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So you want to go to the Red Planet. How deep are your pockets and how much time do you have?

Comment "America is going to Mars," said Elon Musk at yesterday's inauguration of US President Donald Trump. America is already there, thanks to decades of robotic exploration.…

Under Digital Services Act, monitors will be allowed to report abusive language and platforms should respond in 1 day

Online platform companies, including X and Meta, have signed up to a new code of conduct aimed at targeting online hate speech, which the European Commission has now baked into the Digital Services Act.…

An anonymous reader shares a report: Brendan Carr is now formally the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, giving him the power to set the agency's agenda and usher through a host of regulations with major implications for the tech and media industries as soon as he has a Republican majority. In a statement, Carr named a few areas of focus: "issues ranging from tech and media regulation to unleashing new opportunities for jobs and growth through agency actions on spectrum, infrastructure, and the space economy." Carr's priorities might also be gleaned from a document you might have already heard about: Project 2025. That's because he authored the FCC chapter of the Heritage Foundation's wishlist for a Donald Trump presidency. In that chapter, Carr proposes actions including: limiting immunity for tech companies under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, requiring disclosures about how platforms prioritize content, requiring tech companies to pay into a program that funds broadband access in rural areas, and more, quickly approving applications to launch satellites from companies like Elon Musk's Starlink.

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China broke its own record in installing renewable power in 2024, as the world's top polluter continues to push its energy transition while the US shifts away from fighting climate change. From a report: The world's second-largest economy added roughly 277 gigawatts of solar last year, surpassing the previous year's record of 217 gigawatts, the National Energy Administration said in a statement on Tuesday. It also added nearly 80 gigawatts of wind, according to the statement. The record installation means China has hit its 2030 renewables target six years early. This stands in contrast to the US, the world's second-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, where new President Donald Trump has started implementing a hard pivot back to fossil fuels and withdrawn from the Paris climate pact.

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It’s a feature not a bug, and what the US electorate voted for, says analyst

As US president Donald Trump's inauguration passes into history, tech leaders face uncertainty as they wait to see if repeated promises of global US import tariffs are put into action.…

Incident response protocols engaged following claims of source code burglary

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is probing assertions made by prolific Big Tech intruder IntelBroker that they broke into the US corporation's systems and accessed source code, among other things.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday revoked a 2023 executive order signed by Joe Biden that sought to reduce the risks that artificial intelligence poses to consumers, workers and national security. Biden's order required developers of AI systems that pose risks to U.S. national security, the economy, public health or safety to share the results of safety tests with the U.S. government, in line with the Defense Production Act, before they were released to the public. Four days before leaving office, Biden issued a comprehensive cybersecurity executive order that also targeted AI usage. The directive aimed to leverage AI's security benefits, implement digital identities for citizens, and address vulnerabilities that have allowed Chinese and Russian intrusions into U.S. government systems, among other things. It's unclear at this time if it, too, will be revoked.

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From fighters to friends in six months, despite AWS voting against it

Exclusive Microsoft is to become the latest member of CISPE months after negotiating a settlement with the trade association of European cloud providers over alleged anti-competitive software practices. However, not all in the group are happy with the enrollment.…

Ring a bell? Suite of tools named after Yes Minister's master of manipulation

The UK government is striving to end its checkered record in managing large-scale projects with a "plan to put technology to work across public services."…

Supermarket taking 'pragmatic approach' to 'Europe's largest IT transformation program'

Asda has postponed the tech transition of 55 stores to its new systems as US retail giant Walmart continues to support IT at outlets it sold to the new owner in 2021.…

Ars Technica's John Timmer reports: In Monday's issue of Nature Geoscience, a team of UK-based researchers tackle a big one: Mars' dichotomy, the somewhat nebulous boundary between its relatively elevated southern half, and the low basin that occupies its northern hemisphere, a feature that some have proposed also served as an ancient shoreline. The new work suggests that the edge of the dichotomy was eroded back by hundreds of kilometers during the time when an ocean might have occupied Mars' northern hemisphere. [...] The new work focuses on an area called Mawrth Vallis, which sits at the edge of the dichotomy. Relative to the northern basin, it's a kilometer-high plateau cut by a major outflow channel that seems to have been caused by one or more massive floods. The slopes surrounding the plateau feature different types of clay-derived minerals, suggesting the area had been subject to interactions between the original materials and water. Rather than focusing on the plateau itself, the work focuses on the neighboring lowlands, which include a large region dotted with thousands of buttes and mesas that rise roughly a kilometer above the surrounding plains. Using data from the ESA's Mars Express mission, they determine that these features tend to top out at the same height as the nearby plateau. And, using data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, they determined that the clays present along the slopes match those found on the plateau as well. Their conclusion from this is that the mesas and buttes are the remains of what was once a far larger plateau, which was largely eroded away on the side facing the northern basin. And that erosion took place across a pretty significant distance, as the buttes extend hundreds of kilometers away from the present highlands. And, just as at the highland plateau, these mounds hint at a water-based process that modified the rocks from the top down. That's because the deeper clays are often magnesium-rich, which tends to happen when water comes in contact with volcanic rocks or material with similar chemistry. Closer to the surface, things transition to aluminum- and iron-rich clays. These clays can occur when the water source is acidic or can be simply due to longer exposure to water, as the magnesium clays are a bit more soluble. The huge area covered by these mounds gives a sense of just how significant this erosion was. "The dichotomy boundary has receded several hundred kilometers," the researchers note. "Nearly all intervening material -- approximately 57,000 cubic kilometers over an area of 284,000 square kilometers west of Ares Vallis alone -- has been removed, leaving only remnant mounds." Based on the distribution of the different clays, the team argues that their water-driven formation took place before the erosion of the material. This would indicate that water-rock interactions were going on over a very wide region early in the history of Mars, which likely required an extensive hydrological cycle on the red planet. As the researchers note, a nearby ocean would have improved the chances of exposing this region to water, but the exposure could also have been due to processes like melting at the base of an ice cap. Complicating matters further, many of the mounds top out below one proposed shoreline of the northern ocean and above a second. It's possible that a receding ocean could have contributed to their erosion. But, at the same time, some of the features of a proposed shoreline now appear to have been caused by the general erosion of the original plateau, and may not be associated with an ocean at all.

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Now if only the councils could afford to fill them

An oft-repeated myth is that potholes form through a combination of surface cracks, water, and traffic, but they're actually caused by chronic levels of underinvestment in public infrastructure.…

And possibly even more so if you don’t start planning yours soon

If the changes Broadcom brought to VMware have you thinking of a move to an alternative virtualization platform, expect a long, costly, and risky project – and perhaps a longer, costlier, and riskier one if you put off pondering the move.…

President Donald Trump signed an executive order today delaying the TikTok ban for 75 days. The Verge reports: The order, issued on Trump's first day of office, is meant to effectively extend the deadline established by The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act for ByteDance to sell its stake by undercutting penalties on American companies like Apple and Google working with TikTok. It directs the Attorney General "not to take any action to enforce the Act for a period of 75 days from today to allow my Administration an opportunity to determine the appropriate course forward in an orderly way." The AG is supposed to "issue a letter to each provider stating that there has been no violation of the statute and that there is no liability for any conduct that occurred." The order furthermore instructs the Department of Justice to "take no action to enforce the Act or impose any penalties against any entity for any noncompliance with the Act" and says they should be barred from doing so "for any conduct that occurred during the above-specified period or any period prior to the issuance of this order, including the period of time from January 19, 2025, to the signing of this order." It remains unclear whether Trump can legally pause the ban. It's also unclear how he plans to enforce a 50 percent "joint venture" ownership with the company, a move he announced on Sunday.

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Geopolitical rumblings one day, geological rumblings the next

Taiwan has experienced an earthquake so significant that chipmaking champ TSMC has shuttered plants.…

US Digital Service re-named and told to audit government tech and work on data-sharing

US President Donald Trump has re-named the US Digital Service the Department of Government Efficiency and given it a mission to modernize government technology.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: The surge of interest in AI is creating a massive demand for computing power. Around the world, companies are trying to keep up with the vast amount of GPUs needed to power more and more advanced AI models. While GPUs are not the only option for running an AI model, they have become the hardware of choice due to their ability to efficiently handle multiple operations simultaneously -- a critical feature when developing deep learning models. But not every AI startup has the capital to invest in the huge numbers of GPUs now required to run a cutting-edge model. For some, it's a better deal to outsource it. This has led to the rise of a new business: GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS). In recent years, companies like Hyperbolic, Kinesis, Runpod, and Vast.ai have sprouted up to remotely offer their clients the needed processing power. [...] Studies have shown that more than half of the existing GPUs are not in use at any given time. Whether we're talking personal computers or colossal server farms, a lot of processing capacity is under-utilized. What Kinesis does is identify idle compute -- both for GPUs and CPUs -- in servers worldwide and compile them into a single computing source for companies to use. Kinesis partners with universities, data centers, companies, and individuals who are willing to sell their unused computing power. Through a special software installed on their servers, Kinesis detects idle processing units, preps them, and offers them to their clients for temporary use. [...] The biggest advantage of GPUaaS is economical. By removing the need to purchase and maintain the physical infrastructure, it allows companies to avoid investing in servers and IT management, and to instead put their resources toward improving their own deep learning, large language, and large vision models. It also lets customers pay for the exact amount of GPUs they use, saving the costs of the inevitable idle compute that would come with their own servers. The report notes that GPUaaS is growing in profitability. "In 2023, the industry's market size was valued at US $3.23 billion; in 2024, it grew to $4.31 billion," reports IEEE. "It's expected to rise to $49.84 billion by 2032."

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Many of the world's largest tech companies, including Meta, Google, TikTok, and X, have pledged to European lawmakers that they will do more to prevent and remove illegal hate speech on their platforms. The revised set of voluntary commitments unveiled on Monday aim to help platforms "demonstrate their compliance" with the Digital Services Act (DSA) obligations regarding illegal content moderation. The Verge reports: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, X, YouTube, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Dailymotion, Jeuxvideo.com, Rakuten Viber, and Microsoft-hosted consumer services have all signed the "Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech Online Plus" -- which is not a terribly named streaming service but an update to a 2016 Code. The revised code commits signatories to transparency around hate speech detection and reduction, to allowing third-party monitors to assess how hate speech notices are reviewed by the platforms, and to review "at least two-thirds of hate speech notices" within 24 hours. These EU Codes of Conduct are voluntary commitments and companies face no penalties if they decide to back out of the agreement [...].

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The notorious hacker IntelBroker claims to have stolen data from HPE systems, including source code, private repositories, digital certificates, and access to certain services. SecurityWeek reports: The compromised data allegedly includes source code for products such as Zerto and iLO, private GitHub repositories, digital certificates, Docker builds, and even some personal information that the hacker described as "old user PII for deliveries." IntelBroker is also offering access to some services used by HPE, including APIs, WePay, GitHub and GitLab. Contacted by SecurityWeek, HPE said it's aware of the breach claims and is conducting an investigation. "HPE became aware on January 16 of claims being made by a group called IntelBroker that it was in possession of information belonging to HPE. HPE immediately activated our cyber response protocols, disabled related credentials, and launched an investigation to evaluate the validity of the claims," said HPE spokesperson Adam R. Bauer. "There is no operational impact to our business at this time, nor evidence that customer information is involved," Bauer added.

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President Trump hasn’t moved, yet, but has already ordered administration not to interfere in social media moderation

China appears to have softened its stance on the possible sale of TikTok’s US operations and is now perhaps open to the idea.…