An anonymous reader shares a report:When Apple introduced the M1 Ultra -- the company's most powerful in-house processor yet and the crown jewel of its brand new Mac Studio -- it did so with charts boasting that the Ultra capable of beating out Intel's best processor or Nvidia's RTX 3090 GPU all on its own. The charts, in Apple's recent fashion, were maddeningly labeled with "relative performance" on the Y-axis, and Apple doesn't tell us what specific tests it runs to arrive at whatever numbers it uses to then calculate "relative performance." But now that we have a Mac Studio, we can say that in most tests, the M1 Ultra isn't actually faster than an RTX 3090, as much as Apple would like to say it is.

"A little noticed side effect of all the sanctions Russia is under for its invasion of Ukraine is that related to IT," writes Slashdot reader quonset. "U.S. sanctions prohibit any technology transfers to the country, including computer chips. However, another issue is Russia is now cut off from cloud storage companies in the West. As a result, Russia is two months away from using up all its domestic storage capacity. Four options have been proposed to counter this issue. BleepingComputer reports: Last week, the Ministry of Digital Development amended the Yarovaya Law (2016) to suspend a yearly requirement for telecom operators to increase storage capacity allocations by 15% for anti-terrorist surveillance purposes. Another move that could free up space would be to demand ISPs abandon media streaming services and other online entertainment platforms that eat up precious resources. Thirdly, there's the option of buying out all available storage from domestic data processing centers. However, this will likely lead to further problems for entertainment providers who need additional storage to add services and content. Russia is also considering seizing IT servers and storage left behind by companies who pulled out of Russia and integrating them into public infrastructure. There is one more option mentioned in the report and it has to do with China. Russia could "tap into Chinese cloud service providers and IT system sellers," reports BleepingComputer, although China has yet to decide how much it's willing to help Russia.

A team of researchers from Cornell University used a computational aesthetic system to teach an AI robot "to not only determine the most pleasing picture in a given dataset, but capture new, original -- and most importantly, good -- shots on its own," writes Engadget's A. Tarantola. The project is called AutoPhoto and was presented last fall at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. From the report: This robo-photographer consists of three parts: the image evaluation algorithm, which evaluates a presented image and issues an aesthetic score; a Clearpath Jackal wheeled robot upon which the camera is affixed; and the AutoPhoto algorithm itself, which serves as a sort of firmware, translating the results from the image grading process into drive commands for the physical robot and effectively automating the optimized image capture process.

For its image evaluation algorithm, the Cornell team led by second year Masters student Hadi AlZayer, leveraged an existing learned aesthetic estimation model, which had been trained on a dataset of more than a million human-ranked photographs. AutoPhoto itself was virtually trained on dozens of 3D images of interior room scenes to spot the optimally composed angle before the team attached it to the Jackal. When let loose in a building on campus, as you can see in the video above, the robot starts off with a slew of bad takes, but as the AutoPhoto algorithm gains its bearings, its shot selection steadily improves until the images rival those of local Zillow listings. On average it took about a dozen iterations to optimize each shot and the whole process takes just a few minutes to complete.

"You can essentially take incremental improvements to the current commands," AlZayer told Engadget. "You can do it one step at a time, meaning you can formulate it as a reinforcement learning problem." This way, the algorithm doesn't have to conform to traditional heuristics like the rule of thirds because it already knows what people will like as it was taught to match the look and feel of the shots it takes with the highest-ranked pictures from its training data, AlZayer explained. "The most challenging part was the fact there was no existing baseline number we were trying to improve," AlZayer noted to the Cornell Press. "We had to define the entire process and the problem." Looking ahead, AlZayer hopes to adapt the AutoPhoto system for outdoor use, potentially swapping out the terrestrial Jackal for a UAV. "Simulating high quality realistic outdoor scenes is very hard," AlZayer said, "just because it's harder to perform reconstruction of a controlled scene." To get around that issue, he and his team are currently investigating whether the AutoPhoto model can be trained on video or still images rather than 3D scenes.

Chip designer and licensor to the stars, Arm, has reportedly dropped around 1,000 workers onto unemployment queues. The Register reports: An email to staff from Arm CEO Rene Haas, seen and reported by the UK's Daily Telegraph, states: "To stay competitive, we need to remove duplication of work now that we are one Arm; stop work that is no longer critical to our future success; and think about how we get work done." Haas, who has been in the chief exec's chair for about a month, added Arm needs "to be more disciplined about our costs and where we're investing." "I write this knowing that although it is the right thing to do for Arm's future, this is not going to be easy," he added. Between 12 and 15 per cent of staff will be let go as a result globally. The biz employs 6,400 worldwide. The job cuts come just a month after the collapse of the company's $40 billion sale to Nvidia. ARM is now pursuing a potential IPO, according to Bloomberg.

Does Apple have a "Pro" problem? "[Y]ears of Apple and competitors slapping the name onto wireless earbuds and slightly fancier phones have made it hard to tell what 'Pro' even means," argues The Verge's Mitchell Clark. It could be the reason behind Apple's recently-launched Mac "Studio." From the report: From the jump, Apple made it clear who the Mac Studio and Studio Display were for. It showed them being used by musicians, 3D artists, and developers in its presentation, and the message was clear: these are products for creative professionals or people who aspire to be creative professionals. You know, the same exact crowd it's targeted with MacBook Pro commercials for years. "My first thought was, 'Oh, I wonder when the iPhone Studio comes out,'" says Jonathan Balck, co-founder and managing director of ad agency Colossus, in an interview with The Verge. "Pro was exclusive, and it was about one way of doing things, but the whole culture is moving toward creativity," he adds while musing whether we could see Apple's Pro branding shift to become Studio branding instead.

[T]o me, the Mac Studio line is a clear successor to Apple's iMac Pro. Both computers are powered by monstrous CPUs and come standard with 10Gb Ethernet and a healthy crop of Thunderbolt and USB ports. I'm convinced that, had Apple released the new Studio even two years ago, it would've put "Pro" in the name. (Though, to play devil's advocate, I'm not as sure it would've done so for the Studio Display.) Some marketing experts tell me that the word "Pro" is starting to get long in the tooth, and not just from overuse. "The previous term Pro is, in my opinion, outdated and dry," says Keith Dorsey, founder and CEO of the creative marketing group and management company YoungGuns Entertainment. Balck agrees; "If you look at the word Pro, that is in many ways restrictive," he says in an interview, explaining that when you say a product is "professional," it evokes ideas like job interviews, portfolios, and standoffishness. Pro products, he says, come across as just for those who use creativity to get a paycheck.

The reason Apple may need to, though, is because it led the industry in thoroughly overusing the word "Pro" to the point where it's lost all meaning. It's hard to pinpoint where exactly this started (though, in my mind, it was with the two-port MacBook Pro model), but now the word gets slapped on everything. Want to sell wireless earbuds for even more money? Those are Pro earbuds now. Want to have a regular and fancy version of your phone? No problem, call the nice one the Pro. [...] But Apple's new word, "studio," seems to come ready-made to excite the company's target audience.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: Foxconn, the biggest assembler of Apple iPhones, is in talks with Saudi Arabia about jointly building a $9 billion multipurpose facility (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source) that could make microchips, electric-vehicle components and other electronics like displays, according to people familiar with the matter. The Saudi government is reviewing an offer from the company, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., to build a dual-line foundry for surface-mount technology and wafer fabrication in Neom, a tech-focused city-state the kingdom is developing in the desert, the people said. Discussions over the project started last year, they said. The Saudis are conducting due diligence and benchmarking the offer against others that Foxconn has made for similar projects globally, one of the people said. Besides Saudi Arabia, Foxconn is also talking with the United Arab Emirates about potentially siting the project there, one of the people said.

The Taiwan-based company has looked to diversify its manufacturing sites amid rising tensions between China and the U.S. that put it in a potentially vulnerable spot. Riyadh wants the company to guarantee that it would direct at least two-thirds of the foundry's production into Foxconn's existing supply chain, one of the people said, to ensure there are buyers for its products and the project is ultimately profitable. Foxconn is seeking large incentives including financing, tax holidays and subsidies for power and water in exchange for helping set up a high-tech manufacturing sector in the kingdom, the people said, as Saudi Arabia seeks to diversify its economy away from oil. The Saudis could offer direct equity co-investment, industrial development loans, low-interest debt from local banks and export credits to compete with other jurisdictions that Foxconn might consider, said another person familiar with the talks.

The Verge reports: Ford will soon start selling and shipping some Ford Explorers without the chips that power rear air conditioning and heating controls, according to a report from Automotive News. The automaker will instead ship the missing semiconductors to dealers within one year, which they will then install in customers' vehicles after purchase.

Ford spokesperson Said Deep told The Verge that heating and air condition will still be controllable from the front seats, and that customers who choose to purchase a vehicle without the rear controls will receive a price reduction. According to Deep, Ford is doing this as a way to bring new Explorers to customers faster, and that the change is only temporary.

The automaker originally had plans to ship partially-built, undrivable vehicles to dealers last year, but now, the unchipped vehicles will be both driveable and sellable. As pointed out by Automotive News, Ford's decision comes as an attempt to move the partially-built vehicles crowding its factory lots. Last month, hundreds of new Ford Broncos were spotted sitting idly in the snow-covered lots near Ford's Michigan Assembly Plant, all of which await chip-related installations....

Other automakers have also had to make sacrifices due to the chip shortage, with GM dropping wireless charging, HD radios, and a fuel management module that made some pickup trucks operate more efficiently.

Power blackouts and rising electricity costs have inspired "a small but growing number of Californians" to leave the power grid altogether for their own home-generated energy, reports the New York Times.

And thanks to "a stunning drop" in the cost of solar panels and batteries, "Some homeowners who have built new, off-grid homes say they have even saved money because their systems were cheaper than securing a new utility connection...." Nobody is quite sure how many off-grid homes there are but local officials and real estate agents said there were dozens here in Nevada County, a picturesque part of the Sierra Nevada range between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe. Some energy experts say that millions of people could eventually go off the grid as costs drop....

People going off the grid argue that utilities are not moving fast enough to address climate change and are causing other problems. In Northern California, Pacific Gas & Electric's safety record has alienated many residents. The company's equipment caused the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed dozens and destroyed the town of Paradise, about 70 miles north of Nevada City. The utility's effort to prevent fires by cutting off power to homes and businesses has also angered people. One of those residents is Alan Savage, a real estate agent in Grass Valley, who bought an off-grid home six years ago and has sold hundreds of such properties. He said he never loses power, unlike PG&E customers. "I don't think I'll ever go back to being on the grid," Mr. Savage said.

For people like him, it is not enough to take the approach favored by most homeowners with solar panels and batteries. Those homeowners use their systems to supplement the electricity they get from the grid, provide emergency backup power and sell excess energy to the grid.

The appeal of off-grid homes has grown in part because utilities have become less reliable. As natural disasters linked to climate change have increased, there have been more extended blackouts in California, Texas, Louisiana and other states.... Installing off-grid solar and battery systems is expensive, but once the systems are up and running, they typically require modest maintenance and homeowners no longer have an electric bill. RMI, a research organization formerly known as the Rocky Mountain Institute, has projected that by 2031 most California homeowners will save money by going off the grid as solar and battery costs fall and utility rates increase. That phenomenon will increasingly play out in less sunny regions like the Northeast over the following decades, the group forecasts....

Some energy experts worry that people who are going off the grid could unwittingly hurt efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That is because the excess electricity that rooftop solar panels produce will no longer reach the grid, where it can replace power from coal or natural gas plants. "We don't need everybody to cut the cord and go it alone," said Mark Dyson, senior principal with the carbon-free electricity unit of RMI.... Scott Aaronson, a senior vice president for security and preparedness at the Edison Electric Institute, a utility industry trade group, said that while off-grid living might appeal to some, it was "like having a computer not connected to the internet.... You're getting some value but you're not part of a greater whole," he said. "When something goes wrong, that's wholly on you...."

Off-grid systems are particularly attractive to people building new homes. That's because installing a 125- to 300-foot overhead power line to a new home costs about $20,000, according to the California Public Utilities Commission. In places where lines have to be buried, installation runs about $78,000 for 100 feet.
The article ends by pointing out that off-the-grid residents will soon also have a handy alternative to the giant electric batteries that store the excess energy from their solar panels: electric cars like the Ford F-150 Lightning and the Hyundai Ioniq 5.

"News of a fresh Spectre BHB vulnerability that only impacts Intel and Arm processors emerged this week," reports Tom's Hardware, "but Intel's research around these new attack vectors unearthed another issue.

"One of the patches that AMD has used to fix the Spectre vulnerabilities has been broken since 2018." Intel's security team, STORM, found the issue with AMD's mitigation. In response, AMD has issued a security bulletin and updated its guidance to recommend using an alternative method to mitigate the Spectre vulnerabilities, thus repairing the issue anew....

Intel's research into AMD's Spectre fix begins in a roundabout way — Intel's processors were recently found to still be susceptible to Spectre v2-based attacks via a new Branch History Injection variant, this despite the company's use of the Enhanced Indirect Branch Restricted Speculation (eIBRS) and/or Retpoline mitigations that were thought to prevent further attacks. In need of a newer Spectre mitigation approach to patch the far-flung issue, Intel turned to studying alternative mitigation techniques. There are several other options, but all entail varying levels of performance tradeoffs. Intel says its ecosystem partners asked the company to consider using AMD's LFENCE/JMP technique. The "LFENCE/JMP" mitigation is a Retpoline alternative commonly referred to as "AMD's Retpoline."

As a result of Intel's investigation, the company discovered that the mitigation AMD has used since 2018 to patch the Spectre vulnerabilities isn't sufficient — the chips are still vulnerable. The issue impacts nearly every modern AMD processor spanning almost the entire Ryzen family for desktop PCs and laptops (second-gen to current-gen) and the EPYC family of datacenter chips....

In response to the STORM team's discovery and paper, AMD issued a security bulletin (AMD-SB-1026) that states it isn't aware of any currently active exploits using the method described in the paper. AMD also instructs its customers to switch to using "one of the other published mitigations (V2-1 aka 'generic retpoline' or V2-4 aka 'IBRS')." The company also published updated Spectre mitigation guidance reflecting those changes [PDF]....

AMD's security bulletin thanks Intel's STORM team by name and noted it engaged in the coordinated vulnerability disclosure, thus allowing AMD enough time to address the issue before making it known to the public.
Thanks to Slashdot reader Hmmmmmm for submitting the story...

Walgreens and other retailers replaced some fridge and freezer doors with iPad-like screens, reports CNN. "And some shoppers absolutely hate it." The screens, which were developed by the startup Cooler Screens, use a system of motion sensors and cameras to display what's inside the doors — as well as product information, prices, deals and, most appealing to brands, paid advertisements. The tech provides stores with an additional revenue stream and a way to modernize the shopping experience. But for customers who just want to peek into the freezer and grab their ice cream, Walgreens risks angering them by solving a problem that shoppers didn't know existed. The company wants to engage more people with advertising, but the reaction, so far, is annoyance and confusion.

"Why would Walgreens do this?" one befuddled shopper who encountered the screens posted on TikTok. "Who on God's green earth thought this was a good idea?"

"The digital cooler screens at Walgreens made me watch an ad before it allowed me to know which door held the frozen pizzas," said someone on Twitter....

Walgreens began testing the screens in 2018 and has since expanded the pilot to a couple thousand locations nationwide. Several other major retailers are launching their own tests with Cooler Screens, including Kroger, CVS, GetGo convenience stores and Chevron gas stations. "I hope that we will one day be able to expand across all parts of the store," said Cooler Screens co-founder and CEO Arsen Avakian in an interview with CNN Business. Currently the startup has about 10,000 screens in stores, which are viewed by approximately 90 million consumers monthly, according to the company....

Politifact last month debunked a viral Facebook video that claimed "Walgreens refrigerators are scanning shoppers' hands and foreheads for 'the mark of the beast.'"

Avakian insists the tech is "identity-blind" and protects consumers' privacy. The freezers have front-facing sensors used to anonymously track shoppers interacting with the platform, while internally facing cameras track product inventory...

The items on display don't always match up with what's inside because products are out of stock.....

"This is the future of retail and shopping," Avakian said.
CNN notes that major corporations are backing the company Cooler Screens, which "has raised more than $100 million from backers including Microsoft and Verizon." But long-time Slashdot reader davidwr points out it's been done before. "Some gas stations have had video ads at the pump for years now. I boycott those stations on principle."

And Slashdot reader quonset wonders if we're one step closer to Futurama's vision of a world where advertisers enter our dreams.

Ukraine's two leading suppliers of neon, which produce about half the world's supply of the key ingredient for making chips, have halted their operations as Moscow has sharpened its attack on the country, threatening to raise prices and aggravate the semiconductor shortage. CNN Business reports: Some 45%-54% of the world's semiconductor grade neon, critical for the lasers used to make chips, comes from two Ukrainian companies, Ingas and Cryoin, according to Reuters calculations based on figures from the companies and market research firm Techcet. Global neon consumption for chip production reached about 540 metric tons last year, Techcet estimates. Both firms have shuttered their operations, according to company representatives contacted by Reuters, as Russian troops have escalated their attacks on cities throughout Ukraine, killing civilians and destroying key infrastructure. The stoppage casts a cloud over the worldwide output of chips, already in short supply after the coronavirus pandemic drove up demand for cell phones, laptops and later cars, forcing some firms to scale back production.

According to the latest updates from CNN, Ukraine's defense ministry claims Russia is planning to carry out "some sort of terrorist attack at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant" and blame Ukraine. The plant is currently without power and under Russian control. From the report: The Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defence claimed on its Facebook page Friday that "the available intelligence says Putin has ordered that his troops to prepare a terror attack at Chernobyl for which the Russian invaders will try to blame Ukraine." The directorate also repeated that the plant "remains completely disconnected from the monitoring systems run by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)."

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence also alleged Friday that Russian forces had denied a Ukrainian repair team access to Chernobyl. It claimed without offering evidence that "Belarusian specialists" went there posing as nuclear power experts and that Russian saboteurs were arriving to set up a terror attack. The ministry claimed that "without receiving the desired result from the ground military operation and direct talks, Putin is ready to resort to nuclear blackmail of the international community."

The IAEA said last week that it had not been able to re-establish communication with systems installed to monitor nuclear material and activities at either the Chernobyl or Zaporizhzhia plants following the loss of remote data transmissions from those systems. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said Thursday that the situation at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, occupied by the Russian forces, was degrading as the IAEA was losing "a significant amount of information" on safeguarding monitoring systems. However, he said he was "quite encouraged [...] on one important thing, is that Ukraine and Russian Federation want to work with us, they agree to work with us." "Both Russia and Ukraine have repeatedly claimed without substantiation that the other side is planning to provoke an incident involving nuclear, chemical or biological agents," notes CNN.

On Wednesday, Russian's foreign ministry claimed that the U.S. operates a biowarfare lab in Ukraine, "an accusation that has been repeatedly denied by Washington and Kyiv," reports Reuters.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) will begin testing bidirectional charging in California with new pilot programs announced this week at General Motors and Ford. ["This will enable power to flow from a charged EV into a customer's home, automatically coordinating between the EV, home and PG&E's electric supply," explains InsideEVs.] [...] General Motors might be late to the EV pickup party, but on Wednesday, it was first to announce that it is working with PG&E on vehicle-to-home technology. This summer, the two companies will begin lab tests with different GM EVs before starting to test vehicle-to-home connections at some customer homes. The two companies say they plan to open up to a larger customer trial by the end of this year.

On Thursday, Ford and PG&E revealed similar plans at the CERAWeek conference in Houston. Few details have been made public so far, though we know that unlike in the GM pilot, PG&E will not be able to remotely operate the vehicle-to-home feature on demand. And unfortunately, neither the Ford Mustang Mach-E nor the e-Transit will be capable of bidirectional charging; it will just be the F-150 Lightning.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A company that plans to drill deeper into Earth than ever before, creating holes that would extend a record-shattering 12 miles under our planet's surface, has raised a total of $63 million since its launch in 2020. Most recently, Quaise Energy, a startup that aims to revolutionize the geothermal energy market, secured $40 million in series A funding in February, reports Axios. The goal of these super-deep holes is to access a limitless amount of renewable energy from the heat deep inside Earth.

"This funding round brings us closer to providing clean, renewable baseload energy," said Carlos Araque, CEO and co-founder of Quaise Energy, according to BusinessWire. "Our technology allows us to access energy anywhere in the world, at a scale far greater than wind and solar, enabling future generations to thrive in a world powered with abundant clean energy." Geothermal energy has a low profile compared to other renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and hydro, but Quaise believes it is "at the core of an energy-independent world," according to the company's website. This form of energy is among the oldest power sources harnessed by humans, but it only accounts for about 0.4 percent of net energy production in the United States, which is the world's biggest geothermal producer.

Quaise, which is a spinoff from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), intends to pioneer this technology using vacuum tubes known as gyrotrons that shoot millimeter-wave light beams, powered by electrons in a strong magnetic field. Using these devices, the company plans to burn almost twice as far into Earth as the deepest holes ever made, such as Russia's Kola Superdeep Borehole or Qatar's Al Shaheen oil well, both of which extend for about 7.5 miles. Gyrotrons are powerful enough to heat plasma in nuclear fusion experiments, making them an ideal tool to probe unprecedented depths of some 12 miles, where subterranean rocks roil at temperatures of about 500C (930F). Water pumped into this searing environment would instantly vaporize as steam that could be efficiently converted to electricity. Araque and his team at Quaise plan to funnel their seed money into prototype technologies within the next few years. By 2028, the company aspires to retrofit coal-fueled power plants into geothermal energy hotspots, reports ScienceAlert. The process of drilling out these super-deep holes would take a few months, but once the setup is complete, they could provide limitless energy to a region for up to a century, according to Araque.

China exported nearly 500,000 electric cars in 2021 -- more than any other country in the world -- thanks to increasing sales in Europe and Southeast Asia by emerging cost-competitive automakers, Nikkei has learned. From the report: According to the General Administration of Customs of China, the number of passenger EVs exported in 2021 increased 2.6 times to 499,573 units. Meanwhile, Germany doubled its exports to about 230,000 units, while the U.S fell 30% to around 110,000 units, and Japan increased 24% to 27,400 units -- according to data compiled by the German Association of the Automotive Industry and the Japan External Trade Organization.

China accounts for 60% of global EV production, and is emerging as the world's factory for EVs having already secured the same position in digital product manufacturing. Exports to the EU grew in the wake of it announcing a policy to ban the sale of new hybrid and gasoline-powered vehicles in 2035. China's EV exports to Europe rose fivefold to 230,000 units, with the region absorbing half of China's total EV exports. Belgium imported 87,000 units and the U.K. 50,000 units. Of the almost 500,000 units exported, more than 100,000 appear to have originated from Tesla's Shanghai plant.

On February 24, Russian forces seized control of the Chernobyl nuclear plant and took its staff hostage, causing radiation levels to increase about 20-fold from all the heavy military vehicles stirring contaminated soil in the exclusion zone surrounding the plant. Today, the Ukrainian government warned that the abandoned nuclear power plant, including other nuclear facilities nearby, no longer have electricity after a power line was damaged. Axios reports: A loss of power at the plant could disrupt the cooling of radioactive material stored there, risking radioactive leakage that can be carried by wind to other parts of Europe. [...] "About 20,000 spent fuel assemblies are stored in the spent nuclear fuel storage facility-1. They need constant cooling, which is possible only if there is electricity. If it is not there, the pumps will not cool. As a result, the temperature in the holding pools will increase," the Ukrainian government said. "After that evaporation will occur, that will lead to nuclear discharge. The wind can transfer the radioactive cloud to other regions of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and Europe. In addition, there is no ventilation inside the facility," it added.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said Wednesday that Ukraine had informed it of the power outage and called it a violation of a "key safety pillar" but saw "no critical impact on safety" in this case. The agency's director general said Tuesday that it was no longer receiving data monitoring systems installed at the plant and other facilities and that the handling of nuclear material in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone had been put on hold. "I'm deeply concerned about the difficult and stressful situation facing staff at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the potential risks this entails for nuclear safety. I call on the forces in effective control of the site to urgently facilitate the safe rotation of personnel there," IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi said Tuesday.

The Ukrainian government is preparing for the potential need to move its data and servers abroad if Russia's invading forces push deeper into the country, a senior cybersecurity official told Reuters on Wednesday. From the report: Victor Zhora, the deputy chief of Ukraine's State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection, emphasized his department was planning for a contingency, but that it is being considered at all suggests Ukrainians want to be ready for any Russian threat to seize sensitive government documents. The move could only happen after regulatory changes approved by Ukrainian lawmakers, Zhora said.

Government officials have already been shipping equipment and backups to more secure areas of Ukraine beyond the reach of Russian forces, who invaded on Feb. 24 and are laying siege to several cities. Last month Zhora told Politico there were plans to move critical data out of the capital Kyiv should it be threatened, but preparations for potentially moving data abroad go a step further. Ukraine has received offers to host data from a variety of countries, Zhora said, declining to identify them. For reasons of proximity "a European location will be preferred," he said.

Zhora gave few details of how such a move might be executed, but he said past efforts to keep government data out of Russia's grasp involved either the physical transport of servers and removable storage devices or the digital migration of data from one service or server to another. Government agencies would have to decide on a case by case basis whether to keep their operations running inside the country or evacuate them. [...] Russia possessing Ukrainian government databases and intelligence files could be helpful if Russia wanted to control Ukraine.

At its "Peek Performance" event, Apple today announced the third-generation iPhone SE, featuring the A15 Bionic chip, improved battery life, 5G connectivity, a new camera system, and more, all for a starting price of $429. MacRumors reports: The new iPhone SE features the same 4.7-inch display as the current model, but now offers the toughest glass in a smartphone on the front and back -- the same as on the back of the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro. The device's new 12MP Wide camera system offers a range of improvements and computational photography features including Deep Fusion, Photographic Styles, Portrait Mode, and Smart HDR 4.

The new iPhone SE contains the same A15 Bionic chip from the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro. [...] The A15 Bionic also gives the new iPhone SE longer battery life than the previous-generation and older 4.7-inch iPhone models despite having a compact form-factor and 5G connectivity. It continues to support fast charging and be compatible with Qi-certified chargers for wireless charging. Along with the new iPhone SE, Apple also unveiled the all-new Mac Studio and Studio Display, flagship M1 Ultra desktop processor, and updated iPad Air.

The next generation of Apple Silicon chips has arrived with the announcement of the company's new M1 Ultra SoC (system on a chip), the latest entry to Apple's M1 chipset lineup that's even more powerful than the M1, M1 Pro, and M1 Max chips its released so far. From a report: The key to the M1 Ultra is the Apple's UltraFusion architecture -- effectively, Apple is fusing together two separate M1 Max chips into a single, massive SoC, thanks to the 2.5TB/s inter-processor connection that the M1 Max offers. That design lets Apple double virtually all the specs from its M1 Max chip on the M1 Ultra: 20 CPU cores (16 performance and four efficiency), 64 GPU cores, a 32-core Neural Engine for AI processing, and up to 128GB of RAM. All told, Apple says that the M1 Ultra offers eight times the performance of the regular M1.

Laptops and smartphones made by Apple, Microsoft, and Google are considerably less repair-friendly than those made by competitors Asus, Dell, and Motorola, according to a new report. From a report: These findings may be unsurprising to people who like to fix gadgets, but the data to back them up comes from an unusual source: the companies themselves. The report, released today by the US Public Research Interest Group's Education Fund, draws on data companies are now releasing in France to comply with the government's world-first "repairability index" law, which went into effect last year. The law requires manufacturers of certain electronic devices, including cell phones and laptops, to score each of their products based on how easily repairable it is and make that score, along with the data that went into it, available to consumers at point-of-sale.