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Google will start to sweep away cobweb-collecting Gmail accounts this week. If you have an email address you haven't touched in a couple of years, it might soon be gone. From a report: The tech giant on Friday will start deleting personal Google accounts that have remained inactive for at least two years -- and going forward, it will continue killing accounts that reach two years of disuse. Once deleted, the accounts and any items in them can't be recovered. This could mean the end of personal emails, cherished documents and candid photos and videos tucked away in old Gmail accounts, Google Drives and other nooks in Google's servers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's the busiest shopping season of the year, but one item that doesn't appear to be flying off store shelves is Meta Platforms's Quest brand of virtual-reality headsets. Part of the reason is that many shoppers aren't comfortable trying one on in a store. From a report: The headsets are prone to collect dirt and grime and smear your makeup. During the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, people were especially resistant to put them on in stores, even though Meta paid to have cleaners on hand to sanitize the headsets between each use, said a former Meta employee who wasn't authorized to speak publicly and asked not to be identified. The health emergency is over, but many people are still weirded out by the idea of putting on a VR headset in public. Meta sells the Quest in the US through the stores of mobile carriers like AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon. The thinking was, people are already trying out and buying other gadgets there. But picking up a phone that other people have touched feels different than strapping something to your face that other people have strapped to theirs. In-store sales of Quest headsets at mobile carriers' locations are very low, according to former employees of Reality Labs, the division that builds Meta's VR products.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China is waging a growing number of cyberattacks on neighboring Taiwan, according to cybersecurity experts at Alphabet's Google. From a report: Google has observed a "massive increase" in Chinese cyberattacks on Taiwan in the last six months or so, said Kate Morgan, a senior engineering manager in Google's threat analysis division, which monitors government-sponsored hacking campaigns. Morgan warned that Chinese hackers are employing tactics that make their work difficult to track, such as breaking into small home and office internet routers and repurposing them to wage attacks while masking their true origin. "The number of groups in China that are performing hacking and trying to get into technology companies or get into cloud customers is huge," Morgan said. "I don't have the exact number, but it is probably over 100 groups that we are tracking just out of China alone." The hackers are going "after everything," including defense sector, government and private industry on the island, she said. Google's findings come as concerns have grown over the prospect of a conflict in Taiwan. The relationship between the US -- Taiwan's top military backer -- and China has deteriorated in recent years over a wide range of issues including Taiwan, human rights and a race to dominate advanced technologies such as chips, quantum computing and artificial intelligence.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft wants to bring Xbox Game Pass to PlayStation and Nintendo. From a report: Xbox CFO Tim Stuart said during the Wells Fargo TMT Summit this week that the goal is to make first-party games and Game Pass available on "every screen that can play games," and this includes rival consoles. "It's a bit of a change of strategy. Not announcing anything broadly here, but our mission is to bring our first-party experiences [and] our subscription services to every screen that can play games," Stuart said. "That means smart TVs, that means mobile devices, that means what we would have thought of as competitors in the past like PlayStation and Nintendo." Stuart said Game Pass is a "high margin" business for Microsoft, along with first-party games and advertising. These are all areas that Microsoft plans to expand into significantly in the time ahead, Stuart said. The executive added that buying Activision Blizzard helps Microsoft get there faster than it might have been able to on its own. For the advertising part specifically, the Candy Crush mobile game series from King -- which is now owned by Microsoft -- is deeply embedded with ads and microtransactions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A new era of medical discoveries, treatments and cures is on the horizon, researchers say, following the announcement that an unprecedented trove of genetic information is to be made available to scientists. Health researchers from around the world can now apply to study the whole genomes of half a million people enrolled in UK Biobank, a biomedical research project that has compiled detailed health and lifestyle records on individuals since it began 20 years ago. The move on Thursday amounts to the largest number of whole-genome sequences ever released for medical research. The sequences will be used with UK Biobank's records and other data to delve deeply into the genetics of everything -- from people's risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and other conditions, to individuals' sleep and exercise patterns. Researchers believe the new data will allow them to calculate people's individual risk scores for a raft of cancers and other diseases, and so work out who could benefit most from early screening. They should also gain a deeper understanding of serious genetic conditions such as Huntington's and motor neurone disease, which have often been studied in small numbers of severely affected patients. Health experts from academia, the government, industry and charities can apply for access though they have to be approved and study the genomes through a protected database stripped of identifying details such as names, addresses, birth dates, and GP information. "Until 2021 scientists could study only about 1% of the DNA of UK Biobank volunteers -- the fraction that encodes proteins," notes the report. "Since then, whole genomes have been released for 200,000 participants, but work continued to sequence all of the 500,000 volunteers." "With that number of whole genomes in hand, researchers will be able to find much rarer genes which drive diseases, including those that behave like switches and turn other genes on and off."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft Phone Link, previously known as Microsoft Your Phone, lets you control your Android phone from your computer. Now, the company appears to be working on letting you use your Android phone as a webcam with Windows computers, similar to how you can use your iPhone as a webcam on Mac. Android Authority reports: Microsoft's Link to Windows v1.23102.190.0 for Android app includes code that suggests that the company is working on letting your Android phone provide a video stream to your Windows PC. This would effectively allow it to be used as a webcam. [...] These strings indicate that once Microsoft's Phone Link app is working on both connected devices, users would be able to start a camera stream that lets their phone's camera be available to their Windows PC. The strings do not explicitly mention "webcam," but other clues indicate that the feature would be related to video calls in some ways. Phone Link can already access your camera and video conferencing apps, but this is just mirroring apps running on your phone. What you see on your phone screen is what you see on the computer. If you record a video, it gets saved to your phone as typical video recordings do. With the new functionality spotted above, Phone Link could potentially compete against Apple's Continuity Camera features. With Continuity Camera, users can mount their iPhone to their Mac and then use the iPhone's camera and microphone for FaceTime or other camera apps.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mozilla is opening the floodgates on extensions for Firefox on Android, with hundreds of new add-ons arriving in December. From a report: In a blog post, Mozilla explains that Firefox extensions compatible with Android will be "openly available" to users, with over 400 coming at launch. That launch will arrive on December 14. Technically, Firefox already supports extensions on Android. However, the library is a bit more limited as Mozilla details on a support page. With this new update, though, Firefox users will get a lot more options as developers will have a route to port desktop extensions to Android.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

schwit1 shares a report from the Wall Street Journal: Apple is pulling the plug on its credit-card partnership with Goldman Sachs (source paywalled; alternative source), the final nail in the coffin of the Wall Street bank's bid to expand into consumer lending. The tech giant recently sent a proposal to Goldman to exit from the contract in the next roughly 12 to 15 months, according to people briefed on the matter. The exit would cover their entire consumer partnership, including the credit card the companies launched in 2019 and the savings account rolled out this year. It couldn't be learned whether Apple has already lined up a new issuer for the card. The move would mark a swift about-face for a program that just over a year ago was extended through 2029 and was intended to serve as a pillar of Goldman's main-street ambitions. The retreat began around the end of last year after Goldman lost billions of dollars trying to build out a full-service consumer operation. By early this year, Goldman had told Apple that it would be looking to offload the partnership. Typically the merchant -- in this case Apple -- plays a controlling role in such partnerships.schwit1 adds: "The customer satisfaction rate is high but Goldman's acquisition costs were reportedly astronomical -- something like $350 per cardholder."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Henry Kissinger, a diplomatic powerhouse whose roles as a national security adviser and secretary of state under two presidents left an indelible mark on U.S. foreign policy and earned him a controversial Nobel Peace Prize, died on Wednesday at age 100. From a report: Kissinger died at his home in Connecticut, according to a statement from his geopolitical consulting firm, Kissinger Associates. No mention was made of the circumstances. It said he would be interred at a private family service, to be followed at a later date by a public memorial service in New York City. Kissinger had been active past his centenary, attending meetings in the White House, publishing a book on leadership styles, and testifying before a Senate committee about the nuclear threat posed by North Korea. In July 2023 he made a surprise visit to Beijing to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping. During the 1970s in the midst of the Cold War, he had a hand in many of the epoch-changing global events of the decade while serving as national security adviser and secretary of state under Republican President Richard Nixon. The German-born Jewish refugee's efforts led to the U.S. diplomatic opening with China, landmark U.S.-Soviet arms control talks, expanded ties between Israel and its Arab neighbors, and the Paris Peace Accords with North Vietnam. Kissinger's reign as the prime architect of U.S. foreign policy waned with Nixon's resignation in 1974 amid the Watergate scandal. Still, he continued to be a diplomatic force as secretary of state under Nixon's successor, President Gerald Ford, and to offer strong opinions throughout the rest of his life. While many hailed Kissinger for his brilliance and broad experience, others branded him a war criminal for his support for anti-communist dictatorships, especially in Latin America. In his latter years, his travels were circumscribed by efforts by other nations to arrest or question him about past U.S. foreign policy. His 1973 Peace Prize - awarded jointly to North Vietnam's Le Duc Tho, who would decline it - was one of the most controversial ever. Two members of the Nobel committee resigned over the selection as questions arose about the secret U.S. bombing of Cambodia. Further reading: Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America's Ruling Class, Finally Dies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Air pollution from traffic can cause a significant rise in blood pressure that can last up to 24 hours, according to a study via the University of Washington. The spike is comparable to the effect of a high-sodium diet and can contribute to cardiovascular problems. Long-term exposure to vehicle exhaust has been widely linked with respiratory problems such as asthma, especially in children. "Traffic air pollution increases blood pressure within an hour of being in traffic and it stays elevated a day later," said author of the study Joel Kaufman, a physician and professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at the University of Washington. Sixteen healthy people between the ages of 22 and 45 underwent three separate drives as passengers through Seattle rush hour. Two of those drives were "unfiltered," meaning the road air was allowed to enter the car, as is the case for many drivers on the road today. On the third drive, a Hepa (high efficiency particulate absorbing) filter was installed in the car, with participants unaware which drive had filtration. The researchers measured the blood pressure of the passengers before, during and after the two-hour drive. Breathing unfiltered air resulted in blood pressure increase of more than 4.5mm Hg (millimeters of mercury) compared to filtered air. Most of the pollution came from tailpipe exhaust or the fossil fuel combustion, as well as brake and tire wear. The filters were most effective in reducing ultrafine particles (86% decrease), black carbon, which is mostly from diesel (86%), and PM2.5 (60%) while gasses like carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide were unaffected. "The clue here is that these tiniest particles are probably what's responsible for blood pressure difference," Kaufman said. "If you live in an area that has heavy traffic-related air pollution, you want to keep your windows closed and have air filtration capability in your home."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sam Altman is officially OpenAI's CEO again after spending four days in exile. Meanwhile, Microsoft is getting a non-voting observer seat on the nonprofit board that controls OpenAI. "OpenAI adding Microsoft to the board as a 'non-voting observer' means that the tech giant will have more visibility into the company's inner workings but not have an official vote in big decisions," reports The Verge. Altman said in a memo to employees: "I have never been more excited about the future. I am extremely grateful for everyone's hard work in an unclear and unprecedented situation, and I believe our resilience and spirit set us apart in the industry. I feel so, so good about our probability of success for achieving our mission." From the report: With three of the four board members who decided to suddenly fire Altman now gone, OpenAI's new board consists of chair Bret Taylor, Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo, the only remaining holdout from the previous board. In his memo to employees, Altman said that he harbors "zero ill will" towards Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI's co-founder and chief scientist who initially participated in the board coup and changed his mind after nearly all of the company's employees threatened to quit if Altman didn't come back. "While Ilya will no longer serve on the board, we hope to continue our working relationship and are discussing how he can continue his work at OpenAI," Altman said. "The fact that we did not lose a single customer will drive us to work even harder for you," he told employees.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jennifer Ouellette reports via Ars Technica: Back in 2012, a crowdfunding effort on Indigogo successfully raised the funds necessary to purchase the Wardenclyffe Tower site on Long Island, New York, where Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla once tried to build an ambitious wireless transmission station. The goal was to raise additional funds to build a $20 million Tesla Science Center there, with a museum, an educational center, and a technological innovation program. The nonprofit group behind the project finally broke ground this April after years of basic restoration work -- only to experience a devastating setback last week, two days before Thanksgiving, when a fire broke out. Over 100 firefighters from 17 local departments responded and battled the flames throughout the night, as residual embers led to two additional outbreaks. One firefighter sustained bruised ribs after falling off a ladder, but there were no other injuries or fatalities. Once the blaze was extinguished, the TSC group called in their engineers to assess the damage and make recommendations for repairs. While an investigation is ongoing as to the cause of the fire, Fire Chief Sean McCarrick said during a press conference on Tuesday, November 28, that they had ruled out arson. According to project architect Mark Thaler, there was nothing flammable in the lab that could have caused the fire, although the back buildings had wood-frame roofs. The original brick building, designed by Stanford White, is still standing, although there is considerable damage to the structure of the roof, steel girders, chimney, cupola, and a portion of a wall. Some elements have been irreparably destroyed, but fortunately all museum artifacts in TSC's collection were stored offsite. The most pressing concern is that water from the firehoses saturated the brick walls, according to Thaler, since the upcoming colder winter temperatures could freeze that moisture and cause the brick work to break apart and collapse. The engineers have also recommended adding strategic wall supports to both the interior and exterior to shore up the structure. All of this comes with a hefty price tag: $3 million for immediate remediation to seal the roof and dry the building in order to stave off further damage. The building was insured, but that insurance won't come close to covering the cost. The TSC group has set up a 60-day Indiegogo campaign to raise those funds, which is separate from the $14 million it had already raised toward their targeted $20 million goal. "The best way to help right now is to donate if you can," said TSC Executive Director Marc Alessi. "We've never needed it more. We need to secure this lab, stop the water intrusion and future damage. And then we need to complete this project." [...] "Buildings burn down and can then be rebuilt," said John Gaiman, deputy county executive for Suffolk County. "The ideas behind them, the person, the history, the narrative that was created over 100 years ago still exists, and that will continue."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On December 14, 2023, three Grand Theft Auto games will officially become available for Netflix members on the App Store, Google Play, and in the Netflix mobile app. IGN reports: Those who can't wait to jump into Grand Theft Auto III - The Definitive Edition, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - The Definitive Edition, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - The Definitive Edition can pre-register today to get ready for December 14 and play as soon as they are available. The addition of these three classic Grand Theft Auto games will bring Netflix's gaming library to over 80 titles, and all of these games are available to all Netflix subscribers without any ads, in-app purchases, or extra fees.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Michael Larabel reports via Phoronix: The open-source Roundcube webmail software project has "merged" with Nextcloud, the prominent open-source personal cloud software. In boosting Nextcloud's webmail software capabilities, Roundcube is joining Nextcloud as what's been described as a merger. In 2024 Nextcloud is to invest into Roundcube to accelerate the development of this widely-used webmail open-source software. Today's press release says Roundcube will not replace Nextcloud Mail with at least no plans for merging the two in the short-term. Today's press release says that there are no immediate changes for Roundcube and Nextcloud users besides looking forward to improved integration and accelerated development beginning in the short term.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Hackaday: The BBC has a long history of teaching the world about computers. The broadcaster's name was proudly displayed on the BBC Micro, and BBC Basic was the programming language developed especially for that computer. Now, BBC Basic is back and running on a whole mess of modern platforms. BBC Basic for SDL 2.0 will run on Windows, MacOS, x86 Linux, and even Raspberry Pi OS, Android, and iOS. Desktop versions of the programming environment feature a BASIC editor that has syntax coloring for ease of use, along with luxury features like search and replace that weren't always available at the dawn of the microcomputer era. Meanwhile, the smartphone versions feature a simplified interface designed to work better in a touchscreen environment. It's weird to see, but BBC Basic can actually do some interesting stuff given the power of modern hardware. It can address up to 256 MB of memory, and work with far more advanced graphical assets than would ever have been possible on the original BBC Micro. If you honed your programming skills on that old metal, you might be impressed with what they can achieve with BBC Basic in a new, more powerful context.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dollar Tree was impacted by a third-party data breach stemming from the hack of service provider Zeroed-In Technologies. According to Bleeping Computer, nearly two million customers have been affected. "The information stolen during the attack includes names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers (SSNs)." From the report: According to a data breach notification shared with the Maine Attorney General, Dollar Tree's service provider, Zeroed-In, suffered a security incident between August 7 and 8, 2023. As part of this cyberattack, the threat actors managed to steal data containing the personal information of Dollar Tree and Family Dollar employees. "While the investigation was able to determine that these systems were accessed, it was not able to confirm all of the specific files that were accessed or taken by the unauthorized actor," reads the letter sent to affected individuals. "Therefore, Zeroed-In conducted a review of the contents of the systems to determine what information was present at the time of the incident and to whom the information relates." The information stolen during the attack includes names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers (SSNs). Zeroed-In has notified the affected individuals and enclosed instructions on enrolling in a twelve-month identity protection and credit monitoring service. Other Zeroed-In customers apart from Dollar Tree and Family Dollar may have also been impacted by the security breach, but this hasn't been confirmed yet. Meanwhile, the scale of the data breach has already triggered investigations from law firms looking into a potential class-action lawsuit against Zeroed-In.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

During a keynote at its re:Invent conference today, Amazon debuted the Titan Image Generator, which can create new images or customize existing images via a text description. It's now available in preview for AWS customers on Bedrock, Amazon's AI development platform. TechCrunch reports: Amazon says that Titan Image Generator was trained on a "diverse set of datasets" across a "broad range of domains" and can be optionally fine-tuned on custom datasets, and includes built-in mitigations for toxicity and bias. (Barring testing, the jury's out on just how effective those mitigations are, of course.) The company declined to say exactly where those datasets came from however -- and whether it obtained permission from or is compensating all the creators of the images used to train Titan Image Generator. [...] Sivasubramanian did claim onstage, however, that Amazon will protect customers accused of violating copyright with images generated by Titan Image Generator -- in keeping with its AI indemnification policy. That's surely music to the ears of AWS customers worried about regurgitation, or when a generative model spits out a mirror copy of a training example. Images created with Titan Image Generator will also come with a "tamper-resistant" invisible watermark by default -- an attempt to mitigate the spread of AI-generated misinformation and abuse imagery, Sivasubramanian says. (Deepfakes from the Gaza war and AI-generated child abuse images are the latest illustrations of how major the threat's become.) It's not clear exactly what sort of watermarking technique Amazon's using and which tools beyond Amazon's own API will be able to detect it; we've reached out to Amazon for clarification. Sivasubramanian noted watermarks are a part of the voluntary commitment around AI that Amazon signed with the White House in July.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the CBC: Google and the federal government have reached an agreement in their dispute over the Online News Act that would see Google continue to share Canadian news online in return for the company making annual payments to news companies in the range of $100 million. Sources told Radio-Canada and CBC News earlier Wednesday that an agreement had been reached. Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge confirmed the news Wednesday afternoon. "Many doubted that we would be successful, but I was confident we would find a way to address Google's concerns," she told reporters outside the House of Commons. The federal government and Google agreed on the regulatory framework earlier this week, a government source familiar with the talks told Radio-Canada. The federal government had estimated earlier this year that Google's compensation should amount to about $172 million. Google estimated the value at $100 million. The company said it would not have a mandatory negotiation model imposed on it for talks with Canadian media organizations, preferring to deal with a single point of contact. The new regulations will allow Google to negotiate with a single group that would represent all media, allowing the company to limit its arbitration risk. Google would still be required to negotiate with the media and sign an agreement. The digital giant could also add additional service contributions, which have yet to be specified.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang, who runs the semiconductor industry's most valuable company, said the US is as much as 20 years away from breaking its dependence on overseas chipmaking. From a report: Huang, speaking at the New York Times's DealBook conference in New York, explained how his company's products rely on myriad components that come from different parts of the world -- not just Taiwan, where the most important elements are manufactured. "We are somewhere between a decade and two decades away from supply chain independence," he said. "It's not a really practical thing for a decade or two." The outlook suggests there's a long road ahead for a key Biden administration objective -- bringing more of the chipmaking industry to US shores. The president has championed bipartisan legislation to support the building of manufacturing facilities here. And many of the biggest companies are planning to expand their US operations. That includes Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Nvidia's top manufacturing partner, as well as Samsung and Intel.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The United States and China are pursuing parallel scientific tracks. To solve crises on multiple fronts, the two roads need to become one, Nature's editorial board wrote Wednesday. From the post: It's no secret that research collaborations between China and the United States -- among other Western countries -- are on a downward trajectory. Early indicators of a possible downturn have been confirmed by more sources. A report from Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, published in August, for instance, stated that the number of research articles co-authored by scientists in the two countries had fallen in 2021, the first annual drop since 1993. Meanwhile, data from Nature Index show that China-based scientists' propensity to collaborate internationally has been waning, when looking at the authorship of papers in the Index's natural-science journals. Nature reported last month that China's decoupling from the countries loosely described as the West mirrors its strengthening of science links with low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), as part of its Belt and Road Initiative. There are many good reasons for China to be boosting science in LMICs, which could sorely do with greater research funding and capacity building. But this is also creating parallel scientific systems -- one centred on North America and Europe, and the other on China. The biggest challenges faced by humanity, from combating climate change to ending poverty, are embodied in a globally agreed set of targets, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Approaching them without shared knowledge can only slow down progress by creating competing systems for advancing and implementing solutions. It's a scenario that the research community must be more aware of and work to avoid. Nature Index offers some reasons as to why collaboration between China and the West is declining. Travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic took their toll, limiting collaborations and barring new ones from being forged. Geopolitical tensions have led many Western governments to restrict their research partnerships with China, on national-security grounds, and vice versa.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From EV batteries to solar cells to microchips, new materials can supercharge technological breakthroughs. But discovering them usually takes months or even years of trial-and-error research. Google DeepMind hopes to change that with a new tool that uses deep learning to dramatically speed up the process of discovering new materials. From a report: Called graphical networks for material exploration (GNoME), the technology has already been used to predict structures for 2.2 million new materials, of which more than 700 have gone on to be created in the lab and are now being tested. It is described in a paper published in Nature today. Alongside GNoME, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory also announced a new autonomous lab. In partnership with DeepMind, the lab takes GNoME's discoveries and uses machine learning and robotic arms to engineer new materials without the help of humans. Google DeepMind says that together, these advancements show the potential of using AI to scale up the discovery and development of new materials. GNoME can be described as AlphaFold for materials discovery, according to Ju Li, a materials science and engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. AlphaFold, a DeepMind AI system announced in 2020, predicts the structures of proteins with high accuracy and has since advanced biological research and drug discovery. Thanks to GNoME, the number of known stable materials has grown almost tenfold, to 421,000. "While materials play a very critical role in almost any technology, we as humanity know only a few tens of thousands of stable materials," said Dogus Cubuk, materials discovery lead at Google DeepMind, at a press briefing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The tech industry has largely recovered from the downturn, but Silicon Valley learned a long-lasting lesson: how to do more with less. From a report: Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta Platforms have been cutting dozens or a few hundred employees at a time as executives keep tight controls on costs, even as their businesses and stock prices have rebounded sharply. The cuts are far smaller than the mass layoffs that reached tens of thousands in late 2022 and early this year. But they suggest a new era for an industry that in years past grew with little restraint, one in which companies are focusing on efficiency and acting more like their corporate peers that emphasize shareholder value and healthy margins. The launch of the humanlike chatbot ChatGPT late last year served as a bright spot of growth in an industry that was otherwise scaling back. Challenges regarding the technology and calls for regulation remain, but some of the biggest tech companies are starting to make it their priority. There is a reallocation of resources from noncore areas to projects such as AI rather than hiring new people, said Ward, who was previously a director of recruiting at Facebook and the head of recruiting at Pinterest. Amazon eliminated several hundred roles this month from its Alexa division to maximize its "resources and efforts focused on generative AI," according to an internal memo. The company has also made small cuts in recent weeks to its gaming and music divisions. Facebook's parent, Meta, recently posted its largest quarterly revenue in more than a decade. It laid off 20 people weeks later. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said on an earnings call that the company would continue to operate more efficiently going forward "both because it creates a more disciplined and lean culture, and also because it provides stability to see our long-term initiatives through in a very volatile world."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The biggest benefit Samsung Internet on a desktop operating system will provide is the syncing of browsing data between your phone and PC, the lack of which has prevented many users from using Samsung Internet as their primary browser app on their phones and tablets. Unfortunately, Samsung hasn't yet implemented full-fledged sync support on Samsung Internet for Windows. While you can log in with your Samsung account, only browsing history, bookmarks, saved pages and open tabs can be synced at this time. Password syncing is not available, which hopefully won't remain the case for long. The first time you run Samsung Internet on Windows, you can import browsing history, bookmarks/favorites, and search engines from other browsers, including Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. You can also import bookmarks using an HTML file. As for other features, Samsung Internet on Windows has ad blocker support, a secret (incognito) mode, extension support, light and dark mode themes, and a few others. Since Samsung Internet is based on the open-source Chromium project like Chrome and Microsoft Edge, it should support extensions and add-ons that work on those browsers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An "unprecedented outcome" that would keep alive hopes of limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C is within reach, the president-designate of the UN Cop28 climate summit has said -- and even Saudi Arabia is expected to come with positive commitments. From a report: Significant progress has been made in recent weeks on key aspects of a deal at the crucial meeting that starts in Dubai this week, with countries agreeing a blueprint for a fund for the most vulnerable, and reaching an important milestone on climate finance. Sultan Al Jaber, who will lead the talks on behalf of the Cop28 host country, the United Arab Emirates, told the Guardian in an exclusive interview on the eve of the talks that the positive momentum meant the world could agree a "robust roadmap" of cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 that would meet scientific advice. "I have to be cautiously optimistic," he said. "But I have the levers and the traction that I am experiencing today that will allow for us to deliver the unprecedented outcome that we all hope for." He added: "Getting back on track, and ensuring that the world accepts a robust understanding of a roadmap to 2030 that will keep [a temperature rise above pre-industrial levels of] 1.5C (2.7F) within reach is my only goal."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Who censored Robert De Niro? The "Killers of the Flower Moon" actor was gearing up to slam Donald Trump at Monday's Gotham Awards, but when he took the stage he discovered that the speech he planned to give had been altered at the behest of Apple, the film's producer. The company was responding to feedback from the filmmaking team that wanted the actor's remarks to be centered on the movie, according to a source. The actor said he had not been informed of the changes, which took out any mention of the former president. De Niro, who was on hand to present "Killers of the Flower Moon" with the Gotham Historical Icon and Creator Tribute, criticized the awards show and Apple. "I don't feel like thanking them at all for what they did," he said. "How dare they do that, actually." A revised version of the speech was delivered to the teleprompter less than ten minutes before the event started, according to sources with knowledge of the show. A woman who told the teleprompter operator to upload a new speech was overheard identifying herself as an Apple employee.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Hackers who compromised Okta's customer support system stole data from all of the cybersecurity firm's customer support users, Okta said in a letter to clients Tuesday, a far greater incursion than the company initially believed. The expanded scope opens those customers up to the risk of heightened attacks or phishing attempts, Okta warned. An Okta spokesperson told CNBC that customers in government or Department of Defense environments were not impacted by the breach. "We are working with a digital forensics firm to support our investigation and we will be sharing the report with customers upon completion. In addition, we will also notify individuals that have had their information downloaded," a spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC. Nonetheless, Okta provides identity management solutions for thousands of small and large businesses, allowing them to give employees a single point of sign on. It also makes Okta a high-profile target for hackers, who can exploit vulnerabilities or misconfigurations to gain access to a slew of other targets. In the high profile attacks on MGM and Caesars, for example, threat actors used social engineering tactics to exploit IT help desks and target those company's Okta platforms. The direct and indirect losses from those two incidents exceeded $100 million, including a multi-million dollar ransom payment from Caesars.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to Reuters, Unity Software will eliminate 265 jobs or 3.8% of its global workforce as part of a company "reset." It will also end an agreement with Peter Jackson's visual effects company Weta FX. From the report: Tuesday's announcement includes termination of the professional services piece of an agreement Unity struck with movie director Peter Jackson's visual effects company Weta FX in 2021 after Unity purchased the technology and engineering division of Weta FX. As a result, 265 employees whose jobs are related to the agreement will be laid off, the company said. The company has said its total workforce was around 7,000. In addition, Unity will shut down offices in 14 locations such as Berlin and Singapore, pending employee consultation in some countries, and significantly reduce its office footprint for the remaining offices, including in San Francisco and Bellevue, Washington. Unity will no longer mandate that employees work from offices three a days a week and will reduce "full in-office services" to three days a week in most locations, the company said. More changes are in store to "refocus" Unity's business, Whitehurst told Reuters. "While no additions have been finalized, it's clear that we will reduce the number of things we are doing overall," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Red Hat is going to do away with the X.Org server and support Wayland and XWayland for apps that currently (or only) run on X11," writes Slashdot reader motang. Red Hat's Carlos Soriano Sanchez confirmed on the Red Hat blog: "The result of this evaluation is that, while there are still some gaps and applications that need some level of adaptation, we believe the Wayland infrastructure and ecosystem are in good shape, and that we're on a good path for the identified blockers to be resolved by the time RHEL 10 is out, planned to be released on the first half of 2025. With this, we've decided to remove Xorg server and other X servers (except Xwayland) from RHEL 10 and the following releases. Xwayland should be able to handle most X11 clients that won't immediately be ported to Wayland, and if needed, our customers will be able to stay on RHEL 9 for its full life cycle while resolving the specifics needed for transitioning to a Wayland ecosystem. It's important to note that "Xorg Server" and "X11" are not synonymous, X11 is a protocol that will continue to be supported through Xwayland, while the Xorg Server is one of the implementations of the X11 protocol.[...]This decision will allow us to focus our efforts starting from RHEL 10 solely on a modern stack and ecosystem. This means we will be able to tackle problems such as HDR, increased security, setups with mixed low and high density displays or very high density displays, better GPU/Display hot-plugging, better gestures and scrolling, and so on. We are confident that Wayland will provide a solid platform and we're excited to work with the community and all of our partners and customers on building the future for Linux."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: As the host of global climate talks that begin this week, the United Arab Emirates is expected to play a central role in forging an agreement to move the world more rapidly away from coal, oil and gas. But behind the scenes, the Emirates has sought to use its position as host to pursue a contradictory goal: to lobby on oil and gas deals around the world, according to an internal document made public by a whistle-blower.In one example, the document offers guidance for Emirati climate officials to use meetings with Brazil's environment minister to enlist her help with a local petrochemical deal by the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, the Emirates' state-run oil and gas company, known as Adnoc. Emirati officials should also inform their Chinese counterparts that Adnoc was "willing to jointly evaluate international LNG opportunities" in Mozambique, Canada and Australia, the document indicates. LNG stands for liquefied natural gas, which is a fossil fuel and a driver of global warming. These and other details in the nearly 50-page document -- obtained by the Centre for Climate Reportingand the BBC -- have cast a pall over the climate summit, which begins on Thursday. They are indications, experts said, that the U.A.E. is blurring the boundary between its powerful standing as host of the United Nations climate conference, and U.A.E.'s position as one of the world's largest oil and gas exporters. [...] In private, delegates preparing to travel to Dubai expressed concerns that the cloud surrounding the host nation threatened to discredit the talks themselves. The allegations, they said, risked undermining what many have hoped the negotiations will yield: a deal to replace polluting fossil fuels with clean energy such as wind and solar power. But many said they were reluctant to speak out publicly, for fear of jeopardizing their ability to negotiate.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

American Airlines today announced a deal with Graphyte to purchase "carbon removal credits" to help accelerate its long-term goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. According to the announcement, the airline will purchase credits equivalent to 10,000 tons of permanent carbon removal with delivery scheduled for early 2025. From the report: Graphyte uses a process called carbon casting that converts byproducts from the agriculture and timber industries such as wood bark, rice hulls and plant stalks which have captured carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. The plant material is dried to prevent decomposition and then converted into carbon dense bricks that are sealed with a polymer barrier. These bricks are stored in underground chambers and monitored with sensors to make sure the carbon does not escape, according to the company. Plant byproducts from the agriculture and timber industries are typically burned or left to decompose, which returns carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This biomass material is equivalent to 3 billion tons of potential carbon dioxide removal annually, according to Graphyte. Graphyte says carbon casting is a cheap, scalable alternative to expensive and technologically intensive methods of carbon capture and removal. The company is backed by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, an investment firm founded by Bill Gates that funds clean energy technologies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Emilia David reports via The Verge: AWS added new languages to its Amazon Transcribe product, offering generative AI-based transcription for 100 languages and a slew of new AI capabilities for customers. Announced during the AWS re: Invent event, Amazon Transcribe can now recognize more spoken languages and spin up a call transcription. AWS customers use Transcribe to add speech-to-text capabilities to their apps on the AWS Cloud. The company said in a blog post that Transcribe trained on "millions of hours of unlabeled audio data from over 100 languages" and uses self-supervised algorithms to learn patterns of human speech in different languages and accents. AWS said it ensured that some languages were not overrepresented in the training data to ensure that lesser-used languages could be as accurate as more frequently spoken ones. In late 2022, Amazon Transcribe supported 79 languages. Amazon Transcribe has 20 to 50 percent accuracy across many languages, according to AWS. It also offers automatic punctuation, custom vocabulary, automatic language identification, and custom vocabulary filters. It can recognize speech in audio and video formats and noisy environments. With better language recognition, AWS said advances with Amazon Transcribe also bleed into better accuracy with its Call Analytics platform, which its contact center customers often use. Amazon Transcribe Call Analytics, now also powered by generative AI models, summarizes interactions between an agent and a customer. AWS said this cuts down on after-call work creating reports, and managers can quickly read information without needing to go through the entire transcript.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anton Shilov reports via Tom's Hardware: Engineers from Frore Systems have integrated the company's innovative solid-state AirJet cooling system, which provides impressive cooling capabilities despite a lack of moving parts, into an M2-based Apple MacBook Air. With proper cooling, the relatively inexpensive laptop matched the performance of a more expensive MacBook Pro based on the same processor. The lack of a fan is probably one of the main advantages of Apple's MacBook Air over its more performant siblings, but it also puts the laptop at a disadvantage. Fanless cooling doesn't have moving parts (which is a plus), but it also cannot properly cool down Apple's M1 or M2 processor under high loads, which is why a 13-inch MacBook Air powered by M1 or M2 system-on-chip is slower than 13-inch MacBook Pro based on the same SoC. However, making a MacBook Air run as fast as a 13-inch MacBook Pro is now possible. A video posted to YouTube by PC World shows how the AirJet system works. They also released a recent demo showing off the strength of the AirJet technology.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A prolific espionage hacking group with ties to China spent over two years looting the corporate network of NXP, the Netherlands-based chipmaker whose silicon powers security-sensitive components found in smartphones, smartcards, and electric vehicles, a news outlet has reported. The intrusion, by a group tracked under names including "Chimera" and "G0114," lasted from late 2017 to the beginning of 2020, according to Netherlands national news outlet NRC Handelsblad, which cited "several sources" familiar with the incident. During that time, the threat actors periodically accessed employee mailboxes and network drives in search of chip designs and other NXP intellectual property. The breach wasn't uncovered until Chimera intruders were detected in a separate company network that connected to compromised NXP systems on several occasions. Details of the breach remained a closely guarded secret until now. NRC cited a report published (and later deleted) by security firm Fox-IT, titled Abusing Cloud Services to Fly Under the Radar. It documented Chimera using cloud services from companies including Microsoft and Dropbox to receive data stolen from the networks of semiconductor makers, including one in Europe that was hit in "early Q4 2017." Some of the intrusions lasted as long as three years before coming to light. NRC said the unidentified victim was NXP. "Once nested on a first computer -- patient zero -- the spies gradually expand their access rights, erase their tracks in between and secretly sneak to the protected parts of the network," NRC reporters wrote in an English translation. "They try to secrete the sensitive data they find there in encrypted archive files via cloud storage services such as Microsoft OneDrive. According to the log files that Fox-IT finds, the hackers come every few weeks to see whether interesting new data can be found at NXP and whether more user accounts and parts of the network can be hacked." NXP did not alert customers or shareholders to the intrusion, other than a brief reference in a 2019 annual report. It read: "We have, from time to time, experienced cyber-attacks attempting to obtain access to our computer systems and networks. Such incidents, whether or not successful, could result in the misappropriation of our proprietary information and technology, the compromise of personal and confidential information of our employees, customers, or suppliers, or interrupt our business. For instance, in January 2020, we became aware of a compromise of certain of our systems. We are taking steps to identify the malicious activity and are implementing remedial measures to increase the security of our systems and networks to respond to evolving threats and new information. As of the date of this filing, we do not believe that this IT system compromise has resulted in a material adverse effect on our business or any material damage to us. However, the investigation is ongoing, and we are continuing to evaluate the amount and type of data compromised. There can be no assurance that this or any other breach or incident will not have a material impact on our operations and financial results in the future."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Futurism has accused Sports Illustrated of publishing AI-generated articles under fake author biographies. The magazine has since removed the articles in question and released a statement blaming the issue on a contractor. From the report: There was nothing in Drew Ortiz's author biography at Sports Illustrated to suggest that he was anything other than human. "Drew has spent much of his life outdoors, and is excited to guide you through his never-ending list of the best products to keep you from falling to the perils of nature," it read. "Nowadays, there is rarely a weekend that goes by where Drew isn't out camping, hiking, or just back on his parents' farm." The only problem? Outside of Sports Illustrated, Drew Ortiz doesn't seem to exist. He has no social media presence and no publishing history. And even more strangely, his profile photo on Sports Illustrated is for sale on a website that sells AI-generated headshots, where he's described as "neutral white young-adult male with short brown hair and blue eyes." Ortiz isn't the only AI-generated author published by Sports Illustrated, according to a person involved with the creation of the content who asked to be kept anonymous to protect them from professional repercussions. "There's a lot," they told us of the fake authors. "I was like, what are they? This is ridiculous. This person does not exist." "At the bottom [of the page] there would be a photo of a person and some fake description of them like, 'oh, John lives in Houston, Texas. He loves yard games and hanging out with his dog, Sam.' Stuff like that," they continued. "It's just crazy." According to a second person involved in the creation of the Sports Illustrated content who also asked to be kept anonymous, that's because it's not just the authors' headshots that are AI-generated. At least some of the articles themselves, they said, were churned out using AI as well. "The content is absolutely AI-generated," the second source said, "no matter how much they say that it's not." After we reached out with questions to the magazine's publisher, The Arena Group, all the AI-generated authors disappeared from Sports Illustrated's site without explanation. [...] Though Sports Illustrated's AI-generated authors and their articles disappeared after we asked about them, similar operations appear to be alive and well elsewhere in The Arena Group's portfolio. An Arena Group spokesperson issued the following statement blaming a contractor for the content: "Today, an article was published alleging that Sports Illustrated published AI-generated articles. According to our initial investigation, this is not accurate. The articles in question were product reviews and were licensed content from an external, third-party company, AdVon Commerce. A number of AdVon's e-commerce articles ran on certain Arena websites. We continually monitor our partners and were in the midst of a review when these allegations were raised. AdVon has assured us that all of the articles in question were written and edited by humans. According to AdVon, their writers, editors, and researchers create and curate content and follow a policy that involves using both counter-plagiarism and counter-AI software on all content. However, we have learned that AdVon had writers use a pen or pseudo name in certain articles to protect author privacy -- actions we don't condone -- and we are removing the content while our internal investigation continues and have since ended the partnership."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Registry released a new top-level .meme domain that you can now add to your website. The Verge reports: The new .meme domains are available to register right now as part of an early access period for an "additional one-time fee." If you don't want to pay extra, you can wait until they become publicly available on December 5th at 4PM UTC (12PM ET) to pay just the base annual price. There are already a handful of sites that are embracing the .meme domain, some of which are dedicated to memes from the days of yore, including grumpycat.meme, nyancat.meme, and keyboardcat.meme. The meme tracker knowyour.meme even adopted the new domain. However, some of these .meme sites just direct you to a .com address or point you to another platform.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: App developer Elias Saba has had some bad luck with Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedowns. His Android TV app Downloader, which combines a web browser with a file manager, was suspended by Google Play in May after several Israeli TV companies complained that the app could be used to load a pirate website. Google reversed that suspension after three weeks. But Downloader has been suspended by Google Play again, and this time the reason is even harder to understand. Based on a vague DMCA notice, it appears that Downloader was suspended simply because it can load the Warner Bros. website. [...] The notice includes a copy of the DMCA complaint, which came from MarkScan, a "digital asset protection" firm that content owners hire to enforce copyrights. MarkScan said in its complaint that it represents Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. A DMCA notice is supposed to identify and describe the copyrighted work that was infringed. But MarkScan's notice about Downloader identifies the copyrighted work only as "Properties of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc." It provides no detail on which Warner Bros. work was infringed by Downloader. A DMCA notice is also supposed to provide an example of where someone can see "an authorized example of the work." In this field, MarkScan simply entered the main Warner Bros. URL: https://www.warnerbros.com/. The Downloader app had been installed over 10 million times before the takedown, according to an Internet Archive capture taken before the latest suspension. Saba appealed the takedown today, but he told us that the appeal was rejected by Google Play after 24 minutes. Saba said he also submitted a DMCA counter-notice, which gives the complainant 10 business days from today to file a legal action. After his first takedown in May, his app was reinstated after the DMCA complainant didn't take any legal action. Saba also wrote a blog post today about the latest takedown. "Given that my app still does not contain any copyright-infringing content and never has, I've countered this new DMCA takedown which will, hopefully, mean the app will be restored sometime in the coming weeks," he wrote. "In the meantime, you can sideload the app onto your Google TV or Android TV devices by downloading the APK from https://www.aftvnews.com/downloader.apk. Downloader remains available on Fire TV devices directly from the Amazon Appstore." Saba said it's "absurd that Google seems to make no effort at all to verify the copyright claims being made on my app which is just a web browser that can download files and has no content of any sort in it." "If loading a website with infringing content in a standard web browser is enough to violate DMCA, then every browser in the Google Play Store including @googlechrome should also be removed," said Saba in May. "It's a ridiculous claim and an abuse of the DMCA."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The rapid adoption of AI could reduce wages, but so far is creating, not destroying jobs, especially for the young and highly-skilled, research published by the European Central Bank showed on Tuesday. From a report: Firms have invested heavily in AI leaving economists striving to understand the impact on the labour market and driving fears among the wider public for the future of their jobs. At the same time, employers are struggling to find qualified workers, despite a recession that would normally ease labour market pressures. In a sample of 16 European countries, the employment share of sectors exposed to AI increased, with low and medium-skill jobs largely unaffected and highly-skilled positions getting the biggest boost, a Research Bulletin published by the ECB said. But it also cited "neutral to slightly negative impacts" on earnings and said that could increase.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is returning to the Bliss hill once again with this year's entry in its now-traditional ugly retro-computing sweater series. From a report: Blue hemming at the bottom and on the sleeves evokes Windows XP's bright-blue taskbar, and in case people don't immediately recognize Bliss as "a computer thing," there's also a giant mouse pointer hovering over it. The sweater is available from size small up to a 3XL, and costs $70 regardless of which version you buy. All sizes are currently expected to arrive sometime between December 2 and 6.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon on Tuesday announced a new chatbot called Q for people to use at work. From a report: The product, announced at Amazon Web Services' Reinvent conference in Las Vegas, represents Amazon's latest effort to challenge Microsoft and Google in productivity software. It comes one year after Microsoft-backed startup OpenAI launched its ChatGPT chatbot, which has popularized generative artificial intelligence for crafting human-like text in response to a few lines of human input. A tier for business users will cost $20 per person per month. A version with additional features for developers and IT workers will cost $25 per person per month. The Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Duet AI for Google Workspace for business workers both cost $30 per person per month. Initially, Q can help people understand the capabilities of AWS and trouble-shoot issues. People will be able to talk with it in communication apps such as Salesforce's Slack and software developers' text-editing applications, Adam Selipsky, CEO of AWS, said onstage at Reinvent. It will also appear in AWS' online Management Console. Q can provide citations of documents to back up its chat responses. The tool can automatically make changes to source code so developers have less work to do, Selipsky said. The service will be able to connect to more than 40 enterprise systems, he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon's cloud-computing unit announced updated versions of its in-house computer chips while also forging closer ties with Nvidia -- dual efforts designed to ensure it can get enough supplies of crucial data-center processors. From a report: New homegrown Graviton4 chips will have as much as 30% better performance than their predecessors, Amazon Web Services said at its annual re:Invent conference in Las Vegas. Computers using the processors will start coming online in the coming months. The company also unveiled Trainium2, an updated version of a processor designed for artificial intelligence systems. It will begin powering new services starting next year, Amazon said. That chip provides an alternative to so-called AI accelerators sold by Nvidia -- processors that have been vital to the build-out of artificial intelligence services. But Amazon also touted "an expansion of its partnership" with Nvidia, whose chief executive officer, Jensen Huang, joined AWS counterpart Adam Selipsky on stage. AWS will be the first big user of an updated version of that company's Grace Hopper Superchip, and it will be one of the data-center companies hosting Nvidia's DGX Cloud service.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A first-of-its-kind geothermal project is now up and running in Nevada, where it will help power Google's data centers with clean energy. From a report: Google is partnering with startup Fervo, which has developed new technology for harnessing geothermal power. Since they're using different tactics than traditional geothermal plants, it is a relatively small project with the capacity to generate 3.5 MW. For context, one megawatt is enough to meet the demand of roughly 750 homes. The project will feed electricity into the local grid that serves two of Google's data centers outside of Las Vegas and Reno. It's part of Google's plan to run on carbon pollution-free electricity around the clock by 2030. To reach that goal, it'll have to get more sources of clean energy online. And it sees geothermal as a key part of the future electricity mix that can fill in whenever wind and solar energy wane. "If you think about how much we advanced wind and solar and lithium ion storage, here we are -- this is kind of the next set of stuff and we feel like companies have a huge role to play in advancing these technologies," says Michael Terrell, senior director of energy and climate at Google.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A study of more than 2 million people's internet use found no "smoking gun" for widespread harm to mental health from online activities such as browsing social media and gaming, despite widely claimed concerns that mobile apps can cause depression and anxiety. From a report: Researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute, who said their study was the largest of its kind, said they found no evidence to support "popular ideas that certain groups are more at risk" from the technology. However, Andrew Przybylski, professor at the institute -- part of the University of Oxford -- said that the data necessary to establish a causal connection was "absent" without more co-operation from tech companies. If apps do harm mental health, only the companies that build them have the user data that could prove it, he said. "The best data we have available suggests that there is not a global link between these factors," said Przybylski, who carried out the study with Matti Vuorre, a professor at Tilburg University. Because the "stakes are so high" if online activity really did lead to mental health problems, any regulation aimed at addressing it should be based on much more "conclusive" evidence, he added. "Global Well-Being and Mental Health in the Internet Age" was published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science on Tuesday. In their paper, Przybylski and Vuorre studied data on psychological wellbeing from 2.4 million people aged 15 to 89 in 168 countries between 2005 and 2022, which they contrasted with industry data about growth in internet subscriptions over that time, as well as tracking associations between mental health and internet adoption in 202 countries from 2000-19.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After making steep cuts to personnel earlier this year, Evernote's Milan-based owner Bending Spoons is now experimenting with a new plan that would push more users to upgrade to paid versions of its service. From a report: The company confirmed to TechCrunch it's been running a small test that placed limits on the number of notes free users could create, but said the new plan is not yet finalized. TechCrunch was alerted to the test by an Evernote user who logged in to a pop-up message that informed them that unless they upgraded to a paid plan, they would now be limited to only 1 notebook and 50 notes. That change would dramatically limit the service for longtime Evernote users who have accumulated hundreds or thousands of notes over the years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Economist, in an interactive post: In 2024, countries with more than half the world's population -- over four billion people -- will send their citizens to the polls. But many elections are not fully free and fair. Some of these will have no meaningful influence on governments. In the most democratic countries, such as Britain, elections will decide the next government or cause a substantial change in policy. In Russia, one of the least democratic, the vote is very unlikely to weaken Vladimir Putin's grip on power. For countries in between, such as India or the United States, elections still matter, and may even be free and fair. But other aspects of democracy, such as participation or governance, have weaknesses. Some places, such as Brazil and Turkey, will not hold general elections in 2024 but have local or municipal elections in which the whole country will participate. Similarly, the European Union's 27 member states will elect the bloc's next parliament. More people will vote in 2024 than in any previous year. But this great march to the ballot box does not necessarily mean an explosion of democracy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: YouTube is branching out into games -- at least for its paid subscribers. The platform is giving Premium users access to a set of online games that can be directly played on either the mobile app or desktop app. Known as "Playables," the company first debuted the experimental feature to select users in September. As noted by Droid-Life, YouTube sent a notification last week to Premium subscribers informing them of Playables and allowing them to try it out. Those who opt in will be able to play a total of 37 mini-games that effectively live inside YouTube -- there's no need to download or install them. The selection of games isn't too challenging or "out there" -- they include crowd-pleasers like Angry Birds Showdown, Brain Out, Daily Solitaire, The Daily Crossword, and a number of arcade games. And they may not be here to stay. YouTube Premium's notification stated that the games would be available until March 28th, 2024. For now, Premium members can find the full library of games under the "Playables" section in the Explore tab.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Richard Speed reports via The Register: A jury has sided with Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) against Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) over the theft of source code and documentation. A total of $210 million was this week awarded. According to the verdict [PDF], a Texas jury agreed that TCS had "willfully and maliciously" misappropriated both source and confidential documentation by "improper means," awarding CSC $140 million in damages, with another $70 million tacked on for TCS's "unjust enrichment." The complaint [PDF] was filed in April 2019 regarding CSC's VANTAGE-ONE and CyberLife software platforms. CSC had licensed these software platforms to Transamerica Corporation, a life insurance holding company, to whom Tata -- used here to collectively refer to Tata Consultancy Services Limited and Tata America International Corporation -- began providing maintenance services. In 2014, CSC and Transamerica signed off on a Third-Party Access Addendum that would allow Tata to alter CSC's software, but only for the benefit of its customer -- Transamerica. All was well until 2016, when Transamerica decided it needed to refresh its software. CSC and Tata both put in bids. CSC lost, and Tata won with its own software platform called BaNCS. The circumstances got sticky at this point, not least because Tata hired more than 2,000 Transamerica employees. CSC alleged that these former employees had access to its code and documents, and forwarded them on to the Tata BaNCS development team. The situation escalated in 2019, when a CSC employee was accidentally copied in on an email between Tata and Transamerica showing that Tata was accessing confidential information, according to CSC. The company then began legal proceedings. Documents and motions have been exchanged in the years since as Tata sought to get the case thrown out while CSC's claims were upheld. Eventually, it went to a jury trial, which found for CSC.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A team of researchers at the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology has developed a prototype cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) microscope that, despite being significantly cheaper than high-end machines, has successfully solved protein structures with near-atomic resolution. The findings have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Science Magazine reports: [MB physicist Chris Russo] wants a manufacturer to commercialize his team's design, which he believes could be built and sold for $500,000. That's within reach of a new hire's startup package, or one of the regular equipment grants offered by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or National Science Foundation, says Bridget Carragher, founding technical director of the Chan Zuckerberg Imaging Institute. "It would be a marvelous machine," she says. "Everyone who wants to do structural biology could do it." [...] One of the team's key insights was that the electron beam does not need the energies typically used in high-end cryo-EM microscopes. Levels of 100 kiloelectronvolts (KeV) -- one-third as high -- suffice to reveal molecular structure, and they reduce costs by eliminating the need for a regulated gas, sulfur hexafluoride, to snuff out sparks. The team also saw room for improvement in the system of lenses that focuses the electrons and the detector that captures them after they probe the sample. With the resulting prototype, the LMB group determined the structure of 11 diverse proteins. One was the iron-storing protein apoferritin, which has become a benchmark for cryo-EM resolution records. The LMB researchers mapped it at 2.6 angstroms -- 2.6 times the diameter of a hydrogen atom. That's not as high as the record cryo-EM resolution of 1.2 angstroms, but plenty good enough to make an atomic model, Russo says. And the process was fast. Because the microscope sat in the same lab as the freezing stage, the team could quickly check that its samples were good enough, rather than waiting weeks for results from a high-end machine. "Every single structure was done in less than a day," Russo says. Thermo Fisher Scientific, which makes a top-end machine, says it is already expanding the cryo-EM market. In 2020, it began to sell a lower cost option, called Tundra, that operates at 100 KeV. "I would say that there are universities that probably never believed they could own cryo-EM that now have the tools," says Trisha Rice, a vice president who heads the company's cryo-EM business. Indeed, Rajan's university just ordered one for $1.5 million. Russo says Tundra is a step in the right direction, but his team's innovations could make cryo-EM even cheaper. For example, he says, Tundra dials back the energy on a simplified version of the costly electron source used in top-end microscopes, whereas the electron gun on the LMB prototype was designed for 100 KeV from scratch. But he understands that commercializing his team's design would require large investments by potential manufacturers. "We're talking to all of them," Russo says. "But at the end of the day, it's up to them."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta purposefully engineered its platforms to addict children and knowingly allowed underage users to hold accounts, according to a newly unsealed legal complaint. The complaint is a key part of a lawsuit filed against Meta by the attorneys general of 33 states in late October and was originally redacted. It alleges the social media company knew -- but never disclosed -- it had received millions of complaints about underage users on Instagram but only disabled a fraction of those accounts. The large number of underage users was an "open secret" at the company, the suit alleges, citing internal company documents. In one example, the lawsuit cites an internal email thread in which employees discuss why a 12-year-old girl's four accounts were not deleted following complaints from the girl's mother stating her daughter was 12 years old and requesting the accounts to be taken down. The employees concluded that "the accounts were ignored" in part because representatives of Meta "couldn't tell for sure the user was underage." The complaint said that in 2021, Meta received over 402,000 reports of under-13 users on Instagram but that 164,000 -- far fewer than half of the reported accounts -- were "disabled for potentially being under the age of 13" that year. The complaint noted that at times Meta has a backlog of up to 2.5m accounts of younger children awaiting action. The complaint alleges this and other incidents violate the Children's Online Privacy and Protection Act, which requires that social media companies provide notice and get parental consent before collecting data from children. The lawsuit also focuses on longstanding assertions that Meta knowingly created products that were addictive and harmful to children, brought into sharp focus by whistleblower Frances Haugen, who revealed that internal studies showed platforms like Instagram led children to anorexia-related content. Haugen also stated the company intentionally targets children under the age of 18. Company documents cited in the complaint described several Meta officials acknowledging the company designed its products to exploit shortcomings in youthful psychology, including a May 2020 internal presentation called "teen fundamentals" which highlighted certain vulnerabilities of the young brain that could be exploited by product development. The presentation discussed teen brains' relative immaturity, and teenagers' tendency to be driven by "emotion, the intrigue of novelty and reward" and asked how these asked how these characteristics could "manifest ... in product usage." [...] One Facebook safety executive alluded to the possibility that cracking down on younger users might hurt the company's business in a 2019 email. But a year later, the same executive expressed frustration that while Facebook readily studied the usage of underage users for business reasons, it didn't show the same enthusiasm for ways to identify younger kids and remove them from its platforms.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Samantha Cole reports via 404 Media: The founder of a software developer conference has been accused of creating fake female speakers to bolster diversity numbers -- and some speakers are dropping out, with the event just nine days away. Devternity is an online conference for developers that's invite-only for speakers. In the past, it reportedly drew hundreds of attendees both when it was in-person in Latvia and even more after it moved online. Eduard Sizovs founded the event in 2015. Engineer Gergely Orosz tweeted on Thursday that he'd discovered fake speakers listed on the Devternity site. Two women -- Anna Boyko, listed as a staff engineer at Coinbase, and Natalie Stadler, a "software craftswoman" at Coinbase -- were included on the site as speakers but appear to not exist in real life. Neither have an online presence beyond the Devternity website itself. Orosz found archived versions of the Devternity site where Boyko and Stadler were listed; Stadler's listing was up for years, according to archives from 2021. Sizovs responded to these claims in a 916-word tweet, admitting that he'd made at least one fake speaker, Stadler, in the process of building the Devternity site and then left her up. He said that the profile was "auto-generated, with a random title, random Twitter handle, random picture," and that while he noticed it was still on the site, he delayed taking it off because it wasn't a "quick fix" and that "it's better to have that demo persona while I am searching for the replacement speakers," he wrote. In his tweet, Sizovs did not elaborate on why he believed this was "better." Sizovs wrote that after this year's upcoming conference "achieved a worse-than-expected level of diversity of speakers," author and programmer Sandi Metz, "Software Craftswoman, Tech Influencer @ Instagram" Julia Kirsina, and head of developer relations at Amazon Web Services Kristine Howard were the only three women he was able to bring on as speakers. But two of the three dropped out, he said [...].Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A series of arrests that began in late August and continued into last week has sparked concerns that a relatively rare 'Scene' crackdown targeting the top of the so-called 'Piracy Pyramid' may be underway in the Nordic region. TorrentFreak reports: In a statement last week, Denmark's National Unit for Special Crime (NSK) announced that as part of a long-running investigation, a man was arrested on November 22 and then charged with copyright infringement offenses. NSK said its officers searched the home of a 47-year-old man in South Zealand (Sydsjaelland) and seized IT equipment in connection with illegal file-sharing and "copyright infringement of a particularly serious nature." "The case is about an organized network that has illegally shared extremely large quantities of films and TV series via file sharing services," said NSK Police Commissioner Anders-Emil Nohr Kelbaek. While noting that NSK had no further information to offer at this time, Kelbaek said he was pleased that NSK had arrested another suspect believed to have played a 'significant role' in the unnamed network. Last week's arrest was only the latest in a series of arrests carried out as part of the same long-running NSK investigation into the illegal distribution of movies and TV shows. In late August, NSK arrested four people on suspicion of sharing "extremely large quantities" of movies and TV shows. NSK raided addresses in South-West Jutland, North Zealand and Bornholmand. A 43-year old was arrested at the last location, but it's claimed he lives elsewhere. In common with last week's arrest, all were charged on suspicion of "particularly serious" copyright infringement offenses. In an almost identical statement to that issued last week, Commissioner Anders-Emil Nohr Kelbaek said the case was about "an organized network that shares extremely large amounts of data, presumably in the form of films and series." TorrentFreak sources report concerns that last week's arrest may be linked to Scene groups. Terminology used by NSK doesn't instantly rule that out and does seem to suggest something potentially more significant than other arrests over the past few years. According to NSK, the August arrests took place on August 28, 2023. Using information in Scene release databases we looked for Danish Scene groups and/or groups that were releasing Denmark-focused content before that date but then made no releases afterward; while that wouldn't provide conclusive proof that a group had been targeted, the method has proven useful in the past. While activity late August suggests nothing especially out of the ordinary, activity since the arrest last week stands in contrast. TF is informed that some groups may have gone dark simply out of an abundance of caution. It's also possible that the groups have nothing to release. Furthermore, there are many other global groups with no obvious links to Danish content or Denmark that also stopped releasing on November 21. The reasons for this are unknown but holidays in the United States may play a role.Read more of this story at Slashdot.