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Google executive Prabhakar Raghavan on Thursday detailed challenges the search and advertising giant faces from smaller rivals, describing efforts to avoid becoming "the next road kill." From a report: Raghavan testified at the ongoing antitrust trial in the suit brought by the U.S. Justice Department and a coalition of state attorneys general, alleging Alphabet's Google unlawfully abused its dominance in the search-engine market to maintain monopoly power. Raghavan, asked about a 1998 article about Yahoo!'s dominance of search at the time, said he was acutely aware rivals from Expedia.com to Instagram to TikTok competed for users' attention. "I feel a keen sense not to become the next road kill," said Raghavan, a senior vice president at Google who reports to chief executive Sundar Pichai. Raghavan said Google had some 8,000 engineers and product managers working on search, with about 1,000 involved in search quality. Raghavan's description of Google struggling to stay relevant clashed with the Justice Department's depiction of a behemoth that broke antitrust law to retain dominance of online search and some aspects of advertising, including paying an estimated $10 billion annually to smartphone makers and wireless carriers to be the default search engine on devices. Google's share of the search engine market is near 90%.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The UK's Online Safety Bill, a wide-ranging piece of legislation that aims to make the country "the safest place in the world to be online" received royal assent today and became law. The bill has been years in the making and attempts to introduce new obligations for how tech firms should design, operate, and moderate their platforms. Specific harms the bill aims to address include underage access to online pornography, "anonymous trolls," scam ads, the nonconsensual sharing of intimate deepfakes, and the spread of child sexual abuse material and terrorism-related content. Although it's now law, online platforms will not need to immediately comply with all of their duties under the bill, which is now known as the Online Safety Act. UK telecoms regulator Ofcom, which is in charge of enforcing the rules, plans to publish its codes of practice in three phases. The first covers how platforms will have to respond to illegal content like terrorism and child sexual abuse material, and a consultation with proposals on how to handle these duties is due to be published on November 9th.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NR Narayana Murthy, the founder of software consultancy giant Infosys, urged youngsters in India to work 70 hours a week if they want the nation to compete with other economies. From a report: Narayana Murthy, in conversation with former Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai, said that India's work productivity is among the lowest in the world. In order to compete with countries like China, India's youngsters must put in extra hours of work -- like Japan and Germany did after World War 2. He also blamed other issues like corruption in the government and bureaucratic delays, saying: "India's work productivity is one of the lowest in the world. Unless we improve our work productivity, unless we reduce corruption in the government at some level, because we have been reading I don't know the truth of it, unless we reduce the delays in our bureaucracy in taking this decision, we will not be able to compete with those countries that have made tremendous progress." Murthy, 77, added his request to the youngsters of today. "So therefore, my request is that our youngsters must say, 'This is my country. I'd like to work 70 hours a week.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Negotiations to merge Western Digital's semiconductor memory business and Japan's Kioxia Holdings have been terminated, Nikkei reported Thursday. From the report: The companies were aiming to reach an agreement by the end of October. U.S.-based Western Digital by Thursday had notified Kioxia that it would exit the talks after the merger failed to secure approval from SK Hynix, an indirect shareholder in Kioxia. The companies were also unable to agree on the merger's conditions with Bain Capital, Kioxia's top shareholder. Kioxia, formerly known as Toshiba Memory, and Western Digital have both suffered a downturn in earnings amid headwinds in memory chips. They are each seeking capital infusions and other measures to help bolster operations. Kioxia ranks third in global market share for NAND flash memory, while Western Digital ranks fourth. The proposed merger would have resulted in an entity that rivals market leader Samsung Electronics, and the companies had hoped the larger scale would lead to greater profits and growth. But SK Hynix officially declared its opposition to the deal on Thursday. SK Hynix had invested about 400 billion yen ($2.67 billion at current rates) in the Bain-led consortium that acquired what is now Kioxia from Toshiba. The South Korean company is now second only to Samsung in NAND memory, and was worried that the Western Digital-Kioxia merger would hurt its position while derailing partnerships it had been exploring with Kioxia.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The chief executive of Bloomsbury Publishing has warned of the threat of artificial intelligence to the publishing industry, saying tech groups are already using the work of authors to train up generative AI programmes. From a report: Nigel Newton, who signed Harry Potter author JK Rowling to Bloomsbury in the 1990s, also said ministers needed to act urgently to address competition concerns between large US tech groups and the publishing industry given their increasing market dominance in selling books across the world. The warning came as Bloomsbury reported its highest-ever first-half results on the back of the boom in fantasy novels, leading the publisher to boost its interim dividend. The group said revenues grew 11 per cent to $165.7mn, sending profits 11 per cent higher at $21.4mn, for the six months to August 31. Newton pointed to the "huge" growth in fantasy novels, with sales of books by Sarah J Maas and Samantha Shannon growing 79 per cent and 169 per cent respectively in the period and demand for Harry Potter books, 26 years after publication, remaining strong. The next Maas book, scheduled for January, has already received "staggering" pre-orders of 750,000 copies for the hardback edition, he said, underscoring the resurgence of the book-selling industry. The group's consumer division will also publish new books in the expanding Harry Potter franchise -- such as a new Wizarding Almanac this autumn.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

JPMorgan Chase's digital token JPM Coin now handles $1 billion worth of transactions daily and the bank plans to continue widening its usage, Global Head of Payments Takis Georgakopoulos said. From a report: "JPM Coin gets transacted on a daily basis mostly in US dollars, but we again intend to continue to expand that," Georgakopoulos said Thursday in an interview on Bloomberg Television. JPM Coin enables wholesale clients to make dollar and euro-denominated payments through a private blockchain network. It's one of the few examples of a live blockchain application by a large bank, but remains a small fraction of the $10 trillion in US dollar transactions moved by JPMorgan on a daily basis. The company also runs a blockchain-based repo application, and is exploring a digital deposit token to accelerate cross-border settlements.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has worried for years that Apple would one day expand its internet search technology, and has been working on ways to prevent that from happening. From a report: For years, Google watched with increasing concern as Apple improved its search technology, not knowing whether its longtime partner and sometimes competitor would eventually build its own search engine. Those fears ratcheted up in 2021, when Google paid Apple around $18 billion to keep Google's search engine the default selection on iPhones, according to two people with knowledge of the partnership, who were not authorized to discuss it publicly. The same year, Apple's iPhone search tool, Spotlight, began showing users richer web results like those they could have found on Google. Google quietly planned to put a lid on Apple's search ambitions. The company looked for ways to undercut Spotlight by producing its own version for iPhones and to persuade more iPhone users to use Google's Chrome web browser instead of Apple's Safari browser, according to internal Google documents reviewed by The New York Times. At the same time, Google studied how to pry open Apple's control of the iPhone by leveraging a new European law intended to help small companies compete with Big Tech. Google's anti-Apple plan illustrated the importance that its executives placed on maintaining dominance in the search business. It also provides insight into the company's complex relationship with Apple, a competitor in consumer gadgets and software that has been an instrumental partner in Google's mobile ads business for more than a decade.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The world must treat the risks from artificial intelligence as seriously as the climate crisis and cannot afford to delay its response, one of the technology's leading figures has warned. Speaking as the UK government prepares to host a summit on AI safety, Demis Hassabis said oversight of the industry could start with a body similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Hassabis, the British chief executive of Google's AI unit, said the world must act immediately in tackling the technology's dangers, which included aiding the creation of bioweapons and the existential threat posed by super-intelligent systems. "We must take the risks of AI as seriously as other major global challenges, like climate change," he said. "It took the international community too long to coordinate an effective global response to this, and we're living with the consequences of that now. We can't afford the same delay with AI." Hassabis, whose unit created the revolutionary AlphaFold program that depicts protein structures, said AI could be "one of the most important and beneficial technologies ever invented." However, he told the Guardian a regime of oversight was needed and governments should take inspiration from international structures such as the IPCC. "I think we have to start with something like the IPCC, where it's a scientific and research agreement with reports, and then build up from there." He added: "Then what I'd like to see eventually is an equivalent of a Cern for AI safety that does research into that -- but internationally. And then maybe there's some kind of equivalent one day of the IAEA, which actually audits these things." The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is a UN body that promotes the secure and peaceful use of nuclear technology in an effort to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons, including via inspections. However, Hassabis said none of the regulatory analogies used for AI were "directly applicable" to the technology, though "valuable lessons" could be drawn from existing institutions. Hassabis said the world was a long time away from "god-like" AI being developed but "we can see the path there, so we should be discussing it now." He said current AI systems "aren't of risk but the next few generations may be when they have extra capabilities like planning and memory and other things ... They will be phenomenal for good use cases but also they will have risks."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has introduced a completely new way to interact with the Apple Watch without ever needing to use the touchscreen. It's called Double Tap and it arrives today via the watchOS 10.1 update. The Verge reports: With a quick pinching motion, you can use it to scroll through the new smart stack of widgets in watchOS 10, pause or end timers, skip music tracks, and answer phone calls. It's the sort of feature that you might read about and scoff at -- until you're unloading groceries from your car, hands full, and an important call comes through on your watch. [...] Double tap technically isn't a new gesture so much. In 2021, Apple introduced Assistive Touch, an accessibility feature designed for people with limb differences or mobility issues. The idea was to give these folks a way to navigate through menus and control the Apple Watch without needing a second hand. On the surface, it can seem like double tap is a rebadged version of Assistive Touch. That's led to understandable confusion as to how the two features differ -- and why double tap isn't available on older Apple Watches that support Assistive Touch (Series 4 or later, including the first-gen SE and Ultra). The short answer is that the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 have a more powerful chip. Specifically, the new S9 features four neural engines for machine learning, which is what powers double tap. On older watches, Assistive Touch was run on the main CPU. But practically speaking, it's easier to see how Assistive Touch and double tap differ once you try using both. [...] Double tap isn't designed to help you navigate anything. The best way I can describe it is Assistive Touch is like the mouse to your computer. It scrolls, it selects, and it's highly programmable. Double tap is more like the double-click portion of using a mouse. You use it solely to perform the main action of an app. And to do that, Apple had to spend a lot of time researching what people wanted or expected a single double tap to do. [...] And, when double tap performs as intended, it does feel a bit like the watch can read my mind. It's genuinely cool to see double tap work with not just my index finger but the rest of them as well. To my surprise, it feels less gimmicky than I expected. But despite Apple's efforts, it doesn't take long to run into double tap's limitations...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alexandra Witze reports via Nature: A meteorite that slammed into Mars in September 2021 has rewritten what scientists know about the planet's interior. By analysing the seismic energy that vibrated through the planet after the impact, researchers have discovered a layer of molten rock that envelops Mars's liquid-metal core. The finding, reported today in two papers in Nature, means that the Martian core is smaller than previously thought. It also resolves some lingering questions about how the red planet formed and evolved over billions of years. The discovery comes from NASA's InSight mission, which landed a craft with a seismometer on Mars's surface. Between 2018 and 2022, that instrument detected hundreds of "marsquakes' shaking the planet. In July 2021, on the basis of the mission's observations of 11 quakes, researchers reported that the liquid core of Mars seemed to have a radius of around 1,830 kilometers3. That was bigger than many scientists were expecting. And it suggested that the core contained surprisingly high amounts of light chemical elements, such as sulfur, mixed with iron. But the September 2021 meteorite impact "unlocked everything," says Henri Samuel, a geophysicist at the Institute of Earth Physics of Paris and lead author of one of today's papers1. The meteorite struck the planet on the side opposite to where InSight was located. That's much more distant than the marsquakes that InSight had previously studied, and allowed the probe to detect seismic energy traveling all the way through the Martian core4. "We were so excited," says Jessica Irving, a seismologist at the University of Bristol, UK, and a co-author of Samuel's paper. For Samuel, it was an opportunity to test his idea that a molten layer of rock surrounds Mars's core5. The way the seismic energy traversed the planet showed that what scientists had thought was the boundary between the liquid core and the solid mantle, 1,830 kilometers from the planet's centre, was actually a different boundary between liquid and solid. It was the top of the newfound layer of molten rock meeting the mantle (see 'Rethinking the Martian core'). The actual core is buried beneath that molten-rock layer and has a radius of only 1,650 kilometers, Samuel says. The revised core size solves some puzzles. It means that the Martian core doesn't have to contain high amounts of light elements -- a better match to laboratory and theoretical estimates. A second liquid layer inside the planet also meshes better with other evidence, such as how Mars responds to being deformed by the gravitational tug of its moon Phobos. The second paper in Nature today2, from a team independent of Samuel's, agrees that Mars's core is enveloped by a layer of molten rock, but estimates that the core has a radius of 1,675 kilometers. The work analyzed seismic waves from the same distant meteorite impact, as well as simulations of the properties of mixtures of molten elements such as iron, nickel and sulfur at the high pressures and temperatures in the Martian core. Having molten rock right up against molten iron "appears to be unique," says lead author Amir Khan, a geophysicist at ETH Zurich. "You have this peculiarity of liquid-liquid layering, which is something that doesn't exist on the Earth." The molten-rock layer might be left over from a magma ocean that once covered Mars. As it cooled and solidified into rock, the magma would have left behind a deep layer of radioactive elements that still release heat and keep rock molten at the base of the mantle, Samuel says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Egbert Edelbroek was acting as a sperm donor when he first wondered whether it's possible to have babies in space. Curious about the various ways that donated sperm can be used, Edelbroek, a Dutch entrepreneur, began to speculate on whether in vitro fertilization technology was possible beyond Earth -- or could even be improved by the conditions found there. Could the weightlessness of space be better than a flat laboratory petri dish? Now Edelbroek is CEO of SpaceBorn United, a biotech startup seeking to pioneer the study of human reproduction away from Earth. Next year, he plans to send a mini lab on a rocket into low Earth orbit, where in vitro fertilization, or IVF, will take place. If it succeeds, Edelbroek hopes his work could pave the way for future space settlements. "Humanity needs a backup plan," he says. "If you want to be a sustainable species, you want to be a multiplanetary species." Beyond future space colonies, there is also a more pressing need to understand the effects of space on the human reproductive system. No one has ever become pregnant in space -- yet. But with the rise of space tourism, it's likely that it will eventually happen one day. Edelbroek thinks we should be prepared. Despite the burgeoning interest in deep space exploration and settlement, prompted in part by billionaires such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, we still know very little about what happens to our reproductive biology when we're in orbit. A report released in September by the US National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine points out that almost no research has been done on human reproduction in space, adding that our understanding of how space affects reproduction is "vital to long-term space exploration, but largely unexplored to date." Some studies on animals have suggested that the various stages of reproduction -- from mating and fertilization to embryo development, implantation, pregnancy, and birth -- can function normally in space. For example, in the very first such experiment, eight Japanese medaka fish developed from egg to hatchling aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1994. All eight survived the return to Earth and seemed to behave normally.Yet other studies have found evidence that points to potential problems. Pregnant rats that spent much of their third trimester -- a total of five days -- on a Soviet satellite in 1983 experienced complications during labor and delivery. Like all astronauts returning to Earth, the rats were exhausted and weak. Their deliveries lasted longer than usual, likely because of atrophied uterine muscles. All the pups in one of the litters died during delivery, the result of an obstruction thought to be due in part to the mother's weakened state. To Edelbroek, these inconclusive results point to a need to systematically isolate each step in the reproductive process in order to better understand how it is affected by conditions like lower gravity and higher radiation exposure. The mini lab his company developed is designed to do exactly that. It is about the size of a shoebox and uses microfluidics to connect a chamber containing sperm to a chamber containing an egg. It can also rotate at different speeds to replicate the gravitational environment of Earth, the moon, or Mars. It is small enough to fit inside a capsule that can be housed on top of a rocket and launched into space.After the egg has been fertilized in the device, it splits into two cells, each of which divides again to form four cells and so on. After five to six days, the embryo reaches a stage known as a blastocyst, which looks like a hollow ball. At this point, the embryos in the mini lab will be cryogenically frozen for their return to Earth.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Norwegian Volkswagen importer Moller Mobility Group has confirmed that it will stop selling combustion vehicles in Norway from 2024. Electricdrive.com reports: The farewell to the combustion engine in Norway is only logical: already today, e-cars regularly account for more than 80 percent of new registrations in the Scandinavian country, and the government wants them to reach a full 100 per cent by 2025. "It may seem strange to celebrate the milestone by removing model icons from our portfolio, but this has been an ambitious and important initiative over time," says Ulf Tore Hekneby, managing director of Volkswagen importer Harald A. Moller AS. "The goal has been to drive change that we believe is of critical importance." Harald A. Moller AS has been importing Volkswagens to Norway since 1948. According to the company, around 1.1 million VWs have been sold in the Scandinavian country during these 75 years. This includes a total of 102,000 electric cars in the past ten years. The sale of the last Golf in Norway this December marks the end of an era, but also the beginning of a new one, Hekneby emphasised. "We encourage everyone to consider an electric car in their next car purchase. Switching to an electric car is a crucial step in reducing an individual's carbon footprint and an important overall contribution to combating climate change," he said. The top-selling car in the country is the Tesla Model Y, "dominating more than 20% of the market share with 15,452 units sold in the first half of this year," reports Electrek. "Almost one in four new passenger car registrations so far this year was Tesla Model Y."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jameson Dow reports via Electrek: As the latest step in the saga of recalled Chevy Bolts, GM is offering owners of '20-'22 Bolts early payment of $1,400 of an anticipated class action settlement in exchange for installing a piece of diagnostics software that the company says will detect whether batteries require a full replacement. [...] In June, GM announced that it would stop replacing 2020-2022 Chevy Bolt Batteries and would instead verify the integrity of the battery with software over a period of 6,200 miles in which Bolt owners were only allowed to charge their batteries to 80% or ~207 of the original EPA's 259-mile range. GM replaced most batteries on '17-'19 Bolts but then ended up offering software diagnostics instead of battery replacements to many '20-'22 model year Bolts. GM says that the software will detect which batteries actually require a fix, but the software requires 6,214 miles/10,000 km worth of driving to detect these problems, during which time charging must be limited to 80%. This left many customers aggrieved at being promised a new battery and not receiving it, and further, at needing to wait some number of months with restricted charging before receiving a solution. Or, in the case of low-mileage customers, that 6,214 miles might even take years -- which brings up a conflict with GM's insistence that the diagnostic period be finished by March 31, 2025, in order to qualify owners for an extended warranty for a replaced battery pack. Now, GM is trying to sweeten the pot to get customers to install the "software final remedy" by offering early/upfront payment of an anticipated $1,400 class action settlement. The payment comes in the form of a Visa eRewards card that can be used for online purchases. But you can only get this early payment if you install the "software final remedy" before December 31, 2023, and sign a legal release associated with taking the payment. If you don't, you'll have to wait for the class action to be sorted out. The compensation program only applies to owners involved in recall N212345944. If the class action settlement ends up being more than $1,400, GM says that the difference will still be paid out to owners who take advantage of this early compensation offer. As noted in The Verge's report, "[o]lder Chevy Bolt models that were made from 2017 to 2019 were initially provided 'fixes' in 2021 to keep the vehicles from catching fire, but it did not work." A different issue with the batteries appeared in 2020, "during which time at least 19 Bolts caught fire with full batteries."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Balaji Srinivasan, former CTO of Coinbase and author of the Network State, has announced his first Network State Conference.This is a conference for people interested in founding, funding, and finding new communities.Topics include startup societies, network states, digital nomadism, competitive government, legalizing innovation, and building alternatives. Speakers include Glenn Greenwald, Vitalik Buterin, Anatoly Yakovenko, Garry Tan, the Winklevosses, and Tyler Cowen. See presentations by startup society founders around the world, invest in them, and search for the community that fits you. With this and Joseon, the first legally recognized cyber state, the network state movement is beginning to get interesting. Another anonymous reader quotes from the Joseon Official X Account's reply to Balaji's announcement: Joseon, the first legally recognized cyber nation state, will be there.Interestingly, Joseon dons the same grey checkmark that is for governments on its X account.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

IFTTT in a blog post said that Amazon is removing the service from Alexa beginning October 31st. "Once the integration is severed, users won't be able to ask Alexa to trigger IFTTT applets," reports The Verge. "Certain automations will stick around in the IFTTT app, but some will be archived on November 1st unless you take action." From the report: If your IFTTT applets use a specific phrase or question as the trigger ("Alexa, trigger..." or "Alexa, what's on my to-do list?"), that will convert to using an IFTTT button widget that you can either use in the app or add to your smartphone's homescreen. But all other triggers set up through Alexa -- say, an automation that runs when you add something to your to-do list -- will be archived. You will also have to remove any Alexa ingredients from your applets or they'll stop working. IFTTT suggests a few alternatives to pursue to keep using it. In addition to button widgets, users can try Apple Shortcuts or the IFTTT note widget. It's also still integrated with Google Assistant, though voice commands have to start with "activate" before an applet will trigger.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Amazon has more than 181 million users in the European Union and directly employs more than 150,000 people in the region, the company said on Wednesday, in its first store transparency report as required by the EU Digital Services Act (DSA). In August, the Digital Services Act (DSA) imposed new rules on content moderation, user privacy and transparency for platforms and search engines labelled as very large online platforms (VLOP), which were defined as having more than 45 million users in the EU. Amazon has challenged its inclusion in the group, saying it was not the largest retailer in any of the EU countries in which it operates. Germany is by far the biggest market for Amazon store with more than 60 million monthly active users, followed by Italy with 38 million users, according to the report. The company has corporate offices across 50 European cities and 250 logistics centers in the block. In the first half of 2023, the company said it took 274 million actions on its own initiative to remove content that violates policy, or other types of non-illegal content. Amazon also received 8,863 legal requests from EU governments for information about users of its service in the first half of 2023.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pebble, the first of the would-be Twitter replacements to emerge after Elon Musk bought Twitter, is shutting down. The social media platform -- previously known as T2 to indicate a desire to build a Twitter clone -- was founded by former Twitter employees Sarah Oh and Gabor Cselle. Steven Vaughan-Nichols writes via ZDNet: Pebble was an early-stage, Twitter-like social network. Its goal was to become the "place to have the authentic conversations we've always wanted to have." Its founders, who were largely Twitter alumni, designed Pebble to look and feel like pre-Musk Twitter, with a 280-character limit and direct messaging. I rather liked it, but it appears I was in the minority. Pebble was always a bit rough around the edges, and it never made it past about 20,000 users. In what was still a surprising announcement, Pebble revealed its plans to shut down operations on November 1, 2023. In a letter to users, Pebble said: "The painful truth, however, is that we were not growing quickly enough for investors to believe that we will break out. Combine that with a crowded space of alternatives -- and the uphill climb is even steeper. In order to continue to build out a complete Pebble, we would have needed more investment, and more time." That was not to be -- and Pebble's backers ran out of money and time. A spokesperson for the platform stated: "While we are immensely proud of what we achieved with our dedicated team and an incredible community, the reality is that our growth rate was not meeting the expectations set by our investors." With the digital landscape burgeoning with alternative platforms, Pebble was competing in an increasingly crowded marketplace. As the platform prepares for its final curtain call, the team behind Pebble is shifting its focus to showing gratitude to its supportive community. They are exploring potential avenues to ensure that the connections formed on Pebble can continue in another guise. Further details are expected to be shared soon.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At Lenovo Tech World '23 in Austin, Texas, yesterday, Motorola demoed a bendable, bracelet-like smartphone that can wrap around your wrist. Ars Technica reports: On stage at the event, Lexi Valasek, 312 Labs innovation strategy and product research Lead for Motorola Mobility, proudly held a prototype. The smartphone looked ordinary to start: a slab of OLED with a chassis that's a bold orange on the backside. But Valasek quickly bent the phone into an arch shape, where it stood on her hand before she wrapped it around her wrist like a cuff. The phone seemed to adapt to its new positioning rapidly, quickly showing a large clock, making the device feel like a smartwatch. Interestingly, Valasek placed the phone around a silver band already wrapped around her wrist. Lenovo hasn't confirmed why, but The Verge suspects this could be critical to the phone being wearable by featuring a magnet for a secure hold. Videos Motorola shared with its press release today also show the user wearing some sort of metal-looking band on their wrist that the smartphone wraps around. And images of the device show a metal-looking strip that might be for connecting to the additional band in question. According to Motorola's press release, the concept device has "FHD+" resolution across the display, which has a 6.9-inch diagonal size when flat. Also when flat, the device runs the "full Android experience, just like any smartphone," according to Motorola. The concept shown this week differs slightly from the concept demoed at Lenovo Tech World '16 in that it can be arched or bent into an upright position. [...] But beyond that, Motorola doesn't seem any closer to releasing the design.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Two Ukrainian hacktivist groups are claiming to have broken into Russia's largest private bank, Alfa-Bank. In a blog post last week, the hackers from groups called KibOrg and NLB shared screenshots of what appears to be an internal database belonging to Alfa-Bank, as well as personal details of several Russian individuals as "confirmation" of the breach. Within the database, the hackers say there are over 30 million records including names, birthdates, account numbers and phone numbers of Russian customers. Adding some legitimacy to those claims, a Ukrainian intelligence official who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive operation confirmed to NPR that Ukraine's top counterintelligence agency, the SBU, helped the hacktivists breach Alfa-Bank. The official did not share additional details about how the SBU participated or any further plans for sharing the stolen data. Ukrainian journalists including from cybersecurity website The Record previously reported on the connection to the SBU. While the hacktivists did not immediately respond to a request to discuss the breach, they wrote in the blog post -- posted on their own site -- that they would be sharing the data obtained from Alfa-Bank with investigative journalists. Alfa-Bank has not publicly responded to the news of the hack.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers have devised an attack that forces Apple's Safari browser to divulge passwords, Gmail message content, and other secrets by exploiting a side channel vulnerability in the A- and M-series CPUs running modern iOS and macOS devices. From a report: iLeakage, as the academic researchers have named the attack, is practical and requires minimal resources to carry out. It does, however, require extensive reverse-engineering of Apple hardware and significant expertise in exploiting a class of vulnerability known as a side channel, which leaks secrets based on clues left in electromagnetic emanations, data caches, or other manifestations of a targeted system. The side channel in this case is speculative execution, a performance enhancement feature found in modern CPUs that has formed the basis of a wide corpus of attacks in recent years. The nearly endless stream of exploit variants has left chip makers -- primarily Intel and, to a lesser extent, AMD -- scrambling to devise mitigations. The researchers implement iLeakage as a website. When visited by a vulnerable macOS or iOS device, the website uses JavaScript to surreptitiously open a separate website of the attacker's choice and recover site content rendered in a pop-up window. The researchers have successfully leveraged iLeakage to recover YouTube viewing history, the content of a Gmail inbox -- when a target is logged in -- and a password as it's being autofilled by a credential manager. Once visited, the iLeakage site requires about five minutes to profile the target machine and, on average, roughly another 30 seconds to extract a 512-bit secret, such as a 64-character string.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes: The BBC reports that Pope Francis has endorsed a global project aimed at getting more children into computer programming. The Code with Pope initiative, championed by Cosmose AI founder Miron Mironiuk, aims to bridge "the glaring disparities in education" across the globe by providing access to Python coding education through the free online learning platform Codeforia for students aged 11-15 across Europe, Africa and Latin America. Mironiuk will meet the Pope at the Vatican, but he admits he's not anticipating the pontiff to emulate his students in acquiring new skills. "I don't expect him to know Python very well," he said. This is not the first time the Pope has encouraged young people to get into coding, having helped write a line of code together with tech-backed nonprofit Code.org in 2019. Pope Francis has also blessed AI's potential for good, meeting with Microsoft President Brad Smith (a Code.org Board member) to sign the Rome Call for AI Ethics early this year just ahead of Microsoft's $10B OpenAI investment and announcing "Artificial Intelligence and Peace" as the theme for World Day of Peace 2024 in August.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA is demonstrating laser communications on multiple missions -- showcasing the benefits infrared light can have for science and exploration missions transmitting terabytes of important data. NASA: The International Space Station is getting a "flashy" technology demonstration this November. The ILLUMA-T (Integrated Laser Communications Relay Demonstration Low Earth Orbit User Modem and Amplifier Terminal) payload is launching to the International Space Station to demonstrate how missions in low Earth orbit can benefit from laser communications. Laser communications uses invisible infrared light to send and receive information at higher data rates, providing spacecraft with the capability to send more data back to Earth in a single transmission and expediting discoveries for researchers. Managed by NASA's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program, ILLUMA-T is completing NASA's first bi-directional, end-to-end laser communications relay by working with the agency's LCRD (Laser Communications Relay Demonstration). LCRD launched in December 2021 and is currently demonstrating the benefits of laser communications from geosynchronous orbit by transmitting data between two ground stations on Earth in a series of experiments. Some of LCRD's experiments include studying atmospheric impact on laser signals, confirming LCRD's ability to work with multiple users, testing network capabilities like delay/disruption tolerant networking (DTN) over laser links, and investigating improved navigation capabilities.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Biden administration on Monday is expected to unveil a long-anticipated artificial intelligence executive order, marking the U.S. government's most significant attempt to date to regulate the evolving technology that has sparked fear and hype around the world. Washington Post: The administration plans to release the order two days before government leaders, top Silicon Valley executives and civil society groups gather in Britain for an international summit focused on the potential risks that AI presents to society, according to four people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private plans. The sweeping order would leverage the U.S. government's role as a top technology customer by requiring advanced AI models to undergo assessments before they can be used by federal workers, according to three people involved in discussions about the order. The lengthy action would ease barriers to immigration for highly skilled workers, an attempt to boost the United States' technological edge. Federal government agencies -- including the Defense Department, Energy Department and intelligence agencies -- would be required to run assessments to determine how they might incorporate AI into their agencies' work, with a focus on bolstering national cyber defenses.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cost overruns for the new Air Force One jets continue to pile on massive losses for Boeing. From a report: Boeing on Wednesday reported another $482 million in red ink on the contract to retrofit two 747 jets into the next generation of the presidential plane. Boeing has now lost more than $1 billion on each of the two jets. The company has been reporting losses on the planes for years, as CEO Dave Calhoun admitted last year that the company should never have signed the contract with the Air Force to produce the jets for $3.9 billion. Supplier costs have soared since then, and the delivery date has been continually pushed back. Boeing took $1.45 billion in losses on the planes last year, and $318 million in 2021. "Air Force One, I'm just going to call a very unique moment, a very unique negotiation. A very unique set of risks that Boeing probably shouldn't have taken," Calhoun said in April last year when discussing $660 million of those losses reported at that time. "But we are where we are." The company said the latest loss on the program is a result of engineering changes, labor instability, as well as the resolution of negotiations with one of its suppliers. Very often higher costs on defense contracts can be passed onto US taxpayers, but under pressure from then-President Donald Trump, who was threatening to cancel the contract for the planes, Boeing agreed to a fixed price contract on the two new jets.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel's latest 14th Gen chips aren't a huge improvement over the 13th Gen in gaming performance, but a new Intel Application Optimization (APO) feature might just change that. From a report: Intel's new APO app simply runs in the background, improving performance in games. It offers impressive boosts to frame rates in games that support it, like Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege and Metro Exodus. Intel Application Optimization essentially directs application resources in real time through a scheduling policy that fine-tunes performance for games and potentially even other applications in the future. It operates alongside Intel's Thread Director, a technology that's designed to improve how apps and games are assigned to performance or efficiency cores depending on the performance needs. The result is some solid gains to performance in certain games, with one Reddit poster seeing a 200fps boost in Rainbow Six Siege at 1080p. "Not all games benefit from APO," explained Intel VP Roger Chandler in a press briefing ahead of the 14th Gen launch. "As we test and verify games we will add those that benefit the most, so gamers can get the best performance from their systems."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Japan's contribution to world-class research continues to decline, despite having one of the world's largest research communities, according to a report by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), released in English on 25 October. From a report: Masatsura Igami, the director of the Center for S&T Foresight and Indicators at the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP) in Tokyo, and one of the authors of the 2023 edition of the Japanese Science and Technology Indicators report, says that the findings highlight several areas that Japan could explore to improve its global standing. "Japan's current research environment is far from ideal and is unsustainable. The research environment must shape up," he says. The report shows that Japan ranks third globally in the total number of researchers, following China and the United States. However, this workforce is not producing the same level of high-impact research as it was two decades ago. Japan's global share of research papers in the top 10% of most-cited articles has slipped from 6% to 2%, intensifying concerns in Japan about its dwindling international standing. Igami explains that the rest of the world has overtaken Japan in terms of quality research output. Some of the decline might be attributable to funding, Igami says. The 2023 report shows that research spending in the university sector has grown by roughly 80% in the United States and Germany, and 40% in France, has quadrupled in South Korea and has increased more than tenfold in China over the past two decades. By contrast, Japan's spending has increased by 10%. However, even if researchers receive more funding, producing high-impact research might still be challenging, because Japanese scientists have less time for actual research, Igami says. According to a 2020 analysis by MEXT, the proportion of time that university researchers dedicated to science decreased from 47% to 33% between 2002 and 2018. [...] The report's findings confirm those of a previous survey of early-career researchers that pointed to a lack of time for research as a notable factor in job dissatisfaction.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The previously announced joint collaboration between Honda Motor and General Motors to develop a platform for affordable electric vehicles (EVs) has been cancelled, the firms said today. Initially publicized in April 2022, the collaboration aimed to produce lower-cost EVs for the North American, South American, and Chinese markets, with the first models expected to roll out in 2027. However, the companies disclosed that they have mutually agreed to disband the project. ArsTechnica: "After extensive studies and analysis, we have come to a mutual decision to discontinue the program. Each company remains committed to affordability in the EV market," Honda and GM said in a joint statement. "After studying this for a year, we decided that this would be difficult as a business, so at the moment we are ending development of an affordable EV," said Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe in an interview with Bloomberg. "GM and Honda will search for a solution separately. This project itself has been canceled," Mibe said. The now-canceled platform was supposed to use GM's Ultium batteries. GM debuted Ultium in 2020 as its third-generation lithium-ion cell, developed together with LG Chem. At the time, GM CEO Mary Barra said that Ultium cells would drop below the $100/kWh barrier "early in the platform's life." In 2022, the first Ultium-based EVs went into production -- the GMC Hummer EV, the Cadillac Lyriq, and the BrightDrop Zevo 600. Ultium cells were supposedly ready for mass production, but GM and LG Chem are struggling to make that a reality. In July, GM had to idle BrightDrop's production line in Canada due to a shortage of battery cells, and Kelly Blue Book's sales data for the first three quarters of 2023 show that just 6,920 Ultium-based EVs (which include the Chevrolet Blazer and Silverado EV, as well as the Hummer, Lyriq, and BrightDrop van) were delivered to customers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon is beta testing AI image generation tools for its advertisers, offering an easy way to create backgrounds or scenes around whatever product ad buyers are hoping to sell. From a report: The company says the new feature is "designed to remove creative barriers and enable brands to produce lifestyle imagery that helps improve their ads' performance." This could prove to be a quick, convenient option for brands that would otherwise be stuck working with boring standalone images of a product against a white background. Amazon says putting products in a lifestyle scene can lead to 40 percent higher click-through rates.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mark Harris, reporting at IEEE: Expect traffic on the 101 highway in Mountain View, California, to be even worse in the days or weeks ahead, as motorists slow down to watch Google co-founder Sergey Brin's 124-meter long airship Pathfinder 1 launch into the air for the first time. IEEE Spectrum has learned that LTA Research, the company that Brin founded in 2015 to develop airships for humanitarian and cargo transport, received a special airworthiness certificate for the helium-filled airship in early September. That piece of paper allows the largest aircraft since the ill-fated Hindenburg to begin flight tests at Moffett Field, a joint civil-military airport in Silicon Valley, with immediate effect. The certificate permits LTA to fly Pathfinder 1 within the boundaries of Moffett Field and neighboring Palo Alto airport's airspaces, at a height of up to 460 meters (1500 feet). That will let it venture out over the south San Francisco Bay, without interfering with planes flying into or out of San Jose and San Francisco International commercial airports. In a letter supporting its application for the certificate, LTA wrote: "Pathfinder 1's experimental flight test program is to demonstrate and establish the flight envelope for the airship.... LTA's test plan is tailored to include substantial indoor and outdoor ground testing, using a build-up approach to gradually increase the flight envelope." The huge airship will initially be attached to a mobile mast for outdoor ground testing, before conducting about 25 low-level flights, for a total of 50 hours' flight time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is increasing the prices of some of its subscription-based services, including Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and Apple News+, in the U.S. and many other countries around the world. The higher prices are shown on Apple's website. The price changes in the U.S. are as follows: Apple TV+: $6.99 per month to $9.99 per monthApple Arcade: $4.99 per month to $6.99 per monthApple News+: $9.99 per month to $12.99 per month For those who subscribe to Apple TV+ on an annual basis, the price has increased from $69 per year to $99 per year accordingly. Prices for the Apple One bundles that include these services are also increasing as a result:Individual: $16.95 per month to $19.95 per monthFamily: $22.95 per month to $25.95 per monthPremier: $32.95 per month to $37.95 per month.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The upcoming optional disc drive for the PlayStation 5 will require an internet connection to pair it to a console for the first time. From a report: As spotted on the back of the box for the upcoming Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 PS5 slim bundle, small print confirms that players who purchase the new model with the optional drive will be required to connect to the internet when pairing it to a machine for the first time. It's likely that this is a security measure in order to ensure that the disc drive is a legitimate one and not a third party. However, it has raised some preservation concerns.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: SiFive, one of the key companies in the RISC-V ecosystem, is undergoing a significant restructuring marked by extensive layoffs and apparently a shift in business focus, reports More Than Moore. The company is seemingly retracting from its pre-designed core offerings, which means it may focus on custom cores instead. Meanwhile, the move casts uncertainty over SiFive's future in general along with its contributions to the RISC-V. RISC-V has become quite a popular choice for making miniature low-cost cores, but there are several companies who are working on higher-performance RISC-V-based offerings. SiFive is one of such companies offering ready-to-use designs and also making custom cores based on what customers need. But now, SiFive has laid off somewhere between 100 to over 300 employees from around 700 in mid-October. Most of these were engineers, along with some sales and product personnel. Meanwhile, the company's leaders, including CEO Patrick Little, are still there. SiFive issued the following statement to Tom's Hardware: "As we identify and focus on our greatest opportunities, SiFive is shifting to best meet our customers' fast-changing requirements by undergoing a strategic refocusing of all our global teams. Unfortunately, with this realignment, approximately 20% of employees across all different business groups and levels were impacted. The employees are receiving severance and outplacement assistance. SiFive continues to be excited about the long-term opportunities for the company and for RISC-V. The growth of the company has never been stronger and the opportunities never better. We are well funded for years in the future and continue to work with the market leaders in every segment. We remain focused on our four product groups, essential, intelligence, performance and automotive, and as we explained in a press event earlier this month, have a robust roadmap to meet the needs of these markets. We see tremendous new opportunities in AI and with Consumer products like wearables and mobile as Google brings Android to the RISC-V ecosystem. We will continue to offer customization for specific customers, offering standard and custom products where it makes sense from a business standpoint."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SonicSpike shares a report from Politico: An agency set up under Donald Trump to protect elections and key U.S. infrastructure from foreign hackers is now fighting off increasingly intense threats from hard-right Republicans who argue it's gone too far and are looking for ways to rein it in. These lawmakers insist work by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to combat online disinformation during elections singles out conservative voices and infringes upon free speech rights -- an allegation the agency vehemently denies and the Biden administration is contesting in court. The accusations started in the wake of the 2020 election and are ramping up ahead of 2024, with lawmakers now calling for crippling cuts at the agency. "CISA has blatantly violated the First Amendment and colluded with Big Tech to censor the speech of ordinary Americans," Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which oversees CISA, said in a statement to POLITICO. The fight over CISA underscores yet another way Trump's election fraud claims are reverberating into 2024. And though the hard right doesn't have enough votes to defund CISA today, the growing backlash against it has supporters worried that a hard-right faction could hobble the agency in the years ahead -- undermining its efforts not just to secure future elections, but also protect key U.S. and federal networks from major hacks. CISA had broad bipartisan support in Congress when lawmakers passed legislation creating the agency in 2018. At the ceremony where Trump signed it into law, he called it "very, very important legislation" to protect the U.S. against both nation-state hackers and cybercriminals. But when Chris Krebs, the then-head of CISA, debunked Trump's 2020 election fraud claims, the president fired him. And since the GOP assumed control of the House in 2022, like-minded Republicans have been ratcheting up their scrutiny of the agency. [...] Conservatives now argue that activity has become a smokescreen for left-leaning government censorship. In Congress and within the courts, they contend that pressure from federal agencies like CISA led social media companies to limit the spread of information perceived as damaging to Joe Biden's campaign, such as stories relating to Hunter Biden. In a sign of trouble for an agency once boasting strong bipartisan support, 108 Republicans supported the failed push to cut CISA's budget last month -- a near majority within the conference. Backers of the budget cut included a swathe of increasingly influential hard-right lawmakers, like Jordan and James Comer (R-Ky.), chair of the powerful House Oversight Committee. Those with direct oversight over CISA also backed the vote, such as the chief of the Homeland Security Committee, Mark Green (R-Tenn.), and another panel member, August Pfluger (R-Texas).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Corinne Purtill reports via Phys.Org: Before epilepsy was understood to be a neurological condition, people believed it was caused by the moon, or by phlegm in the brain. They condemned seizures as evidence of witchcraft or demonic possession, and killed or castrated sufferers to prevent them from passing tainted blood to a new generation. Today we know epilepsy is a disease. By and large, it's accepted that a person who causes a fatal traffic accident while in the grip of a seizure should not be charged with murder. After more than 40 years studying humans and other primates, Sapolsky has reached the conclusion that virtually all human behavior is as far beyond our conscious control as the convulsions of a seizure, the division of cells or the beating of our hearts. This means accepting that a man who shoots into a crowd has no more control over his fate than the victims who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It means treating drunk drivers who barrel into pedestrians just like drivers who suffer a sudden heart attack and veer out of their lane. "The world is really screwed up and made much, much more unfair by the fact that we reward people and punish people for things they have no control over," Sapolsky said. "We've got no free will. Stop attributing stuff to us that isn't there." Sapolsky, a MacArthur "genius" grant winner, is extremely aware that this is an out-there position. Most neuroscientists believe humans have at least some degree of free will. So do most philosophers and the vast majority of the general population. Free will is essential to how we see ourselves, fueling the satisfaction of achievement or the shame of failing to do the right thing. Saying that people have no free will is a great way to start an argument. This is partly why Sapolsky, who describes himself as "majorly averse to interpersonal conflict," put off writing his new book "Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will." [...] Analyzing human behavior through the lens of any single discipline leaves room for the possibility that people choose their actions, he says. But after a long cross-disciplinary career, he feels it's intellectually dishonest to write anything other than what he sees as the unavoidable conclusion: Free will is a myth, and the sooner we accept that, the more just our society will be. "Determined," which comes out today, builds on Sapolsky's 2017 bestseller "Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst," which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a slew of other accolades. The book breaks down the neurochemical influences that contribute to human behaviors, analyzing the milliseconds to centuries preceding, say, the pulling of a trigger or the suggestive touch on an arm. "Determined" goes a step further. If it's impossible for any single neuron or any single brain to act without influence from factors beyond its control, Sapolsky argues, there can be no logical room for free will.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The Biden administration has proposed to ban all uses of trichloroethylene, an industrial solvent used in glues, other adhesives, spot removers and metal cleaners, saying exposure to even small amounts can cause cancer, damage to the central nervous system and other health effects. The proposed ban is the latest twist in a yearslong debate over whether to regulate trichloroethylene, commonly referred to as TCE. In its final weeks, the Obama administration tried to ban some uses of the chemical, only to have the Trump administration place it on an Environmental Protection Agency list for long-term consideration, a move that essentially suspended any action. Monday's proposal goes further than the Obama-era plan by prohibiting all uses of TCE. Under the E.P.A. proposal, most uses of TCE, including those in processing commercial and consumer products, would be prohibited within one year. For other uses the agency categorized as "limited," such as use in electric vehicle batteries and the manufacturing of certain refrigerants, there would be a longer transition period and more stringent worker protections. The administration said that safer alternatives exist for most uses of TCE as a solvent. In a final evaluation this year, the E.P.A. said the chemical posed an "unreasonable risk to human health." Short-term exposure could affect a developing fetus, and high concentrations can irritate the respiratory system, the agency said. Prolonged exposure has been associated with effects in the liver, kidneys, immune system and central nervous system, it said. "This is extremely important," said Maria Doa, senior director for chemicals policy at the Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit advocacy organization. She said TCE "causes so many different harms at such low levels" that banning it would have widespread impacts. "It's a long time coming," she said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Since disclosing a security breach of its support systems Friday, Okta has shed more than $2 billion from its market valuation "Okta shares slumped more than 11% Friday after the company said an unidentified hacking group was able to access client files through a support system," reports CNBC. "The company did not provide more details beyond a set of technical identifiers. The company's stock continued to fall in Monday trading, ultimately closing down 8.1%." From the report: Okta is a lesser-known name but forms a critical part of cybersecurity systems at major corporations. The identity management company boasts more than 18,000 customers who use its products to provide a single login point for many different platforms that a given company uses. Zoom, for example, uses Okta to give "seamless" access through a single login to the company's Google Workspace, ServiceNow, VMware and Workday platforms. Okta said it had communicated with all affected clients in Friday's announcement. At least one of those clients said it had alerted Okta about a potential breach weeks earlier. [...] Okta has also been at the center of other higher-profile incidents. Earlier this year, for example, casino giants Caesars and MGM were both affected by hacks. Caesars was forced to pay millions in ransom to the hacking group, sources told CNBC. MGM had to shut down critical systems that the company acknowledged would have a material effect on its bottom line in an SEC filing. The direct and indirect losses from those incidents totaled over $100 million. Both those attacks targeted MGM and Caesars' Okta installations, using a sophisticated social engineering attack that went through IT help desks. Three other companies were also targeted by the hacking group, an Okta executive told Reuters. Okta has also been a target before. A hacking group purportedly accessed numerous Okta systems in a March attempt. That group, Lapsus$, has been tied to hacking attacks at Uber and Grand Theft Auto maker Rockstar Games, a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive, according to a report from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

PimEyes, a search engine that relies on facial recognition to help people scan billions of images to find photos of themselves on the internet, announced that it has banned searches of minors as part of the company's "no harm policy." The New York Times reports: PimEyes, a subscription-based service that uses facial recognition technology to find online photos of a person, has a database of nearly three billion faces and enables about 118,000 searches per day, according to [PimEyes CEO Giorgi Gobronidze]. The service is advertised as a way for people to search for their own face to find any unknown photos on the internet, but there are no technical measures in place to ensure that users are searching only for themselves. Parents have used PimEyes to find photos of their children on the internet that they had not known about. But the service could also be used nefariously by a stranger. It had previously banned more than 200 accounts for inappropriate searches of children's faces, Mr. Gobronidze said. "Images of children might be used by the individuals with twisted moral compass and values, such as pedophiles, child predators," Mr. Gobronidze said. PimEyes will still allow searches of minors' faces by human rights organizations that work on children's rights issues, he added. Mr. Gobronidze said that blocking searches of children's faces had been on "the road map" since he acquired the site in 2021, but the protection was fully deployed only this month after the publication of a New York Times article on A.I.-based threats to children. Still, the block isn't airtight. PimEyes is using age detection A.I. to identify photos of minors. Mr. Gobronidze said that it worked well for children under the age of 14 but that it had "accuracy issues" with teenagers. It also may be unable to identify children as such if they're not photographed from a certain angle. To test the blocking system, The Times uploaded a photo of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen from their days as child stars to PimEyes. It blocked the search for the twin who was looking straight at the camera, but the search went through for the other, who is photographed in profile. The search turned up dozens of other photos of the twin as a child, with links to where they appeared online. Mr. Gobronidze said PimEyes was still perfecting its detection system.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

John Timmer reports via Ars Technica: Today, a startup called Atom Computing announced that it has been doing internal testing of a 1,180 qubit quantum computer and will be making it available to customers next year. The system represents a major step forward for the company, which had only built one prior system based on neutral atom qubits -- a system that operated using only 100 qubits. The error rate for individual qubit operations is high enough that it won't be possible to run an algorithm that relies on the full qubit count without it failing due to an error. But it does back up the company's claims that its technology can scale rapidly and provides a testbed for work on quantum error correction. And, for smaller algorithms, the company says it'll simply run multiple instances in parallel to boost the chance of returning the right answer. [...] Atom Computing is now using the system internally and plans to open it up for public use next year. The system has moved from a 10x10 grid to a 35x35 grid, bringing the potential sites for atoms up to 1,225. So far, testing has taken place with up to 1,180 atoms present, making it the largest machine that anyone has publicly acknowledged (at least in terms of qubit count). The qubits are housed in a 12x5 foot box that contains the lasers and optics, along with the vacuum system and a bit of unused space -- Atom CEO Rob Hayes quipped that "there's a lot of air inside that box." It does not, however, contain the computer hardware that controls the system and its operations. The grid of atoms it's used to create, by contrast, is only about 100 microns per side, so it won't strain the hardware to keep increasing the qubit count.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has used a system called Giant Oak Search Technology (GOST) to help the agency scrutinize social media posts, determine if they are "derogatory" to the U.S., and then use that information as part of immigration enforcement, according to a new cache of documents reviewed by 404 Media. The documents peel back the curtain on a powerful system, both in a technological and a policy sense -- how information is processed and used to decide who is allowed to remain in the country and who is not. GOST's catchphrase included in one document is "We see the people behind the data." A GOST user guide included in the documents says GOST is "capable of providing behavioral based internet search capabilities." Screenshots show analysts can search the system with identifiers such as name, address, email address, and country of citizenship. After a search, GOST provides a "ranking" from zero to 100 on what it thinks is relevant to the user's specific mission. The documents further explain that an applicant's "potentially derogatory social media can be reviewed within the interface." After clicking on a specific person, analysts can review images collected from social media or elsewhere, and give them a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down." Analysts can also then review the target's social media profiles themselves too, and their "social graph," potentially showing who the system believes they are connected to. DHS has used GOST since 2014, according to a page of the user guide. In turn, ICE has paid Giant Oak Inc., the company behind the system, in excess of $10 million since 2017, according to public procurement records. A Giant Oak and DHS contract ended in August 2022, according to the records. Records also show Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the State Department, the Air Force, and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service which is part of the U.S. Treasury have all paid for Giant Oak services over the last nearly ten years. The FOIA documents specifically discuss Giant Oak's use as part of an earlier 2016 pilot called the "HSI [Homeland Security Investigations] PATRIOT Social Media Pilot Program." For this, the program would "target potential overstay violators from particular visa issuance Posts located in countries of concern." "The government should not be using algorithms to scrutinize our social media posts and decide which of us is 'risky.' And agencies certainly shouldn't be buying this kind of black box technology in secret without any accountability. DHS needs to explain to the public how its systems determine whether someone is a 'risk' or not, and what happens to the people whose online posts are flagged by its algorithms," Patrick Toomey, Deputy Director of the ACLU's National Security Project, told 404 Media in an email. The documents come from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit brought by both the ACLU and the ACLU of Northern California. Toomey from the ACLU then shared the documents with 404 Media.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has announced a Mac event for October 30th with the caption "Scary Fast." According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the company is expected to focus on the M3 series MacBook Pro models. MacRumors reports: Kuo's wording suggests that he is expecting multiple M3 chips rather than just a single M3 chip, hinting at the possibility of M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips. If Apple does release M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips at once, we can expect to see the new chips introduced in 13-inch, 14-inch, and 16-inch MacBook Pro models. Kuo says that he previously predicted that Apple would not likely introduce new MacBook Pro models in 2023 because of "limited 4Q 23 shipments," and if new MacBook Pros do come out in November or December, the tight supply will last until the first quarter of 2024. Kuo further says that Mac shipments have declined due to the "limited M2 computing power upgrade," which may be the reason why Apple might launch M3 MacBook Pro models with low production volume. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman also says that Apple has been testing M3 Max and M3 Pro MacBook Pro models, suggesting that these machines are going to be refreshed. Gurman just last week claimed that Apple would not update the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M3 Pro and M3 Max chips until early 2024, so it seems that his predictions have since changed. That Kuo and Gurman are both now suggesting that we'll see 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models at Apple's October event comes as a surprise because much of their prior information pointed toward a 2024 refresh for these devices. Gurman maintains that Apple will not refresh the MacBook Air models, Mac mini, Mac Studio, or Mac Pro at this time, which leaves the iMac, 13-inch MacBook Pro, 14-inch MacBook Pro, and 16-inch MacBook Pro for the October event. As Gurman has previously pointed out, these are the machines that are facing extended shipping times in Apple's online store. You can watch the event live via Apple's website starting at 5 p.m. PT on October 30th. Further reading: Apple To Revamp TV App in Step Toward Simplifying Video ServicesRead more of this story at Slashdot.

Qualcomm unveiled a new laptop processor designed to outperform rival products from Intel and Apple on Tuesday, stepping up its long-running effort to break into the personal computer market. From a report: Qualcomm formally launched the Snapdragon X Elite, the flagship platform of its Snapdragon X family that leverages its Oryon CPU core, and promises to double -- yes, double -- the performance of some of the most popular 13th-gen Core chips from AMD and Intel. Sound familiar? It should. Qualcomm promised the same with its earlier Snapdragon 8-series chips, and really didn't deliver. But after buying chip designer Nuvia in 2021, Qualcomm is trying again, hoping that its superpowered Arm chips can once again make Windows on Arm PCs a competitor to conventional X86 PCs when they launch in mid-2024. And they'e talking some big numbers to prove it. Qualcomm sees Oryon first going into PCs (as the engine of the Snapdragon X Elite platform) but then moving into smartphones, cars, "extended reality" devices, and more, Qualcomm chief executive Cristiano Amon is expected to say today. [...] To begin with, Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite is manufactured on a 4nm process node, versus the Intel 4 process node of Intel's Meteor Lake. (The two process technologies aren't directly comparable, though they're close enough for most purposes.) Oryon is a tri-cluster design. Historically, that has meant prime, performance, and efficiency cores, with each type of core taking on their own role depending upon the task. However, it appears that Qualcomm and its X86 rivals may have swapped strategies; as Intel adopts performance and efficiency cores, Qualcomm has chosen AMD's path. There are twelve cores within the Snapdragon X Elite, all running at 3.8GHz. Well, most of the time. If needed one or two of the cores can boost to 4.3GHz, the turbo boost strategy that's become common on the PC. The 64-bit Oryon CPU will be paired with 42Mbytes of total cache, and a memory controller that can access eight channels of LPDDR5x memory (64GB in total) with 130GBps memory bandwidth, executives said. It will be a single die, not a chiplet design.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Oregon State University on Tuesday urged students and staff to "avoid all robots" after a bomb threat was reported in Starship food delivery robots. NBC News reports: The warning was issued at 12:20 p.m. local time and by 12:59 p.m., the potentially dangerous bots had been isolated at safe locations, the school said. The robots were being "investigated by" a technician, OSU said in a statement posted at 1:23 p.m. "Remain vigilant for suspicious activity," the school said. Finally, at around 1:45 p.m., the school issued an "all clear" alert. "Emergency is over," the message said. "You may now resume normal activities. Robot inspection continues in a safe location." A representative for Starship, the company that produces the robots, could not be immediately reached for comment. The company calls itself a "global leader in autonomous delivery" with agreements at a host of universities across the United States. Developing...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: California's auto regulator said on Tuesday it has suspended General Motors' Cruise autonomous vehicle deployment and driverless testing permits, saying it had misrepresented information related to the safety of the autonomous technology. Cruise's AVs posed an "an unreasonable risk to public safety," and "are not safe for the public's operation" California's Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) said in a statement. The suspension, which came after a series of accidents involving Cruise vehicles, is a major setback to GM's self-driving technology unit and to the nascent autonomous vehicle (AV) industry. The suspension was effective immediately. GM has previously insisted Cruise represents a "giant growth opportunity." In June, GM CEO Mary Barra reiterated a forecast that Cruise could generate $50 billion a year in annual revenue by 2030, a target the company has not backed away from. The automaker reported on Tuesday that it lost $723 million on Cruise during the third quarter. The DMV added that Tuesday's "decision does not impact the company's permit for testing with a safety driver." Cruise issued a statement saying it "will be pausing operations of our driverless AVs in San Francisco." Cruise said the California Department of Motor Vehicles reviewed an incident on Oct. 2, when one of its self-driving vehicles was putting on the brakes but did not avoid striking a pedestrian who had previously been struck by a hit-and-run driver. Cruise said that in that incident, "a human hit and run driver tragically struck and propelled the pedestrian into the path of the AV" which struck the pedestrian. "When the AV tried to pull over, it continued before coming to a final stop, pulling the pedestrian forward," the company said. "Our teams are currently doing an analysis to identify potential enhancements to the AV's response to this kind of extremely rare event," it added. In August, the regulator said it was investigating "concerning incidents" involving autonomous vehicles operated by Cruise in San Francisco and asked the company to take half its robotaxis off the roads. That month, a Cruise robotaxi was involved in a crash with an emergency vehicle in San Francisco. Barra said the Cruise robotaxis have better safety records than human drivers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Most Android users have probably never seen Google Play Protect in action. The malware-scanning service is built into every Android device and is supposed to flag malware that users have installed. Recently it flagged some popular apps that are very much not malware: Samsung Wallet and Samsung Messages. As spotted by 9to5Google, Samsung users have been getting hit with Play Protect warnings since earlier this month. Users on the Google Support forum have posted screenshots of Play Protect flagging the Samsung system apps, and even Samsung responded to the issue, explaining (in Korean) how to fix any damage caused by the bug. Samsung says (through translation) the issue was caused by "a temporary failure of the Google server" and should now be fixed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is the third chief executive of the software giant to admit the company has made some serious mobile mistakes. From a report: Satya Nadella took over from former CEO Steve Ballmer in 2014 and, just over a year later, wrote off $7.6 billion related to Microsoft's acquisition of the Nokia phone business. In an interview with Business Insider, Nadella admitted that Microsoft's "exit" from the mobile phone business could have been handled better. Asked about a strategic mistake or wrong decision that he might regret, Nadella responds: "The decision I think a lot of people talk about -- and one of the most difficult decisions I made when I became CEO -- was our exit of what I'll call the mobile phone as defined then. In retrospect, I think there could have been ways we could have made it work by perhaps reinventing the category of computing between PCs, tablets, and phones."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple will redesign its TV app in a step toward consolidating the company's various video offerings later this year, part of its efforts to become a bigger player in the streaming world. Bloomberg News: The company is preparing a new version of the app for release around December as part of an upcoming tvOS software update, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plan is private. The app, which first launched in 2016, aggregates content from iTunes, the Apple TV+ subscription service, live sports networks and third-party offerings like Amazon Prime. As part of the overhaul, the company will discontinue its dedicated apps on the Apple TV set-top box that let users rent and buy movies and shows. It will also remove the movie and TV show sections from the iTunes Store app on iPhones and iPads. The idea is to steer more customers toward the main TV app, which sits at the center of Apple's expanding video strategy. There, users are able to subscribe to TV+ as well as third-party video services like Starz and Paramount+. The app already lets customers rent and buy programs, making a separate iTunes option unnecessary.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mac computer and iPhone maker Apple on Tuesday will announce plans to make parts, tools and documentation needed to repair its products available to independent repair shops and consumers nationwide, at fair and reasonable prices, the White House said. From a report: National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard made the announcement in remarks prepared for a White House event later Tuesday focused on the so-called "right to repair," calling on Congress to pass legislation requiring such action across the country. The event is part of U.S. President Joe Biden's push to promote competition and crack down on so-called junk fees and other actions that increase prices for consumers. The latest effort is aimed at giving consumers more control over fixing what they own, from tractors to smart phones. Brainard said California, Colorado, New York and Minnesota had already passed right to repair laws, and 30 other states had introduced similar legislation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Downloading Chrome using Microsoft Edge is already a nightmare filled with banners and stop-gaps, and nothing seems to be stopping Microsoft from adding even more. From a report: Last weekend, we noticed that an attempt to download Google Chrome using Microsoft Edge results in the latter opening its sidebar with a poll, asking you to explain to Microsoft how you could dare try downloading Google Chrome. Of course, the exact wording is more tame, but you get the idea. Now, besides dismissing several banners and a full-size ad injected on the Chrome website, Edge wants you to answer a questionnaire with the following options: We love having you!Can you please take a minute to tell us why you are trying another browser? I can't search Google easilyI can't access my Google documentsI don't have my favorites or passwords hereToo many ads and pop-upsI don't like the news feedIt's too slowMy websites don't work on Microsoft EdgeMy reason is not listedRead more of this story at Slashdot.

Economists spent 2021 expecting inflation to prove "transitory." They spent much of 2022 underestimating its staying power. And they spent early 2023 predicting that the Federal Reserve's rate increases, meant to cure the inflation, would plunge the economy into a recession. None of those forecasts have panned out. The New York Times: Two big issues have made it difficult to forecast since 2020. The first was the coronavirus pandemic. The world had not experienced such a sweeping disease since the Spanish flu in 1918, and it was hard to anticipate how it would roil commerce and consumer behavior. The second complication came from fiscal policy. The Trump and Biden administrations poured $4.6 trillion of recovery money and stimulus into the economy in response to the pandemic. President Biden then pushed Congress to approve several laws that provided funding to encourage infrastructure investment and clean energy development. Between coronavirus lockdowns and the government's enormous response, standard economic relationships stopped serving as good guides to the future. Take inflation. Economic models suggested that it would not take off in a lasting way as long as unemployment was high. It made sense: If a bunch of consumers were out of work or earning tepid pay gains, they would pull back if companies charged more. But those models did not count on the savings that Americans had amassed from pandemic aid and months at home. Price increases began to take off in March 2021 as ravenous demand for products like used cars and at-home exercise equipment collided with global supply shortages. Unemployment was above 6 percent, but that did not stop shoppers. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 exacerbated the situation, pushing up oil prices. And before long, the labor market had healed and wages were growing rapidly.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Unciphered, a Seattle-based startup, claims to have cracked the seemingly unbreakable encryption of IronKey S200, a decade-old USB thumb drive. By exploiting an undisclosed vulnerability in the device, the company says it can bypass the drive's feature that erases its contents after 10 incorrect password attempts. The breakthrough came within a day of receiving a test device, suggesting that the firm's hacking technique, powered by high-performance computing, could have far-reaching implications. The startup's focus is not just technological; it's after a specific IronKey that holds 7,002 bitcoins, valued at roughly $235 million, stored in a Swiss bank vault. The device belongs to Stefan Thomas, a Swiss crypto entrepreneur, who has forgotten the password and has only two password attempts left before losing access to his fortune. Unciphered believes its hacking capabilities could unlock Thomas' crypto vault and is preparing to reach out to him to offer its services. The only problem: Thomas doesn't seem to want their help. Wired: Earlier this month, not long after performing their USB-decrypting demonstration for me, Unciphered reached out to Thomas through a mutual associate who could vouch for the company's new IronKey-unlocking abilities and offer assistance. The call didn't even get as far as discussing Unciphered's commission or fee before Thomas politely declined. Thomas had already made a "handshake deal" with two other cracking teams a year earlier, he explained. In an effort to prevent the two teams from competing, he had offered each a portion of the proceeds if either one could unlock the drive. And he remains committed, even a year later, to giving those teams more time to work on the problem before he brings in anyone else -- even though neither of the teams has shown any sign of pulling off the decryption trick that Unciphered has already accomplished. That has left Unciphered in a strange situation: It holds what is potentially one of the most valuable lockpicking tools in the cryptocurrency world, but with no lock to pick. "We cracked the IronKey," says Nick Fedoroff, Unciphered's director of operations. "Now we have to crack Stefan. This is turning out to be the hardest part." In an email to WIRED, Thomas confirmed that he had turned down Unciphered's offer to unlock his encrypted fortune. "I have already been working with a different set of experts on the recovery so I'm no longer free to negotiate with someone new," Thomas wrote. "It's possible that the current team could decide to subcontract Unciphered if they feel that's the best option. We'll have to wait and see." In past interviews, Thomas has said that his 7,002 bitcoins were left over from a payment he received for making a video titled "What is Bitcoin?" that published on YouTube in early 2011, when a bitcoin was worth less than a dollar. Later that year, he told WIRED that he'd inadvertently erased two backup copies of the wallet that held those thousands of coins, and then lost the piece of paper with the password to decrypt the third copy, stored on the IronKey. By then, his lost coins were worth close to $140,000.Read more of this story at Slashdot.