Nasdaq Tells Yandex, Other Russian Firms of Plan To Delist Stocks

DreamWorks’ OpenMoonRay Renderer Code Published

Ask Slashdot: What Exactly Are ‘Microservices’?

After debating the term in a recent Slashdot subthread, longtime reader Tablizer wants to pose the question to a larger audience: what exactly are ‘microservices’? Over the past few years I’ve asked many colleagues what “microservices” are, and get a gazillion different answers. “Independent deploy-ability” has been an issue as old as the IBM hills. Don’t make anything “too big” nor “too small”; be it functions, files, apps, name-spaces, tables, databases, etc.

Overly large X’s didn’t need special terms, such as “monofunction”. We’d just call it “poorly partitioned/sized/factored”. (Picking the right size requires skill and experience, both in technology and the domain.) Dynamic languages are usually “independently deployable” at the file level, so what is a PHP “monolith”, for example?

Puzzles like this are abound when trying to use the Socratic method to tease out specific-ness. Socrates would quit and become a goat herder, as such discussions often turn sour and personal. Here’s a recent Slashdot subthread debating the term.

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Binance Halts UK Customer Deposits and Withdrawals

On Monday, Binance said it would suspend withdrawals and deposits for anybody using UK currency. The news came after the world’s largest crypto exchange’s banking partner in the UK, Paysafe, said it was abandoning crypto, at least as far as Binance was concerned. Gizmodo reports: In a statement to Gizmodo, a Paysafe spokesperson said that it was “too challenging” to offer its embedded wallet cryptocurrency services to UK customers because of the regulatory atmosphere in the UK. Paysafe is based in London, and said this decision was “taken in an abundance of caution.” Paysafe did not clarify whether it was abandoning crypto altogether, or just in its partnership with Binance. Paysafe called its UK portion of its crypto business “small” but clarified it was still working with Binance elsewhere in Europe and in Latin America.

Binance suspended withdrawals and deposits for any new customers using British pounds late on Monday, and according to Bloomberg the crypto exchange plans to suspend all GBP transactions for all customers starting May 22. The company is reportedly working to find “an alternative solution” to again allow customers to trade GBP for crypto.

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TikTok Mulls Splitting From ByteDance If Proposal With US Fails

China’s TikTok is considering separating from parent ByteDance to help address U.S. concerns about national security risks, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. Reuters reports: A divestiture, which could result in a sale or initial public offering, is considered a last resort and will be pursued only if the company’s existing proposal with U.S. national security officials does not get approved, Bloomberg reported. The short-form video app is undergoing a national security review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and it agreed last year to implement a number of measures under the plan, nicknamed “Project Texas”, in an attempt to placate hostile lawmakers.

CFIUS has stalled in its process, leaving TikTok unsure of whether its plans will be sufficient to continue operating in the country, according to the report. Members of CFIUS from the Justice Department have been unwilling to accept TikTok’s proposal, it added. CFIUS, a powerful national security body, had in 2020 unanimously recommended that ByteDance divest TikTok because of fears that user data could be passed on to China’s government.

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Online Tests Suggest IQ Scores In US Dropped For the First Time In Nearly a Century

A group of psychologists, two from Northwestern University and the third from the University of Oregon, has found via online testing that IQ scores in the U.S. may be dropping for the first time in nearly a century. Phys.Org reports: In this new effort, the researchers studied the results of online IQ tests taken by adults participating in the Synthetic Aperture Personality Assessment Project over a 12-year period. They found that IQ scores have dropped for all age groups, regardless of gender. They also found that the steepest declines were among young people. They also noted that while a few skills, such as spatial reasoning, were better than previous generations, other skills, such as problem solving, numerical series assessments and verbal reasoning, had all grown worse.

The researchers did not conduct any research to try to explain the drop, but suggest it might be linked to changes in the education system. They also did not address the controversial issue of the accuracy of IQ test scores in general as a means of measuring a person’s intelligence. The paper has been published in the journal Intelligence.

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Justice Department Investigating TerraUSD Stablecoin Collapse

The U.S. Justice Department is probing last year’s collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin, raising the possibility of criminal charges being filed against the stablecoin’s creator, Do Kwon, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar with the matter. CoinDesk reports: The FBI and the Southern District of New York have interviewed former employees of Terraform Labs, the company behind TerraUSD, and sought to interview others, according to the Journal. Manhattan federal prosecutors are also examining chat-group discussions among prominent trading firms Jump Trading Group, Jane Street Group and failed FTX affiliate Alameda Research involving a potential bailout of TerraUSD, according to a separate report from Bloomberg, citing a person familiar with the matter.

Such a bailout never took place, but the investigation is seeking to determine whether the firms were involved in possible market manipulation. TerraUSD and its sister token, Luna, both eventually collapsed, setting off a series of high-profile failures of prominent crypto firms, including hedge fund Three Arrows capital, Voyager Digital and FTX. The Department of Justice previously alleged that an unnamed crypto firm — believed to be Jump — had bailed out TerraUSD once before, in an indictment against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. In February, the SEC filed a civil fraud lawsuit against Kwon and Terraform Labs, accusing them of misleading investors about TerraUSD’s risks.

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Meta Winds Down Support For NFTs

Meta’s head of commerce and financial technologies Stephane Kasriel posted on Twitter that the company will sunset its NFT and digital collectibles features on Instagram and Facebook. TechCrunch reports: This short-lived product only began testing with select Instagram creators last May, plus some Facebook users in June. By July, Meta expanded NFT support on Instagram for creators in 100 countries. Less than a year later, Meta is moving on from NFTs. “We’re winding down digital collectibles (NFTs) for now to focus on other ways to support creators, people, and businesses,” Kasriel wrote in a Twitter thread.

A Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch that it is shifting its investments away from NFTs toward products like Meta Pay, as well as features that enable creators to earn money directly on Meta platforms, like its tipping feature called gifts. The company also said it is testing ways for creators to earn ad revenue on Reels. “Let me be clear: creating opportunities for creators and businesses to connect with their fans and monetize remains a priority, and we’re going to focus on areas where we can make impact at scale, such as messaging and monetization opps for Reels,” Kasriel wrote.

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New ‘Ubuntu Flatpak Remix’ Has (Unofficial) Flatpak Support Preinstalled

An anonymous reader shares this report from 9to5Linux:

After Canonical’s announcement that future Ubuntu releases won’t include Flatpak support by default, someone already made an unofficial Ubuntu flavor that ships with support for Flatpak apps preinstalled and working out of the box, called Ubuntu Flatpak Remix.

Meet Ubuntu Flatpak Remix, an unofficial Ubuntu derivative that doesn’t feature support for Snap apps and comes with support for Flatpak apps working out of the box. Several key apps are preinstalled in the Flatpak format rather than as a Snap app, including the Mozilla Firefox web browser, Mozilla Thunderbird email client, and LibreOffice office suite…. Support for the Flathub portal is installed as well, so you’ll be able to install more apps with just a few clicks.

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GM Wants to Bring Microsoft’s ChatGPT to Cars

Reuters reports:

General Motors is exploring uses for ChatGPT as part of its broader collaboration with Microsoft, a company executive told Reuters. “ChatGPT is going to be in everything,” GM Vice President Scott Miller said in an interview last week.

The chatbot could be used to access information on how to use vehicle features normally found in an owners manual, program functions such as a garage door code or integrate schedules from a calendar, Miller said. “This shift is not just about one single capability like the evolution of voice commands, but instead means that customers can expect their future vehicles to be far more capable and fresh overall when it comes to emerging technologies,” a GM spokesperson said on Friday.

More details from Engadget:

According to Semafor, the digital assistant will operate differently from other chatbots like Bing Chat. GM is reportedly working on adding a “car-specific layer” on top of the large language models that power ChatGPT.

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