Google Rewards Employees Returning to Office with Private Lizzo Concert

As an apparent reward for returning to the office, thousands of Google employees were treated to a private Lizzo concert at the Shoreline Amphitheatre near Google’s headquarters, reports CNBC:

Google implemented a return-to-office policy starting in early April, requiring employees to go to physical facilities at least three days a week. Staffers pushed back on the mandate and the prospect of navigating traffic jams, after they worked efficiently for so long at home while the company enjoyed some of its fastest revenue growth of the past 15 years….

Google had delayed its return plans on multiple occasions, due mostly to surges in Covid-19 case numbers. But this time, the company stuck to its reopening schedule. In the early days back, employees were greeted with marching bands on campus, as well as photo booths, celebratory food and visits from prominent politicians.

“Thank you for being back!” Lizzo said. “Thank you for surviving! Google, we back, bitch!!” […] She inserted the company’s name into her popular song “Boys,” changing the lyrics from “I heard you a freak, too” to “I heard you a freak, Google!”

After two and a half years “of protecting others and ourselves but also being very disconnected,” Lizzo told the crowd, “It’s so incredible to see how connected we are right now!” CNBC reports.
Someone in the crowd shouted back, “Propaganda! Propaganda!”

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Chrome’s Latest Update: 30 Security Fixes and Bug Details Kept ‘Restricted’

Hot Hardware warns that on Tuesday, the Stable Channel for Chrome’s desktop edition “had an update on April 26, 2022. That update includes 30 security fixes, some of them so bad that Google is urging all users to update immediately.”

The release notes for Google’s Chrome v101.0.4951.41 for Windows, Mac, and Linux has a long list of bug fixes; you can view it here. However, there’s also a key statement in that page.
“Note: Access to bug details and links may be kept restricted until a majority of users are updated with a fix. We will also retain restrictions if the bug exists in a third party library that other projects similarly depend on, but haven’t yet fixed….”

Effectively the the non-developer translation of the quote above is that something so significant was found, the details are being kept hidden.

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Sale of Bored Apes’ Metaverse Land Made Gas Fees Skyrocket Past $3,000

There’s a new metaverse project from the creators of the “Bored Apes Yacht Club” NFTs. Last night they held a “virtual land” sale, reports Bloomberg, raising nearly a third of a billion dollars.
At about the same time, Mashable noticed something else happening:

If you were trying to complete a transaction on the Ethereum network last night, you might have been taken aback by the ridiculously high gas fees you saw.

For example, one user purchased a $25 NFT on Saturday evening. Their total price? $3,325. That’s $3,300 just in fees.
Every transaction on their blockchain incurs a fee (which rises based on the number of concurrent transactions), the article points out. “Ethereum transactions can fail if a user doesn’t pay enough in gas fees. When this happens, not only does the transaction not go through, but the user is still charged the gas fee.”
“Ethereum proved unusable for hours due to its inability to distribute the load…” reports CNET. “Someone tweeted a picture of them trying to send $100 in crypto from one wallet to another, showing it required $1,700 in gas fees….

“Over $175 million was spent on gas alone.”

Mashable adds:

An overwhelmed Ethereum Network….caused fees to skyrocket to astronomically high amounts…. One cryptocurrency advocate noticed that from just the Bored Ape’s NFT sale, approximately $100 million were wasted during the first hour of the “land” sale in gas fees alone.
As mentioned earlier, transactions can often fail when the Ethereum network is facing unusually high traffic. And last night, many people paid thousands in gas fees for transactions that didn’t even go through.
Yuga Labs says it will refund users those fees, but it’s unclear just how the company plans to do that. Also, Yuga Labs will ostensibly only cover the fees from failed transactions directly involving the company. If you’re a user who was attempting an unrelated transaction, you can say goodbye to those thousands in lost fees….
However, there was at least one winner from the Saturday night sale: Yuga Labs. The owner of the Bored Ape Yacht Club brand raked in $285 million from the NFT sale.

Transaction costs just to mint the Otherdeed NFTs after the launch “reached $123 million,” reports Bloomberg, “with each Otherdeed requiring about $6,000, or two Ether, in transaction fees to mint, according to data from Etherscan — or more than the price of the deed itself.”
Yuga Labs apologised on Twitter for “turning off the light on Ethereum”, and suggested the possibility of establishing an ApeCoin blockchain.

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Apple Extends Its Grace Period for Deleting Old (and Unpopular) Apps from Its App Store

“As a response to recent coverage of software being purged from the App Store, Apple is sharing its criteria for how it chooses to remove abandoned apps,” reports 9to5Mac.

Apple’s announcement say it’s only flagging apps for possible removal “that

Developers will also have more time to comply after being notified.” (90 days instead of 30 days). And 9to5Mac adds that Apple “is also reiterating that the practice is not new but instead part of an initiative that started six years ago.

But the Verge took a different message from “Apple to developers: if we deleted your old app, it deserved it.”

[T]he company has responded — by issuing a press release effectively saying that nobody was downloading the apps anyways….

Apple’s explanation does clear up why it, as some developers noted, seemed to apply the rules inconsistently. For example, one developer noted that Pocket God, a popular game from the iPhone’s early days, hasn’t been updated for seven years but is still on the App Store. Apple is basically saying it’s still up because it’s still popular.
From one angle, this reasoning doesn’t necessarily gel with the first half of Apple’s post, where it says it removes old apps to ensure “user trust in quality apps,” and to improve discoverability, security and privacy, and user experience. After all — if an app is problematic because it’s outdated, more downloads would make a bad app a bigger issue. Who’s being harmed if there’s an outdated app almost no one is downloading?

But Apple says it doesn’t want the App Store cluttered up with apps that both developers and users have forgotten about. It has enough problems making it easy for users to find good apps as it is, and it’s easy to imagine Apple seeing deleting old, seemingly irrelevant apps as a good solution.

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50 Years After Walking on the Moon, an Astronaut Anticipates Our Return

In 1972 — half a century ago — Charles Moss Duke walked on the moon.
Now 86 years old, he’s ready for America to get back to exploring the moon, reports the Associated Press:
Duke said he does not begrudge NASA for ending the Apollo program to focus on space shuttles, the international space station and other missions in more remote parts of space. But he looks forward to future missions that build off of what he and others have learned from their time on the moon, which called “a great platform for science.”

Duke also noted that he’s encouraged by the commercial partnerships that have developed around space exploration, like Space X and Blue Origin [and the companies he describes in their video as “the others”]. Those options, he said, “make space available for more people and more science and engineering and unmanned stuff.”

“That compliment is going to be really important in the future,” Duke went on.

The article notes the first of NASA’s huge Space Launch System rockets is scheduled to blast off later this year, “with crewed flights planned subsequently.” In the video interview, Duke adds that “With Artemis, NASA is going to be focused on deep space, to the moon and beyond, and I’m excited about that…”

“The more people we get into space, and can see the beauty of the earth — and the incredible emotion that you [feel] when you see the earth hung in the blackness of space — it’s going to affect a lot of people.”

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Fedora’s Lead Speaks on the Popularity of Linux and the Importance of Open Source

Fedora project leader Matthew Miller spoke to TechRepublic’s Jack Wallen this week, sharing some thoughts on the future of Linux — and on open source in general:
Matthew Miller: I think it’s a lost cause to try to “sell” our quirky technology interest to people who don’t see it already. We need to take a different approach…. I think our message, at its root, has to be around open source…. [W]ith Linux, when you install an open-source distro, you’re not just part of a fan community. You’re part of a colossal, global effort that makes software more available to everyone, makes that software better and better, and makes the whole world better through sharing… Just by using it you’re sharing in this amazing undertaking, part of a move away from scarcity to an economy based on abundance….
Jack Wallen: What’s the biggest difference in Linux today vs. Linux of 10 years ago?

Matthew Miller: I think first we have to start with just the amazing ubiquity of it. Ten years ago, it was cute to find a TV that ran Linux. Now, not only is it definitely powering your TV, you’ve probably got Linux running on your lightbulbs! It’s everywhere. And while Linux had pushed proprietary Unix from the server room, ten years ago Windows-based servers were pushing back. The cloud changed that — now, the cloud is Linux, almost completely. (Anything that isn’t is a legacy app that it was too much trouble to port!) From tiny devices to the most powerful mainframes and supercomputers: Linux, Linux, Linux….

Jack Wallen: If Linux has an Achilles’ heel, what is it?

Matthew Miller: Linux and the whole free and open-source software movement grew up with the rise of the internet as an open communication platform. We absolutely need that to continue in order to realize our vision, and I don’t think we can take it for granted.

That’s more general than an Achilles’ heel, though, so right now let me highlight one thing that I think is troubling: Chrome becoming the dominant browser to the point where it’s often the only way to make sites work. Chromium (the associated upstream project) is open source, but isn’t really run as a community project, and, pointedly, very very few people run Chromium itself. I’d love to see that change, but I’d also like to see Firefox regain a meaningful presence.
Miller also said Fedora’s next release is focused on simplicity. (“When the OS gets in the way, it drops from the conversation I want to have about big ideas to … well, the boring technical details that people never want to deal with”)
And he also shared his thoughts on what Linux needs most. “What I’d really like to see more of are more non-technical contributors. I mean, yes, we can always benefit from more packagers and coders and engineers, but I think what we really need desperately are writers, designers, artists, videographers, communicators, organizers and planners. I don’t think big companies are likely to provide those things, at least, not for the parts of the Linux world which aren’t their products.”
“We need people who think the whole grand project I’ve been talking about is important, and who have the skills and interests to help make it real.”

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India To Launch Open E-Commerce Network To Take On Amazon, Walmart

Hmmmmmm shares a report from Reuters: India will on Friday launch an open network for digital commerce (ONDC) as the government tries to end the dominance of U.S. companies Amazon.com and Walmart in the fast-growing e-commerce market, a government document showed. The launch of the platform comes after India’s antitrust body on Thursday raided domestic sellers of Amazon and some of Walmart’s Flipkart following accusations of competition law violations.

The government’s so-called ONDC platform will allow buyers and sellers to connect and transact with each other online, no matter what other application they use. It will be soft-launched on Friday before being expanded, the trade ministry told Reuters. The government document said that two large multinational players controlled more than half of the country’s e-commerce trade, limiting access to the market, giving preferential treatment to some sellers and squeezing supplier margins. It did not name the companies. The document said India’s ONDC plan aimed to onboard 30 million sellers and 10 million merchants online. The plan is to cover at least 100 cities and towns by August.

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Gavin Newsom Reconsiders Closure of Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant

gordm writes: Following appeals from scientists, a Stanford and MIT study showing Diablo Canyon could save California $21 Billion, demand curtailment and a projected power supply shortfall, Gov. Gavin Newsom is now considering keeping the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant open. Diablo Canyon generated 6% of California’s total electricity in 2021 and 12% of California’s carbon-free electricity.
Elon Musk has tweeted in support of keeping Diablo Canyon open, and in support of keeping European nuclear power plants running. According to the L.A. Times, Newsom said the state would seek out a share of $6 billion in federal funds meant to rescue nuclear reactors facing closure. The money comes from the Biden administration’s recently announced effort to rescue nuclear power plants at risk of closing. “The requirement is by May 19 to submit an application, or you miss the opportunity to draw down any federal funds if you want to extend the life of that plant,” Newsom said. “We would be remiss not to put that on the table as an option.”

A spokesperson for the governor clarified that Newsom still wants to see the facility shut down long term. “It’s been six years since PG&E agreed to close the plant near San Luis Obispo, rather than invest in expensive environmental and earthquake-safety upgrades,” the report notes. “But Newsom’s willingness to consider a short-term reprieve reflects a shift in the politics of nuclear power after decades of public opposition fueled by high-profile disasters such as Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, as well as the Cold War.”

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Interactive Fiction Compiler ‘Inform 7’ Is Now Open Source