Slashdot

Wells Fargo fired more than a dozen employees last month after investigating claims that they were faking work. From a report: The staffers, all in the firm's wealth- and investment-management unit, were "discharged after review of allegations involving simulation of keyboard activity creating impression of active work," according to disclosures filed with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. "Wells Fargo holds employees to the highest standards and does not tolerate unethical behavior," a company spokesperson said in a statement. Devices and software to imitate employee activity, sometimes known as "mouse movers" or "mouse jigglers," took off during the pandemic-spurred work-from-home era, with people swapping tips for using them on social-media sites Reddit and TikTok. Such gadgets are available on Amazon.com for less than $20.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A former Microsoft employee claims the tech giant dismissed his repeated warnings about a security flaw that was later exploited in the SolarWinds hack, prioritizing business interests over customer safety. Andrew Harris, who worked on Microsoft's cloud security team, says he discovered the weakness in 2016 but was told fixing it could jeopardize a multibillion-dollar government contract and the company's competitive edge, ProPublica reported Thursday. The flaw, in a Microsoft product called Active Directory Federation Services, allowed hackers to bypass security measures and access sensitive cloud data. Russian hackers exploited the vulnerability in the 2020 SolarWinds attack, breaching several U.S. agencies. Microsoft continues to deny wrongdoing, insisting customer protection is its top priority. The revelations come at a time when Microsoft is facing increasing scrutiny over its security practices and seeks to expand its government business.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: The Mozilla Foundation,the entity behind the web browser Firefox, is blocking various censorship circumvention add-ons for its browser, including ones specifically to help those in Russia bypass state censorship. The add-ons were blocked at the request of Russia's federal censorship agency, Roskomnadzor -- the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media -- according to a statement by Mozilla to The Intercept. "Following recent regulatory changes in Russia, we received persistent requests from Roskomnadzor demanding that five add-ons be removed from the Mozilla add-on store," a Mozilla spokesperson told The Intercept in response to a request for comment. "After careful consideration, we've temporarily restricted their availability within Russia. Recognizing the implications of these actions, we are closely evaluating our next steps while keeping in mind our local community." Developers of digital tools designed to get around censorship began noticing recently that their Firefox add-ons were no longer available in Russia. On June 8, the developer of Censor Tracker, an add-on for bypassing internet censorship restrictions in Russia and other former Soviet countries, made a post on the Mozilla Foundation's discussion forums saying that their extension was unavailable to users in Russia. The developer of another add-on, Runet Censorship Bypass, which is specifically designed to bypass Roskomnadzor censorship, posted in the thread that their extension was also blocked. The developer said they did not receive any notification from Mozilla regarding the block. Two VPN add-ons, Planet VPN and FastProxy -- the latter explicitly designed for Russian users to bypass Russian censorship -- are also blocked. VPNs, or virtual private networks, are designed to obscure internet users' locations by routing users' traffic through servers in other countries. "It's a kind of unpleasant surprise because we thought the values of this corporation were very clear in terms of access to information, and its policy was somewhat different," said Stanislav Shakirov, the chief technical officer of Roskomsvoboda, a Russian open internet group. "And due to these values, it should not be so simple to comply with state censors and fulfill the requirements of laws that have little to do with common sense."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Roku TV owners are complaining that motion smoothing is "suddenly enabled on their TVs with no way to turn it off," reports The Verge. From the report: Contributors on Reddit and in Roku's community forum reported seeing the change on TCL TVs running on Roku OS 13, as did a few staffers on The Verge. However, for others who have access to "Expert" picture settings, the same update is in place without a change, and the settings to control it are still available. For some people experiencing the problem, they said this is the first time their TV offered Roku's motion smoothing feature at all and that there's nowhere in any menu (either the standard settings or the picture settings available while watching TV) to turn it off. The update notes for Roku OS 13 mention a new "Roku Smart Picture" feature that will optimize based on the content being watched, so there may be a bug there. However, people in older threads have reported similar issues with some Roku devices before. A Roku community moderator responded on the forum that the team is looking into the incident. Roku also offered its typical instructions for disabling the settings, which involves clicking the Star button on the remote during playback and heading to the Action Smoothing submenu under Advanced Picture Settings. [...] Naturally, a lot of people who work in film and television aren't a fan. Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson once went so far as to say it makes "movies look like liquid diarrhea."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kent, Wash.-based Stoke Space successfully completed the first hot-fire test of its reusable Nova launch vehicle's first-stage engine, which reached 350,000 hp in under a second during a two-second test on June 5. GeekWire reports: During the two-second test, the engine ramped up to its target starting power level, producing the equivalent of 350,000 hp in less than a second, and held that power level until shutdown. At full power, the full-flow staged combustion engine is designed to produce over 100,000 pounds of thrust. The rocket engine was designed and manufactured in just 18 months. The medium-lift Nova rocket's first-stage booster will be powered by seven of the engines. Stoke successfully conducted a vertical-takeoff-and-landing test flight of its reusable second stage last September. Since then, the company has been focusing on first-stage development. For the rest of this year, Stoke expects to continue maturing its engine and vehicle design while scaling operations for orbital launch. Stoke Space said last year that it was targeting 2025 for its first orbital test flight -- but that timetable depends on progress in the development program.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg: When Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook and his top deputies this week unveiled a landmark arrangement with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into the iPhone, iPad and Mac, they were mum on the financial terms. Left unanswered on Monday: which company is paying the other as part of a tight collaboration that has potentially lasting monetary benefits for both. But, according to people briefed on the matter, the partnership isn't expected to generate meaningful revenue for either party -- at least at the outset. The arrangement includes weaving ChatGPT, a digital assistant that responds in plain terms to information requests, into Apple's Siri and new writing tools. Apple isn't paying OpenAI as part of the partnership, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the deal terms are private. Instead, Apple believes pushing OpenAI's brand and technology to hundreds of millions of its devices is of equal or greater value than monetary payments, these people said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Chemical and manufacturing groups sued the federal government late Monday (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source) over a landmark drinking-water standard that would require cleanup of so-called forever chemicals linked to cancer and other health risks. The industry groups said that the government was exceeding its authority under the Safe Drinking Water Act by requiring that municipal water systems all but remove six synthetic chemicals, known by the acronym PFAS, that are present in the tap water of hundreds of millions of Americans. The Environmental Protection Agency has said that the new standard, put in place in April, will prevent thousands of deaths and reduce tens of thousands of serious illnesses. The E.P.A.'s cleanup standard was also expected to prompt a wave of litigation against chemical manufacturers by water utilities nationwide trying to recoup their cleanup costs. Utilities have also challenged the stringent new standard, questioning the underlying science and citing the cost of filtering the toxic chemicals out of drinking water. In a joint filing late Monday, the American Chemistry Council and National Association of Manufacturers said the E.P.A. rule was "arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of discretion." The petition was filed in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. In a separate petition, the American Water Works Association and the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies said the E.P.A. had "significantly underestimated the costs" of the rule. Taxpayers could ultimately foot the bill in the form of increased water rates, they said. PFAS, a vast class of chemicals also called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are widespread in the environment. They are commonly found in people's blood, and a 2023 government study of private wells and public water systems detected PFAS chemicals in nearly half the tap water in the country. Exposure to PFAS has been associated with developmental delays in children, decreased fertility in women and increased risk of some cancers, according to the E.P.A. [...] The E.P.A. estimates that it would cost water utilities about $1.5 billion annually to comply with the rule, though utilities have said the costs could be twice that amount. Further reading: Lawyers To Plastic Makers: Prepare For 'Astronomical' PFAS LawsuitsRead more of this story at Slashdot.

Rare Earths Norway has discovered Europe's largest proven deposit of rare earth elements in the Fen Carbonatite Complex, positioning Norway as a key player in Europe's effort to reduce reliance on China's rare earths supply. CNBC reports: Rare Earths Norway said in a June 6 statement that its Fen Carbonatite Complex in the southeast of the country boasts 8.8 million metric tons of total rare earth oxides (TREOs) with a reasonable prospect for economic extraction. Within the TREOs, which are considered vital to the global shift away from fossil fuels, the company says there is an estimated 1.5 million metric tons of magnet-related rare earths which can be used in electric vehicles and wind turbines. The discovery eclipses a massive rare earths deposit found last year in neighboring Sweden. One of the aims of the Critical Raw Materials Act is to extract at least 10% of the European Union's annual demand for rare earths by 2030 and Rare Earths Norway says it hopes to contribute to that goal. Rare Earths Norway said the rare earths deposit in Telemark, roughly 210 kilometers (130 miles) southwest of Oslo, is likely to underscore Norway's position as an integral part of Europe's rare earth and critical raw material value chain.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Following in the European Union's footsteps, Japan's parliament has enacted a law on Wednesday that will prohibit big tech from blocking third-party app stores. AppleInsider reports: The intention of the bill is that it will facilitate competition and reduce app prices. Japan's government reportedly believes that Apple and Google are a duopoly, and that they charge developers high fees that are then passed on to users. Big tech companies with App Stores will also prohibit companies from prioritizing their own services. Google is likely to be hit hardest by this. Violators will initially be fined up to 20% of the domestic revenue of the specific service that broke the law. The fee can increase to 30%, if the behavior continues. The Japanese government's Fair Trade Commission (FTC) will choose which firms to apply it to. Companies that will be regulated will be required to submit compliance reports annually. While it hasn't been explicitly said that Apple and Google must comply, It seems certain that the announcement that they'll be held to the provisions is imminent. The Japan FTC isn't expected to add any Japanese firms to the list. The law likely won't take effect until the end of 2025.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel has begun ferrying around 20 "super loads" across Ohio for the construction of its new $28 billion Ohio One Campus. The extensive planning and coordination required for these shipments are expected to cause road closures and delays during the nine days of transport. Tom's Hardware reports: Intel's new campus coming to New Albany, OH, is in heavy construction, and around 20 super loads are being ferried across Ohio's roads by the Ohio Department of Transportation after arriving at a port of the Ohio River via barge. Four of these loads, including the one hitting the road now, weigh around 900,000 pounds -- that's 400 metric tons, or 76 elephants. The super loads were first planned for February but were delayed due to the immense planning workload. Large crowds are estimated to accumulate on the route, potentially slowing it even further. Intel's 916,000-pound shipment is a "cold box," a self-standing air-processor structure that facilitates the cryogenic technology needed to fabricate semiconductors. The box is 23 feet tall, 20 feet wide, and 280 feet long, nearly the length of a football field. The immense scale of the cold box necessitates a transit process that moves at a "parade pace" of 5-10 miles per hour. Intel is taking over southern Ohio's roads for the next several weeks and months as it builds its new Ohio One Campus, a $28 billion project to create a 1,000-acre campus with two chip factories and room for more. Calling it the new "Silicon Heartland," the project will be the first leading-edge semiconductor fab in the American Midwest, and once operational, will get to work on the "Angstrom era" of Intel processes, 20A and beyond. The Ohio Department of Transportation has shared a timetable for how long this process will take.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Wednesday, Stability AI released weights for Stable Diffusion 3 Medium, an AI image-synthesis model that turns text prompts into AI-generated images. Its arrival has been ridiculed online, however, because it generate images of humans in a way that seems like a step backward from other state-of-the-art image-synthesis models like Midjourney or DALL-E 3. As a result, it can churn out wild anatomically incorrect visual abominations with ease. A thread on Reddit, titled, "Is this release supposed to be a joke? [SD3-2B]" details the spectacular failures of SD3 Medium at rendering humans, especially human limbs like hands and feet. Another thread titled, "Why is SD3 so bad at generating girls lying on the grass?" shows similar issues, but for entire human bodies. AI image fans are so far blaming the Stable Diffusion 3's anatomy fails on Stability's insistence on filtering out adult content (often called "NSFW" content) from the SD3 training data that teaches the model how to generate images. "Believe it or not, heavily censoring a model also gets rid of human anatomy, so... that's what happened," wrote one Reddit user in the thread. The release of Stable Diffusion 2.0 in 2023 suffered from similar problems in depicting humans accurately, and AI researchers soon discovered that censoring adult content that contains nudity also severely hampers an AI model's ability to generate accurate human anatomy. At the time, Stability AI reversed course with SD 2.1 and SD XL, regaining some abilities lost by excluding NSFW content. "It works fine as long as there are no humans in the picture, I think their improved nsfw filter for filtering training data decided anything humanoid is nsfw," wrote another Redditor. Basically, any time a prompt hones in on a concept that isn't represented well in its training dataset, the image model will confabulate its best interpretation of what the user is asking for. And sometimes that can be completely terrifying. Using a free online demo of SD3 on Hugging Face, we ran prompts and saw similar results to those being reported by others. For example, the prompt "a man showing his hands" returned an image of a man holding up two giant-sized backward hands, although each hand at least had five fingers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a new blog post, Adobe said it has updated its terms of service to clarify that it won't train AI on customers' work. The move comes after a week of backlash from users who feared that an update to Adobe's ToS would permit such actions. The clause was included in ToS sent to Creative Cloud Suite users, which claimed that Adobe "may access, view, or listen to your Content through both automated and manual methods -- using techniques such as machine learning in order to improve our Services and Software and the user experience." The Verge reports: The new terms of service are expected to roll out on June 18th and aim to better clarify what Adobe is permitted to do with its customers' work, according to Adobe's president of digital media, David Wadhwani. "We have never trained generative AI on our customer's content, we have never taken ownership of a customer's work, and we have never allowed access to customer content beyond what's legally required," Wadhwani said to The Verge. [...] Adobe's chief product officer, Scott Belsky, acknowledged that the wording was "unclear" and that "trust and transparency couldn't be more crucial these days." Wadhwani says that the language used within Adobe's TOS was never intended to permit AI training on customers' work. "In retrospect, we should have modernized and clarified the terms of service sooner," Wadhwani says. "And we should have more proactively narrowed the terms to match what we actually do, and better explained what our legal requirements are." "We feel very, very good about the process," Wadhwani said in regards to content moderation surrounding Adobe stock and Firefly training data but acknowledged it's "never going to be perfect." Wadhwani says that Adobe can remove content that violates its policies from Firefly's training data and that customers can opt out of automated systems designed to improve the company's service. Adobe said in its blog post that it recognizes "trust must be earned" and is taking on feedback to discuss the new changes. Greater transparency is a welcome change, but it's likely going to take some time to convince scorned creatives that it doesn't hold any ill intent. "We are determined to be a trusted partner for creators in the era ahead. We will work tirelessly to make it so."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The European Union on Wednesday said it would impose higher tariffs on Chinese electric vehicle imports, which it found benefit "heavily from unfair subsidies" and pose a "threat of economic injury" to EV producers in Europe. CNBC reports: On a preliminary basis, the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, concluded that the battery-electric vehicles value chain in China "benefits from unfair subsidization" and pronounced that it is in the EU's interest to impose "provisional countervailing duties" on BEV imports from China. The additional tariffs are the result of an EU probe that began in October. The duties are currently provisional, but will be introduced from July 4 in the event of unfruitful talks with Chinese authorities to reach a resolution, the commission said in a statement. Definitive measures will be placed within four months of the imposition of provisional duties. [...] The bloc is imposing a 38.1% tariff on battery-electric vehicle producers who did not cooperate with its investigation, and a lower 21% duty on carmakers in the Asian country who complied but have not been "sampled." The commission also disclosed a set of individual tariffs, which [Valdis Dombrovskis, the EU commissioner for trade, said] are linked to their cooperation with the probe and with the amount of information they supplied. Rates are lower for those companies who shared details, he added. Main Chinese BEV producer BYD was struck with a 17.4% tariff, with Geely slapped with a 20% duty. The EU has also imposed its 38.1% tariff on autos firm SAIC. All three producers were sampled in the EU probe, which is ongoing. Meanwhile, taxes on imported Chinese EVs in the United States are set to quadruple from 25% to 100%, starting this year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Record: The revelation earlier this year that General Motors had been selling driver behavior patterns to data brokers -- who in turn packaged and resold it to insurers -- has led at least one of two major data brokers to shut down its related product. That data broker, Verisk, disclosed last month that it has stopped accepting data from car makers and no longer sells the information to insurers, according to the organization Privacy4Cars, which received the response after sending the data broker an inquiry. "Verisk received driving data from vehicles manufactured by General Motors, Honda, and Hyundai and may have provided a Driving Behavior Data History Report ("Report") to insurers upon request, as a service provider to such insurers, that included certain data provided by these manufacturers," the Verisk response to Privacy4Cars said. "Please note that Verisk no longer receives this data from these automakers to generate Reports and also no longer provides Reports to insurers," the statement added. While Verisk has stopped selling car company-provided driver behavior patterns to insurers, LexisNexis Risk Solutions continues to prominently promote its driver behavior data product for insurers despite the mounting backlash from state governments, federal officials and consumer groups. LexisNexis Risk Solutions' Telematics OnDemand page remains online, boasting that it is "bringing automakers and insurance carriers together." "By partnering directly with automotive OEMs, LexisNexis is able to turn connected car data into tangible driving behavior insights that can be leveraged within insurance carriers' existing workflows," the page says. Much of LexisNexis Risk Solutions' work remains shrouded in secrecy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google's continued abuse of the Fitbit brand is continuing with the shutdown of the web dashboard;. Fitbit.com used to be both a storefront and a way for users to get a big-screen UI to sift through reams of fitness data. The store closed up shop in April, and now the web dashboard is dying in July. In a post on the "Fitbit Community" forums, the company said: "Next month, wea(TM)re consolidating the Fitbit.com dashboard into the Fitbit app. The web browser will no longer offer access to the Fitbit.com dashboard after July 8, 2024." That's it. There's no replacement and no new Fitness thing Google is more interested in; web functionality is just being removed. Google, we'll remind you, used to be a web company. Now it's a phone app or nothing. Google did the same thing to its own Google Fit product in 2019, killing off the more powerful website in favor of an app focus.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Qualcomm faces potential disruption to its Windows on Arm laptops due to a legal battle with Arm, while MediaTek prepares to enter the market. Qualcomm's exclusivity deal with Microsoft for Copilot+ PCs, based on its Snapdragon SoCs, is set to expire this year. MediaTek plans to launch its own Windows on Arm chip in late 2024, though it's unclear if it has Microsoft's approval. The legal dispute stems from Qualcomm's acquisition of Nuvia, with Arm claiming Nuvia's licenses are non-transferable without permission. Arm terminated the licenses, requiring Qualcomm to stop using processor designs developed under those agreements. Arm asserts current Copilot+ SoCs descend from Nuvia's chips, potentially subjecting them to an injunction if Arm prevails in court. Qualcomm maintains its existing Arm license rights cover its custom CPUs. Both companies declined to comment on the ongoing legal matter.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A hacker has gained access to internal tools used by the location tracking company Tile, including one that processes location data requests for law enforcement, and stolen a large amount of customer data, such as their names, physical addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers, 404 Media reports. From the report: The stolen data itself does not include the location of Tile devices, which are small pieces of hardware users attach to their keys or other items to monitor remotely. But it is still a significant breach that shows how tools intended for internal use by company workers can be accessed and then leveraged by hackers to collect sensitive data en masse. It also shows that this type of company, one which tracks peoples' locations, can become a target for hackers. "Basically I had access to everything," the hacker told 404 Media in an online chat. The hacker says they also demanded payment from Tile but did not receive a response. Tile sells various tracking devices which can be located through Tile's accompanying app. Life360, another location data focused company, acquired Tile in November 2021. The hacker says they obtained login credentials for a Tile system that they believe belonged to a former Tile employee. One tool specifically says it can be used to "initiate data access, location, or law enforcement requests." Users can then lookup Tile customers by their phone number or another identifier, according to a screenshot of the tool.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Activision has clarified Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 isn't 309GB after all -- or at least, you can download the core of it for less. From a report: This is despite Xbox's store page for the game stating that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's install size is a rather chunky 309.85 GB. This made many heads turn, because that seemed excessive. The Call of Duty team has now issued a correction with more detail. Writing on social media platform X, Activision stated the file size currently listed for Black Ops 6 "does not represent the download size or disk footprint" for its upcoming Call of Duty game. "The sizes as shown include the full installations of Modern Warfare 2, Modern Warfare 3, Warzone and all relevant content packs, including all localised languages combined which is not representative of a typical player install experience," it explained, before adding: "Players will be able to download Black Ops 6 at launch without downloading any other Call of Duty titles or all of the language packs."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is prioritizing enforcement actions against major technology companies that cause the most harm, FTC Chair Lina Khan said at an event. Khan emphasized the importance of targeting "mob bosses" rather than lower-level offenders to effectively address illegal behaviors in the industry. The FTC has recently launched antitrust probes into Microsoft, Open AI, and Nvidia, and has taken legal action against Meta, Amazon, Google, and Apple in recent years. TechCrunch adds: Khan said that in any given year, the FTC sees up to 3,000 merger filings reported to the agency and that around 2% of those deals get a second look by the government. "So you have 98% of deals that, for the most part, are going through," she said. "If you are a startup or a founder that is eager for an acquisition as an exit, a world in which you have five or six or seven or eight potential suitors, I would think, is a better world in which you just have one or two, right? And so, actually promoting more competition at that level to ensure that startups have you know more of a fair chance of getting a better valuation, I think would be beneficial as well."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report An unofficial site tracking titles in the Epic Games library may have just leaked a ton of upcoming games, as reported earlier by Wccftech. The site, called EpicDB, was taken offline shortly after it posted information scraped from the Epic Games Store catalog on Monday, but that didn't stop people from scanning the list and posting their findings. You can see the list of games from publishers like Bethesda, Sega, Sony, Square Enix, and others in a series of screenshots posted by a user on a ResetEra forum. While some, like Turok, are easy to spot, others are listed under previously rumored codenames, such as "Parkside" or BioShock 4. There are still other titles under codenames we haven't heard about. Some users speculate that "Momo" could point to a Final Fantasy 9 remake, while "Selma" may be the PC port of Red Dead Redemption 1. The codename "Utah" could also hint at the PC version of The Last of Us Part 2, which is rumored to be almost ready to launch.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

T-Mobile's recent price hikes of up to $5 per line on older smartphone plans have left many customers shocked due to the company's previous "Un-contract" promise. Announced in 2017, T-Mobile pledged never to change the price customers pay for their plans. However, a now-removed FAQ revealed that the guarantee only ensured T-Mobile would pay the final month's charges if prices increased and customers chose to leave within 60 days. The price increases affect various plans, despite T-Mobile's earlier promises of "no crazy strings, no hoops to jump through, no hidden fees, no BS."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple's upcoming macOS 15 Sequoia will allow users to sign into iCloud and other Apple ID-related services from within virtual machines. This feature will be available for VMs running macOS 15 or newer, hosted on a Mac with macOS 15 or newer. ArsTechnica adds: But up until now, you haven't been able to sign into iCloud using macOS on a VM. This made the feature less useful for developers or users hoping to test iCloud features in macOS, or whose apps rely on some kind of syncing with iCloud, or people who just wanted easy access to their iCloud data from within a VM.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Waymo is issuing a voluntary software recall after one of its driverless vehicles collided with a telephone pole in Phoenix, Arizona, last month, the company said. The vehicle was damaged, but no passengers or bystanders were hurt in the incident. From a report: The company is filing the recall with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) after completing a software update to 672 vehicles -- the total number of driverless-capable vehicles in Waymo's fleet. The update corrects an error in the software that "assigned a low damage score" to the telephone pole, and updates its map to account for the hard road edge in the alleyway that was not previously included. This is Waymo's second recall ever, after two minor collisions prompted a recall of 444 vehicles last February. And it comes at a time of increased regulatory scrutiny of the driverless vehicle industry, in which federal investigators are probing almost all the major companies operating autonomous vehicles in the US.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Morgan Stanley, in a note -- seen by Slashdot -- sent to its clients on Wednesday: From our continuing discussions with automotive management teams and industry experts, the car is an extension of the phone. The phone is an extension of the car. The lines between car and phone are truly blurring. For years, we have been writing about the potential for Tesla to expand into edge compute domains beyond the car, including last October where we described a mobile AI assistant as a 'heavy key.' Following Apple's WWDC, Tesla CEO Elon Musk re-ignited the topic by saying that making such a device is 'not out of the question.' As Mr. Musk continues to invest further into his own LLM/genAI efforts, such as 'Grok,' the potential strategic and userexperience overlap becomes more obvious. From an automotive perspective, the topic of supercomputing at both the datacenter level and at the edge are highly relevant given the incremental global unit sold is a car that can perform OTA updates of firmware, has a battery with a stored energy equivalent of approx. 2,000 iPhones, and a liquid cooled inference supercomputer as standard kit. What if your phone could tap into your vehicle's compute power and battery supply to run AI applications? Edge compute and AI have brought to light some of the challenges (battery life, thermal, latency, etc.) of marrying today's smartphones with ever more powerful AI-driven applications. Numerous media reports have discussed OpenAI potentially developing a consumer device specifically designed for AI. The phone as a (heavy) car key? Any Tesla owner will tell you how they use their smartphone as their primary key to unlock their car as well as running other remote applications while they interact with their vehicles. The 'action button' on the iPhone 15 potentially takes this to a different level of convenience.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Hackers working for the Chinese government gained access to more than 20,000 VPN appliances sold by Fortinet using a critical vulnerability that the company failed to disclose for two weeks after fixing it, Netherlands government officials said. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2022-42475, is a heap-based buffer overflow that allows hackers to remotely execute malicious code. It carries a severity rating of 9.8 out of 10. A maker of network security software, Fortinet silently fixed the vulnerability on November 28, 2022, but failed to mention the threat until December 12 of that year, when the company said it became aware of an "instance where this vulnerability was exploited in the wild." On January 11, 2023 -- more than six weeks after the vulnerability was fixed -- Fortinet warned a threat actor was exploiting it to infect government and government-related organizations with advanced custom-made malware. Netherlands government officials wrote in Monday's report: Since the publication in February, the MIVD has continued to investigate the broader Chinese cyber espionage campaign. This revealed that the state actor gained access to at least 20,000 FortiGate systems worldwide within a few months in both 2022 and 2023 through the vulnerability with the identifier CVE-2022-42475 . Furthermore, research shows that the state actor behind this campaign was already aware of this vulnerability in FortiGate systems at least two months before Fortinet announced the vulnerability. During this so-called 'zero-day' period, the actor alone infected 14,000 devices. Targets include dozens of (Western) governments, international organizations and a large number of companies within the defense industry. The state actor installed malware at relevant targets at a later date. This gave the state actor permanent access to the systems. Even if a victim installs security updates from FortiGate, the state actor continues to have this access. It is not known how many victims actually have malware installed. The Dutch intelligence services and the NCSC consider it likely that the state actor could potentially expand its access to hundreds of victims worldwide and carry out additional actions such as stealing data. Even with the technical report on the COATHANGER malware, infections from the actor are difficult to identify and remove. The NCSC and the Dutch intelligence services therefore state that it is likely that the state actor still has access to systems of a significant number of victims.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SoftBank has developed AI voice-conversion technology aimed at reducing the psychological stress on call center operators by altering the voices of angry customers to sound calmer. Japan's The Asahi Shimbun reports: The company launched a study on "emotion canceling" three years ago, which uses AI voice-processing technology to change the voice of a person over a phone call. Toshiyuki Nakatani, a SoftBank employee, came up with the idea after watching a TV program about customer harassment. "If the customers' yelling voice sounded like Kitaro's Eyeball Dad, it would be less scary," he said, referring to a character in the popular anime series "Gegege no Kitaro." The voice-altering AI learned many expressions, including yelling and accusatory tones, to improve vocal conversions. Ten actors were hired to perform more than 100 phrases with various emotions, training the AI with more than 10,000 pieces of voice data. The technology does not change the wording, but the pitch and inflection of the voice is softened. For instance, a woman's high-pitched voice is lowered in tone to sound less resonant. A man's bass tone, which may be frightening, is raised to a higher pitch to sound softer. However, if an operator cannot tell if a customer is angry, the operator may not be able to react properly, which could just upset the customer further. Therefore, the developers made sure that a slight element of anger remains audible. According to the company, the biggest burdens on operators are hearing abusive language and being trapped in long conversations with customers who will not get off the line -- such as when making persistent requests for apologies. With the new technology, if the AI determines that the conversation is too long or too abusive, a warning message will be sent out, such as, "We regret to inform you that we will terminate our service." [...] The company plans to further improve the accuracy of the technology by having AI learn voice data and hopes to sell the technology starting from fiscal 2025. Nakatani said, "AI is good at handling complaints and can do so for long hours, but what angry customers want is for a human to apologize to them." He said he hopes that AI "will become a mental shield that prevents operators from overstraining their nerves."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lynn Conway, a pioneering computer scientist who made significant contributions to VLSI design and microelectronics, and a prominent advocate for transgender rights, died Sunday from a heart condition. She was 85. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Hiltzik remembers Conway in a column for the Los Angeles Times: As I recounted in 2020, I first met Conway when I was working on my 1999 book about Xerox PARC, Dealers of Lightning, for which she was a uniquely valuable source. In 2000, when she decided to come out as transgender, she allowed me to chronicle her life in a cover story for the Los Angeles Times Magazine titled "Through the Gender Labyrinth." That article traced her journey from childhood as a male in New York's strait-laced Westchester County to her decision to transition. Years of emotional and psychological turmoil followed, even as he excelled in academic studies. [Conway earned bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from Columbia University in 1961, quickly joining a team at IBM to design the world's fastest supercomputer. Despite personal success, she faced significant emotional turmoil, leading to her decision to transition in 1968. Initially supportive, IBM ultimately fired Conway due to their inability to reconcile her transition with the company's conservative image.] The family went on welfare for three months. Conway's wife barred her from contact with her daughters. She would not see them again for 14 years. Beyond the financial implications, the stigma of banishment from one of the world's most respected corporations felt like an excommunication. She sought jobs in the burgeoning electrical engineering community around Stanford, working her way up through start-ups, and in 1973 she was invited to join Xerox's brand new Palo Alto Research Center, or PARC. In partnership with Caltech engineering professor Carver Mead, Conway established the design rules for the new technology of "very large-scale integrated circuits" (or, in computer shorthand, VLSI). The pair laid down the rules in a 1979 textbook that a generation of computer and engineering students knew as "Mead-Conway." VLSI fostered a revolution in computer microprocessor design that included the Pentium chip, which would power millions of PCs. Conway spread the VLSI gospel by creating a system in which students taking courses at MIT and other technical institutions could get their sample designs rendered in silicon. Conway's life journey gave her a unique perspective on the internal dynamics of Xerox's unique lab, which would invent the personal computer, the laser printer, Ethernet, and other innovations that have become fully integrated into our daily lives. She could see it from the vantage point of an insider, thanks to her experience working on IBM's supercomputer, and an outsider, thanks to her personal history. After PARC, she was recruited to head a supercomputer program at the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA -- sailing through her FBI background check so easily that she became convinced that the Pentagon must have already encountered transgender people in its workforce. A figure of undisputed authority in some of the most abstruse corners of computing, Conway was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1989. She joined the University of Michigan as a professor and associate dean in the College of Engineering. In 2002 she married a fellow engineer, Charles Rogers, and with him lived active life -- with a shared passion for white-water canoeing, motocross racing and other adventures -- on a 24-acre homestead not far from Ann Arbor, Mich. In 2020, Conway received a formal apology from IBM for firing her 52 years earlier. Diane Gherson, an IBM senior vice president, told her, "Thanks to your courage, your example, and all the people who followed in your footsteps, as a society we are now in a better place.... But that doesn't help you, Lynn, probably our very first employee to come out. And for that, we deeply regret what you went through -- and know I speak for all of us."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The news was featured on MSN.com: "Prominent Irish broadcaster faces trial over alleged sexual misconduct." At the top of the story was a photo of Dave Fanning. But Mr. Fanning, an Irish D.J. and talk-show host famed for his discovery of the rock band U2, was not the broadcaster in question. "You wouldn't believe the amount of people who got in touch," said Mr. Fanning, who called the error "outrageous." The falsehood, visible for hours on the default homepage for anyone in Ireland who used Microsoft Edge as a browser, was the result of an artificial intelligence snafu. A fly-by-night journalism outlet called BNN Breaking had used an A.I. chatbot to paraphrase an article from another news site, according to a BNN employee. BNN added Mr. Fanning to the mix by including a photo of a "prominent Irish broadcaster." The story was then promoted by MSN, a web portal owned by Microsoft. The story was deleted from the internet a day later, but the damage to Mr. Fanning's reputation was not so easily undone, he said in a defamation lawsuit filed in Ireland against Microsoft and BNN Breaking. His is just one of many complaints against BNN, a site based in Hong Kong that published numerous falsehoods during its short time online as a result of what appeared to be generative A.I. errors. Mr. Fanning's complaint against BNN is one of many. The site based published numerous falsehoods during its short time online.Credit...Paulo Nunes dos Santos for The New York Times BNN went dormant in April, while The New York Times was reporting this article. The company and its founder did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Microsoft had no comment on MSN's featuring the misleading story with Mr. Fanning's photo or his defamation case, but the company said it had terminated its licensing agreement with BNN. During the two years that BNN was active, it had the veneer of a legitimate news service, claiming a worldwide roster of "seasoned" journalists and 10 million monthly visitors, surpassing the The Chicago Tribune's self-reported audience. Prominent news organizations like The Washington Post, Politico and The Guardian linked to BNN's stories. Google News often surfaced them, too. A closer look, however, would have revealed that individual journalists at BNN published lengthy stories as often as multiple times a minute, writing in generic prose familiar to anyone who has tinkered with the A.I. chatbot ChatGPT. BNN's "About Us" page featured an image of four children looking at a computer, some bearing the gnarled fingers that are a telltale sign of an A.I.-generated image. "How easily the site and its mistakes entered the ecosystem for legitimate news highlights a growing concern: A.I.-generated content is upending, and often poisoning, the online information supply," adds The Times. "NewsGuard, a company that monitors online misinformation, identified more than 800 websites that use A.I. to produce unreliable news content. The websites, which seem to operate with little to no human supervision, often have generic names -- such as iBusiness Day and Ireland Top News -- that are modeled after actual news outlets. They crank out material in more than a dozen languages, much of which is not clearly disclosed as being artificially generated, but could easily be mistaken as being created by human writers."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to The Verge, Best Buy conducted another round of layoffs and job restructurings to "right size" the business in response to declining sales post-pandemic. Further layoffs and changes are expected throughout the year. From the report: The layoffs appeared to have mostly targeted in-home sales roles called designers, who would go to customers' homes to help identify products that would work in their space. It's not clear how many were let go, but designers who weren't laid off have been moved into a different, largely in-store role. Also, pay scales for a similar, existing in-store "consultant" position were revamped. Best Buy confirmed the layoffs in an email to The Verge but declined to share how many people were let go or how pay was changing. "Many of our team members were moved to new areas or roles where our customers need it most," Best Buy spokesperson Ryan Furlong told The Verge. He said some employees in Best Buy's "Design and Consult workforce" -- the collection of roles with in-store workers (called consultants) and in-home field sales positions (called designers) -- will be transitioned into a new "Premium Designer role." Best Buy has been drastically restructuring in recent months, responding to factors like falling sales after the pandemic spiked consumer electronics spending. Best Buy CEO Corie Barry told investors in February that they should expect layoffs this year, and two months ago, mass layoffs of Geek Squad employees were reported. Barry repeated similar things during the company's first quarter earnings call in May, saying that many of Best Buy's moves to "right size" its business "are being implemented throughout this year."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Brazil's government is partnering with OpenAI to use AI for expediting the screening and analysis of thousands of lawsuits to reduce costly court losses impacting the federal budget. Reuters reports: The AI service will flag to government the need to act on lawsuits before final decisions, mapping trends and potential action areas for the solicitor general's office (AGU). AGU told Reuters that Microsoft would provide the artificial intelligence services from ChatGPT creator OpenAI through its Azure cloud-computing platform. It did not say how much Brazil will pay for the services. AGU said the AI project would not replace the work of its members and employees. "It will help them gain efficiency and accuracy, with all activities fully supervised by humans," it said. Court-ordered debt payments have consumed a growing share of Brazil's federal budget. The government estimated it would spend 70.7 billion reais ($13.2 billion) next year on judicial decisions where it can no longer appeal. The figure does not include small-value claims, which historically amount to around 30 billion reais annually. The combined amount of over 100 billion reais represents a sharp increase from 37.3 billion reais in 2015. It is equivalent to about 1% of gross domestic product, or 15% more than the government expects to spend on unemployment insurance and wage bonuses to low-income workers next year. AGU did not provide a reason for Brazil's rising court costs.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New York has launched its mobile ID program, "giving residents the option to digitize their driver's license or non-driver ID," reports The Verge. From the report: Beginning today, the New York Mobile ID app is available from Apple's App Store and Google Play. The app can be used for identity verification at airports. A physical license, permit, or non-driver ID is required to activate a mobile ID; you'll need to take a photo of the front and back with your phone during the enrollment process. The news was announced during a media briefing at LaGuardia Airport on Tuesday that included New York's and Transportation Security Administration federal security director Robert Duffy, among other speakers. Their pitch is that mobile IDs "will revolutionize the way New Yorkers protect their identities and will significantly enhance the way they get through security at airports across the nation." State officials are also emphasizing that it's a voluntary option meant for convenience. "When you offer your mobile ID to TSA or anyone else who accepts it, you are in full control of sharing that information. They can only see the information they request to see," Schroeder said. "If you only need to prove your age, you can withhold other information that a verifier doesn't need to see." The app is designed so that your phone remains in your possession at all times -- you should never freely hand a device over to law enforcement -- and shows a QR code that can be scanned to verify your identity. Any changes to your license status such as renewals or suspensions are automatically pushed to the mobile version, and the digital ID also mirrors data like whether you're an organ donor. For now, acceptance of mobile IDs by businesses (and the police) is completely voluntary -- and there's no deadline in place for compliance -- so it's definitely too soon to start leaving your physical one at home. But bars and other small businesses can start accepting them immediately if they install the state's verifier app. The New York Mobile ID app can be used "at nearly 30 participating airports across the country including all terminals at LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports," according to a press release from Governor Kathy Hochul. New York joins a small list of states that have rolled out mobile driver's licenses, including Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, and Utah.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Mercury News: Krista DeWeese has been laid off four times in the last eight years. She wakes up every morning feeling anxious. Will I lose my job today -- again? Will I have enough to pay the rent? Even though she's an educated, experienced marketing professional, worrisome thoughts trail the 47-year-old Fremont native's every waking moment. Currently a contract worker at a health science company, she has been struggling to find secure work that pays enough to keep up with the exorbitant cost of living in the Bay Area. She has a lot of company. The past year has been tough for the Bay Area, as thousands of layoffs skittered across the region. Even workers at Silicon Valley's tech titans -- including Meta, Apple and Google -- have faced job cuts. Since 2022, tech companies in the region have slashed roughly 40,000 jobs. And with each layoff, workers are entering a market that is less friendly to job seekers than it used to be. New research from tech advocacy organization Women Impact Tech, which examined job and salary data nationwide from 2020 to 2023, affirmed what many people already know: companies are tightening their belts -- slicing jobs and salaries alike -- and many people are struggling to find work that pays enough to live comfortably in the Bay Area. Despite having the highest tech salaries in the country, Silicon Valley has experienced the biggest drop in pay compared to other tech hubs, falling 15% from 2022 to 2023, according to Women Impact Tech. And with inflation, DeWeese and others are watching their spending power shrink. More than 10 years ago, she was earning over $100,000 in total compensation. That amount has dropped 15% since she was laid off from Yahoo in 2016, and has not increased since. "I feel like my career has been frozen in time," DeWeese said. "Things have been at a standstill." Paula Bratcher Ratliff, president of New York-based Women Impact Tech, said that the shrinking pay hits especially hard for women, given the continuing gender pay gap. "The Bay Area took one of the largest hits," Ratliff said. "Women make up about 28% of the entire workforce in tech. When you're seeing an overall decline at 15%, and for pay equity, women have not made much traction." [...] Despite the trend of shrinking salaries in the world's tech capital, Ratliff, with Women Impact Tech, doesn't believe it's necessarily a race to the bottom. "Today, about every company is a tech company, whether they're in retail, consumer goods or hospitality," Ratliff said. "There's so many opportunities in tech without having to focus on those jobs with the tech organizations alone. We're seeing great companies emerge." While it's still unclear where the light is at the end of the tunnel for DeWeese, she remains hopeful her situation will improve. "You have to have hope or else you're just going to live in fear of being let go, again and again," she said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yesterday, Apple made waves in the media when it revealed a partnership with OpenAI during its annual WWDC keynote. That announcement centered on Apple's decision to bring ChatGPT natively to iOS 18, including Siri and other first-party apps. During a followup interview on Monday, Apple executives Craig Federighi and John Giannandrea hinted at a possible agreement with Google Gemini and other AI chatbots in the future. 9to5Mac reports: Moderated by iJustine, the interview was held in Steve Jobs Theater this afternoon, featuring a discussion with John Giannandrea, Apple's Senior Vice President of Machine Learning and AI Strategy, and Craig Federighi, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering. During the interview, Federighi specifically referenced Apple's hopes to eventually let users choose between different models to use with Apple Intelligence. While ChatGPT from OpenAI is the only option right now, Federighi suggested that Google Gemini could come as an option down the line: "We think ultimately people are going to have a preference perhaps for certain models that they want to use, maybe one that's great for creative writing or one that they prefer for coding. And so we want to enable users ultimately to bring a model of their choice. And so we may look forward to doing integrations with different models like Google Gemini in the future. I mean, nothing to announce right now, but that's our direction." The decision to focus on ChatGPT at the start was because Apple wanted to "start with the best," according to Federighi.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

British police have arrested two individuals involved in an SMS-based phishing campaign using a unique device police described as a "homemade mobile antenna," "an illegitimate telephone mast," and a "text message blaster." This first-of-its-kind device in the UK was designed to send fraudulent texts impersonating banks and other official organizations, "all while allegedly bypassing network operators' anti-SMS-based phishing, or smishing, defenses," reports The Register. From the report: Thousands of messages were sent using this setup, City of London Police claimed on Friday, with those suspected to be behind the operation misrepresenting themselves as banks "and other official organizations" in their texts. [...] Huayong Xu, 32, of Alton Road in Croydon, was arrested on May 23 and remains the only individual identified by police in this investigation at this stage. He has been charged with possession of articles for use in fraud and will appear at Inner London Crown Court on June 26. The other individual, who wasn't identified and did not have their charges disclosed by police, was arrested on May 9 in Manchester and was bailed. [...] Without any additional information to go on, it's difficult to make any kind of assumption about what these "text message blaster" devices might be. However, one possibility, judging from the messaging from the police, is that the plod are referring to an IMSI catcher aka a Stingray, which acts as a cellphone tower to communicate with people's handhelds. But those are intended primarily for surveillance. What's more likely is that the suspected UK device is perhaps some kind of SIM bank or collection of phones programmed to spam out shedloads of SMSes at a time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A Finnish startup called Flow Computing is making one of the wildest claims ever heard in silicon engineering: by adding its proprietary companion chip, any CPU can instantly double its performance, increasing to as much as 100x with software tweaks. If it works, it could help the industry keep up with the insatiable compute demand of AI makers. Flow is a spinout of VTT, a Finland state-backed research organization that's a bit like a national lab. The chip technology it's commercializing, which it has branded the Parallel Processing Unit, is the result of research performed at that lab (though VTT is an investor, the IP is owned by Flow). The claim, Flow is first to admit, is laughable on its face. You can't just magically squeeze extra performance out of CPUs across architectures and code bases. If so, Intel or AMD or whoever would have done it years ago. But Flow has been working on something that has been theoretically possible -- it's just that no one has been able to pull it off. Central Processing Units have come a long way since the early days of vacuum tubes and punch cards, but in some fundamental ways they're still the same. Their primary limitation is that as serial rather than parallel processors, they can only do one thing at a time. Of course, they switch that thing a billion times a second across multiple cores and pathways -- but these are all ways of accommodating the single-lane nature of the CPU. (A GPU, in contrast, does many related calculations at once but is specialized in certain operations.) "The CPU is the weakest link in computing," said Flow co-founder and CEO Timo Valtonen. "It's not up to its task, and this will need to change." CPUs have gotten very fast, but even with nanosecond-level responsiveness, there's a tremendous amount of waste in how instructions are carried out simply because of the basic limitation that one task needs to finish before the next one starts. (I'm simplifying here, not being a chip engineer myself.) What Flow claims to have done is remove this limitation, turning the CPU from a one-lane street into a multi-lane highway. The CPU is still limited to doing one task at a time, but Flow's Parallel Processing Unit (PPU), as they call it, essentially performs nanosecond-scale traffic management on-die to move tasks into and out of the processor faster than has previously been possible. [...] Flow is just now emerging from stealth, with [about $4.3 million] in pre-seed funding led by Butterfly Ventures, with participation from FOV Ventures, Sarsia, Stephen Industries, Superhero Capital and Business Finland. The primary challenge Flow faces is that for its technology to be integrated, it requires collaboration at the chip-design level. This means chipmakers need to redesign their products to include the PPU, which is a substantial investment. Given the industry's cautious nature and the existing roadmaps of major chip manufacturers, the uptake of this new technology might be slow. Companies are often reluctant to adopt unproven technologies that could disrupt their long-term plans. The white paper can be read here. A Flow Computing FAQ is also available here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Four more U.S. states on Tuesday joined the Justice Department's lawsuit against Apple alleging the iPhone maker is monopolizing smartphone markets, the department said in a statement. From a report: The four states are Indiana, Massachusetts, Nevada and Washington, the Justice Department said. The original lawsuit was filed in March, and 15 states and the District of Columbia joined the lawsuit at the time.The lawsuit alleges that Apple uses its market power to get more money from consumers, developers, content creators, artists, publishers, small businesses and merchants. The civil lawsuit accuses Apple of an illegal monopoly on smartphones, maintained by imposing contractual restrictions on, and withholding critical access from, developers.The Justice Department has previously said Apple charges as much as $1,599 for an iPhone and makes a larger profit than any rival. Officials also said Apple imposes hidden charges on various business partners - from software developers to credit card companies and even rivals such as Alphabet's, Google, in ways that ultimately raise prices for consumers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Since April, a hacker with a history of selling stolen data has claimed a data breach of billions of records -- impacting at least 300 million people -- from a U.S. data broker, which would make it one of the largest alleged data breaches of the year. The data, seen by TechCrunch, on its own appears partly legitimate -- if imperfect. The stolen data, which was advertised on a known cybercrime forum, allegedly dates back years and includes U.S. citizens' full names, their home address history and Social Security numbers -- data that is widely available for sale by data brokers. But confirming the source of the alleged data theft has proven inconclusive; such is the nature of the data broker industry, which gobbles up individuals' personal data from disparate sources with little to no quality control. The alleged data broker in question, according to the hacker, is National Public Data, which bills itself as "one of the biggest providers of public records on the Internet." On its official website, National Public Data claimed to sell access to several databases: a "People Finder" one where customers can search by Social Security number, name and date of birth, address or telephone number; a database of U.S. consumer data "covering over 250 million individuals;" a database containing voter registration data that contains information on 100 million U.S. citizens; a criminal records one; and several more. Malware research group vx-underground said on X (formerly Twitter) that they reviewed the whole stolen database and could "confirm the data present in it is real and accurate."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

schwit1 shares a report: Bill Gates and his energy company are starting construction at their Wyoming site for a next-generation nuclear power plant he believes will "revolutionize" how power is generated. Gates was in the tiny community of Kemmerer Monday to break ground on the project. The co-founder of Microsoft is chairman of TerraPower. The company applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in March for a construction permit for an advanced nuclear reactor that uses sodium, not water, for cooling. If approved, it would operate as a commercial nuclear power plant. The site is adjacent to PacifiCorp's Naughton Power Plant, which will stop burning coal in 2026 and natural gas a decade later, the utility said. Nuclear reactors operate without emitting planet-warming greenhouse gases. PacifiCorp plans to get carbon-free power from the reactor and says it is weighing how much nuclear to include in its long-range planning. The work begun Monday is aimed at having the site ready so TerraPower can build the reactor as quickly as possible if its permit is approved. Russia is at the forefront for developing sodium-cooled reactors.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Chromebook refresh looms despite Google trying to extend the life of laptops by offering a decade of service updates for models sold since 2021. From a report: Sales of the hardware, which flew off the shelves during the pandemic, ran out of steam in 2022 after buyers had their fill. The US education market generally accounts for 70 to 80 percent of annual orders. The sharp downturn left some vendors holding excess inventory. Yet the refresh cycle may be starting again, according to HP boss Enrique Lores. "So we have started to see a pickup of demand in education, and this, especially in the US, is a Chromebook opportunity," he told an audience of investors at Bernstein's 40th Annual Strategic Decision Conference. He forecast a flurry of activity in 2025 for "many million of units" from education but downplayed the impact on HP's balance sheet because the company pulled back from the product line after the pandemic. Lores said: "We are going after these deals because we think it's good, but it's not like ... a huge impact on the company."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The dream of perpetual, emissionless flight is getting closer to reality. Aviation giants, telecoms, investors, and military agencies are pouring millions into developing these prototypes, which could revolutionize aerial surveillance, emergency communications, and more. Solar planes absorb energy via panels covering their wings and bodies, allowing them to fly indefinitely as long as the sun shines. Advances in battery technology now enable longer flights and overnight operation, albeit with less power than jet fuel. These slow, lightweight aircraft can fly at altitudes and durations impossible for humans, making them ideal for monitoring, telecom, and disaster response.Companies like BAE Systems, Airbus, and Skydweller are racing to commercialize solar planes, with hopes of offering services by 2026-2027. The unregulated stratosphere is a key focus, with planes acting as "steerable satellites." WSJ adds: Most of the companies trying to commercialize solar planes are building aircraft that are lightweight, autonomous and can fly at altitudes and for lengths of time that humans can't tolerate. Unlike balloons, solar planes are steerable, a big advantage for monitoring a target on the ground or providing telecom coverage without being blown off course. They are also cheaper and closer to Earth than satellites, putting them in a sweet spot for services that can't currently be offered by either, executives in charge of solar-aircraft projects say. The planes can capture higher resolution photos or video than satellites, or deliver broadband internet from the air, another thing satellites can't do.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is making changes to Outlook for consumers to enhance account security as part of its Secure Future Initiative. Starting September 16th, the company will end support for Basic Authentication for Outlook personal accounts, requiring users to access their email through apps using Modern Authentication. Microsoft will also remove the light version of the Outlook web application on August 19th and discontinue support for Gmail accounts in Outlook.com on June 30th. Users of affected email apps will be notified by the end of June to update their settings or reconfigure their accounts. The latest versions of Outlook, Apple Mail, and Thunderbird will support these changes, while the new Outlook for Windows and Mac apps will continue to support Gmail accounts. Microsoft is also migrating Windows Mail and Calendar users to the new Outlook for Windows app ahead of ending support for the built-in apps later this year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

storkus shares a report: Starting from 2030, Mastercard will no longer require Europeans to enter their card numbers manually when checking out online -- no matter what platform or device they're using. Mastercard will announce Tuesday in a fireside chat with CNBC that, by 2030, all cards it issues on its network in Europe will be tokenized. In other words, instead of the 16-digit card number we're all accustomed to using for transactions, this will be replaced with a randomly generated "token." The firm says it's been working with banks, fintechs, merchants and other partners to phase out manual card entry for e-commerce by 2030 in Europe, in favor of a one-click button across all online platforms. This will ensure that consumers' cards are secure against fraud attempts, Mastercard says. Users won't have to keep entering passwords every time they try to make a payment, as Mastercard is introducing passkeys that replace passwords. storkus comments: "This story, as currently written, says nothing about their plans outside Europe but in the past the USA in particular has been dead last in getting this kind of tech."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Abstract of a paper published on Nature: Personal names are a universal feature of human language, yet few analogues exist in other species. While dolphins and parrots address conspecifics by imitating the calls of the addressee, human names are not imitations of the sounds typically made by the named individual. Labelling objects or individuals without relying on imitation of the sounds made by the referent radically expands the expressive power of language. Thus, if non-imitative name analogues were found in other species, this could have important implications for our understanding of language evolution. Here we present evidence that wild African elephants address one another with individually specific calls, probably without relying on imitation of the receiver. We used machine learning to demonstrate that the receiver of a call could be predicted from the call's acoustic structure, regardless of how similar the call was to the receiver's vocalizations. Moreover, elephants differentially responded to playbacks of calls originally addressed to them relative to calls addressed to a different individual. Our findings offer evidence for individual addressing of conspecifics in elephants. They further suggest that, unlike other non-human animals, elephants probably do not rely on imitation of the receiver's calls to address one another.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Who would have thought that Raspberry Pi, the maker of the tiny, cheap, single-board computers, would become a public company? Yet, this is exactly what's happening: Raspberry Pi priced its IPO on the London Stock Exchange on Tuesday morning at $3.56 per share, valuing it at $689 million. Shortly after that, the company's shares jumped a nice 32% to $4.70. It means that Raspberry Pi could end up raising more than $200 million during its IPO process. Raspberry Pi has sold 60 million units since its inception. In 2023 alone, Raspberry Pi generated $266 million in revenue and $66 million in gross profit. Raspberry Pi Ltd, the public company, is the commercial subsidiary of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The Foundation says it wants to make it easier for people to learn coding through a low-cost, programmable computer. It also remains the main shareholder of Raspberry Pi Ltd.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: A committee of independent advisers to the Food and Drug Administration voted unanimously on Monday that the benefits outweigh the risks of the newest experimental drug for Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's afflicts more than six million Americans. It has no cure, and there is no treatment or lifestyle modification that can restore memory loss or reverse cognitive decline. The drug, made by Eli Lilly, is donanemab. It modestly slowed cognitive decline in patients in the early stages of the disease but also had significant safety risks, including swelling and bleeding in the brain. The committee concluded, though, that the consequences of Alzheimer's are so dire that even a modest benefit can be worthwhile. The F.D.A. usually follows the advice of the agency's advisory committees but not always. The drug is based on a long-held hypothesis that Alzheimer's disease begins when rough hard balls of amyloid, a protein, pile up in patients' brains, followed by a cascade of reactions leading to the death of neurons. The idea is to treat Alzheimer's by attacking amyloid, clearing it from the brain. Two similar amyloid-fighting drugs were approved recently: Leqembi, made by Eisai and Biogen, was approved last year. That drug's risks and modest benefits are similar to those of donanemab. Aduhelm, made by Biogen, is the other drug and was approved in 2021 but was discontinued because there was insufficient evidence that it could benefit patients. Donanemab was expected to be approved earlier this year, but in March, the F.D.A. decided that, instead, it would require donanemabto undergo the scrutiny of an independent advisory committee, a surprise to Eli Lilly. The vote, said Dr. Daniel Skovronsky, chief scientific officer at Lilly, confirmed his 25-year quest to find a way to intervene in the Alzheimer's disease. Now, he said, the company is starting a study that, it hopes, will stop the disease before symptoms even begin. At issue before the committee on Monday were some unusual aspects of donanemab's clinical trials, especially that study participants stopped taking the drug as soon as their amyloid was cleared. Some experts questioned whether stopping was the best strategy and whether clinical practice should include halting the treatment after amyloid clearance.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After announcing a shut down date in February, Google's "GPay" app has officially stopped working for users in the U.S. "Starting on June 4, GPay -- as was the name of the app on Android homescreens -- automatically signed US users out," reports 9to5Google. "Attempting to login again explains how: 'The Google Pay US app is no longer available. You can still tap to pay using the Google Wallet app.'" From the report: Additionally, Google no longer offers peer-to-peer payments in the US. You can use the Google Pay website to view and transfer your balance -- money you've received or rewards -- to a bank account after June. The focus is now on Google Wallet and digitizing everything in your physical wallet. There's no equivalent finance tracking functionality. Meanwhile, "Google Pay" still exists as the name for what you're actually using when making a physical or online purchase with your phone.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scientists have discovered early morning frost on the summits of Martian volcanoes near the planet's equator, indicating that water ice forms overnight in colder months and evaporates after sunrise. "While the frosty layer is exceptionally thin, it covers an enormous area," reports The Guardian. "Scientists calculate that in the more frigid Martian seasons, 150,000 tons of water, equivalent to 60 Olympic swimming pools, condense daily on the tops of the towering mountains." From the report: "It's the first time we've discovered water frost on the volcano summits and the first time we've discovered water frost in the equatorial regions of Mars," said Adomas Valantinas, a planetary scientist at the University of Berne in Switzerland and Brown University in the US. "What we're seeing could be a trace of a past Martian climate," Valantinas said of the frost-tipped volcanoes. "It could be related to atmospheric climate processes that were operating earlier in Martian history, maybe millions of years ago." Valantinas spotted the frost-capped volcanoes in high-resolution colour images snapped in the early morning hours on Mars by the European Space Agency's Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO). With colleagues, he confirmed the discovery using a spectrometer on TGO and further images taken by the agency's Mars Express orbiter. The frost appears as a bluish hue on the caldera floors and is absent from well-lit slopes. [...] [W]riting in Nature Geoscience, the researchers describe how Martian winds may blow up the mountainsides and carry more moist air into the calderas where it condenses and settles as frost at particular times of year. Modeling of the process suggests the frost is water ice as the peaks are not cold enough for carbon dioxide frost to form.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: A study claims to have proof of what some have suspected: return to office mandates are just back-channel layoffs and post-COVID work culture is making everyone miserable. HR software biz BambooHR surveyed more than 1,500 employees, a third of whom work in HR. The findings suggest the return to office movement has been a poorly-executed failure, but one particular figure stands out -- a quarter of executives and a fifth of HR professionals hoped RTO mandates would result in staff leaving. While that statistic essentially admits the quiet part out loud, there was some merit to that belief. People did quit when RTO mandates were enforced at many of the largest companies, but it wasn't enough, the study reports. More than a third (37 percent) of respondents in leadership roles believed their employers had undertaken layoffs in the past 12 months as a result of too few people quitting in protest of RTO mandates, the study found. Nearly the same number thought their management wanted employees back in the office to monitor them more closely. The end result has been the growth of a different office culture, one that's even more performative, suspicious, and divisive than before the COVID pandemic, the study concludes. According to the report, most employees working remotely and in-person both feel the need to demonstrate productivity, which for more than a third of employees means being seen socializing and moving around the office. That intense need to be visible may actually be harming productivity, study author and BambooHR's own head of HR Anita Grantham concluded in her findings. A full 42 percent of employees who responded to the Bamboo survey said they show up solely to be seen by bosses and managers. If bosses think their presence in the office is making any difference to the amount of work getting done, the results indicate that's not the case. Remote employees and in-office employees both report spending around two hours of every day not working. Those in-office ones, of course, are probably spending those ten hours a week looking as busy as possible. Away from the office, employees feel the need to demonstrate presence by being hyper-available and never going offline -- the so-called "green status effect," the data suggests. "The distrusting and performative cultures some companies are cultivating are harmful to bottom-line growth," Grantham said, adding that RTO policies are okay, but not if they don't consider individual employee needs. "The conversation around work modes is one of the most important things to address and get clear on as a business," Grantham said. "It often gets reduced to just RTO, but it's actually a much bigger conversation."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The New York Times has confirmed that its internal source code was leaked on 4chan after being stolen from the company's GitHub repositories in January 2024. BleepingComputer reports: As first seen by VX-Underground, the internal data was leaked on Thursday by an anonymous user who posted a torrent to a 273GB archive containing the stolen data. "Basically all source code belonging to The New York Times Company, 270GB," reads the 4chan forum post. "There are around 5 thousand repos (out of them less than 30 are additionally encrypted I think), 3.6 million files total, uncompressed tar." While BleepingComputer did not download the archive, the threat actor shared a text file containing a complete list of the 6,223 folders stolen from the company's GitHub repository. The folder names indicate that a wide variety of information was stolen, including IT documentation, infrastructure tools, and source code, allegedly including the viral Wordle game. A 'readme' file in the archive states that the threat actor used an exposed GitHub token to access the company's repositories and steal the data. The company said that the breach of its GitHub account did not affect its internal corporate systems and had no impact on its operations. The Times said in a statement to BleepingComputer: "The underlying event related to yesterday's posting occurred in January 2024 when a credential to a cloud-based third-party code platform was inadvertently made available. The issue was quickly identified and we took appropriate measures in response at the time. There is no indication of unauthorized access to Times-owned systems nor impact to our operations related to this event. Our security measures include continuous monitoring for anomalous activity."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jay Peters reports via The Verge: The iPad is finally getting a Calculator app as part of iPadOS 18. The long-requested app was just announced by Apple at WWDC 2024. On its face, the app looks a lot like the calculator you might be familiar with from iOS. But it also supports Apple Pencil, meaning that you can write down math problems and the app will solve them thanks to a feature Apple calls Math Notes. Other features included in iPadOS 18 include a new, customizable floating tab bar; enhanced SharePlay functionality for easier screen sharing and remote control of another person's iPad; and Smart Script, a handwriting feature that refines and improves legibility using machine learning.Read more of this story at Slashdot.