fidzu : Nerd news

schwit1 shares a report from CNN: A private Chinese space firm successfully sent its Zhuque-3 rocket to orbit but failed in its historic attempt to re-land the rocket booster Wednesday -- the first such trial by a Chinese firm as the country's growing commercial space sector races to catch up with American rivals like SpaceX. The rocket entered orbit as planned, but its first stage did not successfully return to a landing site, instead crashing down, the company said in a statement. "An anomaly occurred after the first-stage engine ignited during the landing phase, preventing a soft landing on the designated recovery pad," the statement said. "The debris landed at the edge of the recovery area, resulting in a failed recovery test." The team would "conduct a comprehensive review" and continue to "advance the verification and application of reusable rocket technology in future missions," the statement added. You can watch a video of the launch and subsequent crash here.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

03 Dec 2025 3:15pm GMT

Comments

03 Dec 2025 3:11pm GMT

Comments

03 Dec 2025 2:42pm GMT

Comments

03 Dec 2025 2:40pm GMT

The Zig Software Foundation has quit GitHub after years of unresolved GitHub Actions bugs -- including a "safe_sleep" script that could spin forever and cripple CI runners. Zig leadership puts the blame on Microsoft's growing AI-first priorities and declining engineering quality. Other open-source developers are voicing similar frustrations. The Register reports: The drama began in April 2025 when GitHub user AlekseiNikiforovIBM started a thread titled "safe_sleep.sh rarely hangs indefinitely." GitHub addressed the problem in August, but didn't reveal that in the thread, which remained open until Monday. That timing appears notable. Last week, Andrew Kelly, president and lead developer of the Zig Software Foundation, announced that the Zig project is moving to Codeberg, a non-profit git hosting service, because GitHub no longer demonstrates commitment to engineering excellence. One piece of evidence he offered for that assessment was the "safe_sleep.sh rarely hangs indefinitely" thread. "Most importantly, Actions has inexcusable bugs while being completely neglected," Kelly wrote. "After the CEO of GitHub said to 'embrace AI or get out', it seems the lackeys at Microsoft took the hint, because GitHub Actions started 'vibe-scheduling' -- choosing jobs to run seemingly at random. Combined with other bugs and inability to manually intervene, this causes our CI system to get so backed up that not even master branch commits get checked."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

03 Dec 2025 2:14pm GMT

Comments

03 Dec 2025 1:50pm GMT

Comments

03 Dec 2025 1:20pm GMT

An anonymous reader quotes a report from GamesIndustry.biz: Japanese game makers are struggling to locate affordable commercial fonts after one of the country's leading font licensing services raised the cost of its annual plan from around $380 to $20,500 (USD). As reported by Gamemakers and GameSpark and translated by Automaton, Fontworks LETS discontinued its game license plan at the end of November. The expensive replacement plan -- offered through Fontwork's parent company, Monotype -- doesn't even provide local pricing for Japanese developers, and comes with a 25,000 user-cap, which is likely not workable for Japan's bigger studios. The problem is further compounded by the difficulties and complexities of securing fonts that can accurately transcribe Kanji and Katakana characters. UI/UX designer Yamanaka stressed that this would be particularly problematic for live service games; even if studios moved quickly and switched to fonts available through an alternate licensee, they will have to re-test, re-validate, and re-QA check content already live and in active use. The crisis could even eventually force some Japanese studios to rebrand entirely if their corporate identity is tied to a commercial font they can no longer afford to license.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

03 Dec 2025 1:13pm GMT

There has never been a better time to be a guitarist.

03 Dec 2025 12:15pm GMT

Comments

03 Dec 2025 12:14pm GMT

Comments

03 Dec 2025 11:50am GMT

Comments

03 Dec 2025 11:06am GMT

China's private launch firm LandSpace is preparing the debut flight of its Zhuque-3 rocket, aiming to become the country's first to land a reusable orbital-class booster using a Falcon-9-style return profile. Ars Technica reports: Liftoff could happen around 11 pm EST tonight (04:00 UTC Wednesday), or noon local time at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China. Airspace warning notices advising pilots to steer clear of the rocket's flight path suggest LandSpace has a launch window of about two hours. When it lifts off, the Zhuque-3 (Vermillion Bird-3) rocket will become the largest commercial launch vehicle ever flown in China. What's more, LandSpace will become the first Chinese launch provider to attempt a landing of its first stage booster, using the same tried-and-true return method pioneered by SpaceX and, more recently, Blue Origin in the United States. Construction crews recently finished a landing pad in the remote Gobi Desert, some 240 miles (390 kilometers) southeast of the launch site at Jiuquan. Unlike US spaceports, the Jiuquan launch base is located in China's interior, with rockets flying over land as they climb into space. When the Zhuque-3 booster finishes its job of sending the rocket toward orbit, it will follow an arcing trajectory toward the recovery zone, firing its engines to slow for landing about eight-and-a-half minutes after liftoff. At least, that's what is supposed to happen. LandSpace officials have not made any public statements about the odds of a successful landing -- or, for that matter, a successful launch... UPDATE: Chinese Reusable Booster Explodes During First Orbital Test

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

03 Dec 2025 10:10am GMT

Comments

03 Dec 2025 9:53am GMT

Comments

03 Dec 2025 7:52am GMT

Bruce66423 shares a report from the Los Angeles Times: Tattoo ink doesn't just sit inertly in the skin. New research shows it moves rapidly into the lymphatic system, where it can persist for months, kill immune cells, and even disrupt how the body responds to vaccines. Scientists in Switzerland used a mouse model to trace what happens after tattooing. Pigments drained into nearby lymph nodes within minutes and continued to accumulate for two months, triggering immune-cell death and sustained inflammation. The ink also weakened the antibody response to Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE's COVID vaccine when the shot was administered in tattooed skin. In contrast, the same inflammation appeared to boost responses to an inactivated flu vaccine. "This work represents the most extensive study to date regarding the effect of tattoo ink on the immune response and raises serious health concerns associated with the tattooing practice," the researchers said. "Our work underscores the need for further research to inform public health policies and regulatory frameworks regarding the safety of tattoo inks." The findings have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

03 Dec 2025 7:07am GMT

Comments

03 Dec 2025 6:34am GMT

Comments

03 Dec 2025 6:07am GMT

Anthropic has made its first acquisition by buying Bun, the engine behind its fast-growing Claude Code agent. The move strengthens Anthropic's push into enterprise developer tooling as it scales Claude Code with major backers like Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, and Google. Adweek reports: Claude Code is a coding agent that lets developers write, debug and interpret code through natural-language instructions. Claude Code had already hit $1 billion in revenue six months since its public debut in May, according to a LinkedIn post from Anthropic's chief product officer, Mike Krieger. The coding agent continues to barrel toward scale with customers like Netflix, Spotify, and Salesforce. Further reading: Meet Bun, a Speedy New JavaScript Runtime

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

03 Dec 2025 5:05am GMT

Comments

03 Dec 2025 4:32am GMT

Comments

03 Dec 2025 4:13am GMT

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The San Francisco city attorney filed on Tuesday the nation's first government lawsuit against food manufacturers over ultraprocessed fare (source may be paywalled; alternative source), arguing that cities and counties have been burdened with the costs of treating diseases that stem from the companies' products. David Chiu, the city attorney, sued 10 corporations that make some of the country's most popular food and drinks. Ultraprocessed products now comprise 70 percent of the American food supply and fill grocery store shelves with a kaleidoscope of colorful packages. Think Slim Jim meat sticks and Cool Ranch Doritos. But also aisles of breads, sauces and granola bars marketed as natural or healthy. It is a rare issue on which the liberal leaders in San Francisco City Hall are fully aligned with the Trump administration, which has targeted ultraprocessed foods as part of its Make America Healthy Again mantra. Mr. Chiu's lawsuit, which was filed in San Francisco Superior Court on behalf of the State of California, seeks unspecified damages for the costs that local governments bear for treating residents whose health has been harmed by ultraprocessed food. The city accuses the companies of "unfair and deceptive acts" in how they market and sell their foods, arguing that such practices violate the state's Unfair Competition Law and public nuisance statute. The city also argues the companies knew that their food made people sick but sold it anyway.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

03 Dec 2025 3:03am GMT

A Waymo robotaxi struck a small unleashed dog in San Francisco -- just weeks after another Waymo killed a beloved neighborhood cat. The dog's condition is unknown. The Los Angeles Times reports: The incident occurred near the intersection of Scott and Eddy streets and drew a small crowd, according to social media posts. A person claiming to be one of the passengers posted about the accident on Reddit. "Our Waymo just ran over a dog," the passenger wrote. "Kids saw the whole thing." The passenger described the dog as between 20 and 30 pounds and wrote that their family was traveling back home after a holiday tree lighting event. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has recorded Waymo taxis as being involved in at least 14 animal collisions since 2021. "Unfortunately, a Waymo vehicle made contact with a small, unleashed dog in the roadway," a company spokesperson said. "We are dedicated to learning from this situation and how we show up for our community as we continue improving road safety in the cities we serve." The spokesperson added that Waymo vehicles have a much lower rate of injury-causing collisions than human drivers. Human drivers run into millions of animals while driving each year. "I'm not sure a human driver would have avoided the dog either, though I do know that a human would have responded differently to a 'bump' followed by a car full of screaming people," the Waymo passenger wrote on Reddit. One person who commented on the discussion said that Waymo vehicles should be held to a higher standard than human drivers, because the autonomous taxis are supposed to improve road safety. "The whole point of this is because Waymo isn't supposed to make those mistakes," the person wrote on Reddit.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

03 Dec 2025 2:02am GMT

During last month's KubeCon North America in Atlanta, Kubernetes maintainers announced the upcoming retirement of Ingress NGINX. "Best-effort maintenance will continue until March 2026," noted the Kubernetes SIG Network and the Security Response Committee. "Afterward, there will be no further releases, no bugfixes, and no updates to resolve any security vulnerabilities that may be discovered." In a recent op-ed for The Register, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols reflects on the decision and speculates about what might have prevented this outcome: Ingress NGINX, for those who don't know it, is an ingress controller in Kubernetes clusters that manages and routes external HTTP and HTTPS traffic to the cluster's internal services based on configurable Ingress rules. It acts as a reverse proxy, ensuring that requests from clients outside the cluster are forwarded to the correct backend services within the cluster according to path, domain, and TLS configuration. As such, it's vital for network traffic management and load balancing. You know, the important stuff. Now this longstanding project, once celebrated for its flexibility and breadth of features, will soon be "abandonware." So what? After all, it won't be the first time a once-popular program shuffled off the stage. Off the top of my head, dBase, Lotus 1-2-3, and VisiCalc spring to my mind. What's different is that there are still thousands of Ingress NGINX controllers in use. Why is it being put down, then, if it's so popular? Well, there is a good reason. As Tabitha Sable, a staff engineer at Datadog who is also co-chair of the Kubernetes special interest group for security, pointed out: "Ingress NGINX has always struggled with insufficient or barely sufficient maintainership. For years, the project has had only one or two people doing development work, on their own time, after work hours, and on weekends. Last year, the Ingress NGINX maintainers announced their plans to wind down Ingress NGINX and develop a replacement controller together with the Gateway API community. Unfortunately, even that announcement failed to generate additional interest in helping maintain Ingress NGINX or develop InGate to replace it." [...] The final nail in the coffin was when security company Wix found a killer Ingress NGINX security hole. How bad was it? Wix declared: "Exploiting this flaw allows an attacker to execute arbitrary code and access all cluster secrets across namespaces, which could lead to complete cluster takeover." [...] You see, the real problem isn't that Ingress NGINX has a major security problem. Heck, hardly a month goes by without another stop-the-presses Windows bug being uncovered. No, the real issue is that here we have yet another example of a mission-critical open source program no one pays to support...

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

03 Dec 2025 1:01am GMT

OpenAI has reportedly issued a "code red" on Monday, pausing projects like ads, shopping agents, health tools, and its Pulse assistant to focus entirely on improving ChatGPT. "This includes core features like greater speed and reliability, better personalization, and the ability to answer more questions," reports The Verge, citing a memo reported by the Wall Street Journal and The Information. "There will be a daily call for those tasked with improving the chatbot, the memo said, and Altman encouraged temporary team transfers to speed up development." From the report: The newfound urgency illustrates an inflection point for OpenAI as it spends hundreds of billions of dollars to fund growth and figures out a path to future profitability. It is also something of a full-circle moment in the AI race. Google, which declared its own "code red" after the arrival of ChatGPT, is a particular concern. Google's AI user base is growing -- helped by the success of popular tools like the Nano Banana image model -- and its latest AI model, Gemini 3, blew past its competitors on many industry benchmarks and popular metrics.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

03 Dec 2025 12:00am GMT

Apple does not plan to comply with India's mandate to preload its smartphones with a state-owned cyber safety app that cannot be disabled. According to Reuters, the order "sparked surveillance concerns and a political uproar" after it was revealed on Monday. From the report: In the wake of the criticism, India's telecom minister Jyotiraditya M. Scindia on Tuesday said the app was a "voluntary and democratic system," adding that users can choose to activate it and can "easily delete it from their phone at any time." At present, the app can be deleted by users. Scindia did not comment on or clarify the November 28 confidential directive that ordered smartphone makers to start preloading it and ensure "its functionalities are not disabled or restricted." Apple however does not plan to comply with the directive and will tell the government it does not follow such mandates anywhere in the world as they raise a host of privacy and security issues for the company's iOS ecosystem, said two of the industry sources who are familiar with Apple's concerns. They declined to be named publicly as the company's strategy is private. "Its not only like taking a sledgehammer, this is like a double-barrel gun," said the first source.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

02 Dec 2025 11:23pm GMT

The last Trump official in the position left amid allegations of petty revenge.

02 Dec 2025 11:17pm GMT

From the outside, China's Zhuque-3 rocket looks like a clone of SpaceX's Falcon 9.

02 Dec 2025 11:04pm GMT

Three years after Google sounded alarm bells over ChatGPT, the tables have turned.

02 Dec 2025 10:42pm GMT

The UK government plans to ban political donations made in cryptocurrency over fears of anonymity, foreign influence, and traceability issues, though the ban won't be ready in time for the upcoming elections bill. The Guardian reports: The government's ambition to ban crypto donations will be a blow to Nigel Farage's Reform UK party, which became the first to accept contributions in digital currency this year. It is believed to have received its first registrable donations in cryptocurrency this autumn and the party has set up its own crypto portal to receive contributions, saying it is subject to "enhanced" checks. Government sources have said ministers believe cryptocurrency donations to be a problem, as they are difficult to trace and could be exploited by foreign powers or criminals. Pat McFadden, then a Cabinet Office minister, first raised the idea in July, saying: "I definitely think it is something that the Electoral Commission should be considering. I think that it's very important that we know who is providing the donation, are they properly registered, what are the bona fides of that donation." The Electoral Commission provides guidance on crypto donations but ministers accept any ban would probably have to come from the government through legislation. "Crypto donations present real risks to our democracy," said Susan Hawley, the executive director of Spotlight on Corruption. "We know that bad actors like Russia use crypto to undermine and interfere in democracies globally, while the difficulties involved in tracing the true source of transactions means that British voters may not know everyone who's funding the parties they vote for."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

02 Dec 2025 10:22pm GMT

Producer Lionsgate reportedly contributed to the gaffe.

02 Dec 2025 9:52pm GMT

Apple will refuse to preload state-run "snooping" app on iPhones, report says.

02 Dec 2025 9:36pm GMT

AWS is deepening its partnership with Nvidia by adopting "NVLink Fusion" in its upcoming Trainium4 AI chips. "The NVLink technology creates speedy connections between different kinds of chips and is one of Nvidia's crown jewels," notes Reuters. From the report: Nvidia has been pushing to sign up other chip firms to adopt its NVLink technology, with Intel, Qualcomm and now AWS on board. The technology will help AWS build bigger AI servers that can recognize and communicate with one another faster, a critical factor in training large AI models, in which thousands of machines must be strung together. As part of the Nvidia partnership, customers will have access to what AWS is calling AI Factories, exclusive AI infrastructure inside their own data centers for greater speed and readiness. Separately, Amazon said it is rolling out new servers based on a chip called Trainium3. The new servers, available on Tuesday, each contain 144 chips and have more than four times the computing power of AWS's previous generation of AI, while using 40% less power, Dave Brown, vice president of AWS compute and machine learning services, told Reuters. Brown did not give absolute figures on power or performance, but said AWS aims to compete with rivals -- including Nvidia -- based on price. "Together, Nvidia and AWS are creating the compute fabric for the AI industrial revolution - bringing advanced AI to every company, in every country, and accelerating the world's path to intelligence," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

02 Dec 2025 9:21pm GMT

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: The popular open-source SmartTube YouTube client for Android TV was compromised after an attacker gained access to the developer's signing keys, leading to a malicious update being pushed to users. The compromise became known when multiple users reported that Play Protect, Android's built-in antivirus module, blocked SmartTube on their devices and warned them of a risk. The developer of SmartTube, Yuriy Yuliskov, admitted that his digital keys were compromised late last week, leading to the injection of malware into the app. Yuliskov revoked the old signature and said he would soon publish a new version with a separate app ID, urging users to move to that one instead. [...] A user who reverse-engineered the compromised SmartTube version number 30.51 found that it includes a hidden native library named libalphasdk.so [VirusTotal]. This library does not exist in the public source code, so it is being injected into release builds. [...] The library runs silently in the background without user interaction, fingerprints the host device, registers it with a remote backend, and periodically sends metrics and retrieves configuration via an encrypted communications channel. All this happens without any visible indication to the user. While there's no evidence of malicious activity such as account theft or participation in DDoS botnets, the risk of enabling such activities at any time is high.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

02 Dec 2025 8:20pm GMT

Comments

02 Dec 2025 8:14pm GMT

Valve has work to do on the software side-but some fixes are coming.

02 Dec 2025 7:26pm GMT

Michael and Susan Dell pledged $6.25 billion to boost participation in the new "Trump Accounts" child investment program. "The historic gift has little precedent, with few single charitable commitments in the past 25 years exceeding $1 billion, much less multiple billions," notes the Associated Press. "Announced on GivingTuesday, the Dells believe it's the largest single private commitment made to U.S. children." From the report: Its structure is also unusual. Essentially, it builds on the "Trump Accounts" program (PDF), where the U.S. Department of the Treasury will deposit $1,000 into investment accounts set up by Treasury for American children born between Jan. 1, 2025 and Dec. 31, 2028. The Dells' gift will use the "Trump Accounts" infrastructure to give $250 to each qualified child under 10. Though the "Trump Accounts" became law as part of the president's signature legislation in July, the Dells say the accounts will not launch until July 4, 2026. Michael Dell said they wanted to mark the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence. [...] Under the new law, "Trump Accounts" are available to any American child under 18 with a Social Security number and their families can fund the accounts, which must be invested in an index fund that tracks the overall stock market. When the children turn 18, they can withdraw the funds to put toward their education, to buy a home or to start a business. The Dells will put money into the accounts of children 10 and younger who live in ZIP codes with a median family income of $150,000 or less and who won't get the $1,000 seed money from the Treasury. The Dells hope their gift will encourage families to claim the accounts and deposit more money into it, even small amounts, so it will grow over time along with the stock market. The report notes that the timed rollout of the $1,000 deposits gives Republicans a strategic political advantage by delivering money to voters during the 2026 midterms and halting the benefit right after the 2028 presidential election.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

02 Dec 2025 7:19pm GMT

The update is rolling out to Pixels starting today.

02 Dec 2025 7:11pm GMT

Comments

02 Dec 2025 6:10pm GMT

Milhoan has a history of touting unproven COVID cures while disparaging vaccines.

02 Dec 2025 5:57pm GMT

Samsung's long-awaited tri-fold phone is launching in Korea this month, with a US launch early next year.

02 Dec 2025 4:47pm GMT

Study: Moai were created by small, decentralized working groups, not managed by one central "chieftain."

02 Dec 2025 4:23pm GMT

A key driver of US renewable energy research is now the National Laboratory of the Rockies.

02 Dec 2025 4:01pm GMT

"This would be a cheap insurance policy."

02 Dec 2025 3:30pm GMT

Avellone recaps his journey from learning on a TRS-80 to today.

02 Dec 2025 3:04pm GMT

New research offers clues about why some prompt injection attacks may succeed.

02 Dec 2025 12:15pm GMT

One of Vladimir Putin's favorite sabres to rattle seems to have lost its edge.

01 Dec 2025 11:36pm GMT