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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A hacker is advertising customer data allegedly stolen from the Australia-based live events and ticketing company TEG on a well-known hacking forum. On Thursday, a hacker put up for sale the alleged stolen data from TEG, claiming to have information of 30 million users, including the full name, gender, date of birth, username, hashed passwords, and email addresses. In late May, TEG-owned ticketing company Ticketek disclosed a data breach affecting Australian customers' data, "which is stored in a cloud-based platform, hosted by a reputable, global third party supplier." The company said that "no Ticketek customer account has been compromised," thanks to the encryption methods used to store their passwords. TEG conceded, however, that "customer names, dates of birth and email addresses may have been impacted" -- data that would line up with that advertised on the hacking forum. The hacker included a sample of the alleged stolen data in their post. TechCrunch confirmed that at least some of the data published on the forum appears legitimate by attempting to sign up for new accounts using the published email addresses. In a number of cases, Ticketek's website gave an error, suggesting the email addresses are already in use. There's evidence that the company's "cloud-based platform" provider is Snowflake, "which has been at the center of a recent series of data thefts affecting several of its customers, including Ticketmaster, Santander Bank, and others," notes TechCrunch. "A now-deleted post on Snowflake's website from January 2023 was titled: 'TEG Personalizes Live Entertainment Experiences with Snowflake.' In 2022, consulting company Altis published a case study (PDF) detailing how the company, working with TEG, 'built a modern data platform for ingesting streaming data into Snowflake.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

British startup Stability AI has appointed Prem Akkaraju as its new CEO. The 51-year-old Akkaraju, former CEO of visual effects company Weta Digital, "is part of a group of investors including former Facebook President Sean Parker that has stepped in to save Stability with a cash infusion that could result in a lower valuation for the firm," reports the Information (paywalled). "The new funding will likely shrink the stakes of some existing investors, who have collectively contributed more than $100 million." In March, Stability AI founder and CEO Emad Mostaque stepped down from the role to pursue decentralized AI. "In a series of posts on X, Mostaque opined that one can't beat 'centralized AI' with more 'centralized AI,' referring to the ownership structure of top AI startups such as OpenAI and Anthropic," reported TechCrunch at the time. The move followed a report in April that claimed the company ran out of cash to pay its bills for its rented cloud GPUs. Last year, the company raised millions at a $1 billion valuation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Ontario Science Center, a world-class science and cultural institution in Toronto, is shutting down immediately due to the risk that the building's roof could collapse, the province announced Friday. CBC News: The abrupt closure, which the province says could last years, comes after the government's controversial announcement in 2023 that the popular landmark and attraction would be moved to the Ontario Place site -- a move it says will save costs. "The actions taken today will protect the health and safety of visitors and staff," said Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma in a news release. "We are making every effort to avoid disruption to the public and help the Ontario Science Centre continue delivering on its mandate." An engineering report this week by Rimkus Consulting Group showed each of the centre's three buildings contain roof panels in a "distressed, high-risk" condition, the Ministry of Infrastructure said in a news release. The panels require fixing by Oct. 31, 2024 to "avoid further stress due to potential snow load which could lead to roof panel failure," the release said. Fixing the roof will cost between $22 million and $40 million, the ministry said, requiring the centre be closed for up to two years. "These estimates are incomplete and subject to change," said the ministry, noting the costs make up only a "small portion" of the funding needed to keep the science centre open. The government says the centre needs $478 million to tackle its "failing infrastructure" and sustain programming.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TikTok revealed it offered the U.S. government a "kill switch" in 2022 to address data protection and national security concerns, allowing the government to shut down the platform if it violated certain rules. The disclosure was made as it began its legal fight against legislation that will require ByteDance to divest TikTok's U.S. assets or face a ban. The BBC reports: "This law is a radical departure from this country's tradition of championing an open Internet, and sets a dangerous precedent allowing the political branches to target a disfavored speech platform and force it to sell or be shut down," they argued in their legal submission. They also claimed the US government refused to engage in any serious settlement talks after 2022, and pointed to the "kill switch" offer as evidence of the lengths they had been prepared to go. TikTok says the mechanism would have allowed the government the "explicit authority to suspend the platform in the United States at the US government's sole discretion" if it did not follow certain rules. A draft "National Security Agreement", proposed by TikTok in August 2022, would have seen the company having to follow rules such as properly funding its data protection units and making sure that ByteDance did not have access to US users' data. The "kill switch" could have been triggered by the government if it broke this agreement, it claimed. In a letter - first reported by the Washington Post - addressed to the US Department of Justice, TikTok's lawyer alleges that the government "ceased any substantive negotiations" after the proposal of the new rules. The letter, dated 1 April 2024, says the US government ignored requests to meet for further negotiations. It also alleges the government did not respond to TikTok's invitation to "visit and inspect its Dedicated Transparency Center in Maryland." Further reading: TikTok Says US Ban Inevitable Without a Court Order Blocking LawRead more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) yesterday rejected AT&T's request to end its landline phone obligations. The state agency also urged AT&T to upgrade copper facilities to fiber instead of trying to shut down the outdated portions of its network. AT&T asked the state to eliminate its Carrier of Last Resort (COLR) obligation, which requires it to provide landline telephone service to any potential customer in its service territory. A CPUC administrative law judge recommended rejection of the application last month, and the commission voted to dismiss AT&T's application with prejudice on Thursday. "Our vote to dismiss AT&T's application made clear that we will protect customer access to basic telephone service... Our rules were designed to provide that assurance, and AT&T's application did not follow our rules," Commissioner John Reynolds said in a CPUC announcement. State rules require a replacement COLR in order to relieve AT&T of its duties, and AT&T argued that VoIP and mobile services could fill that gap. But residents "highlighted the unreliability of voice alternatives" at public hearings, the CPUC said. "Despite AT&T's contention that providers of voice alternatives to landline service -- such as VoIP or mobile wireless services -- can fill the gap, the CPUC found AT&T did not meet the requirements for COLR withdrawal," the agency said. "Specifically, AT&T failed to demonstrate the availability of replacement providers willing and able to serve as COLR, nor did AT&T prove that alternative providers met the COLR definition." The administrative law judge's proposed decision said AT&T falsely claimed that commission rules require it "to retain outdated copper-based landline facilities that are expensive to maintain." The agency stressed that its rules do not prevent AT&T from upgrading to fiber. "COLR rules are technology-neutral and do not distinguish between voice services offered... and do not prevent AT&T from retiring copper facilities or from investing in fiber or other facilities/technologies to improve its network," the agency said yesterday. AT&T California President Marc Blakeman said the company is lobbying to change the state law. "No customer will be left without voice and 911 services. We are focused on the legislation introduced in California, which includes important protections, safeguards, and outreach for consumers and does not impact our customers in rural locations. We are fully committed to keeping our customers connected while we work with state leaders on policies that create a thoughtful transition that brings modern communications to all Californians," Blakeman said. According to SFGATE, the legislation pushed by AT&T "would create a way for AT&T to remain as COLR in rural regions, which the company estimates as being about 100,000 customers, while being released from COLR obligations everywhere else."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft launched its range of Copilot Plus PCs earlier this week, and they all come equipped with the new dedicated Copilot key on the keyboard. It's the first big change to Windows keyboards in 30 years, but all the key does now is launch a Progressive Web App (PWA) version of Copilot. The web app doesn't even integrate into Windows anymore like the previous Copilot experience did since last year, so you can't use Copilot to control Windows 11 settings or have it docked as a sidebar anymore. It's literally just a PWA. Microsoft has even removed the keyboard shortcut to Copilot on these new Copilot Plus PCs, so WINKEY + C does nothing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Millions of mosquitoes are being released from helicopters in Hawaii in a last-ditch attempt to save rare birds slipping into extinction. From a report: The archipelago's endemic, brightly coloured honeycreeper birds are dying of malaria carried by mosquitoes first introduced by European and American ships in the 1800s. Having evolved with no immunity to the disease, the birds can die after just a single bite. Thirty-three species of honeycreeper have become extinct and many of the 17 that remain are highly endangered, with concerns some could be extinct within a year if no action is taken. Now conservationists are urgently trying to save them with an unusual strategy: releasing more mosquitoes. Every week a helicopter drops 250,000 male mosquitoes with a naturally occurring bacterium that acts as birth control on to the islands of the remote archipelago. Already, 10 million have been released. "The only thing that's more tragic is if [the birds] went extinct and we didn't try. You can't not try," said Chris Warren, the forest bird programme coordinator for Haleakala national park on the island of Maui. The population of one honeycreeper, the Kaua'i creeper, or 'akikiki, has dropped from 450 in 2018 to five in 2023, with just one single bird known to be left in the wild on Kaua'i island, according to the national park service.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is withholding a raft of new technologies from hundreds of millions of consumers in the European Union, citing concerns posed by the bloc's regulatory attempts to rein in Big Tech. From a report: The company announced Friday it would block the release of Apple Intelligence, iPhone Mirroring and SharePlay Screen Sharing from users in the EU this year, because the Digital Markets Act allegedly forces it to downgrade the security of its products and services. "We are concerned that the interoperability requirements of the DMA could force us to compromise the integrity of our products in ways that risk user privacy and data security," Apple said in a statement. Under the DMA, Apple is expected to receive a formal warning from EU regulators over how it allegedly blocks apps from steering users to cheaper subscription deals on the web -- a practice for which it received a $1.9 billion fine from Brussels regulators earlier this year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A federal jury in Las Vegas has convicted five men for operating Jetflicks, one of the largest illegal streaming services in the U.S., the Justice Department announced Thursday. The service, which charged $9.99 monthly, allegedly hosted over 183,200 TV episodes, surpassing legitimate streaming platforms. Prosecutors said the operation caused "substantial harm" to copyright owners. The defendants face up to 48 years in prison for conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and related charges. Sentencing dates are pending.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Florida homeowner has filed an unprecedented claim against NASA for damages caused by space debris that crashed through his roof in March. Alejandro Otero is seeking over $80,000 for property damage and other costs after a 1.6-pound metal object from the International Space Station struck his Naples home. NASA confirmed the debris was part of a battery pack jettisoned in 2021. Legal experts, cited by ArsTechnica in the linked story, say the agency's response could set a precedent for future cases involving space debris damage.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

FreeDOS, the open-source OS that is helping keep the legacy of DOS alive, will turn 30 next week. Founded in 1994 by Jim Hall, then a college student, FreeDOS was created as a response to Microsoft's plans to phase out MS-DOS. Three decades later, FreeDOS continues to thrive. Despite the dominance of Windows and macOS, FreeDOS finds unexpected relevance in niche markets. Some laptop manufacturers in certain countries bundle FreeDOS with new machines to reduce costs, introducing a new generation to the classic command-line interface. Hall recently wrote a blog about the upcoming 30th anniversary. Some excerpts from it follows: These days, I'm really excited for all the different ways that people are using FreeDOS. For example, there's a community of enthusiasts who restore classic computers like the IBM PC 5150, PC XT, and PC AT, and put FreeDOS on them. These are great systems that can't run something like Linux, so running FreeDOS is a great way to make these classic computers useful again. I like that FreeDOS (like any DOS) is so easy to understand. There aren't a lot of moving parts in DOS: the computer boots and starts the kernel, the kernel reads FDCONFIG.SYS (or CONFIG.SYS) which defines the shell to run (usually COMMAND.COM), and COMMAND.COM runs a batch file (usually AUTOEXEC.BAT or FDAUTO.BAT) to set up the environment. And then DOS presents you with a friendly command prompt where you can run commands and start programs.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon is planning a major revamp of its decade-old money-losing Alexa service to include a conversational generative AI with two tiers of service and has considered a monthly fee of around $5 to access the superior version, Reuters reported Friday, citing people with direct knowledge of the company's plans. From the report: Known internally as "Banyan," a reference to the sprawling ficus trees, the project would represent the first major overhaul of the voice assistant since it was introduced in 2014 along with the Echo line of speakers. Amazon has dubbed the new voice assistant "Remarkable Alexa," the people said. Amazon has also considered a roughly $10-per-month price, the report added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Kremlin said on Friday that a U.S. decision to ban sales of Kaspersky's software was a typical move by Washington to stifle foreign competition with American products. From a report: The Biden administration on Thursday said it would ban the sale of antivirus software made by Russia's Kaspersky Lab in the United States, citing what it said was the Kremlin's influence over the company which poses a significant security risk. [...] Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Kaspersky was a "very competitive" company on international markets and that Washington's decision to restrict its sales was a "favourite technique of unfair competition from the United States."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC News: A device federal public servants call "the little robot" began appearing in Gatineau office buildings in March. It travels through the workplace to collect data using about 20 sensors and a 360-degree camera, according to Yahya Saad, co-founder of GlobalDWS, which created the robot. "Using AI on the robot, the camera takes the picture, analyzes and counts the number of people and then discards the image," he said. Part of a platform known as VirBrix, the robot also gathers information on air quality, light levels, noise, humidity, temperature and even measures CO2, methane and radon gas. The aim is to create a better work environment for humans -- one that isn't too hot, humid or dim. Saad said that means more comfortable and productive employees. The technology can also help reduce heating, cooling and hydro costs, he said. "All these measures are done to save on energy and reduce the carbon footprint," Saad explained. After the pilot program in March, VirBrix is set to return in July and October, and the government hasn't ruled out extending its use. It's paying $39,663 to lease the robot for two years. Bruce Roy, national president of the Government Services Union, called the robot's presence in federal workplaces "intrusive" and "insulting." "People feel observed all the time," he said in French. "It's a spy. The robot is a spy for management." Roy, whose union represents more than 12,000 federal workers across several departments, said the robot is unnecessary because the employer already has ways of monitoring employee attendance and performance. "We believe that one of the robot's tasks is to monitor who is there and who is not," he said. "Folks say, why is there a robot here? Doesn't my employer trust that I'm here and doing my work properly?" [...] Jean-Yves Duclos, the minister of public services and procurement, said the government is instead using the technology as it looks to cut its office space footprint in half over the coming years. "These robots, as we call them, these sensors observe the utilization of office space and will be able to give us information over the next few years to better provide the kind of workplace employees need to do their job," Duclos said in French. "These are totally anonymous methods that allow us to evaluate which spaces are the most used and which spaces are not used, so we can better arrange them." "In those cases we keep the images, but the whole body, not just the face, the whole body of the person is blurred," said Saad. "These are exceptional cases where we need to keep images and then the images would be handed over to the client." The data is then stored on a server on Canadian soil, according to GlobalDWS.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta has released the Threads API for developers to build "unique integrations" into the text-based conversation app. The move could potentially result in third-party apps. The Verge reports: "People can now publish posts via the API, fetch their own content, and leverage our reply management capabilities to set reply and quote controls, retrieve replies to their posts, hide, unhide or respond to specific replies," explains Jesse Chen, director of engineering at Threads. Chen says that insights into Threads posts are "one of our top requested features for the API," so Meta is allowing developers to see the number of views, likes, replies, reposts, and quotes on Threads posts through the API. Meta has published plenty of documentation about how developers can get started with the Threads API, and there's even an open-source Threads API sample app on GitHub.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) signed two bills into law on Thursday that aim to protect kids and teens from social media harms, making it the latest state to take action as federal proposals still await votes. From a report: One of the bills, the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act, will require parental consent for social media companies to use "addictive feeds" powered by recommendation algorithms on kids and teens under 18. The other, the New York Child Data Protection Act, would limit data collection on minors without consent and restrict the sale of such information but does not require age verification. That law will take effect in a year. States across the country have taken the lead on enacting legislation to protect kids on the internet -- and it's one area where both Republicans and Democrats seem to agree. While the approaches differ somewhat by party, policymakers on both sides have signaled urgent interest in similar regulations to protect kids on the internet. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), for example, signed into law in March a bill requiring parents' consent for kids under 16 to hold social media accounts. And in May, Maryland Governor Wes Moore (D) signed a broad privacy bill into law, as well as the Maryland Kids Code banning the use of features meant to keep minors on social media for extended periods, like autoplay or spammy notifications.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: CDK Global, the company that provides management software for nearly 15,000 car dealerships in North America, is down for a second day following a cyberattack, according to a report from Automotive News. The outage has left car dealerships across North America unable to access the internal systems used to track car sales, view customer information, schedule maintenance, and more. On Wednesday, CDK Global told dealerships that it's "investigating a cyber incident" and "proactively shut all systems down" while addressing the issue. However, as reported by Automotive News, CDK Global restored its systems shortly after, only to shut them down hours later due to "an additional cyber incident."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TikTok and Chinese parent ByteDance on Thursday urged a U.S. court to strike down a law they say will ban the popular short app in the United States on Jan. 19, saying the U.S. government refused to engage in any serious settlement talks after 2022. From a report: Legislation signed in April by President Joe Biden gives ByteDance until Jan. 19 of next year to divest TikTok's U.S. assets or face a ban on the app used by 170 million Americans. ByteDance says a divestiture is "not possible technologically, commercially, or legally." The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will hold oral arguments on lawsuits filed by TikTok and ByteDance along with TikTok users on Sept. 16. TikTok's future in the United States may rest on the outcome of the case which could impact how the U.S. government uses its new authority to clamp down on foreign-owned apps. "This law is a radical departure from this country's tradition of championing an open Internet, and sets a dangerous precedent allowing the political branches to target a disfavored speech platform and force it to sell or be shut down," ByteDance and TikTok argue in asking the court to strike down the law.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook and Instagram users are increasingly turning to small claims courts to regain access to their accounts or seek damages from Meta, amid frustrations with the company's customer support. In several cases across multiple states, Engadget reports, plaintiffs have successfully restored account access or won financial compensation. Meta often responds by contacting litigants before court dates, attempting to resolve issues out of court. The trend, popularized on social media forums, highlights ongoing customer service issues at the tech giant. Some users report significant financial losses due to inaccessible business-related accounts. While small claims court offers a more accessible legal avenue, Meta typically deploys legal resources to respond to these claims.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A cinema in London has cancelled the world premiere of a film with a script generated by AI after a backlash. From a report: The Prince Charles cinema, located in London's West End and which traditionally screens cult and art films, was due to host a showing of a new production called The Last Screenwriter on Sunday. However the cinema announced on social media that the screening would not go ahead. In its statement the Prince Charles said: "The feedback we received over the last 24hrs once we advertised the film has highlighted the strong concern held by many of our audience on the use of AI in place of a writer which speaks to a wider issue within the industry." Directed by Peter Luisi and starring Nicholas Pople, The Last Screenwriter is a Swiss production that describes itself as the story of "a celebrated screenwriter" who "finds his world shaken when he encounters a cutting edge AI scriptwriting system ... he soon realises AI not only matches his skills but even surpasses him in empathy and understanding of human emotions." The screenplay is credited to "ChatGPT 4.0." OpenAI launched its latest model, GPT-4o, in May. Luisi told the Daily Beast that the cinema had cancelled the screening after it received 200 complaints, but that a private screening for cast and crew would still go ahead in London.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Universal Music Group has partnered with AI startup SoundLabs to offer voice modeling technology to its artists. The MicDrop feature, launching this summer, will allow UMG artists to create and control their own AI voice models. The tool includes voice-to-instrument functionality and language transposition capabilities. RollingStone adds: AI voice clones have become perhaps the most well-known -- and often the most controversial -- use of artificial intelligence in the music business. Viral tracks with AI vocals have spurred legislation to protect artists' virtual likenesses and rights of publicity. Last year, an anonymous songwriter named Ghostwriter went viral with his song "Heart On My Sleeve," which featured AI-generated vocals of UMG artists Drake and The Weeknd. The song was pulled from streaming services days later following mounting pressure from the record company. Ironically, Drake got caught in a voice cloning controversy of his own a year later when he used a Tupac voice clone on his Kendrick Lamar diss track "Taylor Made Freestyle." Tupac's estate hit the rapper with a cease-and-desist in April, and the song was subsequently taken down.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

European Union officials have delayed talks over proposed legislation that could lead to messaging services having to scan photos and links to detect possible child sexual abuse material (CSAM). From a report: Were the proposal to become law, it may require the likes of WhatsApp, Messenger and Signal to scan all images that users upload -- which would essentially force them to break encryption. For the measure to pass, it would need to have the backing of at least 15 of the member states representing at least 65 percent of the bloc's entire population. However, countries including Germany, Austria, Poland, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic were expected to abstain from the vote or oppose the plan due to cybersecurity and privacy concerns, Politico reports. If EU members come to an agreement on a joint position, they'll have to hash out a final version of the law with the European Commission and European Parliament.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anthropic launched Claude 3.5 Sonnet on Thursday, claiming it outperforms previous models and OpenAI's GPT-4 Omni. The AI startup also introduced Artifacts, a workspace for users to edit AI-generated projects. This release, part of the Claude 3.5 family, follows three months after Claude 3. Claude 3.5 Sonnet is available for free on Claude.ai and the Claude iOS app, while Claude Pro and Team plan subscribers can access it with significantly higher rate limits. Anthropic plans to launch 3.5 versions of Haiku and Opus later this year, exploring features like web search and memory for future releases. Anthropic also introduced Artifacts on Claude.ai, a new feature that expands how users can interact with Claude. When a user asks Claude to generate content like code snippets, text documents, or website designs, these Artifacts appear in a dedicated window alongside their conversation. This creates a dynamic workspace where they can see, edit, and build upon Claude's creations in real-time, seamlessly integrating AI-generated content into their projects and workflows, the startup said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: YouTube Premium subscribers who use VPNs are reporting that their plans are being automatically canceled by the Google-owned company, according to multiple subscribers who have posted screenshots and descriptions of the issue on Reddit. A Google support representative confirmed to PCMag that YouTube has started a crackdown. "YouTube has initiated the cancellation of premium memberships for accounts identified as having falsified signup country information," the Google support agent said via chat message. "Due to violating YouTube's Paid Terms of Service, these users will receive an email and an in-app notification informing them of the cancellation."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Biden administration on Thursday will announce plans to bar the sale of Kaspersky Lab's antivirus software in the United States, citing the firm's large U.S. customers including critical infrastructure providers and state and local governments, according to Reuters. From the report: The company's close ties to the Russian government were found to pose a critical risk, the person said, adding that the software's privileged access to a computer's systems could allow it to steal sensitive information from American computers, install malware or withhold critical updates. The sweeping new rule, using broad powers created by the Trump administration, will be coupled with another move to add the company to a trade restriction list, according to two other people familiar with the matter, dealing a blow to the firm's reputation that could hammer its overseas sales. The plan to add the cybersecurity company to the entity list, which effectively bars a company's U.S. suppliers from selling to it, and the timing and details of the software sales curb, have not been previously reported. Previously, Kaspersky has said that it is a privately managed company with no ties to the Russian government. The moves show the administration is trying to stamp out any risks of Russian cyberattacks stemming from Kaspersky software and keep squeezing Moscow as its war effort in Ukraine has regained momentum and as the United States has run low on fresh sanctions it can impose on Russia.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Perplexity AI, a billion-dollar "AI" search startup, has come under scrutiny for its data collection practices and accuracy of its chatbot responses. Despite claiming to respect website operators' wishes, Perplexity appears to scrape content from sites that have blocked its crawler, using an undisclosed IP address, a Wired investigation found. The chatbot also generates summaries that closely paraphrase original reporting with minimal attribution. Furthermore, its AI often "hallucinates," inventing false information when unable to access articles directly. Perplexity's CEO, Aravind Srinivas, maintains the company is not acting unethically.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Punishing heat waves gripped three continents on Tuesday, breaking records in cities around the Northern Hemisphere less than two weeks after the Earth recorded what scientists said were likely its hottest days in modern history. Firefighters in Greece scrambled to put out wildfires, as parched conditions raised the risk of more blazes throughout Europe. Beijing logged another day of 95-degree heat, and people in Hangzhou, another Chinese city, compared the choking conditions to a sauna. From the Middle East to the American Southwest, delivery drivers, airport workers and construction crews labored under blistering skies. Those who could stay indoors did. The temperatures, afflicting so much of the world all at once, were a withering reminder that climate change is a global crisis, driven by human-made forces: the emissions of heat-trapping gases, mainly caused by the burning of fossil fuels. John Kerry, the U.S. special envoy for climate change, sought to coordinate some of the global response with the Chinese premier in Beijing, as a heat wave clutched a huge swath of China. "The world really is looking to us for that leadership, particularly on the climate issue," Mr. Kerry told Chinese officials. "Climate, as you know, is a global issue, not a bilateral issue. It's a threat to all of humankind." The planet has warmed about 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the 19th century and will continue to grow hotter until humans essentially stop burning coal, oil and gas, scientists say. The warmer temperatures contribute to extreme weather events and help make periods of extreme heat more frequent, longer and more intense. Also affecting this year's conditions is the return of El Nino, a cyclical weather pattern that, depending on the sea surface temperature and the pressure of the air above it, can originate in the Pacific and have wide-ranging effects on weather around the world.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes: Scientists have found microplastics in human penises for the first time, as concerns over the tiny particles' proliferation and potential health effects mount. Seven different kinds of microplastics were found in four out of five samples of penis tissue taken from five different men as part of a study published in IJIR: Your Sexual Medicine Journal on Wednesday. Microplastics are polymer fragments that can range from less than 0.2 inch (5 millimeters) down to 1/25,000th of an inch (1 micrometer). Anything smaller is a nanoplastic that must be measured in billionths of a meter. They form when larger plastics break down, either by chemically degrading or physically wearing down into smaller pieces. Some minuscule particles can invade individual cells and tissues in major organs, experts say, and evidence is mounting that they are increasingly present in our bodies. Study lead author Ranjith Ramasamy, an expert in reproductive urology who conducted the research while working at the University of Miami, told CNN that he used a previous study that found evidence of microplastics in the human heart as a basis for his research. Ramasamy said he wasn't surprised to find microplastics in the penis, as it is a "very vascular organ," like the heart.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pornhub plans to block access to its website in Indiana, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, and Nebraska in response to age verification laws designed to prevent children from accessing adult websites. From a report: The website has now cut off access in more than half a dozen states in protest of similar age verification laws that have quickly spread across conservative-leaning US states. Indiana, Idaho, and Kansas will lose access on June 27th, according to alerts on Pornhub's website that were seen by local news sources and Reddit users; Kentucky will lose access on July 10th, according to Kentucky Public Radio.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Twenty years ago, FedEx established its own police force. Now it's working with local police to build out an AI car surveillance network. From a report: Forbes has learned the shipping and business services company is using AI tools made by Flock Safety, a $4 billion car surveillance startup, to monitor its distribution and cargo facilities across the United States. As part of the deal, FedEx is providing its Flock video surveillance feeds to law enforcement, an arrangement that Flock has with at least five multi-billion dollar private companies. But publicly available documents reveal that some local police departments are also sharing their Flock feeds with FedEx -- a rare instance of a private company availing itself of a police surveillance apparatus. To civil rights activists, such close collaboration has the potential to dramatically expand Flock's car surveillance network, which already spans 4,000 cities across over 40 states and some 40,000 cameras that track vehicles by license plate, make, model, color and other identifying characteristics, like dents or bumper stickers. Lisa Femia, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said because private entities aren't subject to the same transparency laws as police, this sort of arrangement could "[leave] the public in the dark, while at the same time expanding a sort of mass surveillance network."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

U.S. companies may need to report cash amounts tied to their software expenditures, more of which would be moved off corporate balance sheets under a forthcoming proposal to update decades-old accounting rules. From a report: The Financial Accounting Standards Board voted Tuesday, 7-0, to propose requiring companies to report cash amounts tied to their software costs and help them determine when to expense or capitalize costs. The proposal is a scaled-back version of rule-making around these expenses. The standard setter wants to require U.S. public and private companies to provide a line item in their cash-flow statement to account for cash spending on software. Rules around software costs have gone largely unchanged since the 1980s and 1990s. The proposal would cover use of software ranging from enterprise resource planning systems to hosting services and mobile banking applications, meaning it applies to almost every company. It would exclude development of software licensed to customers. Under the plan, companies would no longer have to evaluate the stage of their software project to determine whether to expense the costs on the income statement or to capitalize, or delay fully recognizing them, on the balance sheet. Companies are now required to expense their software costs as incurred on the income statement during the initial planning and post-implementation stages. When building the programs or applications, companies have to capitalize eligible costs. These current requirements involve significant judgment for companies, creating higher compliance costs. Instead, companies would only have to determine when to begin capitalizing software costs based on executives' signoff for a project and the likelihood that the project will be completed and the software will carry out its intended use.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The European Union is getting closer to passing new rules that would mandate the bulk scanning of digital messages -- including encrypted ones. On Thursday, EU governments will adopt a position on the proposed legislation, which is aimed at detecting child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The vote will determine whether the proposal has enough support to move forward in the EU's law-making process. From a report: The law, first introduced in 2022, would implement an "upload moderation" system that scans all your digital messages, including shared images, videos, and links. Each service required to install this "vetted" monitoring technology must also ask permission to scan your messages. If you don't agree, you won't be able to share images or URLs. As if this doesn't seem wild enough, the proposed legislation appears to endorse and reject end-to-end encryption at the same time. At first, it highlights how end-to-end encryption "is a necessary means of protecting fundamental rights" but then goes on to say that encrypted messaging services could "inadvertently become secure zones where child sexual abuse material can be shared or disseminated."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ilya Sutskever, co-founder of OpenAI who recently left the startup, has launched a new venture called Safe Superintelligence Inc., aiming to create a powerful AI system within a pure research organization. Sutskever has made AI safety the top priority for his new company. Safe Superintelligence has two more co-founders: investor and former Apple AI lead Daniel Gross, and Daniel Levy, known for training large AI models at OpenAI. From a report: Researchers and intellectuals have contemplated making AI systems safer for decades, but deep engineering around these problems has been in short supply. The current state of the art is to use both humans and AI to steer the software in a direction aligned with humanity's best interests. Exactly how one would stop an AI system from running amok remains a largely philosophical exercise. Sutskever says that he's spent years contemplating the safety problems and that he already has a few approaches in mind. But Safe Superintelligence isn't yet discussing specifics. "At the most basic level, safe superintelligence should have the property that it will not harm humanity at a large scale," Sutskever says. "After this, we can say we would like it to be a force for good. We would like to be operating on top of some key values. Some of the values we were thinking about are maybe the values that have been so successful in the past few hundred years that underpin liberal democracies, like liberty, democracy, freedom." Sutskever says that the large language models that have dominated AI will play an important role within Safe Superintelligence but that it's aiming for something far more powerful. With current systems, he says, "you talk to it, you have a conversation, and you're done." The system he wants to pursue would be more general-purpose and expansive in its abilities. "You're talking about a giant super data center that's autonomously developing technology. That's crazy, right? It's the safety of that that we want to contribute to."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. Senate has passed a bill to accelerate the deployment of nuclear energy capacity, including by speeding permitting and creating new incentives for advanced nuclear reactor technologies. From a report: Expanding nuclear power has broad bipartisan support, with Democrats seeing it as critical to decarbonizing the power sector to fight climate change and Republicans viewing it as a way to ensure reliable electricity supply and create jobs. A version of the bill had already passed in the House of Representatives and it will now go to President Joe Biden for a signature to become law. It passed the Senate 88-2 votes. "In a major victory for our climate and American energy security, the U.S. Senate has passed the ADVANCE Act with overwhelming, bipartisan support," said Senator Tom Carper, a Democrat, who is Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "Today, we sent the ADVANCE Act to the president's desk because Congress worked together to recognize the importance of nuclear energy to America's future and got the job done," said Republican Shelley Moore Capito, a ranking member of the committee.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Officials are asking if this month's UK hospital hack resulted in fatalities. From a report: As the fallout from a cyberattack affecting hospitals in London enters its third week, doctors have been asked to report any deaths or other serious harms directly linked to the incident. On June 3, a group of ransomware hackers compromised a lab services provider, Synnovis, and locked down the company's systems, triggering major disruptions at hospitals and clinics in South East London. In the first week, doctors delayed 800 planned operations and 700 outpatient appointments and resorted to handwritten records, while a hospital solicited blood from its own clinical workers after the hack. Some of the worst interruptions have been resolved, but many services still haven't been restored. [...] But amid the recovery, health officials last week circulated a so-called "harms monitoring" form to doctors and clinicians, asking them to record the human toll of the cyberattack. The form, which I have seen, seeks to categorize the damage through a series of questions ranging from minor to major, including "patient died as a DIRECT result of the incident."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Britain's university sector, a key contributor to the country's economy and global standing, is facing an unprecedented crisis that threatens its very existence, according to an analysis by Glen O'Hara, a professor of modern and contemporary history at Oxford Brookes University. Despite collectively generating over $61.1 billion in annual income and $28 billion in export earnings, universities across the UK are grappling with declining funding, widespread cuts, and internal divisions. The sector's annual losses stand at $2.55 billion, with one in four universities in the red. Job cuts have become a daily occurrence, with institutions such as Coventry, Goldsmith's, Kent, and Lincoln slashing staff numbers. The downsizing is primarily occurring through retirements and voluntary severance schemes, but the long-term outlook remains bleak. Experts cited in an analysis by Prospect magazine warn that without fundamental re-engineering and strategic direction, the sector risks a gradual decline, with some universities potentially facing bankruptcy. The government's focus on the "culture wars" has further divided the public from their local campuses, while the real crisis lies in the finance and organization of the sector. The frozen tuition fees for home students, coupled with unpredictable inflation, have left universities struggling to cover costs. Attempts to offset losses by recruiting more students in cheaper-to-teach subjects and attracting international students have reached their limits, with the latter now in decline. As the next government grapples with this crisis, stopgap measures such as small funding injections, slight fee increases, and encouraging university mergers may provide temporary relief.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nvidia has become the U.S.'s most valuable listed company, riding the wave of the AI revolution that brings back memories of one from earlier this century. The last time a big provider of computing infrastructure was the most valuable U.S. company was in March 2000, when networking-equipment company Cisco took that spot at the height of the dot-com boom. Former Cisco CEO John Chambers, who led the company during the dot-com boom, said the implications of AI are larger than the internet and cloud computing combined, but the dynamics differ. "The implications in terms of the size of the market opportunity is that of the internet and cloud computing combined," he told WSJ. "The speed of change is different, the size of the market is different, the stage when the most valuable company was reached is different." The story adds: Chambers said [Nvidia CEO] Huang was working from a different playbook than Cisco but was facing some similar challenges. Nvidia has a dominant market share, much like Cisco did with its products as the internet grew, and is also fending off rising competition. Also like Nvidia, Cisco benefited from investments before the industry became profitable. "We were absolutely in the right spot at the right time, and we knew it, and we went for it," Chambers said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A researcher has found a bug that allows anyone to impersonate Microsoft corporate email accounts, making phishing attempts look credible and more likely to trick their targets. From a report: As of this writing, the bug has not been patched. To demonstrate the bug, the researcher sent an email to TechCrunch that looked like it was sent from Microsoft's account security team. Last week, Vsevolod Kokorin, also known online as Slonser, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that he found the email-spoofing bug and reported it to Microsoft, but the company dismissed his report after saying it couldn't reproduce his findings. This prompted Kokorin to publicize the bug on X, without providing technical details that would help others exploit it.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Shubham Sharma reports via VentureBeat: Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, which previously made headlines with a ChatGPT competitor trained on 2 trillion English and Chinese tokens, has announced the release of DeepSeek Coder V2, an open-source mixture of experts (MoE) code language model. Built upon DeepSeek-V2, an MoE model that debuted last month, DeepSeek Coder V2 excels at both coding and math tasks. It supports more than 300 programming languages and outperforms state-of-the-art closed-source models, including GPT-4 Turbo, Claude 3 Opus and Gemini 1.5 Pro. The company claims this is the first time an open model has achieved this feat, sitting way ahead of Llama 3-70B and other models in the category. It also notes that DeepSeek Coder V2 maintains comparable performance in terms of general reasoning and language capabilities. Founded last year with a mission to "unravel the mystery of AGI with curiosity," DeepSeek has been a notable Chinese player in the AI race, joining the likes of Qwen, 01.AI and Baidu. In fact, within a year of its launch, the company has already open-sourced a bunch of models, including the DeepSeek Coder family. The original DeepSeek Coder, with up to 33 billion parameters, did decently on benchmarks with capabilities like project-level code completion and infilling, but only supported 86 programming languages and a context window of 16K. The new V2 offering builds on that work, expanding language support to 338 and context window to 128K -- enabling it to handle more complex and extensive coding tasks. When tested on MBPP+, HumanEval, and Aider benchmarks, designed to evaluate code generation, editing and problem-solving capabilities of LLMs, DeepSeek Coder V2 scored 76.2, 90.2, and 73.7, respectively -- sitting ahead of most closed and open-source models, including GPT-4 Turbo, Claude 3 Opus, Gemini 1.5 Pro, Codestral and Llama-3 70B. Similar performance was seen across benchmarks designed to assess the model's mathematical capabilities (MATH and GSM8K). The only model that managed to outperform DeepSeek's offering across multiple benchmarks was GPT-4o, which obtained marginally higher scores in HumanEval, LiveCode Bench, MATH and GSM8K. [...] As of now, DeepSeek Coder V2 is being offered under a MIT license, which allows for both research and unrestricted commercial use. Users can download both 16B and 236B sizes in instruct and base avatars via Hugging Face. Alternatively, the company is also providing access to the models via API through its platform under a pay-as-you-go model. For those who want to test out the capabilities of the models first, the company is offering the option to interact. with Deepseek Coder V2 via chatbot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: When old satellites fall into Earth's atmosphere and burn up, they leave behind tiny particles of aluminum oxide, which eat away at Earth's protective ozone layer. A new study finds that these oxides have increased 8-fold between 2016 and 2022 and will continue to accumulate as the number of low-Earth-orbit satellites skyrockets. The 1987 Montreal Protocol successfully regulated ozone-damaging CFCs to protect the ozone layer, shrinking the ozone hole over Antarctica with recovery expected within fifty years. But the unanticipated growth of aluminum oxides may push pause on the ozone success story in decades to come. Of the 8,100 objects in low Earth orbit, 6,000 are Starlink satellites launched in the last few years. Demand for global internet coverage is driving a rapid ramp up of launches of small communication satellite swarms. SpaceX is the frontrunner in this enterprise, with permission to launch another 12,000 Starlink satellites and as many as 42,000 planned. Amazon and other companies around the globe are also planning constellations ranging from 3,000 to 13,000 satellites, the authors of the study said. Internet satellites in low Earth orbit are short-lived, at about five years. Companies must then launch replacement satellites to maintain internet service, continuing a cycle of planned obsolescence and unplanned pollution. Aluminum oxides spark chemical reactions that destroy stratospheric ozone, which protects Earth from harmful UV radiation. The oxides don't react chemically with ozone molecules, instead triggering destructive reactions between ozone and chlorine that deplete the ozone layer. Because aluminum oxides are not consumed by these chemical reactions, they can continue to destroy molecule after molecule of ozone for decades as they drift down through the stratosphere. Yet little attention has yet been paid to pollutants formed when satellites fall into the upper atmosphere and burn. Earlier studies of satellite pollution largely focused on the consequences of propelling a launch vehicle into space, such as the release of rocket fuel. The new study, by a research team from the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering, is the first realistic estimate of the extent of this long-lived pollution in the upper atmosphere, the authors said. [...] In 2022, reentering satellites increased aluminum in the atmosphere by 29.5% over natural levels, the researchers found. The modeling showed that a typical 250-kilogram (550-pound) satellite with 30% of its mass being aluminum will generate about 30 kilograms (66 pounds) of aluminum oxide nanoparticles (1-100 nanometers in size) during its reentry plunge. Most of these particles are created in the mesosphere, 50-85 kilometers (30-50 miles) above Earth's surface. The team then calculated that based on particle size, it would take up to 30 years for the aluminum oxides to drift down to stratospheric altitudes, where 90% of Earth's ozone is located. The researchers estimated that by the time the currently planned satellite constellations are complete, every year, 912 metric tons of aluminum (1,005 U.S. tons) will fall to Earth. That will release around 360 metric tons (397 U.S. tons) of aluminum oxides per year to the atmosphere, an increase of 646% over natural levels. The study is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Astronomers are observing the sudden awakening of a giant black hole in the constellation of Virgo. "Decades of observations found nothing remarkable about the distant galaxy in the constellation of Virgo, but that changed at the end of 2019 when astronomers noticed a dramatic surge in its luminosity that persists to this day," reports The Guardian. "Researchers now believe they are witnessing changes that have never been seen before, with the black hole at the galaxy's core putting on an extreme cosmic light show as vast amounts of material fall into it." From the report: The galaxy, which goes by the snappy codename SDSS1335+0728 and lies 300m light years away, was flagged to astronomers in December 2019 when an observatory in California called the Zwicky Transient Facility recorded a sudden rise in its brightness. The alert prompted a flurry of new observations and checks of archived measurements from ground- and space-based telescopes to understand more about the galaxy and its past behavior. The scientists discovered the galaxy had recently doubled in brightness in mid-infrared wavelengths, become four times brighter in the ultraviolet, and at least 10 times brighter in the X-ray range. What triggered the sudden brightening is unclear, but writing in Astronomy and Astrophysics, the researchers say the most likely explanation is the creation of an "active galactic nucleus" where a vast black hole at the centre of a galaxy starts actively consuming the material around it. Active galactic nuclei emit a broad spectrum of light as gas around the black hole heats up and glows, and surrounding dust particles absorb some wavelengths and re-radiate others. But it is not the only possibility. The team has not ruled out an exotic form of "tidal disruption event," a highly restrained phrase to describe a star that is ripped apart after straying too close to a black hole. Tidal disruption events tend to be brief affairs, brightening a galaxy for no more than a few hundred days, but more measurements are needed to rule out the process.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Meta has created a system that can embed hidden signals, known as watermarks, in AI-generated audio clips, which could help in detecting AI-generated content online. The tool, called AudioSeal, is the first that can pinpoint which bits of audio in, for example, a full hourlong podcast might have been generated by AI. It could help to tackle the growing problem of misinformation and scams using voice cloning tools, says Hady Elsahar, a research scientist at Meta. Malicious actors have used generative AI to create audio deepfakes of President Joe Biden, and scammers have used deepfakes to blackmail their victims. Watermarks could in theory help social media companies detect and remove unwanted content. However, there are some big caveats. Meta says it has no plans yet to apply the watermarks to AI-generated audio created using its tools. Audio watermarks are not yet adopted widely, and there is no single agreed industry standard for them. And watermarks for AI-generated content tend to be easy to tamper with -- for example, by removing or forging them. Fast detection, and the ability to pinpoint which elements of an audio file are AI-generated, will be critical to making the system useful, says Elsahar. He says the team achieved between 90% and 100% accuracy in detecting the watermarks, much better results than in previous attempts at watermarking audio. AudioSeal is available on GitHub for free. Anyone can download it and use it to add watermarks to AI-generated audio clips. It could eventually be overlaid on top of AI audio generation models, so that it is automatically applied to any speech generated using them. The researchers who created it will present their work at the International Conference on Machine Learning in Vienna, Austria, in July.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MattSparkes shares a report from NewScientist: The Russian invasion of Ukraine has seen so many landmines deployed across the country that clearing them would take 700 years, say researchers. To make the task more manageable, Ukrainian scientists are turning to artificial intelligence to identify which regions are a priority for de-mining, though they expect some may simply have to be left as a permanent "scar" on the country. The model considers vast amounts of data, including tax and property ownership records, agricultural maps, data on soil fertility, logs from the military and emergency services of where bombs and shells have landed, information gleaned from satellite images and interviews with local civilians and the military. Even climate change models and data on population density derived from mobile phone operators could be assessed. The AI then weighs factors such as civilian safety and potential economic benefits to determine the importance of a given piece of land and how urgent it is to make it safe. Ihor Bezkaravainyi, a deputy minister at Ukraine's Ministry of Economy, is leading the team, and he likens the task of de-mining during an ongoing war to designing and building a submarine entirely underwater, except that the water is on fire. "It's a big problem," he says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AMD said on Tuesday it was looking into claims that company data was stolen in a hack by a cybercriminal organization called "Intelbroker". "The alleged intrusion, which took place in June 2024, reportedly resulted in the theft of a significant amount of sensitive information, spanning across various categories," reports Hackread. From the report: In a recent post on Breach Forums, IntelBroker detailed the extent of the compromised data. The hacker claims to have accessed information related to the following records: ROMs, Firmware, Source code, Property files, Employee databases, Customer databases, Financial information, Future AMD product plans, and Technical specification sheets. The hacker is selling the data exclusively for XMR (Monero) cryptocurrency, accepting a middleman for transactions. He advises interested buyers to message him with their offers. The reputation of IntelBroker in the cybersecurity community is one of significant concern, given the scale and sensitivity of the targeted entities in previous hacks. The hacker's past exploits include breaches of: Europol, Tech in Asia, Space-Eyes, Home Depot, Facebook Marketplace, U.S. contractor Acuity Inc., Staffing giant Robert Half, Los Angeles International Airport, and Alleged breaches of HSBC and Barclays Bank. Although the hacker's origins and affiliates are unknown, according to the United States government, IntelBroker is alleged to be the perpetrator behind one of the T-Mobile data breaches.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Asda is transferring more than 100 internal IT workers to Indian outsourcing company TCS as it labors to meet deadlines to move away from IT systems supported by previous owner Walmart by the end of the year. According to documents seen by The Register, a collective consultation for a staff transfer under TUPE -- an arrangement by which employment rights are protected under UK law -- begins today (June 17). The UK's third-largest supermarket expects affected staff to meet line managers from June 24, while the transfer date is set for September 16. Contractors will be let go at the end of their current contracts. Asda employs around 5,000 staff in its UK offices. Between 130 and 135 members of the IT team have entered the collective consultation to move to TCS. The move came as private equity company TDR Capital gained majority ownership of the supermarket group. It was acquired from Walmart by the brothers Mohsin and Zuber Issa and TDR Capital in February 2021 at a value of 6.8 billion pounds. The US retail giant retained "an equity investment." Project Future is a massive shift in the retailer's IT function. It is upgrading a legacy ERP system from SAP ECC -- run on-prem by Walmart -- to the latest SAP S/4HANA in the Microsoft Azure cloud, changing the application software, infrastructure, and business processes at the same time. Other applications are also set to move to Azure, including ecommerce and store systems, while Asda is creating an IT security team for the first time -- the work had previously been carried out by its US owner. Asda signed up to SAP's "RISE" program in a deal to lift, shift, and transform its ERP system -- a vital plank in the German vendor's strategy to get customers to the cloud -- in December 2021. But the project has already been beset by delays. The UK retailer had signed a three-year deal with Walmart in February 2021 to continue to support its existing system, but was forced to renegotiate to extend the arrangement, saying it planned to move away from the legacy systems before the end of 2024. Although one insider told El Reg that deadline was "totally unachievable," the Walmart deal extends to September 2025, giving the UK retailer room to accommodate further delays without renegotiating the contract. Asda has yet to migrate a single store to the new infrastructure. The first -- Yorkshire's Otley -- is set to go live by the end of June. One insider pointed out that project managers were trying to book resources from the infrastructure team for later this year and into the next, but, as they were set to transfer to TCS, the infrastructure team did not know who would be doing the work or what resources would be available. "They have a thousand stores to migrate and they're going to be doing that with an infrastructure team who have their eyes on the door. They'll be very professional, but they're not going above and beyond and doing on-call they don't have to do," the insider said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

French electricity prices turned negative due to a drop in demand and a surge in renewable energy output, prompting the grid operator to request that Electricite de France (EDF) take several nuclear reactors offline. Fortune reports: While more clean power is needed across Europe to reach climate goals, soaring renewables output and a lack of battery storage mean reactors sometimes have to be turned off during periods of low demand. It's becoming increasingly common around weekends in France -- which gets about two-thirds of its electricity from its atomic fleet -- and also occurs in the Nordic region and Spain. EDF halted its Golfech 2, Cruas 2 and Tricastin 1 nuclear plants, and plans to halt three others during the weekend. Some renewables producers will also have to curb generation to avoid paying a fee amid negative prices.French day-ahead power fell to -5.76 euros a megawatt-hour, the lowest in four years, in an auction on Epex Spot. Germany's equivalent contract dropped to 7.64 euros.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bipartisan agreement on government internet subsidies seems unlikely as Democrats and Republicans propose conflicting bills to reauthorize the FCC's spectrum auctions. The Democratic bill aims to fund the now-defunct Affordable Connectivity Program, while the Republican version does not. "While some Republicans supported earlier efforts to extend the subsidy program, those efforts did not go through in time to keep it from ending," notes The Verge. From the report: The Senate Commerce Committee canceled a Tuesday morning markup meeting in which it was set to consider the Spectrum and National Security Act, led by committee chair Maria Cantwell (D-WA). When she introduced it in April, Cantwell said the bill would provide $7 billion to continue funding the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), the pandemic-era internet subsidy for low-income Americans that officially ran out of money and ended at the end of May. The main purpose of the bill is to reauthorize the Federal Communications Commission's authority to run auctions for spectrum. The proceeds from spectrum auctions are often used to fund other programs. In addition to the ACP, Cantwell's bill would also fund programs including incentives for domestic chip manufacturing and a program that seeks to replace telecommunications systems that have been deemed national security concerns. The markup was already postponed several times before. Cantwell blamed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, for standing in the way of the legislation. "We had a chance to secure affordable broadband for millions of Americans, but Senator Cruz said 'no,'" Cantwell said in a statement late Monday. "He said 'no' to securing a lifeline for millions of Americans who rely on the Affordable Connectivity Program to speak to their doctors, do their homework, connect to their jobs, and stay in touch with loved ones -- including more than one million Texas families." In remarks on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Cantwell said her Republican colleagues on the committee offered amendments to limit the ACP funding in the bill. She said the ACP shouldn't be a partisan issue and stressed the wide range of Americans who've relied on the program for high-speed connections, including elderly people living on fixed incomes and many military families. "I hope my colleagues will stop with obstructing and get back to negotiating on important legislation that will deliver these national security priorities and help Americans continue to have access to something as essential as affordable broadband," she said. Cruz has his own spectrum legislation with Sen. John Thune (R-SD) that would reauthorize the FCC's spectrum auction authority, with a focus on expanding commercial access to mid-band spectrum, commonly used for 5G. But it doesn't have the same ACP funding mechanism. Some large telecom industry players prefer Cruz's bill, in part because it allows for exclusive licensing. Wireless communications trade group CTIA's SVP of government affairs, Kelly Cole, told Fierce Network that the Cruz bill "is a better approach because it follows the historical precedent set by prior bipartisan legislation to extend the FCC's auction authority." But other tech groups like the Internet Technology Industry Council (ITI), which represents companies including Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta, support Cantwell's bill, in part because of the programs it seeks to fund.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple's practice of leveraging ideas from its third-party developer community to become new iOS and Mac features and apps has a hefty price tag, a new report indicates. With the release of iOS 18 later this fall, Apple's changes may affect apps that today have an estimated $393 million in revenue and have been downloaded roughly 58 million times over the past year, according to an analysis by app intelligence firm Appfigures. Every June at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference, the iPhone maker teases the upcoming releases of its software and operating systems, which often include features previously only available through third-party apps. The practice is so common now it's even been given a name: "sherlocking" -- a reference to a 1990s search app for Mac that borrowed features from a third-party app known as Watson. Now, when Apple launches a new feature that was before the domain of a third-party app, it's said to have "sherlocked" the app. In earlier years, sherlocking apps made some sense. After all, did the iPhone's flashlight really need to be a third-party offering, or would it be better as a built-in function? Plus, Apple has been able to launch features that made its software better adapted to consumers' wants and needs by looking at what's popular among the third-party developer community.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mozilla has acquired ad metrics firm Anonym in a move to "support user privacy" while delivering effective online advertising. Anonym, founded by former Meta executives in 2022, helps advertisers and ad networks measure the performance of online ads while preserving user privacy. The acquisition comes amid growing consumer concerns and regulatory scrutiny over current data practices in the advertising industry. Mozilla CEO Laura Chambers sees this as a pivotal shift in the coexistence of privacy and advertising. Mozilla maintains that advertising is the underlying business model of the web, but it can be reformed to minimize societal harms.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After years of playing second fiddle to Link in her own franchise, Princess Zelda is finally getting a video game of her own this fall. From a report: During today's Direct presentation, Nintendo revealed The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, the franchise's first game to follow as Princess Zelda herself embarks on an adventure to save the world from destruction. After Ganon bests Link in battle, Zelda is left to her own devices to battle hordes of monsters that descend upon the game's take on Hyrule (which seems heavily inspired by 2019's Link's Awakening remake). According to series producer Eiji Aonuma, Zelda will navigate and fight through the world somewhat differently in Echoes of Wisdom as she wields a magical staff known as the Tri Rod with the assistance of a fairy named Tri. The trailer details how Zelda will be able to use the Tri Rod to create "echoes" of objects and monsters she's previously encountered and use them to overcome obstacles.Read more of this story at Slashdot.