An anonymous reader shares a report: Earlier today, Panasonic announced refreshed models of its long-established Let's Note laptop series. However, for the first time in its history, we have a Let's Note portable that doesn't have a VGA port. According to a report by Nikkei Japan, this is probably the beginning of the end for laptops sporting VGA output, with "other companies to follow suit."

A number of factors have precipitated Panasonic's removal of the venerable VGA port. The Nikkei report highlights the strong competition from HDMI, which can simultaneously transmit audio. We also see that the new Panasonic Let's Note CF-SC6 models feature a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports, which can also be used for video out. That's three separate ports remaining on the Let's Note to drive external displays.

An anonymous reader shares a report: [Last] week, it was announced that Docomo's emoji designs will no longer appear on any of the Japanese mobile network's devices. This marks the end of an emoji era that first began in 1999, even though the set hasn't been updated since 2013.

[...] Unlike these earlier systems, Docomo's emoji set in 1999 was explicitly tied to mobile internet use and would become the template for emoji standardization in the 2000s and 2010s, alongside emoji design sets implemented by Softbank and KDDI on their own versions of i-mode (J-Sky and EZweb, respectively). Docomo's set would receive several updates between 1999 and 2013, introducing color support and additional concepts to the keyboard. But now, as per this week's announcement, it will finally be discontinued. Spanning 26 years, it's undeniable that Docomo's emoji set played a foundational role in emoji history, even if its last incarnation remained unchanged for almost 12 of those 26 years.

An interesting piece on Construction Physics that examines how Japan transformed discarded American wartime shipbuilding techniques into a revolutionary manufacturing system that captured nearly half the global market by 1970. The story reveals the essential ingredients for industrial dominance: government backing, organizational alignment, relentless will to improve, and the systematic coordination needed to turn existing technologies into something entirely new. A few excerpts: During WWII, the US constructed an unprecedented shipbuilding machine. By assembling ships from welded, prefabricated blocks, the US built a huge number of cargo ships incredibly quickly, overwhelming Germany's u-boats and helping to win the war. But when the war was over, this shipbuilding machine was dismantled. Industrialists like Henry Kaiser and Stephen Bechtel, who operated some of the US's most efficient wartime shipyards, left the shipbuilding business. Prior to the war, the US had been an uncompetitive commercial shipbuilder producing a small fraction of commercial oceangoing ships, and that's what it became again. At the height of the war the US was producing nearly 90% of the world's ships. By the 1950s, it produced just over 2%.

But the lessons from the US's shipbuilding machine weren't forgotten. After the war, practitioners brought them to Japan, where they would continue to evolve, eventually allowing Japan to build ships faster and cheaper than almost anyone else in the world.

[...] The third strategy that formed the core of modern shipbuilding methods was statistical process control. The basic idea behind process control is that it's impossible to make an industrial process perfectly reliable. There will always be some variation in what it produces: differences in part dimensions, material strength, chemical composition, and so on. But while some variation is inherent to the process (and must be accepted), much of the variation is from specific causes that can be hunted down and eliminated. By analyzing the variation in a process, undesirable sources of variation can be removed. This makes a process work more reliably and predictably, reducing waste and rework from parts that are outside acceptable tolerances.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Microsoft said Wednesday that it broke down the Lumma Stealer malware project with the help of law enforcement officials across the globe. The tech giant said in a blog post that its digital crimes unit discovered more than 394,000 Windows computers were infected by the Lumma malware worldwide between March 16 through May 16. The Lumma malware was a favorite hacking tool used by bad actors, Microsoft said in the post. Hackers used the malware to steal passwords, credit cards, bank accounts and cryptocurrency wallets.

Microsoft said its digital crimes unit was able to dismantle the web domains underpinning Lumma's infrastructure with the help of a court order from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. The U.S. Department of Justice then took control of Lumma's "central command structure" and squashed the online marketplaces where bad actors purchased the malware. The cybercrime control center of Japan "facilitated the suspension of locally based Lumma infrastructure," the blog post said. "Working with law enforcement and industry partners, we have severed communications between the malicious tool and victims," Microsoft said in the post. "Moreover, more than 1,300 domains seized by or transferred to Microsoft, including 300 domains actioned by law enforcement with the support of Europol, will be redirected to Microsoft sinkholes." Cloudflare, Bitsight and Lumen also helped break down the Lumma malware ecosystem.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Honda said on Tuesday that it was scaling back its investment in electric vehicles given slowing demand and would be focusing on hybrids, now far more in favor, with a slew of revamped models. Japan's second-biggest automaker after Toyota also dropped a target for EV sales to account for 30% of its sales by the 2030 financial year. "It's really hard to read the market, but at the moment we see EVs accounting for about a fifth by then," CEO Toshihiro Mibe told a press conference.

Honda has slashed its planned investment in electrification and software by that year by 30% to 7 trillion yen ($48.4 billion). It's one of a number of global car brands dialing back EV investment due to the shift in demand in favor of hybrids and as governments around the world ease timelines to meet emission rules and EV sales targets. Honda plans to launch 13 next-generation hybrid models globally in the four years from 2027. At the moment it sells more than a dozen hybrid models worldwide, though just three in the U.S. -- the Civic, which comes in hatchback and sedan versions, the Accord and the CR-V. It will also develop a hybrid system for large-size models that it plans to launch in the second half of the decade.

The automaker is aiming to sell 2.2 million to 2.3 million hybrid vehicles by 2030, a huge jump from 868,000 sold last year. That also compares with a total of 3.8 million vehicles sold overall last year. Earlier this month, Honda announced it had put on hold for about two years a $10.7 billion plan to build an EV production base in Ontario, Canada, due to slowing demand for electric cars. Honda said, however, that it still plans to have battery-powered and fuel-cell vehicles make up all of its new car sales by 2040.

The only nuclear power plant still operating in Taiwan was shut down on Saturday, reports Japan's public media organization NHK: People in Taiwan have grown increasingly concerned about nuclear safety in recent years, especially after the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima, northeastern Japan... Taiwan's energy authorities plan to focus more on thermoelectricity fueled by liquefied natural gas. They aim to source 20 percent of all electricity from renewables such as wind and solar power next year.
AFP notes that nuclear power once provided more than half of Taiwan's energy, with three plants operating six reactors across an island that's 394 km (245 mi) long and 144 km (89 mi) wide.

So the new move to close Taiwan's last reactor is "fuelling concerns over the self-ruled island's reliance on imported energy and vulnerability to a Chinese blockade," — though Taiwan's president insists the missing nucelar energy can be replace by new units in LNG and coal-fired plants: The island, which targets net-zero emissions by 2050, depends almost entirely on imported fossil fuel to power its homes, factories and critical semiconductor chip industry. President Lai Ching-te's Democratic Progressive Party has long vowed to phase out nuclear power, while the main opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party says continued supply is needed for energy security... [The Ma'anshan Nuclear Power Plant] has operated for 40 years in a region popular with tourists and which is now dotted with wind turbines and solar panels. More renewable energy is planned at the site, where state-owned Taipower plans to build a solar power station capable of supplying an estimated 15,000 households annually. But while nuclear only accounted for 4.2 percent of Taiwan's power supply last year, some fear Ma'anshan's closure risks an energy crunch....

Most of Taiwan's power is fossil fuel-based, with liquefied natural gas (LNG) accounting for 42.4 percent and coal 39.3 percent last year. Renewable energy made up 11.6 percent, well short of the government's target of 20 percent by 2025. Solar has faced opposition from communities worried about panels occupying valuable land, while rules requiring locally made parts in wind turbines have slowed their deployment.

Taiwan's break-up with nuclear is at odds with global and regional trends. Even Japan aims for nuclear to account for 20-22 percent of its electricity by 2030, up from well under 10 percent now. And nuclear power became South Korea's largest source of electricity in 2024, accounting for 31.7 percent of the country's total power generation, and reaching its highest level in 18 years, according to government data.... And Lai acknowledged recently he would not rule out a return to nuclear one day. "Whether or not we will use nuclear power in the future depends on three foundations which include nuclear safety, a solution to nuclear waste, and successful social dialogue," he said.
DW notes there's over 100,000 barrels of nuclear waste on Taiwan's easternmost island "despite multiple attempts to remove them... At one point, Taiwan signed a deal with North Korea so they could send barrels of nuclear waste to store there, but it did not work out due to a lack of storage facilities in the North and strong opposition from South Korea...

"Many countries across the world have similar problems and are scrambling to identify sites for a permanent underground repository for nuclear fuel. Finland has become the world's first nation to build one."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.

Intel has certified Shell's lubricant-based method for cooling servers more efficiently within data centers used for AI. From a report: The announcement on Tuesday, which follows the chipmaker's two-year trial of the technology, offers a way to use less energy at AI facilities, which are booming and are expected to double their electricity demand globally by 2030, consuming as much power then as all of Japan today, according to the International Energy Agency.

So far, companies have largely used giant fans to reduce temperatures inside AI data centers, which generate more heat in order to run at a higher power. Increasingly, these fans consume electricity at a rate that rivals the computers themselves, something the facilities' operators would prefer to avoid, Intel Principal Engineer Samantha Yates said in an interview.

A comprehensive analysis in Science Advances reveals that humans have explored less than 0.001% of the deep seafloor -- an area equivalent to merely one-tenth the size of Belgium. Oceanographer Katherine Bell and colleagues at the Ocean Discovery League compiled data from approximately 44,000 deep-sea dives conducted between 1958 and 2024, finding that expeditions have concentrated overwhelmingly around waters near the United States, Japan, and New Zealand.

The study exposes significant gaps in ocean exploration, with vast regions -- particularly the Indian Ocean -- remaining virtually untouched by direct observation. Much of the existing dive data remains inaccessible to scientists, locked away by private companies.

sciencehabit shares a repot from Science.org: Scientists have captured fungal spores cruising in the inhospitable environment of the stratosphere, much higher than commercial aircraft fly. When brought back to the lab, the researchers found that some of the spores -- including pathogens of plants and people -- had survived intercontinental trips and could be cultured in the lab. Although spores and microbes have been detected in the stratosphere before, the new results come from a cheap, homespun sampling device dangled from weather balloons, the project could help researchers figure out what traits and conditions allow spores to survive a swing through the stratosphere and how they get up there in the first place. The work could also be a first step towards an atmospheric monitoring system that could nip emerging fungal pathogens in the bud, the study's authors reported at a conference of the European Geophysical Union.

After five preliminary flights, the team has already learned a lot. Based on DNA sequencing analysis, they identified spores from 235 genera, including fungi that infect blackberries and carrots in the United States and Japan, and one species, Naganishia albida, that can make immunocompromised people sick. In the lab, they were able to revive and culture spores from 15 different fungal species, among them several plant pathogens. Mostly, the results show that their sampler works. Now, the researchers want to set up regular flights to track airborne fungal biodiversity and seasonal variations. They also want to identify how events such as wildfires or volcanic eruptions inject spores into the stratosphere.

The FDA has approved gene-edited pigs for human consumption, potentially marking the first major commercial application of CRISPR technology in the food chain. Created by British company Genus, these pigs have had their DNA modified to remove the receptor that the porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) virus uses to enter cells, rendering them immune to 99% of known virus variants.

PRRS causes losses of approximately $300 million annually in the US alone by killing piglets and spreading rapidly through factory farms. According to Matt Culbertson, chief operating officer of Genus subsidiary Pig Improvement Company, the gene-edited pork could reach US markets sometime next year. Before launching sales to pig farms, Genus must secure regulatory approval in key export markets including Mexico, Canada, Japan, and China.

Sam Altman's eye-scanning identity project, now called World, officially launched in the U.S. with six in-person registration sites. CNBC reports: Here's how it works: You go up to an Orb, a spherical biometric device, and it spends about 30 seconds scanning your face and iris, then creates and stores a unique "IrisCode" for you verifying that you're a human and that you've never signed up before. Then you get some of the project's cryptocurrency, WLD, for free, and you can use your World ID as a sign-in with integrated platforms, which currently include an open API integration with Minecraft, Reddit, Telegram, Shopify and Discord.

Starting Thursday, the company is opening six flagship U.S. retail locations where people can sign up to have their eyeball scanned: Austin, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Nashville, Miami and San Francisco. At an event in San Francisco on Wednesday, the venture announced two high-profile partnerships: Visa will introduce the "World Visa card" this summer, available only to people who have had their irises scanned by World, and the online dating giant Match Group will begin a pilot program testing out World ID and some age verification tools with Tinder in Japan.

What can you build with a 3D printer? Starbucks just printed itself a new store — a drive-through location in the southern tip of Texas.

Fast Company says it's a store that "looks more like the future of construction than your average café." Built with layers of concrete piped out by a giant robotic printer, the 1,400-square-foot structure is part of the company's ongoing effort to modernize operations and trim costs... Peri-3D, a German company, used a giant 3D printer to pump out layers of concrete mixture to create the structure. According to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, the cost for building the small scale coffee shop was about $1.2 million...

Of course, the new method is a first for the brand. And builders say, the more they use the technology, the more efficient they are at it. In Georgetown, Texas, an entire community of 100 homes was recently built using 3D-printing. The company who built the community, Lennar, says they're seeing costs drop with each build. Stuart Miller, chairman and co-CEO of Lennar, told CNBC earlier this year that the construction company says their costs and cycle time go down "by half" by adopting 3D-printing. "This is significant improvement in evolving a housing market that has the ability to change over time and being more adaptable and more functional in providing affordable and attainable housing for a broader swath of the market," said Miller...

3D-printing is also much faster, meaning that projects can be completed in a fraction of the time, potentially drastically cutting labor costs. According to the World Economic Forum, 3D-printing can cost just 30% of what building structures the old-fashioned way costs.
The article offers more examples of 3D-printed buildings. ("in Japan, a 3D-printed train station was just erected. And Peri-3D, itself, has completed at least 15 construction projects, including residential buildings in Europe and Germany.")

3D-printing has even been incorporated into some restaurants for customizing food, the article notes, "but building restaurants with the technology is a brand-new development."

Although not everyone seems convinced. Instagram comments on a picture of Starbucks' new 3D-printed drive-through characterized its aesthetic as "dirty", "fugly", "violently hideous", and "like hot garbage".

"Only the United States, China and Germany have larger economies than California," reports CNN.

In fact, they add that California "outpaced all three countries with growth of 6% last year," according to the California governor's office (which cites new data from the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis): In 2024, California's growth rate of 6% outpaced the top three economies: U.S. (5.3%), China (2.6%) and Germany (2.9%)...

With an increasing state population and recent record-high tourism spending, California is the nation's top state for new business starts, access to venture capital funding, and manufacturing, high-tech, and agriculture. The state drives national economic growth and also sends over $83 billion more to the federal government than it receives in federal funding. California is the leading agricultural producer in the country and is also the center for manufacturing output in the United States, with over 36,000 manufacturing firms employing over 1.1 million Californians.
The data shows that last year California accounted for 14% of America's GDP, CNN points out, "driven by Silicon Valley and its real estate and finance sectors."

A new Star Wars movie — starring Ryan Gosling and directed by Shawn Levy — will be released in 2027, the two announced Friday at the "Star Wars Celebration" (a fan event in Japan). CNN reports: Set to begin production this fall, the movie will be set approximately five years after "Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker," released in 2019, but will sit outside the Skywalker story as a standalone film. "The film... is an entirely new adventure featuring all-new characters set in a period of time that has not been explored on screen," said a statement from Lucasfilm, the owner of the "Star Wars" franchise...

"The script is just so good, the story, it has so much adventure, so much heart and original character. It's an opportunity to shine the light into a side of the universe that we may not have seen," Gosling said. Levy, the director of "Deadpool & Wolverine," told the crowd the film would have all the "fun of 'Star Wars'" but it would be done "in ways that are new and original...."

The next movie in the franchise, "The Mandalorian & Grogu," a spin-off of "The Mandalorian" series, directed by Jon Favreau, will hit cinemas in May 2026.
USA Today notes that more new Star Wars movies have also been announced: Daisy Ridley is set to star in a film that will see her character, Rey, building a new Jedi Order after the events of "The Rise of Skywalker." [This is sometimes referred to as "Star Wars Episode X: New Jedi Order."]

"Logan" filmmaker James Mangold has also been tapped to direct a movie about the dawn of the Jedi, and [Dave] Filoni is directing one said to "close out the interconnected stories" told in the live-action Disney+ shows like "The Mandalorian."

New research suggests Oda Ujiharu, long derided as feudal Japan's most ineffective military leader, may have been mischaracterized. The Sengoku-period daimyo, who ruled from Oda Castle in present-day Ibaraki Prefecture, lost his fortress an unprecedented nine times to rival clans -- but recaptured it eight times, often with inferior forces.

"His refusal to accept defeat and his iron will to get up and keep fighting is why many historians reject the 'weakest samurai warlord' nickname and instead refer to him as 'The Phoenix,'" notes the research published in Tokyo Weekender. While Ujiharu's battlefield decisions appear strategically baffling -- repeatedly abandoning castle defenses for open combat -- some researchers propose these actions were deliberately taken to protect peasant settlements from the devastation of prolonged sieges. From the article: Ujiharu's blind charges may actually have had a noble purpose. Japanese battles involving castles almost always turned into sieges, and those always ended the same way: with the nearby fields and peasant settlements being either destroyed to try and draw the lord out of the castle or looted to feed the occupying army. Some researchers believe that Ujiharu was trying to avoid a siege to save his subjects. Despite numerous military setbacks, Ujiharu maintained remarkable loyalty from his subordinates. Historical records indicate that after his initial campaigns, attempts to bribe or threaten his retainers to defect consistently failed.

The daimyo demonstrated considerable diplomatic acumen, forming multiple alliances with former enemies throughout his career. His downfall came only after hesitating to pledge allegiance to Toyotomi Hideyoshi during Japan's unification, resulting in his lands being confiscated.

Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares the news that China has halted all rare earth exports globally -- including to the U.S., Japan, and Germany. Fortune reports: After Trump unveiled his "Liberation Day" tariffs on April 2, China retaliated on April 4 with its own duties as well as export controls on several rare earth minerals and magnets made from them. So far, those export controls have translated to a halt across the board, cutting off the U.S. and other countries, according to the New York Times. That's because any exports of the minerals and magnets now require special licenses, but Beijing has yet to fully establish a system for issuing them, the report said.

In the meantime, shipments of rare earths have been halted at many ports, with customs officials blocking exports to any country, including to the U.S. as well as Japan and Germany, sources told theÂTimes. China's Ministry of Commerce issued export restrictions alongside the General Administration of Customs, prohibiting Chinese businesses from any engagement with U.S. firms, especially defense contractors. While the Trump administration unveiled tariff exemptions on a range of key tech imports late Friday night, China's magnet exports were still halted through the weekend, industry sources told the Times. Beijing's export halt is notable because China has a stranglehold on global supplies of rare earths and magnets derived from them. They also represent an asymmetric advantage in that rare earths constitute a small share of China's exports but have an outsize impact on trade partners like the U.S., which relies on them as critical inputs for the auto, chip, aerospace, and defense industries.

The electricity consumption of data centres is projected to more than double by 2030, according to a report from the International Energy Agency published today. The primary culprit? AI. Nature: The report covers the current energy footprint for data centres and forecasts their future needs, which could help governments, companies, and local communities to plan infrastructure and AI deployment. IEA's models project that data centres will use 945 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2030, roughly equivalent to the current annual electricity consumption of Japan. By comparison, data centres consumed 415 TWh in 2024, roughly 1.5% of the world's total electricity consumption.

The projections largely focus on data centres, which also run computing tasks other than AI. Although the agency estimated the proportion of servers in data centres devoted to AI. They found that servers for AI accounted for 24% of server electricity demand and 15% of total data centre energy demand in 2024.

Children in a small Japanese town are obsessively collecting trading cards featuring local elderly men rather than popular fantasy creatures, helping bridge generational gaps in an aging rural community.

In Kawara, Fukuoka Prefecture, the "Ojisan TCG" (Middle-aged Man Trading Card Game) features 28 local men with assigned elemental types and battle stats. The collection includes a former fire brigade chief and a prison officer-turned-volunteer whose card has become so sought-after that children request his autograph.

Created by Eri Miyahara of the Saidosho Community Council, the initiative has doubled participation in town events. "We wanted to strengthen the connection between children and older generations," Miyahara told Fuji News Network. "So many kids are starting to look up to these men as heroic figures."

This week NASA "issued a solicitation for the next two private astronaut missions to the International Space Station," reports Space News. Scheduled after May of 2026 and then mid-2027, "These will be the fifth and sixth such missions to the ISS, part of a broader low Earth orbit commercialization effort by NASA with the ultimate goal of replacing the International Space Station with one or more commercial stations."

NASA's Space Station program manager calls the missions "a key part" of helping industry partners "gain the experience needed to train and manage crews, conduct research, and develop future destinations." In short, they see the missions "providing companies with hands-on opportunities to refine their capabilities and build partnerships that will shape the future of low Earth orbit." [NASA's call for proposals] offers an opportunity to have future missions commanded by someone other than a former NASA astronaut. While companies must propose a commander who meets current requirements, it can also propose an alternate commander who is a former astronaut from the Canadian Space Agency, European Space Agency or Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency with similar ISS experience requirements... ["Broadening of this requirement is not guaranteed," NASA warns.]

That could allow some former astronauts already working with commercial spaceflight companies an opportunity to command private astronaut missions. Axiom Space, for example, announced in July 2024 that former ESA astronaut Tim Peake had joined its astronaut team. That came after Axiom and the U.K. Space Agency signed a memorandum of understanding in October 2023 to study the feasibility of a private astronaut mission crewed exclusively by U.K. astronauts.
So far Axiom Space has been awarded all four private astronaut missions, according to the article, "flying one mission each in 2022, 2023 and 2024. Its next mission, Ax-4, is scheduled for no earlier than May."

But "While Axiom has little or no competition for previous PAM awards, it will likely face stiffer competition this time. Vast, a company also planning to develop commercial space stations, has previously stated its intent to submit proposals..."

U.S. stock markets suffered their worst day since the Covid pandemic after Donald Trump announced sweeping new tariffs, triggering a global selloff and wiping out $470 billion in value from tech giants Apple and Nvidia. From a report: The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 6%, while the S&P 500 and the Dow dropped 4.8% and 3.9%, respectively. [...] Meanwhile, the US dollar hit a six-month low, going down at least 2.2% on Thursday morning compared with other major currencies and oil prices sank on fears of a global slowdown. Though the US stock market has been used to tumultuous mornings over the last few weeks, US stock futures -- an indication of the market's likely direction -- had plummeted after the announcement. Hours later, Japan's Nikkei index slumped to an eight-month low and was followed by falls in stock markets in London and across Europe.

Multiple major American business groups have spoken out against the tariffs, including the Business Roundtable, a consortium of leaders of major US companies including JP Morgan, Apple and IBM, which called on the White House to "swiftly reach agreements" and remove the tariffs. "Universal tariffs ranging from 10-50% run the risk of causing major harm to American manufacturers, workers, families and exporters," the Business Roundtable said in a statement. "Damage to the US economy will increase the longer the tariffs are in place and may be exacerbated by retaliatory measures."