America's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration "said on Tuesday that it will rewrite its vehicle lighting standards," reports Reuters, "to address concerns about headlight glare and allow for the latest safety-improving lighting technologies." NHTSA said it plans to improve rules for LEDs, dusk sensors, automatic high beams and replaceable light sources. The agency will also evaluate headlamp height and aim and how they impact driver visibility and address headlight glare and make appropriate changes. Complaints about glare from headlights have increased and some lawmakers have urged the government to set a maximum headlight brightness standard. A growing number of taller trucks and SUVs on roads has also led to more complaints about glare. LEDs, which now account for most headlights in new cars, are much brighter than traditional halogen headlights... The issue still accounts for a small number of nighttime crashes, according to a study last year from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). The study noted that headlight glare contributes to far fewer crashes than insufficient visibility... Federal headlight standards for minimum and maximum brightness have not changed since 1997, IIHS noted. The study found that drivers older than 70 appear to be most affected by headlight glare. In 2022, NHTSA said it would allow automakers to install adaptive driving beam headlights on new vehicles. The devices adjust the headlight beam pattern to dim portions directed at other vehicles. Thanks to Slashdot reader technology_dude for sharing the news.

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A Hungarian town, an escaped rooster and the universal longing for freedom.

"What did four astronauts see, notice, and document as they traveled around the Moon during NASA's Artemis II mission?" asks a new NASA web page, offering some fascinating pictures and video: Through photographs, spoken observations, drawings, and annotations, the Artemis II crew created a unique scientific record — one that is now available to the science community and the public for further study... As part of the mission science plan, lunar scientists asked the Artemis II crew to watch for tiny flashes sparked by rocky fragments hitting the Moon. Even so, some scientists were astonished when astronauts reported seeing five extremely faint "pinprick" bursts of light from 46,000 miles away. After ruling out other sources — cosmic rays or reflections from the spacecraft — the science team confirmed the sightings... The impact flash observations happened during a planned loss of communications while the Artemis II crew was on the far side of the Moon... Apollo astronauts saw similar flashes from lunar orbit, but the Artemis crew likely caught the faintest ever seen with the unaided eye. From the brightness of the flashes, scientists estimated that incoming rocks were each no more than a couple of inches wide. Despite their size, they were traveling thousands of miles per hour, producing just enough light upon impact to be visible. The nearly hour-long total solar eclipse that the crew experienced while passing by the Moon's far side created ideal dark conditions for spotting such subtle bursts. With no atmosphere to slow or burn up incoming debris, projectiles slam freely into the lunar surface. The crew's direct observations of this process on the Moon's far side provided a rare dataset that will help us understand how often these small impacts occur, which is essential for assessing long-term risks to future lunar habitats and infrastructure... The crew reported seeing subtle hues of gray, black, brown, tan, white, green, and blue across the Moon's surface. This muted rainbow offers clues to the rocks and minerals that make up different lunar regions, helping scientists piece together how the Moon — and, by extension, Earth — evolved over time. "Amazing news," Mission Control responded when they heard about the flashes. Space.com reports that when a Mission Control operator looked over at the Science Evaluation Room, "they were jumping up and down, literally." NASA blogged this week that more than 800 gigabytes of Artemis II lunar science data — some previously unreleased — "have been uploaded to NASA's Planetary Data System, the public archive for NASA's planetary missions." This data release includes more than 11,000 full-resolution images and video of the Moon from the crew's handheld cameras and the Orion spacecraft's cameras, 8.5 hours of audio recordings of the crew's scientific observations of the lunar surface, and crew-annotated images... Along with this data, NASA has released the Artemis II Preliminary Lunar Science Report, the Artemis II Lunar Science Operations Report, and the Artemis II Lunar Science Data User Guide.

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The cease-fire last October ostensibly brought an end to Israel’s war in Gaza after the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023. A year later, however, Israeli strikes, though less frequent, haven’t stopped.

In Iqaluit, the only city in Canada’s Arctic, a new generation of Inuit writers and artists is turning questions of language, land and identity into books, films and even tattoos.

CNN reports: The FBI arrested a Canadian cybersecurity executive and ransomware expert as part of the investigation of a damaging hack that exposed the sensitive data of current and former FBI employees, according to court documents and people familiar the investigation. Edward Dubrovsky was arrested in the Philadelphia area in recent days... Dubrovsky is facing charges related to extortion and making threats. He has been transferred to Texas's Eastern District for a scheduled detention hearing, according to court records and a law enforcement official. FBI Director Kash Patel announced the arrest on Friday but did not disclose where it occurred or what role the man is suspected of playing in the hack. Patel also didn't name Dubrovsky, but CNN confirmed the defendant is believed to be tied to the FBI hack through multiple people familiar with the investigation... A LinkedIn profile under Dubrovsky's name lists years of experience in the Canadian cybersecurity industry and describes Dubrovsky as a 'globally recognized cybersecurity expert.' An Ed Dubrovsky is also the author of a book on handling ransomware negotiations with cybercriminals... There has also been an inquest at the FBI over how such a critical security lapse happened. The FBI determined that a contractor managing the bureau's jobs portal failed to update software "explicitly issued to secure the platform," [senior FBI cyber official, Brett Leatherman said last week]. The FBI has "removed the contractor," he said. The software in question is a human-resources platform made by Oracle, ShinyHunters has said. The hackers previously used a flaw in the software to attack targets in the education sector in May and June, according to Google's Threat Intelligence Group. But months later, the FBI contractor apparently still had not applied a security patch that was available for the software. "The inmate locator at the U.S. Bureau of Prisons website reports that a 54-year-old Edward Dubrovsky is currently being held at a federal facility in Philadelphia," reports security researcher Brian Krebs. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

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On Thursday those trying to access the Ubuntu website, ISO downloads, and similar Ubuntu resources on Thursday found the site "inoperable," reports Phoronix, with the disruption confirmed as a distributed denial of service attack. "Our team is working diligently to resolve the incident," according to a Thursday post on Ubuntu Discourse — followed by a later announcement. "At this time our team continues to work on restoring affected services, most of them are now available. We appreciate your patience and understanding." Ubuntu's status page shows the Ubuntu.com outage lasting for 2 hours and 27 minutes on Friday — though with four-hour outages Wednesday (and other outages affecting other Ubuntu sites). Today "All components are Operational," the status page reports.

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Major TV networks were notified on Friday that the department was examining whether they violated antitrust laws when they suspended pool coverage of President Trump.

Senator Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican in a difficult race, paid an old campaign debt for cookies, muffins and brownies after a baker’s story went viral online.

The Telegraph reports that the nutritional value of fruit and vegetables has fallen by up to 50% since the Sixties, according a new study from researchers at startup studio Deep Science Ventures. The study "found that humans needed to consume twice the number of vegetables to get the same level of minerals such as potassium, magnesium or copper as would have been present in their food 60 years ago." The study found that many crops had lost 20% to 50% of several key nutrients... The decrease in nutrient and vitamin value is thought to be down to declining soil quality and crops being selectively bred for their ability to grow quickly, rather than there being any focus on their health benefits... It raises the prospect that the advice to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, introduced in the UK in 2003, may need to be updated. The report added that people on weight-loss drugs could be most at risk from the lack of nutrients, as the treatments could cause them to consume less food... Nature-friendly farming techniques, such as planting crops that restore nutrients to the soil, could help improve the health benefits of vegetables, according to the researchers. In short, according to Will Summers, a senior associate at the firm, "we've been quietly hollowing out what's inside our food." Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the article.

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The strike on Saturday was the deadliest attack in a Gulf Arab country since the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began in February, and forced the airport to temporarily suspend operations.

A sample of people at the president’s midterm stump speech in Tennessee defended the Pentagon’s announcement that it would livestream the execution of a mass shooter.

In an unannounced change, the Defense Department is now acknowledging troops who died or were wounded in support roles.

Top executives at Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI companies "are privately gaming out scenarios for a public and political revolt after a catastrophic AI event," reports Axios, one that turns "an already wary public further against the technology and its leaders..." These AI company executives "anticipate a large-scale event, most likely a cyberattack, that shuts down access to financial services, internet connectivity, or even power and water..." the article points out. "Many top AI researchers and executives believe a major incident is inevitable. "OpenAI conducts preparedness exercises where teams discuss and work through a range of potential scenarios," a company spokesperson said. "These scenarios are not treated as inevitable, but are meant to help us prepare for a variety of circumstances." Anthropic declined to comment... Top AI planners assume Democrats, ascendant after the midterms, will move fast to shut down AI but will face significant challenges... The planning involves red-teaming for worst-case scenarios. It focuses mainly on racing to educate members of Congress. Company executives know regulation has no chance of passing right now, but still want to shape the legislation and policies U.S. leaders will turn to after a first catastrophic event.... Many AI industry insiders told Axios they believe a major event will occur in the next six to 12 months. "Even with Democrats in control of the House and Senate, the companies see fractured politics as the norm, including within the Democratic Party."

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"Nicolas Cage is speaking out against Amazon," reports Variety. Amazon developed the series Spider-Noir for Prime Video, but then allegedly asked Cage to sign an AI waiver: "Amazon is a very AI-friendly company, to the tune of $50 billion invested in OpenAI," Cage said Saturday during a panel on the Empire Stage at New York Comic Con. "I am not an AI-friendly actor, so it's like, connect those dots! I'm not a member of their club. I didn't sign the waiver to let him use AI on 'Spider-Noir.' I'm probably not going to be working with that studio again, but that's okay." Last month Amazon canceled Spider-Man Noir after just one season, Variety reports. And the cancellation was just days before the Emmy Awards, where it then earned 11 nominations (the most of any Prime Video program this year). ScreenRant reports: Spider-Noir was the actor's first TV role and was praised globally, with season 1 earning a near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes rating from critics of 92% and a 90% rating from audiences. Critics stated that "This sharply written homage to classic film noir — which includes a standout Nicolas Cage performance — is the novel superhero project fans need," and "Spider-Noir is one of the standout shows of the year...." The cancellation was certainly a huge shock as it had earned 11 Emmy nominations and reached 2.6 billion minutes viewed within its first six weeks on Prime Video. More from Variety: Cage went on to tell the Comic-Con audience that he hopes to work with the rising class of Gen-Z filmmakers, praising Backrooms director Kane Parsons, who parlayed his YouTube fame into a Hollywood career... "I got to get with these young directors who are Gen Z, and they're going at it their own way, whether it's through the YouTube culture or whatever it is," Cage said. "They're doing it from scratch and by hand. I want to get with that."

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High diesel costs have posed a problem for Republicans in the midterms, but President Trump’s decision did not satisfy some candidates in key Senate races.

The blog It's FOSS reports: You already know that Canonical has been selectively replacing Ubuntu's C-based system components with Rust-written equivalents that don't compromise in terms of functionality, most of the time. Now it looks like the distro's OpenPGP implementation is next, with Sequoia PGP coming preinstalled in Ubuntu 26.10. Canonical wants it to eventually replace GnuPG [the dominant Linux implementation of PGP, written in C] as the default toolchain, though that switch has not happened yet... [The Ubuntu 26.10 release notes say Sequoia PGP's default status will be a future goal...] [Sequoia PGP] was started in 2017 by three former GnuPG developers who chose to build a new OpenPGP implementation in Rust rather than keep evolving GnuPG's existing codebase. Sequoia PGP is designed as a library that other software can use directly, rather than a standalone command-line tool. sq sits on top of that for encryption, decryption, signing, and key management, and sqv handles signature verification, filling in for gpg and gpgv in GnuPG. Sequoia also implements RFC 9580, the 2024 revision of the OpenPGP standard, whereas GnuPG has continued from the RFC 4880 branch, pursuing its own newer extensions and the LibrePGP specification rather than adopting RFC 9580 as its primary standard. From the It's FOSS Weekly newsletter, which also notes that the founder of the It's FOSS blog has also created a Linux-themed game called TUXDLE — a variation on Wordle where all the answers are Linux terms.

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Potent powders can produce a nearly catatonic state, particularly in those who have not tried the drug before.

Hundreds of thousands of people lost power, but towns near the landfall site in Florida were relieved that the hurricane damage was not worse.

Hurricane Simon and Tropical Storm Rachel are both expected to make landfall in the coming days. Rachel could also affect Southern California.