A federal criminal complaint has revealed that state and local agencies in New Jersey bought millions of dollars worth of banned Chinese surveillance cameras. The cameras were purchased from a local company that rebranded the banned equipment made by Dahua Technology, a company that has been implicated in the surveillance of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang. According to 404 Media, "At least $15 million of the equipment was bought using federal COVID relief funds." From the report: The feds charged Tamer Zakhary, the CEO of the New Jersey-based surveillance company Packetalk, with three counts of wire fraud and a separate count of false statements for repeatedly lying to state and local agencies about the provenance of his company's surveillance cameras. Some of the cameras Packetalk sold to local agencies were Dahua cameras that had the Dahua logo removed and the colors of the camera changed, according to the criminal complaint.

Dahua Technology is the second largest surveillance camera company in the world. In 2019, the U.S. government banned the purchase of Dahua cameras using federal funds because their cameras have "been implicated in human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of China's campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups in Xingjiang." The FCC later said that Dahua cameras "pose an unacceptable risk to U.S. national security." Dahua is not named in the federal complaint, but [404 Media's Jason Koebler] was able to cross-reference details in the complaint with Dahua and was able to identify specific cameras sold by Packetalk to Dahua's product.

According to the FBI, Zakhary sold millions of dollars of surveillance equipment, including rebranded Dahua cameras, to agencies all over New Jersey despite knowing that the cameras were illegal to sell to public agencies. Zakhary also specifically helped two specific agencies in New Jersey (called "Victim Agency-1" and "Victim Agency-2" in the complaint) justify their purchases using federal COVID relief money from the CARES Act, according to the criminal complaint. The feds allege, essentially, that Zakhary tricked local agencies into buying banned cameras using COVID funds: "Zakhary fraudulently misrepresented to the Public Safety Customers that [Packetalk's] products were compliant with Section 889 of the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for 2019 [which banned Dahua cameras], when, in fact, they were not," the complaint reads. "As a result of Zakhary's fraudulent misrepresentations, the Public Safety Customers purchased at least $35 million in surveillance cameras and equipment from [Packetalk], over $15 million of which was federal funds and grants."

Intuit is being questioned by US lawmakers who say federal tax credits the company received could have been better spent to build a free government alternative to Intuit's popular online tax preparation software, TurboTax. From a report: "For years, Intuit's corporate lobbyists have argued that the federal government should not set up a program for Americans to file their taxes online and for free because it would be too costly for taxpayers," the lawmakers, including Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, wrote in a letter to the company. "Your company's disclosure reveals that Intuit's research tax break from 2022 alone could have been enough to fund a year of a free e-File program for millions of Americans."

The lawmakers asked Intuit to provide details on its research expenses dating to 2018. Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, were joined on the letter by Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, and Representative Katie Porter, a Democrat from California. The Internal Revenue Service, in a report to Congress last year, estimated it would cost $64 million to $249 million annually for the agency to run a free-filing program. In the fiscal year ending in July 2023, Mountain View, California-based Intuit received $106 million in federal research and experimentation credits, which amounted to about 4% of its total R&D expenses, according to a regulatory filing.

When a deluge of jobless claims overwhelmed Texas in 2020, the workforce agency deployed AI chatbot "Larry" to field unemployment questions. Larry answered over 21 million queries before being upgraded, but its adoption sparked fears over loss of control. Texas last year established an advisory council to inventory current state AI usages like Larry and consider safeguards against unintended consequences like bias. More than one-third of agencies already use some form of AI, including for job matching, translations and security. From a report: The workforce commission also has an AI tool for job seekers that provides customized recommendations of job openings. Various agencies are using AI for translating languages into English and call center tools such as speech-to-text. AI is also used to enhance cybersecurity and fraud detection.

Automation is also used for time-consuming work in order to "increase work output and efficiency," according to a statement from the Department of Information Resources. One example of this could be tracking budget expenses and invoices. In 2020, DIR launched an AI Center for Excellence aimed at helping state agencies implement more AI technology. Participation in DIR's center is voluntary, and each agency typically has its own technology team, so the extent of automation and AI deployment at state agencies is not closely tracked.

Right now, Texas state agencies have to verify that the technology they use meets safety requirements set by state law, but there are no specific disclosure requirements on the types of technology or how they are used. HB 2060 will require each agency to provide that information to the AI advisory council by July 2024.

Retired officers and departing defense officials are flocking to investment firms that are pushing the government to provide more money to defense-technology startups. The New York Times: When Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and other top officials assembled for an event this month at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, they walked into a lesson in how the high-stakes world of Pentagon lobbying is being altered by the rise of defense technology startups. Inside, at this elite gathering near Los Angeles of senior leaders from government and the arms industry, was a rapidly growing group of participants: former Pentagon officials and military officers who have joined venture capital firms and are trying to use their connections in Washington to cash in on the potential to sell a new generation of weapons.

They represent a new path through the revolving door that has always connected the Defense Department and the military contracting business. Retiring generals and departing top Pentagon officials once migrated regularly to the big established weapons makers like Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Now they are increasingly flocking to venture capital firms that have collectively pumped billions of dollars into Silicon Valley-style startups offering the Pentagon new war-fighting tools like autonomous killer drones, hypersonic jets and space surveillance equipment.

This new route to the private sector is one indicator of the ways in which the United States is trying to become more agile in harnessing technological advances to maintain military superiority over China and other rivals. But the close ties between venture capital firms and Defense Department decision makers have also put a new twist on long-running questions about industry access and influence at a time when the Pentagon is under pressure to rethink how it allocates its huge procurement budget.

Climate change is already beginning to reshape global agriculture. India, the world's most populous country, looks particularly vulnerable: not just because of extreme weather, but because of government price controls. Fixing the problem is becoming more urgent, both for India and the world -- because India is a big food exporter, too. But politics makes that very difficult. From a report: In early December, India banned overseas shipments of onions until March in an effort to tame domestic prices. That is on top of export restrictions on rice, wheat and sugar already imposed over the past 18 months. And since India is the world's largest rice exporter, second-largest sugar and onion exporter, and a significant wheat producer, the bans are wreaking havoc globally. Thai rice prices had risen 14% and Vietnam rice prices had risen 22% from July levels by October, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute. Malaysia and the Philippines introduced their own measures to damp rising prices after India's curbs on rice exports in July.

Climate change will almost certainly pose a major problem for India's food supply. India's Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare recently estimated that, in the absence of adaptation measures, rain-fed rice yields could fall 20% by 2050. But domestic agricultural policies are almost as big a problem. At present, the government sets price floors for two dozen crops, guarantees purchases of certain agricultural products, and provides subsidies to farmers for fertilizers, electricity and transportation. All that might seem positive for food security, but on net it probably hampers investment and food supply growth. Price floors mean that supply might sometimes exceed final buyers' willingness to pay during slow times, leading to wastage. And restrictions on exports artificially depress domestic prices when global demand is hot. The government's own investigations have found that Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee laws, which regulate the trade of farmers' produce by providing licenses to buyers, commission agents and private markets, lead to cartelization and reduced competition.

The number of 18-year-olds in Japan totaled a record low of 1.06 million as of Monday, a government estimate showed, as the country continues to grapple with a falling birthrate. From a report: The number of those that have reached Japan's legal adult age fell by 60,000 from 2023 and accounted for 0.86% of Japan's total population, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said Sunday. The year 2005, when the new adults were born, had seen the country's total fertility rate -- the average number of children a woman is estimated to bear in her lifetime -- fall to a record-low 1.26, later matched by that of 2022.

"This year has been a major turning point in American health care," reports USA Today, "and patients can anticipate several major developments in the new year," including the beginning of a CRISPR "revolution" and "a new reckoning with drug prices that could change the landscape of the U.S. health care system for decades to come." Health care officials expect 2024 to bring a wave of innovation and change in medicine, treatment and public health... Many think 2024 could be the year more people have the tools to follow through on New Year's resolutions about weight loss. If they can afford them and manage to stick with them, people can turn to a new generation of remarkably effective weight-loss drugs, also called GLP-1s, which offer the potential for substantial weight loss...

In 2023, mental health issues became among the nation's most deadly, costly and pervasive health crises... The dearth of remedies has also paved the way for an unsuspecting class of drugs: psychedelics. MDMA, a party drug commonly known as "ecstasy," could win approval for legal distribution in 2024, as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. Another psychedelic, a ketamine derivative eskatemine, sold as Spravato, was approved in 2019 to treat depression, but it is being treated like a conventional therapy that must be dosed regularly, not like a psychedelic that provides a long-lasting learning experience, said Matthew Johnson, an expert in psychedelics at Johns Hopkins University. MDMA (midomafetamine capsules) would be different, as the first true psychedelic to win FDA approval.

In a late-stage trial of patients with moderate or severe post-traumatic stress disorder, close to 90% showed clinically significant improvements four months after three treatments with MDMA and more than 70% no longer met the criteria for having the disorder, which represented "really impressive results," according to Matthew Johnson, an expert in psychedelics at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. Psilocybin, known colloquially as "magic mushrooms," is also working its way through the federal approval process, but it likely won't come up before officials for another year, Johnson said. Psychedelics are something to keep an eye on in the future, as they're being used to treat an array of mental health issues: eskatimine for depression, MDMA for PTSD and psilocybin for addiction. Johnson said his research suggests that psychedelics will probably have a generalizable benefit across many mental health challenges in the years to come.
2024 will also be the first year America's drug-makers face new limits on how much they can increase prices for drugs covered by the federal health insurance program Medicare.

It was a half a century ago that America passed legislation to protect vanishing species and their habitats — and since then, more than five dozen species have recovered. Just one example: In 1963 only 417 nesting pairs of bald eagles were found in the lower 48 states. But today there's more than 300,000 bald eagles, writes USA Today. "[T]hough its future remains uncertain, many experts say it remains one of the nation's crowning achievements."

But 1,252 species are still listed as endangered in the U.S. — 486 animals, and 766 plants — with 417 more species categorized as "threatened." The perils of the changing climate add urgency to calls for increased funding and more protection. In North Carolina, for example, the rising sea steadily creeps over a refuge that's home to the sole remaining wild red wolf population. Off New England, warming waters forced changes in the foraging habits of the endangered North Atlantic right whale, putting the massive marine mammals in harm's way more often... One in 5 plant and animal species in the nation remain at risk of extinction, says Susan Holmes, executive director of the Endangered Species Coalition. "Loss of habitat and climate change are absolutely some of the most important threats that we have."

"We are at what I would say is a pivotal moment with the threats of climate change," she said. "We have to act faster than ever in order to ensure that these species are going to thrive."

TechCrunch reports: Apple's warnings in late October that Indian journalists and opposition figures may have been targeted by state-sponsored attacks prompted a forceful counterattack from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government. Officials publicly doubted Apple's findings and announced a probe into device security.

India has never confirmed nor denied using the Pegasus tool, but nonprofit advocacy group Amnesty International reported Thursday that it found NSO Group's invasive spyware on the iPhones of prominent journalists in India, lending more credibility to Apple's early warnings. "Our latest findings show that increasingly, journalists in India face the threat of unlawful surveillance simply for doing their jobs, alongside other tools of repression including imprisonment under draconian laws, smear campaigns, harassment, and intimidation," said Donncha Ã" Cearbhaill, head of Amnesty International's Security Lab, in the blog post.
Cloud security company Lookout has also published "an in-depth technical look" at Pegasus, calling its use "a targeted espionage attack being actively leveraged against an undetermined number of mobile users around the world." It uses sophisticated function hooking to subvert OS- and application-layer security in voice/audio calls and apps including Gmail, Facebook, WhatsApp, Facetime, Viber, WeChat, Telegram, Apple's built-in messaging and email apps, and others. It steals the victim's contact list and GPS location, as well as personal, Wi-Fi, and router passwords stored on the device...

According to news reports, NSO Group sells weaponized software that targets mobile phones to governments and has been operating since 2010, according to its LinkedIn page. The Pegasus spyware has existed for a significant amount of time, and is advertised and sold for use on high-value targets for multiple purposes, including high-level espionage on iOS, Android, and Blackberry.
Thanks to Slashdodt reader Mirnotoriety for sharing the news.

"[F]or years it was written off," writes CNN. " 'The economics were just way out,' said Martin Soltau, CEO of the UK-based company Space Solar.

"That may now be changing as the cost of launching satellites falls sharply, solar and robotics technology advances swiftly, and the need for abundant clean energy to replace planet-heating fossil fuels becomes more urgent." There's a "nexus of different technologies coming together right now just when we need it," said Craig Underwood, emeritus professor of spacecraft engineering at the University of Surrey in the U.K. The problem is, these technologies would need to be deployed at a scale unlike anything ever done before... "The big stumbling block has been simply the sheer cost of putting a power station into orbit." Over the last decade, that has begun to change as companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin started developing reusable rockets. Today's launch costs at around $1,500 per kilogram are about 30 times less than in the Space Shuttle era of the early 1980s.

And while launching thousands of tons of material into space sounds like it would have a huge carbon footprint, space solar would likely have a footprint at least comparable to terrestrial solar per unit of energy, if not a smaller, because of its increased efficiency as sunlight is available nearly constantly, said Mamatha Maheshwarappa, payload systems lead at UK Space Agency. Some experts go further. Underwood said the carbon footprint of space-based solar would be around half that of a terrestrial solar farm producing the same power, even with the rocket launch...

There is still a huge gulf between concept and commercialization. We know how to build a satellite, and we know how to build a solar array, Maheshwarappa said. "What we don't know is how to build something this big in space..." Scientists also need to figure out how to use AI and robotics to construct and maintain these structures in space. "The enabling technologies are still in a very low technology readiness," Maheshwarappa said. Then there's regulating this new energy system, to ensure the satellites are built sustainably, there's no debris risk, and they have an end-of-life plan, as well as to determine where rectenna sites should be located. Public buy-in could be another huge obstacle, Maheshwarappa said. There can be an instinctive fear when it comes to beaming power from space.

But such fears are unfounded, according to some experts. The energy density at the center of the rectenna would be about a quarter of the midday sun. "It is no different than standing in front of a heat lamp," Hajimiri said.
The article argues that governments and companies around the world "believe there is huge promise in space-based solar to help meet burgeoning demand for abundant, clean energy and tackle the climate crisis." And they cite several specific examples:

• In 2020 the U.S. Naval Research Lab launched a module on an orbital test vehicle, to test solar hardware in space conditions.

• This year Caltech electrical engineering professor led a team that successfully launched a 30-centimeter prototype equipped with transmitters — and successfully beamed detectable energy down to earth.

• In June the U.K. government announced over $5 million in funding to universities and tech companies "to drive forward innovation" in the space-based solar sector.

• The U.S. Air Force Research Lab plans to launch a small demonstrator in 2025.

• Europe's its Solaris program aims to prove "the technical and political viability of space-based solar, in preparation for a possible decision in 2025 to launch a full development program."

• One Chinese spacecraft designer and manufacturer hopes to send a solar satellite into low orbit in 2028 and high orbit by 2030, according to a 2022 South China Morning News report.

In 2021, Philips pulled its popular sleep apnea machines and ventilators off the shelves after discovering that an industrial foam built into the devices to reduce noise could release toxic particles and fumes into the masks worn by patients. "But as Philips publicly pledged to send out replacements, supervisors inside the company's headquarters near Pittsburgh were quietly racing to manage a new crisis that threatened the massive recall and posed risks to patients all over again," reports ProPublica. "Tests by independent laboratories retained by Philips had found that a different foam used by the company -- material fitted inside the millions of replacement machines -- was also emitting dangerous chemicals, including formaldehyde, a known carcinogen."

"Though Philips has said the machines are safe, ProPublica and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette obtained test results and other internal records that reveal for the first time how scientists working for the company grew increasingly alarmed and how infighting broke out as the new threat reached the highest levels of the Pittsburgh operation. The findings also underscore an unchecked pattern of corporate secrecy that began long before Philips decided to use the new foam." From the report: The company had previously failed to disclose complaints about the original foam in its profitable breathing machines, a polyester-based polyurethane material that was found to degrade in heat and humidity. Former patients and others have described hundreds of deaths and thousands of cases of cancer in government reports. After the introduction of the new foam in 2021, this one made of silicone, the company again held back details about the problem from the public even as it sent out replacement machines with the new material to customers around the world.

One of the devices was the DreamStation 2, a newly released continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, machine promoted as one of the company's primary replacements. Federal regulators were alerted to the concern more than two years ago but said in a news release at the time that the company was carrying out additional tests on the foam and that patients should keep using their replacements until more details were available. The Food and Drug Administration has not provided new information on the test results since then, and it is still unclear whether the material is safe. That leaves millions of people in the United States alone caught in the middle, including those with sleep apnea, which causes breathing to stop and start through the night and can lead to heart attacks, strokes and sudden death.

The new foam isn't the only problem: An internal investigation at Philips launched in the months after the recall found that water was condensing in the circuitry of the DreamStation 2, creating a new series of safety risks. "Loss of therapy, thermal events, and shock hazards," the investigation concluded. The FDA issued an alert about overheating last month, warning that the devices could produce "fire, smoke, burns, and other signs of overheating" and advising patients to keep the machines away from carpet, fabric and "other flammable materials." Philips has said that customers could continue using the devices if they followed safety instructions. ...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg, written by Naomi Kresge: In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, hundreds of scientists from all over the world banded together in an open-source effort to develop an antiviral that would be available for all. They could never have anticipated the many roadblocks they would face along the way, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which made refugees out of a group of Kyiv chemists who were doing important work for the project. The group, which called itself Covid Moonshot, hasn't given up on its effort to introduce a more affordable, patent-free treatment for the virus. Their open-source Covid antiviral, now funded by Wellcome, is on track to be ready for human testing within the next year and a half, according to Annette von Delft, a University of Oxford scientist and one of the Moonshot group's leaders. More early discovery work on a range of potential inhibitors for other viruses is also still going on and being funded by a US government grant.

"It's a bit like a proof of concept," von Delft says, for bringing a patent-free experimental drug into the clinic, a model that could be repurposed as a tool to fight neglected tropical diseases or antimicrobial resistance, or prepare for future pandemics. "Can we come up with a strategic model that can help those kinds of compounds with less of a business case along?" Of course, there was definitely a business case for a Covid antiviral, and some of the biggest drugmakers rushed to develop them. In 2022, Pfizer Inc.'s Paxlovid was one of the world's best-selling medicines with $18.9 billion in revenue. Demand has since cratered for the pill, which needs to be given shortly after infection and can't be taken alongside a number of other commonly prescribed medicines. Analysts expect the Paxlovid revenue to plunge just shy of $1 billion this year.

However, there is still a need for a better Covid antiviral, particularly in countries where access to the Pfizer pill is limited, according to von Delft. Covid cases have surged again this holiday season, with the rise of a new variant called JN.1 reminding us that the virus is still changing to evade the immunity we've built up so far. Just before Christmas, UK authorities said about one in every 24 people in England and Scotland had the disease. An accessible antiviral could help people return to work more quickly, and it could also be tested as a potential treatment for long Covid. "We know from experience in viral disease that there will be resistance variants evolving over time," von Delft said. "We'll need more than one."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Social media companies collectively made over $11 billion in U.S. advertising revenue from minors last year, according to a study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health published on Wednesday. The researchers say the findings show a need for government regulation of social media since the companies that stand to make money from children who use their platforms have failed to meaningfully self-regulate. They note such regulations, as well as greater transparency from tech companies, could help alleviate harms to youth mental health and curtail potentially harmful advertising practices that target children and adolescents.

To come up with the revenue figure, the researchers estimated the number of users under 18 on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube in 2022 based on population data from the U.S. Census and survey data from Common Sense Media and Pew Research. They then used data from research firm eMarketer, now called Insider Intelligence, and Qustodio, a parental control app, to estimate each platform's U.S. ad revenue in 2022 and the time children spent per day on each platform. After that, the researchers said they built a simulation model using the data to estimate how much ad revenue the platforms earned from minors in the U.S. The platforms themselves don't make public how much money they earn from minors. [...]

According to the Harvard study, YouTube derived the greatest ad revenue from users 12 and under ($959.1 million), followed by Instagram ($801.1 million) and Facebook ($137.2 million). Instagram, meanwhile, derived the greatest ad revenue from users aged 13-17 ($4 billion), followed by TikTok ($2 billion) and YouTube ($1.2 billion). The researchers also estimate that Snapchat derived the greatest share of its overall 2022 ad revenue from users under 18 (41%), followed by TikTok (35%), YouTube (27%), and Instagram (16%). "As concerns about youth mental health grow, more and more policymakers are trying to introduce legislation to curtail social media platform practices that may drive depression, anxiety, and disordered eating in young people," said senior author Bryn Austin, professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. "Although social media platforms may claim that they can self-regulate their practices to reduce the harms to young people, they have yet to do so, and our study suggests they have overwhelming financial incentives to continue to delay taking meaningful steps to protect children."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from SecurityWeek: Albania's Parliament said on Tuesday that it had suffered a cyberattack with hackers trying to get into its data system, resulting in a temporary halt in its services. A statement said Monday's cyberattack had not "touched the data of the system," adding that experts were working to discover what consequences the attack could have. It said the system's services would resume at a later time. Local media reported that a cellphone provider and an air flight company were also targeted by Monday's cyberattacks, allegedly from Iranian-based hackers called Homeland Justice, which could not be verified independently.

Albania suffered a cyberattack in July 2022 that the government and multinational technology companies blamed on the Iranian Foreign Ministry. Believed to be in retaliation for Albania sheltering members of the Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or MEK, the attack led the government to cut diplomatic relations with Iran two months later. The Iranian Foreign Ministry denied Tehran was behind an attack on Albanian government websites and noted that Iran has suffered cyberattacks from the MEK. In June, Albanian authorities raided a camp for exiled MEK members to seize computer devices allegedly linked to prohibited political activities. [...] In a statement sent later Tuesday to The Associated Press, MEK's media spokesperson Ali Safavi claimed the reported cyberattacks in Albania "are not related to the presence or activities" of MEK members in the country.

Following policy adjustments by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in January, more foreign-born workers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields are able to live and work permanently in the United States. "The jump comes after USCIS in January 2022 tweaked its guidance criteria relating to two visa categories available to STEM workers," reports Science Magazine. "One is the O-1A, a temporary visa for 'aliens of extraordinary ability' that often paves the way to a green card. The second, which bestows a green card on those with advanced STEM degrees, governs a subset of an EB-2 (employment-based) visa." From the report: The USCIS data, reported exclusively by ScienceInsider, show that the number of O-1A visas awarded in the first year of the revised guidance jumped by almost 30%, to 4570, and held steady in fiscal year 2023, which ended on 30 September. Similarly, the number of STEM EB-2 visas approved in 2022 after a "national interest" waiver shot up by 55% over 2021, to 70,240, and stayed at that level this year. "I'm seeing more aspiring and early-stage startup founders believe there's a way forward for them," says Silicon Valley immigration attorney Sophie Alcorn. She predicts the policy changes will result in "new technology startups that would not have otherwise been created."

President Joe Biden has long sought to make it easier for foreign-born STEM workers to remain in the country and use their talent to spur the U.S. economy. But under the terms of a 1990 law, only 140,000 employment-based green cards may be issued annually, and no more than 7% of those can go to citizens of any one country. The ceiling is well below the demand. And the country quotas have created decades-long queues for scientists and high-tech entrepreneurs born in India and China. The 2022 guidance doesn't alter those limits on employment-based green cards but clarifies the visa process for foreign-born scientists pending any significant changes to the 1990 law. The O-1A work visa, which can be renewed indefinitely, was designed to accelerate the path to a green card for foreign-born high-tech entrepreneurs.

Although there is no cap on the number of O-1A visas awarded, foreign-born scientists have largely ignored this option because it wasn't clear what metrics USCIS would use to assess their application. The 2022 guidance on O-1As removed that uncertainty by listing eight criteria -- including awards, peer-reviewed publications, and reviewing the work of other scientistsâ"and stipulating that applicants need to satisfy at least three of them. The second visa policy change affects those with advanced STEM degrees seeking the national interest waiver for an EB-2. Under the normal process of obtaining such a visa, the Department of Labor requires employers to first satisfy rules meant to protect U.S. workers from foreign competition, for example, by showing that the company has failed to find a qualified domestic worker and that the job will pay the prevailing wage. That time-consuming exercise can be waived if visa applicants can prove they are doing "exceptional" work of "substantial merit and national importance." But once again, the standard for determining whether the labor-force requirements can be waived was vague, so relatively few STEM workers chose that route. The 2022 USCIS guidance not only specifies criteria, which closely track those for the nonimmigrant, O-1A visa, but also allows scientists to sponsor themselves.

Nvidia has throttled the performance of its GeForce RTX 4090 GPU by roughly 11%, allowing it to comply with U.S. sanctions and be sold in China. The Register reports: Dubbed the RTX 4090D, the device appeared on Nvidia's Chinese-market website Thursday and boasts performance roughly 10.94 percent lower than the model Nvidia announced in late 2022. This shows up in the form of lower core count, 14,592 CUDA cores versus 16,384 on versions sold outside of China. Nvidia also told The Register today the card's tensor core count has also been been cut down by a similar margin from 512 to 456 on the 4090D variant. Beyond this the card is largely unchanged, with peak clock speeds rated at 2.52 GHz, 24 GB of GDDR6x memory, and a fat 384-bit memory bus.

As we reported at the time, the RTX 4090 was the only consumer graphics card barred from sale in the Middle Kingdom following the October publication of the Biden Administration's most restrictive set of export controls. The problem was the card narrowly exceeded the performance limits on consumer cards with a total processing performance (TPP) of more than 4,800. That number is calculated by doubling the max number of dense tera-operations per second -- floating point or integer -- and multiplying by the bit length of the operation.

The original 4090 clocked a TPP of 5,285 performance, which meant Nvidia needed a US government-issued license to sell the popular gaming card in China. Note, consumer cards aren't subject to the performance density metric that restricts the sale of much less powerful datacenter cards like the Nvidia L4. As it happens, cutting performance by 10.94 percent is enough to bring the card under the metrics that trigger the requirement for the USA's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) to consider an export license. Nvidia notes that the 4090D can be overclocked by end users, effectively allowing customers to recover some performance lost by the lower core count. "In 4K gaming with ray tracing and deep-learning super sampling (DLSS), the GeForce RTX 4090D is about five percent slower than the GeForce RTX 4090 and it operates like every other GeForce GPU, which can be overclocked by end users," an Nvidia spokesperson said in an email.

British households will benefit from improved routes for recycling electronic goods from 2026, under government plans to have producers and retailers pay for household and in-store collections. From a report: Consumers would be able to have electrical waste (e-waste) -- from cables to toasters and power tools -- collected from their homes or drop items off during a weekly shop, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said in a consultation published on Thursday. The ambition is for retailers, rather than the taxpayer, to pick up the tab for these new ways of disposing of defunct, often toxic products safely. The measures are due to come into force in two years' time.

Almost half a billion small electrical items ended up in landfill last year, according to data from the not-for-profit Material Focus. This problem was particularly acute during Christmas, when 500 tonnes of Christmas lights were thrown away, the government said. [...] Measures aimed at easing the problem of electronic waste now include requiring larger retailers to create "collection drop points for electrical items in-store" for free, and without the need to exchange this with a new purchase. From 2026 onward, bricks-and-mortar retailers and online sellers would have to collect any broken or rejected large electrical goods including fridges or cookers when they are delivering a replacement product, Defra said.

Financial Intelligence Unit, an Indian government agency which scrutinizes financial transactions, said Thursday nine global crypto exchanges -- including Binance, Kraken, Kucoin and Mexc -- are operating "illegally" in the country without complying with the local anti-money laundering act and asked the IT Ministry to block their websites. From a report: FIU said it has issued show cause notices to all nine firms. Global crypto exchanges are required to comply with India's anti-money laundering rules and cannot evade the guidelines just because they don't have physical presence in the country, the government agency said.

In October, Apple issued notifications warning over a half dozen India lawmakers of their iPhones being targets of state-sponsored attacks. According to a new report from the Washington Post, the Modi government responded by criticizing Apple's security and demanding explanations to mitigate political impact (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). From the report: Officials from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) publicly questioned whether the Silicon Valley company's internal threat algorithms were faulty and announced an investigation into the security of Apple devices. In private, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, senior Modi administration officials called Apple's India representatives to demand that the company help soften the political impact of the warnings. They also summoned an Apple security expert from outside the country to a meeting in New Delhi, where government representatives pressed the Apple official to come up with alternative explanations for the warnings to users, the people said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. "They were really angry," one of those people said.

The visiting Apple official stood by the company's warnings. But the intensity of the Indian government effort to discredit and strong-arm Apple disturbed executives at the company's headquarters, in Cupertino, Calif., and illustrated how even Silicon Valley's most powerful tech companies can face pressure from the increasingly assertive leadership of the world's most populous country -- and one of the most critical technology markets of the coming decade. The recent episode also exemplified the dangers facing government critics in India and the lengths to which the Modi administration will go to deflect suspicions that it has engaged in hacking against its perceived enemies, according to digital rights groups, industry workers and Indian journalists. Many of the more than 20 people who received Apple's warnings at the end of October have been publicly critical of Modi or his longtime ally, Gautam Adani, an Indian energy and infrastructure tycoon. They included a firebrand politician from West Bengal state, a Communist leader from southern India and a New Delhi-based spokesman for the nation's largest opposition party. [...] Gopal Krishna Agarwal, a national spokesman for the BJP, said any evidence of hacking should be presented to the Indian government for investigation.

The Modi government has never confirmed or denied using spyware, and it has refused to cooperate with a committee appointed by India's Supreme Court to investigate whether it had. But two years ago, the Forbidden Stories journalism consortium, which included The Post, found that phones belonging to Indian journalists and political figures were infected with Pegasus, which grants attackers access to a device's encrypted messages, camera and microphone. In recent weeks, The Post, in collaboration with Amnesty, found fresh cases of infections among Indian journalists. Additional work by The Post and New York security firm iVerify found that opposition politicians had been targeted, adding to the evidence suggesting the Indian government's use of powerful surveillance tools. In addition, Amnesty showed The Post evidence it found in June that suggested a Pegasus customer was preparing to hack people in India. Amnesty asked that the evidence not be detailed to avoid teaching Pegasus users how to cover their tracks. "These findings show that spyware abuse continues unabated in India," said Donncha O Cearbhaill, head of Amnesty International's Security Lab. "Journalists, activists and opposition politicians in India can neither protect themselves against being targeted by highly invasive spyware nor expect meaningful accountability."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The United States and the state of California have reached an agreement in principle with the truck engine manufacturer Cummins on a $1.6 billion penalty to settle claims that the company violated the Clean Air Act by installing devices to defeat emissions controls on hundreds of thousands of engines, the Justice Department announced on Friday. The penalty would be the largest ever under the Clean Air Act and the second largest ever environmental penalty in the United States. Defeat devices are parts or software that bypass, defeat or render inoperative emissions controls like pollution sensors and onboard computers. They allow vehicles to pass emissions inspections while still emitting high levels of smog-causing pollutants such as nitrogen oxide, which is linked to asthma and other respiratory illnesses.

The Justice Department has accused the company of installing defeat devices on 630,000 model year 2013 to 2019 RAM 2500 and 3500 pickup truck engines. The company is also alleged to have secretly installed auxiliary emission control devices on 330,000 model year 2019 to 2023 RAM 2500 and 3500 pickup truck engines. "Violations of our environmental laws have a tangible impact. They inflict real harm on people in communities across the country," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. "This historic agreement should make clear that the Justice Department will be aggressive in its efforts to hold accountable those who seek to profit at the expense of people's health and safety."

In a statement, Cummins said that it had "seen no evidence that anyone acted in bad faith and does not admit wrongdoing." The company said it has "cooperated fully with the relevant regulators, already addressed many of the issues involved, and looks forward to obtaining certainty as it concludes this lengthy matter. Cummins conducted an extensive internal review and worked collaboratively with the regulators for more than four years." Stellantis, the company that makes the trucks, has already recalled the model year 2019 trucks and has initiated a recall of the model year 2013 to 2018 trucks. The software in those trucks will be recalibrated to ensure that they are fully compliant with federal emissions law, said Jon Mills, a spokesman for Cummins. Mr. Mills said that "next steps are unclear" on the model year 2020 through 2023, but that the company "continues to work collaboratively with regulators" to resolve the issue. The Justice Department partnered with the Environmental Protection Agency in its investigation of the case.