sixoh1 writes: On the third attempt, SpaceX's Super Heavy booster lofted the Starship vehicle to space on a sub-orbital parabolic trajectory. The test was successful for nearly all of the objectives, including payload delivery functions on Starship that will be used for Starlink deployment and in-space fuel transfers. Unfortunately the booster did not soft-land, and the Starship vehicle was destroyed during re-entry, likely due to unspecified issues with re-starting the Raptor engine and then maintaining attitude control during re-entry. You can watch Starship's third flight test here.

An article in Inc notes a "wild projection" in Reddit's SEC filing that Reddit's global market opportunity by 2027 is $1.4 trillion." Some of the numbers lead back to a single individual: Sam Altman. The co-founder and chief executive of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI owns an 8.7 percent stake in Reddit, more than its co-founder and CEO, Steve Huffman, who owns 3.3 percent... Altman, through various funds and holding companies he owns or manages, controls more than a million shares of Reddit at $60 million in aggregate purchase price — and holds more than 9 percent of voting rights...

Discussing Reddit's future, financial analyst and journalist Herb Greenberg recently told CNBC, "This is an AI play."
But the senior investing editor for Kiplinger.com argues that retail investors "may want to hold tight before rushing out to buy the Reddit IPO." While IPO stocks tend to have strong first-day showings, returns for the first year are generally weak, says the team of analysts at Trivariate Research, a market research firm based in New York. And since 2020, "the average IPO has lagged its industry average by 30% over the subsequent three years following its first closing price..."

Other commenters have noted that Reddit's allotment of shares to select Redditors could lower demand on the first day of trading, which would work against any IPO pop.
"Over the past few years, there have been a bunch of IPOs in the U.S. in which overhyped names enjoyed flashy stock-market debuts only to drop sharply soon after," notes the Street. Notable examples include Coinbase, which plummeted by almost 90% after its debut, Robinhood, still down 53% since its IPO, and Rivian, down over 91% since its debut. However, it's crucial to note that all of these IPOs occurred in 2021 amid market euphoria fueled by low interest rates, significant economic stimulus, and the lingering effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Although the current macroeconomic landscape differs from three years ago, valuations of tech and growth stocks remain stretched.
Kiplingers.com concludes it "boils down to your own personal investing goals and risk tolerance. If you do decide to buy Reddit stock when it first begins trading, do so in a small amount that you can afford to lose."

But they also cite analysis from David Trainer, CEO of New Constructs, a research firm powered by artificial intelligence. "Reddit's IPO marks the return of the junk IPO," Trainer wrote in Forbes. "[The valuation] implies that Reddit will grow its user base to 26 times current levels, which would be nearly five times the size of [Snapchat-maker] Snap, and a highly unlikely feat. Reddit looks overvalued, and we think investors should pass on this IPO."

Trainer writes: [T]he company has never been profitable and should not be a publicly traded company... I think the company may never monetize its platform without angering its users and the entire premise of Reddit is user-generated content. This business model is inescapably built on a catch-22: make money or please users... Reddit looks overvalued, and I think investors should pass on this IPO.
Buyers and analysts told the site Marketing Brew "that they see the platform as nice-to-have, but that it is not an essential part of their media plans, like Meta or Google are." "They've always been solidly in the second or third tier of social networks," alongside Snap, Pinterest, and X, Brian Wieser, a former GroupM exec who's now author of the industry newsletter Madison and Wall, told Marketing Brew.
Yet Trainer notes that "98% of Reddit's revenue in 2023 came from third-party advertising on the site and 28% of all revenue came from ten customers," and "Reddit's cost of revenue, sales & marketing, general & administrative, and research & development costs were 117% of revenue in 2023."

Trainer concludes "Reddit is nowhere near breakeven. Reddit is an unprofitable social media company fighting for users."

Bloomberg adds that the subreddit r/WallStreetBets "has threatened to bet against the stock, with many people noting that the company still loses money two decades into its existence. (Reddit lost $90.8 million last year, down from $158.6 million the year before.)" Some have complained that the invitation to invest fails to make up for the unpaid labor they've invested making the site work... In 2021 the platform's WallStreetBets forum ignited a meme-stock frenzy, propelling skyward the stocks of nostalgic but struggling companies like GameStop Corp. and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. and sending shockwaves through the financial industry... When it goes public, the platform that invented meme stocks runs the risk of becoming one itself.

Reddit noted the possibility as a risk in its IPO filing. "Given the broad awareness and brand recognition of Reddit, including as a result of the popularity of r/wallstreetbets among retail investors," the company warned that its stock could "experience extreme volatility ... which could cause you to lose all or part of your investment if you are unable to sell your shares at or above the initial offering price."

Users on WallStreetBets got a kick out of the fact that the company listed the forum as a risk factor, posting about it with a sly smiling emoji...
Meanwhile, reports that marketers are infiltrating subreddits have been confirmed. Over 200 businesses have "integrated Reddit Pro into their digital strategies," reports Search Engine Land, including "well-known names such as Taco Bell, the NFL, and The Wall Street Journal...

"During the initial alpha testing phase with approximately 20 businesses, Reddit reported its Pro partners, on average, generated 11 additional posts and comments per month."

Science magazine "has confirmed that a panel of two dozen geologists has voted down a proposal to end the Holocene — our current span of geologic time, which began 11,700 years ago at the end of the last ice age — and inaugurate a new epoch, the Anthropocene.

"Starting in the 1950s, it would have marked a time when humanity's influence on the planet became overwhelming." The vote, first reported by The New York Times, is a stunning — though not unexpected — rebuke for the proposal, which has been working its way through a formal approval process for more than a decade... [S]ome felt the proposed marker of the epoch — some 10 centimeters of mud from Canada's Crawford Lake that captures the global surge in fossil fuel burning, fertilizer use, and atomic bomb fallout that began in the 1950s — isn't definitive enough. Others questioned whether it's even possible to affix one date to the start of humanity's broad planetary influence: Why not the rise of agriculture? Why not the vast changes that followed European encroachment on the New World?
Stanley Finney, a stratigrapher at California State University Long Beach and head of the International Union of Geological Sciences, said "It would have been rejected 10 years earlier if they had not avoided presenting it to the stratigraphic community for careful consideration." Finney also complains that from the start, AWG was determined to secure an "epoch" categorization, and ignored or countered proposals for a less formal Anthropocene designation.... The Anthropocene backers will now have to wait for a decade before their proposal can be considered again...

Even if it is not formally recognized by geologists, the Anthropocene is here to stay. It is used in art exhibits, journal titles, and endless books... And others have advanced the view that it can remain an informal geologic term, calling it the "Anthropocene event...."
From the New York Times: Geoscientists don't deny our era stands out within that long history. Radionuclides from nuclear tests. Plastics and industrial ash. Concrete and metal pollutants. Rapid greenhouse warming. Sharply increased species extinctions. These and other products of modern civilization are leaving unmistakable remnants in the mineral record, particularly since the mid-20th century. Still, to qualify for its own entry on the geologic time scale, the Anthropocene would have to be defined in a very particular way, one that would meet the needs of geologists and not necessarily those of the anthropologists, artists and others who are already using the term.

That's why several experts who have voiced skepticism about enshrining the Anthropocene emphasized that the vote against it shouldn't be read as a referendum among scientists on the broad state of the Earth. "This was a narrow, technical matter for geologists, for the most part," said one of those skeptics, Erle C. Ellis, an environmental scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. "This has nothing to do with the evidence that people are changing the planet," Dr. Ellis said. "The evidence just keeps growing."

Francine M.G. McCarthy, a micropaleontologist at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, is the opposite of a skeptic: She helped lead some of the research to support ratifying the new epoch. "We are in the Anthropocene, irrespective of a line on the time scale," Dr. McCarthy said. "And behaving accordingly is our only path forward."
Thanks to Slashdot reader sciencehabit for sharing the news.

China is in the process of raising more than $27 billion for its largest chip fund to date, accelerating the development of cutting-edge technologies to counter a US campaign to thwart its rise. From a report: The National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund is amassing a pool of capital from local governments and state enterprises for its third vehicle that should exceed the 200 billion yuan of its second fund, according to people familiar with the matter. Known as the Big Fund, the state-backed firm is expanding its remit just as the US prepares to sharply escalate technology curbs designed to curtail Chinese chip and artificial intelligence progress.

The establishment of a much larger third fund -- directly overseen by China's powerful tech ministry -- signals a resurgent effort to harness the world's largest semiconductor market after years of mixed success with central stewardship. Huawei and its partner Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. still had to rely on US-origin technology to build an advanced processor last year.

Americans filing their taxes could face privacy threats, reports the Washington Post: "We just need your OK on a couple of things," TurboTax says as you prepare your tax return.

Alarm bells should be ringing in your head at the innocuous tone.

This is where America's most popular tax-prep website asks you to sign away the ironclad privacy protections of your tax return, including the details of your income, home mortgage and student loan payments. With your permission to blab your money secrets, the company earns extra income from showing you advertisements for the next three years for things like credit cards and mortgage offers targeted to your financial situation.

You have the legal right to say no when TurboTax asks for your permission to "share your data" or use your tax information to "improve your experience...."
The article complains that granting permission allows TurboTax to share details with "sibling" companies "such as your salary, the amount of your tax refund, whether you received a tax break for student loans and the day you printed your tax return..."

"You'll see that permission request once near the beginning of the tax prep process. If you skip it then, you'll see the same screen again near the end. You'll have to say yes or no..." This is part of the corporate arms race for your personal data. Everyone including the grocery store, your apps and the manufacturer of your car are gobbling information to profit from details of your life. With TurboTax, though, you have the power to refuse to participate...

TurboTax and the online tax prep service from H&R Block have been asking every year to blab your tax return. We've cautioned you about it for each of the past two tax filing seasons. (I focused only on TurboTax this year.)

The first privately built spacecraft has successfully landed on the lunar surface on Thursday. "We can confirm, without a doubt, that our equipment is on the surface of the moon," said Stephen Altemus, CEO of Intuitive Machines, the Houston-based company that operated the Odysseus spacecraft. "Welcome to the moon." From a report: As it approached the surface of the moon, Odysseus lost contact with NASA, resulting in several anxious minutes for those who worked on the joint project. But after approximately 15 minutes of searching, officials confirmed that they were once again receiving signals from the spacecraft. "A commercial lander named Odysseus, powered by a company called Intuitive Machines, launched up on a Space X rocket, carrying a bounty of NASA scientific instruments and bearing the dream of a new adventure, a new adventure in science, innovation and American leadership, well, all of that aced the landing of a lifetime," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said after contact had been reestablished. "Today for the first time in more than a half century, the U.S. has returned to the moon."

Altemus had estimated that Odysseus had an 80% chance of successfully landing on the moon, citing previous failed attempts as an advantage. "We've stood on the shoulders of everybody who's tried before us," Altemus said. It was the first American mission to land on the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972 and the first private spacecraft ever to make a soft landing there. While it was a private mission, NASA paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to deliver six instruments to the moon. And the U.S. space agency provided streaming video of the landing.

Intel has landed Microsoft as a customer for its made-to-order chip business, marking a key win for an ambitious turnaround effort under Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger. From a report: Microsoft plans to use Intel's 18A manufacturing technology to make a forthcoming chip that the software maker designed in-house, the two companies said at an event Wednesday. They didn't identify the product, but Microsoft recently announced plans for two homegrown chips: a computer processor and an artificial intelligence accelerator.

Intel has been seeking to prove it can compete in the foundry market, where companies produce custom chips for clients. It's a major shift for the semiconductor pioneer, which once had the world's most advanced chipmaking facilities and kept them to itself. These days, Intel is racing to catch up with companies like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which leads the foundry industry. Microsoft, meanwhile, is looking to secure a steady supply of semiconductors to power its data-center operations -- especially as demand for AI grows. Designing its own chips also lets Microsoft fine-tune the products to its specific needs. "We need a reliable supply of the most advanced, high-performance and high-quality semiconductors," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement. âoeThat's why we are so excited to work with Intel."

Apple is rolling out an upgrade to its iMessage texting platform to defend against future encryption-breaking technologies. From a report: The new protocol, known as PQ3, is another sign that U.S. tech firms are bracing for a potential future breakthrough in quantum computing that could make current methods of protecting users' communications obsolete. "More than simply replacing an existing algorithm with a new one, we rebuilt the iMessage cryptographic protocol from the ground up," an Apple blog post published on Wednesday reads. "It will fully replace the existing protocol within all supported conversations this year."

The Cupertino, California-based iPhone maker says its encryption algorithms are state-of-the-art and that it has found no evidence so far of a successful attack on them. Still, government officials and scientists are concerned that the advent of quantum computers, advanced machines that tap in to the properties of subatomic particles, could suddenly and dramatically weaken those protections. Late last year, a Reuters investigation explored how the United States and China are racing to prepare for that moment, dubbed "Q-Day," both by pouring money into quantum research and by investing in new encryption standards known as post-quantum cryptography. Washington and Beijing have traded allegations of intercepting massive amounts of encrypted data in preparation for Q-Day, an approach sometimes dubbed "catch now, crack later." More on Apple's security blog.

Lyft Chief Executive Officer David Risher's response to a clerical error that unintentionally inflated the company's earnings outlook on Tuesday and sent shares soaring: "My bad." From a report: "First of all, it's on me," Risher said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Wednesday, taking the blame for a typo in a company press release Tuesday that erroneously projected a particular measure of earnings margin to expand by an eye-watering 500 basis points. (In reality, Lyft expects margins to grow by 50 basis points.) "This was a bad error," he said, "but it was one zero in a press release."

The typo, which actually appeared in multiple company documents on Tuesday, helped drive a 67% surge in Lyft's shares in after-hours trading. The mistake was a serious one, Risher said. But it shouldn't take away from Lyft's "butt-kicking" financial performance, he said. Risher said his team at Lyft was taking the error very seriously and noted it was corrected "within seconds of finding it." But in fact, on a call with analysts to discuss the quarterly results, Lyft executives didn't immediately note the error in their opening remarks. Lyft Chief Financial Officer Erin Brewer just began referring to the company's outlook for a 50-basis-point expansion. It wasn't until later in the call, when an analyst pointed out the discrepancy, that Brewer acknowledged her outlook was "actually a correction from the press release."

Less than a week after naming Laura Chambers as interim CEO, Firefox's maker Mozilla said it is cutting about 60 jobs, or 5% of its workforce. The cuts are primarily in the product development organization. Bloomberg reports: "We're scaling back investment in some product areas in order to focus on areas that we feel have the greatest chance of success," Mozilla said in a statement. "We intend to re-prioritize resources against products like Firefox Mobile, where there's a significant opportunity to grow and establish a better model for the industry."

Mozilla last cut a significant number of jobs four years ago at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The not-for-profit company, which competes with Alphabet Inc.'s Google Chrome, Apple Inc.'s Safari and Microsoft Corp.'s Edge, has been grappling with sliding market share of its Firefox web browser in recent years. So far in 2024, the tech sector has cut 32,000 jobs.

Nvidia briefly surpassed Amazon in market capitalization on Monday, as the euphoria around AI catapulted the chipmaker to the fourth most valuable U.S. company. From a report: At a record high of $734.96, Nvidia was worth $1.82 trillion in market value, compared to $1.81 trillion for retail giant Amazon.com and a few billions away from Google-owner Alphabet's $1.87 trillion, according to LSEG data. The last time Nvidia was more valuable than Amazon was in 2002, when they were each worth under $6 billion.

In 2022 Apple filed a lawsuit against startup Rivos. The lawsuit said that in one year Rivos had hired more than 40 former Apple employees to work on competing system-on-a-chip technology, according to Reuters, "and that at least two former Apple engineers took gigabytes of confidential information with them to Rivos."

But Friday Bloomberg reported that the two companies told a judge that they'd "signed an agreement that potentially settles the case." "The agreement provides for remediation of Apple confidential information based on a forensic examination of Rivos systems and other activities," according to the filing in federal court in San Jose, California. "The parties currently are working through that process."
More details from Engadget: Apple also accused the defendant of instructing the employees it hired away to steal presentations and other proprietary information for unreleased iPhone chip designs that cost billions of dollars to develop. Rivos countersued Apple last year, accusing the larger company of restricting employees' ability to work elsewhere and of hindering emerging startups' growth by using anticompetitive measures.

The court dismissed Apple's trade secret claims against Rivos in April 2023, though the company was allowed to file a revised complaint. Apple already settled with its six former employees who filed a countersuit against the iPhonemaker along with Rivos after they dropped their claims against each other last month.

Both companies are now requesting the court to put their cases on hold until March 15, when they expect the settlement to be completed.

The world's biggest builder of recycling plants has teamed with a startup to install AI-powered systems for sorting recycling, reports the Washington Post. And now over the next few years, "The companies plan to retrofit thousands of recycling facilities around the world with computers that can analyze and identify every item that passes through a waste plant, they said Wednesday." "[S]orted" recyclables, particularly plastic, wind up contaminated with other forms of trash, according to Lokendra Pal, a professor of sustainable materials engineering at North Carolina State University... [W]aste plants don't catch everything. [AI startup] Greyparrot has already installed over 100 of its AI trash spotters in about 50 sorting facilities around the world, and [co-founder Ambarish] Mitra said as much as 30 percent of potentially recyclable material winds up getting lumped in with the trash that's headed for the landfill. Failing to recycle means companies have to make more things from scratch, including a lot of plastic from fossil fuels. Also, more waste ends up in landfills and incinerators, which belch greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and pollute their surroundings.

Mitra said putting Greyparrot's AI tools in thousands of waste plants around the world can raise the percentage of glass, plastic, metal and paper that makes it to recycling facilities. "If we can move the needle by even 5 to 10 percent, that would be a phenomenal outcome on a planetary basis for greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impact," he said. Cutting contamination would make recycled materials more valuable and raise the chances that companies would use them to make new products, according to Reck. "If the AI and the robots potentially helped to increase the quality of the recycling stream, that's huge," she said...

Greyparrot's device is, basically, a set of visual and infrared cameras hooked up to a computer, which monitors trash as it passes by on a conveyor belt and labels it under 70 categories, from loose bottle caps (not recyclable!) to books (sometimes recyclable!) to aluminum cans (recyclable!). Waste plants could connect these AI systems to sorting robots to help them separate trash from recyclables more accurately. They could also use the AI as a quality control system to measure how well they're sorting trash from recyclables. That could help plant managers tinker with their assembly lines to recover more recyclables, or verify that a bundle of recyclables is free of contaminants, which would allow them to sell for a higher price.
GreyParrot's co-founder said their trash-spotting computers "could one day help regulators crack down on companies that produce tsunamis of non-recyclable packaging," according to the article.

"The AI systems are so accurate, he said, that they can identify the brands on individual items. 'There could be insights that make them more accountable for ... the commitments they made to the public or to shareholders,' he said."

An anonymous reader shares a report: With progress in the battle against cancer progressing slowly on Earth, California researchers have teamed up with astronauts to take the battle to the stars. In space, the weak pull of gravity, also known as microgravity, places cells under incredible stress, causing them to age more rapidly. This phenomenon allows scientists to witness the progression of cancer growth -- and the effect of cancer treatments -- much more rapidly than they could on Earth.

When the Axiom 3 spaceflight launched from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Jan. 18, bound for the International Space Station, it took with it four crewmembers and some other unusual passengers -- miniature tumor organoids produced from the cells of cancer patients, grown in the lab by scientists at the University of California San Diego. Axiom 3 was slated for splashdown on Saturday but has been delayed until Tuesday, at the earliest, due to weather, according to SpaceX, which manufactured the Crew Dragon spacecraft used for the mission.

It wasn't the first time the team -- led by Dr. Catriona H.M. Jamieson, a hematologist and medical professor at the college -- sent such samples into space. It previously launched stem cells on multiple Space X flights and noticed that pre-leukemic changes occurred, unseen during the same timeframe in controls on the ground. "We said, 'Wait, what if you send cancer up?'" Jamieson tells Fortune. "'Will the cancer go from bad to worse?' And the answer is yes, under conditions of stress" caused by microgravity.

The Dutch parent of Russian tech company Yandex is selling its search engine and other services at a steeply discounted price of $5.21 billion to a group of Russian-based managers and oil company Lukoil. According to the Associated Press, it marks "one of the biggest deals for Western-held companies to exit Russia since the invasion of Ukraine." From the report: The price reflects a 50% discount that Moscow imposes on companies from "unfriendly" countries like the Netherlands as a condition of exiting business in Russia, according to a statement Monday from Nasdaq-exchange listed Yandex NV. [...] The sale in cash and shares worth 475 billion rubles would transfer Yandex's core business -- representing more than 95% of its revenue, assets and employees -- to the group of up to 50 managers, Lukoil and business entities owned by investors Alexander Chachava, Pavel Prass and Alexander Ryazanov.

The 50% discounted sale price was based on the average value of Yandex shares on the Moscow exchange for the three months ending Jan. 31 -- $10.2 billion. That's after shares had already fallen by more than half in ruble terms since their peak before the invasion. After the sale, Yandex NV would be left with its international businesses -- employing 1,300 people -- including self-driving technology and generative artificial intelligence as well as a data center in Finland.

Yandex, founded in 1997 as Russia's answer to Google and Yahoo, serves Russian-speaking customers through its search engine and with widely used apps for food delivery, car-sharing and shopping. Co-founder Arkady Volozh, who had earlier moved to Israel, resigned as CEO in 2022 after he was hit with European Union sanctions. He subsequently condemned Russia's invasion as "barbaric." The Nasdaq exchange suspended trading in Yandex shares days after the invasion.

Boeing found more mistakes with holes drilled in the fuselage of its 737 Max jet, a setback that could further slow deliveries on a critical program already restricted by regulators over quality lapses. ArchieBunker shares a report: The latest manufacturing slip originated with a supplier and will require rework on about 50 undelivered 737 jets to repair the faulty rivet holes, Boeing commercial chief Stan Deal said in a note to staff. While he didn't identify the contractor, a spokesman for fuselage supplier Spirit AeroSystems Holdings said it's aware of the issue and will conduct repairs. The extra time required for inspections and repair work could delay near-term plane deliveries, Deal said in his memo, which was seen by Bloomberg News. He didn't say whether any action would be required on the in-service 737 fleet.

The world's longest-serving central bank governor, Romania's Mugur Isarescu, was the target of a deepfake video depicting the policymaker as touting fraudulent investments. From a report: The episode highlights a raft of disinformation designed to undermine the credibility of key institutions. The video echoed similar deepfakes in recent days, including one aimed at Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, seeking to back false financial investments. The National Bank of Romania issued a warning, reminding citizens that neither Isarescu nor the central bank make investment recommendations. The video uses the image and voice of the central banker -- one of the most trusted officials in Romania -- to pitch stock investments and offers viewers a link to a fraudulent platform.

"We are extremely concerned about the significant rise of these types of fraud attempts and we urge people to be very careful with every transaction that they make," central bank spokesman Dan Suciu said. The videos coincide with a surge in interest for equity investments in Romania, fueled by the largest initial public offering in the country's history last year as well as above-average returns offered by the Bucharest Stock Exchange. Cyber-criminals have taken advantage of the trend in a country that ranks near the lowest in the European Union for financial mediation.

Kyle Orland reports via Ars Technica: Even massive Sega fans would be forgiven for not being too familiar with the Sega AI Computer. After all, the usually obsessive documentation over at Sega Retro includes only the barest stub of an information page for the quixotic, education-focused 1986 hardware. Thankfully, the folks at the self-described "Sega 8-bit preservation and fanaticism" site SMS Power have been able to go a little deeper. The site's recently posted deep dive on the Sega AI Computer includes an incredible amount of well-documented information on this historical oddity, including ROMs for dozens of previously unpreserved pieces of software that can now be partially run on MAME. [...]

While the general existence of the Sega AI Computer has been known in certain circles for a while, detailed information about its workings and software was extremely hard to come by, especially in the English-speaking world. That began to change in 2014 when a rare Yahoo Auctions listing offered a boxed AI Computer along with 15 pieces of software. The site was able to crowdfund the winning bid on that auction (which reportedly ran the equivalent of $1,100) and later obtained a keyboard and more software from the winner of a 2022 auction. SMS Power notes that the majority of the software it has uncovered "had zero information about them on the Internet prior to us publishing them: no screenshots, no photos or scans of actual software." Now, the site's community has taken the trouble to preserve all those ROMs and create a new MAME driver that already allows for "partial emulation" of the system (which doesn't yet include a keyboard, tape drive, or speech emulation support).

That dumped software is all "educational and mostly aimed at kids," SMS Power notes, and is laden with Japanese text that will make it hard for many foreigners to even tinker with. That means this long-lost emulation release probably won't set the MAME world on fire as 2022's surprise dump of Marble Madness II did. Still, it's notable how much effort the community has put in to fill a formerly black hole in our understanding of this corner of Sega history. SMS Power's write-up of its findings is well worth a full look, as is the site's massive Google Drive, which is filled with documentation, screenshots, photos, contemporaneous articles and ads, and much more.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Meta is poised to become Wall Street's top comeback kid. It was only a couple of years back the Facebook owner suffered the single biggest market value destruction in stock-market history. But the company has come a long way since then, on Thursday it dazzled shareholders with yet another impressive quarterly earnings report as the social media giant focuses on cutting back costs and shoring up billions in profits. The stock rose as much as 21% Friday, poised to add roughly $200 billion to its market capitalization. This would be the biggest single-session market value addition, eclipsing the $190 billion gains made by Apple and Amazon in 2022.

"Solid execution, faster growth, and increased capital structure efficiency improve the outlook from here," Brian Nowak, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, wrote in a note Friday. "Meta's AI pipeline for both users and advertisers is robust, with more tools set to launch and scale throughout '24," he added. Meta, which reduced headcount by 22% in 2023, unveiled plans for a $50 billion stock buyback, and announced its first quarterly dividend on Thursday, a sign to investors that it has money to spare and a reason for them to stick around. While the company is making big cost cuts, it continues to spend aggressively on artificial intelligence advancements, namely in generative AI but also on the background technologies to help feed its social media products and power its ad targeting.

The Biden administration is poised to lend $1.5 billion for what what would be the first restart of a shuttered US nuclear reactor, the latest sign of strengthening federal government support for the atomic industry. Bloomberg: The funding, which is set to get conditional backing from the US Energy Department, will be offered as soon as next month to closely held Holtec International to restart its Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, according to people familiar with the matter. Holtec has said a restart of the reactor is contingent on a federal loan. Without such support, the company has said it would decommission the site.

The financing comes as the Biden administration prioritizes maintaining the nation's fleet of nuclear plants to help meet its ambitious climate goals -- including a plan to decarbonize the electricity grid by 2035. More than a dozen reactors have closed since 2013 amid competition from cheaper power from natural gas and renewables, and the Energy Department has warned that as many of half of the nation's nuclear reactors are at risk of closing due to economic factors.