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Windows 10 may be just shy of two years away from the ax, but its successor, Windows 11, appears to be as unpopular as ever. From a report: The end of Windows 10 support is getting closer. Unless the company blinks, October 14, 2025, will be the end of the line for the Home and Pro editions of the operating system, yet users seem reluctant to move on to Windows 11. There was a marked reluctance by users to move from Windows 7, back in the day, but some of the reasons for hesitancy this time are different. The move to Windows 10 usually required the purchase of new hardware. It tended to be unavoidable -- 7 could run on far lower-spec devices than later versions. The move from Windows 10 to Windows 11 will also require new hardware, but for different reasons. Infamously, Microsoft axed support for a raft of hardware with Windows 11, including older Intel CPUs, on security grounds. The result was that hardware that will run Windows 10 perfectly well will not accept the new operating system. And this is not due to performance problems (who remembers trying to run Vista on XP hardware?) but rather because of Microsoft's edict. The result? A collective shrug from PC users. Windows 10 does the job. Why upgrade? The figures speak for themselves. Windows 10 dominates the desktop. According to Statcounter, the worldwide Windows version desktop market share puts Windows 10 at 71.64 percent, with Windows 11 trailing at 23.61 percent.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

EU antitrust regulators are asking Microsoft's users and rivals whether Bing should comply with new tough tech rules and also whether that should be the case for Apple's iMessage, Reuters reported Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: The European Commission in September opened investigations to assess whether Microsoft's Bing, Edge and Microsoft Advertising as well as Apple's iMessage should be subject to the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The probes came after the companies contested the EU competition regulator labelling these services as core platform services under the DMA. The DMA requires Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet's Google, Amazon, Meta Platforms and ByteDance to allow for third-party apps or app stores on their platforms and to make it easier for users to switch from default apps to rivals, among other obligations. The Commission sent out questionnaires earlier this month, asking rivals and users to rate the importance of Microsoft's three services and Apple's iMessage versus competing services.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft, Google and others experiment with how to produce, market and charge for new tools. From a report: Microsoft has lost money on one of its first generative AI products, said a person with knowledge of the figures. It and Google are now launching AI-backed upgrades to their software with higher price tags. Zoom has tried to mitigate costs by sometimes using a simpler AI it developed in-house. Adobe and others are putting caps on monthly usage and charging based on consumption. "A lot of the customers I've talked to are unhappy about the cost that they are seeing for running some of these models," said Adam Selipsky, the chief executive of Amazon.com's cloud division, Amazon Web Services, speaking of the industry broadly. It will take time for companies and consumers to understand how they want to use AI and what they are willing to pay for it, said Chris Young, Microsoft's head of corporate strategy. "We're clearly at a place where now we've got to translate the excitement and the interest level into true adoption," he said. Building and training AI products can take years and hundreds of millions of dollars, more than with other types of software. AI often doesn't have the economies of scale of standard software because it can require intense new calculations for each query. The more customers use the products, the more expensive it is to cover the infrastructure bills. These running costs expose companies charging flat fees for AI to potential losses. Microsoft used AI from its partner OpenAI to launch GitHub Copilot, a service that helps programmers create, fix and translate code. It has been popular with coders -- more than 1.5 million people have used it and it is helping build nearly half of Copilot users' code -- because it slashes the time and effort needed to program. It has also been a money loser because it is so expensive to run. Individuals pay $10 a month for the AI assistant. In the first few months of this year, the company was losing on average more than $20 a month per user, according to a person familiar with the figures, who said some users were costing the company as much as $80 a month.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna appears to be in a state of damage control following recent controversial comments on AI-related job losses. From a report: Speaking at an event in the US this week, Krishna said IBM has no intention of laying off tech staff, such as developers or programmers, and instead plans to ramp up hiring for roles in these areas. "I don't intend to get rid of a single one," he said. "I'll get more." Krishna added that the company aims to increase the number of software engineering and sales staff over the next four years to accommodate for its heightened focus on generative AI. Instead, the hammer will fall largely on staff working in back-office operations, aligning closely with what we've heard previously from the exec. Earlier this year, IBM announced plans to cut nearly 8,000 staff working in positions spanning human resources in a bid to automate roles. The move means that anywhere up to 7,800 jobs at the tech giant's HR division could be cut, equivalent to around 30% of the overall workforce in the unit. IBM also said at the time that it would halt hiring for roles in the division on account of positions being automated. Krishna has been among the most outspoken big tech executives on the topic of AI job losses in recent months. While industry figureheads have repeatedly shirked the topic, Krishna, to his credit, has been candid on the subject. In an interview with CNBC in August, Krishna suggested "we should all feel better" about the influx of generative AI tools, much to the ire of critics worried about its impact on the labor market. Krishna also told the broadcaster that organizations can deliver marked improvements to productivity through generative AI, but that will come at the expense of human roles.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As the FCC leans towards reinstating net neutrality and regulating ISPs under Title II, the broadband sector is set to challenge the move. Previously, courts have upheld FCC's decisions. However, legal experts believe the Supreme Court's current stance may hinder the FCC's authority to classify broadband as a telecommunications service. ArsTechnica: The major question here is whether the FCC has authority to decide that broadband is a telecommunications service, which is important because only telecommunications services can be regulated under Title II's common-carrier framework. "A Commission decision reclassifying broadband as a Title II telecommunications service will not survive a Supreme Court encounter with the major questions doctrine. It would be folly for the Commission and Congress to assume otherwise," two former Obama administration solicitors general, Donald Verrilli, Jr. and Ian Heath Gershengorn, argued in a white paper last month. According to Verrilli and Gershengorn, "There is every reason to think that a majority of the Supreme Court" would vote against the FCC. Verrilli and Gershengorn express their view with a striking level of certainty given how difficult it usually is to predict a Supreme Court outcome -- particularly in a case like this, where the agency decision isn't even finalized. While litigation in lower courts is to be expected, it's not even clear that the Supreme Court will take up the case at all. The certainty expressed by Verrilli and Gershengorn is less surprising when you consider that their white paper was funded by USTelecom and NCTA -- The Internet & Television Association, two broadband industry trade groups that sued the Obama-era FCC in a failed attempt to overturn the net neutrality rules. The groups -- which represent firms like AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Charter -- eventually got their way when then-FCC Chairman Ajit Pai led a repeal of the rules in 2017. But the industry-funded white paper has gotten plenty of attention, and the FCC is keenly aware of the so-called "major questions doctrine" that it describes. The FCC's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), which is pending a commission vote, will seek public comment on how the major questions doctrine might affect Title II regulation and net neutrality rules that would prohibit blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China aims to grow the country's computing power by more than a third in less than three years, a move set to benefit local suppliers and boost technology self-reliance as US sanctions pressure domestic industry. From a report: The world's second-largest economy is targeting more than 300 exaflops of computing capacity across its tech sector by 2025 from 220 this year, according to a joint statement from several agencies including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The goal marks Beijing's latest attempt to construct digital infrastructure to spur a sluggish economy. China also plans to build an additional 20 smart computing centers in two years. Bigger optical networks and more advanced data storage will be installed in the years until 2025, the regulators said. The additional computational power will support manufacturing, education, finance, transportation, healthcare and energy, they added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An economist testified that Google made billions of dollars in extra ad revenue starting in 2017 - by making a secret change to its auction algorithm that bumped their revenues up 15%. Bloomberg reports:Michael Whinston, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said Friday that Google modified the way it sold text ads via "Project Momiji" - named for the wooden Japanese dolls that have a hidden space for friends to exchange secret messages. The shift sought "to raise the prices against the highest bidder," Whinston told Judge Amit Mehta in federal court in Washington. Google's advertising auctions require the winner to pay only a penny more than the runner-up. In 2016, the company discovered that the runner-up had often bid only 80% of the winner's offer. To help eliminate that 20% between the runner-up and what the winner was willing to pay, Google gave the second-place bidder a built-in handicap to make their offer more competitive, Whinston said, citing internal emails and sealed testimony by Google finance executive Jerry Dischler earlier in the case... About two-thirds, more than 60%, of Google's total revenue comes from search ads, Dischler said previously, amounting to more than $100 billion in 2020. In 2021 Google was also accused of running "a secret program to track bids on its ad-buying platform," according to the New York Post (citing reporting by the Wall Street Journal). A Texas-led antitrust suit accused Google "of using the information to gain an unfair market advantage that raked in hundreds of millions of dollars annually, according to a report." And the Post's article also mentioned "an alleged hush-hush deal in which Google allegedly guaranteed that Facebook would win a fixed percentage of advertising deals."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A team of scientists drove hundreds of miles through the steppes of Kazakhstan in search of what may be one of the largest and most diverse fungi ecosystems on Earth. The Washington Post believes their efforts "could help make the planet more resilient to climate change."When these underground fungi come together, they form sophisticated systems known as "mycorrhizal networks...." Mycorrhizal fungi often form mutually beneficial relationships with plants. They trade essential nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen in exchange for carbon, and act as an extended root system, allowing plants to access water they can't reach. These networks may also prove to be invaluable for transporting carbon underground, a study published in June found. About 13 gigatons of carbon fixed by vegetation - equivalent to about one-third of all carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in one year - flows through underground fungi, according to an analysis of nearly 200 data sets. In the steppe, these plant-fungal benefits may be short-lived, however. While deserts are a natural part of Kazakhstan's ecosystem, more than half of the country's vegetation and drylands is at risk of becoming desert as well. The main drivers are large-scale intensive agriculture and increasingly warm and dry temperatures brought by climate change.... Knowing what species of fungi live here is key to understanding how to protect them, said Bethan Manley, project officer at the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks who was on the expedition. It will help determine "where we might be able to have the most effective measures of not poisoning them with fungicides or not having harmful farming practices," she said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Street argues that Satya Nadella "has transformed Microsoft since taking over for former CEO Steve Ballmer. Instead of closing the company off from its rivals, Nadella has been open to working with companies that are also competitors like Apple." But they added that Nadella "remains at odds" with Google's parent company Alphabet, even testifying in the antitrust lawsuit against the company. They highlight another example from Nadella's testimony (first spotted by GeekWire).Nadella also believes that Alphabet sells a false narrative that OEM partners have a choice when in reality they don't. "Google has carrots and it has massive sticks...'We'll remove Google Play if you don't have us as the primary browser.' And without Google Play, an Android phone is a brick. And so that is the type of stuff that is impossible to overcome. No OEM is going to do that," he said. GeekWire also notes Nadella's comments about the U.S. government's antitrust case against Microsoft in 1998:"Google exists because of two things. One is because of our consent decree, where we had to put a lot of limits on what we could distribute and not distribute by default. And, second, because [of] the fact that you could distribute anything you wanted on Windows, and it's still the case, right, it's not just Google. ... The largest marketplace on Windows happens to be not from Microsoft, it's Steam. And so it's an open platform on which anybody can distribute anything."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"34% of Californians say they are considering moving out of the state due to housing costs," according to statistics from a new report from the Public Policy Institute of California. It's a nonprofit think tank founded in 1994 "to inform and improve public policy in California through independent, objective, nonpartisan research." (Founded with a grant from Bill Hewlett of Hewlett-Packard, it also gets funding from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation). The report's startling conclusion? "After a century of explosive growth, California is likely to become a slow-growing state." After the year 2030 California's seniors (older than 65) are expected to outnumber its children. "In 2020, California had nearly four residents ages 18-64 for every adult 65 and older. This ratio is expected to drop to 2.8 by 2030 and 2.2 by 2060, if current trends continue." Births are outpacing deaths by over 106,000 people a year. (Even during the pandemic California had a lower COVID mortality rate than most states.) And international immigration remained a net positive with a 90,000-person increase in 2022. Yet all of this was offset in 2022 by a net loss of 407,000 people migrating out of the state. California already has a population of 39 million - but the full report cites July 2023 projections from the state's Department of Finance that now "suggest that the state population will plateau between 39 and 40 million residents in the long term." The caption on one graph notes that California "is losing households at all income levels."[W]hile the majority of domestic outmigrants are lower- and middle-income, an increasing proportion of higher-income Californians are also exiting the state. The "new normal" of remote work in many white-collar professions has enabled some higher-income workers to move. Politics might also play a role, as conservatives are much more likely than liberals to say they have considered leaving the state. One other factor:Declining birth and fertility rates are a nationwide, even a global, phenomenon as economic and social events have changed the status of women and their access to educational and job opportunities. Total fertility rates - the number of births the average woman will have in her lifetime - have fallen across the U.S. in recent decades. No state has a rate at or above 2.1, the level necessary to maintain a population's current size (not taking immigration and migration into account), but California's fertility rate has fallen faster than most. In 2008 its rate was above the national average (2.15); by 2020 it fell to the seventh-lowest (1.52). The declining birth rate among young adults in their 20s is the biggest driver of the fertility rate decline. One major factor is that 20-somethings are now less likely to get married, which can affect decisions to have children... In the past, higher birth rates among immigrants also helped offset lower birth rates among US-born Californians, though more recently birth rates among immigrants have declined, reflecting patterns in sending countries.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thursday ZDNet reported...As security holes go, CVE-2023-4911, aka "Looney Tunables," isn't horrid. It has a Common Vulnerability Scoring System score of 7.8, which is ranked as important, not critical. On the other hand, this GNU C Library's (glibc) dynamic loader vulnerability is a buffer overflow, which is always big trouble, and it's in pretty much all Linux distributions, so it's more than bad enough. After all, its discoverers, the Qualys Threat Research Unit, were able to exploit "this vulnerability (a local privilege escalation that grants full root privileges) on the default installations of Fedora 37 and 38, Ubuntu 22.04 and 23.04, and Debian 12 and 13." Other distributions are almost certainly vulnerable to attack. The one major exception is the highly secure Alpine Linux. Thanks to this vulnerability, it's trivial to take over most Linux systems as a root user. As the researchers noted, this exploitation method "works against almost all of the SUID-root programs that are installed by default on Linux...." The good news is that Red Hat, Ubuntu, Debian, and Gentoo have all released their own updates. In addition, the upstream glibc code has been patched with the fix. If you can't patch it, Red Hat has a script that should work on most Linux systems to mitigate the problem by setting your system to terminate any setuid program invoked with GLIBC_TUNABLES in the environment.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Los Angeles Times technology columnist Brian Merchant has written a book about the 1811 Luddite rebellion against industrial technology, decrying "entrepreneurs and industrialists pushing for new, dubiously legal, highly automated and labor-saving modes of production." In a new piece he applauds the spirit of the Luddites. "The kind of visionaries we need now are those who see precisely how certain technologies are causing harm and who resist them when necessary."The parallels to the modern day are everywhere. In the 1800s, entrepreneurs used technology to justify imposing a new mode of work: the factory system. In the 2000s, CEOs used technology to justify imposing a new mode of work: algorithmically organized gig labor, in which pay is lower and protections scarce. In the 1800s, hosiers and factory owners used automation less to overtly replace workers than to deskill them and drive down their wages. Digital media bosses, call center operators and studio executives are using AI in much the same way. Then, as now, the titans used technology both as a new mode of production and as an idea that allowed them to ignore long-standing laws and regulations. In the 1800s, this might have been a factory boss arguing that his mill exempted him from a statute governing apprentice labor. Today, it's a ride-hailing app that claims to be a software company so it doesn't have to play by the rules of a cab firm. Then, as now, leaders dazzled by unregulated technologies ignored their potential downsides. Then, it might have been state-of-the-art water frames that could produce an incredible volume of yarn - but needed hundreds of vulnerable child laborers to operate. Today, it's a cellphone or a same-day delivery, made possible by thousands of human laborers toiling in often punishing conditions. Then, as now, workers and critics sounded the alarm... Resistance is gathering again, too. Amazon workers are joining union drives despite intense opposition. Actors and screenwriters are striking and artists and illustrators have called for a ban of generative AI in editorial outlets. Organizing, illegal in the Luddites' time, has historically proved the best bulwark against automation. But governments must also step up. They must offer robust protections and social services for those in precarious positions. They must enforce antitrust laws. Crucially, they must develop regulations to rein in the antidemocratic model of technological development wherein a handful of billionaires and venture capital firms determine the shape of the future - and who wins and loses in it. The clothworkers of the 1800s had the right idea: They believed everyone should share in the bounty of the amazing technologies their work makes possible. That's why I'm a Luddite - and why you should be one, too. So whatever happened to the Luddites? The article reminds readers that the factory system "took root," and "brought prosperity for some, but it created an immiserated working class. "The 200 years since have seen breathtaking technological innovation - but much less social innovation in how the benefits are shared."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The preconceived notions people have about AI - and what they're told before they use it - mold their experiences with these tools," writes Axios, "in ways researchers are beginning to unpack..."A strong placebo effect works to shape what people think of a particular AI tool, one study revealed. Participants who were about to interact with a mental health chatbot were told the bot was caring, was manipulative or was neither and had no motive. After using the chatbot, which is based on OpenAI's generative AI model GPT-3, most people primed to believe the AI was caring said it was. Participants who'd been told the AI had no motives said it didn't. But they were all interacting with the same chatbot. Only 24% of the participants who were told the AI was trying to manipulate them into buying its service said they perceived it as malicious... The intrigue: It wasn't just people's perceptions that were affected by their expectations. Analyzing the words in conversations people had with the chatbot, the researchers found those who were told the AI was caring had increasingly positive conversations with the chatbot, whereas the interaction with the AI became more negative with people who'd been told it was trying to manipulate them... The placebo effect will likely be a "big challenge in the future," says Thomas Kosch, who studies human-AI interaction at Humboldt University in Berlin. For example, someone might be more careless when they think an AI is helping them drive a car, he says. His own work also shows people take more risks when they think they are supported by an AI.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nearly 12% of America's population is in California. And the Los Angeles Times is predicting changes to what they eat:California became the first state in the nation to prohibit four food additives found in popular cereal, soda, candy and drinks after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a ban on them Saturday. The California Food Safety Act will ban the manufacture, sale or distribution of brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, propylparaben and red dye No. 3 - potentially affecting 12,000 products that use those substances, according to the Environmental Working Group. The legislation was popularly known as the "Skittles ban" because an earlier version also targeted titanium dioxide, used as a coloring agent in candies including Skittles, Starburst and Sour Patch Kids, according to the Environmental Working Group. But the measure, Assembly Bill 418, was amended in September to remove mention of the substance... Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel (D-Woodland Hills), who authored AB 418, hailed the move as a "huge step in our effort to protect children and families in California from dangerous and toxic chemicals in our food supply." Gabriel said the bill won't ban any foods or products but will require food companies to make "minor modifications" to their recipes and switch to safer alternative ingredients. The use of the chemicals has already been banned in the European Union's 27 nations as well as many other countries due to scientific research linking them to cancer, reproductive issues, and behavioral and developmental problems in children, Gabriel said. Many major brands and manufacturers - including Coke, Pepsi, Gatorade and Panera - have voluntarily stopped using the additives because of concerns about their affect on human health. Brominated vegetable oil was previously used in Mountain Dew, but Pepsi Co. has since stopped using it in the beverage. It is still used, however, in generic soda brands such as Walmart's Great Value-branded Mountain Lightning. Propylparaben and potassium bromate are commonly found in baked goods. Red dye no. 3 is used by Just Born Quality Confections to color pink and purple marshmallow Peeps candy, according to Consumer Reports. "What we're really trying to get them to do is to change their recipes," Gabriel told The Times in March. "All of these are nonessential ingredients...." "This is a milestone in food safety, and California is once again leading the nation," said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, which co-sponsored the bill along with Consumer Reports. The law could affect food across the country, Cook said, because the size of California's economy might prompt manufacturers to produce just one version of their product rather than separate ones for the state and the rest of the nation. A study by California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (cited in the bill) found that "consumption of synthetic food dyes can result in hyperactivity and other neurobehavioral problems in some children, and that children vary in their sensitivity to synthetic food dyes. The report also found that current federal levels for safe intake of synthetic food dyes may not sufficiently protect children's behavioral health." The reports adds that America's Food and Drug Administration had set levels for the additives" "decades ago," and that those levels "do not reflect newer research." The Los Angeles Times notes that the law won't take effect until January of 2027 - and that it imposes fines of "up to $10,000 for violations." The Times also points out that former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had endorsed the bill as "common sense".Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"OpenAI has unveiled the Beta version of its Python SDK," reports Analytics India Magazine, "marking a significant step towards enhancing access to the OpenAI API for Python developers."The OpenAI Python library offers a simplified way for Python-based applications to interact with the OpenAI API, while providing an opportunity for early testing and feedback before the official launch of version 1.0. It streamlines the integration process by providing pre-defined classes for API resources, dynamically initialising from API responses, ensuring compatibility across various OpenAI API versions... Developers can find comprehensive documentation and code examples in the OpenAI Cookbook for various tasks, including classification, clustering, code search, customising embeddings, question answering, recommendations, visualisation of embeddings, and more... This comes just weeks before OpenAI's first developer conference, OpenAI DevDay. More details in OpenAI's official announcement at PyPi.org.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: "42 states to go!" exclaimed Code.org to its 1+ million Twitter followers as it celebrated victorious efforts to pass legislation making North Carolina the 8th state to pass a high school computer science graduation requirement, bringing the tech-backed nonprofit a step closer to its goal of making CS a requirement for a HS diploma in all 50 states. But as states make good on pledges made to tech CEOs to make their schoolchildren CS savvy, Education Week cautions that K-12 CS has a big certified teacher shortage problem. From the article:When trying to ensure all students get access to the knowledge they need for college and careers, sometimes policy can get ahead of teacher capacity. Computer science is a case in point. As of 2022, every state in the nation has passed at least one law or policy intended to promote K-12 computer science education, and 53 percent of high schools offered basic computer science courses that year, according to the nonprofit advocacy group Code.org." "'There's big money behind making [course offerings] go up higher and faster,' thanks to federal and state grants as well as private foundations, said Paul Bruno, an assistant professor of education policy, organization, and leadership at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. "But then that raises the question, well, who are we getting to teach these courses...?" Bruno's work in states such as California and North Carolina suggests that few of those new computer science classes are staffed with teachers who are certified in that subject."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader mejustme writes: The NIST elliptic curves that power much of modern cryptography were generated in the late '90s by hashing seeds provided by the NSA. Rumor has it that they are in turn hashes of English sentences, but the person who picked them, Dr. Jerry Solinas, passed away in early 2023 leaving behind a cryptographic mystery." That's from the blog of Filippo Valsorda, who was in charge of cryptography and security on the Go team at Google until 2022, (and was on the Cryptography team at Cloudflare until 2017). But more importantly, he adds that "I'm announcing a $12,288 bounty for cracking these five hashes, tripled to $36,864 if the recipient chooses to donate it to a 501(c)(3) charity of their choice." There are hints to which phrase was used as the seed. Dr Jerry Solinas thinks he used something similar to "Jerry deserves a raise.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto may or may not be businessman Craig Wright, who in 2015 founded the blockchain-tech company nChain. But nChain's recently-departed CEO Christen Ager-Hanssen's thinks Wright is not Satoshi - and that's just the beginning. According to Forbes Ager-Hanssen went as far as "to leak emails suggesting former gambling billionaire Calvin Ayre, who has heavily backed the company doesn't believe Wright, nChain's chief scientist, is Satoshi Nakamoto. The alleged email from Ayre begins by citing Wright's "litigation disaster"...'I have been operating under the assumption that you and Ramona have the keys and that you were simply pretending not to have them as part of some strategy that you have trapped yourself in. But now that we are looking at a situation where continuing to deny you have them ruins your life and damages your supporters, I am forced to make a tough decision... There is zero reason to continue to pretend you do not have the keys if you really have them... So either you are a moron for intentionally losing this case, or you are a moron for actually not having the keys... either way, I am not following you over the cliff... But Ager-Hanssen also shared some thoughts of his own:I can confirm I have departed from nChain Global as its Group CEO with immediate effect after reporting several serious issues to the board of nChain Group including what I believe is a conspiracy to defraud nChain shareholders orchestrated by a significant shareholder. I also had concerns about the ultimate beneficiary shareholder and the real people behind DW Discovery fund registered in Cayman. The chairman also took instructions from shadow directors which I didn't accept. I have also reported that I have found compelling evidence that Dr Craig Wright has manipulated documents with the aim to deceive the court he is Satoshi. I'm today myself convinced that Dr Craig Wright is NOT Satoshi and I'm persuaded he will lose all his legal battles. The board didn't take action and my job becomes clearly untenable. One of the things I recommended the Chairman of the board was to sack Dr Craig Wright. I feel sorry for all the great people that work in the company but I don't want to be part of something I clearly don't believe in. #faketoshi Forbes also notes an X (Twitter) account calling itself "Satoshi Nakamoto" with the handle @Satoshi has posted for the first time since 2018 - though X's community notes feature added: "This isn't the real Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of bitcoin. Its an account related to Craig Wright, who claims to be Satoshi with no material proof." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader UnknowingFool for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It started when Linux blogger Bryan Lunduke complained about how the Linux Foundation was reducing the six-year long-term support (LTS) window for the Linux kernel to two years. Lunduke argued that the Foundation seemed more interested in funding compliance best practices - as well as artificial intelligence and blockchain projects. In an online discussion, Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman had this response:Did anyone think to actually ask the developer who is maintaining the long-term support kernel versions why he made that change (back in February?), i.e. me...? No, I guess that would take too much effort, and wouldn't result in such a click-bait headline. "LTS kernels are no longer supported for 6 years because it turns out no one used them." doesn't have that same fun sound...In a second comment Kroah-Hartman also clarified that in fact "The amount of resources and other stuff that the Linux Foundation provides to the Linux kernel community has increased over the years, including last year. " Just because new people are brought in with new projects (that the LF member companies want to host) does not mean that somehow less is being given to the kernel community at all. It is not a zero-sum game here at all, that's not how the LF works in any way. Again, this would have been easy to verify if someone just asked us. So to repeat, no "abandonment" is happening here at all, the opposite is happening, just like it has for the entirety of the Linux Foundation's existence, support has grown every year. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader whoever57 for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Python 3 was by far the choice over Python 2 in a late-2022 survey of more than 23,000 Python developers," reports InfoWorld, "but the percentage of respondents using Python 2 actually ticked up compared to the previous year."Results of the sixth annual Python Developers Survey, conducted by the Python Software Foundation and software tools maker JetBrains, were released September 27. The Python Developers Survey 2022 report indicates that 93% of respondents had adopted Python 3, while only 7% were still using Python 2.In the 2021 survey, though, 95% used Python 3 while 5% used Python 2. In 2020, Python 3 held a 94% to 6% edge. Dating back to 2017, 75% used Python 3 and 25% used Python 2... The 2022 report said 29% of respondents still use Python 2 for data analysis, 24% use Python 2 for computer graphics, and 23% used Python 2 for devops. The survey also found that 45% of respondents are still using Python 3.10, which arrived two years ago, while just 2% still use Python 3.5 or lower. (Python 3.11 was released October 24, 2022, right when the survey was being conducted.) Other findings from the survey:21% said they used Python for work only, while 51% said they used it for work and personal/educational use or side projects, and 21% said they used Python only for personal projects.85% of respondents said Python was their main language (rather than a secondary language).The survey also gives the the top "secondary languages" for the surveyed Python developers as JavaScript (37%), HTML/CSS (37%), SQL (35%), Bash/Shell (32%), and then C/C++ (27%).When asked what they used Python for most, 22% said "Web Development", 18% said "Data Analysis," 12% said "Machine Learning," and 10% said "DevOps/System Administration/Writing Automation Scripts."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes: Amidst a winter marked by scarce gas supplies, the German government has opted to retain its lignite coal power plants on standby for another season. Originally, Germany had planned a phased shutdown of coal plants in exchange for a portion of the government's 40 billion coal phase-out fund. However, last year, disruptions in Russian gas supplies post-Ukraine war prompted an emergency decision to keep coal plants operational. This measure is now extended for the upcoming winter, maintaining 1.9 GWs of lignite capacity alongside the existing 45 GW of coal power plants. The primary purpose of these lignite plants is to alleviate gas demand during peak times and stabilize prices. Despite the economic benefits, the move raises environmental concerns, given lignite's status as a major climate polluter. The government acknowledges this and plans to assess the additional carbon emissions resulting from keeping coal plants on standby, estimated to be between 2.5 and 5.6 tonnes of CO2. The German government emphasized the persistence of the goal to ideally complete the coal phase-out by 2030 and meet climate targets.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Black Parrot (Slashdot reader #19,622) pointed out a historic anniversary this week: On October 6, 1923, Edwin Hubble got a photo of Andromeda that showed that it contained a variable star, and therefore was an actual galaxy, ending the Great Debate over whether the universe consisted of anything beyond our own galaxy. Unless you're more than 100 years old you grew up with a completely different understanding of the universe than anyone who lived before. Even Einstein did not know about it when he proposed the theory of general relativity. It was later in the decade before Hubble discovered that the universe is expanding. A century later, the European Space Agency was announcing...A very rare, strange burst of extraordinarily bright light in the universe just got even stranger a" thanks to the eagle-eye of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The phenomenon, called a Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transient (LFBOT), flashed onto the scene where it wasna(TM)t expected to be found, far away from any host galaxy. Only Hubble could pinpoint its location. The Hubble results suggest astronomers know even less about these objects than previously thought by ruling out some possible theories. Bill Kendrick (Slashdot reader #19,287) writes: Edwin Hubble's discovery - thanks to a Cepheid Variable star - that the "Andromeda Nebula" was actually an entire galaxy 2.5 million light years away... NASA's Astronomy Photo of the Day for today celebrates this with an image of the original photo plate from October 6, 1923. Notice the "N" (for nova) crossed off, and "VAR!" (for variable) next to the star! The discovery of Cepheids, and the important fact that their brightening and dimming was regular, and could be used to determine a star's intrinsic brightness, was thanks to Henrietta Swan Leavitt about a decade earlier. David Butler's "How Far Away Is It?" series has an excellent episode on Andromeda on YouTube.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader alaskana writes: In late 2022 it was revealed that early samples of what was to be the "Pentium 5" processor, codenamed Tejas and Jayhawk were in development and made it as far as being released to board partners for evaluation. A few of these samples made it (of course) onto Ebay and then - not surprisingly - into the hands of a YouTuber. To be fair, tech site Anandtech arguably got the first scoop on this P4 successor way back in 2004, but that story seemingly never gained much traction at that time. They wrote that Intel Prescott CPUs "could hit 5GHz+ but had huge power and temperature numbers, but Tejas was expected to clock higher than Prescott - with Intel chasing the huge 10GHz CPU clocks within 10 years between 2000 and 2011 - but it ended up not happening at all." In what was supposed to be a continuation of the "GHz is king" days of the early aughts, the Pentium 5 was in spirit a continuation of the "faster-is-better" philosophy of the P4 architecture, efficiency be damned. Speeds in excess of 7 GHz(!), and a pipeline upwards of 50 stages were rumored to be targeted by Intel, but reality (and physics) reared their ugly heads as always. WCCF Tech transcribed the remarks of Intel engineer Steve Fischer, who was involved with the project. "The thing had a pipeline depth of around 50 stages and an expected clock target at one point north of 7 GHz. I call the thing "the Death Star of processors" and half-jokingly reasoned that consumer acceptance of liquid-cooled chassis would not be a big deal." Intel kicked off Project Tejas in 2003, expected in 2004 and later pushed into 2005 after issues forced Intel to redesign the chip. Before the company could do that, the Tejas Project was shelved on May 7, 2004. In the end efficiency and parallelization was to be the rule of future CPU development, but the fact that Intel had (at least briefly) had planned on taking the P4 paradigm just a wee bit further with a true Pentium 5 is a fascinating look into the past of a future that never was to be for the venerable Pentium line.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader sharedthis report from the Associated Press:A man accused of shooting down a law enforcement drone being used at a business near his Florida home could be sentenced to 10 years in federal prison... Lake County sheriff's deputies responded to a burglary at a 10-acre industrial property in July 2021 in Mount Dora, northwest of Orlando, according to a plea agreement. As deputies used a $29,000 drone in the outdoor search, gunfire from a neighboring residential property caused it to crash into a metal roof and catch fire, prosecutors said. Deputies went to the property and found Goney, who said he shot down the drone with a .22-caliber rifle because it had been "harassing" him, investigators said. The man had 29 previous felony convictions - and federal law prohibits most convicted felons from possessing firearms and ammunition...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Gizmodo:Zoom is setting out to compete with Google and Microsoft by introducing Zoom Docs at its annual Zoomtopia 2023 event on Tuesday. Zoom Docs is the company's own version of an AI-powered workspace that will provide users with AI capabilities to draft, edit, summarize, and include information from meeting discussions. The company said in a press release that its new feature will be integrated into the meetings feature, and says it will make it "easy for teams and individuals to create, collaborate, manage projects, and stay organized." It will also reportedly include the option to include tables, charts, and images in the Zoom Doc function, according to the press release... Zoom's press release calls it "a next-gen way of collaborating, built from the ground up with AI at its core," with "traditional document capabilities, as well as wikis and drag-and-drop content blocks for tables, charts, and images"Zoom Docs users can also leverage its AI-powered functionality to populate docs with content from Zoom Meetings to inform and jumpstart creation, generate content with Zoom AI Companion, summarize content quickly, easily search documents, and more. Zoom Docs is scheduled to be generally available in 2024. Gizmodo notes that in March Microsoft added ChatGPT to its Suite 365 business software, and Google announced it was adding generative AI to Google Docs and Google Excel.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Since 2004 October has been designated "Cybersecurity Awareness Month" in America, "a collaborative effort between government and industry to enhance cybersecurity awareness, encourage actions by the public to reduce online risk and generate discussion on cyber threats on a national and global scale." That's according to America's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (or CISA), the operational lead for federal cybersecurity and national coordinator for critical infrastructure security and resilience (specifically designed for collaboration and partnership). It's why the NSA is publicizing the ten most common cybersecurity misconfigurations in large organizations. But in addition, for consumers CISA is introducing a new program this year that "promotes behavioral change across the Nation, with a particular focus on how individuals, families and small to medium-sized businesses can Secure Our World by focusing on the four critical actions..." In a video the director of America's cyberdefense agency calls them steps "that everyone can take to stay safe online."Use Strong Passwords, "meaning long, random, and unique to each account. And use a password manager to generate and to save them."Turn on Multi-Factor Authentication on All Accounts That Offer It. "You need more than a password on your most important accounts, like email, social media, and financial accounts."Recognize and Report Phishing. "Be cautious of unsolicited emails, texts, or calls asking you for personal information, and don't click on links or open attachments from unknown sources. Update Your Software. "In fact, enable automatic updates on your software, so the latest security patches just keep your devices continuously up-to-date."The video ends by noting CISA is asking tech companies and software developers to create products that are "secure by design." "And let's secure our families by ensuring that our loved ones know what to look for and how to stay safe online."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader TranquilVoid writes: To better understand the battles between native and invasive ants, scientists at Australia's national science agency have turned to Microsoft's classic computer game to model ant warfare. Across Australia, 50 different species of invasive ants have established themselves, including electric ants, fire ants and yellow crazy ants, with hundreds of millions of dollars spent attempting to eradicate them. "Ants are one of the few groups of animal species in which warfare resembles human warfare, in terms of scale and mortality," researcher Samuel Lymbery said. The research found small armies of strong soldiers did better in complex terrain-based battlefields and large armies of weaker soldiers fared better in simple open battlefields. In the ant world, a simple battlefield would be a footpath or park while a complex battlefield would be bushland with undergrowth and woody debris. Dr Lymbery said his work could help develop new approaches to habitat management, like adding undergrowth or more environmental complexity back into urbanised environments, to tip the competitive balance back in favour of native ants.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An announcement from MIT News:One promising approach to treating Type 1 diabetes is implanting pancreatic islet cells that can produce insulin when needed, which can free patients from giving themselves frequent insulin injections. However, one major obstacle to this approach is that once the cells are implanted, they eventually run out of oxygen and stop producing insulin. To overcome that hurdle, MIT engineers have designed a new implantable device that not only carries hundreds of thousands of insulin-producing islet cells, but also has its own on-board oxygen factory, which generates oxygen by splitting water vapor found in the body. The researchers showed that when implanted into diabetic mice, this device could keep the mice's blood glucose levels stable for at least a month. The researchers now hope to create a larger version of the device, about the size of a stick of chewing gum, that could eventually be tested in people with Type 1 diabetes. "You can think of this as a living medical device that is made from human cells that secrete insulin, along with an electronic life support-system," says Daniel Anderson, a professor in MIT's Department of Chemical Engineering, a member of MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, and the senior author of the study. While the researchers' main focus is on diabetes treatment, they say that this kind of device could also be adapted to treat other diseases that require repeated delivery of therapeutic proteins. Thanks to Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Reuters:In a new front in the U.S.-China tech war, President Joe Biden's administration is facing pressure from some lawmakers to restrict American companies from working on a freely available chip technology widely used in China - a move that could upend how the global technology industry collaborates across borders... RISC-V can be used as a key ingredient for anything from a smartphone chip to advanced processors for artificial intelligence... The lawmakers expressed concerns that Beijing is exploiting a culture of open collaboration among American companies to advance its own semiconductor industry, which could erode the current U.S. lead in the chip field and help China modernize its military. Their comments represent the first major effort to put constraints on work by U.S. companies on RISC-V... Executives from China's Huawei Technologies have embraced RISC-V as a pillar of that nation's progress in developing its own chips. But the United States and its allies also have jumped on the technology, with chip giant Qualcomm working with a group of European automotive firms on RISC-V chips and Alphabet's Google saying it will make Android, the world's most popular mobile operating system, work on RISC-V chips... Jack Kang, vice president of business development at SiFive, a Santa Clara, California-based startup using RISC-V, said potential U.S. government restrictions on American companies regarding RISC-V would be a "tremendous tragedy." "It would be like banning us from working on the internet," Kang said. "It would be a huge mistake in terms of technology, leadership, innovation and companies and jobs that are being created." One U.S. Representative said the Chinese Communist Party was "abusing RISC-V to get around U.S. dominance of the intellectual property needed to design chips. "U.S. persons should not be supporting a PRC tech transfer strategy that serves to degrade U.S. export control laws."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In downtown San Francisco two vehicles were stopped at a red light on Monday night, reports the Washington Post - a regular car and a Cruise robotaxi.Both vehicles advanced when the light turned green, according to witness accounts and video recorded by the Cruise vehicle's internal cameras and reviewed by The Post. As the cars moved forward, the pedestrian entered the traffic lanes in front of them, according to the video, and was struck by the regular car. The video shows the victim rolling onto that vehicle's windshield and then being flung into the path of the driverless car, which stopped once it collided with the woman. According to Cruise spokesperson Hannah Lindow, the autonomous vehicle "braked aggressively to minimize the impact" but was unable to stop before rolling over the woman and coming to a halt. Photos published by the San Francisco Chronicle show the woman's leg sticking out from underneath the car's left rear wheel. "According to Cruise, police had directed the company to keep the vehicle stationary, apparently with the pedestrian stuck beneath it," reports the San Francisco Chronicle. Also from the San Francisco Chronicle:Austin Tutone, a bicycle delivery person, saw the woman trapped underneath the Cruise car and tried to reassure her as they waited for first-responders. "I told her, 'The ambulance is coming' and that she'd be okay. She was just screaming." He shared a photo of the aftermath with The Chronicle that appears to show the car tire on the woman's leg. San Francisco firefighters arrived and used the jaws of life to lift the car off the woman. She was transported to San Francisco General Hospital with "multiple traumatic injuries," said SFFD Capt. Justin Schorr. The victim was in critical condition as of late Tuesday afternoon, according to the hospital. It appears that once the Cruise car sensed something underneath its rear axle, it came to a halt and turned on its hazard lights, Schorr said. Firefighters obstructed the sensors of the driverless car to alert the Cruise control center. He said representatives from Cruise responded to firefighters and "immediately disabled the car remotely."More from the San Francisco Chronicle:"When it comes to someone pinned beneath a vehicle, the most effective way to unpin them is to lift the vehicle," Sgt. Kathryn Winters, a spokesperson for the department, said in an interview. Were a driver to move a vehicle with a person lying there, "you run the risk of causing more injury." Once the person is freed, the car must stay in place as police gather evidence including "the location of the vehicle and/or vehicles before, during and after the collision," said Officer Eve Laokwansathitaya, another spokesperson. The human driver who struck the pedestrian immediately fled the scene, and has not yet been identified.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from SecurityWeek: Tens of thousands of Android devices have been shipped to end-users with backdoored firmware, according to a warning from cybersecurity vendor Human Security. As part of the global cybercriminal operation called BadBox (PDF), Human Security found a threat actor relied on supply chain compromise to infect the firmware of more than 70,000 Android smartphones, CTV boxes, and tablet devices with the Triada malware. The infected devices come from at least one Chinese manufacturer but, before they are delivered to resellers, physical retail stores, and e-commerce warehouses, a backdoor was injected into their firmware. "Products known to contain the backdoor have been found on public school networks throughout the United States," Human says. Discovered in 2016, Triada is a modular trojan residing in a device's RAM, relying on the Zygote process to hook all applications on Android, actively using root privileges to substitute system files. Over time, the malware went through various iterations and was found pre-installed on low-cost Android devices on at least two occasions. As part of the BadBox operation that Human Security discovered, the infected low-cost Android devices allow threat actors to carry out various ad-fraud schemes, including one named PeachPit, which at its peak relied on 121,000 Android and 159,000 iOS devices infected with malware, and on 39 Android, iOS, and CTV-centric apps designed to connect to a fake supply-side platform (SSP). One of the modules delivered to the infected devices from the command-and-control (C&C) server allows the creation of WebViews that are fully hidden from the user, but which "are used to request, render, and click on ads, spoofing the ad requests to look like they're coming from certain apps, referred by certain websites, and rendered" on specific devices. BadBox, Human Security notes, also includes a residential proxy module that allows the threat actors to sell access to the victim's network. Furthermore, they can create WhatsApp messaging accounts and Gmail accounts they can then use for other malicious activities. "Finally, because of the backdoor's connection to C2 servers on BadBox-infected smartphones, tablets, and CTV boxes, new apps or code can be remotely installed by the threat actors without the device owner's permission. The threat actors behind BadBox could develop entirely new schemes and deploy them on BadBox-infected devices without any interaction from the devices' owners," Human notes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scientists using the H.E.S.S. observatory in Namibia have detected the highest energy gamma rays ever from a dead star called a pulsar. Phys.Org reports: The energy of these gamma rays clocked in at 20 tera-electronvolts, or about 10 trillion times the energy of visible light. This observation is hard to reconcile with the theory of the production of such pulsed gamma rays, as the international team reports in the journal Nature Astronomy. [...] The Vela pulsar, located in the Southern sky in the constellation Vela (sail of the ship), is the brightest pulsar in the radio band of the electromagnetic spectrum and the brightest persistent source of cosmic gamma rays in the giga-electronvolts (GeV) range. It rotates about eleven times per second. However, above a few GeV, its radiation ends abruptly, presumably because the electrons reach the end of the pulsar's magnetosphere and escape from it. But this is not the end of the story: using deep observations with H.E.S.S., a new radiation component at even higher energies has now been discovered, with energies of up to tens of tera-electronvolts (TeV). "That is about 200 times more energetic than all radiation ever detected before from this object," says co-author Christo Venter from the North-West University in South Africa. This very high-energy component appears at the same phase intervals as the one observed in the GeV range. However, to attain these energies, the electrons might have to travel even farther than the magnetosphere, yet the rotational emission pattern needs to remain intact. "This result challenges our previous knowledge of pulsars and requires a rethinking of how these natural accelerators work," says Arache Djannati-Atai from the Astroparticle & Cosmology (APC) laboratory in France, who led the research. "The traditional scheme according to which particles are accelerated along magnetic field lines within or slightly outside the magnetosphere cannot sufficiently explain our observations. Perhaps we are witnessing the acceleration of particles through the so-called magnetic reconnection process beyond the light cylinder, which still somehow preserves the rotational pattern? But even this scenario faces difficulties to explain how such extreme radiation is produced." Whatever the explanation, next to its other superlatives, the Vela pulsar now officially holds the record as the pulsar with the highest-energy gamma rays discovered to date. "This discovery opens a new observation window for detection of other pulsars in the tens of teraelectronvolt range with current and upcoming more sensitive gamma-ray telescopes, hence paving the way for a better understanding of the extreme acceleration processes in highly magnetized astrophysical objects," says Djannati-Atai.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to the European Space Agency (ESA), the ozone hole above Antarctica reached approximately 10 million square miles in area on Sept. 16, 2023 -- making it one of the largest seasonal holes ever observed. Space.com reports: One possible reason for the higher-than-normal growth is the Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption in January 2022, which introduced massive quantities of water vapor into the air. "The water vapor could have led to the heightened formation of polar stratospheric clouds, where chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) can react and accelerate ozone depletion," said Inness. Yet despite experiencing large seasonal growth this year, the ozone hole is still decreasing in size overall. "Based on the Montreal Protocol and the decrease of anthropogenic ozone-depleting substances, scientists currently predict that the global ozone layer will reach its normal state again by around 2050," said Claus Zehner, ESA's mission manager for Copernicus Sentinel-5P.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Conversation: Recently, several mammals have been reported to "glow" under ultraviolet (UV) light, including our beloved platypus. But no one knew how common it was among mammals until now. Our research, published in Royal Society Open Science today, found this glow -- known as fluorescence -- is extremely common. Almost every mammal we studied showed some form of fluorescence. [...] We started with the platypus to see if we could replicate the previously reported fluorescence. We photographed preserved and frozen platypus specimens under UV light and observed a fluorescent (although rather faint) glow. [...] We repeated this process for other mammals and found clear evidence of fluorescence in the white fur, spines and even skin and nails of koalas, Tasmanian devils, short-beaked echidnas, southern hairy-nosed wombats, quendas (bandicoots), greater bilbies and even cats. Both fresh-frozen and chemically treated museum specimens were fluorescent. This meant it wasn't preservation chemicals such as borax or arsenic causing the fluorescence. So, we concluded this was a real biological phenomenon. Using specimens from the Western Australian Museum's collection, we took the experiment to the next stage. We recorded every species of mammal that was fluorescent when we exposed the specimens to UV light. As a result, we found 125 fluorescent species of mammal, representing all known orders. Fluorescence is clearly common and widely distributed among mammals. In particular, we noticed that white and light-colored fur is fluorescent, with dark pigmentation preventing fluorescence. For example, a zebra's white stripes fluoresced while the dark stripes didn't. We then used our dataset to test if fluorescence might be more common in nocturnal species. To do this, we correlated the total area of fluorescence with ecological traits such as nocturnality, diet and locomotion. Nocturnal mammals were indeed more fluorescent, while aquatic species were less fluorescent than those that burrowed, lived in trees, or on land. Based on our results, we think fluorescence is very common in mammals. In fact, it is likely the default status of hair unless it is heavily pigmented. This doesn't mean fluorescence has a biological function -- it may just be an artifact of the structural properties of unpigmented hair. However, we suggest florescence may be important for brightening pale-colored parts of animals that are used as visual signals. This could improve their visibility, especially in poor light -- just like the fluorescent optical brighteners that are added to white paper and clothing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tom Perkins writes via The Guardian: Almost half of a federal government panel that helps develop US nutritional guidelines has significant ties to big agriculture, ultra-processed food companies, pharmaceutical companies and other corporate organizations with a significant stake in the process's outcome. The revelation is part of a new report from US Right to Know, a government transparency group that looked for ties to corporate interests among the 20-member panel of food and nutrition experts that makes recommendations for updating the US government's official dietary guidelines. It found nine members had ties to Nestle, Pfizer, Coca-Cola, the National Egg Board and other prominent food lobby groups, among others. The findings raise questions about whether the panel is looking out for Americans' health or corporate profits, and "erodes confidence in dietary guidelines," said Gary Ruskin of US Right to Know. "Millions of Americans' lives are affected by this report and it's crucial that the report tell the truth to American people and it's not degraded into another sales pitch for big food and big pharma," he said. [...] "The guidelines affect the entire US food system quite strongly," Ruskin said. US Right to Know scoured public records dating back five years for conflicts of interest among the 20 panel members. In addition to the nine it found with "high-risk conflicts of interest" and connections to the food and drug industry, it found four more members who have possible conflicts of interest. It applauded the agencies for appointing seven members who did not appear to have any conflicts. At least four panelists have connections to at least two companies each among Abbott, Novo Nordisk, the National Dairy Council, Eli Lilly and Weight Watchers International. One panel member has received about $240,000 in grant funding from Eli Lilly.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Simon Sharwood writes via The Register: The Chinese manufacturer that took over IBM's PC business announced on Thursday that it's teamed with an outfit named Esper that specializes in custom cuts of Android, plus device management offerings. Android is most commonly used in handheld devices. Lenovo's taking it in an entirely different direction by making the ThinkCentre M70a: a desktop all-in-one. The first fruit of the collaboration with Esper, the ThinkCentre M70a boasts a 21 -- inch touch screen and offers a choice of 12th-gen Intel core CPUs from the Core i3 to the almost workstation-grade Core i9, at prices from $889 to beyond $1250. What could you do with Android on a Corei9, plus the maximum 16GB DDR4 3200MHz and 512GB PCIe SSD Lenovo's machines allow? Almost anything -- but Lenovo thinks its Android effort will first be appreciated by customers in the retail, hospitality, and healthcare industries. Esper pitches its wares as ideal for point-of-sale systems, kiosks, and digital signage -- environments where users don't need to access diverse apps but do need a machine that reliably boots into custom environments. Lenovo's not just doing desktop PCs. The number one PC maker by market share has promised it will also ship Esper's wares on the small form factor ThinkCentre M70q -- a machine designed to be bolted to the back of monitors. The ThinkEdge SE30 -- a ruggedized and fanless edge client -- will also have an Android option. So will the ThinkCentre M90n-1 IoT [PDF] -- another rugged client for edge applications.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jonathan Greig writes via The Record: Genetic testing giant 23andMe confirmed that a data scraping incident resulted in hackers gaining access to sensitive user information and selling it on the dark web. The information of nearly 7 million 23andMe users was offered for sale on a cybercriminal forum this week. The information included origin estimation, phenotype, health information, photos, identification data and more. 23andMe processes saliva samples submitted by customers to determine their ancestry. When asked about the post, the company initially denied that the information was legitimate, calling it a "misleading claim" in a statement to Recorded Future News. The company later said it was aware that certain 23andMe customer profile information was compiled through unauthorized access to individual accounts that were signed up for the DNA Relative feature -- which allows users to opt in for the company to show them potential matches for relatives. [...] When pressed on how compromising a handful of user accounts would give someone access to millions of users, the spokesperson said the company does not believe the threat actor had access to all of the accounts but rather gained unauthorized entry to a much smaller number of 23andMe accounts and scraped data from their DNA Relative matches. A researcher approached Recorded Future News after examining the leaked database and found that much of it looked real. [...] The researcher downloaded two files from the BreachForums post and found that one had information on 1 million 23andMe users of Ashkenazi heritage. The other file included data on more than 300,000 users of Chinese heritage. The data included profile and account ID numbers, names, gender, birth year, maternal and paternal genetic markers, ancestral heritage results, and data on whether or not each user has opted into 23andme's health data. The researcher added that he discovered another issue where someone could enter a 23andme profile ID, like the ones included in the leaked data set, into their URL and see someone's profile. The data available through this only includes profile photos, names, birth years and location but does not include test results.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A man who admitted attempting to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II with a crossbow after discussing his plan with an AI-powered chatbot has been sentenced to 9 years in prison for treason. It's the UK's first treason conviction in more than 40 years. Jaswant Singh Chail, who was 19 at the time of his arrest on Christmas Day, 2021, scaled the walls of Windsor Castle's grounds with a mask and a loaded high-power crossbow. He said his intent was, as a British Sikh, to assassinate the Queen in a Star Wars-inspired plan to avenge the 1919 Jallianwalla Bagh massacre, a colonial-era atrocity during British rule in India. Prosecutors said that Chail was encouraged to undertake this plot after discussing it at length with an AI-powered chatbot that egged him on and bolstered his resolve. [...] Chail is currently being held at Broadmoor high-security hospital and will remain there until he is psychologically well enough to serve his sentence.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kylie Robison writes via Fortune: Beginning on Monday, Slack employees will be expected to set aside their regular work duties and to instead plug away at various modules on Salesforce's Trailhead online learning platform, Fortune has learned. The goal is for Slack's employees to reach Trailhead's Ranger level, a feat that requires roughly 40 hours on the learning platform, whose modules include topics like "Learn about the Fourth Industrial Revolution" and "Healthy Eating." A large percent of Slack's roughly 3,000 staff have neglected to hit the target, according to sources inside the company. And since Salesforce provides Trailhead to other businesses as a way to "upskill" employees, some speculate that the slackers at Slack make for bad optics. In a message to employees in mid-September, Slack CEO Lidiane Jones wrote that the one week shutdown, dubbed "Ranger Week," is intended to give everyone "dedicated time to make a lot of progress towards the goal." Jones wrote in her message that the product development engineering (PDE), customer experience (CE), Biz Ops, and communication departments are expected to participate in Ranger Week. "It's important that we all reach Ranger status this year, and I want to ensure that everyone has focus time to upskill on Trailhead," Jones wrote in the message to staff. "I know this will disrupt and slow V2MOM progress for many of us -- we are making this a priority now so we can quickly get back to work on our roadmaps," she said, referring to the company's annual forward-looking strategy planning document which stands for vision, values, methods, obstacles, and measures. [...] "We really are canceling all meetings next week to facilitate this heads-down time, even 1:1s," Slack's chief of staff to the CTO wrote to employees on Wednesday. "We don't know yet what will happen to people who haven't hit Ranger by Jan. 31. At a minimum, it will make Slack look bad compared to the other clouds. Please do use the time next week to make as much progress as you can!" [...] Still, the work stoppage is somewhat porous. Slack's CTO noted that "deploys, on-call rotations, and interviews" will still happen as normal, and while no executive has used the word "mandatory," it's considered strongly encouraged. According to Insider, some workers at Slack are "gaming" the platform to speed through the sessions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The National Security Agency (NSA), in partnership with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), have highlighted the ten most common cybersecurity misconfigurations in large organizations. In their join cybersecurity advisory (CSA), they also detail the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) actors use to exploit these misconfigurations. From the report: Through NSA and CISA Red and Blue team assessments, as well as through the activities of NSA and CISA Hunt and Incident Response teams, the agencies identified the following 10 most common network misconfigurations: 1. Default configurations of software and applications2. Improper separation of user/administrator privilege3. Insufficient internal network monitoring4. Lack of network segmentation5. Poor patch management6. Bypass of system access controls7. Weak or misconfigured multifactor authentication (MFA) methods8. Insufficient access control lists (ACLs) on network shares and services9. Poor credential hygiene10. Unrestricted code execution NSA and CISA encourage network defenders to implement the recommendations found within the Mitigations section of this advisory -- including the following -- to reduce the risk of malicious actors exploiting the identified misconfigurations: Remove default credentials and harden configurations; Disable unused services and implement access controls; Update regularly and automate patching, prioritizing patching of known exploited vulnerabilities; and Reduce, restrict, audit, and monitor administrative accounts and privileges. NSA and CISA urge software manufacturers to take ownership of improving security outcomes of their customers by embracing secure-by-design and-default tactics, including: Embedding security controls into product architecture from the start of development and throughout the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC); Eliminating default passwords; Providing high-quality audit logs to customers at no extra charge; and Mandating MFA, ideally phishing-resistant, for privileged users and making MFA a default rather than opt-in feature. A PDF version of the report can be downloaded here (PDF).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Getty Images CEO Craig Peters told the Verge that he has found a solution to one of AI's biggest copyright problems: creators suing because AI models were trained on their original works without consent or compensation. To prove it's possible for AI makers to respect artists' copyrights, Getty built an AI tool using only licensed data that's designed to reward creators more and more as the tool becomes more popular over time. "I think a world that doesn't reward investment in intellectual property is a pretty sad world," Peters told The Verge. The conversation happened at Vox Media's Code Conference 2023, with Peters explaining why Getty Images -- which manages "the world's largest privately held visual archive" -- has a unique perspective on this divisive issue. In February, Getty Images sued Stability AI over copyright concerns regarding the AI company's image generator, Stable Diffusion. Getty alleged that Stable Diffusion was trained on 12 million Getty images and even imitated Getty's watermark -- controversially seeming to add a layer of Getty's authenticity to fake AI images. Now, Getty has rolled out its own AI image generator that has been trained in ways that are unlike most of the popular image generators out there. Peters told The Verge that because of Getty's ongoing mission to capture the world's most iconic images, "Generative AI by Getty Images" was intentionally designed to avoid major copyright concerns swirling around AI images -- and compensate Getty creators fairly. Rather than crawling the web for data to feed its AI model, Getty's tool is trained exclusively on images that Getty owns the rights to, Peters said. The tool was created out of rising demand from Getty Images customers who want access to AI generators that don't carry copyright risks. [...] With that as the goal, Peters told Code Conference attendees that the tool is "entirely commercially safe" and "cannot produce third-party intellectual property" or deepfakes because the AI model would have no references from which to produce such risky content. Getty's AI tool "doesn't know what the Pope is," Peters told The Verge. "It doesn't know what [Balenciaga] is, and it can't produce a merging of the two." Peters also said that if there are any lawsuits over AI images generated by Getty, then Getty will cover any legal costs for customers. "We actually put our indemnification around that so that if there are any issues, which we're confident there won't be, we'll stand behind that," Peters said. When asked how Getty creators will be paid for AI training data, Peters said that there currently isn't a tool for Getty to assess which artist deserves credit every time an AI image is generated. "Instead, Getty will rely on a fixed model that Peters said determines 'what proportion of the training set does your content represent? And then, how has that content performed in our licensing world over time? It's kind of a proxy for quality and quantity. So, it's kind of a blend of the two,'" reports Ars. "Importantly, Peters suggested that Getty isn't married to using this rewards system and would adapt its methods for rewarding creators by continually monitoring how customers are using the AI tool."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Atari just announced preorders for a physical cartridge for the company's once-ubiquitous 2600 console. From a report: A gaming console that counts 1982 as its most successful year is releasing another new cartridge in the year 2023. The game-in-question is called Save Mary and was actually developed during the console's golden years, before being shelved when the 2600 went the way of the dodo. Save Mary was in development for two whole years, which is a lifetime in the generation of gaming that preceded the NES. The normal timeframe to produce a game back then was six to nine months, with some notorious titles taking just five or six weeks. Save Mary was originally developed by veteran Atari staffer Tod Frye, the guy behind the 2600 version of Pac-Man and the Swordquest series.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lawmakers in the United States last year passed bipartisan legislation intended to maintain US competitiveness with countries such as China by boosting funding for science and innovation. But concerns are mounting that the US Congress will fail to deliver on its promises. From a report: The money allotted to a handful of major US science agencies that had been targeted for a budget boost is likely to fall short of the legislation's goals by more than US$7 billion in 2024, according to a report. And overall funding for those agencies will continue to hover at a 25-year low. "We're leaving scientific opportunities on the table," says Matt Hourihan, who led the analysis for the Federation of American Scientists, an advocacy group based in Washington DC. "If we drop this ball, others will be happy to pick it up." It was precisely this fear that drove members of Congress to come together to pass the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022. The legislation promised one of the largest increases in US science funding in a long time, totalling some $280 billion over five years. Much of the spending mandated by the bill was focused on semiconductor research and manufacturing -- areas in which other countries, particularly China, have dominated. Lawmakers also authorized investments in other science and innovation programmes, but these were not mandated, and need to be approved by Congress during an appropriations process each year. That process has become increasingly contentious as political polarization in the United States has risen over the past few decades. Disputes about overall spending levels and funding for various social programmes have led to repeated delays in crafting the annual budget, at times forcing the government to shut down. This year is a prime example: Republicans, who control the US House of Representatives, blocked legislation that would have allowed the government to increase the federal debt limit and pay its bills, until they were able to secure an agreement with the Democrats in May to limit spending. And last month, a handful of extreme right-wing Republicans sought to close the government down as they pushed for further spending cuts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon has launched its first two satellites for its Project Kuiper, the tech giant's initiative to build a massive constellation of satellites that can provide internet coverage to Earth. From a report: An Atlas V rocket, operated by United Launch Alliance, lofted the pair of satellites en route to orbit from Florida at 2:06 p.m. local time Friday. The mission is still ongoing, and it's unclear when the satellites will be deployed from the rocket. Project Kuiper's goal is to eventually put 3,326 satellites into low Earth orbit, where they will beam broadband internet service to the ground below, similar to Elon Musk's SpaceX Starlink. The two launched Friday, KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2, are test satellites that will allow Amazon to demonstrate the ability to send and receive broadband signals. This mission has been long delayed. Amazon originally hoped to launch these satellites a year ago on a different, experimental rocket. However, the company wound up switching the launch vehicle for these satellites multiple times, eventually landing on ULA's workhorse Atlas V rocket, in order to get the satellites into space more quickly.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

PayPal has been hit with a class action lawsuit by consumers represented by law firm Hagens Berman alleging that the fintech giant's anti-steering rules stifle competition against lower-cost payment platforms such as Stripe and Shopify. From a report: Specifically, according to an investigation conducted by the firm's consumer rights attorneys, PayPal has subjected consumers to excess charges when purchasing from online merchants that accept PayPal or Venmo. The suit states that PayPal's merchant agreements, which all merchants must sign to accept payments via its platform, leads to consumers paying more to make purchases. The attorneys charge that "if PayPal's agreements were transparent, consumers would quickly see a price difference between PayPal and Venmo and its competitors." Specifically, per PayPal's anti-steering rules, if a retailer accepts PayPal or Venmo payments, they agree not to offer any discounts or inducements to persuade consumers to use other payment options that have a lower cost. These discounts are treated as a "surcharge" on PayPal transactions and prohibited by PayPal's anti-steering rules. Merchants also cannot tell customers that other payment methods are more cost-effective or preferred, according to the complaint, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Merchants are also not allowed to present other forms of payment earlier in the checkout process.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has launched a new web version of its app store for Windows. From a report: It's designed as a replacement for the existing way to find Windows apps on the web, with links from the site opening in the Microsoft Store client on Windows 10 or Windows 11. The software giant has ditched its old React codebase from its previous web version of the Microsoft Store and replaced it with a modern web version that uses Shoelace, Lit, Vite, and a C# ASPNET backend. "The old site was a React codebase built on an obsoleted UI framework," explains Microsoft engineer Judah Gabriel in a post on X (formerly Twitter). "We created a fresh user experience with a thoughtfully designed interface, easier ways to discover new apps, modern web tech stack. I hope folks will find it useful."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Climate activists are calling out Shell for partnering with popular video gamers and online youth influencers to promote fossil fuels to a younger generation. From a report: The oil giant, which in July reported quarterly profits of more than $5bn, worked with Fortnite creators and paid popular gamers on multiple platforms to showcase its "ultimate road trips" promotion, part of a marketing campaign for a new gasoline it calls V-Power Nitro+. According to the group Media Matters for America, the company is targeting young players on Twitch, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, encouraging them to fill up virtual vehicles at interactive Shell gas stations and post screenshots of the game with a #Shellroadtrips hashtag. Research by the non-profit group revealed Shell sponsored livestreams of gameplay on Twitch by at least six streamers with a combined 5.5m followers. It also identified three more content creators on other platforms who were paid to promote the campaign in their videos. Those influencers, Media Matters said, have a combined 1.5 million Instagram followers, 8.5 million on TikTok and 11.6 million on YouTube.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Treasury Department released new guidance Friday outlining how car dealers can give customers instant access to the electric vehicle rebate starting in January 2024. It's the latest move by the Biden administration to bring down the cost of EVs in the hopes that more people will buy them. From a report: The new guidance lays out how dealers can effectively reduce the price of an EV by as much as $7,500 at the point of purchase rather than the customer having to wait until they file their taxes to claim the credit. The administration hopes that by applying the credit immediately, more people will be convinced to consider an EV for their next purchase, which will help toward achieving the goal of making EVs 50 percent of new car sales by 2030.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

South Korea's telecommunications regulator said on Friday that Alphabet's Google and Apple have abused their dominant app market position and warned of possible fines totalling up to $50.5 million. From a report: The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) said in a statement that the two tech giants forced app developers into specific payment methods and caused unfair delay in app review. The KCC is notifying the companies for corrective action, and will deliberate on the fines, the statement said. "What KCC has shared today is the pre-notice and we will carefully review and submit our response. Once the final written decision is shared with us we will carefully review to evaluate the next course of action," Google said in a statement to Reuters. Apple also issued a statement, saying: "We disagree with the conclusions made by the KCC in their Examiner's Report, and believe the changes we have implemented to the App Store comply with the Telecommunications Business Act. As we have always done, we will continue to engage with the KCC to share our views."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Japan's latest DIY project is for people who can't get keyboards off their heads. From a report: Google isn't making this product. Instead, the Gboard CAPS project is another of Google Japan's joke keyboard ideas, like the 5.25-foot-long, single-row Gboard Stick Version keyboard shown off last year, used to promote Google's Gboard app. However, Google Japan seemingly prototyped the keyboard in real life. Everything you need to make this typing topper, including the firmware and hardware, is open source and available on GitHub. How do you type with the hat? It has a 6-axis sensor that reads its position. Turn the hat to select a character and press its top to enter. It pairs via Bluetooth, runs on a 3.7V, 120mAh battery, and charges via USB-C.Read more of this story at Slashdot.