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Asteroid 2024 YR4 Will Not Impact the Moon
Ancient Slashdot reader alanw shares a report from the European Space Agency (ESA): Last year, an approximately 60 meter near-Earth object captured global attention. For a brief period, asteroid 2024 YR4 became the most dangerous asteroid discovered in the last 20 years. While an Earth impact was soon ruled out, the asteroid faded from view with a lingering 4% chance of striking the Moon on 22 December 2032. Now, that risk has been eliminated. Astronomers have confirmed that 2024 YR4 will not impact the Moon using new observations made by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Instead, it will safely pass the Moon at a distance of more than 20 000 km.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Humanity Heating Planet Faster Than Ever Before, Study Finds
An anonymous reader The Guardian: Humanity is heating the planet faster than ever before, a study has found. Climate breakdown is occurring more rapidly with the heating rate almost doubling, according to research that excludes the effect of natural factors behind the latest scorching temperatures. It found global heating accelerated from a steady rate of less than 0.2C per decade between 1970 and 2015 to about 0.35C per decade over the past 10 years. The rate is higher than scientists have seen since they started systematically taking the Earth's temperature in 1880. "If the warming rate of the past 10 years continues, it would lead to a long-term exceedance of the 1.5C (2.7F) limit of the Paris agreement before 2030," said Stefan Rahmstorf, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-author of the study. [...] The researchers applied a noise-reduction method to filter out the estimated effect of nonhuman factors in five major datasets that scientists have compiled to gauge the Earth's temperature. In each of them, they found an acceleration in global heating emerged in 2013 or 2014. The findings have been published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Trump Administration Says It Can't Process Tariff Refunds Because of Computer Problems
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said in a filing on Friday that it currently cannot process billions in tariff refunds because its import-processing system is "not well suited to a task of this scale." The Verge reports: The CBP's admission comes after the Supreme Court struck down the tariffs imposed by Trump under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) last month. This week, the International Trade Court ruled that importers impacted by the tariffs are entitled to refunds with interest. The CBP estimates that it collected around $166 billion in IEEPA duties as of March 4th, 2026. [...] The CBP says it currently processes imports through its Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) system. In the filing, Lord says that using the department's existing technology, it would take more than 4.4 million hours to process refunds for the over 53.2 million entries with IEEPA duties. Despite these current limitations, the CBP says it's "confident" it can develop and launch new capabilities to "streamline and consolidate refunds and interest payments on an importer basis" -- but this could take 45 days. "The process will be simpler and more efficient than the existing functionalities, and CBP will provide guidance on how to file refund declarations in the new system," Lord says.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Oura Buys Gesture-Navigation Startup DoublePoint
Smart ring maker Oura has acquired Doublepoint, a Finnish startup specializing in gesture recognition technology for wearables. Engadget reports: The Finnish startup uses smartwatches and wristbands as examples of products that benefit from its technology, but Oura will clearly be looking to incorporate it into its rings, in theory allowing you to control your connected devices with hand movements. Oura said in a press release that the deal sees it inherit an "exceptional team of AI architects and builders from Doublepoint," including Doublepoint's four founders. The newly-acquired company will remain in its native Helsinki, where it will work with Oura's international teams. It added that Doublepoint's expertise in helping devices register subtle hand movements will be key, as nobody wearing a smart ring is going to engage with gesture control if they have to thrash their hand around like a conductor.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Apple Blocks US Users From Downloading ByteDance's Chinese Apps
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: While TikTok operates in the United States under new ownership, Apple has deployed technical restrictions to block iOS users in the United States from downloading other apps made by the video platform's Chinese parent organization ByteDance. ByteDance owns a vast array of different apps spanning social media, entertainment, artificial intelligence, and other sectors. The leading one is Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, which has over 1 billion monthly active users. While most of those users reside in China, iPhone owners around the world have traditionally been able to download these apps from anywhere without using a VPN, as long as they have a valid App Store account registered in China. That's not true anymore. Starting in late January, iPhone users in the U.S. with Chinese App Store accounts began reporting that they were encountering new obstacles when they tried to download apps developed by ByteDance. WIRED has confirmed that even with a valid Chinese App Store account, downloading or updating a ByteDance-owned Chinese app is blocked on Apple devices located in the United States. Instead, a pop-up window appears that says, "This app is unavailable in the country or region you're in." The restriction appears to apply only to ByteDance-owned apps and not those developed by other Chinese companies. The timing and technical specifics suggest the restriction is related to the deal TikTok agreed to in January to divest Chinese ownership of its U.S. operations. The agreement was the result of the so-called TikTok ban law passed by Congress in 2024, which also barred companies like Apple and Google from distributing other apps majority-owned by ByteDance. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act states that no company can "distribute, maintain, or update" any app majority-controlled by ByteDance "within the land or maritime borders of the United States." The law was primarily aimed at TikTok, which has more than 100 million users in the U.S. and had been the subject of years of debate in Washington over whether its Chinese ownership posed a national security risk. But ByteDance also has dozens of other apps that at some point were also removed from Apple's and Google's app stores in the U.S.. Now it seems like the scope of impact has reached even more apps that are not technically designed for U.S. audiences, such as Douyin, the AI chatbot Doubao, and the fiction reading platform Fanqie Novel.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Ars Technica
Ding-dong! The Exploration Upper Stage is dead
The Exploration Upper Stage did not in any way get NASA closer to landing on the Moon.
Satellite firm pauses imagery after revealing Iran's attacks on US bases
Planet wants to prevent "adversarial actors" from using images for "Battle Damage Assessment" purposes.
Fishing crews in the Atlantic keep accidentally dredging up chemical weapons
Fishing crews face horrifying burns from dredging the dumped chemical weapons.
Google's new command-line tool can plug OpenClaw into your Workspace data
This could make it easier to use multiple Workspace APIs, but it's not yet an official Google product.
Feds take notice of iOS vulnerabilities exploited under mysterious circumstances
The long, strange trip of a large assembly of advanced iOS exploits.
Asteroid defense mission shifted the orbit of more than its target
The binary asteroid's orbit around the Sun was affected by the impact.
How moss helped convict grave robbers of a Chicago cemetery
Burr Oak Cemetery is the final resting place of Emmett Till and blues singer Willie Dixon, among others.
Musk fails to block California data disclosure law he fears will ruin xAI
Musk can't convince judge public doesn’t care about where AI training data comes from.
Americans trust Fauci over RFK Jr. and career scientists over Trump officials
RFK Jr. has tried hard to villainize Fauci. Americans still trust Fauci more.
Climate change sucks, but at least it won't kill your EV battery
Older EVs, but not newer ones, may lose up to 30 percent range in a warming world.
Apple users in the US can no longer download ByteDance's Chinese apps
Move comes in the wake of TikTok's transfer of US operations.
Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage
Announcements this week were mostly business as usual, but Apple isn't immune.
With Gateway likely gone, where will lunar landers rendezvous with Orion?
"We will challenge every requirement, clear every obstacle, delete every blocker."
Why are vertebrate eyes so different from those of other animals?
A new hypothesis proposes that our ancestors lost their eyes, then rebuilt them.
Tech industry is in tariff hell, even if refunds are automated
Trade groups urge court to create a simple blueprint for tariff refunds.
AI startup sues ex-CEO, saying he took 41GB of email and lied on résumé
Hayden AI also claims co-founder improperly sold over $1.2M in stock.
Which of these two arcades is the "world largest"—and does it matter?
While semantics count for some, gamers win either way.
Rocket Report: SpaceX launch prices are going up; Russia fixes broken launch pad
It looks like United Launch Alliance will build more upper stages for NASA's SLS rocket.
Workers report watching Ray-Ban Meta-shot footage of people using the bathroom
Meta accused of "concealing the facts" about smart glass users' privacy.
MS exec: Microsoft's next console will play "Xbox and PC games"
Project Helix is set to open the closed-console ecosystem, but the details will matter.
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