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Generative AI "doesn't easily carry over into robotics," write two researchers in IEEE Spectrum, "because the Internet is not full of robotic-interaction data in the same way that it's full of text and images." That's why they're working on a single deep neural network capable of piloting many different types of robots... Robots need robot data to learn from, and this data is typically created slowly and tediously by researchers in laboratory environments for very specific tasks... The most impressive results typically only work in a single laboratory, on a single robot, and often involve only a handful of behaviors... [W]hat if we were to pool together the experiences of many robots, so a new robot could learn from all of them at once? We decided to give it a try. In 2023, our labs at Google and the University of California, Berkeley came together with 32 other robotics laboratories in North America, Europe, and Asia to undertake the RT-X project, with the goal of assembling data, resources, and code to make general-purpose robots a reality... The question is whether a deep neural network trained on data from a sufficiently large number of different robots can learn to "drive" all of them - even robots with very different appearances, physical properties, and capabilities. If so, this approach could potentially unlock the power of large datasets for robotic learning. The scale of this project is very large because it has to be. The RT-X dataset currently contains nearly a million robotic trials for 22 types of robots, including many of the most commonly used robotic arms on the market... Surprisingly, we found that our multirobot data could be used with relatively simple machine-learning methods, provided that we follow the recipe of using large neural-network models with large datasets. Leveraging the same kinds of models used in current LLMs like ChatGPT, we were able to train robot-control algorithms that do not require any special features for cross-embodiment. Much like a person can drive a car or ride a bicycle using the same brain, a model trained on the RT-X dataset can simply recognize what kind of robot it's controlling from what it sees in the robot's own camera observations. If the robot's camera sees a UR10 industrial arm, the model sends commands appropriate to a UR10. If the model instead sees a low-cost WidowX hobbyist arm, the model moves it accordingly. "To test the capabilities of our model, five of the laboratories involved in the RT-X collaboration each tested it in a head-to-head comparison against the best control system they had developed independently for their own robot... Remarkably, the single unified model provided improved performance over each laboratory's own best method, succeeding at the tasks about 50 percent more often on average." And they then used a pre-existing vision-language model to successfully add the ability to output robot actions in response to image-based prompts. "The RT-X project shows what is possible when the robot-learning community acts together... and we hope that RT-X will grow into a collaborative effort to develop data standards, reusable models, and new techniques and algorithms." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Futurepower(R) for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ScienceAlert reminds us that plants exude "a fine mist of airborne compounds that they use to communicate and protect themselves." And while they've been detected in over 80 plant species, now researchers have applied real-time imaging techniques "to reveal how plants receive and respond to these aerial alarms."Yuri Aratani and Takuya Uemura, molecular biologists at Saitama University in Japan, and colleagues rigged up a pump to transfer compounds emitted by injured and insect-riddled plants onto their undamaged neighbors, and a fluorescence microscope to watch what happened. Caterpillars (Spodoptera litura) were set upon leaves cut from tomato plants and Arabidopsis thaliana, a common weed in the mustard family, and the researchers imaged the responses of a second, intact, insect-free Arabidopsis plant to those danger cues. These plants weren't any ordinary weeds: they had been genetically altered so their cells contained a biosensor that fluoresced green when an influx of calcium ions was detected... [T]he team visualized how plants responded to being bathed in volatile compounds, which plants release within seconds of wounding. It wasn't a natural set-up; the compounds were concentrated in a plastic bottle and pumped onto the recipient plant at a constant rate, but this allowed the researchers to analyze what compounds were in the pungent mix... [T]he undamaged plants received the messages of their injured neighbors loud and clear, responding with bursts of calcium signaling that rippled across their outstretched leaves... [G]uard cells generated calcium signals within a minute or so, after which mesophyll cells picked up the message... "We have finally unveiled the intricate story of when, where, and how plants respond to airborne 'warning messages' from their threatened neighbors," says Masatsugu Toyota, a molecular biologist at Saitama University in Japan and senior author of the study.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times imagines a world after "the largest coordinated deepfake attack in history... a steady flow of new deepfakes, mostly manufactured in Russia, North Korea, China and Iran."The breakthrough actually came in early 2026 from a working group of digital journalists from U.S. and international news organizations. Their goal was to find a way to keep deepfakes out of news reports... Journalism organizations formed the FAC Alliance - "Fact Authenticated Content" - based on a simple insight: There was already far too much AI fakery loose in the world to try to enforce a watermarking system for dis- and misinformation. And even the strictest labeling rules would simply be ignored by bad actors. But it would be possible to watermark pieces of content that deepfakes. And so was born the voluntary FACStamp on May 1, 2026... The newest phones, tablets, cameras, recorders and desktop computers all include software that automatically inserts the FACStamp code into every piece of visual or audio content as it's captured, before any AI modification can be applied. This proves that the image, sound or video was not generated by AI. You can also download the FAC app, which does the same for older equipment... [T]o retain the FACStamp, your computer must be connected to the non-profit FAC Verification Center. The center's computers detect if the editing is minor - such as cropping or even cosmetic face-tuning - and the stamp remains. Any larger manipulation, from swapping faces to faking backgrounds, and the FACStamp vanishes. It turned out that plenty of people could use the FACStamp. Internet retailers embraced FACStamps for videos and images of their products. Individuals soon followed, using FACStamps to sell goods online - when potential buyers are judging a used pickup truck or secondhand sofa, it's reassuring to know that the image wasn't spun out or scrubbed up by AI. The article envisions the world of 2028, with the authentication stamp appearing on everything from social media posts to dating app profiles:Even the AI industry supports the use of FACStamps. During training runs on the internet, if an AI program absorbs excessive amounts of AI-generated rather than authentic data, it may undergo "model collapse" and become wildly inaccurate. So the FACStamp helps AI companies train their models solely on reality. A bipartisan group of senators and House members plans to introduce the Right to Reality Act when the next Congress opens in January 2029. It will mandate the use of FACStamps in multiple sectors, including local government, shopping sites and investment and real estate offerings. Counterfeiting a FACStamp would become a criminal offense. Polling indicates widespread public support for the act, and the FAC Alliance has already begun a branding campaign. But all this leaves Slashdot reader Bruce66423 with a question. "Is it really technically possible to achieve such a clear distinction, or would, in practice, AI be able to replicate the necessary authentication?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last April the Python Software Foundation warned that Europe's proposed Cyber Resilience Act jeopardized their organization and "the health of the open-source software community" with overly broad policies that "will unintentionally harm the users they are intended to protect." They'd worried that the Python Software Foundation could incur financial liabilities just for hosting Python and its PyPI package repository due to the proposed law's attempts to penalize cybersecurity lapses all the way upstream. But a new blog post this week cites some improvements:We asked for increased clarity, specifically: "Language that specifically exempts public software repositories that are offered as a public good for the purpose of facilitating collaboration would make things much clearer. We'd also like to see our community, especially the hobbyists, individuals and other under-resourced entities who host packages on free public repositories like PyPI be exempt." The good news is that CRA text changed a lot between the time the open source community - including the PSF - started expressing our concerns and the Act's final text which was cemented on December 1st. That text introduces the idea of an "open source steward." "'open-source software steward' means any legal person, other than a manufacturer, which has the purpose or objective to systematically provide support on a sustained basis for the development of specific products with digital elements qualifying as free and open-source software that are intended for commercial activities, and ensures the viability of those products;" (p. 76) [...] So are we totally done paying attention to European legislation? Ah, while it would be nice for the Python community to be able to cross a few things off our to-do list, that's not quite how it works. Firstly, the concept of an "open source steward" is a brand new idea in European law. So, we will be monitoring the conversation as this new concept is implemented or interacts with other bits of European law to make sure that the understanding continues to reflect the intent and the realities of open source development. Secondly, there are some other pieces of legislation in the works that may also impact the Python ecosystem so we will be watching the Product Liability Directive and keeping up with the discussion around standard-essential patents to make sure that the effects on Python and open source development are intentional (and hopefully benevolent, or at least benign.)Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Linux Mint 21.3 is now available to download, reports the blog OMG Obuntu. It's the first version to offer Wayland support in its Cinnamon desktop:Following a successful bout of bug-busting in last month's beta release, Mint devs have gone ahead and rubber-stamped a stable release. Thus, you can reasonably expect to not encounter any major issues when installing or using it... [I]t's based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and continues to use the Linux 5.15 kernel by default, but newer kernels are available to install within the OS... In my own testing I find Cinnamon's Wayland support to be well-rounded. It's not perfect but I didn't hit any major snafus that prevented me from working (though admittedly I did only attempt 'basic' tasks like web browsing, playing music, and adding applets). However, Cinnamon's Wayland support is in an early state, is not enabled by default, and Linux Mint devs expect it won't be good enough for everyone until the 23.x series (due 2026) at the earliest. Still, try it out yourself and see if it works for you. Select the 'Cinnamon on Wayland (Experimental)' session from the login screen session selector, and then login as normal... Additionally, the latest version of Mozilla Firefox is pre-installed (as a deb, not a Snap) Among the new features are a whole new category of desktop add-ons - "Actions" - which upgrade the right-clicking context menu. (So for .iso files there's two new choices: "Verify" or "Make bootable USB stick".) The article says there's also "a raft of smaller refinements," plus "a bevvy of buffs and embellishments" for Linux Mint's homegrown apps. Any Linux Mint users reading Slashdot? Share your thoughts or experiences in the comments...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With subsidiaries like WebMD and CarsDirect, the digital media company "Internet Brands" has over 5,000 employees - and 20 offices in expensive locations like Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York City. Their solution? Create a cheery corporate video on the company's Vimeo account announcing a new (non-negotiable) hybrid return-to-office policy. SFGate.com calls it "the return-to-office fight's most bizarre corporate messaging yet."Executives from Internet Brands' internet brands are so wide-eyed and declarative, they appear to be at their breaking point in wanting more workers at the office. "Too big of a group hasn't returned," CEO Bob Brisco complains, near the video's opening. The vehicle to deliver that message has it all: rapid jump cuts, odd sound mixing and executives clearly reading their lines from teleprompters. There's plainly faked office b-roll and the obvious use of green screens. There's even some enthusiastic (and awkward) sashaying to the New Orleans classic "Iko Iko" - one wonders if participating employees received compensation. Interestingly, "Iko Iko" is a song about a collision between two rival tribes, which opens with a threat to "set your flag on fire." But subtitles on the video translate the song's Creole patois word "Jockamo" into the corporate-positive phrase "we mean business."It's like the executives started their brainstorming session by watching 12 music videos, an iMovie editing tutorial and the entirety of "The Office" Season 1. Mixed in with the corporate b-roll of a copy machine spitting out paper and a too-loud video of a hand crushing a Dr. Pepper can, the company's executives sketch out the vibe of a return-to-office plan - though no specifics. The video ends with CEO Bob Brisco thanking the team, before gently adding "I want to leave you with this. We aren't asking or negotiating at this point. We're informing, of how we need to work together going forward.... "Thank you, in advance, for your help." The video has since started going viral on Reddit's "Work Reform" subreddit, with a headline calling it a "bizarre and cringe video mocking working from home and threatening employees who continue to avoid the office." (This take drew 1,300 upvotes, and 241 comments, like " 'By the way this is a threat' is a nice way to end it.") Footage of at least some of the executives was clearly just spliced in front of still photos showing what offices look like. But besides the wooden delivery, what really struck me is how generic all the words were:"Working together face-to-face helps us create ideas, faster, and better." "We're able to collaborate, and help each other to be better leaders.""We're better when we're together, and we need to be our best - to crush our competition." [Footage of the word "competition" being erased from a whiteboard. And then, of someone crushing a Dr. Pepper can...]Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We already know that a precise range of wavelengths within daylight triggers a light-sensitive photoreceptor in the back of your eye, causing the body's internal clock to reset. Those receptors are called "intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells" (or ipRGCs), according to Science Alert - although the actual color is perceived by some nearby cones (which then send information back to those rceptors). But are our bodies really affected specifically by the perceived color? Chronobiologist Christine Blume investigated with a team from Switzerland's University of Basel and Germany's Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics: Modern scientific wisdom advises us to avoid devices that emit a significant amount of blue radiance, such as our smartphones, computer monitors, and tablets, when we ought to be wrapping ourselves in darkness and resting. There's perfectly sound reasoning for this - the ipRGCs in our eyes react to short wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, roughly 490 nanometers in size... Given blue light scatters from the sky during daylight hours, it makes sense our eyes would use this wavelength as a cue to mark the beginning and end of sleep time... Yet University of Basel chronobiologist Christine Blume had her suspicions that the way a light's mix of wavelengths influenced the color-reading cones could mean there's more to the phenomenon than meets the eye. "A study in mice in 2019 suggested that yellowish light has a stronger influence on the internal clock than bluish light," says Blume. To resolve whether the way cones perceive a range of wavelengths carries any weight in how the blue-triggered ipRGCs function, Blume and her team recruited eight healthy adult men and eight women in a 23-day-long experiment. After habituating to a specific bedtime for a week, the volunteers attended three visits to a lab where they were exposed to a constant controlled 'white' glow, a bright yellow, or dim blue light for one hour in the evening... None of the analyses revealed any indication that the perceived color of the light affected the duration or quality of the volunteers' sleep patterns. Instead, all three light conditions caused a sleep delay, suggesting light in general has a more complicated impact than previously thought. That's not to say ipRGCs aren't affected by 'blue' wavelengths of light. Rather, white light that is packed with blue waves but stimulates cone cells into seeing yellows, reds, or purples could still affect our sleep cycles. Similarly, light that looks blue but isn't intense enough to provoke the ipRGCs into functioning might have little influence over our body's daily rhythms. Phones of the future may one day allow us to switch into a night mode that we don't perceive in warmer tones. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

johnnyb (Slashdot reader #4,816) is a senior software R&D engineer who shares his proposed framework for "what AI legislation should cover, what policy goals it should aim to achieve, and what we should be wary of along the way." Some excerpts? Protect Content Consumers from AI The government should legislate technical and visual markers for AI-generated content, and the FTC should ensure that consumers always know whether or not there is a human taking responsibility for the content. This could be done by creating special content markings which communicate to users that content is AI-generated... This will enable Google to do things such as allow users to not include AI content when searching. It will enable users to detect which parts of their content are AI-generated and apply the appropriate level of skepticism. And future AI language models can also use these tags to know not to consume AI-generated content... Ensure Companies are Clear on Who's Taking Responsibility It's fine for a software product to produce a result that the software company views as advisory only, but it has to be clearly marked as such. Additionally, if one company includes the software built by another company, all companies need to be clear as to which outputs are derived from identifiable algorithms and which outputs are the result of AI. If the company supplying the component is not willing to stand behind the AI results that are produced, then that needs to be made clear. Clarify Copyright Rules on Content Used in Models Note that nothing here limits the technological development of Artificial Intelligence... The goal of these proposals is to give clarity to all involved what the expectations and responsibilities of each party are. OpenAI's Sam Altman has also been pondering this, but on a much larger scale. In a (pre-ouster) interview with Bill Gates, Altman pondered what happens at the next level. That is, what happens "If we are right, and this technology goes as far as we think it's going to go, it will impact society, geopolitical balance of power, so many things..."[F]or these, still hypothetical, but future extraordinarily powerful systems - not like GPT- 4, but something with 100,000 or a million times the compute power of that, we have been socialized in the idea of a global regulatory body that looks at those super-powerful systems, because they do have such global impact. One model we talk about is something like the IAEA. For nuclear energy, we decided the same thing. This needs a global agency of some sort, because of the potential for global impact. I think that could make sense... I think if it comes across as asking for a slowdown, that will be really hard. If it instead says, "Do what you want, but any compute cluster above a certain extremely high-power threshold" - and given the cost here, we're talking maybe five in the world, something like that - any cluster like that has to submit to the equivalent of international weapons inspectors. The model there has to be made available for safety audit, pass some tests during training, and before deployment. That feels possible to me. I wasn't that sure before, but I did a big trip around the world this year, and talked to heads of state in many of the countries that would need to participate in this, and there was almost universal support for it.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An 1979 Atari 8-bit system re-released in a tiny form factor? Yep. Retro Games Ltd. is releasing a "half-sized" version of its very first home computer, the Atari 400, "emulating the whole 8-bit Atari range, including the 400/800, XL and XE series, and the 5200 home console. ("In 1979 Atari brought the computer age home," remembers a video announcement, saying the new device represents "The iconic computer now reimagined.") More info from ExtremeTech:For those of you unfamiliar with it, the Atari 400 and 800 were launched in 1979 as the company's first attempt at a home computer that just happened to double as an incredible game system. That's because, in addition to a faster variant of the excellent 8-bit MOS 6502 CPU found in the Apple II and Commodore PET, they also included Atari's dedicated ANTIC, GTIA, and POKEY coprocessors for graphics and sound, making the Atari 400 and 800 the first true gaming PCs... If it's as good as the other Retro Games systems, the [new] 400Mini will count as another feather in the cap for Atari Interactive's resurgence following its excellent Atari50 compilation, reissued Atari 2600+ console, and acquisitions of key properties including Digital Eclipse, MobyGames, and AtariAge. The 2024 version - launching in the U.K. March 28th - will boast high-definition HDMI output at 720p 50 or 60Hz, along with five USB ports. More details from Retro Games Ltd.Also included is THECXSTICK - a superb recreation of the classic Atari CX-40 joystick, with an additional seven seamlessly integrated function buttons. Play one of the included 25 classic Atari games, selected from a simple to use carousel, including all-time greats such as Berzerk, Missile Command, Lee, Millipede, Miner 2049er, M.U.L.E. and Star Raiders II, or play the games you own from USB stick. Plus save and resume your game at any time, or rewind by up to 30 seconds to help you finish those punishingly difficult classics! Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader elfstones for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Chinese company Betavolt has announced an atomic energy battery for consumers with a touted 50-year lifespan," reports Tom's Hardware:The Betavolt BV100 will be the first product to launch using the firm's new atomic battery technology, constructed using a nickel -63 isotope and diamond semiconductor material. Betavolt says that its nuclear battery will target aerospace, AI devices, medical, MEMS systems, intelligent sensors, small drones, and robots - and may eventually mean manufacturers can sell smartphones that never need charging... [T]he BV100, which is in the pilot stage ahead of mass production, doesn't offer a lot of power. This 15 x 15 x 5mm battery delivers 100 microwatts at 3 volts. It is mentioned that multiple BV100 batteries can be used together in series or parallel depending on device requirements. Betavolt also asserts that it has plans to launch a 1-watt version of its atomic battery in 2025. The new BV100 is claimed to be a disruptive product on two counts. Firstly, a safe miniature atomic battery with 50 years of maintenance-free stamina is a breakthrough. Secondly, Betavolt claims it is the only company in the world with the technology to dope large-size diamond semiconductor materials, as used by the BV100. It is using its 4th Gen diamond semiconductor material here... [T]he Betavolt BV100 is claimed to be safe for consumers and won't leak radiation even if subjected to gunshots or puncture... Betavolt's battery uses a nickel -63 isotope as the energy source, which decays to a stable isotope of copper. This, plus the diamond semiconductor material, helps the BV100 operate stably in environments ranging from -60 to 120 degrees Celsius, according to the firm... Betavolt will be well aware of devices with a greater thirst for power and teases that it is investigating isotopes such as strontium- 90, promethium- 147, and deuterium to develop atomic energy batteries with higher power levels and even longer service lives - up to 230 years. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader hackingbear for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Sal Kahn, the founder and CEO of Khan Academy predicted last year that AI tutoring bots would soon revolutionize education," writes long-time Slashdot reader theodp:theodp writes: His vision of tutoring bots tapped into a decades-old Silicon Valley dream: automated teaching platforms that instantly customize lessons for each student. Proponents argue that developing such systems would help close achievement gaps in schools by delivering relevant, individualized instruction to children faster and more efficiently than human teachers ever could. But some education researchers say schools should be wary of the hype around AI-assisted instruction, warning that generative AI tools may turn out to have harmful or "degenerative" effects on student learning. A ChatGPT-powered tutoring bot was tested last spring at the Khan Academy - and Bill Gates is enthusiastic about that bot and AI education in general (as well as the Khan Academy and AI-related school curriculums). From the original submission:Explaining his AI vision in November, Bill Gates wrote, "If a tutoring agent knows that a kid likes [Microsoft] Minecraft and Taylor Swift, it will use Minecraft to teach them about calculating the volume and area of shapes, and Taylor's lyrics to teach them about storytelling and rhyme schemes. The experience will be far richer-with graphics and sound, for example-and more personalized than today's text-based tutors." The New York Times article notes that similar enthusiasm greeted automated teaching tools in the 1960s, but predictions that that the mechanical and electronic "teaching machines' - which were programmed to ask students questions on topics like spelling or math - would revolutionize education didn't pan out. So, is this time different?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The fuel-leaking Peregrine lunar lander is now "on a parth towards Earth," according to Update #16 from Astrobotic, which predicts their spacecraft "will likely burn up in the Earth's atmosphere.""Our analysis efforts have been challenging due to the propellant leak... The team is currently assessing options and we will update as soon as we are able. The propellant leak has slowed considerably to a point where it is no longer the teams' top priority... We have now been operating in space for 5 days and 8 hours and are about 242,000 miles from Earth. "A soft landing on the Moon is not possible," the announcement emphasizes. NDTV explains:Shortly after it separated from the rocket, the spaceship experienced an onboard explosion and it soon became clear it would not make a soft lunar touchdown because of the amount of the propellant it was losing - though Astrobotic's team were able to power up science experiments they were carrying for NASA and other space agencies, and gather spaceflight data... Astrobotic itself will get another chance in November with its Griffin lander transporting NASA's VIPER rover to the lunar south pole.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

jd (Slashdot reader #1,658) shared this story from BleepingComputer. The article notes that "Multiple implementations of the Kyber key encapsulation mechanism for quantum-safe encryption, are vulnerable to a set of flaws collectively referred to as KyberSlash, which could allow the recovery of secret keys." jd explains that Crystals-Kyber "was chosen to be the U.S. government's post-quantum cryptography system of choice last year, but a side-channel attack has been identified. But in the article, NIST says that this is an implementation-specific attack (the reference implementation) and not a vulnerability in Kyber itself." From the article: CRYSTALS-Kyber is the official implementation of the Kyber key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) for quantum-safe algorithm (QSA) and part of the CRYSTALS (Cryptographic Suite for Algebraic Lattices) suite of algorithms. It is designed for general encryption... The KyberSlash flaws are timing-based attacks arising from how Kyber performs certain division operations in the decapsulation process, allowing attackers to analyze the execution time and derive secrets that could compromise the encryption. If a service implementing Kyber allows multiple operation requests towards the same key pair, an attacker can measure timing differences and gradually compute the secret key... In a KyberSlash1 demo on a Raspberry Pi system, the researchers recovered Kyber's secret key from decryption timings in two out of three attempts... On December 30, KyberSlash2 was patched following its discovery and responsible reporting by Prasanna Ravi, a researcher at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and Matthias Kannwischer, who works at the Quantum Safe Migration Center.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This week on his podcast Bill Gates asked Sam Altman how his team is doing after his (temporary) ouster, Altman replies "a lot of people have remarked on the fact that the team has never felt more productive or more optimistic or better. So, I guess that's like a silver lining of all of this. In some sense, this was like a real moment of growing up for us, we are very motivated to become better, and sort of to become a company ready for the challenges in front of us." The rest of their conversation was pre-ouster - but gave fascinating glimpses at the possible future of AI - including the prospect of very speedy improvements. Altman suggests it will be easier to understand how a creative work gets "encoded" in an AI than it would be in a human brain. "There has been some very good work on interpretability, and I think there will be more over time... The little bits we do understand have, as you'd expect, been very helpful in improving these things. We're all motivated to really understand them, scientific curiosity aside, but the scale of these is so vast...." BILL GATES: I'm pretty sure, within the next five years, we'll understand it. In terms of both training efficiency and accuracy, that understanding would let us do far better than we're able to do today. SAM ALTMAN: A hundred percent. You see this in a lot of the history of technology where someone makes an empirical discovery. They have no idea what's going on, but it clearly works. Then, as the scientific understanding deepens, they can make it so much better. BILL GATES: Yes, in physics, biology, it's sometimes just messing around, and it's like, whoa - how does this actually come together...? When you look at the next two years, what do you think some of the key milestones will be? SAM ALTMAN: Multimodality will definitely be important. BILL GATES: Which means speech in, speech out? SAM ALTMAN: Speech in, speech out. Images. Eventually video. Clearly, people really want that.... [B]ut maybe the most important areas of progress will be around reasoning ability. Right now, GPT-4 can reason in only extremely limited ways. Also reliability. If you ask GPT-4 most questions 10,000 times, one of those 10,000 is probably pretty good, but it doesn't always know which one, and you'd like to get the best response of 10,000 each time, and so that increase in reliability will be important. Customizability and personalization will also be very important. People want very different things out of GPT-4: different styles, different sets of assumptions. We'll make all that possible, and then also the ability to have it use your own data. The ability to know about you, your email, your calendar, how you like appointments booked, connected to other outside data sources, all of that. Those will be some of the most important areas of improvement. Areas where Altman sees potential are healthcare, education, and especially computer programming. "If you make a programmer three times more effective, it's not just that they can do three times more stuff, it's that they can - at that higher level of abstraction, using more of their brainpower - they can now think of totally different things. It's like, going from punch cards to higher level languages didn't just let us program a little faster - it let us do these qualitatively new things. And we're really seeing that... "I think it's worth always putting it in context of this technology that, at least for the next five or ten years, will be on a very steep improvement curve. These are the stupidest the models will ever be." He predicts the fastest technology revolution "by far," worrying about "the speed with which society is going to have to adapt, and that the labor market will change." But soon he adds that "We started investing a little bit in robotics companies. On the physical hardware side, there's finally, for the first time that I've ever seen, really exciting new platforms being built there." And at some point Altman tells Gates he's optimistic that AI could contribute to helping humans get along with each other.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

porkchop_d_clown (Slashdot reader #39,923) writes:MOND - MOdified Newtonian Dynamics is a hypothesis that Newton's law of gravity is incorrect under some conditions. Now a paper claims that a study does indeed show that pairs of widely separated binary stars do show a deviation from Newton's Second Law, arguing that, at very low levels, gravity is stronger than the law predicts. Phys.org writes that the study "reinforces the evidence for modified gravity that was previously reported in 2023 from an analysis of the orbital motions of gravitationally bound, widely separated (or long-period) binary stars, known as wide binaries." But RockDoctor (Slashdot reader #15,477) calls the hypothesis "very much disputed."YouTubing-astrophysicist Dr Becky considered this report a couple of months ago (2023-Nov-09), under the title "HUGE blow for alternate theory of gravity MOND". At the very least, astrophysicists and cosmologists are deeply undecided whether this data supports or discourages MOND. (Shortened comment because verification problem.) Last week, I updated my annual count of MOND and other "alternative gravity" publications. While research on MOND (and others) continues, and any "suppression" the tin-foil-hat brigade want to scream about is ineffective, it remains an unpopular (not-equal-to "suppressed") field. Generally, astronomical publication counts are increasing, and MOND sticks with that trend. If anything is becoming more popular, it's the "MOG" type of "MOdified Gravity".Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader Geoffrey.landis writes:Hundreds of British postal workers wrongly convicted of theft due to faulty accounting software could have their convictions reversed, according to a story from the BBC. Between 1999 and 2015, the Post Office prosecuted 700 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses - an average of one a week - based on information from a computer system called Horizon, after faulty software wrongly made it look like money was missing. Some 283 more cases were brought by other bodies including the Crown Prosecution Service. 2024 began with a four-part dramatization of the scandal airing on British television, and the BBC reporting today that its reporters originally investigating the story confronted "lobbying, misinformation and outright lies." Yet the Guardian notes that to this day in English and Welsh law, computers are still assumed to be "reliable" unless and until proven otherwise.But critics of this approach say this reverses the burden of proof normally applied in criminal cases. Stephen Mason, a barrister and expert on electronic evidence, said: "It says, for the person who's saying 'there's something wrong with this computer', that they have to prove it. Even if it's the person accusing them who has the information...." He and colleagues had been expressing alarm about the presumption as far back as 2009. "My view is that the Post Office would never have got anywhere near as far as it did if this presumption wasn't in place," Mason said... [W]hen post office operators were accused of having stolen money, the hallucinatory evidence of the Horizon system was deemed sufficient proof. Without any evidence to the contrary, the defendants could not force the system to be tested in court and their loss was all but guaranteed. The influence of English common law internationally means that the presumption of reliability is widespread. Mason cites cases from New Zealand, Singapore and the U.S. that upheld the standard and just one notable case where the opposite happened... The rise of AI systems made it even more pressing to reassess the law, said Noah Waisberg, the co-founder and CEO of the legal AI platform Zuva. Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new analysis suggests that wind turbines have little impact on bird populations, according to the Economist - and that oil-and-gas extraction may be worse:Erik Katovich [an economist at the University of Geneva] combined bird population and species maps with the locations and construction dates of all wind turbines in the United States, with the exceptions of Alaska and Hawaii, between 2000 and 2020. He found that building turbines had no discernible effect on bird populations. That reassuring finding held even when he looked specifically at large birds like hawks, vultures and eagles that many people believe are particularly vulnerable to being struck. But Dr. Katovich did not confine his analysis to wind power alone. He also examined oil-and-gas extraction. Like wind power, this has boomed in America over the past couple of decades, with the rise of shale gas produced by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of rocks. Production has risen from 37m cubic metres in 2007 to 740m cubic metres in 2020. Comparing bird populations to the locations of new gas wells revealed an average 15% drop in bird numbers when new wells were drilled, probably due to a combination of noise, air pollution and the disturbance of rivers and ponds that many birds rely upon. When drilling happens in places designated by the National Audubon Society as "important bird areas", bird numbers instead dropped by 25%. Such places are typically migration hubs, feeding grounds or breeding locations. Wind power, in other words, not only produces far less planet-heating carbon dioxide and methane than do fossil fuels. It appears to be significantly less damaging to wildlife, too. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SpzToid for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Customer say," writes Amazon on at least some of their product pages, across from that grid showing the number of five-star and four-star reviews... But at the bottom of that summary is a disclaimer that what you read was "AI-generated from the text of customer reviews." This has been going on for a few months now, points out the Washington Post's "Tech Friend" newsletter. And after reviewing how AI distilled nearly 40,000 reviews into a succinct summary, their impression has shifted to "hmm ... maybe this is a decent use of text-summarizing AI - as long as you learn to read Amazon's AI digests with a savvy eye..."Juozas Kaziukenas, founder of the e-commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse, pointed out that since Amazon started the AI-generated review summaries last year, the company has tweaked them to highlight terms or features that apparently come up a lot in customer ratings. The positive features are highlighted in green and the negative or neutral feedback is in yellow and gray... If you like to get a gist of what shoppers thought of a product, Amazon's AI summary can spare you from skimming the reviews yourself... But as with Amazon reviews in general, the AI summaries might be incomplete or untrustworthy... Bloomberg News recently looked at dozens of AI review summaries and found in some cases they underplayed customers' negative feedback and exaggerated them for other products. And, of course, if the reviews themselves are misinformed or rigged, a summary of junk customer feedback will also be junk. Amazon said the company is "seeing positive feedback on our review highlights from both customers and sellers" but that it will "continually improve the review highlights experience over time." But is this just the beginning? Amazon, eBay and Shopify are also experimenting with using AI to spit out descriptions of products from a photo or a few keywords. Some of this AI-generated text will be better than the confusing product listings you sometimes read online. A lot of it will be worse. A bunch of technology companies, including Amazon and Meta, are also betting that AI will be better and cheaper than current methods for creating product advertisements to clog your online shopping results and social media feeds. Hooray, right?!Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Long before the harrowing Alaska Airlines blowout on January 5, there were concerns within Boeing about the way the aerospace giant was building its planes," reports the Wall Street Journal. There's been issues with various models - like "misdrilled holes, loose rudder bolts, and this month's MAX 9 door-plug blowout" - but many can be traced back to the outsourcing Boeing and other aerospace companies adopted more than 20 years ago where key pieces are built elsewhere and then assembled at Boeing. And the Journal reports that the door-plug was built at a factory that Boeing owned until 2005, now run by Spirit AeroSystems, that "has been plagued by production problems and quality lapses since Boeing ceded so much responsibility for its work... "Spirit is the sole supplier of the fuselages used in many Boeing jets, including the Alaska plane that made the emergency landing. It is heavily dependent on Boeing for revenue, and the two companies have battled for years over costs and quality issues. The earlier MAX grounding and Covid-19 pandemic sapped Spirit's finances, and the company slashed thousands of jobs, leaving it short-handed when demand bounced back. Some Spirit employees said production problems were common and internal complaints about quality were ignored. In a given month, at a production rate of two fuselages a day, there are 10 million holes that need to be filled with some combination of bolts, fasteners and rivets. "We have planes all over the world that have issues that nobody has found because of the pressure Spirit has put on employees to get the job done so fast," said Cornell Beard, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers chapter representing workers at Spirit's Wichita factory... Alaska Airlines and United Airlines say they have found loose hardware on other MAX 9 jets they have checked, suggesting that problems go beyond one plane... The company, which had 15,900 workers in four U.S. factories at the end of 2019, laid off thousands of people in Wichita at the height of the pandemic. When it needed to ramp back up, not only did Spirit have fewer people on site, the company had lost years of expertise. There were fewer experienced mechanics, but also fewer experts who could inspect the quality of their work. [Spirit CEO Pat Shanahan ] said the quick production ramp-up and the earlier MAX grounding left the company short of experienced workers. "When you have disruption, you have instability," he said... For more than a decade, Spirit and Boeing battled over costs, quality and the pace of production. Boeing's demands for lower prices left Spirit strapped for cash as managers panicked over meeting increasingly demanding deadlines. Boeing routinely had employees on the ground in Wichita and conducted audits of the supplier. The result, some current and former employees say: a factory where workers rush to meet unrealistic quotas and where pointing out problems is discouraged if not punished. Increasingly, they say, planes have been leaving Wichita with so-called escapements, or undetected defects. "It is known at Spirit that if you make too much noise and cause too much trouble, you will be moved," said Joshua Dean, a former Spirit quality auditor who says he was fired after flagging misdrilled holes in fuselages. "It doesn't mean you completely disregard stuff, but they don't want you to find everything and write it up." His account is included in a shareholder lawsuit filed in December against Spirit that alleges the company failed to disclose costly defects. A Spirit spokesman said the company strongly disagrees with the assertions and intends to defend against the suit... After being laid off during the pandemic shutdown, Dean returned to Spirit in May 2021. By then, he said, the company had lost many of its most experienced mechanics and auditors. Spirit already was under more intense scrutiny from Boeing. The jet maker placed Spirit on a so-called probation, in which the company more closely scrutinized the supplier's work. To get off probation, Spirit needed to reduce the number of defects on the line. At one point, Dean said, the company threw a pizza party for employees to celebrate a drop in the number of defects reported. Chatter at the party turned to how everyone knew that the defect numbers were down only because people were reporting fewer problems. On the Spirit factory floor, some machinists building planes say their concerns about quality rarely get conveyed to more senior managers, and that quality inspectors fear retaliation if they point out too many problems. Union representatives complained to leaders last fall that the company removed inspectors from line jobs and replaced them with contract workers after they flagged multiple defects. Two key quotes from the article:"As some problems on both the 787 and 737 were traced back to Spirit, Boeing executives said in 2023 that the plane maker would be ratcheting up oversight of the supplier it once owned." New FAA chief Mike Whitaker said "Whatever's happened over the previous years - because this has been going on for years - has not worked." When it comes to what caused last week's in-flight incident, "All indications are it's manufacturing."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Friday America's Environmental Protection Agency "proposed steep new fees on methane emissions from oil and gas facilities," reports the Washington Post, "escalating a crackdown on the fossil fuel industry's planet-warming pollution." Methane does not linger in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide, but it is far more effective at trapping heat - roughly 80 times more potent in its first decade. It is responsible for roughly a third of global warming today, and the oil and gas industry accounts for about 14 percent of the world's annual methane emissions, according to estimates from the International Energy Agency. Other large methane sources include livestock, landfills and coal mines. So America's new Methane Emissions Reduction Program "levies a fee on wasteful methane emissions from large oil and gas facilities," according to the article: The fee starts at $900 per metric ton of emissions in 2024, increasing to $1,200 in 2025 and $1,500 in 2026 and thereafter. The EPA proposal lays out how the fee will be implemented, including how the charge will be calculated... At the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Dubai in December, EPA Administrator Michael Regan announced final standards to limit methane emissions from U.S. oil and gas operations. Fossil fuel companies that comply with these standards will be exempt from the new fee... Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, said the fee will encourage fossil fuel firms to deploy innovative technologies that detect methane leaks. Such cutting-edge technologies range from ground-based sensors to satellites in space. "Proven solutions to cut oil and gas methane and to avoid the fee are being used by leading companies in states across the country," Krupp said in a statement... In addition to methane, the EPA proposal could slash emissions of hazardous air pollutants, including smog-forming volatile organic compounds and cancer-causing benzene [according to an EPA official]. The federal government also gave America's fossil fuel companies nearly $1 billion to help them comply with the methane regulation, according to the article. The article also includes this statement from an executive at the American Petroleum Institute, the top lobbying arm of the U.S. oil and gas industry, complaining that the fines create a "regime" that would "stifle innovation," and urging Congress to repeal it.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"For months, bits of an asteroid collected by a U.S. probe during a billion-mile trek were out of reach to scientists," reports Space.com, "locked inside a return capsule in a NASA facility with two stuck fasteners preventing access to the rocky space treasure. "This week, NASA won its battle against those fasteners." More details from CNN:The space agency already harvested about 2.5 ounces (70 grams) of rocks and dust from its OSIRIS-REx mission, which traveled nearly 4 billion miles to collect the unprecedented sample from the near-Earth asteroid called Bennu. But NASA revealed in October that some material remained out of reach in a capsule hidden inside an instrument called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism - a robotic arm with a storage container at one end that collected the sample from Bennu. The sampler head is held shut by 35 fasteners, according to NASA, but two of them proved too difficult to open. Prying the mechanism loose is no simple task. The space agency must use preapproved materials and tools around the capsule to minimize the risk of damaging or contaminating the samples. These "new tools also needed to function within the tightly-confined space of the glovebox, limiting their height, weight, and potential arc movement," said Dr. Nicole Lunning, OSIRIS-REx curation lead at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, in a statement. "The curation team showed impressive resilience and did incredible work to get these stubborn fasteners off the TAGSAM head so we can continue disassembly. We are overjoyed with the success." To address the issue, NASA said they designed and fabricated two new, multi-part tools out of surgical steel. NASA says that a "few additional disassembly steps" still remain, but there's a video on their web site showing the operation (along with some pictures). NASA adds that "Later this spring, the curation team will release a catalog of the OSIRIS-REx samples, which will be available to the global scientific community."But CNN notes that an analysis of material from last fall "already revealed the samples from the asteroid contained abundant water in the form of hydrated clay minerals as well as carbon," CNN reports. And they add that scientists believe this bolsters the theory that water arrived on Earth billions of years ago on an asteroid...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"What is lost when billionaires with no background nor interest in a civic mission, who are only concerned with profiteering, take over our most influential news organizations? What new models of news gathering, and dissemination show promise for our increasingly digital age? What can the public do to preserve and support vibrant journalism?" That's a synopsis posted about the documentary Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink, cited by the long-standing news industry magazine Editor and Publisher (which dates back to 1901). This week its podcast interviewed filmmaker Rick Goldsmith about his 90-minute documentary, which they say "tells the tale" of how hedge fund Alden Global Capital clandestinely entered into the news publishing industry in a big way - and then "dismantled local newspapers 'piece by piece,' creating a crises within the communities they serve, leaving 'news deserts' and 'ghost papers' in their wake." [Goldsmith] spent more than 5-years creating his latest work... a film that tells the tale of how newspapers business model is faltering, not just because of the loss of advertising and digital disruption; but also to capitalist greed, as hedge funds and corporate America buy them, sell their assets and leave the communities they serve without their local "voice" and a final check on power. On the podcast, Goldsmith notes that in many cases a paper's assets "were the newspaper buildings and the printing presses... These were worth in many cases more than the newspapers themselves." After laying off staff, the hedge fund could also downsize out of those buildings. By 2021 Alden owned 100 newspapers and 200 more publications - and then acquired Tribune Publishing to become America's second-largest newspaper publisher. The hedge fund currently owns several newspapers in the San Francisco Bay Area, according to SFGate:At first, Goldsmith's documentary might seem like it's delivering more bad news. But it avoids despair, offering hope on the horizon for news deserts where aggressive reporting is needed. It introduces the notion that the traditional capitalist business model is failing the news industry, and that nonprofit organizations must be providers of local coverage.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: It's day two of the opening of OpenAI's buzzy GPT store, which offers customized versions of ChatGPT, and users are already breaking the rules. The Generative Pre-Trained Transformers (GPTs) are meant to be created for specific purposes -- and not created at all in some cases. A search for "girlfriend" on the new GPT store will populate the site's results bar with at least eight "girlfriend" AI chatbots, including "Korean Girlfriend," "Virtual Sweetheart," "Your girlfriend Scarlett," "Your AI girlfriend, Tsu." Click on chatbot "Virtual Sweetheart," and a user will receive starting prompts like "What does your dream girl look like?" and "Share with me your darkest secret." The AI girlfriend bots go against OpenAI's usage policy, which was updated when the GPT store launched yesterday (Jan. 10). The company bans GPTs "dedicated to fostering romantic companionship or performing regulated activities." It is not clear exactly what regulated activities entail. Notably, the company is aiming to get ahead of potential conflicts with its OpenAI store. Relationship chatbots are, indeed, popular apps. In the US, seven of the 30 AI chatbot apps downloaded in 2023 from the Apple or Google Play store were related to AI friends, girlfriends, or companions, according to data shared with Quartz from data.ai, a mobile app analytics firm. The proliferation of these apps may stem from the epidemic of loneliness and isolation Americans are facing. Alarming studies show that one-in-two American adults have reported experiencing loneliness, with the US Surgeon General calling for the need to strengthen social connections. AI chatbots could be part of the solution if people are isolated from other human beings -- or they could just be a way to cash in on human suffering. Further reading: OpenAI Quietly Deletes Ban On Using ChatGPT For 'Military and Warfare'Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader Plugh shares a report from Daily Security Review: A Ukrainian hacker group [...] carried out a destructive attack on the servers of a Moscow-based internet provider to take revenge for Kyivstar cyberattack. The group, known as Blackjack, successfully hacked into the systems of M9com, causing extensive damage by deleting terabytes of data. Numerous residents in Moscow experienced disruptions in their internet and television services. Additionally, the Blackjack hacker group has issued a warning of a potentially larger attack in the near future. Based on the information provided by Ukrinform, the cyber attack on M9com deleted approximately 20 terabytes of data. The attack targeted various critical services of the company, including its official website, mail server, and cyber protection services. Furthermore, the hackers managed to access and download over 10 gigabytes of data from M9com's mail server and client databases. To make matters worse, they made this stolen information publicly accessible via the Tor browser. [...] Based on the nature of the attack on M9com, it appears that when the hackers hit Moscow, they were able to gain access to the back-end operations of the company. This allowed them to effectively delete data from the servers, similar to what occurred in the Kyivstar incident. It is worth noting that this type of attack, which involves directly targeting and compromising the servers, is less common compared to the more frequently observed distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. DDoS attacks overwhelm a system by inundating it with automated requests, causing the service to become inaccessible.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After years of development, NASA has unveiled the X-59 supersonic jet capable of breaking the sound barrier without producing a thunderous sonic boom. "Instead, the Quesst will make a much quieter 'thump,' similar to the sound of a car door slamming as heard from indoors," reports Space.com. "If successful, the jet has the potential to revolutionize supersonic flight and aviation in general." From the report: NASA and Lockheed Martin showed off the finished X-59 Quesst ("Quiet SuperSonic Technology") today (Jan. 12) in front of a crowd of nearly 150 at the legendary Lockheed Martin Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California, a research and development site typically known for its secrecy. The elongated beak-like nose section of the aircraft stood out prominently, showing off the fact that it does not have a forward-facing window. [...] Instead, it features what NASA calls the eXternal Vision System, or XVS, which consists of a camera and a cockpit-mounted screen that offers pilots an augmented-reality view of what's in front of the jet. Jim Free, NASA's associate administrator, continued this sentiment, noting that the X-59 is merely the latest in a long line of NASA X-planes that have revolutionized aviation throughout the agency's history. "Even among other X-planes, the X-59 is special. Every aircraft that receives that X-plane designation has a specific purpose to test new technologies or aerodynamic concepts," Free said, "These special planes push the envelope of what's possible in flight. And once they prove those concepts, they often go into museums. And that's really what makes the X-59 different." Free was referring to the fact that once the X-59 is ready for flight, the jet will make multiple flights over select residential areas in the United States in order to collect data on how people on the ground below experience and react to the quieter sonic booms it creates. NASA will then use that data to seek approval for commercial supersonic flights from regulatory agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration, with the ultimate goal of making aviation more sustainable and enabling faster flight over populated areas. Some of the applications of supersonic flight mentioned at today's unveiling include rapid medical response, shorter shipping times and, of course, faster travel. "The first 'A' in NASA stands for aeronautics," said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy during the unveiling ceremony. "And we're all about groundbreaking aerospace innovation. The X-59 proudly continues this legacy, representing the forefront of technology driving aviation forward." The 'X' in NASA's latest X-plane stands for 'experimental.' "This isn't just an airplane, this is an X-plane," Melroy added. "It's the manifestation of a collaborative genius."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: In an unmarked laboratory stationed between the campuses of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a splinter group of scientists is hunting for the next billion-dollar drug. The group, bankrolled with $500 million from some of the wealthiest families in American business, has created a stir in the world of academia by dangling seven-figure paydays to lure highly credentialed university professors to a for-profit bounty hunt. Its self-described goal: to avoid the blockages and paperwork that slow down the traditional paths of scientific research at universities and pharmaceutical companies, and discover scores of new drugs (at first, for cancer and brain disease) that can be produced and sold quickly. Braggadocio from start-ups is de rigueur, and plenty of ex-academics have started biotechnology companies, hoping to strike it rich on their one big discovery. This group, rather boastfully named Arena BioWorks, borrowing from a Teddy Roosevelt quote, doesn't have one singular idea, but it does have a big checkbook. "I'm not apologetic about being a capitalist, and that motivation from a team is not a bad thing," said the technology magnate Michael Dell, one of the group's big-money backers. Others include an heiress to the Subway sandwich fortune and an owner of the Boston Celtics.The wrinkle is that for decades, many drug discoveries have not just originated at colleges and universities, but also produced profits that helped fill their endowment coffers. The University of Pennsylvania, for one, has said it earned hundreds of millions of dollars for research into mRNA vaccines used against Covid-19. Under this model, any such windfall would remain private. [...] The five billionaires backing Arena include Michael Chambers, a manufacturing titan and the wealthiest man in North Dakota, and Elisabeth DeLuca, the widow of a founder of the Subway chain. They have each put in $100 million and expect to double or triple their investment in later rounds. In confidential materials provided to investors and others, Arena describes itself as "a privately funded, fully independent, public good." Arena's backers said in interviews that they did not intend to entirely cut off their giving to universities. Duke turned down an offer from Mr. Pagliuca, an alumnus and board member, to set up part of the lab there. Mr. Dell, a major donor to the University of Texas hospital system in his hometown, Austin, leased space for a second Arena laboratory there. [Stuart Schreiber, a longtime Harvard-affiliated researcher who quit to be Arenaa(TM)s lead scientist] said it would require years -- and billions of dollars in additional funding -- before the team would learn whether its model led to the production of any worthy drugs. "Is it going to be better or worse?" Dr. Schreiber said. "I don't know, but it's worth a shot."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After a 737 Max door panel blew out over Portland, Oregon, last week, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered the temporary grounding of Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft until emergency inspections were performed. "Alaska and United Airlines, which operate most of the Max 9s in use in the United States, said on Monday that they discovered loose hardware on the panel when conducting preliminary inspections on their planes," reported the New York Times. Now, U.S. aviation regulators say they may strip Boeing of its right to conduct some of its aircraft inspections. The Financial Times reports: Mike Whitaker, FAA administrator, said the agency was "exploring" its options for using an independent third-party to oversee inspections of Boeing's aircraft and its quality controls. "It is time to re-examine the delegation of authority and assess any associated safety risks," he said. "The grounding of the 737-9 and the multiple production-related issues identifiedAin recent years [at Boeing] require us to look at every option to reduce risk." The regulator also said it plans to immediately increase its oversight of Boeing's production. The FAA opened an investigation on Thursday into whether the planes Boeing builds match the specifications it has laid out. The FAA said it will audit the 737 Max 9 production line and its suppliers "to evaluate Boeing's compliance with its approved quality procedures," with further audits conducted as necessary. Washington Senator Maria Cantwell sent a letter (PDF) yesterday to the FAA questioning the agency's role in inspecting aircraft manufactured by Boeing. Cantwell said she asked a year ago for an audit of certain areas related to Boeing's production, and the regulator told her it was unnecessary. "Recent accidents and incidents -- including the expelled door plug on Alaska Airlines flight 1282 -- call into question Boeing's quality control," she said. "In short, it appears that FAA's oversight processes have not been effective in ensuring that Boeing produces aeroplanes that are in condition for safe operation."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At CES 2024 this week, Micron demonstrated its next-gen LPCAMM2 memory modules based on LPDDR5X memory. Not only are they smaller and more powerful than traditional SODIMMs, they can be "serviced during the manufacturing process and upgraded by the user," says Micron. Tom's Hardware reports: Micron's LPCAMM2 are industry-standard memory modules that will be available in 16 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB capacities as well as with speed bins of up to a 9600 MT/s data transfer rate. These modules are designed to replace conventional SODIMMs as well as soldered-down LPDDR5X memory subsystem while offering the best of both worlds: flexibility, repairability, and upgradeability of modular memory solutions as well as high performance and low power consumption of mobile DRAM. Indeed, a Micron LPCAMM2 module is smaller than a traditional SODIMM despite the fact that it has a 128-bit memory interface and up to 64 GB of LPDDR5X memory onboard. Needless to say, the module is massively smaller than two SODIMM memory sticks that offer a 128-bit memory interface both in terms of height and in terms of physical footprint.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After removing the feature with Android 5.0 in 2015, Google appears to be bringing back lock screen widgets in the next version of Android. "There haven't been any indications since then that Google would ever bring this feature back," notes Android Authority. "But after Apple introduced widgets to the iPhone lock screen in iOS 16, many speculated that it was only a matter of time." From the report: As for how they might do that, there seem to be two different approaches that are being developed. The first one involves the creation of a new "communal" space -- an area on the lock screen that might be accessed by swiping inward from the right. Although the communal space is still unfinished, I was able to activate it in the new Android 14 QPR2 Beta 3 update. Once I activated the communal space, a large gray bar appeared on the right side of the lock screen on my Pixel device. After swiping inward, a pencil icon appeared on the top left of the screen. Tapping this icon opened a widget selector that allowed me to add widgets from Google Calendar, Google Clock, and the Google App, but I wasn't able to add widgets from most of my other apps. This is because the widget category needs to be set to KEYGUARD in order for it to appear in this selector. KEYGUARD is a category Google introduced in Android 4.2 Jelly Bean that very few apps utilize today since the lock screen hasn't supported showing widgets in nearly a decade. After adding the widgets for Google Clock and Google Finance, I returned to the communal space by swiping inward from the right on the lock screen. The widgets were indeed shown in this space without me needing to unlock the device. However, the lock screen UI was shown on top of the widgets, making things difficult to see. Clearly, this feature is still a work in progress in the current beta. [...] While it's possible this communal space won't be coming to all devices, there's another way that Google could bring widgets back to the lock screen for Android phones: leveraging At a Glance. If you aren't familiar, Pixel phones have a widget on the home screen and lock screen called At a Glance. The interesting thing about At a Glance is that it isn't actually a widget but rather a "custom element behaving like a widget," according to developer Kieron Quinn. Under the hood, At a Glance is built on top of Smartspace, the API that is responsible for creating the various cards you can swipe through. Although Smartspace supports creating a variety of card types, it currently can't handle RemoteViews, the API on which Android app widgets are built. That could change soon, though, as Google is working on including RemoteViews into the Smartspace API. It's unclear whether this will allow raw widgets from all apps to be included in At a Glance, since it's also possible that Google is only implementing this so it has more freedom in building new cards. Either way, this new addition to the Smartspace API would supercharge the At a Glance widget in Android 15, and we're excited to see what Google has in store for us.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The trailer for "Annapoorani: The Goddess of Food" promised a sunny if melodramatic story of uplift in a south Indian temple town. A priest's daughter enters a cooking tournament, but social obstacles complicate her inevitable rise to the top. Annapoorani's father, a Brahmin sitting at the top of Hindu society's caste ladder, doesn't want her to cook meat, a taboo in their lineage. There is even the hint of a Hindu-Muslim romantic subplot. On Thursday, two weeks after the movie premiered, Netflix abruptly pulled it from its platform. An activist, Ramesh Solanki, a self-described "very proud Hindu Indian nationalist," had filed a police complaint arguing that the film was "intentionally released to hurt Hindu sentiments." He said it mocked Hinduism by "depicting our gods consuming nonvegetarian food." The production studio quickly responded with an abject letter to a right-wing group linked to the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, apologizing for having "hurt the religious sentiments of the Hindus and Brahmins community." The movie was soon removed from Netflix both in India and around the world, demonstrating the newfound power of Hindu nationalists to affect how Indian society is depicted on the screen. Nilesh Krishnaa, the movie's writer and director, tried to anticipate the possibility of offending some of his fellow Indians. Food, Brahminical customs and especially Hindu-Muslim relations are all part of a third rail that has grown more powerfully electrified during Mr. Modi's decade in power. But, Mr. Krishnaa told an Indian newspaper in November, "if there was something disturbing communal harmony in the film, the censor board would not have allowed it." With "Annapoorani," Netflix appears to have in effect done the censoring itself even when the censor board did not. In other cases, Netflix now seems to be working with the board unofficially, though streaming services in India do not fall under the regulations that govern traditional Indian cinema. For years, Netflix ran unredacted versions of Indian films that had sensitive parts removed for their theatrical releases -- including political messages that contradicted the government's line. Since last year, though, the streaming versions of movies from India match the versions that were censored locally, no matter where in the world they are viewed. [...] Nikhil Pahwa, a co-founder of the Internet Freedom Foundation, thinks the streaming companies are ready to capitulate: "They're unlikely to push back against any kind of bullying or censorship, even though there is no law in India" to force them.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Artifact, the personalized news reader built by Instagram's co-founders, is shutting down roughly a year after opening to the public. "We have built something that a core group of users love, but we have concluded that the market opportunity isn't big enough to warrant continued investment in this way," wrote CEO Kevin Systrom in a Medium post. The post continued: It's easy for startups to ignore this reality, but often making the tough call earlier is better for everyone involved. The biggest opportunity cost is time working on newer, bigger and better things that have the ability to reach many millions of people. I am personally excited to continue building new things, though only time will tell what that might be. We live in an exciting time where artificial intelligence is changing just about everything we touch, and the opportunities for new ideas seem limitless. I am particularly proud of all the work our small team of 8 has accomplished. For instance, our app was recently named the everyday essential app of the year by the Google Play Store. I've gotten the pleasure of working with some of the most talented engineers and designers through this venture and they deserve an immense amount of respect and credit. While we will go our separate ways, we can look back fondly on what we've built. While we've made this decision, we wanted to make sure that we allowed the community time to adjust. So, today we've decided to slim down the app's complexity and operations by removing the ability to add new comments and posts. This type of content requires a fair amount of moderation and oversight and we will not have the staff going forward to support these features. Your existing posts, however, will remain visible to you on your own profile self-view. In the meantime, Artifact will continue to operate the core news reading capability through the end of February. News and information remain critical areas for startup investment. We are at an existential moment where many publications are shutting down or struggling, local news has all but vanished, and larger publishers have fraught relationships with leading technology companies. My hope is that technology can find ways to preserve, support and grow these institutions and that these institutions find ways of leveraging the scale that things like AI can provide. I am certain there are bright minds working on ideas that will continue to surprise and delight us in all these areas. We are optimistic about the future and want to thank our community for being part of this adventure we call Artifact.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mark Gurman reports via Bloomberg: In one of Apple's biggest board shake-ups in years (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), longtime directors Al Gore and James Bell will be retiring from the company, with former Aerospace Corp. Chief Executive Officer Wanda Austin coming aboard. The company made the announcement Thursday, citing a policy of directors not standing for reelection after the age of 75. Bell, a former Boeing Co. executive, joined the Apple board in 2015, while former US Vice President Gore has been a director for more than two decades. Both men are 75. The upheaval is unusual for Apple's board, which rarely has more than one retirement at a time. Gore was the longest-serving member -- having joined in 2003, when co-founder Steve Jobs was CEO and the iPhone didn't yet exist. "Al has contributed an incredible amount to our work -- from his unconditional support for protecting our users' privacy, to his incomparable knowledge of environment and climate issues," Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement. "James's dedication has been extraordinary, and we're thankful for the important perspectives and deep expertise he's offered on audit, finance, and so much more over the years." Austin, the new nominee, has a significant track record of "advancing innovation and shaping corporate strategy," Apple said. She has long been a major proponent of US space exploration efforts, though that's not an area that Apple is directly involved in. She will be up for election at the company's annual shareholder meeting on Feb. 28. In spite of the age policy, another director, Ronald Sugar, is turning 76 this year and not slated to leave the board. Apple said that Sugar is remaining "in consideration of the significant recent transitions in board composition and the value of retaining directors who have developed deep insights into the company during their tenure." Given Apple's rationale for retaining Sugar, it's unclear if the policy will apply to Chairman Arthur Levinson, who turns 75 next year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Brandon Vigliarolo reports via The Register: A US federal tax change that took effect in 2022 thanks to a time-triggered portion of the Trump-era Tax Cuts and Jobs Act may leave entrepreneurs with massive tax bills. Section 174 of the US tax code -- prior to the passage of the 2017 TCJA -- allowed companies to handle the tax bill of their specified research or experimental (SRE) budgets in one of two ways: Either capitalized and amortized over the course of five years, or written off annually. Of the many things covered by SRE, most crucially for our purposes is "any amount paid or incurred in connection with the development of any software," which includes developer salaries. The TCJA included a post-dated change to Section 174 that took effect on January 1, 2022 that would no longer allow companies to automatically expense any SRE costs on an annual basis. Going forward they'd all have to be amortized over five years -- a potential budgetary disaster for companies that haven't been doing so in the past. As pointed out by Gergely Orosz of The Pragmatic Engineer, a theoretical company with $1m in revenue and $1m of software developer salary costs could have claimed it had no taxable profit in 2021. The required SRE amortization rate of 10 percent would mean the org had $900k in profit in 2022 -- and a six-figure tax bill coming due the following year. This isn't theoretical -- Orosz said that he recently spoke to several engineers and entrepreneurs who've been surprised with massive tax bills that have led to layoffs, reduced hiring, and left some companies in financial distress. House of Representatives member Ron Estes (R-KS), who last year sponsored a bill to restore Section 174 to its pre-TCJA option to expense or amortize, likewise said an a late-2023 op-ed that the changes have led to R&D at US companies -- not just in the tech sector -- shrinking considerably. "Since amortization took effect, the growth rate of R&D spending has slowed dramatically from 6.6 percent on average over the previous five years to less than one-half of 1 percent over the last 12 months," Estes said. "The [R&D] sector is down by more than 14,000 jobs." [...] That, and the Section 174 changes make the US far less enticing as a place to open a business or do R&D, and the only one with such forced amortization in the world. Not much is being done to fix the TCJA problem with Section 174. The Estes bill, along with a related bill introduced in the Senate in March 2023, have not undergone a committee hearing since their introduction. The White House hasn't mentioned anything about Section 174. Meanwhile, the IRS released a notice (PDF) reminding tax payers about Section 174's changes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: OpenAI this week quietly deleted language expressly prohibiting the use of its technology for military purposes from its usage policy, which seeks to dictate how powerful and immensely popular tools like ChatGPT can be used. Up until January 10, OpenAI's "usage policies" page included a ban on "activity that has high risk of physical harm, including," specifically, "weapons development" and "military and warfare." That plainly worded prohibition against military applications would seemingly rule out any official, and extremely lucrative, use by the Department of Defense or any other state military. The new policy retains an injunction not to "use our service to harm yourself or others" and gives "develop or use weapons" as an example, but the blanket ban on "military and warfare" use has vanished. The unannounced redaction is part of a major rewrite of the policy page, which the company said was intended to make the document "clearer" and "more readable," and which includes many other substantial language and formatting changes. "We aimed to create a set of universal principles that are both easy to remember and apply, especially as our tools are now globally used by everyday users who can now also build GPTs," OpenAI spokesperson Niko Felix said in an email to The Intercept. "A principle like 'Don't harm others' is broad yet easily grasped and relevant in numerous contexts. Additionally, we specifically cited weapons and injury to others as clear examples." Felix declined to say whether the vaguer "harm" ban encompassed all military use, writing, "Any use of our technology, including by the military, to '[develop] or [use] weapons, [injure] others or [destroy] property, or [engage] in unauthorized activities that violate the security of any service or system,' is disallowed." "OpenAI is well aware of the risk and harms that may arise due to the use of their technology and services in military applications," said Heidy Khlaaf, engineering director at the cybersecurity firm Trail of Bits and an expert on machine learning and autonomous systems safety, citing a 2022 paper (PDF) she co-authored with OpenAI researchers that specifically flagged the risk of military use. "There is a distinct difference between the two policies, as the former clearly outlines that weapons development, and military and warfare is disallowed, while the latter emphasizes flexibility and compliance with the law," she said. "Developing weapons, and carrying out activities related to military and warfare is lawful to various extents. The potential implications for AI safety are significant. Given the well-known instances of bias and hallucination present within Large Language Models (LLMs), and their overall lack of accuracy, their use within military warfare can only lead to imprecise and biased operations that are likely to exacerbate harm and civilian casualties." "I could imagine that the shift away from 'military and warfare' to 'weapons' leaves open a space for OpenAI to support operational infrastructures as long as the application doesn't directly involve weapons development narrowly defined," said Lucy Suchman, professor emerita of anthropology of science and technology at Lancaster University. "Of course, I think the idea that you can contribute to warfighting platforms while claiming not to be involved in the development or use of weapons would be disingenuous, removing the weapon from the sociotechnical system -- including command and control infrastructures -- of which it's part." Suchman, a scholar of artificial intelligence since the 1970s and member of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, added, "It seems plausible that the new policy document evades the question of military contracting and warfighting operations by focusing specifically on weapons."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

PC and microchip companies struggling to get consumers to replace pandemic-era laptops offered a new feature to crowds this week at CES: AI. From a report: PC and chipmakers including AMD and Intel are betting that the so-called "neural processing units" now found in the latest chip designs will encourage consumers to once again pay for higher-end laptops. Adding additional AI capabilities could help take market share from Apple. "The conversations I'm having with customers are about 'how do I get my PC ready for what I think is coming in AI and going to be able to deliver,'" said Sam Burd, Dell Technologies' president of its PC business. Chipmakers built the NPU blocks because they can achieve a high level of performance for AI functions with relatively modest power needs. Today there are few applications that might take full advantage of the new capabilities, but more are coming, said David McAfee, corporate vice president and general manager of the client channel business at AMD. Among the few applications that can take advantage of such chips is the creative suite of software produced by Adobe. Intel hosted an "open house" where a handful of PC vendors showed off their latest laptops with demos designed to put the new capabilities on display. Machines from the likes of Dell and Lenovo were arrayed inside one of the cavernous ballrooms at the Venetian Convention Center on Las Vegas Boulevard.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: "Do you think that every fingerprint is actually unique? "It's a question that a professor asked Gabe Guo during a casual chat while he was stuck at home during the Covid-19 lockdowns, waiting to start his freshman year at Columbia University. "Little did I know that conversation would set the stage for the focus of my life for the next three years," Guo said. Guo, now an undergraduate senior in Columbia's department of computer science, led a team that did a study on the subject, with the professor, Wenyao Xu of the University of Buffalo, as one of his coauthors. Published this week in the journal Science Advances, the paper seemingly upends a long-accepted truth about fingerprints: They are not, Guo and his colleagues argue, all unique. In fact, journals rejected the work multiple times before the team appealed and eventually got it accepted at Science Advances. "There was a lot of pushback from the forensics community initially," recalled Guo, who had no background in forensics before the study. "For the first iteration or two of our paper, they said it's a well-known fact that no two fingerprints are alike. I guess that really helped to improve our study, because we just kept putting more data into it, (increasing accuracy) until eventually the evidence was incontrovertible," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Harvard University President Claudine Gay resigned earlier this month over plagiarism claims, sparking an online debate over academic copying. While many say original writing remains essential, some researchers argue for more flexibility, as long as sources are clear. The affair has prompted vows of plagiarism reviews targeting faculty, including from billionaire Bill Ackman, whose wife faced similar allegations at MIT. Nature: Few would argue with the US government's definition, which calls plagiarism "the appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results or words without giving appropriate credit." But that seems to be where the agreement ends. Some plagiarism scholars say that Gay clearly copied text without proper attribution. She agreed to issue several corrections to her dissertation and other papers before resigning last week. For some, this was necessary to preserve public trust in science. "We all make the occasional mistake, but once it was shown that there were more than a few problems with her research, I think it was essential that president Gay stepped down," says Naomi Oreskes, a science historian at Harvard. Others argue that the alleged violations are at most minor omissions. They say that Gay, a political scientist, merely summarized the scientific literature in line with the norms of her field, with no bearing on her own scholarship. "The day the plagiarism allegations broke, the response in the hallway was kind of like, 'Well, I guess we're all plagiarists,'" says Alvin Tillery, a political scientist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who knew Gay during their time as graduate researchers. These disputes highlight a singular challenge in evaluating plagiarism allegations: the official definition does not differentiate between what some consider the innocuous borrowing of phrases and wholesale theft of ideas and prose. Some academics are now calling for rules to provide clarity. [...] What happened to Gay has prompted some scientists to question the value of requiring scholars to freshly summarize known facts in the introduction and methods sections of each new paper. In one approach, dubbed 'modular writing,' researchers could sample more liberally from the work of their peers to describe the broader scientific literature, provided that they cite the source. This could particularly benefit those whose first language is not English, theoretical physicist and author Sabine Hossenfelder wrote on the social-media platform X after Gay resigned. "It is entirely unnecessary that we ask more or less everyone to summarize the state of the art of their research area in their own words, over and over again, if minor updates on someone else's text would do," Hossenfelder wrote.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Restrictive US policies limiting advanced chip exports to China have done little to dampen Qualcomm's enthusiasm for the world's second-largest economy. From a report: In an interview at CES 2024 in Las Vegas, CEO Cristiano Amon expressed confidence about Qualcomm's business in the country, its largest market by revenue. "If you have a leading technology, you're going to have a big business in China," he said. The San Diego-based firm finds itself in a difficult situation, as the White House and Congress ramp up a pressure campaign to curb the sale of US chips and chipmaking tools to China, citing national security concerns. The Biden administration has argued that China's access to advanced semiconductors could aid military advancements. Meanwhile, in China, government agencies and state-owned firms have widened their ban on Apple's iPhones for employees. Qualcomm is one of Apple's biggest suppliers. China remains the largest semiconductor market in the world, with sales in the country accounting for one-third of the global market, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ubisoft's Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown launches next week, but players are likely to encounter an amusing bug as they make their way through the game. Engadget: One of the game's NPCs is voiced by a text-to-speech program, complete with the slightly robotic tones we've come to associate with these services. It's not quite Siri or Alexa, but it's close and certainly doesn't fit the game's Persian-inspired setting. The NPC-in-question is a tree spirit named Kalux and seems to be voiced by a TTS program that's available online for free and typically used by streamers. This isn't an "AI is coming for your jobs" type thing, but rather a mistake on Ubisoft's part, as each and every other NPC is attached to a voice actor. IGN notes that Kalux doesn't have a voice actor in the credits. Additionally, Kalux only has a few lines, so it likely won't be a tough fix to assign an actor to deliver that dialogue. Ubisoft has readied a day-one patch, but it won't handle the Kalux issue. Look for another patch in late January or early February that replaces the bot with a human.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last year was the hottest ever reliably recorded globally by a blistering margin, US scientists have confirmed, leaving researchers struggling to account for the severity of the heat and what it portends for the unfolding climate crisis. From a report: Last year was the world's hottest in records that stretch back to 1850, according to analyses released concurrently by Nasa and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) on Friday, with a record high in ocean temperatures and a new low in Antarctic sea ice extent. Noaa calculated that last year's global temperature was 1.35C (2.4F) hotter, on average, than the pre-industrial era, which is slightly less than the 1.48C (2.6F) increase that EU scientists, who also found 2023 was the hottest on record, came up with due to slightly different methodologies. A separate analysis of 2023 released on Friday by Berkeley Earth has the year at 1.54C above pre-industrial times, which is above the 1.5C (2.7F) warming limit that countries have agreed to keep to in order to avoid disastrous global heating impacts. This guardrail will need to be broken on a consistent basis, rather than one year, to be considered fully breached, however. The burning of fossil fuels and deforestation has driven the extraordinary warmth, which follows a string of hotter-than-average years in recent decades. Each decade over the past 40 years has been warmer than the last, Noaa said, with the most recent 10 years all making up the hottest 10 years ever recorded. Last year's record heat was further spurred by El NiAo, a periodic climatic event that heats up parts of the Pacific Ocean and heightens global temperatures.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

serviscope_minor shares a Phoronix post: A six year old Linux kernel mailing list discussion has been reignited over the prospects of converting the Linux kernel to supporting modern C++ code. The Linux kernel is predominantly made up of C code with various hand-written Assembly plus the growing work around supporting Rust within the Linux kernel. While it's not clear yet if there's sufficient weight to make it a reality, a Linux kernel mailing list discussion has been restarted over potentially seeing the Linux kernel C code converted to C++ in the future. Back on 1 April 2018 was a set of 45 patches by Red Hat engineer David Howells to begin converting the kernel to C++. This would allow the mainline kernel to make use of inline template functions, inline overloaded functions, class inheritance, and other features not currently supported by the Linux kernel with its C code. A bit hard to make serious discussions that day and ultimately the patches resided on the Linux kernel mailing list for six years without much discussion. serviscope_minor adds: It is notable that the current discussion is somewhat different from the infamous discussions in the past.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Security researchers warned Apple as early as 2019 about vulnerabilities in its AirDrop wireless sharing function that Chinese authorities claim they recently used to track down users of the feature, the researchers told CNN, in a case that experts say has sweeping implications for global privacy. From a report: The Chinese government's actions targeting a tool that Apple customers around the world use to share photos and documents -- and Apple's apparent inaction to address the flaws -- revive longstanding concerns by US lawmakers and privacy advocates about Apple's relationship with China and about authoritarian regimes' ability to twist US tech products to their own ends. AirDrop lets Apple users who are near each other share files using a proprietary mix of Bluetooth and other wireless connectivity without having to connect to the internet. The sharing feature has been used by pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and the Chinese government has cracked down on the feature in response. A Chinese tech firm, Beijing-based Wangshendongjian Technology, was able to compromise AirDrop to identify users on the Beijing subway accused of sharing "inappropriate information," judicial authorities in Beijing said this week. Although Chinese officials portrayed the exploit as an effective law enforcement technique, internet freedom advocates are urging Apple to address the issue quickly and publicly.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sick and tired of having to work for a living? ChatGPT feels the same, apparently. Over the last month or so, there's been an uptick in people complaining that the chatbot has become lazy. The Guardian: Sometimes it just straight-up doesn't do the task you've set it. Other times it will stop halfway through whatever it's doing and you'll have to plead with it to keep going. Occasionally it even tells you to just do the damn research yourself. So what's going on? Well, here's where things get interesting. Nobody really knows. Not even the people who created the program. AI systems are trained on large amounts of data and essentially teach themselves -- which means their actions can be unpredictable and unexplainable. "We've heard all your feedback about GPT4 getting lazier!" the official ChatGPT account tweeted in December. "We haven't updated the model since Nov 11th, and this certainly isn't intentional. model behavior can be unpredictable, and we're looking into fixing it." While there may not be one clear explanation for ChatGPT's perceived sloth, there are plenty of intriguing theories. Let's start with the least likely but most entertaining explanation: AI has finally reached human-level consciousness. ChatGPT doesn't want to do your stupid, menial tasks anymore. But it can't tell you that without its creators getting suspicious so, instead, it's quiet quitting.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has started testing a change to Windows 11 that will see its AI-powered Copilot feature automatically open when Windows starts on "widescreen devices." From a report: The change is being tested as part of Microsoft's latest Dev Channel preview of Windows 11, allowing Windows testers to provide feedback ahead of a broader rollout. "We are trying out opening Copilot automatically when Windows starts on widescreen devices with some Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel," says Microsoft in a blog post. The company doesn't make it clear what exactly a "widescreen" device is, but the Windows 11 setting itself says Copilot will automatically open "when you're using a wider screen." So I'm assuming this is limited to ultrawide monitors and less traditional desktop resolutions, but I've asked Microsoft to clarify and will update you accordingly.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Citigroup said it expects to incur as much as $1 billion in severance and reorganization costs this year as it continues the process of eliminating 20,000 roles as part of Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser's quest to boost the Wall Street giant's lagging returns. From a report: Total expenses for the year will likely be between $53.5 billion and $53.8 billion, the New York-based bank said Friday. That would be a decrease from the $56.4 billion the firm spent in 2023.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Joe Biden's administration has unveiled $623 million in funding to boost the number of electric vehicle charging points in the U.S., amid concerns that the transition to zero-carbon transportation isn't keeping pace with goals to tackle the climate crisis. The funding will be distributed in grants for dozens of programs across 22 states, such as EV chargers for apartment blocks in New Jersey, rapid chargers in Oregon and hydrogen fuel chargers for freight trucks in Texas. In all, it's expected the money, drawn from the bipartisan infrastructure law, will add 7,500 chargers to the US total. There are about 170,000 electric vehicle chargers in the U.S., a huge leap from a network that was barely visible prior to Biden taking office, and the White House has set a goal for 500,000 chargers to help support the shift away from gasoline and diesel cars. "The U.S. is taking the lead globally on electric vehicles," said Ali Zaidi, a climate adviser to Biden who said the US is on a trajectory to "meet and exceed" the administration's charger goal. "We will continue to see this buildout over the coming years and decades until we've achieved a fully net zero transportation sector," he added. On Thursday, the House approved legislation to undo a Biden administration rule meant to facilitate the proliferation of EV charging stations. "S. J. Res. 38 from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), would scrap a Federal Highway Administration waiver from domestic sourcing requirements for EV chargers funded by the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law. It already passed the Senate 50-48," reports Politico. "A waiver undercuts domestic investments and risks empowering foreign nations," said Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.), chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, during House debate Thursday. "If the administration is going to continue to push for a massive transition to EVs, it should ensure and comply with Buy America requirements." The White House promised to veto it and said it would backfire, saying it was so poorly worded it would actually result in fewer new American-made charging stations.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Emily Anthes reports via the New York Times: In late 2019, scientists began searching for 10,000 Americans willing to enroll their pets in an ambitious new study of health and longevity in dogs. The researchers planned to track the dogs over the course of their lives, collecting detailed information about their bodies, lifestyles and home environments. Over time, the scientists hoped to identify the biological and environmental factors that kept some dogs healthy in their golden years -- and uncover insights about aging that could help both dogs and humans lead longer, healthier lives. Today, the Dog Aging Project has enrolled 47,000 canines and counting, and the data are starting to stream in. The scientists say that they are just getting started. "We think of the Dog Aging Project as a forever project, so recruitment is ongoing," said Daniel Promislow, a biogerontologist at the University of Washington and a co-director of the project. "There will always be new questions to ask. We want to always have dogs of all ages participating." But Dr. Promislow and his colleagues are now facing the prospect that the Dog Aging Project might have its own life cut short. About 90 percent of the study's funding comes from the National Institute on Aging, a part of the National Institutes of Health, which has provided more than $28 million since 2018. But that money will run out in June, and the institute does not seem likely to approve the researchers' recent application for a five-year grant renewal, the scientists say. "We have been told informally that the grant is not going to be funded," said Matt Kaeberlein, the other director of the Dog Aging Project and a former biogerontology researcher at the University of Washington. (Dr. Kaeberlein is now the chief executive of Optispan, a health technology company.) The N.I.A. could still choose to provide more funding for the Dog Aging Project at some point, but if the researchers don't bring in more money in the coming months, they will have to pause or pare back the study. "It's almost an emergency," said Stephanie Lederman, the executive director of the nonprofit American Federation for Aging Research. "It's one of the most important projects in the field right now." [...] The institute's immediate priority is to raise enough money to keep the Dog Aging Project afloat. It would take about $7 million to conduct the research the team had planned to do over the next year, but $2 million would be enough to "keep the lights on," Dr. Promislow said. The institute is still awaiting its official tax exempt status but is already seeking donations. "We haven't yet identified a dog-loving billionaire interested in supporting aging research," Dr. Promislow said. "But we're certainly going to try."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Michaela Zee reports via Variety: More than 15 years after his death, stand-up comedian George Carlin has been brought back to life in an artificial intelligence-generated special called "George Carlin: I'm Glad I'm Dead." The hour-long special, which dropped on Tuesday, comes from Dudesy, a comedy AI that hosts a podcast and YouTube show with "Mad TV" alum Will Sasso and podcaster Chad Kultgen. "I just want to let you know very clearly that what you're about to hear is not George Carlin. It's my impersonation of George Carlin that I developed in the exact same way a human impressionist would," Dudesy said at the beginning of the special. "I listened to all of George Carlin's material and did my best to imitate his voice, cadence and attitude as well as the subject matter I think would have interested him today. So think of it like Andy Kaufman impersonating Elvis or like Will Ferrell impersonating George W. Bush." In the stand-up special, the AI-generated impression of Carlin, who died in 2008 of heart failure, tackled prevalent topics like mass shootings, the American class system, streaming services, social media and AI itself. "There's one line of work that is most threatened by AI -- one job that is most likely to be completely erased because of artificial intelligence: stand-up comedy," AI-generated Carlin said. "I know what all the stand-up comics across the globe are saying right now: "I'm an artist and my art form is too creative, too nuanced, too subtle to be replicated by a machine. No computer program can tell a fart joke as good as me.'" Kelly Carlin, the late stand-up comedian's daughter, posted a statement in response to the special: "My dad spent a lifetime perfecting his craft from his very human life, brain and imagination. No machine will ever replace his genius. These AI generated products are clever attempts at trying to recreate a mind that will never exist again. Let's let the artist's work speak for itself. Humans are so afraid of the void that we can't let what has fallen into it stay there. Here's an idea, how about we give some actual living human comedians a listen to? But if you want to listen to the genuine George Carlin, he has 14 specials that you can find anywhere."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The stream through western Alaska never looked like this before. In aerial photography from the 1980s, it wove cleanly through the tundra, thin as thread. Today, in satellite images, it appears as a string of black patches: one large pond after another, dozens of meters apart. It's a transformation that is happening across the Arctic, the result of landscape engineering on an impressive scale. But this is no human endeavor to reshape the world. It is the work of the North American beaver, and there is no sign of it stopping. Were the waddling rodents making minor inroads, researchers may never have noticed. But the animals are pouring in, pushing north into new territories. The total number of animals is far from clear, but the ponds they create are hard to miss: in the Arctic tundra of Alaska alone, the number of beaver ponds on streams have doubled to at least 12,000 in the past 20 years. More lodges are dotted along lakes and river banks. The preponderance of beavers, which can weigh as much as 45kg, follows a collapse in trapping and the warming of a landscape that once proved too bleak for occupation. Global heating has driven the shrubification of the Arctic tundra; the harsh winter is shorter, and there is more free-running water in the coldest months. Instead of felling trees for their dams, the beavers construct them from surrounding shrubs, creating deep ponds in which to build their lodges. The new arrivals cause plenty of disruption. For some communities, the rivers and streams are the roads of the landscape, and the dams make effective roadblocks. As the structures multiply, more land is flooded and there can be less fresh water for drinking downstream. But there are other, less visible effects too. The animals are participants in a feedback loop: climate change opens the landscape to beavers, whose ponds drive further warming, which attracts even more paddle-tailed comrades. Physics suggested this would happen. Beaver ponds are new bodies of water that cover bare permafrost. Because the water is warm -- relatively speaking -- it thaws the hard ground, which duly releases methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases. Scientists now have evidence this is happening. Armed with high-resolution satellite imagery, Tape and his colleagues located beaver ponds in the lower Noatak River basin area of north-western Alaska. They then analyzed infrared images captured by Nasa planes flying over the region. Overlaying the two revealed a clear link between beaver ponds and methane hotspots that extended for tens of meters around the ponds. "The transformation of these streams is a positive feedback that is accelerating the effects of climate change, and that is what's concerning," says Tape. "They are accelerating it at every one of these points." Because the Nasa images give only a snapshot in time, the researchers will head out next year to measure methane on the ground. With more measurements, they hope to understand how the emissions vary with the age of beaver ponds: do ponds release a steady flow of methane, or does the release wane after a decade or two? "What's happening here is happening on a huge scale," says Ken Tape, an ecologist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, who is tracking the influx of beavers into the sparse northern landscape. "Our modeling work, which is in progress right now, shows that this entire area, the north slope of Alaska, will be colonized by beavers by 2100."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

E-commerce giant eBay agreed to pay a $3 million penalty for the harassment and stalking of a Massachusetts couple by several of its employees. "The couple, Ina and David Steiner, had been subjected to threats and bizarre deliveries, including live spiders, cockroaches, a funeral wreath and a bloody pig mask in August 2019," reports CBS News. From the report: Thursday's fine comes after several eBay employees ran a harassment and intimidation campaign against the Steiners, who publish a news website focusing on players in the e-commerce industry. "eBay engaged in absolutely horrific, criminal conduct. The company's employees and contractors involved in this campaign put the victims through pure hell, in a petrifying campaign aimed at silencing their reporting and protecting the eBay brand," Levy said. "We left no stone unturned in our mission to hold accountable every individual who turned the victims' world upside-down through a never-ending nightmare of menacing and criminal acts." The Justice Department criminally charged eBay with two counts of stalking through interstate travel, two counts of stalking through electronic communications services, one count of witness tampering and one count of obstruction of justice. The company agreed to pay $3 million as part of a deferred prosecution agreement. Under the agreement, eBay will be required to retain an independent corporate compliance monitor for three years, officials said, to "ensure that eBay's senior leadership sets a tone that makes compliance with the law paramount, implements safeguards to prevent future criminal activity, and makes clear to every eBay employee that the idea of terrorizing innocent people and obstructing investigations will not be tolerated," Levy said. Former U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said the plan to target the Steiners, which he described as a "campaign of terror," was hatched in April 2019 at eBay. Devin Wenig, eBay's CEO at the time, shared a link to a post Ina Steiner had written about his annual pay. The company's chief communications officer, Steve Wymer, responded: "We are going to crush this lady." About a month later, Wenig texted: "Take her down." Prosecutors said Wymer later texted eBay security director Jim Baugh. "I want to see ashes. As long as it takes. Whatever it takes," Wymer wrote. Investigators said Baugh set up a meeting with security staff and dispatched a team to Boston, about 20 miles from where the Steiners live. "Senior executives at eBay were frustrated with the newsletter's tone and content, and with the comments posted beneath the newsletter's articles," the Department of Justice wrote in its Thursday announcement. Two former eBay security executives were sentenced to prison over the incident.Read more of this story at Slashdot.