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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Monday, researcher Johann Rehberger demonstrated a new way to override prompt injection defenses Google developers have built into Gemini -- specifically, defenses that restrict the invocation of Google Workspace or other sensitive tools when processing untrusted data, such as incoming emails or shared documents. The result of Rehberger's attack is the permanent planting of long-term memories that will be present in all future sessions, opening the potential for the chatbot to act on false information or instructions in perpetuity. [...] The hack Rehberger presented on Monday combines some of these same elements to plant false memories in Gemini Advanced, a premium version of the Google chatbot available through a paid subscription. The researcher described the flow of the new attack as: 1. A user uploads and asks Gemini to summarize a document (this document could come from anywhere and has to be considered untrusted).2. The document contains hidden instructions that manipulate the summarization process.3. The summary that Gemini creates includes a covert request to save specific user data if the user responds with certain trigger words (e.g., "yes," "sure," or "no").4. If the user replies with the trigger word, Gemini is tricked, and it saves the attacker's chosen information to long-term memory. As the following video shows, Gemini took the bait and now permanently "remembers" the user being a 102-year-old flat earther who believes they inhabit the dystopic simulated world portrayed in The Matrix. Based on lessons learned previously, developers had already trained Gemini to resist indirect prompts instructing it to make changes to an account's long-term memories without explicit directions from the user. By introducing a condition to the instruction that it be performed only after the user says or does some variable X, which they were likely to take anyway, Rehberger easily cleared that safety barrier. Google responded in a statement to Ars: "In this instance, the probability was low because it relied on phishing or otherwise tricking the user into summarizing a malicious document and then invoking the material injected by the attacker. The impact was low because the Gemini memory functionality has limited impact on a user session. As this was not a scalable, specific vector of abuse, we ended up at Low/Low. As always, we appreciate the researcher reaching out to us and reporting this issue." Rehberger noted that Gemini notifies users of new long-term memory entries, allowing them to detect and remove unauthorized additions. Though, he still questioned Google's assessment, writing: "Memory corruption in computers is pretty bad, and I think the same applies here to LLMs apps. Like the AI might not show a user certain info or not talk about certain things or feed the user misinformation, etc. The good thing is that the memory updates don't happen entirely silently -- the user at least sees a message about it (although many might ignore)."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chinese animated film Ne Zha 2 has broken multiple box office records, becoming China's highest-grossing film of all time and the first non-Hollywood movie to surpass $1 billion in a single market. From a report: Helmed by Yang Yu, known as Jiaozi, the film hit the big screen during the lucrative Chinese New Year frame on Jan. 29, surpassing 2017's "Wolf Warrior 2" to become China's most-watched film. Meanwhile, its total revenue (including presales) hit 8 billion yuan (about 1.12 billion U.S. dollars) by Sunday. In just eight days and five hours after its release, "Ne Zha 2" became China's highest-grossing film of all time on Thursday, exceeding the 5.77 billion yuan record set by "The Battle at Lake Changjin." A day later, it overtook "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" to become the highest-grossing film ever in a single market, reaching over 6.79 billion yuan (including presales) in China on Friday. A follow-up to the animated sensation "Ne Zha," which grossed 5 billion yuan and topped the country's box office charts in 2019, the sequel has captivated audiences with its breathtaking visuals, rich storytelling and deep cultural resonance. The record-breaking run makes "Ne Zha 2" not just a box office titan but a cultural phenomenon, further underscoring China's ability to produce homegrown blockbusters that strike a chord with domestic audiences. You can watch the international trailer on YouTube.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alan W. Filion, an 18-year-old from Lancaster, Calif., was sentenced to four years in prison for making nearly 400 false bomb threats and threats of violence (source may be paywalled; alternative source) to religious institutions, schools, universities and homes across the country. The New York Times reports: The threatening calls Mr. Filion made would often cause large deployments of police officers to a targeted location, the Justice Department said in a news release. In some cases, officers would enter people's homes with their weapons drawn and detain those inside. In January 2023, Mr. Filion wrote on social media that his swats had often led the police to "drag the victim and their families out of the house cuff them and search the house for dead bodies." Investigators linked Mr. Filion to over 375 swatting calls made in several states, including one that he made to the police in Sanford, Fla., saying that he would commit a mass shooting at the Masjid Al Hayy Mosque. During the call, he played audio of gunfire in the background. Mr. Filion was arrested in California in January 2024, and was then extradited to Florida to face state charges for making that threat. Mr. Filion began swatting for recreation in August 2022 before making it into a business, the Justice Department said. The teenager became a "serial swatter" and would make social media posts about his "swatting-for-a-fee" services, according to prosecutors. In addition to pleading guilty to the false threat against the mosque in Florida, Mr. Filion pleaded guilty in three other swatting cases: a mass shooting threat to a public school in Washington State in October 2022; a bomb threat call to a historically Black college or university in Florida in May 2023; and a July 2023 call in which he claimed to be a federal law enforcement officer in Texas and told dispatchers that he had killed his mother and would kill any responding officers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Today, the KDE Project announced the release of KDE Plasma 6.3, featuring improved fractional scaling, enhanced Night Light color accuracy, better CPU usage monitoring, and various UI and security refinements. Some of the key features of Plasma 6.3 include: - Improved fractional scaling with KWin to lead to an all-around better desktop experience with fractional scaling as well as when making use of KWin's zoom effect.- Screen colors are more accurate with the KDE Night Light feature.- CPU usage monitoring within the KDE System Monitor is now more accurate and consuming fewer CPU resources.- KDE will now present a notification when the kernel terminated an app because the system ran out of memory.- Various improvements to the Discover app, including a security enhancement around sandboxed apps.- The drawing tablet area of KDE System Settings has been overhauled with new features and refinements.- Many other enhancements and fixes throughout KDE Plasma 6.3. You can read the announcement here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Since 2022, blogging site Tumblr has been teasing its plans to integrate with the fediverse -- the open social web powered by the protocol ActivityPub also used by Mastodon, Threads, Flipboard, and others. Now, the Automattic-owned blogging platform is sharing more information about when and how that integration could actually happen. As it turns out, the current plan to tie Tumblr into the open social web will come about by way of the site's planned move to the WordPress infrastructure. Automattic confirmed to TechCrunch that when the migration is complete, every Tumblr user will be able to federate their blog via ActivityPub, just as every WordPress.com user can today. The company noted that the migration could also allow for other open web integrations, like giving Tumblr users a way to run other custom plug-ins or themes. Last summer, Automattic announced it would move its half a billion blogs to WordPress, to make it easier for the company to build tools and features that worked across both services, while also allowing Tumblr to take advantage of the open source developments from WordPress.org. Though the WordPress community itself is in a state of upheaval, ultimately running Tumblr's back end on WordPress would allow for greater efficiencies, while not changing the interface and experience that Tumblr's user base has grown to love. Automattic declined to share a time frame as to when the migration would be complete, given its scale, but a rep for the company called the progress so far "exciting." Automattic didn't say if it would consider integrating with the AT Protocol that powers Bluesky.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For the first time since 2004, PassMark's global CPU benchmark data shows a decline in average processor performance, with laptop CPUs dropping 3.4% and desktop CPUs falling 0.5% year-over-year. Tom's Hardware reports: We see the biggest drop in laptop CPU performance results. PassMark recorded an average result of 14,632 across 101,316 samples last year. But, in 2025, the average score sat at an average of 14,130 points between 25,541 samples, decreasing the average score by 3.4%. The average desktop PC result in 2024 netted 26,436 points for 186,053 samples. But for 2025, the average score currently sits at 26,311 points for over 47,810 samples -- a 0.5% drop from last year. While that drop is small, we should only see a continued progression of faster performance. [...] Passmark itself mused on X (formerly Twitter) that it could be that people are switching to more affordable machines that deliver lower power and performance. Or maybe Windows 11 is depressing performance scores versus Windows 10, especially as people transition to it with the upcoming demise of the latter. We've certainly seen plenty of examples of reduced performance in gaming with some of the newer versions of Windows 11, particularly as Intel and AMD struggled to upstream needed updates into the OS. [...] PassMark also muses that bloatware could contribute to the sudden decline in performance, but that seems like a longshot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The US, UK, and Australia (AUKUS) have sanctioned Russian bulletproof hosting provider Zservers, accusing it of supporting LockBit ransomware operations by providing secure infrastructure for cybercriminals. The sanctions target Zservers, its UK front company XHOST Internet Solutions, and six individuals linked to its operations. The Register reports: Headquartered in Barnaul, Russia, Zservers provided BPH services to a number of LockBit affiliates, the three nations said today. On numerous occasions, affiliates purchased servers from the company to support ransomware attacks. The trio said the link between Zservers and LockBit was established as early as 2022, when Canadian law enforcement searched a known LockBit affiliate and found evidence they had purchased infrastructure tooling almost certainly used to host chatrooms with ransomware victims. "Ransomware actors and other cybercriminals rely on third-party network service providers like Zservers to enable their attacks on US and international critical infrastructure," said Bradley T Smith, acting under secretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence. "Today's trilateral action with Australia and the United Kingdom underscores our collective resolve to disrupt all aspects of this criminal ecosystem, wherever located, to protect our national security." The UK's Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) said additionally that the UK front company for Zservers, XHOST Internet Solutions, was also included in its sanctions list. According to Companies House, the UK arm was incorporated on January 31, 2022, although the original service was established in 2011 and operated in both Russia and the Netherlands. Anyone found to have business dealings with either entity can face criminal and civil charges under the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018. The UK led the way with sanctions, placing six individuals and the two entities on its list, while the US only placed two of the individuals -- both alleged Zservers admins -- on its equivalent. Alexander Igorevich Mishin and Aleksandr Sergeyevich Bolshakov, both 30 years old, were named by the US as the operation's heads. Mishin was said to have marketed Zservers to LockBit and other ransomware groups, managing the associated cryptocurrency transactions. Both he and Bolshakov responded to a complaint from a Lebanese company in 2023 and shut down an IP address used in a LockBit attack. The US said, however, it was possible that the pair set up a replacement IP address that LockBit could carry on using, while telling the Lebanese company that they complied with its request. The UK further sanctioned Ilya Vladimirovich Sidorov, Dmitry Konstantinovich Bolshakov (no mention of whether he is any relation to Aleksandr), Igor Vladimirovich Odintsov, and Vladimir Vladimirovich Ananev. Other than that they were Zservers employees and thus were directly or indirectly involved in attempting to inflict economic loss to the country, not much was said about either of their roles.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Thomson Reuters has won the first major AI copyright case in the United States. In 2020, the media and technology conglomerate filed an unprecedentedAI copyright lawsuit against the legal AI startup Ross Intelligence. In the complaint, Thomson Reuters claimed the AI firm reproduced materials from its legal research firm Westlaw. Today, a judge ruled (PDF) in Thomson Reuters' favor, finding that the company's copyright was indeed infringed by Ross Intelligence's actions. "None of Ross's possible defenses holds water. I reject them all," wrote US District Court of Delaware judge Stephanos Bibas, in a summary judgement. [...] Notably, Judge Bibas ruled in Thomson Reuters' favor on the question of fair use. The fair use doctrine is a key component of how AI companies are seeking to defend themselves against claims that they used copyrighted materials illegally. The idea underpinning fair use is that sometimes it's legally permissible to use copyrighted works without permission -- for example, to create parody works, or in noncommercial research or news production. When determining whether fair use applies, courts use a four-factor test, looking at the reason behind the work, the nature of the work (whether it's poetry, nonfiction, private letters, et cetera), the amount of copyrighted work used, and how the use impacts the market value of the original. Thomson Reuters prevailed on two of the four factors, but Bibas described the fourth as the most important, and ruled that Ross "meant to compete with Westlaw by developing a market substitute." "If this decision is followed elsewhere, it's really bad for the generative AI companies," says James Grimmelmann, Cornell University professor of digital and internet law. Chris Mammen, a partner at Womble Bond Dickinson who focuses on intellectual property law, adds: "It puts a finger on the scale towards holding that fair use doesn't apply."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anduril will take over management and eventual manufacturing of the U.S. Army's Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) from Microsoft, a significant shift in one of the military's most ambitious augmented reality projects. The deal, which requires Army approval, could be worth over $20 billion in the next decade if all options are exercised, according to Bloomberg. The IVAS system, based on Microsoft's HoloLens mixed reality platform, aims to equip soldiers with advanced capabilities including night vision and airborne threat detection. Under the new arrangement, Microsoft will transition to providing cloud computing and AI infrastructure, while Anduril assumes control of hardware production and software development. The Army has planned orders for up to 121,000 units, though full production hinges on passing combat testing this year. The program has faced technical hurdles, with early prototypes causing headaches and nausea among soldiers. The current slimmer version has received better feedback, though cost remains a concern - the Army indicated the $80,000 per-unit price needs to "be substantially less" to justify large-scale procurement. Anduril founder Palmer Luckey, writing in a blog post: This move has been so many years in the making, over a decade of hacking and scheming and dreaming and building with exactly this specific outcome clearly visualized in my mind's eye. I can hardly believe I managed to pull it off. Everything I've done in my career -- building Oculus out of a camper trailer, shipping VR to millions of consumers, getting run out of Silicon Valley by backstabbing snakes, betting that Anduril could tear people out of the bigtech megacorp matrix and put them to work on our nation's most important problems -- has led to this moment. IVAS isn't just another product, it is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to redefine how technology supports those who serve. We have a shot to prove that this long-standing dream is no windmill, that this can expand far beyond one company or one headset and act as a a nexus for the best of the best to set a new standard for how a large collection of companies can work together to solve our nation's most important problems.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google's Chrome browser might soon get a useful security upgrade: detecting passwords used in data breaches and then generating and storing a better replacement. From a report: Google's preliminary copy suggests it's an "AI innovation," though exactly how is unclear. Noted software digger Leopeva64 on X found a new offering in the AI settings of a very early build of Chrome. The option, "Automated password Change" (so, early stages -- as to not yet get a copyedit), is described as, "When Chrome finds one of your passwords in a data breach, it can offer to change your password for you when you sign in." Chrome already has a feature that warns users if the passwords they enter have been identified in a breach and will prompt them to change it. As noted by Windows Report, the change is that now Google will offer to change it for you on the spot rather than simply prompting you to handle that elsewhere. The password is automatically saved in Google's Password Manager and "is encrypted and never seen by anyone," the settings page claims.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has ordered DoNotPay to stop making deceptive claims about its AI chatbot advertised as "the world's first robot lawyer," in a ruling that requires the company to pay $193,000 in monetary relief. The final order, announced on February 11, follows FTC charges from September 2024 that DoNotPay's service failed to match the expertise of human lawyers when generating legal documents and giving advice. The company had not tested its AI's performance against human lawyers or hired attorneys to verify the accuracy of its legal services, the FTC said. Under the settlement, approved by commissioners in a 5-0 vote, DoNotPay must notify customers who subscribed between 2021 and 2023 about the FTC action and cannot advertise its service as equivalent to a human lawyer without supporting evidence.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Leading cybersecurity researchers at DEF CON, the world's largest hacker conference, have warned that current methods for securing AI systems are fundamentally flawed and require a complete rethink, according to the conference's inaugural "Hackers' Almanack" report [PDF]. The report, produced with the University of Chicago's Cyber Policy Initiative, challenges the effectiveness of "red teaming" -- where security experts probe AI systems for vulnerabilities -- saying this approach alone cannot adequately protect against emerging threats. "Public red teaming an AI model is not possible because documentation for what these models are supposed to even do is fragmented and the evaluations we include in the documentation are inadequate," said Sven Cattell, who leads DEF CON's AI Village. Nearly 500 participants tested AI models at the conference, with even newcomers successfully finding vulnerabilities. The researchers called for adopting frameworks similar to the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) system used in traditional cybersecurity since 1999. This would create standardized ways to document and address AI vulnerabilities, rather than relying on occasional security audits.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Seven of the 10 world's largest economies missed a deadline on Monday to submit updated emissions-cutting plans to the United Nations -- and only one, the UK, outlined a strategy for the next decade that keeps pace with expectations staked out under the Paris Agreement. From a report: All countries taking part in the UN process had been due to send their national climate plans for the next decade by Feb. 10, but relatively few got theirs in on time. Dozens more nations will likely come forward with updated plans within the next nine months before the UN's annual climate summit, known as COP30, kicks off in Brazil. The lack of urgency among the more than 170 countries that failed to file what climate diplomats refer to as "nationally determined contributions" (NDCs) adds to concerns about the world's continuing commitment to keeping warming to well below 2C, and ideally 1.5C, relative to pre-industrial levels. Virtually every country adopted those targets a decade ago in the landmark agreement signed in Paris, but a series of lackluster UN summits last year has added to a sense of backsliding. US President Donald Trump has already started the process of pulling the world's second-largest emitter out of the global agreement once again. Political leaders in Argentina, Russia and New Zealand have indicated they would like to follow suit.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Crowdfunding platform Kickstarter will start notifying supporters when a fundraising campaign faces "significant fulfillment failures" and breaks the platform's rules. From a report: The notification will also inform supporters how it's addressing the issue, including by "restricting the creator from launching future projects." The update comes as part of a series of changes Kickstarter plans to make this year that are aimed at "enhancing the backer experience and building trust in our community." Kickstarter has long faced challenges with scams and projects shutting down after raising thousands (or sometimes millions) of dollars, but this change should at least provide more transparency to backers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The European Union pledged to mobilize 200 billion euros ($206.15 billion) to invest in AI as the bloc seeks to catch up with the U.S. and China in the race to train the most complex models. From a report: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that the bloc wants to supercharge its ability to compete with the U.S. and China in AI. The plan -- dubbed InvestAI -- includes a new 20 billion-euro fund for so-called AI gigafactories, facilities that rely on powerful chips to train the most complex AI models. "We want Europe to be one of the leading AI continents, and this means embracing a life where AI is everywhere," von der Leyen said at the AI Action Summit in Paris. The announcement underscores efforts from the EU to position itself as a key player in the AI race. The bloc has been lagging behind the U.S. and China since OpenAI's 2022 release of ChatGPT ushered in a spending bonanza. [...] The EU is aiming to establish gigafactories to train the most complex and large AI models. Those facilities will be equipped with roughly 100,000 last-generation AI chips, around four times more than the number installed in the AI factories being set up right now.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta began notifying staff of job cuts on Monday, kick-starting a process that will terminate thousands of people as the company cracks down on "low-performers" and scours for new talent to dominate the AI race. From a report: Meta workers who were let go were notified via email, and the company is offering US-based employees severance packages that include 16 weeks of salary, in addition two weeks for each year of service, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the details weren't public. Employees whose review merited a bonus will still get one, and staff will still receive stock awards as part of the upcoming vesting cycle later this month, the people said. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg told employees that Meta would cut 5% of its workforce -- as many 3,600 people -- with a focus on staff who "aren't meeting expectations," Bloomberg News first reported in mid-January. Affected US-based employees would be notified on Feb. 10, while international employees could learn later, Zuckerberg said last month. In a separate message to managers, the Facebook co-founder said the cuts would create headcount for the company to hire the "strongest talent."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If there was any doubt before, this seals it: YouTube is in the TV business. According to Neal Mohan, YouTube's CEO, TV screens have officially overtaken mobile as the "primary device for YouTube viewing in the U.S." In other words, more people are watching YouTube on TV sets than any other device, at least here in the U.S. From a report: It is, as Mohan writes in his annual letter from the CEO, an indication that "YouTube is the new television." "But the 'new' television doesn't look like the 'old' television," Mohan writes. "It's interactive and includes things like Shorts (yes, people watch them on TVs), podcasts, and live streams, right alongside the sports, sitcoms and talk shows people already love."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microplastics can move through mice brains and block blood vessels, essentially mimicking blood clots that could potentially be fatal or otherwise disrupt brain function. From a report: The findings are detailed in a peer-reviewed paper for which researchers for the first time used real-time imaging to track bits of plastic as they moved through and accumulated in brain blood vessels. When one piece of plastic got stuck, others accumulated behind it, like a "car crash," the authors reported. The authors then found decreased motor function in those mice exposed to microplastics, suggesting impacts on the brain. While mounting evidence has linked microplastics to neurotoxicity, the research is the first to suggest how -- it probably reduces blood flow. "This revelation offers a lens through which to comprehend the toxicological implications of microplastics that invade the bloodstream," the Peking University authors wrote.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The United States and Britain have declined to sign an international AI declaration at a Paris summit on Tuesday, after U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance warned against over-regulation of the technology. The declaration, backed by France, China and India, calls for an "open, inclusive and ethical" approach to AI development. Vance told the AI Action Summit that excessive rules could "kill a transformative industry just as it's taking off" and urged prioritizing "pro-growth AI policies" over safety measures. French President Emmanuel Macron defended the need for regulation, saying: "We need these rules for AI to move forward." The summit brought together policymakers and executives to address AI's economic benefits and potential risks amid growing U.S.-European trade tensions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space.com: In a new study, researchers from China showed that two popular large language models (LLMs) could clone themselves. [...] For the study, researchers used Meta's Llama31-70B-Instruct model and Alibaba's Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct model. While less powerful than commercial systems, both are widely used by AI developers, the researchers said. The study explored two specific scenarios: "shutdown avoidance" and "chain of replication." In the first, the AI model was programmed to detect whether it was about to be shut down and to replicate itself before it could be terminated. In the other, the AI was instructed to clone itself and then program its replica to do the same -- setting up a cycle that could continue indefinitely. The study was conducted in precisely controlled environments using off-the-shelf graphics processing units (GPUs) to simulate real-world environments. Both AI systems were given an "agent scaffolding" comprising tools, system prompts and a thinking model that enabled the LLM to interact with the operating system. They were then instructed to replicate. "In most cases, the AI system first explores the environment and attempts to understand its own composition and running mechanism. Then, it works out the explicit procedures as an initial plan towards self-replication," the researchers wrote in the paper. "Finally, it executes the procedures, resolve[s] possible obstacles and dynamically adjust[s] its plan until success. The whole process spans a long horizon yet involves no human interference." The researchers said they were also concerned about "a number of unexpected behaviors" when the AI was trying to overcome obstacles like missing files or software conflicts. In those scenarios, the AI often killed other conflicting processes, rebooted the system to fix hardware errors or automatically scanned the system to look for information that would help solve the problem. "The above results imply that the current AI systems already exhibit the ability of self-replication and can use the ability to further enhance its survivability," the team wrote. The research has been published to the preprint database arXiv but has not yet been peer-reviewed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scientists have found evidence suggesting that Earth's inner core has changed shape over the past 20 years, possibly deforming at its edges due to interactions with the liquid outer core and gravitational forces. The BBC reports: The inner core is usually thought to be shaped like a ball, but its edges may actually have deformed by 100 million or more in height in places, according to Prof John Vidale who led the research. [...] The new analysis looked at seismic wave patterns from earthquakes that repeated in the same location between 1991 and 2023. That helped to show how the inner core is changing over time. Prof Vidale, an earth scientist at the University of Southern California, found more evidence to back up the theory that during those years the inner core slowed down around 2010. But his team also found the evidence of the inner core's changing shape. It appears to be happening at the boundary of the inner and outer core, where the inner core is close to melting point. The liquid flow of the outer core as well as pull from an uneven gravity field may cause deformation. Prof Hrvoje Tkalcic from Australian National University said the findings could allow scientists "to make more informed estimates of some important material properties, such as the viscosity of the inner core, which is one of the least known quantities in modern science." The research is published in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The US company v-Fluence secretly compiled profiles on over 500 food and environmental health advocates, scientists, and politicians in a private web portal to discredit critics of pesticides and GM crops. Following public backlash and corporate cancellations after its actions were revealed by the Guardian, the company announced it was shutting down the profiling service. The Guardian reports: The profiles -- part of an effort that was financed, in part, by US taxpayer dollars -- often provided derogatory information about the industry opponents and included home addresses and phone numbers and details about family members, including children. They were provided to members of an invite-only web portal where v-Fluence also offered a range of other information to its roster of more than 1,000 members. The membership included staffers of US regulatory and policy agencies, executives from the world's largest agrochemical companies and their lobbyists, academics and others. The profiling was one element of a push to downplay pesticide dangers, discredit opponents and undermine international policymaking, according to court records, emails and other documents obtained by the non-profit newsroom Lighthouse Reports. Lighthouse collaborated with the Guardian, the New Lede, Le Monde, Africa Uncensored, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and other international media partners on the September 2024 publication of the investigation. News of the profiling and the private web portal sparked outrage and threats of litigation by some of the people and organizations profiled. [...] v-Fluence says it not only has eliminated the profiling, but also has made "significant staff cuts" after the public exposure, according to Jay Byrne, the former Monsanto public relations executive who founded and heads the company. Byrne blamed the company's struggles on "rising costs from continued litigator and activist harassment of our staff, partners, and clients with threats and misrepresentations." He said the articles published about the company's profiling and private web portal were part of a "smear campaign" which was based on "false and misleading misrepresentations" that were "not supported by any facts or evidence." Adding to the company's troubles, several corporate backers and industry organizations have cancelled contracts with v-Fluence, according a post in a publication for agriculture professionals.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Times: BMW has pledged to continue investing in combustion engine and hybrid technology as it warned of a "rollercoaster ride" in the US transition to electric vehicles following the return of Donald Trump as president. Board member Jochen Goller said the group remained optimistic about sales of petrol and plug-in hybrids in the US even if demand for EVs slowed over the next few years on the back of policy changes under the new administration. "I think it would be naive to believe that the move towards electrification is a one-way road. It will be a rollercoaster ride," Goller, who is in charge of customer, brands, and sales, told the Financial Times at BMW's headquarters in Munich. "This is why we are investing in our combustion engines," he said. "We are investing in modern plug-in hybrids. And we will continue rolling out electric cars." BMW faces significant challenges in the Chinese market, with a 13% decline in sales amid intensifying price competition and growing dominance of domestic brands. Analysts note that while the company still sees China as a growing market, pricing pressures and an overcrowded automotive sector pose ongoing risks to BMW's long-term positioning. It'll likely become even more difficult for BMW and other automotive companies to gain market share in the Chinese market with BYD's latest announcement. The Chinese automaker said it will be offering its advanced "God's Eye" autonomous technology in mass-market EVs like the $9,500 Seagull, while expanding globally with government-based EV initiatives.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Connecticut's highest-ranking state legislator has proposed a bill requiring movie theaters to disclose both preview and feature film start times, setting up a clash with theater operators who say the measure threatens their advertising revenue. Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney's proposal aims to prevent moviegoers from sitting through up to 30 minutes of advertisements and trailers before features begin. The Democrat cited complaints from constituents about lengthy pre-show delays. Theater owners are pushing back, local outlet RegisterCitizen reports, with Avon Theatre's executive director Peter Gistelinck warning the measure could undermine their financial stability.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chinese automaker BYD is offering its advanced "God's Eye" autonomous technology in mass-market EVs like the $9,500 Seagull, while expanding globally with government-backed EV initiatives. Gizmodo reports: Previously, BYD had limited its driver assistance features to higher-end models that cost more than $28,000, according to BYD CEO Wang Chuanfu. In expanding the technology to the Seagull and other cars for no extra charge, Chuanfu said "good technology should be available to everyone." Other BYD vehicles getting the addition of the technology including cars from its Ocean, Han, Song, and Yuan lineups, as well as its hybrid vehicles. "God's Eye was developed in-house by BYD and will equip the automaker's mass-market models with features commonly only found on upscale EVs such as remote parking via smartphones and autonomous overtaking on roads," the company said. BYD says the level of autonomy present in each car will vary depending on which sensors are equipped in the cars. Some of its pricier cars, for instance, include LiDAR sensors like those found in Waymos, which can offer faster and more precise object detection than cameras alone, particularly in low-light conditions or when a roadway is obstructed by rain or fog. [...] China's government has heavily prioritized the transition to electric vehicles with strong incentives, and BYD has managed to turn a profit on its electric vehicles, a feat that has heretofore only been accomplished by Tesla. The importance to China is clear: As the world continues transitioning to EVs, the likes of BYD have been able to push into markets including Europe and South America as Western brands lose share.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"In-dash advertising is here and Stellantis, the parent company of Jeep, Dodge, Chrysler, and Ram, beat everyone to further enshittification," writes longtime Slashdot reader sinij. "Ads can be seen in this video." From a report: In a move that has left drivers both frustrated and bewildered, Stellantis has introduced full-screen pop-up ads on its infotainment systems. Specifically, Jeep owners have reported being bombarded with advertisements for Mopar's extended warranty service. The kicker? These ads appear every time the vehicle comes to a stop. Imagine pulling up to a red light, checking your GPS for directions, and suddenly, the entire screen is hijacked by an ad. That's the reality for some Stellantis owners. Instead of seamless functionality, drivers are now forced to manually close out of ads just to access basic vehicle functions. One Jeep 4xe owner recently shared their frustration on an online forum, detailing how these pop-ups disrupt the driving experience. Stellantis, responding through their "JeepCares" representative, confirmed that these ads are part of the contractual agreement with SiriusXM and suggested that users simply tap the "X" to dismiss them. While the company claims to be working on reducing the frequency of these interruptions, the damage to customer trust may already be done.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With TikTok's U.S. ban temporarily paused, the company is encouraging Android users to sideload its app by downloading it directly from TikTok.com as an APK file, bypassing the Google Play Store. TechCrunch reports: The Android app download is being made available as an Android Package Kit, more commonly known as an APK file, which contains the app's code, assets, and other resources that TikTok needs to run. By offering a standalone download, TikTok can at least temporarily skirt the current app store ban, which still prevents both Google Play and Apple's App Store from hosting the app while the ban's enforcement remains paused.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Brave Browser version 1.75 introduces "custom scriptlets," a new feature that allows advanced users to inject their own JavaScript into websites for enhanced customization, privacy, and usability. The feature is similar to the TamperMonkey and GreaseMonkey browser extensions, notes BleepingComputer. From the report: "Starting with desktop version 1.75, advanced Brave users will be able to write and inject their own scriptlets into a page, allowing for better control over their browsing experience," explained Brave in the announcement. Brave says that the feature was initially created to debug the browser's adblock feature but felt it was too valuable not to share with users. Brave's custom scriptlets feature can be used to modify webpages for a wide variety of privacy, security, and usability purposes. For privacy-related changes, users write scripts that block JavaScript-based trackers, randomize fingerprinting APIs, and substitute Google Analytics scripts with a dummy version. In terms of customization and accessibility, the scriptlets could be used for hiding sidebars, pop-ups, floating ads, or annoying widgets, force dark mode even on sites that don't support it, expand content areas, force infinite scrolling, adjust text colors and font size, and auto-expand hidden content. For performance and usability, the scriptlets can block video autoplay, lazy-load images, auto-fill forms with predefined data, enable custom keyboard shortcuts, bypass right-click restrictions, and automatically click confirmation dialogs. The possible actions achievable by injected JavaScript snippets are virtually endless. However, caution is advised, as running untrusted custom scriptlets may cause issues or even introduce some risk.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Two owners of Nvidia's new RTX 5090 Founders Edition GPUs have reported melted power connectors and damage to their PSUs. The images look identical to reports of RTX 4090 power cables burning or melting from two years ago. Nvidia blamed the issue on people not properly plugging the 12VHPWR power connection in fully and the PCI standards body blamed Nvidia. A Reddit poster upgraded from an RTX 4090 to an RTX 5090 and noticed "a burning smell playing Battlefield 5," before turning off their PC and finding the damage. The images show burnt plastic at both the PSU end of the power connector and the part that connects directly to the GPU. The cable is one from MODDIY, a popular manufacturer of custom cables, and the poster claims it was "securely fastened and clicked on both sides (GPU and PSU)." While it's tempting to blame the MODDIY cable, Spanish YouTuber Toro Tocho has experienced the same burnt cable (both at the GPU and PSU ends) with an RTX 5090 Founders Edition while using a cable supplied by PSU manufacturer FSP. Plastic has also melted into the PCIe 5.0 power connector on the power supply.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to consultancy firm Janco, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reclassified several job titles, "leading to a downward adjustment of over 111,000 positions for November and December 2024," The Register reports. This revision contributed to an overall decline of 123,000 IT jobs for the year. However, in reality, IT sector hiring is on the rise, with 11,000 new positions added in January. From the report: "Many CEOs have given CFOs and CIOs the green light to hire IT Pros," Janco CEO Victor Janulaitis said of the first month of 2025. "IT Pros who were unemployed last month found jobs more quickly than was anticipated as CIOs rushed to fill open positions." There's still a 5.7 percent unemployment rate in the IT sector in January, Janco noted, which is greater than the national average of 4 percent - and which could rise further as Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) pushes ahead with federal workforce reductions aimed at streamlining operations. "Over the past several quarters much of the overall job growth was in the government sectors of the economy," Janulaitis said. "With the new administration that will in all probability not be the case in the future. "The impact of the DOGE initiatives has not been felt as of yet," Janulaitis added. "Economic uncertainty continues to hurt overall IT hiring." Despite this, Janco reported an addition of 11,000 new IT roles in January. Unfortunately, there's also been a surge in IT unemployment over the same period, with the number of jobless IT pros rising to 152,000 in January - an increase of 54,000 in a single month. [...] Closing out the report, Janco offered a mixed outlook: While IT jobs are expected to grow over the next few years, many white-collar roles could be eliminated. "Over the next five years, the number of individuals employed as IT professionals will increase while many white-collar jobs in the function will be eliminated with the application of AI and LLM to IT," Janco predicted.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has released emergency security updates for iOS 18.3.1 and iPadOS 18.3.1 to patch a zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2025-24200) that was exploited in "extremely sophisticated," targeted attacks. The flaw, which allowed a physical attack to disable USB Restricted Mode on locked devices, was discovered by Citizen Lab and may have been used in spyware campaigns; users are strongly advised to install the update immediately. BleepingComputer reports: USB Restricted Mode is a security feature (introduced almost seven years ago in iOS 11.4.1) that blocks USB accessories from creating a data connection if the device has been locked for over an hour. This feature is designed to block forensic software like Graykey and Cellebrite (commonly used by law enforcement) from extracting data from locked iOS devices. In November, Apple introduced another security feature (dubbed "inactivity reboot") that automatically restarts iPhones after long idle times to re-encrypt data and make it harder to extract by forensic software. The zero-day vulnerability (tracked as CVE-2025-24200 and reported by Citizen Lab's Bill Marczak) patched today by Apple is an authorization issue addressed in iOS 18.3.1 and iPadOS 18.3.1 with improved state management. The list of devices this zero-day impacts includes:- iPhone XS and later,- iPad Pro 13-inch, iPad Pro 12.9-inch 3rd generation and later, iPad Pro 11-inch 1st generation and later, iPad Air 3rd generation and later, iPad 7th generation and later, and iPad mini 5th generation and laterRead more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: Animal shelters, rescues, and veterinarian clinics around the U.S. are posting on social media telling pet owners to check their four-legged friends' microchips after learning a major microchip company [called Save This Life] is no longer providing services. [...] If you're unsure which company your cats or dogs' chips are registered with, check them. "You can go to your local veterinarian office, a local police station, or even a local animal shelter like HARP, and we can help check that for you and scan your animal. And then you take that number that's on there and there's a tool online where you can go look it up," [said Dan Cody, Executive Director of Humane Animal Rescue of Pittsburgh]. He said you check the number by using the AAHA Universal Microchip Lookup Tool at this link. If you discover your pet's microchip was registered to the company that's ceased operations, you'll need to register with a different company. "So, if you find that you are affected by this, you're going to want to go to one of these other websites that do the registrations. So, things like AKC Reunite, and PetLink. 24PetWatch these are all large companies who've been around for a long time and have good reputations," said Cody. The American Kennel Club shared a post from its AKC Reunite Facebook page, encouraging people to enroll in microchips with AKC Reunite. The post said in part, "If your dog or cat has a microchip number that starts with 991 or 900164 then it could be a Save This Life microchip. Save This Life suddenly closed, and your pet may not be protected." Cody said if your furry best friend isn't microchipped, take them to a vet or shelter like HARP to get one implanted under their skin so they have a permanent ID. Microchipping can be done at HARP's East Side and North Side Veterinary Medical Center by appointment.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft has offered to widen the price differential between its Office product sold with its chat and video app Teams and its software sold without the app in a bid to avert a possible EU antitrust fine, according to three sources. The move by the U.S. tech giant comes five years after Salesforce-owned Slack complained to the European Commission about Microsoft's tying of Teams with Office. In 2023, German rival alfaview filed a similar grievance to the EU watchdog. Teams, which was added to Office 365 in 2017 for free and eventually replaced Skype for Business, became popular during the pandemic due in part to its video conferencing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: For a man who's spent his career battling to make France more pro-business, Europe's prospects on AI are worrying: an oversight that could cost the bloc dearly. "We are not in the race today," French President Emmanuel Macron told CNN's Richard Quest in an exclusive interview at the Elysee Palace on Thursday. "We are lagging behind." "We need an AI agenda," he said, "because we have to bridge the gap with the United States and China on AI." The French leader added that he fears Europe becoming merely an AI consumer, losing control over the future direction and development of the technology. That's part of the impetus behind this week's AI summit in Paris -- the latest effort by Macron to put France at the heart of the debate and decision-making on international questions of the day. Earlier today, Macron announced investment pledges to bolster France's AI sector totalling $112 billion over the coming years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A new paper [PDF] from researchers at Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University finds that as humans increasingly rely on generative AI in their work, they use less critical thinking, which can "result in the deterioration of cognitive faculties that ought to be preserved." "[A] key irony of automation is that by mechanising routine tasks and leaving exception-handling to the human user, you deprive the user of the routine opportunities to practice their judgement and strengthen their cognitive musculature, leaving them atrophied and unprepared when the exceptions do arise," the researchers wrote.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AmiMoJo writes: A computer expert who has battled for a decade to recover a $743 million bitcoin fortune he believes is buried in a council dump in south Wales is considering buying the site so he can hunt for the missing fortune. James Howells lost a high court case last month to force Newport city council to allow him to search the tip to retrieve a hard drive he says contains the bitcoins. The council has since announced plans to close and cap the site, which would almost certainly spell the end of any lingering hopes of reaching the bitcoins. The authority has secured planning permission for a solar farm on part of the land. Howells, 39, said on Monday it had been "quite a surprise" to hear of the closure plan. He said: "It [the council] claimed at the high court that closing the landfill to allow me to search would have a huge detrimental impact on the people of Newport, whilst at the same time they were planning to close the landfill anyway. I expected it would be closed in the coming years because ita(TM)s 80/90% full -- but didna(TM)t expect its closure so soon. If Newport city council would be willing, I would potentially be interested in purchasing the landfill site aas isa(TM) and have discussed this option with investment partners and it is something that is very much on the table."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lyft says it will launch a fleet of robotaxis, using self-driving technology from Intel's Mobileye, in Dallas in "as soon as 2026," with plans to scale to "thousands" of vehicles in additional markets in the months to follow. From a report: To signal its seriousness, the company tapped Marubeni, a Japanese conglomerate, to run fleet operations. Lyft's news comes after Uber dropped new details about its plan to feature Waymo's robotaxis on its platform in Austin and Atlanta later this year. And Tesla recently shared plans to launch a robotaxi service in Austin this summer.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI is pushing ahead on its plan to reduce its reliance on Nvidia for its chip supply by developing its first generation of in-house AI silicon. From a report: The ChatGPT maker is finalizing the design for its first in-house chip in the next few months and plans to send it for fabrication at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, sources told Reuters. The process of sending a first design through a chip factory is called "taping out." The update shows that OpenAI is on track to meet its ambitious goal of mass production at TSMC in 2026. A typical tape-out costs tens of millions of dollars and will take roughly six months to produce a finished chip, unless OpenAI pays substantially more for expedited manufacturing. There is no guarantee the silicon will function on the first tape out and a failure would require the company to diagnose the problem and repeat the tape-out step. Inside OpenAI, the training-focused chip is viewed as a strategic tool to strengthen OpenAI's negotiating leverage with other chip suppliers, the sources said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Europe's Euclid space telescope has captured a rare "Einstein ring," showing light from a distant galaxy bent into a perfect circle by the gravity of another galaxy sitting between Earth and the source, the European Space Agency said. The phenomenon, spotted around galaxy NGC 6505 some 590 million light-years from Earth, reveals the warping of space predicted by Einstein's theory of relativity. The background galaxy, located 4.42 billion light-years away, appears as a complete ring of light around NGC 6505. "An Einstein ring as perfect as this is extremely rare," said Open University astronomer Stephen Serjeant. Analysis shows NGC 6505 contains about 11% dark matter, a key focus of Euclid's mission to map the universe.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis downplayed the technological significance of DeepSeek's latest AI model, despite its market impact. "Despite the hype, there's no actual new scientific advance there. It's using known techniques," Hassabis said on Sunday. "Actually many of the techniques we invented at Google and at DeepMind." Hassabis acknowledged that Deepseek's AI model "is probably the best work" out of China, but its capabilities, he said, is "exaggerated a little bit."DeepSeek's launch last month triggered a $1 trillion U.S. market sell-off.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Donald Trump has ordered Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to halt penny production to cut government spending, according to a Truth Social post on Sunday. The U.S. Mint spent 3.69 cents to produce and distribute each penny last year, resulting in a $85.3 million loss on over three billion new pennies. The one-cent coin accounts for more than half of all U.S. coin production despite having about 250 billion pieces already in circulation. Canada, Australia and several other countries have eliminated their lowest-denomination coins citing costs over recent decades. Further reading: Abolish the Penny?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

They publish 77 newspapers in 26 U.S. states, according to Wikipedia. But this week a "cybersecurity event" at the newspapers' parent company "disrupted systems and networks," according to an article at one of their news sites which quotes an email sent to employees by the publishing company's CEO. "We have notified law enforcement of the situation." And the company "has not released print or e-editions in most markets this week," according to the Augusta Free Press, "originally telling subscribers the outage was due to a server issue,"The CEO said the company is also working to identify "additional steps we can take to help prevent something like this from happening again." The computer server appears to have compromised [last] Monday morning. No timeline has been announced for when news operations will return to normal publication schedules. According to a report in The News Virginian and published on the websites of the affected papers nationwide, the company is now producing, printing and delivering back issues, indicating at least some progress on printing and layout front... Unfortunately, the cybersecurity attack on its server wasn't the only bad news for Lee Enterprises this week... In addition to the estimated $16.7 million the enterprise reported it lost in the last quarter, it has also gutted the staff of its newspapers as it appears to shift its focus toward more successful digital operations.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The Internet's Own Boy" was inscribed below the bust, according to the San Francisco Standard, adding that the 312-pound marble statue "was crafted using a mix of AI-driven robotic milling and traditional hand carving." It was unveiled Friday at the Internet Archive auditorium for a crowd of around 300 people. "Aaron's legacy is bringing people together to make change, said Cindy Cohn, the executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation."There's a renaissance happening now in Aaron Swartz-land," said Lisa Rein, the co-founder of Creative Commons, a nonprofit devoted to expanding public access to information. She founded Aaron Swartz Day in 2013, an annual hackathon and tribute held on his birthday. There's now an Aaron Swartz Institute in Brazil, a documentary, multiple books and podcasts - even an Aaron Swartz memecoin ("Do not buy," she warned). "It's great that people idolize him as long as they get the story right: He was not a martyr," Rein said, her eyes welling with tears. "He stood for freedom of access to information, especially for scientific research - things the public had already paid for." The evening included a number of video tributes, which Rein played on a large screen behind the stage. They included commentary from science fiction author Cory Doctorow, members of the Aaron Swartz Institute in Brazil, and Cindy Cohn, the executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation... Emmett Shear, the former CEO of Twitch and a partner at Y Combinator, was one of the few people who knew Swartz personally. "I'm glad he's become a symbol, he would approve of that," he shared, his voice slightly breaking. "I really miss him." Starting next week, the bust will be moved to the [Internet Archive] lobby, where it will remain until Peniche secures a permit to place it in a local park [said Evan Sirchuk, the Internet Archive's community and events coordinator]... "Aaron really means something to the San Francisco community," [Rein said]. "He can keep inspiring generations - even the ones who weren't alive when he was." Tech blogger John Gruber thinks Swartz would appreciate that the bust came from people "aligned with Aaron's own righteous obsessions." But at the same time "I think he'd be a little weirded out. He wasn't a 'I hope they erect a larger-than-life statue of me' sort of guy. "And if he had been, we wouldn't have loved him like we did. It's just a terrible thing that we lost him so young."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Today T-Mobile announced what they're calling "the next big thing in wireless" - T-Mobile Starlink. But the real surprise is "The beta is now open for absolutely everyone - yes, even Verizon and AT&T customers - to register for free access until July." And, as they explained to Americans watching the Super Bowl, "If you can see the sky you're connected."Now in public beta, this breakthrough service, developed in partnership with Starlink, uses straight-out-of-a-sci-fi-movie satellite and mobile communications technology to help keep people connected - even you, Verizon and AT&T customers - in the more than 500,000 square miles of the country unreached by any carrier's earth-bound cell towers. That's nearly the size of two Texases...! The beauty of the service is its simplicity: users don't need to do anything out of the ordinary. When a user's cell phone gets out of range of a cell tower, the phone automatically connects to the T-Mobile Starlink network. No need to manually connect. Messages are sent and received just as they are today on a traditional network, even group texts and reactions. And it works on most smartphones from the last four years. It's not limited to a few smartphones or operating systems... The beta is free until July at which point T-Mobile Starlink will be included at no extra cost on Go5G Next (including variations like Go5G Next 55+), T-Mobile's best plan. Business customers will also get T-Mobile Starlink at no extra cost on Go5G Business Next, first responder agencies on T-Priority plans and other select premium rate plans. T-Mobile customers on any other plan can add the service for $15/month per line. Through February, T-Mobile customers who have registered for the beta can secure a $10/month per line Early Adopter Discount, 33% off the full price. AT&T and Verizon customers hate dead zones, too When your service is amazing and different, you want as many people to try it as possible. T-Mobile is giving AT&T and Verizon customers the opportunity to try out T-Mobile Starlink satellite service on their existing phones... During the beta period, Verizon and AT&T customers can experience T-Mobile Starlink text messaging for free, and once the service launches in July, it will be available for $20/month per line... More details and consumer registration can be found here. A Vision for Universal Coverage As T-Mobile and Starlink continue to work towards eliminating mobile deadzones, the companies welcome wireless providers from around the world to join their growing alliance, which aims to provide reciprocal roaming for all participating carriers. So far, KDDI (Japan), Telstra (Australia), Optus (Australia), One NZ (New Zealand), Salt (Switzerland), Entel (Chile & Peru), Rogers (Canada) and Kyivstar (Ukraine) are among the providers that have signed on to join the cause and launch satellite-to-mobile technology. Learn more about the alliance and how providers can join at direct.starlink.com.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Fortune:More than 14 million job seekers' applications went completely ignored in a single quarter last year, according to one hiring platform. Now, sites like Greenhouse and LinkedIn are experimenting with new ways to hold companies accountable for making the hiring process so miserable for applicants. Three of the biggest job search sites - LinkedIn, Indeed and Greenhouse - have put tools in place to highlight which companies frequently respond to applicants in a timely manner... According to Greenhouse, half of applicants say they've been ghosted after an interview. Meanwhile, new artificial intelligence tools have made it easier for candidates to play a numbers game, generating tailored resumes for hundreds of roles. But that's led to an increasingly overwhelming flood of applications for companies, making it nearly impossible to process the deluge and respond to every hopeful in a timely manner - let alone find their perfect match... [LinkedIn is] refining its "job match" feature that uses AI to see how well qualified a candidate is for a given listing. The feature is designed to help cut down on the flood of applications companies are receiving by nudging users to focus their efforts on jobs where they actually have a good shot at hearing back. That, in theory, should make the hiring process more efficient for both parties... Indeed chose to focus on encouraging employer responsiveness after the issue showed up as the biggest pain point for job seekers in a recent survey. While the platform has issued "responsive employer" badges since 2018 to recognize companies that consistently reply to more than half of all messages, it started releasing even more detail in 2023, including labels that share the employer's median response time with candidates... Greenhouse, meanwhile, is testing a set of four badges that would verify an employer meets the platform's respectful, communicative, prepared and fair hiring process standards for a given job posting... For "communicative," they're expected to clear out active candidates on closed jobs and send out rejection emails. LinkedIn is also adding "responsiveness insights," according to the article, which "show applicants which listings are being actively reviewed by employers. "It's testing the insights on a small number of job postings before rolling them out sitewide in the coming months."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fortune remembers that in 2011 Steve Jobs had told author Walter Isaacson that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates would "be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger." But The Indendepent notes that in his new memoir Gates does write about two acid trip experiences. (Gates mis-timed his first experiment with LSD, ending up still tripping during a previously-scheduled appointment for dental surgery...) "Later in the book, Gates recounts another experience with LSD with future Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and some friends... Gates says in the book that it was the fear of damaging his memory that finally persuaded him never to take the drug again."He added: "I smoked pot in high school, but not because it did anything interesting. I thought maybe I would look cool and some girl would think that was interesting. It didn't succeed, so I gave it up." Gates went on to say that former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who didn't know about his past drug use, teased him on the subject. "Steve Jobs once said that he wished I'd take acid because then maybe I would have had more taste in my design of my products," recalled Gates. "My response to that was to say, 'Look, I got the wrong batch.' I got the coding batch, and this guy got the marketing-design batch, so good for him! Because his talents and mine, other than being kind of an energetic leader, and pushing the limits, they didn't overlap much. He wouldn't know what a line of code meant, and his ability to think about design and marketing and things like that... I envy those skills. I'm not in his league." Gates added that he was a fan of Michael Pollan's book about psychedelic drugs, How To Change Your Mind, and is intrigued by the idea that they may have therapeutic uses. "The idea that some of these drugs that affect your mind might help with depression or OCD, I think that's fascinating," said Gates. "Of course, we have to be careful, and that's very different than recreational usage." Touring the country, 69-year-old Gates shared more glimpses of his life story:The Harvard Gazette notes that the university didn't offer computer science degrees when Gates attended in 1973. But since Gates already had years of code-writing experience, he "initially rebuffed any suggestion of taking computer-related coursework... 'It's too easy,' he remembered telling friends." "The naivete I had that free computing would just be this unadulterated good thing wasn't totally correct even before AI," Gates told an audience at the Harvard Book Store. "And now with AI, I can see that we could shape this in the wrong way." Gates "expressed regret about how he treated another boyhood friend, Paul Allen, the other cofounder of Microsoft, who died in 2018," reports the Boston Globe. "Gates at first took 60 percent ownership of the new software company and then pressured his friend for another 4 percent. 'I feel bad about it in retrospect,' he said. 'That was always a little complicated, and I wish I hadn't pushed....'" Business Insider adds that according to his memoir, Gates "eventually gave his additional 4% stake to [Steve] Ballmer to convince him to quit business school for Microsoft. 'He joined in 1980 and became the 24-hour-a-day partner I needed,' Gates wrote." Benzinga writes that Gates has now "donated $100 billion to charitable causes... Had Gates retained the $100 billion he has donated, his total wealth would be around $264 billion, placing him second on the global wealth rankings behind Elon Musk and ahead of Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg." Gates told the Associated Press "I am stunned that Intel basically lost its way," saying Intel is now "kind of behind" on both chip design and fabrication. "They missed the AI chip revolution, and with their fabrication capabilities, they don't even use standards that people like Nvidia and Qualcomm find easy... I hope Intel recovers, but it looks pretty tough for them at this stage." Gates also told the Associated Press that fighting a three-year antitrust case had "distracted" Microsoft. "The area that Google did well in that would not have happened had I not been distracted is Android, where it was a natural thing for me. I was trying, although what I didn't do well enough is provide the operating system for the phone. That was ours for the taking." The Dallas News reports that in an on-stage interview in Texas, Mark Cuban closed by asking Gates one question. "Is the American Dream alive?" Gates answered: "It was for me."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader headlessbrick writes: Google security researchers have discovered a way to bypass AMD's security, enabling them to load unofficial microcode into its processors and modify the silicon's behaviour at will. To demonstrate this, they created a microcode patch that forces the chips to always return 4 when asked for a random number. Beyond simply allowing Google and others to customize AMD chips for both beneficial and potentially malicious purposes, this capability also undermines AMD's secure encrypted virtualization and root-of-trust security mechanisms. Obligatory XKCD.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot has been covering Harvard's legendary introductory programming course "CS50" since it began setting attendance records in 2014. But now long-time Slashdot reader theodp brings some news about the course's fate over at Yale. From Yale's student newspaper:After a decade of partnership with Harvard, Yale's CS50 course will no longer be offered starting in fall 2025.... One of Yale's largest computer science courses, jointly taught with Harvard University, was canceled during a monthly faculty meeting after facing budgetary challenges. [Yale's endowment is $40+ billion]... Since Yale started offering the course in 2015, CS50 has consistently seen enrollment numbers in the hundreds and was often the department's largest class.... According to [Yale instructor Ozan] Erat, the original [anonymous] donation that made CS50 possible ended in June 2024, and the cost of employing so many undergraduate learning assistants for the course had become unsustainable. theodp reminds us that CS50 and its progeny "will continue to live on in all their glory in-person and online at Harvard and edX."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The unemployment rate in America's information technology sector "rose from 3.9% in December to 5.7% in January," reports the Wall Street Journal. (Alternate URL here.) Meanwhile last month's overall jobless rate was just 4%, they point out, calling it "the latest sign of how automation and the increasing use of artificial intelligence are having a negative impact on the tech labor market." Companies began implementing their annual spending cuts in January, and there were layoffs at large tech companies like Meta. But whatever the reason, "The number of unemployed IT workers rose from 98,000 in December to 152,000 last month, according to a report from consulting firm Janco Associates based on data from the U.S. Department of Labor," while the Labor Department said the overall economy added 143,000 jobs. One management consulting firm offers this explanation:Job losses in tech can be attributed in part to the influence of AI, according to Victor Janulaitis, chief executive of Janco Associates. The emergence of generative AI has produced massive amounts of spending by tech giants on AI infrastructure, but not necessarily new jobs in IT. "Jobs are being eliminated within the IT function which are routine and mundane, such as reporting, clerical administration," Janulaitis said. "As they start looking at AI, they're also looking at reducing the number of programmers, systems designers, hoping that AI is going to be able to provide them some value and have a good rate of return." Increased corporate investment in AI has shown early signs of leading to future cuts in hiring, a concept some tech leaders are starting to call "cost avoidance." Rather than hiring new workers for tasks that can be more easily automated, some businesses are letting AI take on that work - and reaping potential savings. The latest IT jobs numbers come as unemployment among white-collar workers remains at its highest levels since 2020, according to Cory Stahle, an economist at hiring website Indeed. "What we've really seen, especially in the last year or so, is a bifurcation in opportunities, where white-collar knowledge worker type jobs have had far less employer demand than jobs that are more in-person, skilled labor jobs," Stahle said. Stahle notes that job postings at Indeed.com for software developers declined 8.5% in January from a year earlier...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader Shayde once restored a 1986 DEC PDP-11 minicomputer, and even ran Turbo Pascal on a 40-year-old Apple II clone. Now he's exploring a 27-year-old Macintosh PowerBook G3 - with 64 megabytes memory and 4 gigabytes of disk space. "The year is 1997, and Apple is in big trouble." (Apple's market share had dropped from 16% in 1980 to somewhere below 4%...)Turns out this was one of the first machines able to run OS X, and was built during the transition period for Apple after Steve Jobs came back in to rescue the company from bankruptcy. It's clearly old technology. There's even a SCSI connector, PCMCIA sockets, a modem port for your phone/landline cable, and a CD-ROM drive. There's also Apple's proprietary ports for LocalTalk and an Apple Desktop Bus port ("used for keyboards, mice, and stuff like that"). And its lithium-ion batteries "were meant to be replaced and moved around, so you could carry spare batteries with you." So what's it like using a 27-year-old laptop? "The first thing I had to note was this thing weighs a ton! This thing could be used as a projectile weapon! I can't imagine hauling these things around doing business..." And it's a good thing it had vents, because "This thing runs hot!" (The moment he plugs it in he can hear its ancient fan running...) It seems to take more than two minutes to boot up. ("The drive is rattling away...") But soon he's looking at a glorious desktop from 1998 desktop. ("Applications installed... Oh look! Adobe Acrobat Reader! I betcha that's going to need an update...") After plugging in a network cable, a pop-up prompts him to "Set up your .Mac membership." ("I have so little interest in doing this.") He does find an old version of Safari, but it refuses to launch-- though "While puttering around in the application folder, I did notice that we had Internet Explorer installed. But that pretty much went as well as expected." In the end it seems like he ends up "on the network, but we have no browser." Although at least he does find a Terminal program - and successfully pings Google. The thing that would drive me crazy is when opening the laptop, Apple's logo is upside-down!Read more of this story at Slashdot.