Google’s New Pixel Tablet Is a $500 Slate For the Home

Google has announced the Pixel Tablet after teasing it during last year’s Google I/O conference. The Verge reports: The Pixel Tablet is designed from the ground up to be good at what people typically use tablets for: watching video or playing games in the comfort of their own home. It is not, however, making any statements about the future of computing. The looks of the Pixel Tablet are relatively generic. It has an 11-inch, 16:10, 2560 x 1600 pixel LCD display, even bezels all around, and a matte back. It comes in three colors: white, dark green, and light pink, with the dark green model featuring a black bezel. Though it looks like plastic from a distance, the Pixel Tablet has an aluminum frame with a nanotexture coating, not unlike what Google did with the Pixel 5 smartphone.

Bundled in the box with the Pixel Tablet is a magnetic speaker dock. This serves multiple purposes and is meant to prevent the dreaded “dead tablet in a drawer” syndrome: it’s a place to store the Pixel Tablet when it’s not in use; it charges the battery; and it has a louder, fuller speaker better suited for communal listening than the speakers that are built into the tablet. If you’re playing music or watching a video on the tablet when you put it on the dock, it will seamlessly transfer the audio to the dock’s speaker. Pull the tablet off the dock while something is playing, and it will instantly switch to the tablet’s speakers.

When mounted on the speaker dock, the Pixel Tablet looks an awful lot like the Nest Hub Max, a $250 smart display that Google released back in 2019. But make no mistake, the Pixel Tablet is an Android tablet and not a smart display — it runs completely different software and has different capabilities compared to the Nest Hub. That said, when the tablet is docked on the speaker, it can show a slideshow of images from your Google Photos albums just like the Nest Hub. It also has a quick access button to the Google Home app so you can control smart home devices, and it can accept voice commands from a distance for hands-free Google Assistant queries. The lock screen won’t show any personal information like notifications — for that, you’ll have to unlock the tablet to access the accounts that are set up on it. The $499 slab is available for preorder starting today, and will begin shipping on June 20th.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Major Psychologists’ Group Warns of Social Media’s Potential Harm To Kids

For the first time, the American Psychological Association (APA) has issued guidelines for teenagers, parents, teachers and policymakers on how to use social media, with the aim of reducing the rate of depression, anxiety and loneliness in adolescents. NPR reports: The 10 recommendations in the report summarize recent scientific findings and advise actions, primarily by parents, such as monitoring teens’ feeds and training them in social media literacy, even before they begin using these platforms. But some therapists and clinicians say the recommendations place too much of the burden on parents. To implement this guidance requires cooperation from the tech companies and possibly regulators.

While social media can provide opportunities for staying connected, especially during periods of social isolation, like the pandemic, the APA says adolescents should be routinely screened for signs of “problematic social media use.” The APA recommends that parents should also closely monitor their children’s social media feed during early adolescence, roughly ages 10-14. Parents should try to minimize or stop the dangerous content their child is exposed to, including posts related to suicide, self-harm, disordered eating, racism and bullying. Studies suggest that exposure to this type of content may promote similar behavior in some youth, the APA notes.

Another key recommendation is to limit the use of social media for comparison, particularly around beauty — or appearance-related content. Research suggests that when kids use social media to pore over their own and others’ appearance online, this is linked with poor body image and depressive symptoms, particularly among girls. As kids age and gain digital literacy skills they should have more privacy and autonomy in their social media use, but parents should always keep an open dialogue about what they are doing online. The report also cautions parents to monitor their own social media use, citing research that shows that adults’ attitudes toward social media and how they use it in front of kids may affect young people.

The APA’s report does contain recommendations that could be picked up by policy makers seeking to regulate the industry. For instance it recommends the creation of “reporting structures” to identify and remove or deprioritize social media content depicting “illegal or psychologically maladaptive behavior,” such as self-harm, harming others, and disordered eating. It also notes that the design of social media platforms may need to be changed to take into account “youths’ development capabilities,” including features like endless scrolling and recommended content. It suggests that teens should be warned “explicitly and repeatedly” about how their personal data could be stored, shared and used.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Goodbye To Roblox On Linux With Their New Anti-Cheat and Wine Blocking

Roblox’s new anti-cheat software puts a stop to in-game exploits, but at what cost? According to Liam Dawe from Gaming On Linux, it’s blocking the Wine application, meaning “you won’t be able to play it on Linux any more, at all, unless you find some sort of special workaround.” He adds: “Previously the roll-out of this update was being tested only with some users. Now though it’s here for everyone giving a 64 bit client and introducing their Hyperion anti-cheat software which they are intentionally blocking Wine with.” Here’s what one of their staff had to say about this: Hi – thanks for the question. I definitely get where you’re coming from, and as you point out, you deserve a clear, good-faith answer. Unfortunately that answer is essentially “no.”

From a personal perspective, a lot of people at Roblox would love to support Linux (including me). Practically speaking, there’s just no way for us to justify it. If we release a client, we have to support it, which means QA, CS, documentation, etc., all of which is much more difficult on a fragmented platform. We release weekly on a half-dozen platforms. Adding in the time to test, debug, and release a Linux client would be expensive, which means time taken away from improving Roblox on our current platforms.

Even Wine support is difficult because of anti-cheat. As wonderful as it would be to allow Roblox under Wine, the number of users who would take advantage of that is minuscule compared with our other platforms, and it’s not worthwhile if it makes it easy for exploiters to cheat.

I’m sorry to be such a downer about this, but it’s the reality. We have to spend our time porting to and supporting the platforms that will grow our community.

Again, I’m personally sorry to have to say this. Way back in 2000 I had a few patches accepted into the kernel, and I led the port of Roblox game servers from Windows to Linux several years ago. From a technical and philosophical perspective, it would be a wonderful thing to do. But our first responsibility is to our overall community, and the opportunity cost of supporting a Linux client is far, far too high to justify.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Metaverse Could Contribute Up To 2.4% of US GDP By 2035, Study Shows

A study commissioned by Meta has found that the metaverse could contribute around 2.4% to U.S. annual GDP by 2035, equating to as much as $760 billion. Reuters reports: The concept of the metaverse includes augmented and virtual reality technologies that allow users to immerse themselves in a virtual world or overlay information digitally on images of the real world, according to the report by consulting firm Deloitte. Economic gains may come from the use of the technologies in the defense, medical and manufacturing sectors, plus entertainment use cases such as video games and communication, the report said.

Social media giant Meta, which pivoted its focus on building metaverse technologies in 2021, has forecast the tech would eventually replace mobile as the main computing platform. In a separate report, Meta said the European Union may see an increased economic opportunity of up to 489 billion euros ($538.29 billion) in annual GDP by 2035 or about 1.3%-2.4% of its total GDP. The metaverse could contribute between C$45.3 billion ($33.88 billion) and C$85.5 billion to Canada’s annual GDP by 2035, Deloitte said. Last year, a Meta-funded report estimated that metaverse adoption would contribute $3.01 trillion by 2031.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

WordPress Plugin Hole Puts ‘2 Million Websites’ At Risk

A vulnerability in the “Advanced Custom Fields” plugin for WordPress is putting more than two million users at risk of cyberattacks, warns Patchstack researcher Rafie Muhammad. The Register reports: A warning from Patchstack about the flaw claimed there are more than two million active installs of the Advanced Custom Fields and Advanced Custom Fields Pro versions of the plugins, which are used to give site operators greater control of their content and data, such as edit screens and custom field data. Patchstack researcher Rafie Muhammad uncovered the vulnerability on February 5, and reported it to Advanced Custom Fields’ vendor Delicious Brains, which took over the software last year from developer Elliot Condon. On May 5, a month after a patched version of the plugins was released by Delicious Brains, Patchstack published details of the flaw. It’s recommended users update their plugin to at least version 6.1.6.

The flaw, tracked as CVE-2023-30777 and with a CVSS score of 6.1 out of 10 in severity, leaves sites vulnerable to reflected XSS attacks, which involve miscreants injecting malicious code into webpages. The code is then “reflected” back and executed within the browser of a visitor. Essentially, it allows someone to run JavaScript within another person’s view of a page, allowing the attacker to do things like steal information from the page, perform actions as the user, and so on. That’s a big problem if the visitor is a logged-in administrative user, as their account could be hijacked to take over the website.

“This vulnerability allows any unauthenticated user [to steal] sensitive information to, in this case, privilege escalation on the WordPress site by tricking the privileged user to visit the crafted URL path,” Patchstack wrote in its report. The outfit added that “this vulnerability could be triggered on a default installation or configuration of Advanced Custom Fields plugin. The XSS also could only be triggered from logged-in users that have access to the Advanced Custom Fields plugin.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New York Times To Get Around $100 Million From Google Over Three Years

US Crypto Exchange Bittrex Files For Bankruptcy

According to CoinDesk, crypto exchange Bittrex has filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. state of Delaware, “months after announcing it would wind down operations in the country and weeks after being sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).” From the report: The exchange believes it has more than 100,000 creditors, with estimated liabilities and assets both within the $500 million to $1 billion range, according to a court filing shared by Randall Reese of Chapter 11 Dockets, a bankruptcy tracker. Bittrex’s U.S. branch has had a rough 2023 so far, laying off 80 people in February and announcing in March that it would end all operations by the end of April. These changes have not affected Bittrex Global, the non-U.S. crypto exchange.

Despite Bittrex’s impending exit from the U.S., the SEC sued it in mid-April on allegations it operated a national securities exchange, broker and clearing agency. The SEC also sued former Bittrex CEO Bill Shihara and Bittrex Global. Bittrex Global CEO Oliver Linch said last month that the exchange intended to fight these charges in court, but a bankruptcy proceeding may make this more difficult.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yet Another Problem with Recycling: It Spews Microplastics

“An alarming new study has found that even when plastic makes it to a recycling center, it can still end up splintering into smaller bits that contaminate the air and water,” reports Wired:

This pilot study focused on a single new facility where plastics are sorted, shredded, and melted down into pellets. Along the way, the plastic is washed several times, sloughing off microplastic particles — fragments smaller than 5 millimeters — into the plant’s wastewater. Because there were multiple washes, the researchers could sample the water at four separate points along the production line. (They are not disclosing the identity of the facility’s operator, who cooperated with their project.) This plant was actually in the process of installing filters that could snag particles larger than 50 microns (a micron is a millionth of a meter), so the team was able to calculate the microplastic concentrations in raw versus filtered discharge water — basically a before-and-after snapshot of how effective filtration is.

Their microplastics tally was astronomical. Even with filtering, they calculate that the total discharge from the different washes could produce up to 75 billion particles per cubic meter of wastewater. Depending on the recycling facility, that liquid would ultimately get flushed into city water systems or the environment. In other words, recyclers trying to solve the plastics crisis may in fact be accidentally exacerbating the microplastics crisis, which is coating every corner of the environment with synthetic particles.

“It seems a bit backward, almost, that we do plastic recycling in order to protect the environment, and then end up increasing a different and potentially more harmful problem,” says plastics scientist Erina Brown, who led the research while at the University of Strathclyde.
“It raises some very serious concerns,” agrees Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics and a former US Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator, who wasn’t involved in the paper. “And I also think this points to the fact that plastics are fundamentally not sustainable.”

Wired ponts out that more than half the microplastics can be captured with a filtration system. “Without it, the researchers calculated that this single recycling facility could emit up to 6.5 million pounds of microplastic per year. Filtration got it down to an estimated 3 million pounds.”

But one of the paper’s co-authors shared their discouraging conclusion. “The recycling centers are potentially making things worse by actually creating microplastics faster and discharging them into both water and air. I’m not sure we can technologically engineer our way out of that problem.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Why the Creator of Ruby on Rails Prefers Dynamic Typing

“I write all novel client-side code as JavaScript instead of TypeScript, and it’s a delight,” says the creator of Ruby on Rails. Posting on Twitter, David Heinemeier Hansson opined that TypeScript “sucked out much of the joy I had writing JavaScript. I’m forever grateful that Yukihiro ‘Matz’ Matsumoto didn’t succumb to the pressure of adding similar type hints to Ruby.”

When it comes to static vs dynamic typing, “I’ve heard a million arguments from both sides throughout my entire career,” Hansson wrote on his blog today, “but seen very few of them ever convinced anyone of anything.”
But wait — he thinks we can all get along:
Personally, I’m unashamedly a dynamic typing kind of guy. That’s why I love Ruby so very much. It takes full advantage of dynamic typing to allow the poetic syntax that results in such beautiful code. To me, Ruby with explicit, static typing would be like a salad with a scoop of ice cream. They just don’t go together.

I’ll also confess to having embraced the evangelical position for dynamic typing in the past. To the point of suffering from a One True Proposition affliction. Seeing the lack of enthusiasm for dynamic typing as a reflection of missing education, experience, or perhaps even competence.

Oh what folly. Like trying to convince an introvert that they’d really like parties if they’d just loosen up a bit…

These days, I’ve come to appreciate the magnificence of multiplicity. Programming would be an awful endeavor if we were all confined to the same paradigm. Human nature is much too varied to accept such constraint on its creativity…But it took a while for me to come to these conclusions. I’m a recovering solutionist. So when I see folks cross their heart in disbelief that anyone, anywhere might fancy JavaScript over TypeScript, I smile, and I remember the days when I’d recognize their zeal in the mirror.

Hansson also sees the “magnificence of multiplicity” in positions about functional vs object-oriented programming. “Poles on both these axes have shown to deliver excellent software over the decades (and awful stuff too!).”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Binance Temporarily Paused Bitcoin Transactions Over Network Congestion, Also Faces Government Scrutiny

CoinDesk reports that Binance “temporarily paused bitcoin withdrawals Sunday morning U.S. time as the Bitcoin blockchain became overwhelmed with pending transactions and sky-high fees.”
The company resumed withdrawals within two hours of its initial Twitter posting about the withdrawals.
On-chain data shows that there are nearly 400,000 unconfirmed Bitcoin transactions, which is higher than anything seen during the bull runs of 2018 and 2021. The average transaction fee has also doubled since March, pushing it to a two-year high. The current transaction fee is just over $8, a 309% change from a year ago.

In an earlier CoinDesk article, an executive at Luxor Technologies, a full-stack Bitcoin mining pool, blamed the rising fees on the adoption of the new BRC-20 token standard, a new way to “inscribe” additional data during transactions.

But meanwhile, an anonymous reader shared another report from Mashable about Binance:

Bloomberg reported that the crypto exchange (currently the world’s largest) is facing a U.S. Department of Justice probe over possibly allowing Russians to move money in a way that would violate U.S. sanctions… It’s worth noting that no formal accusation has been made against Binance, as this is just a probe. It may be some time before accusations manifest — if they manifest at all. In 2021, Binance was under a similar investigation related to possible money laundering.
But another Reuters article adds that Bloomberg’s sources “also said that Binance is discussing the possibility of settling with the Department of Justice regarding previous allegations that the exchange was also used to move money to circumvent U.S. sanctions against Iran.”
And elsewhere, Reuters reports:
Israel has seized around 190 crypto accounts at crypto exchange Binance since 2021 , including two it said were linked to Islamic State and dozens of others it said were owned by Palestinian firms connected to the Islamist Hamas group, documents released by the country’s counter-terror authorities show…
In a blog post after its publication, Binance said that Reuters was “deliberately leaving out critical facts.” The exchange has been “working closely with international counter-terrorism authorities” on the seizures, Binance said. “With regard to the specific organizations mentioned in the article, it’s important to clarify that bad actors don’t register accounts under the names of their criminal enterprises,” it said…
Under Israeli law, the country’s defense minister can order the seizure and confiscation of assets that the ministry deems related to terrorism… The seizures by Israel’s National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing highlight how governments are targeting crypto companies in their efforts to prevent illegal activity. Binance, founded in 2017 by CEO Changpeng Zhao, says on its website it reviews information requests from governments and law enforcement agencies on a case-by-case basis, disclosing information as legally required.

Binance has also said it checks users for connections to terrorism and has “continued to invest tremendous resources to enhance its compliance program,” it told U.S. senators in March in response to their requests for information on Binance’s regulatory compliance and finances.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.