Month: September 2023

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto )

US government lawyers criticized Elon Musk's leadership at the company formerly named Twitter yesterday, telling a judge that Musk's attempt to terminate a privacy settlement and Federal Trade Commission investigation should be rejected.

"After agreeing last year to settle charges that it once again misled consumers about the privacy and security of their information, X Corp. (formerly Twitter, Inc.) now seeks to jettison that agreement and limit further scrutiny of its data practices. X Corp.'s motion is meritless and should be denied," Department of Justice lawyers representing the US government wrote in the filing in US District Court for the Northern District of California.

In July, Musk's X Corp. asked the court to terminate or modify a privacy settlement that Twitter and the FTC agreed to in May 2022 before Musk bought the company. X claimed that the FTC's ongoing investigation into whether it is complying with the settlement "has spiraled out of control and become tainted by bias." X's motion also sought "a protective order staying the notice of deposition of Elon Musk."

Enlarge / One of Brother's compact laser printers. (credit: Amazon)

It's the beginning of the end for third-party printer drivers in Windows, according to a support document the company released earlier this month. Instead of bespoke drivers for individual printers and scanners, Windows will rely on its built-in universal "class driver" that supports the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) and other standards embraced by the Mopria Alliance.

The phase-out will kick off in earnest at some point in 2025, when Microsoft will stop accepting new third-party printer drivers in Windows Update. Updates to existing printer drivers will still be allowed, but drivers for new printers can no longer be added. In 2026, all printers connected to a Windows PC will default to the built-in class driver even if a customized third-party driver is available. And starting in 2027, only security-related fixes will be allowed for printer drivers in Windows Update.

If you rely on third-party drivers to support an older printer without Mopria or IPP support, don't worry—third-party print drivers will continue to work in Windows for the foreseeable future, and the support document explicitly says that existing drivers can continue to be installed from Windows Update or downloaded and installed manually by users. Microsoft will also continue to sign new printer drivers as part of its Windows Hardware Compatibility Program, though after 2025, these drivers can no longer be added to Windows Update.

Enlarge / No, this is not a screen grab from the movie Logan. It's Parallel Systems' second-generation autonomous electric rail vehicle. (credit: Parallel Systems)

Platoons of driverless cargo trucks cruising across highways is one of those tempting technocrat ideas that doesn't look like it will pan out. As autonomous driving technology matured in the middle of the last decade, we saw trials of the concept, but human truck drivers do more than just throttle, steer, and brake, and they aren't likely to be replaced soon.

A better idea would be to shift some of that cargo to our underutilized railways—here, the idea of platooning is an old one, better known as a "train." Parallel Systems hopes to do just that with its second-generation autonomous battery-electric freight railcar.

"Our goal is to transfer more of the trucking traffic onto the railroad. In order to do that, the railroad needs to be far more flexible," explained John Howard, co-founder and vice president of operations at Parallel Systems.

Enlarge / An algal bloom clogging a waterway near Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland. (credit: Chris Banaiuk)

Standing on the marina, Rob Skelly peers into the darkness of the river where bright speckles of algae drift in the water. A neon green invader. “It’s starting to build,” he says. “Tomorrow, you’ll find that there’s clumps like that all over the river—and then the day after that there’ll be more and more.”

Until this summer, Skelly had never seen algae wax and wane like this in the River Bann, a major waterway in Northern Ireland. The owner of the Cranagh Activity Centre set up his thriving water sports business 27 years ago, and it has been in this location since 2015. The algae has killed it. Following news reports of toxin-producing blue-green algae in lakes and rivers around Northern Ireland, people began canceling their bookings for water-skiing lessons and similar activities in droves.

Skelly doesn’t blame them. “How can I put customers into that?” he says, looking at the mottled water below us. The season ruined, Skelly has decided to close his business for good. “You know, it’s heartbreaking.”