An anonymous reader shares a report: A storm hit the United Arab Emirates and Oman this week bringing record rainfall that flooded highways, inundated houses, grid-locked traffic and trapped people in their homes. [...] In the UAE, a record 254 millimetres (10 inches) of rainfall was recorded in Al Ain, a city bordering Oman. It was the largest ever in a 24-hour period since records started in 1949. Rainfall is rare in the UAE and elsewhere on the Arabian Peninsula, that is typically known for its dry desert climate. Summer air temperatures can soar above 50 degrees Celsius. But the UAE and Oman also lack drainage systems to cope with heavy rains and submerged roads are not uncommon during rainfall.

Following Tuesday's events, questions were raised whether cloud seeding, a process that the UAE frequently conducts, could have caused the heavy rains. Cloud seeding is a process in which chemicals are implanted into clouds to increase rainfall in an environment where water scarcity is a concern. The UAE, located in one of the hottest and driest regions on earth, has been leading the effort to seed clouds and increase precipitation. But the UAE's meteorology agency told Reuters there were no such operations before the storm. The huge rainfall was instead likely due to a normal weather system that was exacerbated by climate change, experts say. A low pressure system in the upper atmosphere, coupled with low pressure at the surface had acted like a pressure 'squeeze' on the air, according to Esraa Alnaqbi, a senior forecaster at the UAE government's National Centre of Meteorology. That squeeze, intensified by the contrast between warmer temperatures at ground level and colder temperatures higher up, created the conditions for the powerful thunderstorm, she said.

Average incomes will fall by almost a fifth within the next 26 years as a result of the climate crisis, according to a study that predicts the costs of damage will be six times higher than the price of limiting global heating to 2C. From a report: Rising temperatures, heavier rainfall and more frequent and intense extreme weather are projected to cause $38tn of destruction each year by mid-century, according to the research, which is the most comprehensive analysis of its type ever undertaken, and whose findings are published in the journal Nature. The hefty toll -- which is far higher than previous estimates -- is already locked into the world economy over the coming decades as a result of the enormous emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere through the burning of gas, oil, coal and trees.

This will inflict crippling losses on almost every country, with a disproportionately severe impact on those least responsible for climate disruption, further worsening inequality. The paper says the permanent average loss of income worldwide will be 19% by 2049. In the United States and Europe the reduction will be about 11%, while in Africa and south Asia it will be 22%, with some individual countries much higher than this. "It's devastating," said Leonie Wenz, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and one of the authors of the study. "I am used to my work not having a nice societal outcome, but I was surprised by how big the damages were. The inequality dimension was really shocking."

State tax collectors, particularly in New York, have intensified their audit efforts on high earners, leveraging artificial intelligence to compensate for a reduced number of auditors. CNBC reports: In New York, the tax department reported 771,000 audits in 2022 (the latest year available), up 56% from the previous year, according to the state Department of Taxation and Finance. At the same time, the number of auditors in New York declined by 5% to under 200 due to tight budgets. So how is New York auditing more people with fewer auditors? Artificial Intelligence.

"States are getting very sophisticated using AI to determine the best audit candidates," said Mark Klein, partner and chairman emeritus at Hodgson Russ LLP. "And guess what? When you're looking for revenue, it's not going to be the person making $10,000 a year. It's going to be the person making $10 million." Klein said the state is sending out hundreds of thousands of AI-generated letters looking for revenue. "It's like a fishing expedition," he said.

Most of the letters and calls focused on two main areas: a change in tax residency and remote work. During Covid many of the wealthy moved from high-tax states like California, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to low-tax states like Florida or Texas. High earners who moved, and took their tax dollars with them, are now being challenged by states who claim the moves weren't permanent or legitimate. Klein said state tax auditors and AI programs are examining cellphone records to see where the taxpayers spent most of their time and lived most of their lives. "New York is being very aggressive," he said.

Creating a sexually explicit "deepfake" image is to be made an offence under a new law in the UK, the Ministry of Justice has announced. The Guardian: Under the legislation, anyone who creates such an image without consent will face a criminal record and an unlimited fine. They could also face jail if the image is shared more widely. The creation of a deepfake image will be an offence regardless of whether the creator intended to share it, the department said. The Online Safety Act, introduced last year, has already criminalised the sharing of deepfake intimate images, whose creation is being facilitated by advances in artificial intelligence.

The offence will be introduced through an amendment to the criminal justice bill, which is making its way through parliament. Laura Farris, the minister for victims and safeguarding, said the creation of deepfake sexual images was "unacceptable irrespective of whether the image is shared."

The United States Senate is poised to vote on legislation this week that, for the next two years at least, could dramatically expand the number of businesses that the US government can force to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant. From a report: Some of the nation's top legal experts on a controversial US spy program argue that the legislation, known as the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act (RISAA), would enhance the US government's spy powers, forcing a variety of new businesses to secretly eavesdrop on Americans' overseas calls, texts, and email messages. Those experts include a handful of attorneys who've had the rare opportunity to appear before the US government's secret surveillance court.

The Section 702 program, authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, was established more than a decade ago to legalize the government's practice of forcing major telecommunications companies to eavesdrop on overseas calls in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. On the one hand, the government claims that the program is designed to exclusively target foreign citizens who are physically located abroad; on the other, the government has fiercely defended its ability to access wiretaps of Americans' emails and phone conversations, often years after the fact and in cases unrelated to the reasons the wiretaps were ordered in the first place.

The 702 program works by compelling the cooperation of US businesses defined by the government as "electronic communications service providers" -- traditionally phone and email providers such as AT&T and Google. Members of the House Intelligence Committee, whose leaders today largely serve as lobbyists for the US intelligence community in Congress, have been working to expand the definition of that term, enabling the government to force new categories of businesses to eavesdrop on the government's behalf.

The Justice Department is preparing to sue Live Nation as soon as next month [non-paywalled link], an antitrust challenge that could spur major changes at the biggest name in concert promotion and ticketing. WSJ: The agency is preparing to file an antitrust lawsuit against the Ticketmaster parent in the coming weeks that would allege the nation's biggest concert promoter has leveraged its dominance in a way that undermined competition for ticketing live events, according to people familiar with the matter.

The specific claims the department would allege couldn't be learned. The federal government opted out of trying to block Live Nation and Ticketmaster's 2010 tie up. Since then, the company has faced accusations of exorbitant ticket fees, flawed customer service and anticompetitive practices from lawmakers, regulators and state attorneys general. Critics of the merger say it has stifled competition in ticketing and that the company should be broken up. Live Nation's size and power in concert promotion, ticketing and venues are at the heart of a Justice Department investigation that began in 2022. The investigation gained momentum in November 2022 after Ticketmaster crashed during a fan presale to Taylor Swift's "Eras Tour."

YouTube has updated its policies to no longer allow "third-party apps to turn off ads." The Verge reports: This appears to target mobile ad blockers like AdGuard, which lets you open YouTube within the ad blocking app, where you'll get to view videos interruption-free. "We only allow third-party apps to use our API when they follow our API Services Terms of Service," YouTube says. "When we find an app that violates these terms, we will take appropriate action to protect our platform, creators, and viewers." To get around this, YouTube once again suggests signing up for the ad-free YouTube Premium.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Monday declared that Earth is in the midst of a "4th global coral bleaching event" that's been documented over the last 14 months in every major ocean basin, including off Florida in the United States, in Australia's Great Barrier Reef and in the South Pacific. "As the world's oceans continue to warm, coral bleaching is becoming more frequent and severe," said Derek Manzello, a coral reef ecologist who coordinates NOAA's Coral Reef Watch Program, in a news release. "When these events are sufficiently severe or prolonged, they can cause coral mortality, which hurts the people who depend on the coral reefs for their livelihoods." NBC News reports: Corals are critical ecosystems that support a vast array of fish and aquatic species, which help feed coastal communities and attract tourists. The economic value of reefs is estimated at $2.7 trillion per year, according to a 2020 report from the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network. "They protect our coastline. They offer protection from storms and hurricanes. They have a great value for our economy and safety," [Ana Palacio, an assistant scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies, a research institute that is based at the University of Miami in partnership with NOAA] said.

In Florida, as sea surface temperatures spiked, bleaching started early in the season, experts said. "Normally, bleaching will be observed in the Northern Hemisphere around August and September. We started to observe bleaching in July last year," said Phanor Montoya-Maya, a marine biologist with the Coral Restoration Foundation, an organization that collects, restores and repopulates corals. Palacio said the region saw widespread mortality of elkhorn and staghorn corals, two species that have been the focus of restoration efforts. "In some locations, about 20% of those populations survived," Palacio said of restored corals. "We're concentrating our hope on why those corals survived and what they can tell us about resistance and how corals can be more resilient."

The last global coral bleaching event happened in 2014 and lasted until 2017. More than 56% of global reef areas saw temperatures that could cause bleaching during that time period. In an email on Monday, Manzello said that 54% of the world's coral reef areas had experienced bleaching-level heat stress in the past year and that the event was poised to become the worst bleaching event in history. "The percentage of reef areas experiencing bleaching-level heat stress has been increasing by roughly 1% per week," Manzello said. "It is likely that this event will surpass the previous peak."

Montoya-Maya said a bleaching alert is already in effect in Florida, even earlier than last year. He said the Coral Restoration Foundation was preparing for a busy summer responding to another bleaching event. The natural pattern of El Nino has begun to dissipate and NOAA's Climate Prediction Center estimates there is a 60% chance La Niaa develops this summer, which could help cool Atlantic waters and allow some corals to recover, at least temporarily.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: In a major clean energy benchmark, wind, solar, and hydro exceeded 100% of demand on California's main grid for 30 of the past 38 days. Stanford University professor of civil and environmental engineering Mark Z. Jacobson has been tracking California's renewables performance, and he shares his findings on Twitter (X) when the state breaks records. Jacobson notes that supply exceeds demand for "0.25-6 h per day," and that's an important fact. The continuity lies not in renewables running the grid for the entire day but in the fact that it's happening on a consistent daily basis, which has never been achieved before.

At the two-week record mark, Ian Magruder at Rewiring America made this great point on LinkedIn: "And what makes it even better is that California has the largest grid-connected battery storage facility in the world (came online in January ...), meaning those batteries were filling up with excess energy from the sun all afternoon today and are now deploying as we speak to offset a good chunk of the methane gas generation that California still uses overnight." On April 2, the California Independent System Operator (ISO) recommended 26 new transmission projects worth $6.1 billion, with a big number being devoted to offshore wind. In response, Jacobson predicted on April 4 that California will entirely be on renewables and battery storage 24/7 by 2035.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: The Biden administration marked the close of tax season Monday by announcing it had met a modest goal of getting at least 100,000 taxpayers to file through the Internal Revenue Service's new tax software, Direct File -- an alternative to commercial tax preparers. Although the government had billed Direct File as a small-scale pilot, it still represents one of the most significant experiments in tax filing in decades -- a free platform letting Americans file online directly to the government. Monday's announcement aside, though, Direct File's success has proven highly subjective.

By and large, people who tried the Direct File software -- which looks a lot like TurboTax or other commercial tax software, with its question-and-answer format -- gave it rave reviews. "Against all odds, the government has created an actually good piece of technology," a writer for the Atlantic marveled, describing himself as "giddy" as he used the website to chat live with a helpful IRS employee. The Post's Tech Friend columnist Shira Ovide called it "visible proof that government websites don't have to stink." Online, people tweeted praise after filing their taxes, like the user who called it the "easiest tax experience of my life."

While the users might be a happy group, however, there weren't many of them compared to other tax filing options -- and their positive reviews likely won't budge the opposition that Direct File has faced from tax software companies and Republicans from the outset. These headwinds will likely continue if the IRS wants to renew it for another tax season. The program opened to the public midway through tax season, when many low-income filers had already claimed their refunds -- and was restricted to taxpayers in 12 states, with only four types of income (wages, interest, Social Security and unemployment). But it gained popularity as tax season went on: The Treasury Department said more than half of the total users of Direct File completed their returns during the last week.

The UK is starting to draft regulations to govern AI, focusing on the most powerful language models which underpin OpenAI's ChatGPT, Bloomberg News reported Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: Policy officials at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology are in the early stages of devising legislation to limit potential harms caused by the emerging technology, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing undeveloped proposals. No bill is imminent, and the government is likely to wait until France hosts an AI conference either later this year or early next to launch a consultation on the topic, they said.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who hosted the first world leaders' summit on AI last year and has repeatedly said countries shouldn't "rush to regulate" AI, risks losing ground to the US and European Union on imposing guardrails on the industry. The EU passed a sweeping law to regulate the technology earlier this year, companies in China need approvals before producing AI services and some US cities and states have passed laws limiting use of AI in specific areas.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has written a letter to the Federal Trade Commission, saying that TurboTax "continues to relentlessly upsell" customers while also directing them away from services that would otherwise be free. From a report: As noted in the letter, Warren's staff analyzed TurboTax's services using a sample taxpayer and found that the company attempted to upsell the customer eight times during the tax filing process. Warren writes that in "several cases," these solicitations "appear to be efforts to mislead customers into thinking that they must pay the extra fees in order to file their taxes when that is not the case." Some show up as full-screen prompts, forcing users to scroll to the bottom to deny the upgrade.

In one instance, Warren's team found that TurboTax highlighted its $89 tax filing package as "the right option" for their sample taxpayer, leaving the free option at the bottom of the page. After choosing just one upgrade, Warren's staff found that their sample taxpayer with "simple" filing requirements had to pay an extra $69 to report her unemployment income and educator expenses, plus $64 to file Massachusetts state tax returns. That makes for a grand total of $133 -- a sum people wouldn't have to pay through the IRS's free Direct File service, Warren argues.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Los Angeles Times: A network of air monitors installed in Northern California has provided scientists with some of the first measurable evidence quantifying how much electric vehicles are shrinking the carbon footprint of a large urban area. Researchers from UC Berkeley set up dozens of sensors across the Bay Area to monitor planet-warming carbon dioxide, the super-abundant greenhouse gas produced when fossil fuels are burned. Between 2018 and 2022, the region's carbon emissions fell by 1.8% each year, which the Berkeley researchers concluded was almost exclusively owed to drivers switching to electric vehicles, according to a study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

In that time, Californians purchased about 719,500 zero-emission or plug-in hybrid vehicles, more than triple the amount compared to the previous five years, according to the California Department of Energy. The Bay Area also had a higher rate of electric vehicle adoption than the state as a whole.

While the findings confirm the state's transition to zero-emission vehicles is substantially lowering carbon emissions, it also reveals these reductions are still not on pace to meet the state's ambitious climate goals. Emissions need to be cut by around 3.7% annually, or nearly twice the rate observed by the monitors, according to Ronald Cohen, UC Berkeley professor of chemistry. Although cars and trucks are the state's largest source of carbon emissions, it underscores the need to deploy zero-emission technology inside homes and for the power grid.

"I think what we see right now is evidence of strong success in the transportation sector," Cohen said. "We're going to need equally strong success in home and commercial heating, and in the [industrial] sources. We don't yet see significant movement in those, but policy pushing on those is not as far ahead as policy on electric vehicles." Although cities only cover roughly 3% of global surface area, they produce about 70% of carbon emissions.

Meanwhile, in Southern California, nonprofit news site Canary Media reports that an old gas combustion plant is being replaced by a "power bank" named Nova.

It's expected to store "more electricity than all but one battery plant currently operating in the U.S." The billion-dollar project, with 680 megawatts and 2,720 megawatt-hours, will help California shift its nation-leading solar generation into the critical evening and nighttime hours, bolstering the grid against the heat waves that have pushed it to the brink multiple times in recent years... The town of Menifee gets to move on from the power plant exhaust that used to join the smog flowing from Los Angeles... And the grid gets a bunch more clean capacity that can, ideally, displace fossil fuels...

Moreover, [the power bank] represents Calpine's grand arrival in the energy storage market, after years operating one of the biggest independent gas power plant fleets in the country alongside Vistra and NRG... Federal analysts predict 2024 will be the biggest-ever year for grid battery installations across the U.S., and they highlighted Calpine's project as one of the single largest projects. The 620 megawatts the company plans to energize this year represent more than 4% of the industry's total expected new additions.

Many of these new grid batteries will be built in California, which needs all the dispatchable power it can get to meet demand when its massive solar fleet stops producing, and to keep pace with the electrification of vehicles and buildings. The Menifee Power Bank, and the other gigawatts worth of storage expected to come online in the state this year, will deliver much-needed reinforcement.
The company says it's planning "a portfolio" of 2,000 megawatts of California battery capacity.

But even this 680-megawatt project consists of 1,096 total battery containers holding 26,304 battery modules (or a total of 3 million cells), "all manufactured by Chinese battery powerhouse BYD, according to Robert Stuart, an electrical project manager with Calpine. That's enough electricity to supply 680,000 homes for four hours before it runs out." What's remarkable is just how quickly the project came together. Construction began last August, and is expected to hit 510 megawatts of fully operational capacity over the course of this summer, even as installation continues on other parts of the plant. Erecting a conventional gas plant of comparable scale would have taken three or four years of construction labor, due to the complexity of the systems and the many different trades required for it, Stuart told Canary Media... That speed and flexibility makes batteries a crucial solution as utilities across the nation grapple with a spike in expected electricity demand unlike anything seen in the last few decades.
The article notes a 2013 Caifornia policy mandating battery storage for its utility companies, which "kicked off a decade-long project to will an energy storage market into existence through methodical policies and regulations, and the knock-on effects of building the nation's foremost solar fleet." Those energy storage policies succeeded in jumpstarting the modern grid battery market: California leads the nation with more than 7 gigawatts of batteries installed as of last year (though Texas is poised to overtake California in battery installations this year, on the back of no particular policy effort but a general openness to building energy projects)... California's interlocking climate regulations effectively rule out new gas construction. The state's energy roadmap instead calls for massive expansion of battery capacity to shift the ample amounts of solar generation into the evening peaks.
"These trends, along with the falling price of batteries and maturing business model for storage, nudged Calpine to get into the battery business, too."

A business columnist at the Los Angeles Times notes Sam Bankman-Fried's judge issued another ruling "that may have a more far-reaching effect on the crypto business.

U.S. Judge Failla "cleared the Securities and Exchange Commission to proceed with its lawsuit alleging that the giant crypto broker and exchange Coinbase has been dealing in securities without a license." What's important about Failla's ruling is that she dismissed out of hand Coinbase's argument, which is that cryptocurrencies are novel assets that don't fall within the SEC's jurisdiction — in short, they're not "securities." Crypto promoters have been making the same argument in court and the halls of Congress, where they're urging that the lawmakers craft an entirely new regulatory structure for crypto — preferably one less rigorous than the existing rules and regulations promulgated by the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission...

Failla saw through that argument without breaking a sweat. "The 'crypto' nomenclature may be of recent vintage," she wrote, "but the challenged transactions fall comfortably within the framework that courts have used to identify securities for nearly eighty years...." Since Congress hasn't enacted regulations specifically aimed at crypto, Coinbase said, the SEC's lawsuit should be dismissed. The judge's opinion of that argument was withering. "While certainly sizable and important," she wrote, "the cryptocurrency industry 'falls far short of being a "portion of the American economy" bearing vast economic and political significance....'"

Failla's ruling followed another in New York federal court in which a judge deemed crypto to be securities. In that case, Judge Edgardo Ramos refused to dismiss SEC charges against Gemini Trust Co., a crypto trading outfit run by Cameron and Tyler Winkelvoss, and the crypto lender Genesis Global Capital. The SEC charged that a scheme in which Gemini pooled customers' crypto assets and lent them to Genesis while promising the customers high interest returns is an unregistered security. The SEC case, like that against Coinbase, will proceed....

The hangover from March continued into this month. On April 5, a federal jury in New York found Terraform Labs and its chief executive and major shareholder, Do Kwon, liable in what the SEC termed "a massive crypto fraud...." The value of UST fell in effect to zero, the SEC said, "wiping out over $40 billion of total market value ... and sending shock waves through the crypto asset community."

The Associated Press reports: As their rivalry intensifies, U.S. and Chinese military planners are gearing up for a new kind of warfare in which squadrons of air and sea drones equipped with artificial intelligence work together like swarms of bees to overwhelm an enemy. The planners envision a scenario in which hundreds, even thousands of the machines engage in coordinated battle. A single controller might oversee dozens of drones. Some would scout, others attack. Some would be able to pivot to new objectives in the middle of a mission based on prior programming rather than a direct order.

The world's only AI superpowers are engaged in an arms race for swarming drones that is reminiscent of the Cold War, except drone technology will be far more difficult to contain than nuclear weapons. Because software drives the drones' swarming abilities, it could be relatively easy and cheap for rogue nations and militants to acquire their own fleets of killer robots. The Pentagon is pushing urgent development of inexpensive, expendable drones as a deterrent against China acting on its territorial claim on Taiwan. Washington says it has no choice but to keep pace with Beijing. Chinese officials say AI-enabled weapons are inevitable so they, too, must have them.

The unchecked spread of swarm technology "could lead to more instability and conflict around the world," said Margarita Konaev, an analyst with Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology.
"A 2023 Georgetown study of AI-related military spending found that more than a third of known contracts issued by both U.S. and Chinese military services over eight months in 2020 were for intelligent uncrewed systems..." according to the article.

"Military analysts, drone makers and AI researchers don't expect fully capable, combat-ready swarms to be fielded for five years or so, though big breakthroughs could happen sooner."

In the view of Jim VandeHei, CEO of Axios, artificial intelligence will eviscerate the weak, the ordinary, the unprepared in media," reports the New York Times: VandeHei says the only way for media companies to survive is to focus on delivering journalistic expertise, trusted content and in-person human connection. For Axios, that translates into more live events, a membership program centered on its star journalists and an expansion of its high-end subscription newsletters. "We're in the middle of a very fundamental shift in how people relate to news and information," he said, "as profound, if not more profound, than moving from print to digital." "Fast forward five to 10 years from now and we're living in this AI-dominated virtual world — who are the couple of players in the media space offering smart, sane content who are thriving?" he added. "It damn well better be us."

Axios is pouring investment into holding more events, both around the world and in the United States. VandeHei said the events portion of his business grew 60% year over year in 2023. The company has also introduced a $1,000-a-year membership program around some of its journalists that will offer exclusive reporting, events and networking. The first one, announced last month, is focused on Eleanor Hawkins, who writes a weekly newsletter for communications professionals. Her newsletter will remain free, but paying subscribers will have access to additional news and data, as well as quarterly calls with Hawkins... Axios will expand Axios Pro, its collection of eight high-end subscription newsletters focused on specific niches in the deals and policy world. The subscriptions start at $599 a year each, and Axios is looking to add one on defense policy...

"The premium for people who can tell you things you do not know will only grow in importance, and no machine will do that," VandeHei said....VandeHei said that although he thought publications should be compensated for original intellectual property, "that's not a make-or-break topic." He said Axios had talked to several AI companies about potential deals, but "nothing that's imminent.... One of the big mistakes a lot of media companies made over the last 15 years was worrying too much about how do we get paid by other platforms that are eating our lunch as opposed to figuring out how do we eat people's lunch by having a superior product," he said.
"VandeHei said Axios was not currently profitable because of the investment in the new businesses," according to the article.

But "The company has continued to hire journalists even as many other news organizations have cut back."

Intel, Nvidia, AMD, and Arm are among Canonical's "silicon partners," a program that "ensures maximum Ubuntu compatibility and long-term support with certified hardware," according to Web Pro News.

And now Qualcomm is set to be Canonical's next silicon partner, "giving Qualcomm access to optimized versions of Ubuntu for its processors." Companies looking to use Ubuntu on Qualcomm chips will benefit from an OS that provides 10 years of support and security updates.

The collaboration is expected to be a boon for AI, edge computing, and IoT applications. "The combination of Qualcomm Technologies' processors with the popularity of Ubuntu among AI and IoT developers is a game changer for the industry," commented Dev Singh, Vice President, Business Development and Head of Building, Enterprise & Industrial Automation, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc...
"Optimised Ubuntu and Ubuntu Core images will be available for Qualcomm SoCs," according to the announcement, "enabling enterprises to meet their regulatory, compliance and security demands for AI at the edge and the broader IoT market with a secure operating system that is supported for 10 years." Qualcomm Technologies chose to partner with Canonical to create an optimised Ubuntu for Qualcomm IoT chipsets, giving developers an easy path to create safe, compliant, security-focused, and high-performing applications for multiple industries including industrial, robotics and edge automation...

Developers and enterprises can benefit from the Ubuntu Certified Hardware program, which features a growing list of certified ODM boards and devices based on Qualcomm SoCs. These certified devices deliver an optimised Ubuntu experience out-of-the-box, enabling developers to focus on developing applications and bringing products to market.

Ubuntu 24.10 [expected this October] and Debian GNU/Linux 13 "Trixie" [expected June-July 2025] "will feature a refined APT command-line interface," reports 9to5Linux: APT developer and Canonical engineer Julian Andres Klode took to LinkedIn to present the revamped APT interface powered by the upcoming APT 3.0 package manager that looks to give users a more concise and well-laid-out command-line output when updating, installing, or removing packages via the terminal emulator.

The new APT 3.0 UI brings a columnar display that will make it easier for users to quickly scan for a package name, support for colors (red for removals and green for other changes), which makes it easier to quickly distinguish commands at a glance, and smoother install progress bars using Unicode blocks.

In addition, the new APT 3.0 command-line interface will be less verbose and offer more padding to make it easier to separate sections and extract the relevant information for you.
"Bleeding-edge users and Linux enthusiasts who want to try this right now can check out Debian Unstable..."

DOJ-Collected Information Exposed In Data Breach Affecting 340,000 Information Collected An anonymous reader shared this report from Security Week: Economic analysis and litigation support firm Greylock McKinnon Associates, Inc. (GMA) is notifying over 340,000 individuals that their personal and medical information was compromised in a year-old data breach. The incident was detected on May 30, 2023, but it took the firm roughly eight months to investigate and determine what type of information was compromised and to identify the impacted individuals.



According to GMA's notification letter to the affected individuals, a copy of which was submitted to the Maine Attorney General's Office, both personal and Medicare information was compromised in the data breach... "This information may have included your name, date of birth, address, Medicare Health Insurance Claim Number (which contains a Social Security number associated with a member) and some medical information and/or health insurance information," the notification letter reads.

The compromised data, GMA says, was obtained by the US Department of Justice "as part of a civil litigation matter". More than 340,000 individuals were affected by the data breach, the company told the Maine Attorney General's Office. The impacted individuals, however, are "not the subject of this investigation or the associated litigation matters", the company tells the affected individuals.