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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Best Buy is set to post its tenth consecutive quarter of sales decline on Thursday when the U.S. electronics retailer reports quarterly results, as spending on big-ticket electronics remains pressured despite easing inflation. Although results from big-box retailers Walmart and Target indicate that consumers have resumed spending on less-expensive discretionary items such as apparel and accessories, they are still hesitant to go for TVs and washing machines. UPDATE 5/30/24: Best Buy's quarterly profit exceeded Wall Street estimates due to improved demand in its computing category, cost-saving efforts, and a successful membership program, leading to a 10% rise in shares. "Demand for artificial intelligence-enabled laptops as well as higher-end televisions is helping Best Buy regain lost ground on sales in the country as consumers look to upgrade or replace their gadgets after more than two years of restraint on spending on electronics," reports Reuters. "The company is also banking on the launch of Microsoft's AI-powered Copilot+ PCs, which are expected to go on sale on June 18." "Best Buy CEO Corie Barry said on a post-earnings call that the company expects to have more than 40% of the product assortment at launch exclusive to the company. The company has also benefited from people signing up for its two-tiered membership program, which it refreshed last year, helping the top electronics retailer in the United States retain shoppers and drive better margins."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

David Snow reports via Cult of Mac: A new report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) shows Apple News+ growing its subscription rate about four times as fast as major news sites are. CIRP showed Apple increased its News+ subscriptions in the United States from 15% to 24% between 2020 to 2024, a 9% increase. In that same period, The New York Times and The Washington Post managed a 2% bump apiece and The Wall Street Journal managed a 3% increase. The results come from data measuring how many Apple product buyers say they subscribe to the News+ service. CIRP also cited a report indicating that the Apple News+ partnership program is increasingly becoming a lifeline for news websites losing revenue, according to major publishers. And as far as the growth of Apple News+ subscription growth is concerned, it may keep growing as long as the user install base for devices keeps growing. "One-quarter of the U.S. base of Apple customers represents tens of millions of users, an enormous audience relative to what individual media outlets can expect on their own," CIRP noted.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With the help of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of astronomers discovered a galaxy at a redshift of 14.32, indicating it existed just 290 million years post-Big Bang. In a NASA release today, Stefano Carniani from Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy, and Kevin Hainline from the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, described how this source was found and what its unique properties tell us about galaxy formation: "The instruments on Webb were designed to find and understand the earliest galaxies, and in the first year of observations as part of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), we found many hundreds of candidate galaxies from the first 650 million years after the big bang. In early 2023, we discovered a galaxy in our data that had strong evidence of being above a redshift of 14, which was very exciting, but there were some properties of the source that made us wary. The source was surprisingly bright, which we wouldn't expect for such a distant galaxy, and it was very close to another galaxy such that the two appeared to be part of one larger object. When we observed the source again in October 2023 as part of the JADES Origins Field, new imaging data obtained with Webb's narrower NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) filters pointed even more toward the high-redshift hypothesis. We knew we needed a spectrum, as whatever we would learn would be of immense scientific importance, either as a new milestone in Webb's investigation of the early universe or as a confounding oddball of a middle-aged galaxy. In January 2024, NIRSpec observed this galaxy, JADES-GS-z14-0, for almost ten hours, and when the spectrum was first processed, there was unambiguous evidence that the galaxy was indeed at a redshift of 14.32, shattering the previous most-distant galaxy record (z = 13.2 of JADES-GS-z13-0). Seeing this spectrum was incredibly exciting for the whole team, given the mystery surrounding the source. This discovery was not just a new distance record for our team; the most important aspect of JADES-GS-z14-0 was that at this distance, we know that this galaxy must be intrinsically very luminous. From the images, the source is found to be over 1,600-light years across, proving that the light we see is coming mostly from young stars and not from emission near a growing supermassive black hole. This much starlight implies that the galaxy is several hundreds of millions of times the mass of the Sun! This raises the question: How can nature make such a bright, massive, and large galaxy in less than 300 million years? The data reveal other important aspects of this astonishing galaxy. We see that the color of the galaxy is not as blue as it could be, indicating that some of the light is reddened by dust, even at these very early times. JADES researcher Jake Helton of Steward Observatory and the University of Arizona also identified that JADES-GS-z14-0 was detected at longer wavelengths with Webb's MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), a remarkable achievement considering its distance. The MIRI observation covers wavelengths of light that were emitted in the visible-light range, which are redshifted out of reach for Webb's near-infrared instruments. Jake's analysis indicates that the brightness of the source implied by the MIRI observation is above what would be extrapolated from the measurements by the other Webb instruments, indicating the presence of strong ionized gas emission in the galaxy in the form of bright emission lines from hydrogen and oxygen. The presence of oxygen so early in the life of this galaxy is a surprise and suggests that multiple generations of very massive stars had already lived their lives before we observed the galaxy. All of these observations, together, tell us that JADES-GS-z14-0 is not like the types of galaxies that have been predicted by theoretical models and computer simulations to exist in the very early universe. Given the observed brightness of the source, we can forecast how it might grow over cosmic time, and so far we have not found any suitable analogs from the hundreds of other galaxies we've observed at high redshift in our survey. Given the relatively small region of the sky that we searched to find JADES-GS-z14-0, its discovery has profound implications for the predicted number of bright galaxies we see in the early universe, as discussed in another concurrent JADES study (Robertson et al., recently accepted). It is likely that astronomers will find many such luminous galaxies, possibly at even earlier times, over the next decade with Webb. We're thrilled to see the extraordinary diversity of galaxies that existed at Cosmic Dawn!Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The slashing of pollution from shipping in 2020 led to a big "termination shock" that is estimated have pushed the rate of global heating to double the long-term average, according to research. Until 2020, global shipping used dirty, high-sulphur fuels that produced air pollution. The pollution particles blocked sunlight and helped form more clouds, thereby curbing global heating. But new regulations at the start of 2020 slashed the sulphur content of fuels by more than 80%. The new analysis calculates that the subsequent drop in pollution particles has significantly increased the amount of heat being trapped at the Earth's surface that drives the climate crisis. The researchers said the sharp ending of decades of shipping pollution was an inadvertent geoengineering experiment, revealing new information about its effectiveness and risks. Dr Tianle Yuan, at the University of Maryland, US, who led the study, said the estimated 0.2 watts per sq meter of additional heat trapped over the oceans after the pollution cut was "a big number, and it happened in one year, so it's a big shock to the system." "We will experience about double the warming rate compared to the long-term average" since 1880 as a result, he said. The heating effect of the pollution cut is expected to last about seven years. The research, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, combined satellite observations of sulphur pollution and computer modeling to calculate the impact of the cut. It found the short-term shock was equivalent to 80% of the total extra heating the planet has seen since 2020 from longer-term factors such as rising fossil-fuel emissions. The scientists used relatively simple climate models to estimate how much this would drive up average global temperatures at the surface of the Earth, finding a rise of about 0.16C over seven years. This is a large rise and the same margin by which 2023 beat the temperature record compared with the previous hottest year. However, other scientists think the temperature impact of the pollution cut will be significantly lower due to feedbacks in the climate system, which are included in the most sophisticated climate models. The results of this type of analysis are expected later in 2024. [...] The new analysis indicates that this type of geoengineering would reduce temperatures, but would also bring serious risks. These include the sharp temperature rise when the pumping of aerosols stopped -- the termination shock -- and also potential changes to global precipitation patterns, which could disrupt the monsoon rains that billions of people depend on. "We should definitely do research on this, because it's a tool for situations where we really want to cool down the Earth temporarily," like an emergency brake, said Dr Gavin Schmidt, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "But this is not going to be a long-term solution, because it doesn't address the root cause of global warming," which is emissions from fossil fuel burning.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Now included in Amazon Prime is free delivery via Grubhub. According to The Verge, "Amazon is now embedding Grubhub into Amazon.com and the Amazon Shopping app, and Amazon Prime customers paying $139 per year for Amazon Prime will now pay $0 for food delivery fees on orders of $12 or more, among other benefits." From the report: Amazon had previously offered Prime customers a free one-year subscription to GrubHub Plus, but that one auto-renewed at $129 per year. Now, it's a permanent part of the Amazon Prime subscription. Amazon says the ordering experience is "identical" to ordering from Grubhub's website or app and is accessible to all customers, even without Prime. Amazon and Grubhub say they'll continue collaborating on other promotions, including food pairings and promotions like the limited Nuka burger for the Fallout series premiere. Prime members can also get $5 off their Grubhub meal of $25 or more made through Amazon with code PRIME5 (valid through June 2nd). What will likely not be included in Amazon's Prime subscription is Alexa's upcoming AI overhaul. "Amazon is upgrading its decade-old Alexa voice assistant with generative AI and plans to charge a monthly subscription fee to offset the cost of the technology," CNBC reported earlier this month. Unfortunately, sources said it will not be included in the $139-per-year Prime offering.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Computer hardware manufacturer Cooler Master has confirmed that it suffered a data breach on May 19 after a threat actor breached the company's website, stealing the Fanzone member information of 500,000 customers. BleepingComputer reports: [A] threat actor known as 'Ghostr' told us they hacked the company's Fanzone website on May 18 and downloaded its linked databases. Cooler Master's Fanzone site is used to register a product's warranty, request an RMA, or open support tickets, requiring customers to fill in personal data, such as names, email addresses, addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, and physical addresses. Ghostr said they were able to download 103 GB of data during the Fanzone breach, including the customer information of over 500,000 customers. The threat actor also shared data samples, allowing BleepingComputer to confirm with numerous customers listed in the breach that their data was accurate and that they recently requested support or an RMA from Cooler Master. Other data in the samples included product information, employee information, and information regarding emails with vendors. The threat actor claimed to have partial credit card information, but BleepingComputer could not find this data in the data samples. The threat actor now says they will sell the leaked data on hacking forums but has not disclosed the price. Cooler Master said in a statement to BleepingComputer: "We can confirm on May 19, Cooler Master experienced a data breach involving unauthorized access to customer data. We immediately alerted the authorities, who are actively investigating the breach. Additionally, we have engaged top security experts to address the breach and implement new measures to prevent future incidents. These experts have successfully secured our systems and enhanced our overall security protocols. We are in the process of notifying affected customers directly and advising them on next steps. We are committed to providing timely updates and support to our customers throughout this process."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to CNBC, Twitch is expected to terminate all members of its Safety Advisory Council on Friday. "The council is a resource of nine industry experts, streamers and moderators who consulted on trust and safety issues related to children on Twitch, nudity, banned users and more," notes the report. From the report: The Amazon-owned game-streaming company formed its Safety Advisory Council in May 2020 to "enhance Twitch's approach to issues of trust and safety" on the platform and guide decisions, according to a company webpage. The council advised Twitch on "drafting new policies and policy updates," "developing products and features to improve safety and moderation" and "protecting the interests of marginalized groups," per the webpage. For four years, the group advised the company on "hate raids" on marginalized groups and nudity policies, among other things. But in the afternoon of May 6, council members were called into a meeting after receiving an email that all existing contracts would conclude on May 31, 2024, and that they would not receive payment for the second half of 2024. The council was not made up of Twitch employees, but rather advisors, including Dr. Sameer Hinduja, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center; Emma LlansA, director of the Center for Democracy and Technology's Free Expression Project; and Dr. T.L. Taylor, co-founder and director of AnyKey, which advocates for diversity and inclusion in gaming. "Looking ahead, the Safety Advisory Council will primarily be made up of individuals who serve as Twitch Ambassadors," the email, viewed by CNBC, stated. In a formal notice in the same email, the company wrote, "Pursuant to section 5(a) of the SAC advisor Agreement, we are writing to provide you with notice of termination... This means that the second 2024 payment won't be issued." Twitch Ambassadors are users of the streaming platform "chosen specifically because of the positive impact they've contributed to the Twitch community," according to the company's website. Payment depended on the length of the contract, but council members were paid between $10,000 and $20,000 per 12-month period, according to a source familiar with the contracts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: TikTok is working on a clone of its recommendation algorithm for its 170 million U.S. users that may result in a version that operates independently of its Chinese parent and be more palatable to American lawmakers who want to ban it, according to sources with direct knowledge of the efforts. The work on splitting the source code ordered by TikTok's Chinese parent ByteDance late last year predated a bill to force a sale of TikTok's U.S. operations that began gaining steam in Congress this year. The bill was signed into law in April. The sources, who were granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the short-form video sharing app, said that once the code is split, it could lay the groundwork for a divestiture of the U.S. assets, although there are no current plans to do so. The company has previously said it had no plans to sell the U.S. assets and such a move would be impossible. [...] In the past few months, hundreds of ByteDance and TikTok engineers in both the U.S. and China were ordered to begin separating millions of lines of code, sifting through the company's algorithm that pairs users with videos to their liking. The engineers' mission is to create a separate code base that is independent of systems used by ByteDance's Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, while eliminating any information linking to Chinese users, two sources with direct knowledge of the project told Reuters. [...] The complexity of the task that the sources described to Reuters as tedious "dirty work" underscores the difficulty of splitting the underlying code that binds TikTok's U.S. operations to its Chinese parent. The work is expected to take over a year to complete, these sources said. [...] At one point, TikTok executives considered open sourcing some of TikTok's algorithm, or making it available to others to access and modify, to demonstrate technological transparency, the sources said. Executives have communicated plans and provided updates on the code-splitting project during a team all-hands, in internal planning documents and on its internal communications system, called Lark, according to one of the sources who attended the meeting and another source who has viewed the messages. Compliance and legal issues involved with determining what parts of the code can be carried over to TikTok are complicating the work, according to one source. Each line of code has to be reviewed to determine if it can go into the separate code base, the sources added. The goal is to create a new source code repository for a recommendation algorithm serving only TikTok U.S. Once completed, TikTok U.S. will run and maintain its recommendation algorithm independent of TikTok apps in other regions and its Chinese version Douyin. That move would cut it off from the massive engineering development power of its parent company in Beijing, the sources said. If TikTok completes the work to split the recommendation engine from its Chinese counterpart, TikTok management is aware of the risk that TikTok U.S. may not be able to deliver the same level of performance as the existing TikTok because it is heavily reliant on ByteDance's engineers in China to update and maintain the code base to maximize user engagement, sources added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The free online tax filing program known as IRS Direct File will be made permanent for the 2025 tax season, with all 50 states and Washington D.C. invited to participate. Axios reports: Treasury announced earlier this month that more than 140,000 people participated in the Direct File pilot program in a dozen states claiming more than $90 million in refunds. The pilot exceeded its 100,000-person target during this past tax season. "President Biden is committed to saving Americans time and money and ensuring families receive the tax benefits they're owed," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement. "Providing a free tool to all Americans who want the option to file directly with the IRS is key to achieving those goals." The pilot program targeted people with simple tax returns based on W-2 forms. In her remarks today Yellen said that over the next few years they will expand Direct File to support more situations. The announcement from the Treasury Department comes a week after the IRS' Free File program was extended through 2029. "Free file is where some of your tax dollars go to create the bridges between 3rd parties and the IRS filing system," notes Slashdot reader slack_justyb. "Direct file is the taxpayer to IRS direct system that we got a taste of this year. We want to keep on the direct file path, but the free file path helps breakup the larger entities out there that lobby hard to keep the return-free system from ever getting started."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you contact Spotify's customer service with a valid receipt, the company will refund your Car Thing purchase. That's the latest development reported by Engadget. When Spotify first announced that it would brick every Car Thing device on December 9, 2024, it said that it wouldn't offer owners any subscription credit or automatic refund. From the report: Spotify has taken some heat for its announcement last week that it will brick every Car Thing device on December 9, 2024. The company described its decision as "part of our ongoing efforts to streamline our product offerings" (read: cut costs) and that it lets Spotify "focus on developing new features and enhancements that will ultimately provide a better experience to all Spotify users." TechCrunch reports that Gen Z users on TikTok have expressed their frustration in videos, while others have complained directed toward Spotify in DMs on X (Twitter) and directly through customer support. Some users claimed Spotify's customer service agents only offered several months of free Premium access, while others were told nobody was receiving refunds. It isn't clear if any of them contacted them after last Friday when it shifted gears on refunds. Others went much further. Billboard first reported on a class-action lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on May 28. The suit accuses Spotify of misleading Car Thing customers by selling a $90 product that would soon be obsolete without offering refunds, which sounds like a fair enough point. It's worth noting that, according to Spotify, it began offering the refunds last week, while the lawsuit was only filed on Tuesday. If the company's statement about refunds starting on May 24 is accurate, the refunds aren't a direct response to the legal action. (Although it's possible the company began offering them in anticipation of lawsuits.) Editor's note: As a disgruntled Car Thing owner myself, I can confirm that Spotify is approving refund requests. You'll just have to play the waiting game to get through to a Spotify Advisor and their "team" that approves these requests. You may have better luck emailing customer service directly at support@spotify.com.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Sam Altman-led OpenAI said on Thursday it had disrupted five covert influence operations that sought to use its artificial intelligence models for "deceptive activity" across the internet. The artificial intelligence firm said the threat actors used its AI models to generate short comments, longer articles in a range of languages, made up names and bios for social media accounts over the last three months. These campaigns, which included threat actors from Russia, China, Iran and Israel, also focused on issues including Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the conflict in Gaza, the Indian elections, politics in Europe and the United States, among others. The deceptive operations were an "attempt to manipulate public opinion or influence political outcomes," OpenAI said in a statement. [...] The deceptive campaigns have not benefited from increased audience engagement or reach due to the AI firm's services, OpenAI said in the statement. OpenAI said these operations did not solely use AI-generated material but included manually written texts or memes copied from across the internet. In a separate announcement on Wednesday, Meta said it had found "likely AI-generated" content used deceptively across its platforms, "including comments praising Israel's handling of the war in Gaza published below posts from global news organizations and U.S. lawmakers," reports Reuters.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Framework, a company known for its modular laptops, has announced a fourth round of iterative updates and upgrade options for its Framework Laptop 13. The upgrades include motherboards and pre-built laptops featuring new Intel Meteor Lake Core Ultra processors with Intel Arc dedicated GPUs, lower prices for AMD Ryzen 7000 and 13th-gen Intel editions, and a new display with a higher resolution and refresh rate. The Core Ultra boards come with three CPU options, with prices starting at $899 for a pre-built or DIY model. Upgrading from an older Intel Framework board requires an upgrade to DDR5 RAM, and Framework charges $40 for every 8GB of DDR5-5600, which is above market rates. The new 13.5-inch display has a resolution of 2880x1920, a 120 Hz refresh rate, and costs $130 more than the standard display.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft seems to be concerned about some of OpenAI's business dealings. From a report: Satya Nadella recently met with Sam Altman to discuss an apparent deal between OpenAI and Apple, The Information reported [hard-paywalled]. According to the outlet, the OpenAI CEO recently reached an agreement with the iPhone maker to incorporate some OpenAI services into Apple products. Nadella was reportedly concerned about the potential impact of a deal on Microsoft's product ambitions, per the report. Apple was said to be considering both Google and OpenAI for the deal, which could be worth billions. If OpenAI has indeed reached an agreement with Apple, it would be a much-needed win for Altman. The tech boss has faced heightened scrutiny after former employees and board members publicly criticized him. Helen Toner, a former OpenAI director, recently accused Altman of lying to the board "multiple" times and "withholding information."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The New York governor, Kathy Hochul, plans to introduce a bill banning smartphones in schools, the latest in a series of legislative moves aimed at online child safety by New York's top official. From a report: "I have seen these addictive algorithms pull in young people, literally capture them and make them prisoners in a space where they are cut off from human connection, social interaction and normal classroom activity," she said. Hochul said she would launch the bill later this year and take it up in New York's next legislative session, which begins in January 2025. If passed, schoolchildren will be allowed to carry simple phones that cannot access the internet but do have the capability to send texts, which has been a sticking point for parents. She did not offer specifics on enforcing the prohibition. "Parents are very anxious about mass shootings in school," she said. "Parents want the ability to have some form of connection in an emergency situation." The smartphone-ban bill will follow two others Hochul is pushing that outline measures to safeguard children's privacy online and limit their access to certain features of social networks.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Cloud faced a major setback earlier this month when it accidentally deleted the account of UniSuper, an Australian pension fund managing $135 billion in assets, causing a two-week outage for its 647,000 members. Google Cloud has since completed an internal review of the incident and published a blog post detailing the findings. ArsTechnica: Google has a "TL;DR" at the top of the post, and it sounds like a Google employee got an input wrong. "During the initial deployment of a Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) Private Cloud for the customer using an internal tool, there was an inadvertent misconfiguration of the GCVE service by Google operators due to leaving a parameter blank. This had the unintended and then unknown consequence of defaulting the customer's GCVE Private Cloud to a fixed term, with automatic deletion at the end of that period. The incident trigger and the downstream system behavior have both been corrected to ensure that this cannot happen again."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Some of the world's most profitable -- and most polluting corporations -- have invested in carbon offset projects that have fundamental failings and are "probably junk," suggesting industry claims about greenhouse gas reductions were likely overblown, according to new analysis. From a report: Delta, Gucci, Volkswagen, ExxonMobil, Disney, easyJet and Nestle are among the major corporations to have purchased millions of carbon credits from climate friendly projects that are "likely junk" or worthless when it comes to offsetting their greenhouse gas emissions, according to a classification system developed by Corporate Accountability, a non-profit, transnational corporate watchdog. Some of these companies no longer use CO2 offsets amid mounting evidence that carbon trading do not lead to the claimed emissions cuts -- and in some cases may even cause environmental and social harms. However, the multibillion-dollar voluntary carbon trading industry is still championed by many corporations including oil and gas majors, airlines, automakers, tourism, fast-food and beverage brands, fashion houses, banks and tech firms as the bedrock of climate action -- a way of claiming to reduce their greenhouse gas footprint while continuing to rely on fossil fuels and unsustainable supply chains. Yet, for 33 of the top 50 corporate buyers, more than a third of their entire offsets portfolio is "likely junk" -- suggesting at least some claims about carbon neutrality and emission reductions have been exaggerated according to the analysis. The fundamental failings leading to a "likely junk" ranking include whether emissions cuts would have happened anyway, as is often the case with large hydroelectric dams, or if the emissions were just shifted elsewhere, a common issue in forestry offset projects.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mishaal Rahman, reporting for AndroidAuthority: Google just unveiled its latest Android Feature Drop earlier today, and it's one of the most exciting feature drops I can remember. The two features I'm most excited about are part of Play Services's new Cross-Device Services module, which brings some Apple Continuity-style magic to your Android devices. For example, the new Instant Hotspot feature lets you connect your Android tablet or Chromebook to your phone's hotspot with a single tap. Instant Hotspot works with phones running Android 11 or newer, with one notable exception: Samsung devices. According to Google, Instant Hotspot will not be available on any Samsung devices. [...] It's not clear exactly why Instant Hotspot isn't available on Samsung devices. The feature is part of Google Play Services, which is available on all Google-certified Android devices, including those from Samsung. It's likely that Samsung opted out of this particular feature, perhaps to encourage users to buy devices within their ecosystem.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple prioritizes device durability over easier repairs, according to John Ternus, the company's head of hardware engineering, in a recent interview with YouTuber MKBHD. "It's objectively better for the customer to have that reliability," Ternus stated, adding that it is "ultimately better for the planet" due to significantly lower failure rates. Apple tests over 10,000 units of each product before release and incorporates real-world concerns into its testing suite.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A widespread outage affecting over 600,000 routers connected to Windstream's Kinetic broadband service left customers without internet access for several days last October, according to a report by security firm Lumen Technologies' Black Lotus Labs. The incident, dubbed "Pumpkin Eclipse," is believed to be the result of a deliberate attack using commodity malware known as Chalubo to overwrite router firmware. Windstream, which has about 1.6 million subscribers in 18 states, has not provided an explanation for the outage. The company sent replacement routers to affected customers, many of whom reported significant financial losses due to the disruption. ArsTechnica adds: After learning of the mass router outage, Black Lotus began querying the Censys search engine for the affected router models. A one-week snapshot soon revealed that one specific ASN experienced a 49 percent drop in those models just as the reports began. This amounted to the disconnection of at least 179,000 ActionTec routers and more than 480,000 routers sold by Sagemcom. The constant connecting and disconnecting of routers to any ISP complicates the tracking process, because it's impossible to know if a disappearance is the result of the normal churn or something more complicated. Black Lotus said that a conservative estimate is that at least 600,000 of the disconnections it tracked were the result of Chaluba infecting the devices and, from there, permanently wiping the firmware they ran on. After identifying the ASN, Black Lotus discovered a complex multi-path infection mechanism for installing Chaluba on the routers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The staggering electricity demand needed to power next-generation technology is forcing the US to rely on yesterday's fuel source: coal. From a report: Retirement dates for the country's ageing fleet of coal-fired power plants are being pushed back as concerns over grid reliability and expectations of soaring electricity demand force operators to keep capacity online. The shift in phasing out these facilities underscores a growing dilemma facing the Biden administration as the US race to lead in artificial intelligence and manufacturing drives an unprecedented growth in power demand that clashes with its decarbonisation targets. The International Energy Agency estimates the AI application ChatGPT uses nearly 10 times as much electricity as Google Search. An estimated 54 gigawatts of US coal powered generation assets, about 4 per cent of the country's total electricity capacity, is expected to be retired by the end of the decade, a 40 per cent downward revision from last year, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights, citing reliability concerns. "You can't replace the fossil plants fast enough to meet the demand," said Joe Craft, chief executive of Alliance Resource Partners, one of the largest US coal producers. "In order to be a first mover on AI, we're going to need to embrace maintaining what we have." Operators slowing down retirements include Alliant Energy, which last week delayed plans to convert its Wisconsin coal-fired plant to gas from 2025 to 2028. Earlier this year, FirstEnergy announced it was scrapping its 2030 target to phase out coal, citing "resource adequacy concerns." Further reading: Data Centers Could Use 9% of US Electricity By 2030, Research Institute Says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has confirmed the authenticity of 2,500 leaked internal documents detailing the company's data collection practices. The documents offer insights into Google's closely guarded search ranking algorithm. However, Google cautioned against making inaccurate assumptions based on incomplete information. The Verge adds: The leaked material suggests that Google collects and potentially uses data that company representatives have said does not contribute to ranking webpages in Google Search, like clicks, Chrome user data, and more. The thousands of pages of documents act as a repository of information for Google employees, but it's not clear what pieces of data detailed are actually used to rank search content -- the information could be out of date, used strictly for training purposes, or collected but not used for Search specifically. The documents also do not reveal how different elements are weighted in search, if at all.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alphabet's Google and augmented reality startup Magic Leap are forming a strategic technology partnership and working on building immersive experiences that blend the physical and digital worlds. From a report: Magic Leap said in a blog post on Thursday that the two companies have agreed to a partnership. While short on details, the announcement adds to signals that Google may be plotting a return to the market for augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) technologies that it so far has largely yielded to rivals Meta and Apple. The partnership would combine Florida-based Magic Leap's expertise in optics and device manufacturing with Google's technology platforms, Magic Leap said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Yesterday, Amazon failed to convince a US district court to dismiss the Federal Trade Commission's lawsuit targeting the tech giant's alleged history of tricking people into signing up for Prime. The FTC has alleged that Amazon "tricked, coerced, and manipulated consumers into subscribing to Amazon Prime," a court order said, failing to get informed consent by designing a murky sign-up process. And to keep subscriptions high, Amazon also "did not provide simple mechanisms for these subscribers to cancel their Prime memberships," the FTC alleged. Instead, Amazon forced "consumers intending to cancel to navigate a four-page, six-click, fifteen-option cancellation process." In their motion to dismiss, Amazon outright disputed these characterizations of its business, insisting its enrollment process was clear, its cancellation process was simple, and none of its executives could be held responsible for failing to fix these processes when "accidental" sign-ups became widespread. Amazon defended its current practices, arguing that some of its Prime disclosures "align with practices that the FTC encourages in its guidance documents." But the judge apparently did not find Amazon's denials completely persuasive. Viewing the FTC's complaint "in the light most favorable to the FTC," Judge John Chun concluded that "the allegations sufficiently indicate that Amazon had actual or constructive knowledge that its Prime sign-up and cancellation flows were misleading consumers." In his order (PDF), Chun also denied individual motions to dismiss from Amazon executives Russell Grandinetti, Neil Lindsay, and Jamil Ghani, who oversaw Prime operations. Executives had urged the court to dismiss the FTC's claims against them. They argued that the FTC "singled them out 'for an 'unprecedented sanction'" when the agency had "only recently started prosecuting companies for using 'dark patterns'" under Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act (ROSCA) and the FTC Act. They claimed that the FTC never alerted them to any wrongdoing before filing the lawsuit, so how could they have known they were violating the law? According to Chun, however, the FTC sufficiently alleged that each of these executives knew they were violating consumer protection laws when prioritizing profits over eliminating dark patterns triggering "accidental" or "nonconsensual" Prime sign-ups. Chun explained that executives may be "personally liable for corporate violations of the FTC Act if the individual 'participated directly in, or had the authority to control, the unlawful acts or practices at issue.'" For example, when Lindsay -- who in 2016 had the "most responsibility for the Prime subscription program" -- was "asked about Amazon's use of dark patterns during the Prime enrollment process," Lindsay justified the dark patterns. "Lindsay explained that once consumers become Prime members -- even unknowingly -- they will see what a great program it is and remain members, so Amazon is 'okay' with the situation," Chun's order said. And when Grandinetti, who "oversaw the Prime subscription program" in 2018, was told that the sign-up process and auto-renew feature frustrated customers, he "vetoed any changes that would reduce enrollment." Because executives seemingly prioritized profits over reducing customer friction, the FTC alleged that reasonable customers got sucked into Prime without their consent. Sometimes customers understandably got confused by the "discrepancy in size, location, and color" of Amazon's disclosures, Chun suggested. Other times, confusion struck when Amazon tried to upsell customers on Prime at checkout -- pairing their enrollment with their other shopping experience.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A survey of 12,000 people in six countries -- Argentina, Denmark, France, Japan, the UK, and the USA -- found that very few people are regularly using AI products like ChatGPT. Unsurprisingly, the group bucking the trend are young people ages 18 to 24. The BBC reports: Dr Richard Fletcher, the report's lead author, told the BBC there was a "mismatch" between the "hype" around AI and the "public interest" in it. The study examined views on generative AI tools -- the new generation of products that can respond to simple text prompts with human-sounding answers as well as images, audio and video. "Large parts of the public are not particularly interested in generative AI, and 30% of people in the UK say they have not heard of any of the most prominent products, including ChatGPT," Dr Fletcher said. This research attempted to gauge what the public thinks, finding:- The majority expect generative AI to have a large impact on society in the next five years, particularly for news, media and science- Most said they think generative AI will make their own lives better- When asked whether generative AI will make society as a whole better or worse, people were generally more pessimistic In more detail, the study found: - While there is widespread awareness of generative AI overall, a sizable minority of the public -- between 20% and 30% of the online population in the six countries surveyed -- have not heard of any of the most popular AI tools.- In terms of use, ChatGPT is by far the most widely used generative AI tool in the six countries surveyed, two or three times more widespread than the next most widely used products, Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot.- Younger people are much more likely to use generative AI products on a regular basis. Averaging across all six countries, 56% of 18-24s say they have used ChatGPT at least once, compared to 16% of those aged 55 and over.- Roughly equal proportions across six countries say that they have used generative AI for getting information (24%) as creating various kinds of media, including text but also audio, code, images, and video (28%).- Just 5% across the six countries covered say that they have used generative AI to get the latest news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last August, PayPal became the first major financial company to roll out a stablecoin. Labeled PayPal USD, or PYUSD, the coin was issued on the Ethereum blockchain and "fully backed by U.S. dollar deposits, short-term Treasuries and similar cash equivalents." Now, the financial company is adding Solana as an option, "making PayPal's stablecoin faster and cheaper to use." "The Solana blockchain is known for processing massive amounts of transactions at high speeds with extremely low costs, providing significant benefits for commerce use cases," says the company in a press release. "As the most used blockchain for stablecoin transfers, according to data from blockchain analytics platform Artemis, Solana has emerged as the leading blockchain to run tokenized transactions and is ideal for PYUSD as it continues to be used for payment use cases."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: When used to generate power or move vehicles, fossil fuels kill people. Particulates and ozone resulting from fossil fuel burning cause direct health impacts, while climate change will act indirectly. Regardless of the immediacy, premature deaths and illness prior to death are felt through lost productivity and the cost of treatments. Typically, you see the financial impacts quantified when the EPA issues new regulations, as the health benefits of limiting pollution typically dwarf the costs of meeting new standards. But some researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab have now done similar calculations -- but focusing on the impact of renewable energy. Wind and solar, by displacing fossil fuel use, are acting as a form of pollution control and so should produce similar economic benefits. Do they ever. The researchers find that, in the U.S., wind and solar have health and climate benefits of over $100 for every Megawatt-hour produced, for a total of a quarter-trillion dollars in just the last four years. This dwarfs the cost of the electricity they generate and the total of the subsidies they received. [...] As a result, the environmental and health benefits of wind in 2022 are estimated as being $143 for each Mw-hr, with solar providing $100/Mw-hr in benefits. Given the amount of power generated by wind and solar that year, that works out to a total of $62 billion and $12 billion, respectively. For the entire 2019-2022 period, they total up to $250 billion. Due to the uncertainties in various estimates, the researchers estimate that the real value for wind is somewhere between $91 and $183 per Mw-hr, with solar having a proportionate uncertainty. For comparison, they note that the unsubsidized costs of the electricity produced by wind and solar range from $20 to $60 per Mw-hr, depending on where the facility is sited. So, in some ways, the companies that own these plants are only receiving a very small fraction of the benefits of their operation. Wind and solar do receive subsidies, but even the most generous ones provided by the Inflation Reduction Act max out below $35/Mw-hr -- again, far less than the health and environmental benefits. The researchers note that most of these benefits (about 75 percent) come from the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. Still, the nitrogen and sulfur emissions reductions were also substantial: They displaced the equivalent of roughly 20 percent of the power sector's total emissions of these chemicals. That translates into avoiding about 1,400 premature deaths in 2022 alone. The researchers acknowledge a number of limitations to their work. "One big one is that they don't include distributed solar at all, meaning their totals for that form of production are a significant underestimate," reports Ars, noting that the Energy Information Agency estimates that, in the U.S., distributed solar accounts for over 30 percent of total solar production. "It also, as mentioned, doesn't account for the use of storage such as batteries, which are increasingly used to offset the tail-off in solar production in the evenings." "In addition, their work doesn't account for the intermittency of renewable power sources, which can sometimes result in the use of less efficient fossil fuel plants and so offset some of these benefits. The drop of wind and solar prices are also influencing decisions on what types of fossil fuel plants are getting built, disfavoring coal and increasing investments in natural gas plants that can respond quickly to changes in renewable output. Over the long term, this will result in additional benefits that can't be captured by this sort of short-term analysis." The study has been published in the journal Cell Reports Sustainability.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

schwit1 shares a report from NPR: When you first approach this bridge over Interstate 66 in northern Virginia, it may feel like you're driving on the wrong side of the road. Because, in a way, you are. "There were a lot of people who looked at me like I was a little nuts," says traffic engineer Gilbert Chlewicki, the inventor of this unconventional interchange. "Like, why are you putting me on the other side of the road?" Chlewicki agreed to meet at this intersection 35 miles west of Washington, D.C. to explain the workings of the diverging diamond interchange, as it's known. He was easy to spot, wearing a neon yellow vest for safety. As you enter the interchange, the right and left sides of the road cross over each other at a stop light. You are, in fact, driving on the left side of the road at this point. From there, left turns become a lot easier, because there's no oncoming traffic in the way. Instead of waiting for a signal, you get a free left turn. "When we do the cross-over to the left side of the road, that's when the left turns happen, so the left is very easy," says Chlewicki. That means diverging diamond interchanges can be both more efficient and safer than conventional intersections with left turn lanes. There are now more than 200 of them across the U.S., in more than 30 states. But at first, it wasn't easy to convince other traffic engineers. "Anything different is a hard sell," Chlewicki said. "Safety was the big question." In 2009, Missouri became the first state to install a diverging diamond interchange (DDI) at a congested intersection in Springfield. This new design quickly reduced traffic congestion and significantly improved safety, with crashes decreasing by 40-50%. However, drivers have mixed feelings about the design. Some, like school bus driver Logan Wilcox, feel it can be confusing and potentially dangerous for unfamiliar drivers. Others, like local driver Greg Peterson, praise it for improving traffic flow and reducing accidents.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Satellite-to-phones service provider AST SpaceMobile announced a deal with Verizon to provide remote coverage across the United States. "Verizon's deal effectively includes a $100 million raise for AST, as well, in the form of $65 million in commercial service prepayments and $35 million in debt via convertible notes," reports CNBC. "The companies said that $45 million of the prepayments 'are subject to certain conditions' such as needed regulatory approvals and signing of a definitive commercial agreement." Shares of AST jumped 69% in trading to close at $9.02 a share -- the largest single day rise for the company's stock since it went public in 2021. From the report: AST SpaceMobile is building satellites to provide broadband service to unmodified smartphones, in the nascent "direct-to-device" communications market. [...] The Verizon partnership follows a similar pattern to AT&T's work with AST. Back in January, AT&T was a co-debt investor in the company alongside Google and Vodafone. The companies then established the commercial agreement earlier this month, which "lays out in much more detail how we will ultimately offer service together," AST's Chief Strategy Officer Scott Wisniewski said in a statement to CNBC. [...] AST expects to launch its first five commercial satellites later this year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Michael Larabel reports via Phoronix: A massive uptick in traffic to Fedora's package mirrors is causing problems for the Linux distribution. Some five million additional systems have started putting additional strain on Fedora's mirror resources since March and appear to be coming from Amazon's cloud. Stephen Smoogen of Red Hat wrote a blog post today around 5+ million more EPEL-7 systems beginning in March. Fedora hosts the packaging mirrors for Extra Packages For Enterprise Linux (EPEL) to augment the package selection available on RHEL, CentOS, Amazon Linux, etc. The past three months now there has been a 5+ million surge in Fedora/EPEL traffic and it's placed a strain on the systems. It's about doubling the number of unique IPs connecting to the mirror system. The massive uptick in Fedora/EPEL activity puts additional pressure on Fedora web proxies for mirror data and then the mirrors themselves that tend to be volunteer run. Much of this new traffic is coming from the Amazon/AWS cloud.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes an op-ed from The Globe and Mail, written by Kate Robertson and Ron Deibert. Robertson is a senior research associate and Deibert is director at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab. From the piece: A federal cybersecurity bill, slated to advance through Parliament soon, contains secretive, encryption-breaking powers that the government has been loath to talk about. And they threaten the online security of everyone in Canada. Bill C-26 empowers government officials to secretly order telecommunications companies to install backdoors inside encrypted elements in Canada's networks. This could include requiring telcos to alter the 5G encryption standards that protect mobile communications to facilitate government surveillance. The government's decision to push the proposed law forward without amending it to remove this encryption-breaking capability has set off alarm bells that these new powers are a feature, not a bug. There are already many insecurities in today's networks, reaching down to the infrastructure layers of communication technology. The Signalling System No. 7, developed in 1975 to route phone calls, has become a major source of insecurity for cellphones. In 2017, the CBC demonstrated how hackers only needed a Canadian MP's cell number to intercept his movements, text messages and phone calls. Little has changed since: A 2023 Citizen Lab report details pervasive vulnerabilities at the heart of the world's mobile networks. So it makes no sense that the Canadian government would itself seek the ability to create more holes, rather than patching them. Yet it is pushing for potential new powers that would infect next-generation cybersecurity tools with old diseases. It's not as if the government wasn't warned. Citizen Lab researchers presented the 2023 report's findings in parliamentary hearings on Bill C-26, and leaders and experts in civil society and in Canada's telecommunications industry warned that the bill must be narrowed to prevent its broad powers to compel technical changes from being used to compromise the "confidentiality, integrity, or availability" of telecommunication services. And yet, while government MPs maintained that their intent is not to expand surveillance capabilities, MPs pushed the bill out of committee without this critical amendment last month. In doing so, the government has set itself up to be the sole arbiter of when, and on what conditions, Canadians deserve security for their most confidential communications -- personal, business, religious, or otherwise. The new powers would only make people in Canada more vulnerable to malicious threats to the privacy and security of all network users, including Canada's most senior officials. [...] "Now, more than ever, there is no such thing as a safe backdoor," the authors write in closing. "A shortcut that provides a narrow advantage for the few at the expense of us all is no way to secure our complex digital ecosystem." "Against this threat landscape, a pivot is crucial. Canada needs cybersecurity laws that explicitly recognize that uncompromised encryption is the backbone of cybersecurity, and it must be mandated and protected by all means possible."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The notorious hacker group ShinyHunters has claimed to have breached the security of Ticketmaster-Live Nation, compromising the personal data more than half a billion users. "This massive 1.3 terabytes of data, is now being offered for sale on Breach Forums for a one-time sale for $500,000," reports Hackread. From the report: ShinyHunters has allegedly accessed a treasure trove of sensitive user information, including full names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, ticket sales and event details, order information, and partial payment card data. Specifically, the compromised payment data includes customer names, the last four digits of card numbers, expiration dates, and even customer fraud details. The data breach, if confirmed, could have severe implications for the affected users, leading to potential identity theft, financial fraud, and further cyber attacks. The hacker group's bold move to put this data on sale goes on to show the growing menace of cybercrime and the increasing sophistication of these cyber adversaries.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Salesforce shares dropped as much as 17% in extended trading due to weaker-than-expected revenue and guidance that fell short of Wall Street expectations. "Revenue in the fiscal first quarter, which ended April 30, increased 11% from $8.25 billion a year earlier," reports CNBC. "It's the first time since 2006 that Salesforce fell short on revenue, according to LSEG data." From the report: Salesforce called for adjusted earnings per share in the current quarter of $2.34 to $2.36 on $9.2 billion to $9.25 billion in revenue. Analysts surveyed by LSEG had expected $2.40 in adjusted earnings per share on $9.37 billion in revenue. [...] Salesforce saw budget scrutiny and longer deal cycles than usual during the quarter, president and operating chief Brian Millham told analysts on a conference call. Management implemented go-to-market changes that cut into bookings, Millham said. All five of Salesforce's product areas contributed to the growth. But revenue from the Professional Services and Other category, at $548 million, was down 9% and under the StreetAccount consensus of $572.9 million. Net income jumped to $1.53 billion, or $1.56 per share, from $199 million, or 20 cents per share a year ago.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: The U.S. Department of the Treasury today unveiled sanctions against three Chinese nationals for allegedly operating 911 S5, an online anonymity service that for many years was the easiest and cheapest way to route one's Web traffic through malware-infected computers around the globe. KrebsOnSecurity identified one of the three men in a July 2022 investigation into 911 S5, which was massively hacked and then closed ten days later. From 2015 to July 2022, 911 S5 sold access to hundreds of thousands of Microsoft Windows computers daily, as "proxies" that allowed customers to route their Internet traffic through PCs in virtually any country or city around the globe -- but predominantly in the United States. 911 built its proxy network mainly by offering "free" virtual private networking (VPN) services. 911's VPN performed largely as advertised for the user -- allowing them to surf the web anonymously -- but it also quietly turned the user's computer into a traffic relay for paying 911 S5 customers. 911 S5's reliability and extremely low prices quickly made it one of the most popular services among denizens of the cybercrime underground, and the service became almost shorthand for connecting to that "last mile" of cybercrime. Namely, the ability to route one's malicious traffic through a computer that is geographically close to the consumer whose stolen credit card is about to be used, or whose bank account is about to be emptied. In July 2022, KrebsOnSecurity published a deep dive into 911 S5, which found the people operating this business had a history of encouraging the installation of their proxy malware by any means available. That included paying affiliates to distribute their proxy software by secretly bundling it with other software. That story named Yunhe Wang from Beijing as the apparent owner or manager of the 911 S5 proxy service. In today's Treasury action, Mr. Wang was named as the primary administrator of the botnet that powered 911 S5. Update, May 29, 12:26 p.m. ET: The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) just announced they have arrested Wang in connection with the 911 S5 botnet. The DOJ says 911 S5 customers have stolen billions of dollars from financial institutions, credit card issuers, and federal lending programs. [...] The third man sanctioned is Yanni Zheng, a Chinese national the U.S. Treasury says acted as an attorney for Wang and his firm -- Spicy Code Company Limited -- and helped to launder proceeds from the business into real estate holdings. Spicy Code Company was also sanctioned, as well as Wang-controlled properties Tulip Biz Pattaya Group Company Limited, and Lily Suites Company Limited. "911 S5 customers allegedly targeted certain pandemic relief programs," a DOJ statement on the arrest reads. "For example, the United States estimates that 560,000 fraudulent unemployment insurance claims originated from compromised IP addresses, resulting in a confirmed fraudulent loss exceeding $5.9 billion. Additionally, in evaluating suspected fraud loss to the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program, the United States estimates that more than 47,000 EIDL applications originated from IP addresses compromised by 911 S5. Millions of dollars more were similarly identified by financial institutions in the United States as loss originating from IP addresses compromised by 911 S5." "Jingping Liu assisted Yunhe Wang by laundering criminally derived proceeds through bank accounts held in her name that were then utilized to purchase luxury real estate properties for Yunhe Wang," the document continues. "These individuals leveraged their malicious botnet technology to compromise personal devices, enabling cybercriminals to fraudulently secure economic assistance intended for those in need and to terrorize our citizens with bomb threats."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

American Lidar, a company registered in Michigan in December, is a subsidiary of China-based lidar maker Hesai Group, which the U.S. has labeled a security concern, WSJ reported Wednesday, citing policymakers and national-security experts. Chinese firms facing regulatory or reputational problems are rebranding and creating U.S.-domiciled businesses to sell their wares as the Biden administration expands the government entity lists that restrict Chinese companies' business dealings in the U.S., the report said. These moves, while legal, irritate regulators who can't enforce laws when it isn't clear who is behind a company. Hesai became a target in the U.S.-China tech-trade war after allegations that its laser sensors could be used to collect sensitive American data, and was added to the Defense Department list that designates companies as Chinese military entities operating in the U.S. BGI Genomics and DJI are also facing similar challenges and are attempting to rebrand or license their technology to American startups to avoid sanctions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google is killing off a messaging service! This one is the odd "Google Business Messaging" service -- basically an instant messaging client that is built into Google Maps. If you looked up a participating business in Google Maps or Google Search on a phone, the main row of buttons in the place card would read something like "Call," "Chat," "Directions," and "Website." That "Chat" button is the service we're talking about. It would launch a full messaging interface inside the Google Maps app, and businesses were expected to use it for customer service purposes. Google's deeply dysfunctional messaging strategy might lead people to joke about a theoretical "Google Maps Messaging" service, but it already exists and has existed for years, and now it's being shut down.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: At a two-hour drive from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia's capital, rows of solar panels extend to the horizon like waves on an ocean. Despite having almost limitless reserves of oil, the kingdom is embracing solar and wind power, partly in an effort to retain a leading position in the energy industry, which is vitally important to the country but fast changing. Looking out over 3.3 million panels, covering 14 square miles of desert, Faisal Al Omari, chief executive of a recently completed solar project called Sudair, said he would tell his children and grandchildren about contributing to Saudi Arabia's energy transition. Although petroleum production retains a crucial role in the Saudi economy, the kingdom is putting its chips on other forms of energy. Sudair, which can light up 185,000 homes, is the first of what could be many giant projects intended to raise output from renewable energy sources like solar and wind to around 50 percent by 2030. Currently, renewable energy accounts for a negligible amount of Saudi electricity generation. Analysts say achieving that hugely ambitious goal is unlikely. "If they get 30 percent, I would be happy because that would be a good signal," said Karim Elgendy, a climate analyst at the Middle East Institute, a research organization in Washington. Still, the kingdom is planning to build solar farms at a rapid pace. "The volumes you see here, you don't see anywhere else, only in China," said Marco Arcelli, chief executive of Acwa Power, Sudair's Saudi developer and a growing force in the international electricity and water industries. The Saudis not only have the money to expand rapidly, but are free of the long permit processes that inhibit such projects in the West. "They have a lot of investment capital, and they can move quickly and pull the trigger on project development," said Ben Cahill, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research institution in Washington. Even Saudi Aramco, the crown jewel of the Saudi economy and the producer of nearly all its oil, sees a shifting energy landscape. To gain a foothold in solar, Aramco has taken a 30 percent stake in Sudair, which cost $920 million, the first step in a planned 40-gigawatt solar portfolio -- more than Britain's average power demand -- intended to meet the bulk of the government's ambitions for renewable energy. The company plans to set up a large business of storing greenhouse gases underground.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is seeking a senior engineer to help build a television and sports app for Android, a sign the company is finally bringing its TV+ service to the rival smartphone platform. From a report: In a job listing published in recent days, Apple said it's looking for someone to lead the development of "fun new features" and "help build an application used by millions to watch and discover TV and sports." The move suggests that the company is looking to gain market share in video streaming -- and is setting aside its rivalry with Android in order to chase additional users. It's rare for Apple to develop software for Google's Android, which competes with its iOS platform. The TV+ service, launched in 2019, is Apple's answer to Netflix or Disney+, and the company has spent heavily on feeding it with original content.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

House Republicans this week accused officials at the National Institutes of Health of orchestrating "a conspiracy at the highest levels" of the agency to hide public records related to the origins of the Covid pandemic. And the lawmakers promised to expand an investigation that has turned up emails in which senior health officials talked openly about trying to evade federal records laws. From a report: The latest accusations -- coming days before a House panel publicly questions Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a former top N.I.H. official -- represent one front of an intensifying push by lawmakers to link American research groups and the country's premier medical research agency with the beginnings of the Covid pandemic. That push has so far yielded no evidence that American scientists or health officials had anything to do with the coronavirus outbreak. But the House panel, the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, has released a series of private emails that suggest at least some N.I.H. officials deleted messages and tried to skirt public records laws in the face of scrutiny over the pandemic. Even those N.I.H. officials whose job it was to produce records under the Freedom of Information Act may have helped their colleagues avoid their obligations under that law, several emails suggest. The law, known as FOIA, gives people the right to obtain copies of federal records.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mistral, the French AI startup backed by Microsoft and valued at $6 billion, has released its first generative AI model for coding, dubbed Codestral. From a report: Codestral, like other code-generating models, is designed to help developers write and interact with code. It was trained on over 80 programming languages, including Python, Java, C++ and JavaScript, explains Mistral in a blog post. Codestral can complete coding functions, write tests and "fill in" partial code, as well as answer questions about a codebase in English. Mistral describes the model as "open," but that's up for debate. The startup's license prohibits the use of Codestral and its outputs for any commercial activities. There's a carve-out for "development," but even that has caveats: the license goes on to explicitly ban "any internal usage by employees in the context of the company's business activities." The reason could be that Codestral was trained partly on copyrighted content. Codestral might not be worth the trouble, in any case. At 22 billion parameters, the model requires a beefy PC in order to run.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Data centers could use up to 9% of total electricity generated in the United States by the end of the decade, more than doubling their current consumption, as technology companies pour funds into expanding their computing hubs, the Electric Power Research Institute said on Wednesday. From a report: Depending on the adoption pace of technology such as generative artificial intelligence, which is fueling the expansion of data centers, and the energy efficiency of new centers, the estimated annual growth rate of electricity use by the industry ranges from 3.7% to 15% through 2030, the institute's analysis said. The institute is a U.S.-based research organization funded by energy and government organizations. Data centers, along with expanding domestic manufacturing and electrification of transportation, are lifting the U.S. electricity industry out of two decades of flat growth. The centers require massive amounts of power for high-intensity computing and cooling systems, with a new large data center requiring the same amount of electricity needed to power 750,000 homes, according to numerous energy company earnings calls this year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

IP core designer Arm announced its next-generation CPU and GPU designs for flagship smartphones: the Cortex-X925 CPU and Immortalis G925 GPU. Both are direct successors to the Cortex-X4 and Immortalis G720 that currently power MediaTek's Dimensity 9300 chip inside flagship smartphones like the Vivo X100 and X100 Pro and Oppo Find X7. From a report: Arm changed the naming convention for its Cortex-X CPU design to highlight what it says is a much faster CPU design. It claims the X925's single-core performance is 36 percent faster than the X4 (when measured in Geekbench). Arm says it increased the AI workload performance by 41 percent, time to token, with up to 3MB of private L2 cache. The Cortex-X925 brings a new generation of Cortex-A microarchitectures ("little" cores) with it, too: the Cortex-A725, which Arm says has 35 percent better performance efficiency than last-gen's A720 and a 15 percent more power-efficient Cortex-A520. Arm's new Immortalis G925 GPU is its "most performant and efficient GPU" to date, it says. It's 37 percent faster on graphics applications compared to the last-gen G720, with improved ray-tracing performance with intricate objects by 52 percent and improved AI and ML workloads by 34 percent -- all while using 30 percent less power. For the first time, Arm will offer "optimized layouts" of its new CPU and GPU designs that it says will be easier for device makers to "drop" or implement into their own system on chip (SoC) layouts. Arm says this new physical implementation solution will help other companies get their devices to market faster, which, if true, means we could see more devices with Arm Cortex-X925 and / or Immortalis G925 than the few that shipped with its last-gen ones.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Colorado Governor Jared Polis has signed the "Consumer Right to Repair Digital Electronic Equipment" bill into law. The legislation grants consumers the right to repair their own electronic devices, including cell phones, gaming systems, computers, and televisions. According to Polis, the bill will provide Coloradans with the necessary information to repair their own equipment or choose their preferred repair provider, potentially leading to lower prices and faster repairs through increased competition. State Senator Jeff Bridges, the bill's prime sponsor, called for the federal government and other states to follow Colorado's lead, claiming that this bill is the strongest repair legislation in the country. Bridges emphasized that the law addresses issues such as "parts pairing" and repair restrictions that have prevented owners from fixing their devices in the past. The bill expands on Colorado's previous right-to-repair law for agricultural equipment, which Polis cited as a successful precedent for this new legislation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Helen Toner, a former OpenAI board member, said that the board didn't know about the company's 2022 launch of its chatbot ChatGPT until afterward -- and only found out about it on Twitter. From a report: In a podcast, Toner gave her fullest account to date of the events that prompted her and other board members to fire Sam Altman in November of last year. In the days that followed Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman's sudden ouster, employees threatened to quit, Altman was reinstated, and Toner and other directors left the board. "When ChatGPT came out in November 2022, the board was not informed in advance about that," Toner said on the podcast. "We learned about ChatGPT on Twitter." In a statement provided to the TED podcast, OpenAI's current board chief, Bret Taylor said, "We are disappointed that Ms. Toner continues to revisit these issues." He also said that an independent review of Altman's firing "concluded that the prior board's decision was not based on concerns regarding product safety or security, the pace of development, OpenAI's finances, or its statements to investors, customers, or business partners." [...] In the podcast, Toner also said that Altman didn't disclose his involvement with OpenAI's startup fund. And she criticized his leadership on safety. "On multiple occasions, he gave us inaccurate information about the formal safety processes that the company did have in place," she said,"meaning that it was basically impossible for the board to know how well those safety processes were working or what might need to change."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Former FTX executive Ryan Salame has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison, "the first of the lieutenants of failed cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried to receive jail time for their roles in the 2022 collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange," reports the Associated Press. From the report: Salame, 30, was a high-ranking executive at FTX for most of the exchange's existence and, up until its collapse, was the co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets. He pleaded guilty last year to illegally making unlawful U.S. campaign contributions and to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business. The sentence of 7 1/2 years in prison, plus three years of supervised release, was more than the five to seven years prosecutors had asked Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to impose on Salame in their pre-sentencing memo. While Salame was a high-level executive at FTX, he was not a major part of the government's case against Bankman-Fried at his trial earlier this year and did not testify against him. In a bid for leniency, Salame said during the sentencing hearing that he cooperated and even provided documents that aided prosecutors in their cross examination of Bankman-Fried, as well as in his own prosecution. Along with helping Bankman-Fried hide the holes in FTX's balance sheet that ultimately led to the exchange's failure, Salame was used as a conduit for Bankman-Fried to make illegal campaign contributions to help shape U.S. policy on cryptocurrencies. On the surface, Bankman-Fried mostly gave political contributions to Democrats and liberal-leaning causes, while Salame gave contributions to Republicans and right-leaning causes. But ultimately the funds that Salame used for those contributions came from Bankman-Fried. The judge also chastised Salame for pulling $5 million in cryptocurrencies out of FTX as the exchange was failing. "You tried to withdraw tens of millions more," Kaplan said. "It was me first. I'm getting in the lifeboat first. To heck with all those customers."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new tool called Lifeseeker could help search and rescue teams find missing people in minutes using their cellphones. The technology acts as a miniature cellphone tower, allowing rescuers to pinpoint cellphone locations within a 3-mile radius, significantly improving the efficiency and success rate of search missions in challenging terrains. The Colorado Sun reports: "As we detect the phone, basically a blotch shows up on the map and as we fly around that area, that blotch gets smaller and smaller and smaller until we can see exactly where they are," said Dr. Tim Durkin, a search and rescue program coordinator for Colorado Highland Helicopters. "That process of detecting, focusing on one specific location takes about a minute -- not really very long at all." Depending on the situation, search and rescue teams can then send in ground crews with the person's location or land the helicopter if there's a clearing nearby and conditions allow for a safe landing, Durkin said. During a test mission in La Plata Canyon northwest of Durango, search crews found the two people they were looking for within two minutes and 14 seconds, Durkin said. The technology, called Lifeseeker, was developed by Spain-based company CENTUM research & technology and is in the process of being approved by the Federal Communications Commission before it can be sold to the state or counties hoping to use it for their SAR efforts, he said. [...] The radio-based technology needs a clear view of the terrain without interference to pick up the signal of the cellphone. If the conditions and terrain are favorable, it can detect a cellphone up to nearly 20 miles away. It takes about three minutes to attach the Lifeseeker unit inside a helicopter when needed for a search and rescue mission, Durkin said. SAR can also use the tool to send text messages to the missing person, for example, advising them to stay in one area if they are hurt or move to a clearing for a helicopter to pick them up. The tool also has a broadcast function that allows SAR to send out a message to a group of people within a certain range, similar to an Amber Alert for a missing child, to warn them of a wildfire or flood, Durkin said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: A sophisticated joint European-Japanese satellite has launched to measure how clouds influence the climate. Some low-level clouds are known to cool the planet, others at high altitude will act as a blanket. The Earthcare mission will use a laser and a radar to probe the atmosphere to see precisely where the balance lies. It's one of the great uncertainties in the computer models used to forecast how the climate will respond to increasing levels of greenhouse gases. "Many of our models suggest cloud cover will go down in the future and that means that clouds will reflect less sunlight back to space, more will be absorbed at the surface and that will act as an amplifier to the warming we would get from carbon dioxide," Dr Robin Hogan, from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, told BBC News. The 2.3-tonne satellite was sent up from California on a SpaceX rocket. The project is led by the European Space Agency (ESA), which has described it as the organization's most complex Earth observation venture to date. Certainly, the technical challenge in getting the instruments to work as intended has been immense. It's taken fully 20 years to go from mission approval to launch. Earthcare will circle the Earth at a height of about 400km (250 miles). It's actually got four instruments in total that will work in unison to get at the information sought by climate scientists. The simplest is an imager -- a camera that will take pictures of the scene passing below the spacecraft to give context to the measurements made by the other three instruments.Earthcare's European ultraviolet laser will see the thin, high clouds and the tops of clouds lower down. It will also detect the small particles and droplets (aerosols) in the atmosphere that influence the formation and behavior of clouds. The Japanese radar will look into the clouds, to determine how much water they are carrying and how that's precipitating as rain, hail and snow. And a radiometer will sense how much of the energy falling on to Earth from the Sun is being reflected or radiated back into space.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The defense lawyer minced no words as he addressed a room full of plastic-industry executives. Prepare for a wave of lawsuits with potentially "astronomical" costs. Speaking at a conference earlier this year, the lawyer, Brian Gross, said the coming litigation could "dwarf anything related to asbestos," one of the most sprawling corporate-liability battles in United States history. Mr. Gross was referring to PFAS, the "forever chemicals" that have emerged as one of the major pollution issues of our time. Used for decades in countless everyday objects -- cosmetics, takeout containers, frying pans -- PFAS have been linked to serious health risks including cancer. Last month the federal government said several types of PFAS must be removed from the drinking water of hundreds of millions of Americans. "Do what you can, while you can, before you get sued," Mr. Gross said at the February session, according to a recording of the event made by a participant and examined by The New York Times. "Review any marketing materials or other communications that you've had with your customers, with your suppliers, see whether there's anything in those documents that's problematic to your defense," he said. "Weed out people and find the right witness to represent your company." A wide swath of the chemicals, plastics and related industries are gearing up to fight a surge in litigation related to PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a class of nearly 15,000 versatile synthetic chemicals linked to serious health problems. [...] PFAS-related lawsuits have already targeted manufacturers in the United States, including DuPont, its spinoff Chemours, and 3M. Last year, 3M agreed to pay at least $10 billion to water utilities across the United States that had sought compensation for cleanup costs. Thirty state attorneys general have also sued PFAS manufacturers, accusing the manufacturers of widespread contamination. But experts say the legal battle is just beginning. Under increasing scrutiny are a wider universe of companies that use PFAS in their products. This month, plaintiffs filed a class-action lawsuit against Bic, accusing the razor company for failing to disclose that some of its razors contained PFAS. Bic said it doesn't comment on pending litigation, and said it had a longstanding commitment to safety. The Biden administration has moved to regulate the chemicals, for the first time requiring municipal water systems to remove six types of PFAS. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency also designated two of those PFAS chemicals as hazardous substances under the Superfund law, shifting responsibility for their cleanup at contaminated sites from taxpayers to polluters. Both rules are expected to prompt a new round of litigation from water utilities, local communities and others suing for cleanup costs. "To say that the floodgates are opening is an understatement," said Emily M. Lamond, an attorney who focuses on environmental litigation at the law firm Cole Schotz. "Take tobacco, asbestos, MTBE, combine them, and I think we're still going to see more PFAS-related litigation," she said, referring to methyl tert-butyl ether, a former harmful gasoline additive that contaminated drinking water. Together, the trio led to claims totaling hundreds of billions of dollars. Unlike tobacco, used by only a subset of the public, "pretty much every one of us in the United States is walking around with PFAS in our bodies," said Erik Olson, senior strategic director for environmental health at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "And we're being exposed without our knowledge or consent, often by industries that knew how dangerous the chemicals were, and failed to disclose that," he said. "That's a formula for really significant liability."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Danny Goodwin reports via Search Engine Land: A trove of leaked Google documents has given us an unprecedented look inside Google Search and revealed some of the most important elements Google uses to rank content. Thousands of documents, which appear to come from Google's internal Content API Warehouse, were released March 13 on Github by an automated bot called yoshi-code-bot. These documents were shared with Rand Fishkin, SparkToro co-founder, earlier this month. What's inside. Here's what we know about the internal documents, thanks to Fishkin and [Michael King, iPullRank CEO]: Current: The documentation indicates this information is accurate as of March.Ranking features: 2,596 modules are represented in the API documentation with 14,014 attributes.Weighting: The documents did not specify how any of the ranking features are weighted -- just that they exist.Twiddlers: These are re-ranking functions that "can adjust the information retrieval score of a document or change the ranking of a document," according to King.Demotions: Content can be demoted for a variety of reasons, such as: a link doesn't match the target site; SERP signals indicate user dissatisfaction; Product reviews; Location; Exact match domains; and/or Porn. Change history: Google apparently keeps a copy of every version of every page it has ever indexed. Meaning, Google can "remember" every change ever made to a page. However, Google only uses the last 20 changes of a URL when analyzing links. Other interesting findings. According to Google's internal documents: Freshness matters -- Google looks at dates in the byline (bylineDate), URL (syntacticDate) and on-page content (semanticDate).To determine whether a document is or isn't a core topic of the website, Google vectorizes pages and sites, then compares the page embeddings (siteRadius) to the site embeddings (siteFocusScore).Google stores domain registration information (RegistrationInfo).Page titles still matter. Google has a feature called titlematchScore that is believed to measure how well a page title matches a query.Google measures the average weighted font size of terms in documents (avgTermWeight) and anchor text. What does it all mean? According to King: "[Y]ou need to drive more successful clicks using a broader set of queries and earn more link diversity if you want to continue to rank. Conceptually, it makes sense because a very strong piece of content will do that. A focus on driving more qualified traffic to a better user experience will send signals to Google that your page deserves to rank." [...] Fishkin added: "If there was one universal piece of advice I had for marketers seeking to broadly improve their organic search rankings and traffic, it would be: 'Build a notable, popular, well-recognized brand in your space, outside of Google search.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is introducing the Gemini AI chatbot to Chromebook Plus models, enhancing features like text rewriting, image editing, and hands-free control. Here are a few of the top new features coming to ChromeOS, as summarized by Wired: The first notable feature is Help Me Write, which works in any text box. Select text in any text box and right-click -- you'll see a box next to the standard right-click context menu. You can ask Google's AI to rewrite the selected text, rephrase it in a specific way, or change the tone. I tried to use it on a few sentences in this story but did not like any of the suggestions it gave me, so your mileage may vary. Or maybe I'm a better writer than Google's AI. Who knows? Google's bringing the same generative AI wallpaper system you'll find in Android to ChromeOS. You can access this feature in ChromeOS's wallpaper settings and generate images based on specific parameters. Weirdly, you can create these when you're in a video-calling app too. You'll see a menu option next to the system tray whenever the microphone and video camera are being accessed -- tap on it and click "Create with AI" and you can generate an image for your video call's background. I'm not sure why I'd want a background of a "surreal bicycle made of flowers in pink and purple," but there you go. AI! Here's something a little more useful: Magic Editor in Google Photos. Yep, the same feature that debuted in Google's Pixel 8 smartphones is now available on Chromebook Plus laptops. In the Google Photos app, you can press Edit on a photo and you'll see the option for Magic Editor. (You'll need to download more editing tools to get started.) This feature lets you erase unwanted objects in your photos, move a subject to another area of the frame, and fill in the backgrounds of photos. I successfully erased a paint can in the background of a photo of my dog, and it worked pretty quickly. Then there's Gemini. It's available as a stand-alone app, and you can ask it to do pretty much anything. Write a cover letter, break down complex topics, ask for travel tips for a specific country. Just, you know, double-check the results and make sure there aren't any hallucinations. If you want to tap into Google's Gemini Advanced model, the company says it is offering 12 months free for new Chromebook Plus owners through the end of the year, so you have some time to redeem that offer. This is technically an upgrade from Google One, and it nets you Gemini for Workspace, 2 terabytes of storage, and a few other perks. New features coming to all Chromebooks include easy setup with Android phones via QR code for sharing Wi-Fi credentials, integration of Google Tasks into the system tray, a Game Dashboard for mapping controls and recording gameplay as GIFs, and a built-in screen recorder tool. Upcoming enhancements also include Hands-Free Control using face gestures, the Help Me Read feature with Gemini for summarizing websites and PDFs, and an Overview screen to manage open browser windows, tabs, and apps. You can check if your Chromebook is compatible with the Chromebook Plus OS update here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The term "auth" is ambiguous, often meaning either authentication (authn) or authorization (authz), which leads to confusion and poor system design. Instead, Nicole Tietz-Sokolskaya, a software engineer at AI market research platform Remesh, argues that the industry adopt the terms "login" for authentication and "permissions" for authorization, as these are clearer and help maintain distinct, appropriate abstractions for each concept. From their blog post: We should always use the most clear terms we have. Sometimes there's not a great option, but here, we have wonderfully clear terms. Those are "login" for authentication and "permissions" for authorization. Both are terms that will make sense with little explanation (in contrast to "authn" and "authz", which are confusing on first encounter) since almost everyone has logged into a system and has run into permissions issues. There are two ways to use "login" here: the noun and the verb form. The noun form is "login", which refers to the information you enter to gain access to the system. And the verb form is "log in", which refers to the action of entering your login to use the system. "Permissions" is just the noun form. To use a verb, you would use "check permissions." While this is long, it's also just... fine? It hasn't been an issue in my experience. Both of these are abundantly clear even to our peers in disciplines outside software engineering. This to me makes it worth using them from a clarity perspective alone. But then we have the big benefit to abstractions, as well. When we call both by the same word, there's often an urge to combine them into a single module just by dint of the terminology. This isn't necessarily wrong -- there is certainly some merit to put them together, since permissions typically require a login. But it's not necessary, either, and our designs will be stronger if we don't make that assumption and instead make a reasoned choice.Read more of this story at Slashdot.