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Scary play lets people -- and other animals -- rehearse coping skills for disturbing challenges in the real world. Scientific American: Our desire to experience fear, it seems, is rooted deep in our evolutionary past and can still benefit us today. Scary play, it turns out, can help us overcome fears and face new challenges -- those that surface in our own lives and others that arise in the increasingly disturbing world we all live in. The phenomenon of scary play surprised Charles Darwin. In The Descent of Man, he wrote that he had heard about captive monkeys that, despite their fear of snakes, kept lifting the lid of a box containing the reptiles to peek inside. Intrigued, Darwin turned the story into an experiment: He put a bag with a snake inside it in a cage full of monkeys at the London Zoological Gardens. A monkey would cautiously walk up to the bag, slowly open it, and peer down inside before shrieking and racing away. After seeing one monkey do this, another monkey would carefully walk over to the bag to take a peek, then scream and run. Then another would do the same thing, then another. The monkeys were "satiating their horror," as Darwin put it. Morbid fascination with danger is widespread in the animal kingdom -- it's called predator inspection. The inspection occurs when an animal looks at or even approaches a predator rather than simply fleeing. This behavior occurs across a range of animals, from guppies to gazelles. At first blush, getting close to danger seems like a bad idea. Why would natural selection have instilled in animals a curiosity about the very things they should be avoiding? But there is an evolutionary logic to these actions. Morbid curiosity is a powerful way for animals to gain information about the most dangerous things in their environment. It also gives them an opportunity to practice dealing with scary experiences. When you consider that many prey animals live close to their predators, the benefits of morbidly curious behavior such as predator inspection become clear. For example, it's not uncommon for a gazelle to cross paths with a cheetah on the savanna. It might seem like a gazelle should always run when it sees a cheetah. Fleeing, however, is physiologically expensive; if a gazelle ran every time it saw a cheetah, it would exhaust precious calories and lose out on opportunities for other activities that are important to its survival and reproduction. Consider the perspective of the predator, too. It may seem like a cheetah should chase after a gazelle anytime it sees one. But for a cheetah, it's not easy to just grab a bite; hunting is an energetically costly exercise that doesn't always end in success.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Does Gmail want to be an instant messaging client? From a report: Last month the popular webmail app shipped an emoji reactions bar in the mobile app, where a single tap would send a new email with your emoji response. Now, a wild new UI experiment spotted by Android Police goes another step further: a quick reply bar that looks just like instant messaging input. Rather than the usual input block you get for writing paragraphs of overly formal text, this new Gmail experiment has a one-line input bar at the bottom for replies. A drop-down menu just above it lets you pick from the usual "reply," "reply all," or "forward" options. Besides that, you get an attachment and send button. An "expand" button will presumably launch the usual compose interface.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The latest entry in Activision Blizzard's popular Call of Duty video-game series was made in half the time of previous iterations, a fact that may be contributing to a spate of bad reviews about the game's storyline, Bloomberg reported Friday, citing people familiar with the development process. From the report: Critics have panned the game, the first big release since Microsoft closed its $69 billion acquisition of Activision last month, saying the storyline feels rushed. Most Call of Duty games are developed in around three years, but the bulk of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, which comes out Friday, was made in less than a year and a half, said the people, who asked to not be identified because they weren't authorized to speak publicly. The abridged production schedule proved stressful for the development team, they said. Call of Duty has generated more than $30 billion in revenue over the last two decades. It's the most important series in Activision's portfolio, with thousands of developers across the world. New Call of Duty games will always top the charts, but some of the makers of Modern Warfare III say they hope their new corporate owners don't judge them too harshly for the negative reception after a shortened development cycle that was beyond the studio's control. The process was hurried because this year's game was conceived to fill a gap in the release schedule following the delay of another Call of Duty title previously planned for 2023. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III was originally pitched to staff at Foster City, California-based developer Sledgehammer Games as an expansion to last year's title, but it morphed into a full sequel during development, Bloomberg earlier reported. The process was hurried because this year's game was conceived to fill a gap in the release schedule following the delay of another Call of Duty title previously planned for 2023. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III was originally pitched to staff at Foster City, California-based developer Sledgehammer Games as an expansion to last year's title, but it morphed into a full sequel during development, Bloomberg earlier reported.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A partnership between Qualcomm and Iridium to bring satellite connectivity to Android phones has fallen apart, almost a year after the deal was announced. From a report: In January, the two companies debuted the Snapdragon Satellite platform, a way to bring satellite-based SMS and emergency messaging to high-end smartphones. But on Thursday, Iridium said Qualcomm will cancel the partnership, effective Dec. 3. "The companies successfully developed and demonstrated the technology; however, notwithstanding this technical success, smartphone manufacturers have not included the technology in their devices," Iridium said in the announcement. "Due to this, on November 3, 2023, Qualcomm notified Iridium that it has elected to terminate the agreements." Qualcomm didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. But the statement from Iridium suggests the Snapdragon Satellite platform suffered from technical issues, or perhaps failed to attract interest from smartphone vendors. Back in January, the companies also indicated that the Snapdragon Satellite platform would require supported phones to be manufactured with modems that could communicate with the Iridum network's L-Band radio frequencies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A young man sits in a car, pointing a cellphone camera out of the window, seemingly trying to remain undetected. As he breathes heavily in anticipation, he peers at a T-Mobile store across the road from where he is parked. Suddenly, there is some commotion inside. An accomplice grabs something off a table where a T-Mobile employee is sitting. The accomplice, dressed in a mask and black baseball cap, then bursts out of the store and clumsily sprints towards the car. The man in the vehicle starts laughing, then giggling uncontrollably like a child. The pair got what they came for: a T-Mobile employee's tablet, the sort workers use everyday when dealing with customer support issues or setting up a new phone. To the people in the car, what this tablet is capable of is much more valuable than iPad hardware itself. The tablet lets them essentially become T-Mobile. It can grant them the ability to take over target phone numbers, and redirect any text messages or calls for the victim to the hacker's own device, as part of a hack called a SIM swap. From there, they can easily break into email, cryptocurrency, and social media accounts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tumblr is downscaling its ambitions after failing to reach goals for a new audience, aiming to move some staff members to other divisions of parent company Automattic. From a report: A leaked memo, which circulated on Tumblr and was confirmed in a Verge comment by Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg, says that "the majority" of Tumblr's non-support, safety, and moderation staff will "switch to other divisions." In follow-up posts on Tumblr, Mullenweg stated that Automattic is planning "a more focused approach in 2024," including an emphasis on the "core functionality" of the site. [...] It describes implementing a backup plan to "reflect and decide where else we should concentrate our energy together" without laying off staff from Automattic -- which also operates the WordPress.com and WordPress VIP hosting services. "This plan is happening now." That involves transferring the majority of 139 people on a team identified as covering product development, marketing, and other tasks outside support, moderation, and security.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes: US Treasuries may face renewed selling pressure into the new year if one measure of the nation's swelling debt repayment bill is any guide. Estimated annualized interest payments on the US government debt pile climbed past $1 trillion at the end of last month, Bloomberg analysis shows. That projected amount has doubled in the past 19 months from the equivalent figure forecast around the time. The estimated interest expense is calculated using US Treasury data which state the government's monthly outstanding debt balances and the average interest it pays. Of course, the gauge of estimated interest costs is different than what the Treasury actually paid. Interest costs in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 ultimately totaled $879.3 billion, up from $717.6 billion the previous year and about 14% of total outlays. But, looking forward, the rise in yields on long-term Treasuries in recent months suggests the government will continue to face an escalating interest bill.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In an ingenious study published this summer, US researchers showed that within a few months of the launch of ChatGPT, copywriters and graphic designers on major online freelancing platforms saw a significant drop in the number of jobs they got, and even steeper declines in earnings. This suggested not only that generative AI was taking their work, but also that it devalues the work they do still carry out. Most strikingly, the study found that freelancers who previously had the highest earnings and completed the most jobs were no less likely to see their employment and earnings decline than other workers. If anything, they had worse outcomes. In other words, being more skilled was no shield against loss of work or earnings. But the online freelancing market covers a very particular form of white-collar work and of labour market. What about looking higher up the ranks of the knowledge worker class? For that, we can turn to a recent, fascinating Harvard Business School study, which monitored the impact of giving GPT-4, OpenAI's latest and most advanced offering, to employees at Boston Consulting Group.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI. But for a brief time on Thursday, employees of the software company weren't allowed to use the startup's most famous product, ChatGPT, CNBC reported. From a report: "Due to security and data concerns a number of AI tools are no longer available for employees to use," Microsoft said in an update on an internal website. "While it is true that Microsoft has invested in OpenAI, and that ChatGPT has built-in safeguards to prevent improper use, the website is nevertheless a third-party external service," Microsoft said. "That means you must exercise caution using it due to risks of privacy and security. This goes for any other external AI services, such as Midjourney or Replika, as well." The company initially said it was banning ChatGPT and design software Canva, but later removed a line in the advisory that included those products. After initial publication of this story, Microsoft reinstated access to ChatGPT. In a statement to CNBC, Microsoft said the ChatGPT temporary blockage was a mistake resulting from a test of systems for large language models. "We were testing endpoint control systems for LLMs and inadvertently turned them on for all employees," a spokesperson said. "We restored service shortly after we identified our error. As we have said previously, we encourage employees and customers to use services like Bing Chat Enterprise and ChatGPT Enterprise that come with greater levels of privacy and security protections."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: On Thursday, trades handled by the world's largest bank in the globe's biggest market traversed Manhattan on a USB stick. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China's U.S. unit had been hit by a cyberattack, rendering it unable to clear swathes of U.S. Treasury trades after entities responsible for settling the transactions swiftly disconnected from the stricken systems. That forced ICBC to send the required settlement details to those parties by a messenger carrying a thumb drive as the state-owned lender raced to limit the damage. The workaround -- described by market participants -- followed the attack by suspected perpetrator Lockbit, a prolific criminal gang with ties to Russia that has also been linked to hits on Boeing, ION Trading U.K. and the U.K.'s Royal Mail. The strike caused immediate disruption as market-makers, brokerages and banks were forced to reroute trades, with many uncertain when access would resume. The incident spotlights a danger that bank leaders concede keeps them up at night -- the prospect of a cyber attack that could someday cripple a key piece of the financial system's wiring, setting off a cascade of disruptions. Even brief episodes prompt bank leaders and their government overseers to call for more vigilance.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Michael Kan reports via PCMag: Encrypted messaging service Signal is now testing usernames, which will offer people a more private way to share their contact details on the app. Signal kicked off the public test today through a new beta build available in its community forums. "After rounds of internal testing, we have hit the point where we think the community that powers these forums can help us test even further before public launch," says Signal VP of Engineering Jim O'Leary. The development is a big deal since Signal -- an end-to-end encrypted messaging app -- has long required users to sign up with a phone number. That same number also needs to be shared in order to message other users on the app. This can be problematic since sharing your phone number exposes you to privacy and hacking risks. For example, a contact on Signal could choose to call and message your number over an unencrypted cellular network or pass off the number to someone else.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. Space Force's shadowy X-37B spaceplane is set to launch atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket on Dec. 7. It'll mark the seventh mission for the X-37B, but the first time it'll fly on a heavy-lift launcher. Space.com reports: Little is known about the capabilities and operations of the space plane, but Space Force says the mission will follow previous flights that used the X-37B as a test bed for launching experimental payloads and returning them to Earth. "We are excited to expand the envelope of the reusable X-37B's capabilities, using the flight-proven service module and Falcon Heavy rocket to fly multiple cutting-edge experiments for the Department of the Air Force and its partners," said Lt. Col. Joseph Fritschen, program director for the X-37B, in the statement. It isn't known why the X-37B is launching atop a Falcon Heavy for the USSF-52 mission. Five of the space plane's previous missions launched on United Launch Alliance Atlas V rockets, while its fifth mission, USA-277, took off on top of SpaceX's smaller rocket, the Falcon 9 (Falcon Heavy consists of three Falcon 9 boosters strapped together). Such a change could suggest that the space plane is carrying heavier payloads or is sporting a new hardware configuration. So far, Space Force has only stated that the mission will "expand the United States Space Force's knowledge of the space environment by experimenting with future space domain awareness technologies," according to the statement. However, Space Force's statement adds that the mission will carry a NASA experiment known as Seeds-2 that will test the effects that space-based radiation has on plant seeds during a long-duration spaceflight.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The government of Maine has confirmed over a million state residents had personal information stolen in a data breach earlier this year by a Russia-linked ransomware gang. In a statement published Thursday, the Maine government said hackers exploited a vulnerability in its MOVEit file-transfer system, which stored sensitive data on state residents. The hackers used the vulnerability to access and download files belonging to certain state agencies between May 28 and May 29, the statement read. The Maine government said it was disclosing the incident and notifying affected residents as its assessment of the impacted files "was recently completed." Maine said that the stolen information may include a person's name, date of birth, Social Security number, driver's license and other state or taxpayer identification numbers. Some individuals had medical and health insurance information taken. The statement said the state holds information about residents "for various reasons, such as residency, employment, or interaction with a state agency," and that the data it holds varies by person. According to the state's breakdown of which agencies are affected, more than half of the stolen data relates to Maine's Department of Health and Human Services, with up to about a third of the data affecting the Maine's Department of Education. The remaining data affects various other agencies, including Maine's Bureau of Motor Vehicles and Maine's Department of Corrections, though the government notes that the breakdown of information is subject to change. More than 1.3 million people live in the state of Maine, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo writes: [O]n Wednesday, the company and utility planning to build the first small, modular nuclear plant in the U.S. announced it was cancelling the project. The U.S. has approved a single design for a small, modular nuclear reactor developed by the company NuScale Power. The government's Idaho National Lab was working to help construct the first NuScale installation, the Carbon Free Power Project. Under the plan, the national lab would maintain a few of the first reactors at the site, and a number of nearby utilities would purchase power from the remaining ones. With the price of renewables dropping precipitously, however, the project's economics have worsened, and backers started pulling out of the project. The final straw came on Wednesday, when NuScale and the primary utility partner, Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, announced that the Carbon Free Power Project no longer had enough additional utility partners, so it was being cancelled. In a statement, the pair accepted that "it appears unlikely that the project will have enough subscription to continue toward deployment."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Illinois Senate has approved a plan to allow small modular reactors in the state, lifting a 36-year-old moratorium on new nuclear power installments. Proponents say the plan will ensure the state can meet its carbon-free power production promise by 2045. The Associated Press reports: Environmentalists have criticized the plan, noting that small modular reactors are a decade or more from viability. Sponsoring Sen. Sue Rezin, a Republican from Morris, said that's the reason, coupled with a federal permitting process of as much as eight years, her legislation is timely. "If we want to take advantage of the amazing advancements in new nuclear technology that have occurred over the past couple of decades and not fall behind the rest of the states, we need to act now," Rezin said. The House has through Thursday -- the scheduled adjournment of the General Assembly's fall session -- to OK the proposal and send it to Gov. J.B. Pritzker. Under the legislation, Illinois would allow development of small modular reactors in January 2026. That's when a report on necessary safety measures and updated guidelines would be due. The plan also tasks the Illinois Emergency Management Agency with oversight of newly installed reactors. Rezin added that layer of inspection, despite her contention that strict federal control is sufficient, to appease a concerned Pritzker. The Democrat cited the issue as one that caused him to side with environmentalists and veto initial legislation Rezin saw approved overwhelmingly last spring.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from SecurityWeek: Mortgage giant Mr. Cooper on Thursday announced that it has shut down certain systems after falling victim to a cyberattack, which resulted in its operations being suspended. The attack occurred on October 31 and prompted an immediate response, including containment measures that involved taking down some systems. The shutdown, the company says in an incident notice on its website, prevents it from processing customer payments temporarily, but such operations will resume as soon as systems are restored. Mr. Cooper says it is currently investigating the potential compromise of customer data, and that it will notify all those whose data might have been impacted by the attack. Headquartered in the Dallas, Texas, area, Mr. Cooper is one of the largest mortgage servicers in the US, with approximately 4.3 million customers. While it remains unclear what kind of cyberattack hit Mr. Cooper's systems, the mortgage and loan giant did confirm that customer data was compromised. However, banking information does not appear to be impacted. "Mr. Cooper does not store banking information related to mortgage payments on our systems. This information is hosted with a third-party provider and, based on the information we have to date, we do not believe it was affected by this incident," the company added. According to TechCrunch, citing a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr. Cooper said it "expects to incur up to $10 million in additional vendor costs during its fiscal fourth quarter, adding that it does not expect a material impact to its business."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tumblr may be nearing its end after its management sent memos to staff with the Lord Tennyson quote about having "loved and lost." Ars Technica reports: Internet statesman and Waxy.org proprietor Andy Baio posted what is "apparently an internal Automattic memo making the rounds on Tumblr" to Threads. The memo, written to employees at WordPress.com parent company Automattic, which bought Tumblr from Verizon's media arm in 2019, is titled or subtitled "You win or you learn." The posted memo states that a majority of the 139 employees working on product and marketing at Tumblr (in a team apparently named "Bumblr") will "switch to other divisions." Those working in "Happiness" (Automattic's customer support and service division) and "T&S" (trust and safety) would remain. "We are at the point where after 600+ person-years of effort put into Tumblr since the acquisition in 2019, we have not gotten the expected results from our effort, which was to have revenue and usage above its previous peaks," the posted memo reads. After quotes and anecdotes about love, loss, mountain climbing, and learning on the journey, the memo notes that nobody will be let go and that team members can make a ranked list of their top three preferred assignments elsewhere inside Automattic.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Valve designers Lawrence Yang and Pierre-Loup Griffais say the company has sold "multiple millions" Steam Deck handheld gaming PCs. The Verge reports: The Steam Deck has been a hit for Valve right from its launch; when the device first went up for preorders in July 2021 (has it really been that long?), the demand created some major issues for Valve's Steam store. And the handheld gaming PC is often at or near the top of Steam's top-selling chart -- even just two months after the device's official February 2022 launch, it was clear that the Steam Deck was not a flop. The company apparently even made a cake to celebrate selling 1 million units. The company is probably set to sell a lot more after recently unveiling a new revision with an OLED screen, longer battery life, and faster Wi-Fi.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader Alain Williams writes: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is in the hospital in Mexico, according to multiple reports. It is not currently clear what the cause is. The 73-year-old was in Mexico City attending the World Business Forum (WBF), a business conference. [According to TMZ, Wozniak finished his speech but then told his wife he was "feeling strange." She reportedly insisted he go to the hospital.] An unnamed source from the WBF said that Mr Wozniak fainted on Wednesday at the event [minutes before his participation], according to CNN. TMZ reports that Wozniak was hospitalized after "suffering what appears to be vertigo." Mexican media outlets were reporting that it was due to a possible stroke.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Earlier this year, Mozilla acquired Fakespot, a startup that leverages AI and machine learning to identify fake and deceptive product reviews. Now, Mozilla is launching its first LLM (large language model) with the arrival of Fakespot Chat, an AI agent that will help consumers as they shop online by answering questions about the product or even suggesting questions that could be useful in your product research. [...] Fakespot has been using AI, including generative AI technologies, to make the online shopping process more trustworthy, not less. For instance, it launched a generative AI feature called Pros and Cons last year, that could replace the need for reading reviews by writing up its own summaries of a product's positives and negatives. The feature was trained on billions of data points, with the model itself using five different models under its hood, the company said. This week, Fakespot Chat launched into testing, allowing shoppers to ask an AI chatbot about a product they're considering, similar to how you could ask a salesperson for help if you were shopping in a physical store in the real world. The technology uses AI and machine learning to sort through the product reviews, sorting real from fake, to answer the user's questions. The information from your chat session is saved to improve the experience for others, Mozilla notes, but users don't have to create an account or divulge personal information for the experience to work. The feature is available via the Fakespot Analyzer or it can be used on an Amazon.com product from Fakespot's browser extension. For the former, you'd copy and paste the URL of the product into the analyzer to ask your questions, but if using the browser add-on, the analysis starts automatically. When the analysis is complete, Fakespot Chat appears on the right-hand side of the analysis page alongside other features, like Pros and Cons, as well as Fakespot's Review Grades and Highlights. You can then interrogate the AI agent about the product as you weigh your purchase decisions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Two million species are at risk of extinction, a figure that is double previous UN estimates, new analysis has found. From a report: While scientists have long documented the decline of species of plants and vertebrates, there has always been significant uncertainty over insects, with the UN making a "tentative estimate" of 10% threatened with extinction in 2019. Since then, more data has been collected on insects, showing the proportion at risk of extinction is much higher than previously estimated. Because there are so many insect species, this doubles the global number of species at risk, according to the paper, published in Plos One on Wednesday. Lead researcher, Axel Hochkirch, from the Musee National d'Histoire Naturelle in Luxembourg, said: "What our study does is really highlight that insects are as threatened as other taxa. And because they are the most species-rich group of animals on our planet, this is really something which should be addressed." Understanding what is happening to global insect populations has been challenging because of the lack of data - but 97% of all animals are invertebrates. Of that group, about 90% are classified as insects. They provide vital ecosystem services: pollinating crops, recycling nutrients into soils, and decomposing waste. "Without insects, our planet will not be able to survive," Hochkirch said. The team looked at all European species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's red list of threatened species. This is considered the most comprehensive source of information on species at risk. They found a fifth of European species were at risk of extinction, with 24% of invertebrates at risk, as well as 27% of all plants and 18% of vertebrates.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Internet service providers and their lobby groups are fighting a US plan to prohibit discrimination in access to broadband services. In particular, ISPs want the Federal Communications Commission to drop the plan's proposal to require that prices charged to consumers be non-discriminatory. From a report: In 2021, Congress required the Federal Communications Commission to issue rules "preventing digital discrimination of access based on income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion, or national origin" within two years. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel last month released her draft plan to comply with the congressional mandate and scheduled a November 15 commission vote on adopting final rules. The plan is likely to pass in a party-line vote as Rosenworcel has a 3-2 Democratic majority, but aspects of the draft could be changed before the vote. Next week's meeting could be a contentious one, judging by a statement issued Monday by Republican Commissioner Brendan Carr. Carr described Rosenworcel's proposal as "President Biden's plan to give the administrative state effective control of all Internet services and infrastructure in the US." He also objects to the Rosenworcel plan's statement that the FCC rules may apply to entities that are not broadband providers, such as landlords, if they "impede equal access to broadband Internet access service." Consumer advocates generally support the proposal but say the planned system for handling complaints, ISP responses, and investigations is not transparent enough, reducing the system's potential to act as a deterrent. Consumer advocates also say Internet users who have already been harmed by discrimination may not get any relief because the proposed rules do not apply retroactively. ISPs including Comcast, Charter, AT&T, and Verizon have held a flurry of meetings with FCC officials and commissioners in which they argued that the rules are too broad.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lowpass: Amazon has been working on a new operating system to replace Android on Fire TVs, smart displays and other connected devices, I have learned from talking to multiple sources with knowledge of these plans, as well as job listings and other materials referencing these efforts. Development of the new operating system, which is internally known as Vega, appears fairly advanced. The system has already been tested on Fire TV streaming adapters, and Amazon has told select partners about its plans to transition to a new application framework in the near future. A source with knowledge of the company's plans suggested that it could start shipping Vega on select Fire TV devices as early as next year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google -- under fire in court for allegedly resting on its laurels thanks to its 90% market dominance -- only made an effort to beef up the quality of its search engine in the European Union after being hit by a record antitrust fine, according to internal documents revealed in the US Justice Department's monopolization case against the tech giant. From a report: The Justice Department is arguing at a trial in Washington that Google's failure to improve its products -- unless put under pressure -- proves that it's illegally maintaining its monopoly. Alphabet's Google planned to improve its European search results only after a record 2018 European antitrust fine, according to the documents, which revealed that Google executives discussed a plan dubbed "Go Big in Europe." The plan aimed to improve results in France and Germany in 2019 and 2020 with changes such as adding post-game soccer video highlights, more local content and news, pronunciation practice for different languages and more information on local television options available for streaming. The catalyst was a 2018 EU antitrust order that forced Google to offer a choice screen giving Android phone users five search engine options to choose from, according to US antitrust enforcers trying the case.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As AMD is now well into their third generation of RDNA architecture GPUs, the sun has been slowly setting on AMD's remaining Graphics Core Next (GCN) designs, better known by the architecture names of Polaris and Vega. From a report: In recent weeks the company dropped support for those GPU architectures in their open source Vulkan Linux driver, AMDVLK, and now we have confirmation that the company is slowly winding down support for these architectures in their Windows drivers as well. Under AMD's extended driver support schedule for Polaris and Vega, the drivers for these architectures will no longer be kept at feature parity with the RDNA architectures. And while AMD will continue to support Polaris and Vega for some time to come, that support is being reduced to security updates and "functionality updates as available." For AMD users keeping a close eye on their driver releases, they'll likely recognize that AMD already began this process back in September -- though AMD hasn't officially documented the change until now. As of AMD's September Adrenaline 23.9 driver series, AMD split up the RDNA and GCN driver packages, and with that they have also split the driver branches between the two architectures. As a result, only RDNA cards are receiving new features and updates as part of AMD's mainline driver branch (currently 23.20), while the GCN cards have been parked on a maintenance driver branch - 23.19.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) has halved the number of live service games it plans to release over the next few years, it's confirmed. From a report: SIE had previously said it planned to have 12 live service titles in the market by its fiscal year ending in March 2026 -- up from three during its last business year ended this March. However, earlier this year PlayStation's management team confirmed that it had partnered with Destiny studio Bungie for a "rigorous portfolio review" process. According to press reports, this has led to some projects being scaled back. During an earnings call on Thursday, Sony president, COO and CFO Hiroki Totoki seemingly confirmed that this review had resulted in some games being pushed back due to quality concerns. "We are reviewing this... we are trying as much as possible to ensure [these games] are enjoyed and liked by gamers for a long time," he said. "[Of] the 12 titles, six titles will be released by FY25 -- that's our current plan. [As for] the remaining six titles, we are still working on that. That's the total number of live service and multiplayers titles [and] mid-to-long-term we want to [push] this kind of service and that's the unchanged policy of the company. It's not like we stick to certain titles, but game quality should be the most important [thing]."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Humane, the startup founded by former Apple design and engineering team Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, has officially launched its long-awaited Ai Pin -- making a splashy foray into the nascent field of artificial intelligence hardware. From a report: The device can magnetically clip onto clothing and will cost $699 with a $24-a-month subscription -- which will come with unlimited data and phone calls. The company also said it would partner with T-Mobile for phone service and Microsoft and OpenAI for AI technology. The device will be available to order starting Nov. 16. Tech and AI enthusiasts have watched Humane closely after Chaudhri and Bongiorno, husband-and-wife co-founders, started the company in 2018. It has kept most of its work under wraps, with some notable exceptions. In April, Chaudhri gave a demo of the device at a TED Talk. In September, the pin adorned models including Naomi Campbell at Paris Fashion Week. The Humane Ai Pin is meant to eventually be a smartphone replacement. The subscription plan comes with its own phone number, and it doesn't need to be paired with a phone. The device is screenless, and people will interact with it via voice, touchpad, gesture or by holding up objects. It also features a laser projector that can emit text onto the user's hand.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has confirmed in court that Epic was offered a $147 million deal to launch its hit game Fortnite on Android's Google Play Store. From a report: The deal, which Google's VP of Play partnerships, Purnima Kochikar, says was approved and presented to Epic but not accepted, would have seen the money dispensed over a three-year period of "incremental funding" (ending in 2021) to the games publisher. It was meant to stem a potential "contagion" of popular apps bypassing Android's official store and, with it, Google's lucrative in-app purchase fees. Epic launched Fortnite on Android in 2018 directly through its website, avoiding the Play Store. That allowed it to sell Fortnite's in-game currency, V-Bucks, without paying the commission required of Play Store apps. It relented in 2020, saying that "scary, repetitive security pop-ups" and other factors had put it at a severe disadvantage. But in an antitrust lawsuit filed later that year -- and currently being argued before a jury -- it alleged its initial decision had thrown Google into a panic. It cited internal documents claiming Google feared a "contagion risk" if other game developers (including Blizzard, Valve, Sony, and Nintendo) followed Epic's lead, and it claimed Google attempted to forestall it by offering special benefits or even buying Epic.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Sphere in Las Vegas reported an operating loss of $98.4 million for the fiscal quarter ending Sept. 30, Sphere Entertainment Co. said this morning on an earnings call. From a report: Additionally, the company lost its chief financial officer, as Gautam Ranji has resigned, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Ranji's exit was "not a result of any disagreement with the company's independent auditors or any member of management on any matter of accounting principles or practices, financial statement disclosure or internal controls," the company said in the filing.The New York Post reported Tuesday that Ranji suddenly quit after a bout of yelling and screaming from CEO James Dolan. Ranji, who had been on the job for 11 months, will be replaced on an interim basis by Greg Brunner, the company's senior vice president, according to the filing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft now wants you to explain exactly why you're attempting to close its OneDrive for Windows app before it allows you to do so. From a report: Neowin has spotted that the latest update to OneDrive now includes an annoying dialog box that asks you to select the reason why you're closing the app every single time you attempt to close OneDrive from the taskbar. Closing OneDrive is already buried away and not a simple task, with Microsoft hiding it under a "pause syncing" option when you right-click on OneDrive in the taskbar. But now, the quit option is grayed out until you select a reason for quitting OneDrive from a drop-down box. Here are the options:1. I don't want OneDrive running all the time2. I don't know what OneDrive is3. I don't use OneDrive4. I'm trying to fix a problem with OneDrive5. I'm trying to speed up my computer6. I get too many notifications7. OtherRead more of this story at Slashdot.

After months of high-level meetings and discussions, government officials and Big Tech leaders have agreed on one thing about artificial intelligence: The potentially world-changing technology needs some ground rules. But many in Silicon Valley are skeptical. WashingtonPost: A growing group of tech heavyweights -- including influential venture capitalists, the CEOs of midsize software companies and proponents of open-source technology -- are pushing back, claiming that laws for AI could snuff out competition in a vital new field. To these dissenters, the willingness of the biggest players in AI, such as Google, Microsoft and ChatGPT maker OpenAI to embrace regulation is simply a cynical ploy by those firms to lock in their advantages as the current leaders, essentially pulling up the ladder behind them. These tech leaders' concerns ballooned last week, when President Biden signed an executive order laying out a plan to have the government develop testing and approval guidelines for AI models -- the underlying algorithms that drive "generative" AI tools such as chatbots and image-makers. "We are still in the very early days of generative AI, and it's imperative that governments don't preemptively anoint winners and shut down competition through the adoption of onerous regulations only the largest firms can satisfy," said Garry Tan, the head of Y Combinator, a San Francisco-based start-up incubator that helped nurture companies including Airbnb and DoorDash when they were just starting. The current discussion hasn't incorporated the voices of smaller companies enough, Tan said, which he believes is key to fostering competition and engineering the safest ways to harness AI. Companies like influential AI start-up Anthropic and OpenAI are closely tied to Big Tech, having taken huge amounts of investment from them. "They do not speak for the vast majority of people who have contributed to this industry," said Martin Casado, a general partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which made early investments in Facebook, Slack and Lyft. Most AI engineers and entrepreneurs have been watching the regulatory discussions from afar, focusing on their companies instead of trying to lobby politicians, he said. "Many people want to build, they're innovators, they're the silent majority," Casado said. The executive order showed those people that regulation could come sooner than expected, he said. Casado's venture capital firm sent a letter to Biden laying out its concerns. It was signed by prominent AI start-up leaders including Replit CEO Amjad Masad and Mistral's Arthur Mensch, as well as more established tech leaders such as e-commerce company Shopify's CEO Tobi Lutke, who had tweeted "AI regulation is a terrible idea" after the executive order was announced.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Omegle, a popular online chat service that allowed individuals to connect and chat with strangers, has shut down after 15 years citing growing misuse of the platform, including in committing "unspeakably heinous crimes." From a report: The site, founded in 2009 by a then 18-year-old programmer and high school student Leif K-Brooks, was bootstrapped throughout its existence. Though it waned in popularity over the years, it still pulled about 50 million visitors last month, according to analytics firm SimilarWeb.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Times: Amazon Prime members will be able to access US healthcare provider One Medical's suite of benefits, for a fee, as the ecommerce company looks to expand its presence in the $4 trillion American healthcare industry. Prime members in the US who opt in will have access to unlimited, on-demand virtual healthcare via One Medical, the subscription-based group that Amazon acquired last year for $3.9 billion. They will also be able to schedule in-person appointments that they will either pay for themselves or that will be covered by insurance. The addition to Amazon's flagship Prime membership program comes as the company looks to "stack" healthcare services together and broaden its reach in the sector, which would be "big for us if we do a good job," said Neil Lindsay, senior vice-president of Amazon Health. The subscription will cost Amazon Prime members $9 per month or $99 per year, compared with the standard One Medical subscription fee of $199 per year. That will come on top of the $139 per year, or $14.99 a month, price for a Prime subscription. The move is Amazon's latest effort to leverage its loyal base of Prime members and become a big player in the healthcare industry. In January, following its 2018 acquisition of mail-order pharmacy PillPack for about $1 billion, Amazon launched RxPass, which allows Prime members to order an unlimited amount of some unbranded prescription medications for $5 a month. It has also rolled out a "Clinic" telehealth service that connects patients with clinicians and a broader mail-order pharmacy service.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Velcroman1 writes: Overclocking master Allen 'Splave' Golibersuch surfaced on Tom's Hardware to detail his work with liquid nitrogen to set a slew of new world records with Intel's Raptor Lake Refresh" CPUs. They include 15 world records with the Core i7-14700K and eight records with the Core i5-14600K, along with four records with the Core i9-14900K, spanning benchmarks from Cinebench to wPrime and H265. "My top speeds were 7,730.11 MHz on all cores on the 14900K, 7,859.05 MHz on the 14600K and 7,600 MHz on the 14700K," writes Splave. "All of these achieved in Cinebench R23 while using Liquid Nitrogen cooling." "At the end of a week of playing around, I broke the 8-core Cinebench record at a crazy 7.73 GHz on all cores," concludes Splave. "Overall, these CPUs potentially OC better than their predecessors and cost the same. It was a rather refreshing refresh, I would say."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Angela Watercutter and Will Bedingfield report via Wired: After 118 days on the picket lines, the longest such strike in Hollywood's history, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists has reached a deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Both sides were mum about the terms of the deal Wednesday night, but it comes following a long struggle over the use of artificial intelligence on actors' performances and actors' demands for residual payments for shows and films that play on streaming services. A committee from SAG, which represents thousands of film and television actors, approved the agreement Wednesday. The strike itself, which has featured pickets outside the offices of Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and others, will end Thursday morning. It's expected that the tentative deal will head to the union's national board to be approved on Friday. Undeniably, this is a huge milestone for Hollywood, a $130 billion-plus industry that has all but ground to halt this year, as both the Writers Guild of America and SAG dug in their heels over fair wages and the use of AI in their work. WGA members went on strike in May; SAG walked off the job in July, the first time the industry had faced a dual work stoppage since 1960. The WGA strike ended in September with a historic deal that put up guardrails to protect writers from AI encroaching on their work. As this year's negotiations between SAG and AMPTP dragged on, generative AI became the major sticking point. Back in July, studios claimed they offered a "groundbreaking AI proposal that protects actors' digital likenesses." SAG countered that the proposal stipulated background performers could be scanned, paid for the day, and then turned into digital characters that studios could use "for the rest of eternity." (AMPTP disputed this.) The issue was volleyed back and forth until last weekend, when SAG reviewed the studios' "last, best, and final" offer and rejected it, claiming "there are several essential items on which we still do not have an agreement, including AI. A follow-up story in The Hollywood Reporter revealed that the AMPTP proposal sought to allow studios to pay for AI scans of what are known as Schedule F performers and, following the actors' death, allow studios to use the scans without the consent of the estate or SAG. Schedule F performers include anyone who makes more than the minimum rate for TV series regulars or feature films. The guild wanted compensation for reuse of the scans, along with consent. On Tuesday, the studios reportedly agreed to adjust the AI language in their proposal, a move that seems to have been the tipping point. Even though the terms of the tentative deal reached Thursday are unclear, it's hard to imagine the actors didn't get at least some of the AI protections they were seeking.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Facebook parent Meta is teaming up with Hugging Face and European cloud infrastructure company Scaleway to launch a new AI-focused startup program at the Station F startup megacampus in Paris. The underlying goal of the program is to promote a more "open and collaborative" approach to AI development across the French technology world. The timing of the announcement is notable, coming amid a growing push for regulation and a marked conflict between the "open" and "closed" AI realms. [...] While Meta itself has been open sourcing its own generative AI models, Hugging Face -- a billion-dollar VC-backed startup in its own right -- has set out its stall as a sort of open source alternative to OpenAI, replete with open alternatives to the likes of ChatGPT and spearheading community projects such as BigScience. So in many ways, Meta and Hugging Face's tie-up today makes a great deal of sense, given their respective stances on the whole "open" versus "closed" AI discussion. "For me, open source AI is the most important topic of the decade as it is the cornerstone toward democratizing ethical AI," Hugging Face CEO Clement Delangue said in a statement. From today through December 1 (2023), startups can apply to join the new "AI Startup Program" at Station F, with five winners proceeding to the accelerator program that will run from January to June. The chosen startups, selected by a panel of judges from Meta, Hugging Face and French cloud company Scaleway, will have at least one thing in common -- they will be working on projects substantively built on open foundation models, or at the very least can demonstrate a "willingness to integrate these models into their products and services," according to the announcement issued by Meta today. "With the proliferation of foundation models and generative artificial intelligence models, the aim is to bring the economic and technological benefits of open, state-of-the-art models to the French ecosystem," the announcement noted. Indeed, the winning startups will receive mentoring from researchers and engineers at Meta, gain access to Hugging Face's various platforms and tools, and compute resources from Scaleway.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland shares a report from CNN Business: Cruise, General Motors' self-driving vehicle subsidiary, has recalled all 950 of its autonomous vehicles for a software update. Late last month, Cruise paused all its public testing operations while it investigated the incident that led to the recall. [...] The update will alter the way the car responds after an impact is detected. In [that infamous San Francisco accident], the vehicle had incorrectly determined that it was struck on the side rather than hitting something in the front, according to a report (PDF) Cruise filed with NHTSA. The report did not detail exactly what the software update changes, only that it "remedies the issue described in this notice." The cars can be returned to service once the updates are completed, Cruise said in its report to NHTSA. Cruise doesn't sell its self-driving vehicles so all the cars are owned by either Cruise or GM, which produces the heavily modified Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles. The company will perform the software updates itself.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Samsung has beat Apple to the chase by introducing a new generative AI model that's expected to come to its devices soon. The model is called Samsung Gauss after Carl Friedrich Gauss, "the legendary mathematician who established normal distribution theory, the backbone of machine learning and AI." CNBC reports: The AI system has a number of features: the first, Samsung Gauss Language, is a generative language model which can help compose emails and translate content, as well as "enhance the consumer experience by enabling smarter device control when integrated into products." The second feature allows in-house software developers to write code quickly, while the third, Samsung Gauss Image, can generate or edit images. "Samsung Gauss is currently used on employee productivity but will be expanded to a variety of Samsung product applications to provide new user experience in the near future," Samsung said in a press release on Wednesday. Samsung could be amongst the first handset makers in the world to introduce generative AI to its devices. Daniel Araujo, Samsung's vice president of the mobile business, said on the company's earnings call last month that generative AI technology will likely reach customers next year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Record: A federal judge on Tuesday refused to bring back a class action lawsuit alleging four auto manufacturers had violated Washington state's privacy laws by using vehicles' on-board infotainment systems to record and intercept customers' private text messages and mobile phone call logs. The Seattle-based appellate judge ruled that the practice does not meet the threshold for an illegal privacy violation under state law, handing a big win to automakers Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen and General Motors, which are defendants in five related class action suits focused on the issue. One of those cases, against Ford, had been dismissed on appeal previously. The plaintiffs in the four live cases had appealed a prior judge's dismissal. But the appellate judge ruled Tuesday that the interception and recording of mobile phone activity did not meet the Washington Privacy Act's standard that a plaintiff must prove that "his or her business, his or her person, or his or her reputation" has been threatened. In an example of the issues at stake, plaintiffs in one of the five cases filed suit against Honda in 2021, arguing that beginning in at least 2014 infotainment systems in the company's vehicles began downloading and storing a copy of all text messages on smartphones when they were connected to the system. An Annapolis, Maryland-based company, Berla Corporation, provides the technology to some car manufacturers but does not offer it to the general public, the lawsuit said. Once messages are downloaded, Berla's software makes it impossible for vehicle owners to access their communications and call logs but does provide law enforcement with access, the lawsuit said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tim Hardwick reports via MacRumors: WhatsApp has introduced a new privacy feature that lets you hide your IP address from whoever you call over the encrypted communications platform. As it stands, one-to-one calls over WhatsApp are established as a direct peer-to-peer connection between users. While this ensures the best possible voice quality, it means the connected devices must reveal their IP addresses to each other. According to WhatsApp, the new privacy setting introduced today works differently by relaying all of your calls through WhatsApp's servers to obfuscate your location, rather than connecting you directly to the person you are calling. Meta engineers elaborated on the feature in a blog post: "Most calling products people use today have peer-to-peer connections between participants. This direct connection allows for faster data transfers and better call quality, but it also means that participants need to know each other's IP addresses so that call data packets can be delivered to the correct device -- meaning that the IP addresses are visible to both callers on a 1:1 call. IP addresses may contain information that some of our most privacy-conscious users are mindful of, such as broad geographical location or internet provider. To address this concern, we introduced a new feature on WhatsApp that allows you to protect your IP address during calls. With this feature enabled, all your calls will be relayed through WhatsApp's servers, ensuring that other parties in the call cannot see your IP address and subsequently deduce your general geographical location." WhatsApp notes that call quality might be reduced as a result of using the new setting. The feature can be enabled under "Advanced" privacy settings in the app.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A robot in a South Korea distribution center crushed a man to death after the machine apparently failed to differentiate him from the boxes of produce it was handling. The Guardian reports: The man, a robotics company worker in his 40s, was inspecting the robot's sensor operations at a distribution centre for agricultural produce in South Gyeongsang province. The industrial robot, which was lifting boxes filled with bell peppers and placing them on a pallet, appears to have malfunctioned and identified the man as a box, Yonhap reported, citing the police. The robotic arm pushed the man's upper body down against the conveyor belt, crushing his face and chest, according to Yonhap. He was transferred to the hospital but died later, the report said. The BBC notes that the man was "checking the robot's sensor operations ahead of its test run [...] scheduled for November 8." It was originally planned for November 6th, "but was pushed back by two days due to problems with the robot's sensor," the report adds.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jason Koebler reports via 404 Media: Voters in Maine overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure Tuesday that enshrines the right to repair cars, a major win for consumers and a blow to auto manufacturers who have spent millions lobbying against similar legislation and fighting against it in the courts. "Question 4," which enshrines consumers' data access to car diagnostics for the purposes of repair, passed by a margin of 84.3-15.7 in Tuesday's election with 94 percent of the votes tallied. The yes/no question was simple: "Do you want to require vehicle manufacturers to standardize on-board diagnostic systems and provide remote access to those systems and mechanical data to owners and independent repair facilities?" "Maine residents have won the right to control their destiny when it comes to car repairs," Tommy Hickey, director of the Maine Automotive Right to Repair Coalition, told 404 Media. "There's a new technology in cars, they've become computers on wheels, and with this law owners in Maine will be the gatekeepers of that information."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: People who buy a Fire TV from Amazon are probably looking for a cheap and simple way to get an affordable 4K smart TV. When Amazon announced its first self-branded TVs in September 2021, it touted them as being a "great value." But owners of the devices will soon be paying for some of those savings in the form of more prominently displayed advertisements. Charlotte Maines, Amazon's director of Fire TV advertising, monetization, and engagement, detailed the new types of ads that Amazon is selling on Fire TVs. In a StreamTV Insider report from November 1, Amazon said the new ads will allow advertisers to reach an average of 155 million unique monthly viewers. Some of the changes targeting advertisers, like connecting display placement ads with specific in-stream video ads, seem harmless enough. Others could jeopardize the TV-watching experience for owners. For example, Amazon is preparing to make Alexa with generative AI more useful for finding content on Fire TVs. This could help Alexa, which has struggled alongside other tech giants' voice assistants to generate significant revenue. Amazon gets money every time someone interacts with digital content through Alexa. However, the company is double-dipping on this idea by also tying ads to generative AI on Fire TVs. When users ask Alexa to help them find media with queries such as "play the show with the guy who plays the lawyer in Breaking Bad," they will see ads that are relevant to the search. [...] Finally, Amazon is adding "contextual sponsored tiles" that use machine learning to show ads based on whatever content genre or search term the Fire TV user is browsing. Amazon Fire TV users will also start seeing banner ads on the device's home screen for things that have nothing to do with entertainment or media. This ad space was previously reserved for advertising media and entertainment, making the ads feel more relevant, at least. Amazon opening the ad space to more types of advertisers is similar to a move Google TV made early this year. The banner ads will occupy the first slot in the rotating hero area, which Amazon believes is the first thing Fire TV users see.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Next April a new LTS Ubuntu arrives, and alongside it will be a whole new immutable desktop edition. At this year's Ubuntu conference in Riga, Latvia, Canonical revealed more details about its forthcoming immutable desktop distro. From a report: Core Desktop is not the next version of Ubuntu itself. Ordinary desktop and server Ubuntu aren't going anywhere, and the next release, numbered 24.04 and codenamed Noble Numbat as we mentioned last month, will be the default and come with all the usual editions and flavors. Nor is this a whole new product: it is a graphical desktop edition of the existing Ubuntu Core distro, as we examined on its release in June last year, a couple of months after 22.04. Ubuntu Core is Canonical's Internet of Things (IoT) distro, intended to be embedded on edge devices, such as digital signs and smart displays. It is an immutable distro, meaning that the root filesystem is read-only and there's no conventional package manager. Rather than being a basis for customization, like a conventional Linux, the idea is that immutable distros are rolled out and updated more like a phone or tablet OS: there's a single fixed and heavily tested OS image, and it's deployed onto the devices out in the field without modification. Updates are monolithic: a whole fresh image is pushed out, and all the OS components are upgraded in a single operation to the same combination. That isn't unique. Most of the major Linux vendors have immutable offerings, and The Reg has looked at several over the years, including MicroOS, the basis of SUSE's next-gen enterprise OS ALP. As well as the well-known ChromeOS, another immutable desktop is the educational distro Endless OS. [...] Canonical believes it has some unique new angles. Core Desktop is constructed as additional layers on top of the existing Ubuntu Core distro, and like Core, it's entirely built with a single packaging system: Ubuntu's Snap. While Snap remains controversial, it does have some compelling advantages over both SUSE and Red Hat's tooling. SUSE's transactional_update tool, while simpler than its rivals in implementation, requires a snapshot-capable filesystem, meaning that its immutable distros must use Btrfs. While it has many admirers, the number and the contents of the orange and red cells in the feature tables here in its own documentation reflect the FOSS desk's serious reservations about Btrfs.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One of the world's largest mobile data brokers, Kochava, has lost its battle to stop the Federal Trade Commission from revealing what the FTC has alleged is a disturbing, widespread pattern of unfair use and sale of sensitive data without consent from hundreds of millions of people. ArsTechnica: US District Judge B. Lynn Winmill recently unsealed a court filing, an amended complaint that perhaps contains the most evidence yet gathered by the FTC in its long-standing mission to crack down on data brokers allegedly "substantially" harming consumers by invading their privacy. The FTC has accused Kochava of violating the FTC Act by amassing and disclosing "a staggering amount of sensitive and identifying information about consumers," alleging that Kochava's database includes products seemingly capable of identifying nearly every person in the United States. According to the FTC, Kochava's customers, ostensibly advertisers, can access this data to trace individuals' movements -- including to sensitive locations like hospitals, temporary shelters, and places of worship, with a promised accuracy within "a few meters" -- over a day, a week, a month, or a year. Kochava's products can also provide a "360-degree perspective" on individuals, unveiling personally identifying information like their names, home addresses, phone numbers, as well as sensitive information like their race, gender, ethnicity, annual income, political affiliations, or religion, the FTC alleged. Beyond that, the FTC alleged that Kochava also makes it easy for advertisers to target customers by categories that are "often based on specific sensitive and personal characteristics or attributes identified from its massive collection of data about individual consumers." These "audience segments" allegedly allow advertisers to conduct invasive targeting by grouping people not just by common data points like age or gender, but by "places they have visited," political associations, or even their current circumstances, like whether they're expectant parents. Or advertisers can allegedly combine data points to target highly specific audience segments like "all the pregnant Muslim women in Kochava's database," the FTC alleged, or "parents with different ages of children."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The world is set to have been hotter in 2023 than in any other year on record, scientists have declared, before a landmark climate summit this month. From a report: "We can say with near certainty that 2023 will be the warmest year on record, and is currently 1.43C above the pre-industrial average," said Samantha Burgess, the deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service. "The sense of urgency for ambitious climate action going into Cop28 has never been higher." The Copernicus scientists found last month was the hottest October on record globally, with temperatures 1.7C above what they were thought to have been during the average October in the late 1800s. By burning fossil fuels and destroying nature, humans have pumped heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere that have raised the temperature of planet by 1.2C since the Industrial Revolution. The global temperature anomaly for October 2023 was the second highest across all months in its dataset, the scientists found, behind only the month before. "The fact that we're seeing this record hot year means record human suffering," said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London. "Within this year, extreme heatwaves and droughts made much worse by these extreme temperatures have caused thousands of deaths, people losing their livelihoods, being displaced etc. These are the records that matter. That is why the Paris agreement is a human rights treaty, and not keeping to the goals in it, is violating human rights on a vast scale."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has bowed to the inevitable and said it "expects to make" App Store policy changes to comply with EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA). From a report: The iPhone-maker has updated the language pertaining to its risk factors in the fiscal year 2023 Form 10-K filing, with the revised text presenting a shift from the company's previous position, indicating a more definitive stance on potential modifications to the App Store policies. Apple said that future changes could also affect how the company charges developers for access to its platforms; how it manages distribution of apps outside of the App Store; and "how, and to what extent, it allows developers to communicate with consumers inside the App Store regarding alternative purchasing mechanisms."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Windows Central: Microsoft began rolling out its new AI assistant for Windows earlier this year with the Windows 11 version 23H2 release, which adds a new Microsoft Copilot button directly to the Taskbar. Microsoft has been putting its Copilot in front of every user it can, but there's still a large chunk of PC users on the older Windows 10 OS which hasn't seen any of Microsoft's recent AI additions. That may soon be changing. According to my sources, Microsoft is planning to bring the same Microsoft Copilot to Windows 10 in an update coming soon. Just like Windows 11, this update to Windows 10 will place a Copilot button directly on the Windows 10 taskbar, which will open the exact same Copilot sidebar experience found on Windows 11.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon is investing millions in training an ambitious large language model (LLMs), hoping it could rival top models from OpenAI and Alphabet. From a report: The model, codenamed as "Olympus," has 2 trillion parameters, the people said, which could make it one of the largest models being trained. OpenAI's GPT-4 model, one of the best models available, is reported to have one trillion parameters. The team is spearheaded by Rohit Prasad, former head of Alexa, who now reports directly to CEO Andy Jassy. As head scientist of artificial general intelligence (AGI) at Amazon, Prasad brought in researchers who had been working on Alexa AI and the Amazon science team to work on training models, uniting AI efforts across the company with dedicated resources.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The scientific literature is polluted with fake manuscripts churned out by paper mills -- businesses that sell bogus work and authorships to researchers who need journal publications for their CVs. But just how large is this paper-mill problem? From a report: An unpublished analysis shared with Nature suggests that over the past two decades, more than 400,000 research articles have been published that show strong textual similarities to known studies produced by paper mills. Around 70,000 of these were published last year alone. The analysis estimates that 1.5-2% of all scientific papers published in 2022 closely resemble paper-mill works. Among biology and medicine papers, the rate rises to 3%. Without individual investigations, it is impossible to know whether all of these papers are in fact products of paper mills. But the proportion -- a few per cent -- is a reasonable conservative estimate, says Adam Day, director of scholarly data-services company Clear Skies in London, who conducted the analysis using machine-learning software he developed called the Papermill Alarm. In September, a cross-publisher initiative called the STM Integrity Hub, which aims to help publishers combat fraudulent science, licensed a version of Day's software for its set of tools to detect potentially fabricated manuscripts. Paper-mill studies are produced in large batches at speed, and they often follow specific templates, with the occasional word or image swapped. Day set his software to analyse the titles and abstracts of more than 48 million papers published since 2000, as listed in OpenAlex, a giant open index of research papers that launched last year, and to flag manuscripts with text that very closely matched known paper-mill works. These include both retracted articles and suspected paper-mill products spotted by research-integrity sleuths such as Elisabeth Bik, in California, and David Bimler (also known by the pseudonym Smut Clyde), in New Zealand.Read more of this story at Slashdot.