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In a regulatory filing today, Dell revealed that it has terminated its distribution deal for VMware products. The deal was made in November 2021 before VMware was acquired by Broadcom. The Register reports: That agreement was struck on the same day Dell and VMware parted ways -- back when Big Mike's Bespoke Computer Barn decided to pay down some debt by making Virtzilla a standalone company. In those far-off days, Dell was still all-in on VMware, which is why their agreement sought to "formalize the commercial relationship between the parties in order to maintain the mutual strategic advantage between Dell and VMware [and] to affirm the parties' interest in continuing to collaborate on solutions and a go-to-market (GTM) strategy." The agreement added: "With respect to certain technologies and GTM activities, the parties' respective products and services work better together to create advantages and value for customers." Nothing has changed that would make such collaboration less beneficial for customers. Nothing, that is, other than Broadcom's decision to stop allowing manufacturers like Dell to resell licenses for VMware's products -- a consequence of the chip giant's plan to stop selling perpetual VMware licenses and instead insist on software subscriptions that bundle many products. That decision has not been well-received -- neither by OEMs, who lose a line of revenue, nor by customers who quite liked buying bundled licenses with hardware because doing so is often more efficient than buying them separately. Dell's filing cites the original agreement's allowance for its VMware distribution deal to be dissolved after a "change of control" at either party. Broadcom's acquisition of VMware certainly represents such an event.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The first lab-grown freshwater eel meat has been produced, potentially solving a diner's dilemma. Rampant overfishing has caused eel populations to plummet and prices to soar, but the cultivated eel could provide the delicacy guilt-free. The eel meat was produced by Forsea Foods in Israel from embryonic cells of a freshwater eel. The company collaborated with a Japanese chef to create unagi kabayaki, marinated grilled eel over rice, and unagi nigiri, a type of sushi. The company aims to scale up its operation and have the cultivated eel on sale in about two years. Japan's prime minister, Fumio Kishida, last year backed the development of a cultivated meat industry. The restaurant price in Japan is about $250 a kilogram, and Forsea Foods expects the price of the cultivated eel to match that of the wild-caught eel. [...] Forsea Foods' strategy is to target species at risk of extinction in the wild that also command high prices in restaurants and shops, with eel meeting both criteria. The very complex life cycle of eels, involving long migrations from rivers to the ocean and several distinct life stages, means it is not possible to farm them like some fish. The cultivated eel was produced using organoids, tiny bundles of tissue originally developed for use in medical research. The organoids are made of embryonic stem cells taken from fertilized eel eggs. These cells can develop into any kind of tissue and, as they grow, they self-organize into the structure of real meat. The final product also contains some plant-based ingredients. Other approaches to cultivated meat require greater use of expensive growth factor chemicals and scaffolds for cells to grow on [...]. The technique is particularly suited to fish and seafood, whose meat is fairly uniform unlike, for example, marbled beef, he said. Like other cultivated meat, the product is not produced using antibiotics or hormones. Forsea Foods is the only company known to be producing cultivated meat using this technology. The company has raised $5.2 million in investment, with more expected to be announced soon.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Todd Bishop reports via GeekWire: A Microsoft AI engineering leader says he discovered vulnerabilities in OpenAI's DALL-E 3 image generator in early December allowing users to bypass safety guardrails to create violent and explicit images, and that the company impeded his previous attempt to bring public attention to the issue. The emergence of explicit deepfake images of Taylor Swift last week "is an example of the type of abuse I was concerned about and the reason why I urged OpenAI to remove DALL-E 3 from public use and reported my concerns to Microsoft," writes Shane Jones, a Microsoft principal software engineering lead, in a letter Tuesday to Washington state's attorney general and Congressional representatives. 404 Media reported last week that the fake explicit images of Swift originated in a "specific Telegram group dedicated to abusive images of women," noting that at least one of the AI tools commonly used by the group is Microsoft Designer, which is based in part on technology from OpenAI's DALL-E 3. "The vulnerabilities in DALL-E 3, and products like Microsoft Designer that use DALL-E 3, makes it easier for people to abuse AI in generating harmful images," Jones writes in the letter to U.S. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, Rep. Adam Smith, and Attorney General Bob Ferguson, which was obtained by GeekWire. He adds, "Microsoft was aware of these vulnerabilities and the potential for abuse." Jones writes that he discovered the vulnerability independently in early December. He reported the vulnerability to Microsoft, according to the letter, and was instructed to report the issue to OpenAI, the Redmond company's close partner, whose technology powers products including Microsoft Designer. He writes that he did report it to OpenAI. "As I continued to research the risks associated with this specific vulnerability, I became aware of the capacity DALL-E 3 has to generate violent and disturbing harmful images," he writes. "Based on my understanding of how the model was trained, and the security vulnerabilities I discovered, I reached the conclusion that DALL-E 3 posed a public safety risk and should be removed from public use until OpenAI could address the risks associated with this model." On Dec. 14, he writes, he posted publicly on LinkedIn urging OpenAI's non-profit board to withdraw DALL-E 3 from the market. He informed his Microsoft leadership team of the post, according to the letter, and was quickly contacted by his manager, saying that Microsoft's legal department was demanding that he delete the post immediately, and would follow up with an explanation or justification. He agreed to delete the post on that basis but never heard from Microsoft legal, he writes. "Over the following month, I repeatedly requested an explanation for why I was told to delete my letter," he writes. "I also offered to share information that could assist with fixing the specific vulnerability I had discovered and provide ideas for making AI image generation technology safer. Microsoft's legal department has still not responded or communicated directly with me." "Artificial intelligence is advancing at an unprecedented pace. I understand it will take time for legislation to be enacted to ensure AI public safety," he adds. "At the same time, we need to hold companies accountable for the safety of their products and their responsibility to disclose known risks to the public. Concerned employees, like myself, should not be intimidated into staying silent." The full text of Jones' letter can be read here (PDF).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has confirmed to Cord Cutters News that you can now customize what games you can watch in your Multiview window. The keyword here is "games" because this feature is still limited to just sporting events at this time. From the report: One of YouTube TV's best features is the ability to offer the option to watch up to four sporting or news events at once on the same screen. The only downside has been the fact that customers have been unable to pick what games are in these windows. Instead, YouTube TV gives you a number of premade multiview options to pick from. Now, though, YouTube TV seems to be testing your ability to pick what games you want on your TV. Yesterday, YouTube TV started to give some NBA League Pass subscribers the ability to pick which games they want to watch from a handful of games in a list. From there, YouTube TV would create a multiview channel for you to watch the games you pick. Google says this feature is coming to all devices that support multiview and you can only create these channels from preselected NBA games. Sadly, you can't pick any channel you want but only from a list of preselected games to create your own multiview channel.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For the first time, Microsoft's Q2 earnings report includes the impact of the company's $68.7 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition. "While Microsoft isn't breaking out specific numbers, it says that its overall gaming revenue increased by 49 percent, 44 points of which came from the 'net impact' of the Activision deal," reports Engadget. From the report: Microsoft's More Personal Computing division, which includes Xbox, Surface and Windows, was up 19 percent ($16.9 billion) since last year. The company says the Activision deal accounted for 15 points of that increase. It's a huge change for a division that's been severely impacted by dwindling PC sales (which affects Windows licenses and Surfaces) and struggling Xbox consoles. PC device revenues were down 9 percent for the quarter, while Xbox hardware sales were up 3 percent. Xbox content and services revenue is also up 61 percent since last year, 55 points of which comes from Activision. Overall, Microsoft reported revenues of $62 billion, up from $52.7 billion a year earlier. Microsoft's cloud division posted revenue growth of 28%, with its intelligent-cloud revenue up 20% to $25.9 billion. Meanwhile, its productivity and business-processes segment generated $19.2 billion.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: With help from the FBI, German police managed to secure nearly 50,000 bitcoin (USD $2 billion) from the operators of the defunct movie streaming portal, Movie2k. [...] Movie2K was another pirate site that showed an early interest in bitcoin. In its heyday, the site was the dominant pirate streaming portal in German-speaking countries. It generated a healthy revenue stream, part of it held in bitcoin. The operator of the site never got to spend most of it though. The site surprisingly shut down in the spring of 2013. Many suspected that legal troubles had plagued the site, something confirmed years later when Dresden police announced several arrests. It was rare to see new activity in an already-dated dossier, but the biggest surprise followed later when the police announced that $29.7m in bitcoin had been secured from the site's operators. This 'seizure' was one of the largest of its kind but the authorities estimated that the operators had more bitcoin stashed away, much more. Today, new information released by Dresden police shows that the assumption was correct. Following an investigation carried out by the Dresden General Prosecutor's Office, the Saxony State Criminal Police, and the local tax authority (INES), nearly 50,000 bitcoin were 'provisionally' secured earlier this month. The haul is worth more than $2 billion at today's exchange rate. Never before has this much bitcoin been secured by German authorities; it's also one of the largest crypto hauls worldwide. "The Bitcoins were seized after the accused voluntarily transferred them to official wallets provided by the [Federal Criminal Police Office]. This means that a final decision has not yet been made about the utilization of the Bitcoins," police write.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

sdinfoserv writes: UPS is cutting 12,000 jobs, or about 2.5% of its global workforce. The cuts mostly effect managers and contractors. Meanwhile, as the company wrestles with struggling profits and sales, workers are to return to the office five days a week and the company is "investing in artificial intelligence (AI) as it pushes to become more efficient," according to the BBC. [The job cuts are expected to reduce costs by $1 billion this year.] The BBC reports: The company said that reflected economic weakness in Europe and parts of Asia, as well as disruption in the US, where a strike threatened by staff over the summer led some customers to shift their business to rivals. UPS said it had since won back about 60% of that business and expected modest growth to start to return this year, with average daily volumes flat or up 2% in the US and flat or up 3% internationally. But its forecast was weaker than analysts had expected, sending shares down more than 7%. It also warned that costs associated with its new contract with the Teamsters union would continue to weigh on the company over the next six months. As part of that deal, the average full-time driver won a pay and benefits package worth about $170,000 a year by the end of the five-year contract in 2028.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has lifted the embargo on the first wave of non-curated reviews of its Vision Pro headset, and the results are somewhat surprising. The initial "high" experienced upon first impressions, where reviewers laud the headset's "incredibly impressive displays" and "near perfect" tracking capabilities, has waned. In real-world conditions outside of Apple's heavily-regulated demos, the Vision Pro appears to suffer from limited productivity usecases, DRM'd apps, and half-baked features that suggest this device is still very much in the dev-kit stage. Above all, however, is the isolation experienced when using the Vision Pro. It offers very few options for wearers to socialize and share memories with one another in any meaningful way. Tim Cook may be right when he said headsets are inherently isolating. "You're in there, having experiences all by yourself that no one else can take part it," concludes Nilay Patel in his review for The Verge. "I don't want to get work done in the Vision Pro. I get my work done with other people, and I'd rather be out here with them." These are some of our favorite reviews of the Apple Vision Pro: - The Verge: Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it's not- The Wall Street Journal: Apple Vision Pro Review: The Best Headset Yet Is Just a Glimpse of the Future- Washington Post: Apple's Vision Pro is nearly here. But what can you do with it?- Tom's Guide: Apple Vision Pro review: A revolution in progress- CNET: Apple Vision Pro Review: A Mind-Blowing Look at an Unfinished Future- CNBC: Apple Vision Pro review: This is the future of computing and entertainmentRead more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The business arm of Raspberry Pi is preparing to make an initial public offering (IPO) in London. CEO Eben Upton tells Ars that should the IPO happen, it will let Raspberry Pi's not-for-profit side expand by "at least a factor of 2X." And while it's "an understandable thing" that Raspberry Pi enthusiasts could be concerned, "while I'm involved in running the thing, I don't expect people to see any change in how we do things." CEO Eben Upton confirmed in an interview with Bloomberg News that Raspberry Pi had appointed bankers at London firms Peel Hunt and Jefferies to prepare for "when the IPO market reopens." Raspberry previously raised money from Sony and semiconductor and software design firm ARM, and it sought public investment. Upton denied or didn't quite deny IPO rumors in 2021, and Bloomberg reported Raspberry Pi was considering an IPO in early 2022. After ARM took a minority stake in the company in November 2023, Raspberry Pi was valued at roughly 400 million pounds, or just over $500 million. Given the company's gradual recovery from pandemic supply chain shortages, and the success of the Raspberry Pi 5 launch, the company's IPO will likely jump above that level, even with a listing in the UK rather than the more typical US IPO. Upton told The Register that "the business is in a much better place than it was last time we looked at it [an IPO]. We partly stopped because the markets got bad. And we partly stopped because our business became unpredictable." "It's a good thing, in that people care about us," Upton said in response to concerned hobbyists and tech enthusiasts. "What Raspberry Pi [builds] are the products we want to buy, and then we sell them to people like us," Upton said. "Certainly, while I'm involved in it, I can't imagine an environment in which the hobbyists are not going to be incredibly important." The IPO is "about the foundation," Upton said, with that charitable arm selling some of its majority stake in the business entity to raise funds and expand. "We've not cooked up some new way for a not-for-profit to do an IPO, no," he noted. [He told Ars that Raspberry Pi's business arm has had both strategic and private investors in its history, along with a majority shareholder in its Foundation (which in 2016 owned 75 percent of shares), and that he doesn't see changes to what Pi has built. He also noted that the foundation was previously funded by dividends from the business side.] "We do this transaction, and the proceeds of that transaction allow the foundation to train teachers, run clubs, expand programs, and ... do those things at, at least, a factor of 2X. That's what I'm most excited about." Upton said there would be "no change" to the kinds of products Pi makes, and that makers are "culturally important to us." [...] "If people think that an IPO means we're going to ... push prices up, push the margins up, push down the feature sets, the only answer we can give is, watch us. Keep watching," he said. "Let's look at it in 15, 20 years' time."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta's latest update to its code generation AI model, Code Llama 70B, is "the largest and best-performing model" yet. From a report: Code Llama tools launched in August and are free for both research and commercial use. According to a post on Meta's AI blog, Code Llama 70B can handle more queries than previous versions, which means developers can feed it more prompts while programming, and it can be more accurate.Code Llama 70B scored 53 percent in accuracy on the HumanEval benchmark, performing better than GPT-3.5's 48.1 percent and closer to the 67 percent mark an OpenAI paper (PDF) reported for GPT-4. Built on Llama 2, Code Llama helps developers create strings of code from prompts and debug human-written work. Meta simultaneously launched two other Code Llama tools last fall, Code Llama -- Python and Code Llama -- Instruct, which focused on specific coding languages.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Starbucks is taking its extra virgin olive oil-infused drinks -- which some customers previously complained of sending them straight to the bathroom i-- nationwide beginning Tuesday. CNN: The lineup, called Oleato, launched in a few US cities last year before slowly expanding to more stores. Tuesday's launch across its US and Canada locations signifies that the chain stands behind the beverage despite subpar reviews from customers and critics. On the Oleato menu are two drinks: An oat milk latte infused with the extra virgin olive oil; and a new toffeenut iced shaken espresso with golden foam, which is vanilla sweet cream infused with extra virgin olive oil into a cold foam. The drinks debuted in Italy in 2023, with a Starbucks executive previously telling CNN that it's one of its "biggest launches we've had in decades."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced today that it'll start reimbursing local governments for installing solar panels and more efficient appliances after a disaster strikes. From a report: The move can help communities prepare for another calamity by equipping them with tools that just might keep the lights on when they would otherwise suffer a power outage. It's also a way for the US to deploy technologies that cut greenhouse gas emissions and stave off worsening climate disasters like storms, heatwaves, and wildfires. [...] This is the first time FEMA is funding "net-zero energy projects, including solar, heat pumps and efficient appliances" through its biggest grant program, called Public Assistance. It's available to communities recovering from a major event that the president has declared an emergency or disaster. Under the program, FEMA reimburses state, tribal, territorial, and local governments 75 percent of the cost of eligible recovery efforts. That's typically been to pay for "emergency protective measures," debris removal, and to rebuild public infrastructure.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Russia is facing a widespread internet outage that's affected users across the country, with access to websites on the local .ru domain down. From a report: The issue was linked to a technical problem with the .ru domain's global Domain Name System Security Extensions, or DNSSEC, which is used to secure data exchanged in internet protocol networks, Russia's Digital Ministry said in a statement on Telegram Tuesday. Websites including the most popular local search engine Yandex.ru, ecommerce leaders Ozon.ru and Wildberries.ru, and apps of the country's biggest banks -- Sberbank PJSC and VTB Group -- were all affected, state-run Ria reported, citing Downradar, a traffic monitoring service.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tom Warren, writing for The Verge: Last week, I turned on my PC, installed a Windows update, and rebooted to find Microsoft Edge automatically open with the Chrome tabs I was working on before the update. I don't use Microsoft Edge regularly, and I have Google Chrome set as my default browser. Bleary-eyed at 9AM, it took me a moment to realize that Microsoft Edge had simply taken over where I'd left off in Chrome. I never imported my data into Microsoft Edge, nor did I confirm whether I wanted to import my tabs. But here was Edge automatically opening after a Windows update with all the Chrome tabs I'd been working on. I didn't even realize I was using Edge at first, and I was confused why all my tabs were suddenly logged out. After the shock wore off, I looked to make sure I hadn't accidentally allowed this behavior. I found a setting in Microsoft Edge that imports data from Google Chrome on each launch. "Always have access to your recent browsing data each time you browse on Microsoft Edge," reads Microsoft's description of the feature in Edge. This setting was disabled, and I had never been asked to turn it on. So I went to install the same Windows update on a laptop, which actually resulted in it failing and my having to do a system restore. Once the system restore was complete, the same thing happened. Edge opened automatically with all of my Chrome tabs. I haven't been able to replicate the behavior on other PCs, but a number of X users replied to my post about this saying they have experienced the same thing in the past.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dan Goodin, reporting for ArsTechnica: ChatGPT is leaking private conversations that include login credentials and other personal details of unrelated users, screenshots submitted by an Ars reader on Monday indicated. Two of the seven screenshots the reader submitted stood out in particular. Both contained multiple pairs of usernames and passwords that appeared to be connected to a support system used by employees of a pharmacy prescription drug portal. An employee using the AI chatbot seemed to be troubleshooting problems they encountered while using the portal. "THIS is so f-ing insane, horrible, horrible, horrible, i cannot believe how poorly this was built in the first place, and the obstruction that is being put in front of me that prevents it from getting better," the user wrote. "I would fire [redacted name of software] just for this absurdity if it was my choice. This is wrong." Besides the candid language and the credentials, the leaked conversation includes the name of the app the employee is troubleshooting and the store number where the problem occurred. The entire conversation goes well beyond whata(TM)s shown in the redacted screenshot above. A link Ars reader Chase Whiteside included showed the chat conversation in its entirety. The URL disclosed additional credential pairs. The results appeared Monday morning shortly after reader Whiteside had used ChatGPT for an unrelated query.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against Citibank on Tuesday, alleging the big bank failed to do enough to protect and reimburse victims of fraud. From a report: The lawsuit argues that New York customers lost millions of dollars -- in some cases their entire lifesavings -- to scammers and hackers because of Citi's weak security and anti-fraud measures. According to the NY AG, Citi does not do enough to prevent unauthorized account takeovers, illegally refuses to reimburse fraud victims and "misleads" customers about their rights after their accounts are hacked. The lawsuit, filed in US District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleges that Citi has "overpromised and underdelivered on security" and failed to respond appropriately to red flags. "Banks are supposed to be the safest place to keep money, yet Citi's negligence has allowed scammers to steal millions of dollars from hardworking people, James said in a statement. There is no excuse for Citi's failure to protect and prevent millions of dollars from being stolen from customers' accounts and my office will not write off illegal behavior from big banks."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AmiMoJo writes: Apple has attacked proposals for the UK government to pre-approve new security features introduced by tech firms. Under the proposed amendments to existing laws, if the UK Home Office declined an update, it then could not be released in any other country, and the public would not be informed. The government is seeking to update the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) 2016. The Home Office said it supported privacy-focused tech but added that it also had to keep the country safe. A government spokesperson said: "We have always been clear that we support technological innovation and private and secure communications technologies, including end-to-end encryption, but this cannot come at a cost to public safety." The proposed changes will be debated in the House of Lords tomorrow. Apple says it is an "unprecedented overreach" by the UK government. "We're deeply concerned the proposed amendments to the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) now before Parliament place users' privacy and security at risk," said Apple in a statement. "It's an unprecedented overreach by the government and, if enacted, the UK could attempt to secretly veto new user protections globally preventing us from ever offering them to customers."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes: Visual Studio Magazine reports on new research on the effect of AI-powered GitHub Copilot on software development which sought to investigate the quality and maintainability of AI-assisted code compared to what would have been written by a human. Countering the positively-glowing findings of some other studies, the Coding on Copilot whitepaper from GitClear cites some adverse results. "We find disconcerting trends for maintainability," explains the paper's abstract. "Code churn -- the percentage of lines that are reverted or updated less than two weeks after being authored -- is projected to double in 2024 compared to its 2021, pre-AI baseline. We further find that the percentage of 'added code' and 'copy/pasted code' is increasing in proportion to 'updated,' 'deleted,' and 'moved 'code. In this regard, AI-generated code resembles an itinerant contributor, prone to violate the DRY-ness [don't repeat yourself] of the repos visited." The paper concludes, "How will Copilot transform what it means to be a developer? There's no question that, as AI has surged in popularity, we have entered an era where code lines are being added faster than ever before. The better question for 2024: who's on the hook to clean up the mess afterward?" Further complicating matters, Computing Education in the Era of Generative AI (Feb. 2024 CACM) notes that "generating and inserting large blocks of code may be counterproductive for users at all levels. This requires users to read through code they did not write, sometimes at a more sophisticated level than they are familiar with." Interestingly, the AI-generated code maintenance worries are reminiscent of concerns cited in the past for 'Google programmers', Stack Overflow copy-and-pasters, and stitchers of not-quite-compatible libraries, as well as earlier iterations of code generators, including C++ and other 'Next-Next-Finish' code wizards of the 90's and COBOL and PL/I applications generators (PDF) of the 80's. Everything old is new again, including code maintenance challenges.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. government in recent months launched an operation to fight a pervasive Chinese hacking operation that successfully compromised thousands of internet-connected devices, Reuters reported Tuesday, citing two Western security officials and another person familiar with the matter. From the report: The Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation sought and received legal authorization to remotely disable aspects of the Chinese hacking campaign, the sources told Reuters. The Biden administration has increasingly focused on hacking, not only for fear nation states may try to disrupt the U.S. election in November, but because ransomware wreaked havoc on Corporate America in 2023. The hacking group at the center of recent activity, Volt Typhoon, has especially alarmed intelligence officials who say it is part of a larger effort to compromise Western critical infrastructure, including naval ports, internet service providers and utilities. While the Volt Typhoon campaign initially came to light in May 2023, the hackers expanded the scope of their operations late last year and changed some of their techniques, according to three people familiar with the matter. The widespread nature of the hacks led to a series of meetings between the White House and private technology industry, including several telecommunications and cloud commuting companies, where the U.S. government asked for assistance in tracking the activity.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has proposed creating a new top-level domain (TLD) and never allowing it to be delegated in the global domain name system (DNS) root. From a report: The proposed TLD is .INTERNAL and, as the name implies, it's intended for internal use only. The idea is that .INTERNAL could take on the same role as the 192.168.x.x IPv4 bloc -- available for internal use but never plumbed into DNS or other infrastructure that would enable it to be accessed from the open internet. ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) advised the development of such a TLD in 2020. It noted at the time that "many enterprises and device vendors make ad hoc use of TLDs that are not present in the root zone when they intend the name for private use only. This usage is uncoordinated and can cause harm to Internet users" -- in part by forcing DNS servers to handle, and reject, queries for domains only used internally. DNS, however, can't prevent internal use of ad hoc TLDs. So the SSAC recommended creation of a TLD that would be explicitly reserved for internal use.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter betso.net shares a report: A German railway firm posted a vacancy for a Windows 3.11 Administrator just before the weekend. In addition to skills in wrangling Windows for Workgroups on the 30-year-old operating system, the recruiter would look upon a candidate more fondly for possessing MS-DOS experience. The admin would purportedly oversee systems with 166MHz processors and a whopping 8MB of RAM. It might seem slightly worrying that modern railways are still running on such ancient systems, but mission-critical systems often adhere to the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ScienceAlert: Peering into the jungle of microbes that live within us, researchers have stumbled across what seem to be an entire new class of virus-like objects. "It's insane," says University of North Carolina cell biologist Mark Peifer, who was not involved in the study, told Elizabeth Pennisi at Science Magazine. "The more we look, the more crazy things we see." These mysterious bits of genetic material have no detectable sequences or even structural similarities known to any other biological agents. So Stanford University biologist Ivan Zheludev and colleagues argue their strange discovery may not be viruses at all, but instead an entirely new group of entities that may help bridge the ancient gap between the simplest genetic molecules and more complex viruses. "Obelisks comprise a class of diverse RNAs that have colonized, and gone unnoticed in, human, and global microbiomes," the researchers write in a preprint paper. Named after the highly-symmetrical, rod-like structures formed by its twisted lengths of RNA, the Obelisks' genetic sequences are only around 1,000 characters (nucleotides) in size. In fact, this brevity is likely one of the reasons we've failed to notice them previously. In a study that has yet to be peer reviewed, Zheludev and team searched 5.4 million datasets of published genetic sequences and identified almost 30,000 different Obelisks. They appeared in about 10 percent of the human microbiomes the team examined. In one set of data, Obelisks turned up in 50 percent of the patients' oral samples. What's more, different types of Obelisks appear to be present in different areas of our bodies. "[This] supports the notion that Obelisks might include colonists of said human microbiomes," the researchers explain. They managed to isolate one type of host cell from our microbiome, the bacterium Streptococcus sanguinis -- a common human mouth microbe. The Obelisk in these microbes had a loop 1,137 nucleotides long. "While we don't know the 'hosts' of other Obelisks," write Zheludev and colleagues. "it is reasonable to assume that at least a fraction may be present in bacteria." The question of the Obelisks' source aside, all seem to include codes for a new class of protein the researchers have named Oblins. Zheludev and team couldn't identify any impact of the Obelisks on their bacterial hosts, or a means by which they could spread between cells. "These elements might not even be 'viral' in nature and might more closely resemble 'RNA plasmids,'" they conclude. This research appears in the preprint server bioRxiv.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Embracer Group has canceled a Deus Ex game at its Eidos studio that's been in development since 2022. The company also announced that it's letting go of 97 game developers and support staff. "The global economic context, the challenges of our industry and the comprehensive restructuring announced by Embracer have finally impacted our studio," wrote Eidos Montreal. Eidos doesn't mention the canceled game. The Verge reports: Embracer snapped up both Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamics from Square Enix in May 2022, putting the studios behind Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, and Thief under one umbrella. That November, Schreier tweeted that a new Deus Ex was now "very very early" in development, and it appears that's the game now canceled. It's been eight years since Deus Ex: Mankind Divided ended on a largely unsatisfying cliffhanger, and it doesn't sound like we're going to get a resolution anytime soon. Sources told Schreier in 2017 that an earlier Mankind Divided sequel had been canceled, too. What's more, Embracer decided to erase the mobile game Deus Ex Go from existence, ripping it away from people who'd already paid, though I hear it may still be playable if you have it downloaded.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to Neuralink founder Elon Musk, the first human received an implant from the brain-chip startup on Sunday and is recovering well. "Initial results show promising neuron spike detection," Musk added. Reuters reports: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had given the company clearance last year to conduct its first trial to test its implant on humans. The startup's PRIME Study is a trial for its wireless brain-computer interface to evaluate the safety of the implant and surgical robot. The study will assess the functionality of the interface which enables people with quadriplegia, or paralysis of all four limbs, to control devices with their thoughts, according to the company's website.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ProPublica: Reeling from one of the most catastrophic recalls in decades, Philips Respironics said it will stop selling sleep apnea machines and other respiratory devices in the United States under a settlement with the federal government that will all but end the company's reign as one of the top makers of breathing machines in the country. The agreement, announced by Philips early Monday, comes more than two years after the company pulled millions of its popular breathing devices off the shelves after admitting that an industrial foam fitted in the machines to reduce noise could break apart and release potentially toxic particles and fumes into the masks worn by patients. It could be years before Philips can resume sales of the devices, made in two factories outside Pittsburgh. The company said all the conditions of the multiyear consent decree -- negotiated in the wake of the recall with the Department of Justice on behalf of the Food and Drug Administration -- must be met first. The move by a company that aggressively promoted its machines in ad campaigns and health conferences -- in one case with the help of an Elvis impersonator -- follows relentless criticism about the safety of the machines. A ProPublica and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette investigation found the company held back thousands of complaints about the crumbling foam for more than a decade before warning customers about the dangers. Those using the machines included some of the most fragile people in the country, including infants, the elderly, veterans and patients with chronic conditions. "It's about time," said Richard Callender, a former mayor in Pennsylvania who spent years using one of the recalled machines. "How many people have to suffer and get sick and die?" Philips said the agreement includes other requirements the company must meet before it can start selling the machines again, including the marquee DreamStation 2, a continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, device heralded by Philips when it was unveiled in 2021 for the treatment of sleep apnea. The settlement, which is still being finalized, has to be approved by a court and has not yet been released by the government. It remains unclear how the halt in sales will impact patients and doctors. The company's U.S. market share for sleep apnea devices in 2020 was about 37% -- behind only one competitor, medical device maker ResMed, according to an analysis by iData Research. Philips has dominated the market in ventilator sales, the data shows.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In an announcement earlier today, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said single-use vapes will be banned in Britain, with certain flavors restricted and regulations put in place around their packaging and displays. The New York Times reports: Mr. Sunak said that the ban, which is part of legislation that still has to be approved by Parliament, was intended to halt "one of the most worrying trends at the moment," before it becomes "endemic." "The long-term impacts of vaping are unknown and the nicotine within them can be highly addictive, so while vaping can be a useful tool to help smokers quit, marketing vapes to children is not acceptable," he said in a statement. Andrea Leadsom, Britain's health minister, said the measures were intended to make sure that vapes were aimed at adults who were quitting smoking, rather than children. "Nicotine is highly addictive -- and so it is completely unacceptable that children are getting their hands on these products, many of which are undeniably designed to appeal to young people," she said in a statement. [...] While it is not illegal for people under 18 to smoke or vape in Britain, it is illegal for those products to be sold to them. By banning disposable vapes, and restricting the flavors and packaging of refillable vapes, the government hopes to make it far less likely that young people will experiment with e-cigarettes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Benj Edwards reports via Ars Technica: In a move that marks the end of an era, New Mexico State University (NMSU) recently announced the impending closure of its Hobbes OS/2 Archive on April 15, 2024. For over three decades, the archive has been a key resource for users of the IBM OS/2 operating system and its successors, which once competed fiercely with Microsoft Windows. In a statement made to The Register, a representative of NMSU wrote, "We have made the difficult decision to no longer host these files on hobbes.nmsu.edu. Although I am unable to go into specifics, we had to evaluate our priorities and had to make the difficult decision to discontinue the service." Hobbes is hosted by the Department of Information & Communication Technologies at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico. In the official announcement, the site reads, "After many years of service, hobbes.nmsu.edu will be decommissioned and will no longer be available. As of April 15th, 2024, this site will no longer exist." The earliest record we've found of the Hobbes archive online is this 1992 Walnut Creek CD-ROM collection that gathered up the contents of the archive for offline distribution. At around 32 years old, minimum, that makes Hobbes one of the oldest software archives on the Internet, akin to the University of Michigan's archives and ibiblio at UNC.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With the increasing adoption of e-bikes and drones for efficient, eco-friendly delivery services, New York is proposing the Department of Sustainable Delivery to regulate these services, focusing on safety, data sharing, and operational permits to ease congested lanes. Fast Company reports: The first step of the new department will be a task force made up of tech, transportation, labor, and government representatives. There are currently some city regulations around delivery operations, but they're fragmented; the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, for example, has addressed delivery worker rights (and recently announced a new minimum pay rate for app-based food delivery workers), while the Department of Transportation focuses on commercial delivery, and has taken steps to address delivery cargo bikes. "We don't have a place where every company that wants to dispatch in volume and move freight [and goods] around in the city on a micro level comes through and has to show that they're going to meet certain requirements," [New York City Deputy Mayor of Operations Meera Joshi] says. Managers of truck delivery fleets often track their driver's performance and behavior with tools like GPS; through the new department, micromobility app companies may be required to share their GPS delivery data with the city. That data might reveal more about how long delivery riders are working, or how heavy cargo bikes' loads are, which could lead to new regulations. Joshi also points to e-bike fires and rising e-bike rider deaths as red flags that signal the need for more oversight and legislation, which could prevent future tragedies. More information about where and when these deliveries are happening could also help the city adapt its infrastructure to this growing market. "As more and more of the city is feeling the effects of the commercialization of bike lanes, we certainly do have to rethink how wide our bike lanes are, what they are there to accommodate, does there need to be some separation between motorized and nonmotorized [bikes]?" Joshi says. "But these things need to be informed." The city is already making some such updates. Last summer, it upgraded a stretch of 10th Avenue to include a 10-foot-wide bike lane, to better allow regular cyclists and delivery e-bikes to coexist Tech advancements often move faster than the government, resulting in a game of legislative catch up for cities. Joshi says New York City is thinking about micromobility in this way because "we've seen this movie before," referring to tech disruption, "and we'd like a different ending." While Joshi knows that companies may bristle at the increased oversight, she says being proactive about these issues and taking steps to address them will likely help the firms and their public perception long-term. And not addressing micromobility challenges now could also impede larger climate progress. "If we are not able to show that we have a comprehensive framework, show that we're able to manage what we have today and prepare for the unknown, we could have people, saying 'it was better when [delivery] was in trucks,'" Joshi says, "and that would actually be probably the worst thing for the environment."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Europe's aviation safety body is working with the airline industry to counter a danger posed by interference with GPS signals -- now seen as a growing threat to the safety of air travel. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) held a recent workshop on incidents where people spoofed and jammed satellite navigation systems, and concluded these pose a "significant challenge" to safety. Mitigating the risks posed by such actions will require measures to be enacted in the short term as well as medium and long term timescales, the two bodies said. They want to start by sharing information about the incidents and any potential remedies. In Europe, this information sharing will occur through the European Occurrence Reporting scheme and EASA's Data4Safety program. Given the global nature of the problem, a broader solution would be better, but this would have to be pursued at a later date, EASA said. Inevitably, another of the measures involves retaining traditional navigation aids to ensure there is a conventional backup for GNSS navigation, while a third calls for guidance from aircraft manufacturers to airlines and other aircraft operators to ensure they know how to manage jamming and spoofing situations. As a further measure, EASA said it will inform all relevant stakeholders, which includes airlines, air navigation service providers, airports and the air industry, about recorded incidents. Interference with global navigation systems can take one of two forms: jamming requires nothing more than transmitting a radio signal strong enough to drown out those from GPS satellites, while spoofing is more insidious and involves transmitting fake signals that fool the receiver into calculating its position incorrectly. According to EASA, jamming and spoofing incidents have increasingly threatened the integrity of location services across Eastern Europe and the Middle East in recent years. [...] The IATA said that coordinated action is needed, including sharing of safety data and a commitment from nations to retain traditional navigation systems as backup.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

David Pierce reports via The Verge: A few minutes ago, I opened the new Arc Search app and typed, "What happened in the Chiefs game?" That game, the AFC Championship, had just wrapped up. Normally, I'd Google it, click on a few links, and read about the game that way. But in Arc Search, I typed the query and tapped the "Browse for me" button instead. Arc Search, the new iOS app from The Browser Company, which has been working on a browser called Arc for the last few years, went to work. It scoured the web -- reading six pages, it told me, from Twitter to The Guardian to USA Today -- and returned a bunch of information a few seconds later. I got the headline: Chiefs win. I got the final score, the key play, a "notable event" that also just said the Chiefs won, a note about Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift, a bunch of related links, and some more bullet points about the game. Basically, instead of returning a bunch of search queries about the Chiefs game, Arc Search built me a webpage about it. And somewhere in there is The Browser Company's big idea about the future of web browsers -- that a browser, a search engine, an AI chatbot, and a website aren't different things. They're all just parts of an internet information finder, and they might as well exist inside the same app. [...] But from a pure product perspective, this feels closer to the way AI search should work than anything I've tried. Products like Copilot and Perplexity AI are cool, but they're fundamentally just chatbots with web access. Arc Search imagines something else entirely: AI that explores websites by building you a new one every time you ask.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Japan is aiming to phase out floppy disks and CD-ROMs, which until now were forms of physical media required for submitting some official documents to the government. Engadget reports: Back in 2022, Minister of Digital Affairs Taro Kono urged various branches of the government to stop requiring businesses to submit information on outdated forms of physical media. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) is one of the first to make the switch. "Under the current law, there are many provisions stipulating the use of specific recording media such as floppy disks regarding application and notification methods," METI said last week, according to The Register. After this calendar year, METI will no longer require businesses to submit data on floppy disks under 34 ordinances. The same goes for CD-ROMs when it comes to an unspecified number of procedures. There's still quite some way to go before businesses can stop using either format entirely, however. Kono's staff identified some 1,900 protocols across several government departments that still require the likes of floppy disks, CD-ROMs and even MiniDiscs. The physical media requirements even applied to key industries such as utility suppliers, mining operations and aircraft and weapons manufacturers. There are a couple of main reasons why there's a push to stop using floppy disks, as SoraNews24 points out. One major factor is that floppy disks can be hard to come by. Sony, the last major manufacturer, stopped selling them in 2011. Another is that some data types just won't fit on a floppy disk. A single photo can easily be larger than the format's 1.4MB storage capacity.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Mercedes-Benz accidentally exposed a trove of internal data after leaving a private key online that gave "unrestricted access" to the company's source code, according to the security research firm that discovered it. Shubham Mittal, co-founder and chief technology officer of RedHunt Labs, alerted TechCrunch to the exposure and asked for help in disclosing to the car maker. The London-based cybersecurity company said it discovered a Mercedes employee's authentication token in a public GitHub repository during a routine internet scan in January. According to Mittal, this token -- an alternative to using a password for authenticating to GitHub -- could grant anyone full access to Mercedes's GitHub Enterprise Server, thus allowing the download of the company's private source code repositories. "The GitHub token gave 'unrestricted' and 'unmonitored' access to the entire source code hosted at the internal GitHub Enterprise Server," Mittal explained in a report shared by TechCrunch. "The repositories include a large amount of intellectual property connection strings, cloud access keys, blueprints, design documents, [single sign-on] passwords, API Keys, and other critical internal information." Mittal provided TechCrunch with evidence that the exposed repositories contained Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) keys, a Postgres database, and Mercedes source code. It's not known if any customer data was contained within the repositories. It's not known if anyone else besides Mittal discovered the exposed key, which was published in late-September 2023. A Mercedes spokesperson confirmed that the company "revoked the respective API token and removed the public repository immediately." "We can confirm that internal source code was published on a public GitHub repository by human error. The security of our organization, products, and services is one of our top priorities. We will continue to analyze this case according to our normal processes. Depending on this, we implement remedial measures."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Andrew Joseph, writing for STAT News: There was something odd about these Alzheimer's cases. Part of it was the patients' presentations: Some didn't have the classic symptoms of the condition. But it was also that the patients were in their 40s and 50s, even their 30s, far younger than people who normally develop the disease. They didn't even have the known genetic mutations that can set people on the course for such early-onset Alzheimer's. But this small handful of patients did share a particular history. As children, they had received growth hormone taken from the brains of human cadavers, which used to be a treatment for a number of conditions that caused short stature. Now, decades later, they were showing signs of Alzheimer's. In the interim, scientists had discovered that that type of hormone treatment they got could unwittingly transfer bits of protein into recipients' brains. In some cases, it had induced a fatal brain disease called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or CJD -- a finding that led to the banning of the procedure 40 years ago. It seemed that it wasn't just the proteins behind CJD that could get transferred. As the scientific team treating the patients reported Monday in the journal Nature Medicine, the hormone transplant seeded the beta-amyloid protein that's a hallmark of Alzheimer's in some recipients' brains, which, decades later, propagated into disease-causing plaques. They are the first known cases of transmitted Alzheimer's disease, likely a scientific anomaly yet a finding that adds another wrinkle to ongoing arguments about what truly causes Alzheimer's. "It looks real that some of these people developed early-onset Alzheimer's because of that [hormone treatment]," said Ben Wolozin, an expert on neurodegenerative diseases at Boston University's medical school, who was not involved in the study.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

IBM delivered a companywide ultimatum to managers who are still working remotely: move near an office or leave the company. From a report: All US managers must immediately report to an office or client location at least three days a week "regardless of current work location status," according to a memo sent on Jan. 16 viewed by Bloomberg. Badge-in data will be used to "assess individual presence" and shared with managers and human resources, Senior Vice President John Granger wrote in the note. Those working remotely, other than employees with exceptions such as medical issues or military service, who don't live close enough to commute to a facility must relocate near an IBM office by the start of August, according to the memo. Managers who don't agree to relocate and are unable to secure a role that's approved to be remote must "separate from IBM," Granger wrote.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Regulators put limits on Boeing 737 MAX production; grounded MAX 9 jets have resumed flying after required inspections. From a report: Bolts needed to secure part of an Alaska Airlines jet that blew off in midair appear to have been missing when the plane left Boeing's factory. Boeing and other industry officials increasingly believe the plane maker's employees failed to put back the bolts when they reinstalled a 737 MAX 9 plug door after opening or removing it during production, according to people familiar with the matter. The increasingly likely scenario, according to some of these people, is based partly on an apparent absence of markings on the Alaska door plug itself that would suggest bolts were in place when it blew off the jet around 16,000 feet over Oregon on Jan. 5. They also pointed to paperwork and process lapses at Boeing's Renton, Wash., factory related to the company's work on the plug door. The National Transportation Safety Board has been conducting metallurgical analysis of the plug door but hasn't released the results of the testing. Laboratory tests might show whether the bolts were in place or not there at all. An update in the NTSB probe is expected as soon as this week. New evidence could later emerge before accident investigators reach final conclusions. It couldn't be determined how many people were involved with work on the plug door at Boeing's 737 factory. Supplier Spirit AeroSystems delivered the 737 fuselage to Boeing's factory with the door plug installed. The plug door itself was constructed in Spirit's Malaysian factory, while the fuselage was assembled in Wichita, Kan. Boeing opened or removed the door plug after the 737 MAX 9 jet's fuselage arrived at the plane maker's Renton, Wash., factory for final assembly, The Wall Street Journal and other news outlets have reported.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

UnknowingFool writes: Jurors on Friday, January 26, 2024 ruled in favor of celebrity tattoo artist Kat Von D (real name Katherine von Drachenberg) in a copyright lawsuit regarding a photo of Miles Davis in that her use of the photo was not copyright infringement. The photographer of the photo, Jeffrey Sedlik, sued Von D in February 2021 after she used the photo as the basis for a tattoo she inked on a friend. Kat Von D, who gained fame in the reality shows about tattoo artists "LA Ink" and "Miami Ink", put the tattoo on her friend's arm in 2017 as a gift. The jury found that the tattoo was not "substantially similar" to the photo and were also persuaded that the non-commercial nature of the work meant her use of the photo would be fair use. The plaintiff Sedilk said he is planning to appeal the ruling arguing it contradicts the Supreme Court ruling in Warhol Foundation vs Goldsmith (PDF) where the artist Andy Warhol made a silkscreen print of Lynn Goldsmith's photo of Prince. The main difference pointed out by Von D's lawyers is that Warhol charged $10,000 for his print whereas Von D did not charge her friend for the tattoo and that is was closer to "fan art".Read more of this story at Slashdot.

T-Mobile has tweaked its terms of service for its home broadband users to add a new clause: If you are a heavy internet user that passes 1.2TB of data in a monthly billing cycle, you may have your speeds slowed in "times of congestion" or when there is a lot of pressure on the network. CNET: As spotted by The Mobile Report, the change went into effect on Jan. 18. In its updated terms, the carrier says that these users "will be prioritized last on the network" in congestion situations, which could mean painfully slow speeds for however long the congestion persists. T-Mobile does note that since its Home Internet service is available only in "limited areas" and intended to be used in a "stationary" setting, as opposed to a phone that could be in a busy place like a packed stadium, "these customers should be less likely to notice congestion in general."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Spying used to be all about secrets. Increasingly, it's about what's hiding in plain sight [non-paywalled link] . From a report: A staggering amount of data, from Facebook posts and YouTube clips to location pings from mobile phones and car apps, sits in the open internet, available to anyone who looks. US intelligence agencies have struggled for years to tap into such data, which they refer to as open-source intelligence, or OSINT. But that's starting to change. In October the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees all the nation's intelligence agencies, brought in longtime analyst and cyber expert Jason Barrett to help with the US intelligence community's approach to OSINT. His immediate task will be to help develop the intelligence community's national OSINT strategy, which will focus on coordination, data acquisition and the development of tools to improve its approach to this type of intelligence work. ODNI expects to implement the plan in the coming months, according to a spokesperson. Barrett's appointment, which hasn't previously been reported publicly, comes after more than a year of work on the strategy led by the Central Intelligence Agency, which has for years headed up the government's efforts on OSINT. The challenge with other forms of intelligence-gathering, such as electronic surveillance or human intelligence, can be secretly collecting enough information in the first place. With OSINT, the issue is sifting useful insights out of the unthinkable amount of information available digitally. "Our greatest weakness in OSINT has been the vast scale of how much we collect," says Randy Nixon, director of the CIA's Open Source Enterprise division. Nixon's office has developed a tool similar to ChatGPT that uses AI to sift the ever-growing flood of data. Now available to thousands of users within the federal government, the tool points analysts to the most important information and auto-summarizes content. Government task forces have warned since the 1990s that the US was at risk of falling behind on OSINT. But the federal intelligence community has generally prioritized information it gathers itself, stymying progress.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Blackstone is betting big on AI, plowing billions into data centers after its $10 billion takeover of QTS last year. The private equity giant is bankrolling the development of massive computing bunkers on hundreds of acres in Phoenix and other key markets to meet exploding demand from tech titans like Microsoft. With AI taking hold, QTS has become North America's top provider of leased data center capacity. But the data crunch has strained power grids. QTS estimates its data centers will tap 6 gigawatts of electricity, equal to the needs of 5 million homes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft has introduced more protections to Designer, an AI text-to-image generation tool that people were using to make nonconsensual sexual images of celebrities. Microsoft made the changes after 404 Media reported that the AI-generated nude images of Taylor Swift that went viral last week came from 4chan and a Telegram channel where people were using Designer to make AI-generated images of celebrities. "We are investigating these reports and are taking appropriate action to address them," a Microsoft spokesperson told us in an email on Friday. "Our Code of Conduct prohibits the use of our tools for the creation of adult or non-consensual intimate content, and any repeated attempts to produce content that goes against our policies may result in loss of access to the service. We have large teams working on the development of guardrails and other safety systems in line with our responsible AI principles, including content filtering, operational monitoring and abuse detection to mitigate misuse of the system and help create a safer environment for users."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China has approved more than 40 AI models for public use in the first six months since authorities began the approval process, as the country strives to catch up to the U.S. in AI development, according to Chinese media. Reuters: Chinese regulators granted approvals to a total of 14 large language models (LLM) for public use last week, Chinese state-backed Securities Times reported. It marks the fourth batch of approvals China has granted, which counts Xiaomi, 4Paradigm and 01.AI among the recipients. Beijing started requiring tech companies to obtain approval from regulators to open their LLMs to the public last August. It underscored China's approach towards developing AI technology while striving to keep it under its purview and control. Beijing approved its first batch of AI models in August shortly after the approval process was adopted. Baidu, Alibaba and ByteDance were among China's first companies to receive approvals Chinese regulators then granted two more batches of approvals in November and December before another batch was given the greenlight this month. While the government has not disclosed the exact list of approved companies available for public checks, Securities Times said on Sunday more than 40 AI models have been approved.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon Prime Video has been a free perk for those who subscribe to the ecommerce giant's free shipping service, but if you're a US Prime subscriber, things change from today. We first learned of the planned change back in September of last year, with the implementation date announced in an email to customers in December. If you want to retain the ad-free experience, you have to hand over an extra $2.99 per month. The WSJ notes Amazon's claim that it has a lower ad-load than most ad-supported services. Amazon's presentation said the average ad load per hour is expected to be between two and three-and-half minutes, which would be meaningfully smaller than traditional television and most other streaming services. Some commercials would appear before a program begins playing, while others would interrupt it.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The estate of George Carlin has filed a federal lawsuit against the comedy podcast Dudesy for an hour-long comedy special sold as an AI-generated impression of the late comedian. But a representative for one of the podcast hosts behind the special now admits that it was actually written by a human. In the lawsuit, filed by Carlin manager Jerold Hamza in a California district court, the Carlin estate points out that the special, "George Carlin: I'm Glad I'm Dead," (which was set to "private" on YouTube shortly after the lawsuit was filed) presents itself as being created by an AI trained on decades worth of Carlin's material. That training would, by definition, involve making "unauthorized copies" of "Carlin's original, copyrighted routines" without permission in order "to fabricate a semblance of Carlin's voice and generate a Carlin stand-up comedy routine," according to the lawsuit. Despite the presentation as an AI creation, there was a good deal of evidence that the Dudesy podcast and the special itself were not actually written by an AI, as Ars laid out in detail this week. And in the wake of this lawsuit, a representative for Dudesy host Will Sasso admitted as much to The New York Times. "It's a fictional podcast character created by two human beings, Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen," spokeswoman Danielle Del told the newspaper. "The YouTube video 'I'm Glad I'm Dead' was completely written by Chad Kultgen." Regardless of that admission, Carlin estate lawyer Josh Schiller told the Times that the lawsuit would move forward. "We don't know what they're saying to be true," he said. "What we will know is that they will be deposed. They will produce documents, and there will be evidence that shows one way or another how the show was created."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon will not move forward with a planned acquisition of vacuum-maker iRobot, the two said Monday, citing "no path to regulatory approval" as the deal-breaker. Amazon announced its plan to acquire iRobot for $1.7 billion in August 2022. iRobot said separately that it will lay off about 350 jobs, or 31% of its workforce.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Los Angeles Times reports that after more than 10 years of planning, "Barring weather delays, the space shuttle Endeavour will undergo its final, historic lift starting Monday night, a maneuver no other retired orbiter has undergone..."First, a pair of cranes will hoist the shuttle from a horizontal position to a vertical one; the spacecraft will be attached to a sling, a large metal frame that'll support it during the move. An 11-story crane will lift the tail of Endeavour, while a 40-story crawler crane - about the height of [Los Angeles'] City Hall - will lift the nose. Once the shuttle is pointed toward the stars, the shorter crane will be disconnected, leaving the taller crane to gently swing the orbiter to its final position and lowering it to be affixed with the giant orange external tank. The external tank is attached to twin solid rocket boosters, which are connected to the exhibit's foundation... Once the shuttle full stack is in place, the rest of the museum will be built around it. It could be a few years before it is open to the public, given the construction schedule and additional time needed to install exhibits. "Los Angeles will be home to the only retired space shuttle displayed in a full-stack arrangement as if ready for launch," the article points out. Officials hope to livestream the historic lift on Monday night at 9:30 p.m. PST.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope observed the smallest exoplanet where water vapor has been detected in the atmosphere," writes SciTechDaily. "At only approximately twice Earth's diameter, the planet GJ 9827d could be an example of potential planets with water-rich atmospheres elsewhere in our galaxy.""This would be the first time that we can directly show through an atmospheric detection, that these planets with water-rich atmospheres can actually exist around other stars," said team member Bjorn Benneke of the Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets at Universite de Montreal. "This is an important step toward determining the prevalence and diversity of atmospheres on rocky planets." "Water on a planet this small is a landmark discovery," added co-principal investigator Laura Kreidberg of Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. "It pushes closer than ever to characterizing truly Earth-like worlds." However, it remains too early to tell whether Hubble spectroscopically measured a small amount of water vapor in a puffy hydrogen-rich atmosphere, or if the planet's atmosphere is mostly made of water, left behind after a primeval hydrogen/helium atmosphere evaporated under stellar radiation... Because the planet is as hot as Venus, at 800 degrees Fahrenheit, it definitely would be an inhospitable, steamy world if the atmosphere were predominantly water vapor... "Observing water is a gateway to finding other things," said Thomas Greene, astrophysicist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. "This Hubble discovery opens the door to future study of these types of planets by the James Webb Space Telescope.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Around three hours after its moon lander had touched down, Japan's space agency "decided to switch SLIM off with 12% power remaining to allow for a possible resumption when the sun's angle changed," reports Agence France-Presse. Today there was good news:Japan's Moon lander has resumed operations, the country's space agency said on Monday, indicating that power had been restored after it was left upside down during a slightly haphazard landing. The probe, nicknamed the "moon sniper", had tumbled down a crater slope during its landing on 20 January, leaving its solar batteries facing in the wrong direction and unable to generate electricity... The agency posted on X an image shot by Slim of "toy poodle", a rock observed near the lander.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Someday in the not too distant future, it might no longer be possible to drive a brand-new car faster than 80 mph in California," writes Car and Driver:That's because state senator Scott Wiener earlier this week proposed a new bill that aims to prevent certain new vehicles from going more than 10 mph over the speed limit. In California, the maximum posted speed limit is 70 mph, meaning anything north of 80 mph would be off limits. The Speeding and Fatality Emergency Reduction on California Streets - or SAFER California Streets, for short - is a package of bills that includes SB 961 that was published Tuesday, which essentially calls for speed governors on new cars and trucks built or sold in California starting with the 2027 model year. These vehicles would be required to have an "intelligent speed limiter system" that electronically prevents the driver from speeding above the aforementioned threshold. The speed-limiter tech wouldn't apply to emergency vehicles. There's also language in the bill that the passive device would have the ability to be temporarily disabled by the driver, however, it's unclear in what situations that might apply. The bill also states that automakers would be able to fully disable the speed-limiter, but presumably only for authorized emergency vehicles. The commissioner of the California Highway Patrol could authorize disabling the speed-limiter too at their discretion... The proposed legislation is said to be an attempt to address rising traffic fatalities, which in California have reportedly increased by 22 perecent from 2019 to 2022.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Halo - the TV series - launches its second season on February 8th. But today a trailer premiered during halftime of the pre-Super Bowl football playoff. Gizmodo reports:Even though the Covenant are the other side of Halo's ongoing conflict, the first season of Paramount+'s TV series largely represented them through a human proxy named Makee. With the upcoming second season, the coalition of alien races is set to become a more prominent threat, and that means they'll be getting more proper screentime. IGN had written that Season 1 "isn't a perfect adaptation of the games, but it ultimately succeeds in expanding the series' mythology and taking a more character-driven approach to Master Chief's adventures." This week Paramount+ also released a 28-minute compilation of "Epic Battle Scenes from Season 1, a season which reportedly cost $200 million to film. And now the entertainment site Collider reports on what comes next:While on the set for Halo Season 2, Collider's Steve Weintraub and some other reporters got the chance to sit down with stars Schreiber and Kate Kennedy to discuss how the show will further flesh out the Covenant in the upcoming episodes. Part of that involves expanding their arsenal with new vehicles like the corvette, a class of ships used in the Halo canon by the Covenant for reconnaissance, stealth, and much more. Kennedy placed it among her favorite Season 2 set designs, saying... "It's huge, and what the set guys did for it, and the art department, is really, really impressive. They turned it around so quickly, and it's, like, awe-inspiring, it's huge." Aside from making the Covenant more formidable, Season 2 will also focus on making them more understandable. Part of that involves diving into the thought process of key players within the alien faction, including two that Schreiber could tease. "Yeah, we definitely go into the Covenant mind-state, mentality," he said... In future seasons, Schreiber believes Halo will only continue to develop the Covenant, their motives, and the relationships and allegiances within the coalition as the story of intergalactic war unfolds.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The tech site IT Brew looks at an open-source tool that "uses AI to offer efficiency-minded suggestions to Python coders." Known as "Scalene," the profiler - a kind of debugger for performance issues - has been downloaded more than 900,000 times on GitHub. "It's awesome in general, and amazing for an academic project," UMass professor Emery Berger, who worked with PhD students Sam Stern and Juan Altmayer Pizzorno on the open-source tool, told IT Brew... Scalene measures how much time and memory is spent on each line of code - both on average and at peak, [and] how much time is spent in efficient libraries and how much is spent in Python... By selecting a lightning-bolt icon, a user can "leverage the engine that powers ChatGPT to get an optimization" suggestion, Berger said. In one demo he showed IT Brew, an output recommended a less-memory-intensive move to reduce a very large array created by the code... "If your Python code already runs fast enough, then you don't need a profiler. But if it's running slow, I think it's a very convenient profiler to reach for," Berger said. Link via Dev News .Read more of this story at Slashdot.