Slashdot

From science fiction author/blogger/technology activist Cory Doctorow:Right to repair has no cannier, more dedicated adversary than Apple, a company whose most innovative work is dreaming up new ways to sneakily sabotage electronics repair while claiming to be a caring environmental steward, a lie that covers up the mountains of e-waste that Apple dooms our descendants to wade through... Tim Cook laid it out for his investors: when people can repair their devices, they don't buy new ones. When people don't buy new devices, Apple doesn't sell them new devices. It's that's simple... Specifically Doctorow is criticizing the way Apple equips parts with a tiny system-on-a-chip just to track serial numbers solely "to prevent independent repair technicians from fixing your gadget."For Apple, the true anti-repair innovation comes from the most pernicious US tech law: Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). DMCA 1201 is an "anti-circumvention" law. It bans the distribution of any tool that bypasses "an effective means of access control." That's all very abstract, but here's what it means: if a manufacturer sticks some Digital Rights Management (DRM) in its device, then anything you want to do that involves removing that DRM is now illegal - even if the thing itself is perfectly legal... When California's right to repair bill was introduced, it was clear that it was gonna pass. Rather than get run over by that train, Apple got on board, supporting the legislation, which passed unanimously. But Apple got the last laugh. Because while California's bill contains many useful clauses for the independent repair shops that keep your gadgets out of a landfill, it's a state law, and DMCA 1201 is federal. A state law can't simply legalize the conduct federal law prohibits. California's right to repair bill is a banger, but it has a weak spot: parts-pairing, the scourge of repair techs... Parts-pairing is bullshit, and Apple are scum for using it, but they're hardly unique. Parts-pairing is at the core of the fuckery of inkjet printer companies, who use it to fence out third-party ink, so they can charge $9,600/gallon for ink that pennies to make. Parts-pairing is also rampant in powered wheelchairs, a heavily monopolized sector whose predatory conduct is jaw-droppingly depraved... When Bill Clinton signed DMCA 1201 into law 25 years ago, he loaded a gun and put it on the nation's mantlepiece and now it's Act III and we're all getting sprayed with bullets. Everything from ovens to insulin pumps, thermostats to lightbulbs, has used DMCA 1201 to limit repair, modification and improvement. Congress needs to rid us of this scourge, to let us bring back all the benefits of interoperability. I explain how this all came to be - and what we should do about it - in my new Verso Books title, The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"New York City is now turning to robots to help patrol the Times Square subway station," quipped one local newscast. The non-profit New York City blog Gothamist describes the robot as "almost as tall as the mayor - but at least three-times as wide around the waist," with a maximum speed of 3 miles per hour-- but a 360-degree field of vision, equipped with four cameras to send live video (without audio) to the police.A 420-pound, 5-foot-2-inch robocop with a giant camera for a face will begin patrolling the Times Square subway station overnight, the New York Police Department announced Friday morning. At a press conference held underground in the 42nd Street subway station, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said the city is launching a two-month pilot program to test the Knightscope K5 Autonomous Security Robot. During the press conference, the K5 robot - which is shaped like a small, white rocketship - stood silently along with uniformed officers and city officials in suits. Stripes of glowing blue lights indicated it was "on." The K5 will act as a crime deterrent and provide real-time information on how to best deploy human officers to a safety incident, the mayor said. It features multiple cameras, a button that can connect the public with a real person, and a speaker for live audio communication... During the pilot program, the K5 will patrol the Times Squares subway station from midnight to 6 a.m. with a human NYPD handler that will help introduce it to the public. After two months, the mayor said the handler will no longer be necessary, and the robot will go on solo patrol... Knightscope, which manufactures the robot, reports that it has been deployed to 30 clients in 10 states, including at malls and hospitals. The K5 has been in some sticky situations in other cities. One was toppled and slathered in barbecue sauce in San Francisco, while another was beaten by an intoxicated man in Mountain View, California, according to news reports. Another robot fell into a pool of water outside an office building in Washington, D.C. When asked whether the robot was at risk of vandalism in New York City, the mayor strode over to it and gave it a few firm shoves. "Let's be clear, this is not a pushover. 420 pounds. This is New York tested," he said. The city is leasing the robot for $9 an hour - And yes, local newscasts couldn't resist calling it a robocop. One shows the mayor announcing "We will continue to stay ahead of those who want to harm everyday New Yorkers." Though the robot is equipped with facial recognition capability, it will not be activated.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

First the Washington Post summarizes what scientists believed in the 1970s. Chlorofluorocarbons, or (CFCs, "could float up into the stratosphere and break down a protective layer of ozone, allowing more ultraviolet light to enter the atmosphere and harm humans, crops, and entire ecosystems. In fact, this had already happened: There was a hole in the ozone layer over the South Pole."Experts view the subsequent treaty to cut down on the use of CFCs - the 1987 Montreal Protocol - as a landmark environmental achievement. Scientists estimate that the pact has prevented millions of cases of skin cancer. Today, the ozone hole is recovering well. But a provocative scientific paper published Friday in the journal AGU Advances suggests that the link between the ozone layer and human health is more complicated than it seems. Under certain circumstances, the researchers write, small decreases in the ozone layer could now save lives... The researchers initially were examining something else: what would happen to the chemistry of the atmosphere if humans injected sulfates into the stratosphere, a controversial strategy to cool the planet. But in the process, they found that the chemicals would alter the atmosphere's ozone content - with consequences for human health. Sulfate chemicals are known to deplete ozone high in the atmosphere, but, the paper shows, they could also decrease ground-level air pollution. Ozone, or O3, occurs in two forms in the atmosphere: what scientists call "good ozone" in the stratosphere, the layer of the atmosphere that sits 6 to 31 miles above the surface, and "bad ozone" in the troposphere, the atmospheric layer that reaches to the ground... an air pollutant in the troposphere that comes from power plants, cars, and industrial sites. It can be deadly, exacerbating respiratory diseases. According to one study, over 400,000 people died from long-term exposure to ozone in 2019 alone. The new paper shows that "good ozone" and "bad ozone" can interact in unexpected ways. When good ozone is depleted, more UV light reaches the troposphere, which increases the rate of skin cancer. But UV light also catalyzes chemical reactions in the troposphere, including one in which hydroxide, or OH - which some scientists call the "Pac-Man of the atmosphere" - swallows up pollutants. The more UV light, the more OH eats up dangerous pollutants. This decrease in ground-level air pollution, according to the study, could actually outweigh the rise in skin cancer. A small decrease in stratospheric ozone, according to their study, could save between 33,000 and 86,000 lives every year. Only a few papers have made this connection, including one in 2018 that similarly found that a small decrease in the ozone layer could save lives from air pollution... One way to read the study is as another warning of how dangerous ground-level air pollution is and how far the world still needs to go to clean it up. (Outdoor air pollution writ large is associated with an estimated 4.2 million premature deaths every year.)Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A startup named OceanWell has partnered with southern California's Las Virgenes Municipal Water District "to study the feasibility of harvesting drinking water from desalination pods placed on the ocean floor," reports the Los Angeles Times:The company says that by combining desalination with off-shore energy technology, it can solve many of the challenges associated with traditional, land-based desalination, including high energy costs and salty byproducts that threaten marine life. The process could produce as much as 10 million gallons of fresh water per day - a significant gain for an inland district almost entirely reliant on imported supplies... OceanWell says its technology can use up to 40% less energy by harvesting the water in pods placed at depths of about 1,400 feet, where naturally immense water pressure can help power the filtration process... Land-based facilities try to squeeze out as much freshwater as possible to help balance high energy costs, with typical targets of 50% freshwater and 50% brine from every gallon processed. But because OceanWell uses "free" pressure from the ocean, it can operate at a lower recovery rate of 10% to 15%, producing a much less salty byproduct that can be dissolved back into ambient conditions within seconds, she said... The partnership with Las Virgenes will allow OceanWell to "stress test" the technology's capabilities in the reservoir and collect more data, said Kalyn Simon, OceanWell's director of engagement. The current goal is to be fully operational by 2028, producing an estimated 10 million gallons of freshwater per day. Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Since 1999, Slashdot has been covering the annual Ig Nobel prize ceremonies - which honor real scientific research into strange or surprising subjects. "Each winner (or winning team) has done something that makes people LAUGH, then THINK," explains the ceremony web page, promising that "a gaggle of genuine, genuinely bemused Nobel laureates handed the Ig Nobel Prizes to the new Ig Nobel winners." As co-founder Marc Abrahams says on his LinkedIn profile, "All these things celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative - and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology." You can watch this year's entire goofy webcast online. (At 50 minutes there's a jaw-droppingly weird music video about running on water...)Slashdot reader Thorfinn.au shares this summary of this year's winning research: CHEMISTRY and GEOLOGY PRIZE [POLAND, UK] - Jan Zalasiewicz, for explaining why many scientists like to lick rocks. LITERATURE PRIZE [FRANCE, UK, MALAYSIA, FINLAND] - Chris Moulin, Nicole Bell, Merita Turunen, Arina Baharin, and Akira O'Connor for studying the sensations people feel when they repeat a single word many, many, many, many, many, many, many times. MECHANICAL ENGINEERING PRIZE [INDIA, CHINA, MALAYSIA, USA] - Te Faye Yap, Zhen Liu, Anoop Rajappan, Trevor Shimokusu, and Daniel Preston, for re-animating dead spiders to use as mechanical gripping tools. PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE [SOUTH KOREA, USA] - Seung-min Park, for inventing the Stanford Toilet a computer vision system for defecation analysis et al. COMMUNICATION PRIZE [ARGENTINA, SPAIN, COLOMBIA, CHILE, CHINA, USA] - Maria Jose Torres-Prioris, Diana Lopez-Barroso, Estela Camara, Sol Fittipaldi, Lucas Sedeno, Agustin Ibanez, Marcelo Berthier, and Adolfo Garcia, for studying the mental activities of people who are expert at speaking backward. MEDICINE PRIZE [USA, CANADA, MACEDONIA, IRAN, VIETNAM] - Christine Pham, Bobak Hedayati, Kiana Hashemi, Ella Csuka, Tiana Mamaghani, Margit Juhasz, Jamie Wikenheiser, and Natasha Mesinkovska, for using cadavers to explore whether there is an equal number of hairs in each of a person's two nostrils. NUTRITION PRIZE [JAPAN] - Homei Miyashita and Hiromi Nakamura, for experiments to determine how electrified chopsticks and drinking straws can change the taste of food. EDUCATION PRIZE [HONG KONG, CHINA, CANADA, UK, THE NETHERLANDS, IRELAND, USA, JAPAN] - Katy Tam, Cyanea Poon, Victoria Hui, Wijnand van Tilburg, Christy Wong, Vivian Kwong, Gigi Yuen, and Christian Chan, for methodically studying the boredom of teachers and students. PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE [USA] - Stanley Milgram, Leonard Bickman, and Lawrence Berkowitz for 1968 experiments on a city street to see how many passersby stop to look upward when they see strangers looking upward. PHYSICS PRIZE [SPAIN, GALICIA, SWITZERLAND, FRANCE, UK] - Bieito Fernandez Castro, Marian Pena, Enrique Nogueira, Miguel Gilcoto, Esperanza Broullon, Antonio Comesana, Damien Bouffard, Alberto C. Naveira Garabato, and Beatriz Mourino-Carballido, for measuring the extent to which ocean-water mixing is affected by the sexual activity of anchovies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CNN reports:The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection [known as Cal Fire] says it has a new tool to battle wildfires before they explode - artificial intelligence. "I think it is a game changer ... It has enhanced our abilities to validate situational awareness and then respond in a quick fashion," Phillip SeLegue, Cal Fire's staff chief for fire intelligence, told CNN. Deep in the California wilderness of the Cleveland National Forest in San Diego County, a fire started in the middle of a July night. No fire officials were in the area, but AI was watching and alerted the authorities. "The dispatch center there was not aware of the fire," said Scott Slumpff, battalion chief of the intel program at Cal Fire, who was testing the new technology at the time and received the initial alert. Cal Fire, in partnership with the University of California at San Diego's Alert California program and its network of more than 1,000 cameras across the state, is using the technology to spot fires early. "The camera had done its 360 [degree turn], identified an anomaly, stopped and was zoomed in," Slumpff explained. He then confirmed it was a fire and immediately dispatched resources. "They were able to hold it to a 10 by 10 [foot] spot out in the middle of the forest..." The pilot program was so successful, Cal Fire expanded the technology at the beginning of September to all 21 of its dispatch centers across the state... Cal Fire says 40% of fires since July 10 have been detected by AI before a 911 call was received - and the technology is continuing to learn and improve. "We have multiple successes of fires at night that had gone undetected that we were able to suppress before a 911 call had even come into the command centers," Cal Fire's staff chief for fire intelligence, told CNN. "The fires you don't hear about in the news is the greatest success."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"As more companies enforce their office mandates, some workers are choosing to quit instead of complying and returning to the office," reports the Washington Post.Workers say their reasons for quitting include everything from family to commuting expenses to being required to relocate. And many workers worry that people like those with disabilities or who are primary caregivers may be left behind due to their inability to successfully work from the office... Workers are pushing back, penning letters to executives, staging walkouts and quitting despite the tight labor market. "I'm not surprised at all," Prithwiraj Choudhury, a Harvard Business School professor who studies the future of work, said about workers quitting. "By mandating these rigid policies, you're risking your top performers and diversity. It just doesn't make economic sense." Choudhury said companies should provide overall guidance that allows each to determine how they best work after analysis and feedback from workers. That's especially important for women, whom Choudhury said are resigning in large numbers - a notion multiple surveys support... For some workers who moved or were hired remotely during the pandemic, commuting is a nearly impossible task, they say. In a related note, Grindr tells the Post they're still requiring two-days-per-week in the office starting in October. Grindr they're looking forward to "further improving productivity and collaboration."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"As the sun rose on Friday over the lunar plateau where India's Vikram lander and Pragyan rover sit, the robotic explorers remained silent," writes the New York Times:The Indian Space Research Organization, India's equivalent of NASA, said on Friday that mission controllers on the ground had sent a wake-up message to Vikram. The lander, as expected, did not reply. Efforts will continue over the next few days, but this could well be the conclusion of Chandrayaan-3, India's first successful space mission to the surface of another world... The hope was that when sunlight again warmed the solar panels, the spacecraft would recharge and revive. But that was wishful thinking. Neither Vikram nor Pragyan were designed to survive a long, frigid lunar night when temperatures plunge to more than a hundred degrees below zero, far colder than the electronic components were designed for. The spacecraft designers could have added heaters or used more resilient components, but that would have added cost, weight and complexity... The mission's science observations included a temperature probe deployed from Vikram that pushed into the lunar soil. The probe recorded a sharp drop, from about 120 degrees Fahrenheit at the surface to 10 degrees just three inches down. Lunar soil is a poor conductor of heat. The poor heat conduction could be a boon for future astronauts; an underground outpost would be well-insulated from the enormous temperature swings at the surface. Another instrument on Vikram, a seismometer, detected on Aug. 26 what appeared to be a moonquake... The Pragyan measurement suggests that concentrations of sulfur might be higher in the polar regions. Sulfur is a useful element in technologies like solar cells and batteries, as well as in fertilizer and concrete. Before it went to sleep earlier this month, Vikram made a small final move, firing its engines to rise about 16 inches above the surface before softly landing again. The hop shifted Vikram's position by 12 to 16 inches, ISRO said. "Hoping for a successful awakening for another set of assignments!" ISRO posted on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, on Sept. 2. "Else, it will forever stay there as India's lunar ambassador." "Efforts to establish contact will continue," ISRO tweeted yesterday...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Recent breaches of MGM's casino systems "were probably carried out by teens and young adults who have allied themselves with one of the world's most notorious ransomware gangs," writes the Washington Post's technology reporter. Their alliance with the "Scattered Spider" group is described as "part of a trend that has alarmed security experts and defenders of corporate computer networks." The group is said to be "very active in the past two years, targeting large companies via stolen employee credentials and tricks such as convincing tech support employees that they have been accidentally locked out of their computers and need a new password."They moved from cryptocurrency thefts to targeting businesses that provide third-party business functions such as help desks and call center staffing, allowing them to infiltrate networks of many customers. And they extorted Western Digital and other technology firms after stealing internal data before heading for the jackpots in Las Vegas. But their willingness to deploy crippling ransomware while demanding money is a major escalation, as is their choice of a business partner: ALPHV, a hacking group whose affiliates include members of the former Russian powerhouses BlackMatter and DarkSide, the groups responsible for the Colonial Pipeline hack that awoke Washington to the national security risk of ransomware. ALPHV provided the BlackCat ransomware that the young hackers installed in the casinos' systems... [According to new research presented Friday at the LABScon security conference] they came together through crimes enabled by SIM-swapping, which usually involves convincing phone company employees to hand over control of someone else's phone number. Because of poor security controls around those numbers, such gambits have allowed criminals to amass millions of dollars by beating SMS text-based two-factor authentication on cryptocurrency accounts. The extra money has made alliances possible with criminals who have different skills to bring to the table, including some who had hacked police servers and could send emails from purported officers demanding emergency disclosures of information on phone and internet customers. Worse, the researchers said, they have now attracted recruiters for the Russian gangs who want to combine their business savvy with the techniques and local knowledge of the native English speakers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In 2020 Serbian scientists were gifted China's "Fire-Eye" labs, remembers the Washington Post. The sophisticated portable labs "excelled not only at cracking the genetic code for viruses, but also for humans, with machines that can decipher genetic instructions contained within the cells of every person on Earth, according to its Chinese inventors." Although some of them were temporary, "scores" of the portable labs "were donated or sold to foreign countries during the pandemic," reports the Washington Post. But it adds that now those same labs "are attracting the attention of Western intelligence agencies amid growing unease about China's intentions."Some analysts perceive China's largesse as part of a global attempt to tap into new sources of highly valuable human DNA data in countries around the world. That collection effort, underway for more than a decade, has included the acquisition of U.S. genetics companies as well as sophisticated hacking operations, U.S. and Western intelligence officials say. But more recently, it received an unexpected boost from the coronavirus pandemic, which created opportunities for Chinese companies and institutes to distribute gene-sequencing machines and build partnerships for genetic research in places where Beijing previously had little or no access, the officials said. Amid the pandemic, Fire-Eye labs would proliferate quickly, spreading to four continents and more than 20 countries, from Canada and Latvia to Saudi Arabia, and from Ethiopia and South Africa to Australia. Several, like the one in Belgrade, now function as permanent genetic-testing centers... BGI Group, the Shenzhen-based company that makes Fire-Eye labs, said it has no access to genetic information collected by the lab it helped create in Serbia. But U.S. officials note that BGI was picked by Beijing to build and operate the China National GeneBank, a vast and growing government-owned repository that now includes genetic data drawn from millions of people around the world. The Pentagon last year officially listed BGI as one of several "Chinese military companies" operating in the United States, and a 2021 U.S. intelligence assessment linked the company to the Beijing-directed global effort to obtain even more human DNA, including from the United States. The U.S. government also has blacklisted Chinese subsidiaries of BGI for allegedly helping analyze genetic material gathered inside China to assist government crackdowns on the country's ethnic and religious minorities... Beijing's drive to sweep up DNA from across the planet has occasionally stirred controversy, particularly after a 2021 Reuters series about aspects of the project. Chinese academics and military scientists have also attracted attention by debating the feasibility of creating biological weapons that might someday target populations based on their genes. Genetic-based weapons are regarded by experts as a distant prospect, at best, and some of the discussion appears to have been prompted by official paranoia about whether the United States and other countries are exploring such weapons. U.S. intelligence officials believe China's global effort is mostly about beating the West economically, not militarily. There is no public evidence that Chinese companies have used foreign DNA for reasons other than scientific research. China has announced plans to become the world's leader in biotechnology by 2035, and it regards genetic information - sometimes called "the new gold" - as a crucial ingredient in a scientific revolution that could produce thousands of new drugs and cures... U.S. intelligence officials said in interviews that they have limited insight into how BGI handles DNA information acquired overseas, including whether genetic data from the Fire-Eye labs ultimately end up in the computers of China's military or intelligence services... Chinese law makes clear that any information collected using BGI's machines can be accessed by the Chinese government. A national intelligence law enacted in 2017 stipulates that Chinese firms and citizens are legally bound to share proprietary information acquired in foreign countries whenever requested. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the articleRead more of this story at Slashdot.

The use of AI in the economy presents many unanswered questions for policymakers though there is some evidence that it could improve labor productivity, according to Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. From a report: "The impact of AI on the economy and monetary policy will depend on whether AI is just another app or something more profound," Cook said in remarks prepared for delivery at the National Bureau of Economic Research's conference on artificial intelligence in Toronto Friday. "Empirical evidence is still patchy, but there is work showing that generative AI improves productivity in a variety of settings." Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the Fed's board, was among central bank officials who on Wednesday voted unanimously to hold rates steady in a range of 5.25% to 5.5%. President Joe Biden named Cook as a governor on the board last year. She was endorsed for a full 14-year term in a 51-47 Senate vote earlier this month. Cook predicted that greater use of AI will be similar to the spread of computation in the workplace and could present "a difficult transition for some workers. [...] Any large change in the labor force will generate disruptions and challenges that will need to be addressed to help workers adapt and thrive."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meredith Whittaker, the president of the Signal Foundation, which maintains the nonprofit Signal messaging app, reaffirmed that Signal would leave the U.K. if the country's recently passed Online Safety Bill forced Signal to build "backdoors" into its end-to-end encryption. From a report: "We would leave the U.K. or any jurisdiction if it came down to the choice between backdooring our encryption and betraying the people who count on us for privacy, or leaving," Whittaker said. "And that's never not true." The Online Safety Bill, which was passed into law in September, includes a clause -- clause 122 -- that, depending on how it's interpreted, could allow the U.K.'s communications regulator, Ofcom, to break the encryption of apps and services under the guise of making sure illegal material such as child sexual exploitation and abuse content is removed. Ofcom could fine companies not in compliance up to $22.28 million, or 10% of their global annual revenue, under the bill -- whichever is greater. Whittaker didn't mince words in airing her fears about the Online Safety Bill's implications. "We're not about political stunts, so we're not going to just pick up our toys and go home to, like, show the bad U.K. they're being mean," she said. "We're really worried about people in the U.K. who would live under a surveillance regime like the one that seems to be teased by the Home Office and others in the U.K."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In 2019, CD Projekt Red unexpectedly announced Cyberpunk 2077's 2020 release, surprising some employees. Released in December 2020, it faced bugs and issues, symbolizing industry crunch. However, post-release updates, particularly in 2022, significantly improved the game, leading some to praise its transformation. A Kotaku critic wrote that the game "might finally be complete." But CD Projekt Red wasn't finished just yet. Now, in September 2023, the Cyberpunk 2077 saga is coming to an end with two final, major releases:1. The 2.0 patch, which came out Sept. 21 and overhauls many of the game's core mechanics.2. Phantom Liberty, an expansion starring Idris Elba that's out on Sept. 26. Bloomberg adds: Both appear to be excellent. The expansion adds a new area to the game's dystopian Night City and tells a heist story in which you team up with the president and government spooks. It has received glowing reviews from critics, with IGN declaring that, "Phantom Liberty is Cyberpunk 2077 at its best." New content is great, but it's the 2.0 patch that makes the biggest impact on Cyberpunk 2077, with changes that are made immediately apparent when you open up the game. The menus are cleaner, the loot system is less convoluted and character building feels completely different thanks to a revamped skill system that allows for more distinct playstyles. You can now specialize, transforming your character into a stealthy ninja, a speedy assaulter or a cybernetic hacker. Cyberpunk 2077's biggest problem, aside from the bugs, was its uncertainty over whether it wanted to be Deus Ex or Grand Theft Auto. It straddled the line between deep role-playing game and systemic open-world sandbox, ultimately feeling like an inferior version of both. Although the new patch doesn't pick a side in this divide, it does bolster them. The new level system allows for the type of build experimentation that RPG fans were hoping to see in Cyberpunk 2077.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The prestigious Lasker Awards were given this week to scientists making advances in the diagnosis of eye disease, the prediction of cellular protein structure and the intricacies of the immune system. The awards, closely watched by researchers in biomedical fields, often foreshadow Nobel Prizes. The New York Times adds: The Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award was given to a team of three scientists, led by James G. Fujimoto, a professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who helped invent optical coherence tomography. The technology can detect conditions like macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy earlier than previous methods, preventing blindness. O.C.T. now is commonly used in ophthalmology offices, where the patient simply rests a chin and forehead against an instrument for a brief scan. The method, invented in 1991, offers a staggering amount of detail about the retina, a layer of tissue at the back of the eye critical to vision. "It's not much thicker than a strand of hair, but it has 10 internal layers," said Dr. David Huang, an ophthalmologist at the Casey Eye Institute at Oregon Health & Science University who helped to invent the method. Before O.C.T., an ophthalmologist could dilate a patient's eyes with eye drops to enlarge the pupil, and then use a magnifying lens and special light to examine the retina. An O.C.T. scan "can measure the thickness of the retina, the fluid pockets in it and the abnormal blood vessel growth," detecting small lesions that have not yet caused symptoms, Dr. Huang added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: China's craze over generative artificial intelligence has triggered a flurry of product announcements from startups and tech giants on an almost daily basis, but investors are warning a shakeout is imminent as cost and profit pressures grow. The buzz in China, first ignited by the success of OpenAI's ChatGPT almost a year ago, has given rise to what a senior Tencent executive described this month as "war of a hundred models", as it and rivals from Baidu to Alibaba to Huawei promote their offerings. China now has at least 130 large language models, accounting for 40% of the global total and just behind the United States' 50% share, according to brokerage CLSA. Additionally, companies have also announced dozens of "industry-specific LLMs" that link to their core model. However, investors and analysts say that most were yet to find viable business models, were too similar to each other and were now grappling with surging costs. Tensions between Beijing and Washington have also weighed on the sector, as U.S. dollar funds invest less in early-stage projects and difficulties obtaining AI chips made by the likes of Nvidia start to bite. "Only those with the strongest capabilities will survive," said Esme Pau, head of China internet and digital asset research at Macquarie Group, who expects consolidation and a price war as players compete for users.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The European Commission has re-imposed a fine of about $400 million on chipmaker Intel for abusing its dominant position in the x86 processor market. The move is the latest twist in an antitrust saga that has been now running for more than two decades. The Register: According to the Commission, the fine is in response to previously established anticompetitive practices by the silicon giant, aimed at excluding competitors from the market in breach of EU competition rules. The original fine handed to Intel in 2009 was for $1.2 billion, based on findings that the company had given incentives to PC makers to use its CPUs instead of those from rivals, or else delay the launch of specific products containing rival chips. These incentives consisted of wholly or partially hidden rebates for using Intel chips, or payments in order to delay launching products with rival chips, amounting to so-called "naked restrictions." It ultimately goes back to complaints from rival CPU maker AMD in 2000 and again in 2003 that Intel was engaging in anticompetitive conduct by offering rebates to vendors to favor Intel components. Intel fought the decision, but an appeal by the Silicon Valley outfit to have it overturned was initially denied in 2014. Then in 2022, the EU General Court partially annulled the 2009 ruling by the Commission, in particular the findings related to Intel's conditional rebates, and went on to nix the fine imposed on the company in its entirety.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA, in a press release: Jupiter's moon Europa is one of a handful of worlds in our solar system that could potentially harbor conditions suitable for life. Previous research has shown that beneath its water-ice crust lies a salty ocean of liquid water with a rocky seafloor. However, planetary scientists had not confirmed if that ocean contained the chemicals needed for life, particularly carbon. Astronomers using data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have identified carbon dioxide in a specific region on the icy surface of Europa. Analysis indicates that this carbon likely originated in the subsurface ocean and was not delivered by meteorites or other external sources. Moreover, it was deposited on a geologically recent timescale. This discovery has important implications for the potential habitability of Europa's ocean. "On Earth, life likes chemical diversity -- the more diversity, the better. We're carbon-based life. Understanding the chemistry of Europa's ocean will help us determine whether it's hostile to life as we know it, or if it might be a good place for life," said Geronimo Villanueva of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, lead author of one of two independent papers describing the findings. "We now think that we have observational evidence that the carbon we see on Europa's surface came from the ocean. That's not a trivial thing. Carbon is a biologically essential element," added Samantha Trumbo of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, lead author of the second paper analyzing these data. NASA plans to launch its Europa Clipper spacecraft, which will perform dozens of close flybys of Europa to further investigate whether it could have conditions suitable for life, in October 2024.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The White House is considering requiring cloud computing firms to report some information about their customers to the U.S. government, Semafor reported Friday, citing people familiar with an upcoming executive order on AI. From the report: The provision would direct the Commerce Department to write rules forcing cloud companies like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon to disclose when a customer purchases computing resources beyond a certain threshold. The order hasn't been finalized and specifics of it could still change. Similar "know-your-customer" policies already exist in the banking sector to prevent money laundering and other illegal activities, such as the law mandating firms to report cash transactions exceeding $10,000. In this case, the rules are intended to create a system that would allow the U.S. government to identify potential AI threats ahead of time, particularly those coming from entities in foreign countries. If a company in the Middle East began building a powerful large language model using Amazon Web Services, for example, the reporting requirement would theoretically give American authorities an early warning about it. The policy proposal represents a potential step toward treating computing power -- or the technical capacity AI systems need to perform tasks -- like a national resource. Mining Bitcoin, developing video games, and running AI models like ChatGPT all require large amounts of compute.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Communications Commission is taking steps to restrict Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers from easily accessing US telephone numbers. Over the past several years, robocallers have exploited VoIP providers to inundate US citizens with unwanted calls, many of which come from falsified numbers. Previously, the regulations allowed VoIP services relatively uncomplicated access to US phone numbers. ArsTechnica: But under rules adopted by the FCC yesterday, VoIP providers will face some extra hurdles. They will have to "make robocall-related certifications to help ensure compliance with the Commission's rules targeting illegal robocalls," and "disclose and keep current information about their ownership, including foreign ownership, to mitigate the risk of providing bad actors abroad with access to US numbering resources," the FCC said. The FCC order will take effect 30 days after it's published in the Federal Register. A public draft of the order was released ahead of the FCC meeting.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Unity has announced some key changes to its widely panned Runtime Fee policy, which spawned both derision and confusion from developers and the gaming community at large when it was unveiled earlier this month. From a report: It's easing up on some big aspects of the previously announced charges, removing the fee from the Unity Personal tier entirely, although it still remains in a revised form on the Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise tiers. In short, as originally announced, starting on Jan. 1, 2024, Unity would start charging developers a small fee every time someone downloads a game built on Unity's game engine after a certain threshold for minimum revenue and install count. The different tiers of Unity plans - Unity Personal/Unity Plus, Unity Pro, and Unity Enterprise - had different thresholds and, per the original announcement, smaller developers using Unity Personal/Unity Plus would have to pay Unity $0.20 per install once their game passes $200,000 in revenue over the last 12 months and 200,000 life-to-date installs. Unity announced today, however, that there will be no Runtime Fee on games built on Unity Personal, which will remain free. They will also be increasing financial theshold of Unity Personal from $100,000 to $200,000 and will remove the requirement to use the Made with Unity splash screen.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

schwit1 writes: China's exports of two rare minerals essential for manufacturing semiconductors fell to zero in August, a month after Beijing imposed curbs on sales overseas, citing national security. China produces about 80% of the world's gallium and about 60% of germanium, according to the Critical Raw Materials Alliance, but it didn't sell any of the elements on international markets last month, Chinese customs data released on Wednesday showed. In July, the country exported 5.15 metric tons of forged gallium products and 8.1 metric tons of forged germanium products. When asked about the lack of exports last month, He Yadong, a spokesperson from China's commerce ministry told a press briefing Thursday that the department had received applications from companies to export the two materials. Some applications had been approved, he said, without elaborating. The curbs are indicative of China's apparent willingness to retaliate against US export controls, despite concerns about economic growth, as a tech war simmers.Nobody ever said weaning ourselves off the CCP would be easy, Schwit1 adds.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. Treasury Department and China's Ministry of Finance launched a pair of economic working groups on Friday in an effort to ease tensions and deepen ties between the nations. From a report: Led by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Vice Premier He Lifeng, the working groups will be divided into economic and financial segments. The working groups will "establish a durable channel of communication between the world's two largest economies," Yellen said in a series of tweets detailing the announcement. She said the groups will "serve as important forums to communicate America's interests and concerns, promote a healthy economic competition between our two countries with a level playing field for American workers and businesses." The announcement follows a string of high-ranking administration officials' visits to China this year, which sets the stage for a possible meeting between President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in November at an Asia-Pacific economic conference in San Francisco. China is one of the United States' biggest trading partners, and economic competition between the two nations has increased in recent years. The two finance ministers have agreed to meet at a "regular cadence," the Treasury Department said in a news release.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In his first major public interview since the DMV cut their San Francisco fleet in half, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said "we cannot expect perfection" from the self-driving cars, and vaguely threatened to leave town if regulators curtail them any further. From a report: The self-driving robotaxis of GM subsidiary Cruise and Google-owned Waymo seemed like they were heading in a successful direction when they won approval from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) last month to run their self-driving robotaxis at all hours in SF without restrictions. But barely a week later, the California DMV demanded Cruise cut it SF fleet in half, following post-Outside Lands stalling incidents, a night of multiple accidents, and SF City Attorney David Chiu filing a motion to get the CPUC to reverse their decision. Cruse CEO Kyle Vogt sat down for a (very friendly) 40-minute interview Wednesday at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, which can be seen in its entirety above. And he seems to be going on offense against the regulatory pushback his company is getting from SF and California lawmakers. "It's kind of fun as a society to poke at the differences between AVs (autonomous vehicles) and humans, but if we're serious about safety in our cities, we should be rolling out the red carpet for AVs," Vogt said, according to the SF Standard.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

How many smartphone brands do you think have left the market since 2017? The likes of LG probably come to mind, then there are the many local, lesser-known brands. Maybe fifty, or one hundred? The actual figure is, astoundingly, nearly 500. TechSpot: Counterpoint Research's analysis shows that at its peak in 2017, there were more than 700 smartphone brands contributing to the 1.5 billion units sold annually. In 2023, that number is down by a third to almost 250. Nearly all of those brands that have shuttered over the last five years were local ones found in locations such as India, the Middle East, Africa, China, Japan, and South Korea. The number of global brands such as Samsung has remained consistent at over 30. Counterpoint Research highlights several reasons behind the shrinking number of brands over the last seven years. The pandemic and component shortages that began in 2020 had a massive impact, while the global economic slowdown following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has caused many smaller smartphone companies to shutter. The local brands have also been dealing with other factors killing off their businesses. More people are holding onto their devices for longer before upgrading, cheaper phones are improving in quality all the time, there's a maturing user base, we've seen technology transitions such as that from 4G to 5G, and a handful of big brands are holding on to more of the market.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon, following other streaming platforms looking to further monetize their content, will run ads on its Prime Video service in key markets -- a move that will help offset rising costs and provide a boost to an already robust advertising business. From a report: Ad-supported streaming will be the default on Prime Video in US, UK, Germany and Canada starting early next year, the company said in a statement on Friday. The company has long offered video streaming as part of a package that also includes speedy shipping, music and other perks. Amazon said Prime subsribers will continue to pay $139 annually in the US but will be able to pay an additional $2.99 a month to avoid ads. Pricing in other countries will be anounced later, the company said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Esper: Starting in Android 14, it may not be necessary to use a third-party app to turn your smartphone into a webcam for your PC, as that functionality is getting baked into the Android OS itself -- though there's a catch. When you plug an Android phone into a PC, you have the option to change the USB mode between file transfer/Android Auto (MTP), USB tethering (NCM), MIDI, or PTP. In Android 14, however, a new option can appear in USB Preferences: USB webcam. Selecting this option switches the USB mode to UVC (USB Video Class), provided the device supports it, turning your Android device into a standard USB webcam that other devices will recognize, including Windows, macOS, and Linux PCs, and possibly even other Android devices. Webcam support in Android 14 is not enabled out of the box, however. In order to enable it, four things are required: a Linux kernel config needs to be enabled, the UVC device needs to be configured, the USB HAL needs to be updated, and a new system app needs to be preloaded.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a news story: A report by dappGambl based on data provided by NFT Scan and CoinMarketCap showed that out of 73,257 NFT collections the researchers looked at, 69,795 of them, or slightly over 95%, had a market cap of zero ether. By their estimates, almost 23 million people hold these worthless assets. "This daunting reality should serve as a sobering check on the euphoria that has often surrounded the NFT space," the researchers said. "Amid stories of digital art pieces selling for millions and overnight success stories, it is easy to overlook the fact that the market is fraught with pitfalls and potential losses." NFTs are digital representations of art or collectibles tied to a blockchain, typically ethereum, and each one has a unique signature that cannot be duplicated. In 2021 and 2022, the NFT market saw a huge bull run, at one point leading to $2.8 billion in monthly trading volume. During that time, popular collections such as Bored Apes and CryptoPunks were selling for millions of dollars, and celebrities such as Stephen Curry and Snoop Dogg participated in the hype. The boom coincided with cryptocurrency's peak when bitcoin was trading close to $70,000. On Wednesday, the price of the crypto hovered just above $27,000. dappGambl's study shows 79% of all NFT collections currently remain unsold, and the surplus of supply over demand has created a buyer's market that isn't doing anything to revive enthusiasm.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Brazilian engineer Luiz Andre Barroso, who ripped up the rulebook at Google, has died. His radical ideas for data centers laid the foundations for cloud computing. Wired: Luiz Andre Barroso had never designed a data center before Google asked him to do it in the early 2000s. By the time he finished his first, he had overturned many conventions of the computing industry, laying the foundations for Silicon Valley's development of cloud computing. Barroso, a 22-year veteran of Google who unexpectedly died on September 16 at age 59, built his data centers with low-cost components instead of expensive specialized hardware. He reimagined how they worked together to develop the concept of "the data center as a computer," which now underpins the web, mobile apps, and other internet services. Jen Fitzpatrick, senior vice president of Google's infrastructure organization, says Barroso left an indelible imprint at the company whose contributions to the industry are countless. "We lost a beloved friend, colleague and respected leader," she writes in a statement on behalf of the company.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

FrankOVD writes: Google is being sued by a widow who says her husband drowned in September 2022 after Google Maps directed him over a collapsed bridge in Hickory, North Carolina. Google failed to correct its map service despite warnings about the broken bridge two years before the accident, according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday by Alicia Paxson in Wake County Superior Court. Philip Paxson "died tragically while driving home from his daughter's ninth birthday party, when he drove off of an unmarked, unbarricaded collapsed bridge in Hickory, North Carolina while following GPS directions," the complaint said. The Snow Creek Bridge reportedly collapsed in 2013 and wasn't repaired. Barricades were typically in place but "were removed after being vandalized and were missing at the time of Paxson's wreck," according to The Charlotte Observer. The lawsuit has five defendants, including Google and its owner Alphabet. The other defendants are James Tarlton and two local business entities called Tarde, LLC and Hinckley Gauvain, LLC. Tarlton and the two businesses "owned, controlled, and/or were otherwise responsible for the land" containing the bridge, the lawsuit said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rishi Sunak has vowed to press ahead with watering down key green measures despite intense criticism, because he still believes the UK will hit its net zero target in 2050. From a report: The prime minister defended defying the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee (CCC) and said he had "absolute confidence and belief" the country was on track to meet its end goal. In a BBC radio interview on Thursday morning, Sunak shrugged off suggestions he had ignored the view of the official body that advises governments on reducing emissions. He said: "I'm very happy to have opinions and advice from everybody, and everyone's entitled to their view. We're very confident -- being in government, with all the information at our disposal -- that we we are on track to hit all our targets." Sunak told Radio 4's Today programme that Margaret Thatcher would have agreed with his rationale, and that it was not right for "working families" to face significant costs as part of the country's transition to net zero. But he struggled to provide an explanation for claims he had scrapped measures critics said had never seriously been mooted -- such as an alleged tax on meat, compulsory car sharing and forcing households to use seven recycling bins. "These are all things that have been raised by very credible people," he argued. When pressed, Sunak was unable to provide evidence that those specific measures had been suggested by anyone and instead said they had been euphemistically advocated for by bodies such as the CCC.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google has been trying to publicly pressure Apple into adopting the GSMA's RCS (Rich Communications Service) messaging protocol for a long time now, with nothing to show for it. As a matter of fact, Apple CEO Tim Cook seemed to completely dismiss the idea when he answered a question on the subject by saying that consumers should buy their moms an iPhone. Google and its Android platform aren't giving up that easily and they've just released a snarky ad to continue criticizing Apple's preferred messaging platform. The ad's called "iPager" and mimics Apple's marketing language to reveal a retro-styled beeper, indicating that Apple's behind the curve with its chosen messaging platform. The spot states that the iPager uses "outdated messaging tech" to "text with Android," citing many of the perceived disadvantages of sticking with SMS technology when communicating with Android phones. Google didn't invent this comparison whole-cloth, as the 30-year-old SMS tech actually dates back to old-school pagers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Several Slashdot readers have shared this report: Folks, what you've heard so far is true. Apple's new FineWoven iPhone cases and accessories are bad. Like, really bad. I've been puzzling over them for the past week, looking at them from different angles. Picking them up, setting them down, petting them. Seven days later, I still can't make sense of them and have no other choice but to say it out loud: FineWoven is very bad. FineWoven is a new fabric option you'll find on iPhone 15 cases, AirTag holders, and MagSafe wallets. Apple calls it a "luxurious and durable microtwill." It's silky, almost slippery to the touch, and costs $59 for any of the phone cases, $35 for an AirTag holder, and $99 for one of the new watch bands -- not the most expensive phone cases you can buy, but pretty darn pricey. Apple is pitching them as a premium replacement of sorts for the leather accessories it discontinued. The company won't sell leather iPhone cases and straps anymore because making them at Apple's scale "has a significant carbon footprint," according to Lisa Jackson, the company's environmental policy VP. That's fair; as my colleague Justine Calma puts it, "Cattle are a big source of greenhouse gas emissions because cows burp out methane, which is even more potent than CO2 when it comes to its ability to trap heat on the planet." If you want a fancy first-party iPhone case, then your new, more sustainable option would be FineWoven. But FineWoven is very much not the premium material that leather is. When I popped the MagSafe wallet out of its box, I could clearly see some places where it was already showing wear along the edges. Little bits of lint immediately caught on the fabric, too. And then there's the fingernail test.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: DuckDuckGo, a privacy-centric search engine founded about 15 years ago, has languished with a small market share as consumers face difficulties switching from Google when the behemoth is the default option on computer screens, the upstart's founder said in an antitrust trial. Founded in 2008, DuckDuckGo currently has about a 2.5% share of the market for search in the US, said CEO Gabriel Weinberg, and conducts about 100 million searches a day globally. In comparison, Google conducts several billion searches daily. Weinberg said about 30% to 40% of DuckDuckGo's users have a "strong preferencea for privacy and that most of the company's users switch over from Google." The company considers Google to be "far and away" its biggest competitor. "Switching is way harder than it needs to be," Chief Executive Officer Gabriel Weinberg said in federal court on Thursday. "There's just too many steps."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At an event today focused on AI and security tools and new Surface devices, Microsoft announced that Windows 11 users will soon be able to take better advantage of passkeys, the digital credentials that can be used as an authentication method for websites and apps. From a report: Once the expanded passkeys support rolls out, Windows 11 users will be able to create a passkey using Windows Hello, Windows' biometric identity and access control feature. They'll then be able to use that passkey to access supported webs or apps using their face, fingerprint or PIN. Windows 11 passkeys can be managed on the devices on which they're stored, or saved to a mobile phone for added convenience. "For the past several years, we've been committed to working with our industry partners and the FIDO Alliance to further the passwordless future with passkeys," Microsoft wrote in a blog post this morning. "Passkeys are the cross-platform, cross-ecosystem future of accessing websites and applications." Microsoft began rolling out support for passkey management several months ago in the Windows Insider dev channel, but this marks the capability's general availability.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MGM Resorts brought to an end a 10-day computer shutdown prompted by efforts to shield from a cyberattack data including hotel reservations and credit card processing, the casino giant said Wednesday, as analysts and academics measured the effects of the event. From a report: "We are pleased that all of our hotels and casinos are operating normally," the Las Vegas-based company posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. It reported last week that the attack was detected Sept. 10. Rival casino owner Caesars Entertainment also disclosed last week to federal regulators that it was hit by a cyberattack Sept. 7. It said that its casino and online operations were not disrupted but it could not guarantee that personal information about tens of millions of customers, including driver's licenses and Social Security numbers of loyalty rewards members, had not been compromised. Caesars, based in Reno, is widely reported to have paid $15 million of a $30 million ransom sought by a group called Scattered Spider for a promise to secure the data.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft just showed off its new high-end convertible laptop, the Surface Laptop Studio 2, at its launch event in New York City. The Laptop Studio 2 keeps the overall aesthetic of its predecessor, including the pull-forward 14.4-inch display that makes it a much more touch-friendly device but adds some welcome power-user features. From a report: The Studio 2, which starts at $1,999, runs on Intel's 13th Generation chips -- specifically the i7 H class -- with an Nvidia RTX 4050 or RTX 4060 GPU inside. It also has an Intel Neural Processing Unit, or NPU, which is the first Intel NPU in a Windows computer. (There were rumblings that Microsoft might be making this chip itself, but it appears not.) You can configure it with up to 2TB of storage and 64 gigs of RAM. In all, Microsoft says it's "the most powerful Surface we've ever built" and promises twice the performance of the previous device. The Studio 2 also offers some big new connectivity options: it has two USB-C ports, one USB-A port, a microSD card reader, and the Surface Slim Pen 2. In addition, there's a new customizable and more responsive haptic touchpad that Microsoft calls "the most inclusive touchpad on any laptop."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cisco agreed to buy Splunk in a deal valued at about $28 billion, representing its biggest acquisition yet and a massive push into software and artificial intelligence-powered data analysis. From a report: Cisco will pay $157 a share in cash, the companies said in a statement Thursday, or a 31% premium to Splunk's previous closing price on Wednesday. Cisco has been expanding its software and services business in an attempt to rely less on its hallmark networking hardware. The Silicon Valley giant has traditionally generated the bulk of its revenue from equipment that forms the backbone of computer networks, but that's been changing. Last month Cisco outlined the headway it's making in artificial intelligence and security technology. The deal is also arguably just as much a bet on artificial intelligence as it is on the business of software and data security. Earlier this year, Splunk announced a new line of AI offerings that it said would, among other things, allow companies to detect and respond to anomalies in their data faster. The merger offers the companies' AI products "substantial scale" and more visibility into data, they said in Thursday's statement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft will release its next big Windows 11 update, 23H2, on September 26th. The update will include the new AI-powered Windows Copilot feature, a redesigned File Explorer, a new Ink Anywhere feature for pen users, big improvements to the Paint app, native RAR and 7-zip file support, a new volume mixer, and much more. From a report: Windows Copilot is the headline feature for the Windows 11 23H2 update, bringing the same Bing Chat feature straight to the Windows 11 desktop. It appears as a sidebar in Windows 11, allowing you to control settings on a PC, launch apps, or simply answer queries. It's integrated all over the operating system, too: Microsoft executives demoed using Copilot to write text messages using data from your calendar, navigation options in Outlook, and more. This is also Microsoft's latest attempt to deliver a digital assistant inside Windows after the company shut down the Cortana app inside Windows 11 last month. It might be more successful this time, particularly as it's powered by the same technologies behind Bing Chat, so you can ask real questions and get answers (that might not always be accurate) in return. [...] Microsoft is also adding native RAR and 7-zip support to Windows 11 with this update. That means you'll be able to easily open files like tar, 7-zip, rar, gz, and many others using the libarchive open-source project that's now built into Windows 11. Microsoft is also planning to provide support for creating these file formats in 2024.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rupert Murdoch is stepping down as chair of Fox and News Corp, after building a media empire over seven decades that revolutionized news and entertainment and made him one of the world's most influential and controversial tycoons. WSJ: Murdoch, 92 years old, will exit his roles atop each company as of November, when they hold annual meetings, the companies said. He will be appointed chairman emeritus of each company. His eldest son, Lachlan Murdoch, who has served as co-chair of News Corp, will become sole chair of that company and will continue as Fox Corp executive chair and CEO. "For my entire professional life, I have been engaged daily with news and ideas, and that will not change. But the time is right for me to take on different roles," Rupert Murdoch wrote in a memo to staff. His decision to step back solidifies Lachlan Murdoch as his successor. He called Lachlan a "passionate, principled leader" who can take the companies into the future. Murdoch is one of a handful of media barons, along with the likes of John Malone, Ted Turner and Sumner Redstone, who shaped the modern era of media. He has wielded influence in political and financial capitals, earning credit from his boosters and blame from his critics. Murdoch has remained active in his later years, pursuing big deals to reshape his companies. Murdoch is stepping back at an important moment for both wings of his media empire, as they confront fundamental challenges in the media landscape. Fox, a relatively small player in an entertainment industry now dominated by titans, is wrestling with the profound implications of cable cord-cutting and the growth of streaming. News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, Times of London and other publications, is trying to find the right formula for digital growth amid a fierce battle for subscribers and online-ad dollars.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Computer Weekly: A doctoral thesis by American investigative journalist and post-doctoral researcher Jacob Appelbaum has now revealed unpublished information from the Snowden archive. These revelations go back a decade, but remain of indisputable public interest: - The NSA listed Cavium, an American semiconductor company marketing Central Processing Units (CPUs) - the main processor in a computer which runs the operating system and applications -- as a successful example of a "SIGINT-enabled" CPU supplier. Cavium, now owned by Marvell, said it does not implement back doors for any government. - The NSA compromised lawful Russian interception infrastructure, SORM. The NSA archive contains slides showing two Russian officers wearing jackets with a slogan written in Cyrillic: "You talk, we listen." The NSA and/or GCHQ has also compromised Key European LI [lawful interception] systems. - Among example targets of its mass surveillance program, PRISM, the NSA listed the Tibetan government in exile. These revelations have surfaced for the first time thanks to a doctoral thesis authored by Appelbaum towards earning a degree in applied cryptography from the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. Communication in a world of pervasive surveillance is a public document and has been downloaded over 18,000 times since March 2022 when it was first published. [...] We asked Jacob Appelbaum, currently a post-doctoral researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology, why he chose to publish those revelations in a technically written thesis rather than a mass-circulation newspaper. He replied: "As an academic, I see that the details included are in the public interest, and highly relevant for the topic covered in my thesis, as it covers the topic of large-scale adversaries engaging in targeted and mass surveillance." According to The Register, "Marvell (the owner of Cavium since 2018) denies the allegations that it or Cavium placed backdoors in products at the behest of the U.S. government. Appelbaum's thesis wasn't given much attention until it was mentioned in Electrospaces.net's security blog last week.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Waymo announced a "tour across Los Angeles" that allows curious residents the opportunity to ride in fully autonomous vehicles as the Alphabet-owned company begins to lay the groundwork for the launch of a commercial robotaxi service. The Verge reports: Waymo says it will make six multi-week "tour stops" in LA neighborhoods where people can hail a self-driving car without anyone in the front seat. Interested Angelenos can snag early access tickets at several pop-up events throughout the city or sign up for a waitlist. Once they receive a ticket, riders can use Waymo's fully driverless vehicles for free within the service area for one week during the allotted time. The tour is as follows: Santa Monica and Venice Beach October 11th-November 18th; Century City November 20th-December 17th; West Hollywood December 17th-January 7th; Mid City January 8th-23rd; Koreatown January 24th-February 8th; and Downtown LA February 9th-March 3rd. Waymo's operational design domain -- the area in which its robotaxis are programmed to travel -- stretches from the West Side to Downtown LA, an area that's larger than San Francisco but smaller than its coverage in Phoenix.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SpaceX just extended its Falcon 9 rocket-reuse record. Space.com reports: The Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Tuesday at 11:38 p.m. EDT (0338 GMT Sept. 20), carrying 22 of SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites toward low Earth orbit (LEO). The rocket's first stage came back to Earth 8.5 minutes after launch, landing on a SpaceX drone ship stationed at sea. It was the 17th liftoff and landing for this Falcon 9's first stage, according to a SpaceX mission description. Those figures are unprecedented; the previous mark was 16, held by two different Falcon 9 boosters. The 22 Starlink satellites, meanwhile, deployed from the Falcon 9's upper stage 62.5 minutes after launch as planned. Tuesday night's liftoff extended another record as well: It was SpaceX's 65th orbital mission of the year. The company's previous mark, 61, was set in 2022. You can watch a recorded video of the launch here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: On the outskirts of the small town of Folschviller in eastern France stand three nondescript sheds. One of these temporary structures has recently become a hive of activity due to a continuous stream of visitors, including scientists, journalists, and the public. The shed sits above a borehole first drilled in 2006 and houses a gas measurement system called SysMoG, which was originally developed to determine the underground methane concentration. While the device did detect almost pure methane (99 percent) at a depth of 650 meters, probing further down, the borehole resulted in an unexpected and surprising discovery: hydrogen in high concentration. "At 1,100 meters, the concentration of dissolved hydrogen is 14 percent. At 3,000 meters, the estimated concentration could be as high as 90 percent," Jacques Pironon, director of research at GeoRessources lab at the University de Lorraine, said. Based on the estimates of methane resources and the concentration of hydrogen detected so far, scientists have conjectured that the Lorraine region in eastern France, of which Folschviller is a part, could contain 46 million tons of white -- or naturally produced -- hydrogen. That would make it one of the world's largest known hydrogen deposits. This remarkable discovery was not the objective of the project, called Regalor. Instead, it aimed to determine the feasibility of methane production in the Lorraine region and to record the presence of traces of other gases. "Our original research was related to the study of carboniferous sediments in northeast France. This was important as Lorraine was one of France's largest coal-producing regions," Pironon said. [...] Soon, the researchers will start taking measurements in three other boreholes at similar depths to understand if the hydrogen concentration remains high as you move laterally from the site of the original borehole. "If the concentration is similar, the next step, which is being discussed with the authorities, would be to drill a hole 3,000 meters deep to validate the evolution of the hydrogen concentration with depth," he said. The deeper borehole could also throw up another surprise. "Besides knowing the level of hydrogen concentration, we will also know if hydrogen is present in dissolved form or in gaseous state at these depths," Pironon said. This study could also shed light on the source of this hydrogen. According to Pironon, there are two hypotheses, one of which is related to the presence of the mineral siderite. "Hydrogen could be produced by the reaction between water and siderite, which is made of iron carbonates. We consider that the siderite could be oxidized by water molecules to produce hydrogen. The oxygen then combines with iron to produce iron oxide." According to Pironon, the other hypothesis relates its presence to the chemical processes that form coal, which, along with the release of methane, can also produce hydrogen.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A few months after getting FDA approval for human trials, Neuralink is looking for its first test subjects. The Verge reports: The six-year initial trial, which the Elon Musk-owned company is calling "the PRIME Study," is intended to test Neuralink tech designed to help those with paralysis control devices. The company is looking for people (PDF) with quadriplegia due to vertical spinal cord injury or ALS who are over the age of 22 and have a "consistent and reliable caregiver" to be part of the study. The PRIME Study (which apparently stands for Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface, even though that acronym makes no sense) is set to research three things at once. The first is the N1 implant, Neuralink's brain-computer device. The second is the R1 robot, the surgical robot that actually implants the device. The third is the N1 User App, the software that connects to the N1 and translates brain signals into computer actions. Neuralink says it's planning to test both the safety and efficacy of all three parts of the system. Those who participate in the PRIME Study will first participate in an 18-month study that involves nine visits with researchers. After that, they'll spend at least two hours a week on brain-computer interface research sessions and then do 20 more visits over the next five years. Neuralink doesn't say how many subjects it's looking for or when it plans to begin the study but does say it only plans to compensate "for study-related costs" like travel to and from the study location. (Also not clear: where that location is. Neuralink only says it has received approval from "our first hospital site.")Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Parents in the U.S. whose children purchased items in the popular game Fortnite without their permission will be able to claim a refund from today. The BBC reports: The U.S. regulator accused the game of tricking players into making unintended purchases and breaching privacy. Fortnite developer Epic Games agreed to pay $245 million in refunds in 2022. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has now begun the process of contacting 37 million people to alert them to the compensation. The FTC said Epic Games duped players with "deceptive interfaces" that could trigger purchases while the game loaded, and accused it of having default settings that breached people's privacy. In total, it agreed to a settlement of $520 million with Epic Games over the concerns. This includes a $275 million fine relating to how Fortnite collects data on its users, including those aged under 13, without informing parents. It is the largest fine ever levied by the FTC for breaking a rule. The rest of the settlement will be paid out as refunds.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hayden Field writes via CNBC: Naba Banerjee is a proud party pooper. As the person in charge of Airbnb's worldwide ban on parties, she's spent more than three years figuring out how to battle party "collusion" by users, flag "repeat party houses" and, most of all, design an anti-party AI system with enough training data to halt high-risk reservations before the offender even gets to the checkout page. It's been a bit like a game of whack-a-mole: Whenever Banerjee's algorithms flag some concerns, new ones pop up. Airbnb defines a party as a gathering that occurs at an Airbnb listing and "causes significant disruption to neighbors and the surrounding community," according to a company rep. To determine violations, the company considers whether the gathering is an open-invite one, and whether it involves excessive noise, trash, visitors, parking issues for neighbors, and other factors. Banerjee joined the company's trust and safety team in May 2020 and now runs that group. In her short time at the company, she's overseen a ban on high-risk reservations by users under age 25, a pilot program for anti-party AI in Australia, heightened defenses on holiday weekends, a host insurance policy worth millions of dollars, and this summer, a global rollout of Airbnb's reservation screening system. Some measures have worked better than others, but the company says party reports dropped 55% between August 2020 and August 2022 -- and since the worldwide launch of Banerjee's system in May, more than 320,000 guests have been blocked or redirected from booking attempts on Airbnb. Overall, the company's business is getting stronger as the post-pandemic travel boom starts to fade. Last month, the company reported earnings that beat analysts' expectations on earnings per share and revenue, with the latter growing 18% year over year, despite fewer-than-expected numbers of nights and experiences booked via the platform.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A suspicious phone company is on the verge of having all its calls blocked by US-based telcos after being accused of ignoring orders to investigate and block robocalls. One Owl Telecom is a US-based gateway provider that routes phone calls from outside the U.S. to consumer phone companies such as Verizon. "Robocalls on One Owl's network apparently bombarded consumers without their consent with prerecorded messages about fictitious orders," the Federal Communications Commission said yesterday. On August 1, the FCC sent One Owl a Notification of Suspected Illegal Robocall Traffic (PDF) ordering it to investigate robocall traffic identified by USTelecom's Industry Traceback Group, block all of the identified traffic within 14 days, and "continue to block the identified gateway traffic as well as substantially similar traffic on an ongoing basis." One Owl apparently hasn't taken any of the required steps, the FCC said yesterday. "One Owl never responded, and the [FCC Enforcement] Bureau is not aware of any measures One Owl has taken to comply with the Notice," an FCC order said. Blocking robocall traffic from companies like One Owl is a bit like playing whack-a-mole. The FCC said it previously took enforcement actions "against two other entities to whom One Owl is closely related: Illum Telecommunication Limited and One Eye LLC. While operating under different corporate names, these entities have shared personnel, IP addresses, customers, and a penchant for disregarding FCC rules." If One Owl doesn't provide an adequate response within 14 days, all phone companies receiving calls from it "will then be required to block and cease accepting all traffic received from One Owl beginning 30 days after release of the Final Determination Order," the FCC said. "One Owl faces a simple choice -- comply or lose access to U.S. communications networks," FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan Egal said in a press release.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At its fall hardware event Wednesday, Amazon revealed an all-new Alexa voice assistant powered by its new Alexa large language model. The Verge reports: According to Dave Limp, Amazon's current SVP of devices and services, this new Alexa can understand conversational phrases and respond appropriately, interpret context more effectively, and complete multiple requests from one command. In an interview with The Verge ahead of the event, Limp explained that the new Alexa LLM "is a true generalizable large language model that's very optimized for the Alexa use case; it's not what you find with a Bard or ChatGPT or any of these things." However, this all-new Alexa isn't being unleashed everywhere, on everyone, all at once. The company is rolling it out slowly through a preview program "in the coming months" -- and only in the US. Clearly, there have been lessons learned from the missteps of Microsoft and Google, and Amazon is proceeding with caution. "When you connect an LLM to the real world, you want to minimize hallucinations -- and while we think we have the right systems in place ... there is no substitute for putting it out in the real world," says Limp. If you want to be notified when you can join the preview, tell your Echo device, "Alexa, let's chat," and your interest will be registered. Unsurprisingly, this superpowered Alexa may not always be free. Limp said that while Alexa, as it is today, will remain free, "the idea of a superhuman assistant that can supercharge your smart home, and more, work complex tasks on your behalf, could provide enough utility that we will end up charging something for it down the road."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yelp is releasing a new index that tracks every U.S. establishment it's ever caught engaging in "suspicious" activity to influence its reviews. Engadget reports: [T]he index is the first time the company has offered a single place where users can find a historical record of every business that's ever been subject to such a warning as well as a current list of businesses with active alerts on their pages. For Yelp, the index is both its latest move in a long-running war on fake reviews, as well as a nod to a changing regulatory environment in which fake reviews are attracting increasing scrutiny from regulators.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: When HashiCorp announced it was changing its Terraform license in August, it set off a firestorm in the open source community, and actually represented an existential threat to startups that were built on top of the popular open source project. The community went into action and within weeks they had written a manifesto, and soon after that launched an official fork called OpenTF. Today, that group went a step further when the Linux Foundation announced OpenTofu, the official name for the Terraform fork, which will live forever under the auspices of the foundation as an open source project. At the same time, the project announced it would be applying for entry into the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). "OpenTofu is an open and community-driven response to Terraform's recently announced license change from a Mozilla Public License v2.0 (MPLv2) to a Business Source License v1.1 providing everyone with a reliable, open source alternative under a neutral governance model," the foundation said in a statement. The name is deliberately playful says Yevgeniy (Jim) Brikman from the OpenTofu founding team, who is also co-founder of Gruntwork. "I'm glad your reaction was to laugh. That's a good thing. We're trying to keep things a little more humorous," Brikman told TechCrunch, but the group is dead serious when it comes to building an open fork. [...] "The first thing was to get an alpha release out there. So you can go to the OpenTofu website and download OpenTofu and start using it and trying it out," he said. "Then the next thing is a stable release. That's coming in the very near future, but there's work to do. Once you have a stable release, people can start using it. Then we can start growing adoption, and once we start growing adoption, some of the big players will start stepping in when some of the big players start stepping in other big players will start stepping in as well."Read more of this story at Slashdot.