This will be one of the first commercial Unreal Engine 5-based games released. It was developed by a new team, Hexworks. The first gameplay trailer for Lords of the Fallen was also posted today, showing off some impressive-looking graphics and monsters, with Iron Maiden's "Fear of the Dark" as its soundtrack. Here's a summary of what to expect from the full game:

Taking place more than a thousand years after the events of the first game, Lords of the Fallen introduces an all-new adventure in a vast, interconnected world, more than five times larger than the original game. An expansive RPG experience – filled with NPC quests, compelling characters, and rich narrative – players will need to create their own hero before tackling the immersive single player campaign. They will also have the option to invite a second player to join their adventure in uninterrupted online co-op – a new feature for the franchise.

CI Games will release three editions of Lords of the Fallen. The standard edition will just have the game, while the deluxe edition will include extra digital and in-game items like the ability to play as the Dark Crusader character immediately. The collector's edition will include a 10-inch statue of the Dark Crusader.

Other upcoming Unreal Engine 5 games due out in 2023 include the horror game reboot Layers of Fear, and the fantasy-themed first-person shooter Immortals of Aveum.

Unreal Engine 5-based RPG Lords of the Fallen gets an October 13 release date

Google has pushed Shorts to YouTube's homepage and various other sections on the site. There is no direct option to disable that section on the video platform, but third-party extensions come to the rescue.

YouTube Shorts focuses on vertical videos that do not exceed a playtime of 60 seconds. Shorts is Google's attempt to keep YouTube relevant and competitive, especially in regards to TikTok.

Launched globally in July 2021, Shorts has seen a number of improvements, including revenue share opportunities for publishers.

Hiding YouTube Shorts is best done with browser extensions.

Hide YouTube Shorts in Google Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers

Chrome and Chromium-based web browser users may block Shorts on YouTube in the following way:

1. Load the Hide YouTube Shorts Chrome Web Store website in the web browser.
2. Activate the "Add to" button on the page.
3. Confirm the prompt that is displayed to install the extension in the web browser.

The extension works automatically and will hide Shorts on YouTube, including on the Home, Trending and Subscription pages on YouTube, the recommended list, notification menu, Channel pages and in search results.

Please note that you need to reload any open YouTube tabs if they have been open prior to the installation of the extension in the web browser.

A click on the extension icon in the browser displays options to allow Shorts on select pages on YouTube. Users who do not want to see Shorts anywhere do not need to open the menu, but users who may want to see Shorts on some pages may customize the hiding here.

These extensions can't be installed in most Chromium mobile browsers, as these do not support extensions.

Hiding Shorts in Firefox

Firefox users may do the following to hide Shorts on YouTube in their web browser:

• Visit the Hide YouTube-Shorts extension page on the Mozilla Add-ons store.
• Activate the "add to Firefox" button on the page.
• Confirm the installation prompt.

The extension hides Shorts on YouTube automatically.  A click on the extension icon displays an option to hide the Shorts tab on YouTube as well, or to reveal Shorts again.

Firefox Beta and Nightly on mobile support custom add-on collections, which means that users of the browser may add this extension to their listing to integrate it into Firefox mobile.

Now You: do you watch Shorts on YouTube or elsewhere?

How to hide the Shorts section on YouTube

4A Games is celebrating a special birthday this week. Metro: Last Light has turned 10, and to mark the occasion, the developer is making it free for everyone on PC. You might already own the game on the Epic Games Store from a previous freebie promotion, but this latest offer is for a Steam copy.

Coming in as the second entry in the popular post-apocalyptic first-person shooter series, Metro: Last Night continues the story of Artyom. Once again, players are in the Moscow Metro, a network that is largely safe from the radiation and mutated creatures on the surface. The title puts focus on immersion, with it using mostly audio and visual cues and a minimal HUD to convey information.

Here's how the developer describes the setting:

In 2013 the world was devastated by an apocalyptic event, annihilating almost all mankind and turning the earth’s surface into a poisonous wasteland. A handful of survivors took refuge in the depths of the Moscow underground, and human civilization entered a new Dark Age.

Metro: Last Light is now free to claim on Steam, with only a free account needed to add the title to a library. The promotion will last an entire week too, ending on May 25.

Metro: Last Light goes free to claim on Steam celebrating 10-year Anniversary

The decaying glory of the Titanic like you've never seen before.

Using a ship positioned near the wreck, some 700 kilometers (435 miles) off the east coast of Canada, the team deployed two submersibles - named Romeo and Juliet (although shouldn't that be Rose and Jack?) – that spent many hours detailing the wreck at a depth of around 3,800 meters (12,500 feet) below the water's surface.

It gathered a massive 16 terabytes of data, as well as over 715,000 images and full 4k video footage of the wreck. 

This was then used to create a “Digital Twin” of the wreck. The team has boasted that the digital model has such extraordinary detail that it’s even possible to see the serial number on the ship’s propeller. 

The serial code on the ship's propeller.

“This is the Titanic as no one had ever seen it before,” Gerhard Seiffert, 3D Capture Specialist at Magellan, said in a statement sent to IFLScience.

“When we saw the data come in it was all worth it – the level of detail we saw and recorded was extraordinary,” he added. 

“What we've created is a highly accurate photorealistic 3D model of the wreck. Previously footage has only allowed you to see one small area of the wreck at a time. This model will allow people to zoom out and to look at the entire thing for the first time. So, by capturing this 3D model, what we're able to do is visualize the wreck in a completely new way, there's all kinds of amazing small little details that you can see,” Seiffert continued. 

RMS Titanic was the supposedly "unsinkable" ocean liner that famously sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912, after striking an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton in England to New York City. 

At least 1,500 passengers died and the wreck sunk to the seabed, some 4,000 meters (13,123 feet) below sea level around 740 kilometers (400 nautical miles) from Newfoundland in Canada.

The final resting place of the Titanic wasn’t discovered until September 1985, 73 years after it met its icy fate. 

The latest scanning project is helping to shed light on the latest chapter of the Titanic’s story: its rusting demise into ruins. 

“I have been studying Titanic for 20 years, but this is a true game-changer,” explained Parks Stephenson, Titanic Expert.

“We've got actual data that engineers can take to examine the true mechanics behind the breakup and the sinking and thereby get even closer to the true story of the Titanic disaster. For the next generation of Titanic exploration, research, and analysis, this is the beginning of a new chapter,” said Stephenson. 

Source

Generative AI is a revolutionary technology that's expected to change society as we know it but, in parallel, copyright concerns persist. During a House Judiciary IP Subcommittee Hearing yesterday it was made clear that Congress doesn't plan to overreact. Lawmakers hope to find the middle ground, but that could be easier said than done.

U.S. Congress Doesn’t Plan to Overreact to Generative AI Copyright Challenges

Amazon keeps investing more in the South Asian market, mainly in India. The company recently announced that it will invest $4.4 billion in the South Asian economy to grow AWS in the area. Now, Amazon announced its bigger plans, consisting of investing $12.7 million in India by 2030. AWS is currently one of the most dominant companies in India when it comes to cloud services.

"AWS is committed to driving positive social and economic impact in India. In addition to building cloud infrastructure and helping local customers and partners digitally transform, we have trained more than four million people in India with cloud skills since 2017 and invested in six utility-scale renewable energy projects to meet our global 100% renewable energy goal by 2025," said Puneet Chandok, president of commercial business at AWS India and South Asia.

Amazon, which previously spent $3.7 billion in AWS infrastructure in India and currently operates two data center regions in the South Asian market, stated that its investments will support 131,700 full-time employment in fields like engineering, telecommunications, and construction.

AWS is one of many to invest in India recently

India has always been an attractive place for technology companies. Still, AWS announced a couple of days after another tech company revealed that it will be expanding its work in the company. Foxconn recently announced a $500 million investment in Telangana, India.

Foxconn is attempting to extend its presence in the South Asian market, particularly in India. Earlier this year, the business won a proposal to manufacture AirPods in the nation, and it has now committed to investing $500 million in Telangana, India, with local officials. K.T. Rama Rao, Telangana's IT minister, stated that Foxconn's plan will create 25,000 direct employees in the first phase.

Besides, Apple and Google have also announced that they will expand their phone production in the country. The United States will drive the country's resilient growth through the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment. PGII is a G7-led initiative that aims to support promising/infrastructure projects in developing countries, and India is one of them.

AWS unveils $12.7 billion investment plan in India

A few days ago, it was leaked that Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti will be released on 24th May. With 16GB version of the same card and RTX 4060 (non-Ti) expected to release two months later in July.

However, while we knew about the release dates, we didn’t know much about their specs and costs, until now.

RTX 4060 Ti Leaked Specs

VideoCardz reports that the specs of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti has seemingly leaked on benchmarking software Geekbench.

The Geekbench results show that RTX 4060 Ti could come with 4352 CUDA cores. This is, in-fact, lesser than what was found in RTX 3060 Ti, but that’s for later. The max frequency this card is expected to run at is 2.54 GHz.

Additionally, the graphics card will feature just 8GB VRAM that will run at 18Gbps speed.

In terms of performance, the RTX 4060 Ti graphics card is just 9% faster than the previous-gen RTX 3060 Ti graphics card. While this is massively disappointing, these synthetic benchmarks like Geekbench are not comparable to actual gaming performance.

Either-way, the reason these specs are being available because it’s possible that Nvidia has sent these graphics cards to the reviewers and they are testing them right now.

Pricing Leaks For RTX 4060 Ti

Well known Twitter based leaker MEGAsizeGPU has posted the prices for the RTX 4060 Ti graphics cards.

He says that the prices for RTX 4060 Ti 8GB will start at $399. While the 16GB version of RTX 4060 Ti will start at $499.

The reason we say start at is that these are just rumored MSRP. The real prices by board partners are expected to be higher.

Disappointing Specs

Honestly speaking, the specs and pricing for the RTX 4060 Ti, if true, are massively disappointing. To understand that, one needs to look at the chart we created below.

Notice a few things above.

First look at how CUDA cores have doubled from RTX 2060 Super to RTX 3060 Ti. Now look at the CUDA Cores in RTX 4060 Ti, instead of an increase, Nvidia is in-fact decreasing them.

Then look at the clock speeds. So while Nvidia is decreasing the CUDA cores, it wants to compensate that with higher clock rates. Meaning that while RTX 4060 Ti will perform faster than RTX 3060 Ti, it would be more due to improvements in the tech and increase in clock speeds, not an increase in specs.

Another thing to notice is that we are getting a new xx60 Ti card after more than 2 years, yet, Nvidia doesn’t bother to increase the VRAM size for the base model. Nvidia has come under a lot of criticism because games these days are not doing nicely with 8GB VRAM, which Nvidia insists on. So to keep people happy, it’s releasing a 16GB version. But a $100 more is just not justified.

In-fact, it’s instead cutting the memory bus size, which in turn decreases the memory bandwidth. This means that at higher resolution, the RTX 4060 Ti is expected to do badly, no matter how much VRAM you put in it.

Overall, the specs for the RTX 4060 Ti are quite disappointing. However, it’s expected to release on 24th May and reviews could be out a day before. So, let’s see how it actually performs in the reviews when it releases.

Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti Specs & Price Gets Leaked, To Cost $399

• The creator of the post-apocalyptic RPG series, Tim Cain, has revealed how Interplay Entertainment settled on the franchise's name.
• After struggling to choose a title, Cain hosed a brainstorming session in which the developers at the studio threw out a variety of different suggestions.
• One of these names was Fallout, which ended up sticking after Cain had a discussion with Interplay's founder Brian Fargo.

Fallout is one of the best RPG franchises of all time, but have you ever wondered how its original developers settled on its name? If so, you'll be happy to know that we now have an answer, as series creator Tim Cain has revealed how Interplay Entertainment chose the title in 1996 — one year before the release of Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game.

"It's very very hard to come up with a name for a game. Especially a new game, with new mechanics, and a new setting and new characters...you would think, there's a whole team of creative people who've been working on it, they can just go, 'Boom! This is the name'...it doesn't work that way," said Cain, discussing the difficulty Interplay had picking a name in a video on his YouTube channel. "It's hard to come up with a word or two that captures the essence of your game." Cain also noted that the developers wanted to avoid a title that had connotations, could be shortened into an unfortunate acronym, or included overused terms.

When Cain first began developing Fallout solo, it was simply named Test Bed after the titles he gave to the various engines he was trying out. Then, when Interplay got the license to use the Generic Universal RolePlaying System (GURPS), its label was changed to GURPS. It wasn't until the team began creating the game's setting that the project got its first serious name Vault 13, which is the underground bunker you begin the game in. But Cain soon realized that Vault 13 wouldn't cut it.

"I said, 'If we ever make a sequel, we cannot call this game Vault 13 because what would the sequel be? Vault 13...2? Vault 14? More Vault 13?' It was a bad name," Cain said. "So that's when I said that we need to come up with something better."

Cain explained that the developers had a brainstorming session in which team members were encouraged to suggest anything that came to mind. "I asked people to come to the conference room and just throw out ideas," Cain said. "And I will say, I said, 'No idea will be critiqued,' although I may critique them now," he added.

The cover art of 1997's Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game, the first game in the series. (Image credit: Interplay Entertainment)

Reading through his "Naming the Game" notes from 1996, Cain listed every suggestion from this session with a huge grin on his face. These included The Vault, Ground-Zero, Survivors, Warriors of the Apocalypse, Radstorm ("I think that one was mine," Cain said with a grimace), Nuclear Winter, Doomsday Winter, After the Bomb, and many, many more. Among these names, though, was Fallout. And while Cain didn't like it initially, he ended up loving it after Interplay founder Brian Fargo (now the CEO of inXile Entertainment, the studio behind Wasteland 3) gave it his approval.

"Every now and then I'd have meetings with Brian Fargo, and I suggested to him what I thought were the best ones on this list ... I don't think I mentioned Fallout. My programmer brain back then was like, 'Fallout? There's no fallout, it's 80 years later, that kind of ionizing radiation has decayed,'" Cain said, making fun of his original opinion. "Brian came back the next day and said, 'Why don't you just name it Fallout? Great name, it's a word, probably won't even be shortened.' ... And I kinda didn't like it, and I said, 'Let me think about it.'"

"Sure enough, the next morning I woke up and went, 'Fallout is actually a really good name.' I suggested it to the team...boom. Everybody loved it. ... Fallout is a nice short name. Captures the essence of the game," he continued. "You say 'Fallout,' and you immediately think, 'Well this is probably a post-apocalyptic game. And it's probably not a happy post-apocalyptic game.' So Fallout fits perfectly. And that's where the whole series got its name."

Fallout creator Tim Cain reveals how the legendary RPG got its name

Meanwhile, as of 2018, about 80% of the country's wastewater—including water used in agriculture, power plants, and mines—gets dumped back into the world, untreated and unusable, a wasted opportunity. And although today's go-to purification technologies, which use a process called reverse osmosis, are still the most cost-effective and energy-efficient way to treat seawater and briny groundwater, conventional reverse osmosis cannot handle super-salty waters—those containing double the salt content of the ocean. As U.S. water supplies shrink (and get saltier), the country can no longer afford to dump even the saltiest sources back into the world.

Now, in a new study published in Desalination, members of the National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI) research consortium analyzed an emerging form of reverse osmosis, called low-salt-rejection reverse osmosis. These novel systems could treat even highly salty water. But the design is so new it is still theoretical.

So, to learn how these technologies might compete with other water treatment options, the NAWI research team developed a mathematical model that could, with help from a supercomputer, quickly evaluate the cost, clean water output, and energy consumption of more than 130,000 potential system designs. Their results show that, in many cases, low-salt-rejection reverse osmosis could be the most cost-effective choice, potentially reducing the overall cost of producing clean water by up to 63%.

"The ultimate goal of this research is to conduct a thorough techno-economic evaluation of a new technology that hasn't been tested in the real world yet but has the potential to enable high-water-recovery desalination," said Adam Atia, a senior engineer at the National Energy Technology Laboratory and the paper's lead author.

Although a few studies have evaluated the potential cost and efficiency of low-salt-rejection reverse osmosis systems, this study offers a more comprehensive analysis of their design, operation, and performance. To better understand the potential promise of these theoretical systems, the team used a supercomputer to hone in on the most optimal, cost-effective designs. They then explored how those designs might function in hundreds of thousands of scenarios (as opposed to just a handful).

Because low-salt-rejection reverse osmosis systems allow more salt to pass through each membrane, they require less force—and therefore less energy—to push the water through. But, if more salt can squeeze through, the resulting water is, not surprisingly, still too salty to drink. To produce potable water, this still-too-salty water gets recycled back into the previous membrane stages. Once the salt content is low enough, standard reverse osmosis can take care of the rest, generating high-quality drinking water.

All that recycling adds to the system's complexity. So, the team needed to find out: How many membrane stages are optimal? How many recycling loops are needed? And how much cost and energy do those loops add? To answer these questions, researchers could calculate, individually, how much clean water each design could produce from waters with different concentrations of salt.

"That would potentially take a really, really, really long time for them to solve," said Ethan Young, a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and an author on the study. "We were able to do it in a few minutes with high-performance computing."

And, in those few minutes, they examined not one but hundreds of thousands of potential scenarios.

"The novelty of our study is the computational force power we brought to bear on this analysis," added Bernard (Ben) Knueven, a fellow NREL researcher and author.

Without a supercomputer, all those calculations would take about 88 days instead of one hour or even a few minutes, Young said. Of course, the supercomputer also needed Knueven and Young's mathematical magic to solve these complex design problems both quickly and accurately.

With all that speedy math, the team discovered that low-salt-rejection reverse osmosis could outperform its competitors in both cost and energy use—at least for water containing less than 125 grams of salt per liter. But the team's model could also help other research teams identify, build, and test the most promising system designs.

"The hope is, by doing these computational analyses, we can give the experimentalists information to say, 'Oh, here's an interesting thing to study,' or, 'No, this is probably completely ruled out,'" Knueven said.

The model could be expanded, too, to help experimentalists hone in on the best designs for reverse osmosis systems, generally. Their study is the first to both use and add to NAWI's Water treatment Technoeconomic Assessment Platform (WaterTAP). A publicly available software tool, WaterTAP gives users the power to model and simulate various water treatment technologies and evaluate their cost, energy, and environmental trade-offs.

"I think it's so cool. We're building a tool that can help us and other researchers assess the potential of new and exciting technologies," Knueven said of WaterTAP, which was built through a collaboration between NREL, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the National Energy Technology Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Regents of the University of California.

Next, the researchers hope to partner with experimental teams to build and evaluate how low-salt-rejection reverse osmosis systems function in the real world. Mineral buildup, for example, could slow the system down and should be accounted for in future evaluations.

Even so, Atia said, this emerging form of reverse osmosis could be a valuable tool to maximize water recovery from high-salinity sources. "And our model can play a key role in supporting the technology's deployment," he said.

"To me," Knueven said, "it's a demonstration of what we can do with a little bit of computation and a little bit of optimization."

More than a month ago, Nvidia released the GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card to the public.

The reviews for the card weren’t that great. It costs as much as RTX 3070 Ti while performing only as good as RTX 3080. The generational uplift in performance is just 30%. Which is far lesser than 50% performance uplift which Nvidia usually provides.

While the power efficiency and ray tracing performance of RTX 4070 is good, overall the card has been a big disappointment.

Also, though the card is having good sales as per the data available for the German retailer Mindfactory, that data is limited just to the region.

In fact, outside Germany, the sales of the RTX 4070 are so bad that Nvidia has temporarily halted the supply of the GPU to its board partners.

RTX 4070 Supply Halted

MoneyDJ reports (translated) that Nvidia had stopped the supply of the RTX 4070 GPU to its board partners in April itself due to poor sales.

It says that while the supply was expected to resume in May. it hasn’t. In fact, it could be that this halting of GPU supply might continue well into the month of June, too.

The report mentions that while initial supply could have been good, overall it’s not selling much due to inflation and other reasons such as hike in interest rates. Because of that, only the loyal Nvidia fan-base is expected to buy the card, which is not enough to increase the overall sales.

Meanwhile, the Nvidia board partners are eagerly waiting for Nvidia to release RTX 4060 series, so that sales of graphics card board partners increase again.

The report also points out that similarly, even RTX 4080 wasn’t selling much. At least as compared to RTX 4090 which was released earlier. Hence, to prevent over-inventory of not one, but two GPUs, Nvidia seems to have stopped the supply of RTX 4070.

Reasons

The report gives out some reason why sales of RTX 4070 are not great. Like Nvidia concentrating more on servers. Then Nvidia controlling the inventory to make sure RTX 30 series graphics cards are completely sold out first. The third reason given is to control the price. Nvidia probably doesn’t want prices to get too cheap.

The biggest reason we personally feel is that RTX 4070 is just not good enough. It costs a lot and it competes only with RTX 3080 and AMD’s RX 6800 XT. So nothing ground breaking. Additionally, it comes with 12GB VRAM, which would have been fine, but games these days are really demanding so 16GB VRAM is becoming a must for a card like RTX 4070.

Overall sales of such cards are expected to disappoint. We feel the only way Nvidia can fix it is not to control it’s supply, but to make them cheaper for everyone. Because it doesn’t cost that much to make them.

RTX 4070 GPU Hardly Selling, Nvidia Has Halted Its Supply

In a news post, Blizzard stated that BlizzCon 2023 would be held on November 3-4 at its traditional venue, the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California. Details about the event itself, including when tickets will go on sale, will be revealed at a later date. However, special hotel room rates are already available to reserve.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Blizzard elected to cancel BlizzCon in 2020. In February 2021, it held a virtual event to reveal some new titles and updates on its current and upcoming games. There were plans for an online-only BlizzCon for February 2022, but in October 2021, Blizzard announced those plans were not only canceled but that the developer would "take the time to reimagine what a BlizzCon event of the future could look like." It would appear those plans now mean a return to an in-person event.

Previous BlizzCon events have seen the developer reveal all new games, along with new entries in familiar franchises. It will be held several months after Blizzard will release one of its most anticipated games, Diablo IV, in early June.

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Blizzard finally brings back the in-person BlizzCon to Anaheim, California on November 3-4

Players heading to the city of Lorville on planet Hurston will now see an overhauled skyline that better reflects the scale of the city. Being one of the first cities that was added to the title, the upgrade gives it a new layout, updated buildings, and more. "The goal is to create the visual identity for the high-end, low-end, and generic branding of the city skyline and add navigational signage around the landing zone," the developer explains.

Salvaging wrecks for profit is also a career option for players now. Various mission types, ranging from lawful, lawless, to unlawful, are now available with objectives that have them salvaging and scrapping derelict ships.

Speaking of salvaging, the hand-held tractor beam has had a major upgrade. It can now detach intact parts from ships like engines, weapons systems, and missiles, and easily reattach them onto other ships . As for gameplay uses, this can be used by players to restock their depleted ammo stocks using defeated enemy ships, trade with friends without using menus, carry additional ship equipment in cargo holds, and more.

New players are also a focus in this update, with a New Player Experience Mission Chain now being offered when logging into the title. This provides an interactive tutorial of sorts that gets players familiar with basic FPS and ship flying systems, UI, and other elements of this sci-fi universe.

The update also carries backend improvements to make the new persistent objects system more reliable, FPS AI and mining balances, a new event for PVP fans, and other changes. Find the complete patch notes here.

Star Citizen Alpha 3.19 - Call to Adventure is now available for all backers to jump into in live servers. For anyone wanting to try the game out, Cloud Imperium Games has also confirmed that Invictus Launch Week free event is coming back on May 19, offering free access to the game and a variety of ships during its run.

Star Citizen Alpha 3.19 is live carrying city upgrades, salvager missions, and more

Nuclear power is a significant source of energy that has been around for several decades. It is considered a sustainable and low-carbon option, making it an essential tool in the fight against climate change. The secret to nuclear power lies in uranium, a naturally occurring element used to fuel nuclear power plants – but it is also the material used in many nuclear weapons. But how does a common ore go from being in the ground to creating vast amounts of energy?

What makes uranium so powerful?

Uranium holds both a fascinating history and immense significance in various fields. Discovered in 1789 by German chemist Martin Klaproth, uranium was named after the planet Uranus, which had only been discovered a few years previously. 

This dense, silvery-white metal is known for its radioactive properties and abundant presence in the Earth's crust. It is thought to have been formed in supernovae around 6.6 billion years ago and its slow radioactive decay is the main source of heat within the Earth, causing convection and even continental drift. 

Like other elements, uranium occurs in several slightly different forms called isotopes, identified by the number of neutrons they have in their nucleus. Natural uranium ore is made up of two such isotopes: uranium-238 (U-238) and uranium-235 (U-235). It is the latter isotope, U-235, that is most important for nuclear power – but it only accounts for about 0.7 percent of natural uranium, whereas U-238 makes up about 99.3 percent. 

The reason why U-235 is so important is that it is a fissile material, which means it can sustain a nuclear chain reaction. This is achieved by “splitting the atom”, a process referred to as “fission”, where a nucleus is bombarded by neutrons which cause it to break into two or more smaller nuclei. The energy released by this split is massive and comes in the form of heat. When U-235 undergoes fission, the split nucleus releases more neutrons, resulting in more and more fission reactions (the chain reaction) which produces even more energy. 

It is this energy that sustains nuclear reactors, where the heat is used to make steam to drive turbines and generators, therefore creating electricity. It is, however, the same reaction that makes nuclear weapons explode. But while the principles between energy production and explosions are the same, the outcomes are very different. 

In a nuclear reactor, uranium fuel rods are assembled in the core along with other rods called “nuclear poison” that absorb neutrons to limit fission reactions in a controlled way. These control rods can be inserted and withdrawn to set the reactor to the desired power level. Because of the way that fuel is prepared, if there is a critical event in the reactor, the core may overheat and melt but it cannot explode. 

How does uranium make nuclear power?

Uranium has to go through a series of industrial processes before it can be loaded as fuel. Then, once it has been depleted, further steps are taken to either dispose of it or recycle the fuel. All these stages are collectively known as the nuclear fuel cycle. 

The nuclear fuel cycle begins with uranium mining and milling, where uranium ore is extracted from the Earth's crust and processed to obtain uranium concentrate, also known as yellowcake. This yellowcake is then converted into a form suitable for enrichment.

As mentioned above, the amount of U-235 in uranium ore is extremely low, so enrichment is used to increase concentrations of this vital isotope. This is achieved through various techniques, but often through the use of centrifuges that separate U-235 from U-238 by their difference in mass. 

Once enough U-235 is accumulated, the enriched material undergoes fuel fabrication, where it is shaped into pellets and enclosed in metal to become fuel rods. These rods are then assembled into fuel assemblies for use in a reactor. This accounts for the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle.

After the fuel has been depleted and no longer sustains nuclear chain reactions, it needs to be managed in specific ways. The spent fuel assemblies are carefully removed from the core and put into storage. Eventually, the spent fuel will undergo reprocessing,

where any usable materials are extracted for further use. The aim of this step is to recover valuable materials such as any remaining U-235, but also newly created plutonium, which can be reused as fuel in a reactor.

Reprocessing typically involves several steps, including dissolution, separation, purification, and fabrication of the recovered materials into new fuel assemblies. This process allows for the recycling and more efficient use of nuclear fuel, reducing waste and maximizing the energy potential of nuclear resources. However, reprocessing also presents challenges in terms of cost, proliferation risks, and waste management, which require careful consideration and stringent regulatory measures.

Because nuclear fuel can be used for nuclear weapons, only nations that are part of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) are allowed to import uranium or plutonium. The treat helps safeguard the peaceful use of nuclear fuels and technologies and prevents the spread of weapons of mass destruction. 

All “explainer” articles are confirmed by fact checkers to be correct at time of publishing. Text, images, and links may be edited, removed, or added to at a later date to keep information current.  

Source

It used to be that if you wanted to find a DNA sequence in a particular sample, you had to go searching for that specific sequence—you had to fish it out with a hook designed especially to catch it. But no more. DNA sequencing technology has advanced to the point where you can take a sample from almost any environment—a drop of water, an ice core, a scoop of sand or soil, even air—and just see whatever DNA is in there.

This provides a non-invasive way to study wild populations and invasive or endangered species and has been used to monitor for pathogens (SARS-CoV-2, mpox, polio, tuberculosis) in wastewater. But guess who else’s DNA is in those environmental samples? Yup. Ours.

Something identifiable in the air

Liam Whitmore is a zoologist and conservationist who studies green turtles. He and his colleagues realized that having human DNA slip into research samples might be an issue, so they looked to see if they could find any in old water and sand samples they had taken as part of a wildlife and pathogen monitoring study. They did. Then they went intentionally searching for specific human sequences, and, in water, sand, and air samples, they found plenty of genomic regions that could identify a person’s ancestry and susceptibility to several diseases. They didn’t go so far as to identify individuals but noted that someone probably could compare these sequences to public genetic data without too much difficulty.

This is not the first time conservationists have had to contend with inadvertently collecting sensitive human data; mics and cameras set up to study wildlife can also record human voices and images. Data filtering can alleviate some of the privacy and consent concerns this raises, but things are stickier with DNA. So Whitmore and company very responsibly outlined some of the potential problems as well as some potential benefits of their findings, rather than leaving it up to policymakers and regulators and ethicists to sort it out later (i.e., too late).

The findings raise questions about best practices for these sorts of studies. In the US and the European Union, federally funded researchers intending to work with identifiable human DNA samples must first get approval from their institutional review board (which Whitmore did) and also get written informed consent from participants. But consent is impossible to obtain when the DNA is captured inadvertently in the environment.

Environmental DNA sequences are often deposited into public databases, as well. Since we now recognize that they contain human DNA, can/should this still be the case?

Beyond bureaucratic concerns, there are a host of malicious uses for this human genomic bycatch. Bad guys can use it for location tracking and surveillance of individuals or, perhaps more distressingly, target populations, without their knowledge or consent.

Commercial appropriation of this tracking and surveillance data is almost the most benign application one can imagine for it. Wastewater monitoring for pathogens arrived with COVID-19, but the significant legal and privacy issues regarding its use have barely been addressed. Now that identifiable human DNA can be isolated from air, these issues really need to get hammered out.

Good and bad

But the DNA that we are constantly shedding and leaving all around us could also be used for good. That same pathogen monitoring could be correlated with human DNA that identifies susceptible populations, helping to protect them. Human genomic bycatch could be used to continually monitor for cancer-causing mutations, which arise and accumulate over a person’s lifetime. It could be used to add genetic information from underrepresented populations to genomic databases that still lack them or to find undiscovered sites of human habitation that archeologists have not yet uncovered. And environmental DNA samples could be used to find missing persons, both victims and suspects. Gaining these benefits while maintaining privacy will require a careful balancing act.

As Natalie Ram, a legal scholar who works at the intersection of law and genetic privacy, put it in an accompanying paper: “To be sure, solving crime is a good thing. But exploiting involuntarily shed genetic information for investigative aims risks putting all of us under perpetual genetic surveillance.” She highlighted that law enforcement has repeatedly demonstrated that they could not possibly be keener to use genetic information gathered for other purposes, like consumer genetic testing and even newborn screening (!!) and that, in the US at least, “most lower courts have held that individuals have no constitutional privacy rights in the DNA they unintentionally and inevitably shed as they move through the world.”

We know that we leave genetic material all over the world; that’s hardly news. But now anyone who has the desire and the means can collect and use or misuse it. This means that all of the thorny, complicated questions that arose with DNA sequencing technology have become even more pressing.

Source

Several days ago, Elon Musk, the then CEO of Twitter, announced through tweets that the company will start deleting Twitter accounts which haven’t seen any activity from several years.

When reminded about how doing so might also delete some historic tweets, Musk said that the accounts will be archived.

The idea behind deleting inactive accounts on Twitter, as per him, is for freeing up of account usernames of inactive accounts, if one can understand his tweet correctly.

It looks like another big company is joining the inactive account deletion race. The reason given behind it is entirely different, though.

Google To Start Deleting Inactive Accounts

Google has made an announcement in the Safety and Security section of Google’s official blog. Ruth Kricheli, the Vice-President of Product Management at Google, has announced important changes to how Google intends to deal with inactive accounts.

The blog post explains that Google does whatever it can to prevent users from being hacked. This includes preventing spam, phishing and account hijacking. However, despite all the efforts, it’s the inactive accounts which are more likely to be compromised.

The reason it explains is that the inactive accounts are more likely to use outdated, reused and sometimes hacked passwords. Additionally, Google’s own internal analysis shows that compared to active accounts these inactive accounts are 10 times more likely to not have 2-factor-authentication enabled in them.

Google explains that all this can lead to inactive accounts being hacked, used for identity theft and even for spreading spam. This is why Google has announced that it will start deleting accounts which are inactive for 2 years.

2 Years Of Inactivity Explained

Google says that starting December this year, it will start deleting accounts which have not been signed in to for 2 years. The deletion of accounts includes the account itself and its contents.

The contents include things from Google Workspace, which comprises Gmail, Docs, Drive, Meet and Calendar. Additionally, contents from even YouTube and Google Photos will be deleted. So basically everything important.

It says that this policy will only affect personal Google accounts and won’t affect business or school ones. Google says that this deletion will happen slowly. Also, users will be given a lot of notices before their accounts get deleted.

To explain it further, it has given three important points:

• While the policy takes effect today, it will not immediately impact users with an inactive account — the earliest we will begin deleting accounts is December 2023.
• We will take a phased approach, starting with accounts that were created and never used again.
• Before deleting an account, we will send multiple notifications over the months leading up to deletion, to both the account email address and the recovery email (if one has been provided).

Preventing Account Deletion

Google says that keeping one’s account active is simple. Just signing in to the Google account using any Google services through the account will be enough to consider it active.

It says that signing in to the account or using any of these services using that account will be enough:

Even having a subscription to Google One, any news publication or any app will be considered as an account active.

It has even shared an animated image to show how signing in to an account will make it active again.

Additionally, it states that in order to prevent one’s photos to be deleted from Google Photos, one needs to sign in into it within every two years too.

To conclude the blog post, Google insists users to have a backup to their Google account. Suggesting things like making sure recovery email is added to the account and is up-to-date, among other things.

Conclusion

We personally think this move from Google is not a wrong one when looked from a security point of view. What Google is saying is true, inactive accounts do pose a security threat when compromised. Not only to the user themselves, but also to other people out there. It also makes Google answerable about what it has doing to prevent that.

The problem happens when Google says everything, from videos on YouTube, to photos on Google Photos, to emails on Gmail, to files on Docs and Drive, to contacts on Meet and Calendar, will be deleted if the account is inactive. That’s too harsh.

However, Google does say that one sign-in is all that is required to prevent that. Also, it will do the deletion only after a lot of prior notifications to the users and that too in a phased manner.

So get going, everyone. Sign-in into those Google accounts which are inactive. But do make sure they are important enough to keep them in the first place.

Google To Delete Accounts That Are Inactive For 2 Years

Instagram Channels is a feature that was launched earlier this year which is very similar to that which already exists as a part of Telegram, and is restricted to the mobile Instagram apps, with channels only accessible to followers.

The feature works exactly as it does on Facebook, where a user would select the option to choose a GIF from a selection or search for one on Giphy (which Meta has already been ordered to sell off by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority), so expect comment threads to turn into a long list of reaction GIFs and memes very quickly.

This was not the only feature to be announced during this chat, as Mosseri also confirmed that Reels will be gaining lyrics as well, with it improving the existing auto-caption sticker that was introduced in 2021, which gives a timeline on the Reels interface that allows for captions and audio to be synced more accurately.

Source: Engadget

Instagram enables the ability to comment using GIFs

Maurice Jakesch, a doctoral student in the field of information science asked more than 1,500 participants to write a paragraph answering the question, "Is social media good for society?" People who used an AI writing assistant that was biased for or against social media were twice as likely to write a paragraph agreeing with the assistant, and significantly more likely to say they held the same opinion, compared with people who wrote without AI's help.

The study suggests that the biases baked into AI writing tools—whether intentional or unintentional—could have concerning repercussions for culture and politics, researchers said.

"We're rushing to implement these AI models in all walks of life, but we need to better understand the implications," said co-author Mor Naaman, professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and of information science in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science. "Apart from increasing efficiency and creativity, there could be other consequences for individuals and also for our society—shifts in language and opinions."

While others have looked at how large language models such as ChatGPT can create persuasive ads and political messages, this is the first study to show that the process of writing with an AI-powered tool can sway a person's opinions. Jakesch presented the study, "Co-Writing with Opinionated Language Models Affects Users' Views," at the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in April, where the paper received an honorable mention.

To understand how people interact with AI writing assistants, Jakesch steered a large language model to have either positive or negative opinions of social media. Participants wrote their paragraphs—either alone or with one of the opinionated assistants—on a platform he built that mimics a social media website. The platform collects data from participants as they type, such as which of the AI suggestions they accept and how long they take to compose the paragraph.

People who co-wrote with the pro-social media AI assistant composed more sentences arguing that social media is good, and vice versa, compared to participants without a writing assistant, as determined by independent judges. These participants also were more likely to profess their assistant's opinion in a follow-up survey.

The researchers explored the possibility that people were simply accepting the AI suggestions to complete the task quicker. But even participants who took several minutes to compose their paragraphs came up with heavily influenced statements. The survey revealed that a majority of the participants did not even notice the AI was biased and didn't realize they were being influenced.

"The process of co-writing doesn't really feel like I'm being persuaded," said Naaman. "It feels like I'm doing something very natural and organic—I'm expressing my own thoughts with some aid."

When repeating the experiment with a different topic, the research team again saw that participants were swayed by the assistants. Now, the team is looking into how this experience creates the shift, and how long the effects last.

Just as social media has changed the political landscape by facilitating the spread of misinformation and the formation of echo chambers, biased AI writing tools could produce similar shifts in opinion, depending on which tools users choose. For example, some organizations have announced they plan to develop an alternative to ChatGPT, designed to express more conservative viewpoints.

These technologies deserve more public discussion regarding how they could be misused and how they should be monitored and regulated, the researchers said.

"The more powerful these technologies become and the more deeply we embed them in the social fabric of our societies," Jakesch said, "the more careful we might want to be about how we're governing the values, priorities and opinions built into them."

Advait Bhat from Microsoft Research, Daniel Buschek of the University of Bayreuth and Lior Zalmanson of Tel Aviv University contributed to the paper.

Source

While these incidents had unrelated root causes, they affected most of GitHub's primary services from May 9 to May 11, causing widespread database connection and authentication failures for up to ten hours.

"Last week, GitHub experienced several availability incidents, both long running and shorter duration. We have since mitigated these incidents and all systems are now operating normally," Hanley said.

"The root causes for these incidents were unrelated but in aggregate, they negatively impacted the services that organizations and developers trust GitHub to deliver. This is not acceptable nor the standard we hold ourselves to."

On May 9, eight main services were hit by a major outage caused by a configuration change to GitHub's internal service serving Git data.

The second outage, occurring on May 10, impacted the issuance of authentication tokens for GitHub Apps and resulted from high load and inefficient implementation of an API responsible for managing GitHub App permissions.

"On May 10, the database cluster serving GitHub App auth tokens saw a 7x increase in write latency for GitHub App permissions (status yellow)," Hanley explained.

"The failure rate of these auth token requests was 8-15% for the majority of this incident, but did peak at 76% percent for a short time."

The third GitHub outage experienced by users last week, on May 11, was due to a loss of read replicas after a database cluster serving Git data crashed and triggered an automated failover mechanism.

"We are addressing the Git database crash that has caused more than one incident at this point. This work was already in progress and we will continue to prioritize it," Hanley said.

"We are addressing the database failover issues to ensure that failovers always recover fully without intervention."

GitHub will share more detailed information on these outages and what it's doing to address the issues that caused them in its May Availability Report.

"The May report will include these incidents and any further detail we have on them, along with a general update on progress towards increasing the availability of GitHub," Hanley said.

GitHub was also affected by multiple outages within a week in March 2022, when the company revealed that the incidents were caused by resource contention issues in the platform's primary database cluster.

Another major outage impacted GitHub in February 2022, when the platform was down worldwide, preventing access to the website and blocking commits, cloning, or pull request attempts.

GitHub reveals reason behind last week’s string of outages

SwiftKey

The Compose feature is now available for SwiftKey users on Android and iOS. It allows generating drafts according to your preferred parameters, such as tone, format, length, and topic.

Also, the company expands on the recently released tone feature with two new styles—witty and funny. These two tones join the existing four that include professional, casual, polite, and social. Microsoft says the updated tone feature will help you create the right message from a one-liner to a work email.

Finally, the third new feature is an AI-powered translator built into SwiftKey. You can tap a button on the toolbar, paste some text, and quickly translate it into many languages.

Edge

Edge for Android and iOS will soon receive support for contextual chat, allowing you to ask Bing Chat questions related to the content on the current page. For example, you can tap the Bing Chat icon and ask it to pick the best wine for the recipe you are currently viewing.

Another similar new feature is text actions. You can highlight a word or phrase on a page and ask Bing to provide more context, explain something, and more.

Skype

The AI-powered Bing bot is now available in all group chats, meaning there is no more need for participants to search for Bing and att it to their contacts. Microsoft says the update is currently rolling out to Skype users and will arrive to all customers worldwide within a few days.

Bing App

Finally, there are a few neat improvements to the Bing app. Microsoft has prepared a new widget to access Bing Chat from the home screen on your iPhone or Android smartphone. Also, in upcoming weeks, Microsoft will let you transfer conversations from your desktop to mobile using QR codes.

At last, Microsoft increased the number of supported languages for voice input and improved the quality of non-English chats, allowing users to choose from various languages and voices for an optimal and delightful experience.

You can learn more about the new features coming soon to your mobile devices in a post on the official Microsoft Bing blog.

Microsoft announces new AI features for Bing, SwiftKey, Edge, and Skype

Nvidia has long neglected the mobile chip market. The company's last mobile chips, under the Tegra brand, were used in Microsoft's first Surface RT device, which the company unveiled more than 10 years ago. Nvidia's game streaming device Shield is also powered by a Tegra processor.

The report provides no details on the partnership or information about the upcoming products. First MediaTek mobile processors with Nvidia GPUs are expected for 2024.

The Windows on Arm partnership will be used by both companies to get a share of the notebook market. MediaTek is focusing on the "entry-level Chromebook market" currently according to the report. The company has a market share of about 20% in the segment.

The cooperation with Nvidia could help MediaTek gain a foothold in higher-priced segments by launching products that are considered mid- to high-end notebooks. The report offers no details on the cooperation. In other words, chip or product details are unknown at this point and it is unclear when the first product will be released to market.

MediaTek announced in 2017 that it would not put its ARM-based chips in Windows PCs at the time citing that ARM had a "turbulent history with Windows". Then, in 2022, MediaTek announced plans to developer SoCs with "enhanced CPU and GPU performance" for the Windows on ARM PC market.

The company revealed plans to integrate technology of its high-end Dimensity SoCs for smartphones into its Windows on ARM products. This included connectivity technology, such as that powering 5G, BlueTooth and Wi-Fi functionality, but also other technology.

The cooperation with Nvidia would reduce the burden on MediaTek and it would increase the credibility of the products.

The two companies may make an official announcement later this year regarding the partnership.

Now You: have you tried Windows on ARM or MediaTek powered devices? (via Neowin)

Nvidia and MediaTek reportedly working on mobile and Windows ARM chipsets together

• Microsoft is trying to acquire Activision Blizzard for almost $69 billion. 
• The deal has garnered approval from multiple regulators, including the European Commission, while there is major pushback from U.S. and U.K. regulators. 
• When asked in an interview if Microsoft would ever consider "selling the product" in the U.S. and Europe but not the U.K, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said "Let's wait for it all to play out."

As the storied effort of Microsoft to acquire Activision Blizzard continues and theories fly left and right, we've got some additional commentary from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella regarding the situation.

The approval process for the purchase is a rollercoaster, with many countries like Japan and Brazil approving the deal, while the FTC in the U.S. and the CMA in the U.K. are seeking to stop the acquisition from happening. Microsoft recently got its biggest approval yet, with the European Commission approving the deal with a number of guidelines and requirements in place regarding Cloud gaming. 

In an interview with CNBC, when Nadella was asked if there was a future where he could see Microsoft "selling the product" in the U.S. and Europe, but not the U.K, he said "Let's wait for it all to play out."

"The fundamental logic of this deal, bringing more competition and more opportunity for publishers and gamers still holds," Nadella said peaking prior to the European Commission's decision being announced. "We obviously respect the sovereignty of the United Kingdom and the CMA to decide what's good [for them]."

Microsoft currently plans to appeal the CMA's decision and will be arguing for the purchase against the FTC in court. 

The $69 billion acquisition would see Microsoft add Activision, Blizzard Entertainment, and King to the Xbox first-party roster, including franchises like Call of Duty, Candy Crush, Diablo, Warcraft, and many more.

While Microsoft has repeatedly emphasized its desire to keep Call of Duty on all existing platforms and expand it to other players, the company has seen major pushback from Sony, the latter of which has voiced innumerable concerns around Microsoft degrading the quality of Call of Duty specifically on PlayStation. 

In more recent weeks, Cloud gaming has been the main talking point while the discussion around PlayStation has largely subsided, with even the CMA narrowing its concerns to no longer include how PlayStation would be affected, though the regulator still chose to block the deal.

Windows Central's take

I am once again tapping my imaginary sign that mentions I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not a legal expert with authority on how things can play out. 

That said...I am extremely skeptical Microsoft would ever not offer something in the U.K. I don't know how that works, and it seems like a nuclear, last-resort option regardless of the form it takes. Obviously, Nadella has to keep every option possible and use a non-committal answer for now, but for now, I'm more interested in how the appeal process plays out.

Satya Nadella: 'Wait for it all to play out' when asked about pulling out of the UK over Xbox-ABK deal

Ubisoft is investing even more into Assassin’s Creed

Got a Gmail account you still want, but rarely use? Google is warning consumers it could delete those accounts if they’ve been inactive for at least two years.

The new policy(Opens in a new window) takes effect in December, at which point Google may purge inactive accounts that apply. “We will take a phased approach, starting with accounts that were created and never used again,” the company added.

The change comes nearly three years after Google announced(Opens in a new window) it could delete the contents within a user’s account, such as in Gmail or Google Photos, if they had been inactive for two years. This coincided with it ending free unlimited storage for Google Photos and Google Docs.

The search giant is now expanding the potential deletion from content to the full account in an effort to crack down on hackers misusing Google services for phishing schemes. As the company notes, unused Google accounts tend to be easy to break into because they’ve often been secured with old, easy-to-guess passwords.

“Our internal analysis shows abandoned accounts are at least 10x less likely than active accounts to have 2-step-verification set up. Meaning, these accounts are often vulnerable, and once an account is compromised, it can be used for anything from identity theft to a vector for unwanted or even malicious content, like spam,” Google said in the blog post.

To prevent catching consumers off guard, the company will send affected users “multiple notifications over the months leading up to deletion, to both the account email address and the recovery email.”

“We are going to roll this out slowly and carefully, with plenty of notice,” the search giant added. So Google won't wipe out inactive accounts instantaneously. The policy also only applies to personal Google accounts—not accounts belonging to companies or organizations such as schools.

“The simplest way to keep a Google Account active is to sign-in at least once every 2 years. If you have signed into your Google Account or any of our services recently, your account is considered active and will not be deleted,” the company added.

Source

• Weibao Wang was charged with six counts of theft or attempted theft by prosecutors, who allege he stole troves of source code on Apple’s autonomous technology for an unnamed Chinese company.

• Autonomous technology can be used to develop and build self-driving cars.

• Wang fled the U.S. the same day his home was searched by law enforcement.

A former Apple software engineer was charged with allegedly stealing Apple’s autonomous technology for a Chinese self-driving car company, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday.

Weibao Wang worked as a software engineer at Apple from 2016 to 2018, a DOJ indictment said. Wang worked on Apple’s Annotation Team, and was granted “broad access” to databases which the Justice Department said could only be accessed by 2,700 of Apple’s 135,000 employees.

Wang is the third former Apple employee to be accused of stealing autonomous trade secrets for China.

Wang has been charged with six separate counts involving the theft or attempted theft of Apple’s “entire autonomy source code,” tracking systems, behavior planning for autonomous systems, and descriptions of the hardware that was behind the systems.

A year into his employment, four months before he quit his job at Apple, Wang accepted a job at the U.S.-based subsidiary of an unnamed Chinese company which was developing autonomous driving technology and began to siphon “large amounts” of sensitive commercial technology and source code, the indictment alleged.

In April 2017, only 5,000 of Apple’s 135,000 full-time employees had been informed about the project, the DOJ indictment alleges, or around 4% of the company. An even smaller segment, around 2%, had access to “one or more” of the databases Wang accessed, the indictment continues.

Law enforcement executed a search of Wang’s home in California on Jun. 27, 2018, where they found large quantities of stolen, confidential, and proprietary data, the indictment alleges. Wang was able to flee the country even after law enforcement executed the search, despite promising that he wouldn’t.

Wang boarded a flight to Guangzhou, China from San Francisco International Airport. In a press conference, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California Ismail Ramsey said Wang was in China and would face ten years in prison for each count if extradited and convicted.

The charges were announced as part of a sweeping enforcement action led by the Disruptive Technology Strike Force. Four other cases were unveiled across the United States, involving criminal behavior to supply Iranian forces with sensitive ballistic technology, Russian intelligence and research units with quantum technology, and sanctions-violating exports.

The allegations against Wang come after another Apple employee, Xiaolang Zhang, pleaded guilty in San Jose federal court to a similar theft involving trade secrets in Apple’s car division.

Like Wang, Zhang had planned to flee to China. Both Zhang and Wang were working at Apple’s autonomous division at the same time, and both left their employment at Apple in 2018.

Another employee, Jizhong Chen, was also facing federal charges over his alleged 2019 theft of sensitive information. Chen also attempted to flee to China, according to court documents. Chen’s case is proceeding in California federal court.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

< Read the indictment here: >

Source