully programmable quantum computers. ColdQuanta has received $6.75 million in venture funding while Atom Computer has raised $5 million.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Scientists from the Energy Materials and Surface Sciences Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) believe they've found a winning formula in a new method to fabricate low-cost high-efficiency solar cells. Prof. Yabing Qi and his team from OIST in collaboration with Prof. Shengzhong Liu from Shaanxi Normal University, China, developed the cells using the materials and compounds that mimic the crystalline structure of the naturally occurring mineral perovskite. They describe their technique in a study published in the journal Nature Communications. Perovskite offers a more affordable solution, Prof. Qi says. Perovskite was first used to make solar cells in 2009 by Prof. Tsutomu Miyasaka's research team at Toin University of Yokohama, Japan, and since then it has been rapidly gaining importance. The fabrication method he and his research team have developed produces perovskite solar cells with an efficiency comparable to crystalline silicon cells, but it is potentially much cheaper than making silicon solar cells.

To make the new cells, the researchers coated transparent conductive substrates with perovskite films that absorb sunlight very efficiently. They used a gas-solid reaction-based technique in which the substrate is first coated with a layer of hydrogen lead triiodide incorporated with a small amount of chlorine ions and methylamine gas -- allowing them to reproducibly make large uniform panels, each consisting of multiple solar cells. In developing the method, the scientists realized that making the perovskite layer 1 micron thick increased the working life of the solar cell significantly. In addition, a thicker coating not only boosted the stability of the solar cells but also facilitated the fabrication processes, thereby lowering its production costs. The team is now working on increasing the size of their newly designed solar cell prototype to large commercial-sized panels that can be several feet long. They have reportedly built a working model of their new perovskite solar modules, thanks to funding from OIST's Technology Development and Innovation Center, but "the process of upscaing has reduced the efficiency of the cells from 20% to 15%," reports Phys.Org. "[T]he researchers are optimistic that they will be able to improve the way they work in the coming years and successfully commercialize their use."

AmiMoJo shares a report from Ars Technica: Today, roughly 25 percent of the European Union's power currently comes from nuclear sources, with coal and gas each delivering a little above 20 percent. Wind constitutes 10 percent of the European Union's energy mix. But by 2027, IEA's forecasts (PDF) put wind just beating all other electricity sources with a 23-percent share of the energy mix. "Other Renewables" like biomass plants contribute a little over 20 percent, gas adds 20 percent, nuclear contributes just a little below 20 percent, and coal declines to just over 10 percent. Solar energy contributes about six or seven percent in the IEA's 2027 scenario. The European Union has a wealth of wind energy, especially offshore wind energy, a sector in which the EU is the global leader. Offshore wind allows turbines to be built bigger, and coastal winds are often stronger and more consistent than onshore winds. [The IEA forecasts 200 gigawatts (GW) of installed capacity by 2040.]

secwatcher shares a report from Threatpost: A passcode bypass vulnerability in Apple's new iOS version 12 could allow an attacker to access photos and contacts (including phone numbers and emails) on a locked iPhone. The hack allows someone with physical access to a vulnerable iPhone to sidestep the passcode authorization screen on iPhones running Apple's latest iOS 12 beta and iOS 12 operating systems. Threatpost was tipped off to the bypass by Jose Rodriguez, who describes himself as an Apple enthusiast and "office clerk" based in Spain who has also found previous iPhone hacks.

Rodriguez posted a video of the bypass on his YouTube channel under the YouTube account Videosdebarraquito, where he walks viewers through a complicated 37-step bypass process in Spanish. Threatpost has independently confirmed that the bypass works on a number of different iPhone models including Apple's newest model iPhone XS. The process involves tricking Siri and Apple's accessibility feature in iOS called VoiceOver to sidestep the device's passcode. The attack works provided the attacker has physical access to a device that has Siri enabled and Face ID either turned off or physically covered (by tape, for instance).

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Electrek has learned that Tesla already achieved the goal for a new record production with two days still to go before the end of the quarter. As we reported last week, Tesla achieved a new record day of Model 3 production, but it was cutting it close for the quarterly goal. The automaker had been guiding a production of 50,000 to 55,000 Model 3 vehicles for the third quarter. According to a reliable source familiar with Tesla's production, the automaker had a strong week of production and managed to bring the total number Model 3 produced to over 51,000 vehicles. For the first time in months, Tesla was able to produce about 5,000 Model 3 vehicles over seven days. The total production for the week was at around 6,700 vehicles -- bringing the total for the quarter to about 77,400 vehicles. Tesla was able to maintain production of about 1,100 cars per day over four days this week and about 800 Model 3's per day over three of those days. It's one of the highest levels of production that Tesla was ever able to maintain.

BitTorrent and Tron, following the acquisition, hope to successfully integrate blockchain technology with the popular file-sharing protocol. From a report: Both companies were built around decentralization, which makes for a good match. However, it doesn't stop there. BitTorrent and Tron plan to integrate blockchain technology into future releases of their torrent clients. In short, they want to make it possible for users to 'earn' tokens by seeding. At the same time, others can 'bid' tokens to speed up their downloads. The new plan is dubbed "Project Atlas" and BitTorrent currently has seven people working on it full-time. In theory, the incentives will increase total seeding capacity, improving the health of the torrent ecosystem.

"By adding tokens we'll make it so that you can effectively earn per seeding and create incentives for users not only to seed longer but to dedicate more of their bandwidth and storage overall," Project Atlas lead Justin Knoll says. The idea to merge the blockchain with file-sharing technology isn't new. Joystream, previously implemented a similar idea and Upfiring is also working on incentivized sharing. BitTorrent itself also considered it before Tron came into the picture. "Even before the Tron acquisition, our R&D team was looking at ways to add blockchain based incentives to the protocol. Now with the addition of Tron's expertise, we can accelerate that effort," Knoll says. BitTorrent says it will start implementing the technology in its desktop clients, such as uTorrent. After that, it intends to bring it to mobile. The company is additionally encouraging developers of other BitTorrent clients to follow suit. "We'll release the details of our implementation and encourage third-party clients and the whole ecosystem to implement this," Knoll was quoted as saying.

Intel interim CEO Bob Swan publicly addressed the company's CPU shortage issue for the first time since July, when he acknowledged that meeting additional demand would be Intel's "biggest challenge." From a report: In a message posted to Intel's website Friday, Swan said the "surprising return" to growth in the PC market "has put pressure on [the company's] factory network." He added, "We're prioritizing the production of Intel Xeon and Intel Core processors so that collectively we can serve the high-performance segments of the market. That said, supply is undoubtedly tight, particularly at the entry-level of the PC market."

Intel partners and at least one distributor previously told CRN they were seeing a shortage of Intel's current generation, 14-nanometer CPUs, most notably in lower-end client processors.

During a talk at the Oculus Connect conference today, Oculus' CTO, John Carmack, compared the company's newly announced Oculus Quest headset to the Xbox 360 and PS3 in terms of power. Ars Technica reports: That doesn't mean the Quest, which is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC, can generate VR scenes comparable to those seen in Xbox 360 or PS3 games, though. As Carmack pointed out, most games of that generation targeted a 1280x720 resolution at 30 frames per second. On Quest, the display target involves two 1280x1280 images per frame at 72fps. That's 8.5 times as many pixels per second, with additional high-end anti-aliasing effects needed for VR as well. "It is not possible to take a game that was done at a high-quality level [on the Xbox 360 or PS3] and expect it to look good in VR," Carmack said. Expecting Rift-level performance from a self-contained mobile headset like the quest isn't realistic, Carmack said, partly for simple electrical reasons. While a high-end gaming PC often draw up to 500 watts of power, Carmack said the Quest only uses about 5W, a tidbit that should be of benefit to the Quest's still unconfirmed battery-life statistics.

That relative lack of hardware power is going to require some developers to adopt "a different programming style that's been necessary on the PC," Carmack warned. "With a modern PC, you have so much extra power, you don't need to be a hotshot programmer to make a game people love. You don't really have that convenience on any mobile platform, really, but especially not on our platform." That's not an insurmountable problem, Carmack suggested, as long as developers focus on the dozen or so things that players really need to concentrate on in an average game, rather than "thousands" of pieces of graphical fluff. He suggested developers look back to the lessons of platforms like the original PlayStation and Nintendo DS to see how developers crafted memorable experiences on much less-powerful hardware. Carmack went on to say that "realistically, we're going to end up competing with the Nintendo Switch... they'll pick up Quest as [a] mobile device, just like Switch."

One of the most appealing new features of the Apple Watch Series 4 is its electrocardiogram (ECG) sensor that measures the electrical activity of your heartbeat, providing you with a heart rhythm classification that can be shared with your doctor. While the feature will be available later this year in the United States, 9to5Mac reports that it could take years for it to be approved in the United Kingdom. From a report: The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) explains that the process starts by examining Apple's documentation surrounding the ECG feature and performing an audit of the quality assurance system. While this step doesn't appear to be lengthy, the proceeding steps could make the process longer. MHRA says it would require Apple to perform a new clinical investigation to judge the effectiveness of the ECG on Apple Watch, but Apple would likely not be able to use any of the data from the studies it's already completed because MHRA requires companies to notify the regulator in advance of a study.

Once the study is submitted, MHRA has 60 days to approve it (which may become longer if the regulators have further inquiries for Apple), and then Apple can begin the study. These last few steps are what the MHRA say "could potentially add years" onto the debut of the ECG in the UK. Despite the potential for years-long approval, Apple may find ways to expedite this process. While the United Kingdom remains part of the European Union, it's possible that Apple could receive approval from a broader regulatory body and sidestep the MHRA's processes.

After pulling its recommendation in August, Consumer Reports announced that it is once again recommending Microsoft's Surface laptops. "Microsoft's reliability is now on-par with most other laptop brands," says Martin Lachter, a senior research associate at Consumer Reports. The Verge reports: Consumer Reports originally revoked its recommendations after a survey of 90,000 laptop and tablet owners found that 25 percent of Surface users reported having problems by the end of their second year owning the device. Its latest survey concluded that that's no longer the case (although the recommendation site didn't disclose the exact numbers for this year's polling). The newly re-gained recommendation applies to most of Microsoft's Surface lineup, including the Surface Pro, Surface Laptop, and Surface Book 2. Notably missing is the recently released 10-inch Surface Go, although that isn't getting the recommendation badge due to poor performance in Consumer Reports' lab testing, not reliability concerns.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In a Tuesday interview with Bloomberg, the head of Panasonic's Automotive Division said that the company was on track to complete an additional three battery-cell production lines at Tesla's Nevada Gigafactory before the end of this year. That puts the expansion ahead of schedule for completion. Panasonic is a joint owner of the Gigafactory. The company provides the "2170" battery cells that go into a Model 3 battery pack. Tesla packages those cells to complete the pack. In the interview, Panasonic automotive executive Yoshio Ito told Bloomberg that "the bottleneck for Model 3 production has been our batteries." Ito added, "they just want us to make as many as possible."

In short, more battery cells rolling off more lines at the Gigafactory are good for Model 3 production only if the manufacturing process gets smoother. There's evidence that this is happening, as the company was able to sell more than 28,000 Model 3s in the second quarter of 2018, albeit at the slight expense of Model S and Model X production. The three new Panasonic lines will bring the number of cell-producing lines up to 13, Bloomberg wrote. Ito told the news service that Tesla is currently using all of its Gigafactory capacity to produce vehicle batteries, despite initially planning to reserve 30 percent of its capacity to build stationary storage batteries like Powerwalls and Powerpacks. That has played out in long-delayed Powerwall installations.

An anonymous reader shares a report: While Americans still wrangle their overgrown lawns by pushing or riding a lawnmower, many Europeans have handed off that responsibility to robots. These beefy, Roomba-like mowers loop their way around a yard, keeping grass trim and neat. To many of their users, the bots are endearing. Their owners give them names or cover them in decals of ladybugs or bumblebees. But the sentimentality only goes so far, because these blades-on-wheels have also been slicing up something other than grass: hedgehogs.

Erika Heller, a long-time hedgehog advocate with a Swiss nonprofit called Igelstation Winterthur, estimates that nearly half the hedgehogs brought to the group during the last couple years were injured by robot lawnmowers. These injuries include limb amputation, cut bellies, or even scalping. And that's not including the ones that have been killed outright. "The ones that have died we don't see, because they don't get brought here." In the United States, despite a wealth of children's toys and clothing featuring hedgehogs, the only live animals you're likely to see are in the zoo or, more controversially, kept as pets. But in Europe, wild hedgehogs are beloved. They're popular in European folklore; there's even a famous British poem about a hedgehog killed by a lawn mower.

Facebook's Oculus has announced its new $399 standalone virtual-reality headset that's scheduled to launch in the spring of 2019. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that "with Oculus Quest, we will complete our first generation of Oculus products," adding that the Oculus Quest combines "the key attributes of the ideal VR system" -- a wireless design, virtual hand controllers, and full positional tracking. The Verge reports: The Oculus Quest is a consumer version of what was previously known as Project Santa Cruz. It uses motion controllers similar to Oculus Touch, and four wide-angle cameras provide positional tracking that lets people walk through virtual space. It's supposed to support "Rift-quality" experiences, with a starting catalog of over 50 titles, including well-known existing games like climbing simulator The Climb and adventure-puzzle game Moss.

Oculus Quest essentially combines the high-end, tethered Oculus Rift headset with the relatively cheap, standalone Oculus Go device that was released earlier this year. It uses the same optics as the Oculus Go, with a resolution of 1600 x 1440 per eye, but with the option to adjust lens spacing. Also like the Oculus Go, the Oculus Quest includes built-in speakers that pipe sound into users' ears, but supposedly with improved bass. But unlike the Oculus Go, you can walk around, apparently for large distances. Barra describes it as having "arena-scale" tracking that supports at least 4,000 square feet of space. Its controllers have the same button layout as the Rift's Touch controllers, but with the half-moon tracking ring reversed, so it loops above your hands instead of below them.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Surya Raghavendran of Ann Arbor, Michigan isn't your average 17-year-old. Not only does the high school senior run a small business repairing iPhones when he's not in class, but he's raising awareness about people's right to fix their own devices without paying companies like Apple exorbitant fees. "People should be able to choose where they want to get their devices repaired," Raghavendran told me over the phone. "Right to repair will decrease the amount of e-waste and people will retain their devices much longer with suitable repair networks." Raghavendran is doing more than just talking about right to repair, he's become one of the leading advocates for a right to repair law in the state by pushing his lawmakers to introduce legislation that would protect a consumer's right to repair.

Raghavendran started researching the laws around repairing electronics, and he joined up with Environment Michigan -- an environmental activist group -- and started going to Lansing, the state capitol, to ask politicians what they were doing to protect people's right to repair their own devices. Raghavendran sent an email to state senator Rebekah Warren who called him in for a meeting and told him to start a petition. Since July, he's been asking for stories from the public about why the right to repair is important. The right to repair fight is happening all across the country at the local level and Raghavendran's petition has drawn support from people like like Nathan Proctor, the Director of the Campaign for the Right to Repair at US PIRG. Repair.org, a group pushing for right to repair laws all over the country, has draft legislation it wants to get in front of Michigan's state legislature. Proctor has been working with Raghavendran, Environment Michigan, and Michigan legislators to draft right to repair legislation. Proctor wants to pass a right to repair bill that is similar to the one passed in Massachusetts that forced automotive companies to share diagnostic information with third party repair shops. The law passed in 2012 "set a precedent and the industry rolled out the changes nationally," reports Motherboard.

An anonymous reader shares an article from Bloomberg: In early November, Qualcomm Chairman Paul Jacobs stood on a stage in the heart of Silicon Valley and vowed to break Intel's stranglehold on the world's most lucrative chip business. The mobile internet and cloud computing were booming and the data centers running this digital economy had an insatiable thirst for computer servers -- and especially the powerful, expensive server chips that Intel churns out by the million. Qualcomm had spent five years and hundreds of millions of dollars designing competing processors, trying to expand beyond its mobile business. Jacobs was leading a coming-out party featuring tech giants like Microsoft and HP, which had committed to try the new gear. "That's an industry that's been very slow moving, very complacent," Jacobs said on stage. "We're going to change that."

Less than a year later, this once-promising business is in tatters, according to people familiar with the situation. Most of the key engineers are gone. Big customers are looking elsewhere or going back to Intel for the data center chips they need. Efforts to sell the operation -- including a proposed management buyout backed by SoftBank -- have failed, the people said. Jacobs, chief backer of the plan and the son of Qualcomm's founder, is out, too. The demise is a story of debt-fueled dealmaking and executive cost-cutting pledges in the face of restless investors seeking quick returns -- exactly the wrong environment for the painstaking and expensive task of building a new semiconductor business from scratch. It leaves Qualcomm more reliant on a smartphone market that's plateaued. And Intel's server chip boss is happy.