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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: For weeks, NASA has downplayed problems experienced by Starliner, a Boeing spacecraft that took two astronauts to the International Space Station in June. But on Wednesday, NASA officials admitted that the problems with the spacecraft were more serious than first thought and that the astronauts may not travel home on the Boeing vehicle, after all. The agency is exploring a backup option for the astronauts, Suni Wiliams and Butch Wilmore, to hitch a ride back to Earth on a vehicle built by Boeing's competitor SpaceX instead. Their stay in orbit, which was to be as short as eight days, may extend into next year. "We could take either path," Ken Bowersox, NASA's associate administrator for the space operations mission directorate, said during a news conference on Wednesday. "And reasonable people could pick either path." NASA and Boeing officials had maintained that the crew that launched with Starliner on its first crewed test flight was not stranded in space. Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore have spent two months aboard the orbital outpost while engineers continue to analyze data about the faulty performance of several of the Starliner's thrusters when it approached for docking. Under the contingency plan, a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule would travel to the space station with two astronauts instead of its planned crew of four. Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore would then join as full-time members of the space station crew for a half-year stay, returning on the Crew Dragon around next February. "In the last few weeks, we have decided to make sure we have that capability there, as our community, I would say, got more and more uncomfortable," said Steve Stich, the manager of the commercial crew program at NASA. NASA officials said no decision had been made yet.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ocean temperatures in the Great Barrier Reef are now the hottest in at least 400 years and are an "existential threat" to the planet's unique natural wonder, according to new scientific research. From a report: Scientists analysed long-lived corals in and around the reef that keep a record of temperature hidden in their skeleton and matched them to modern observations. The research, published in the journal Nature, used climate models to find the extreme temperatures of recent decades could not have happened without the extra greenhouse gases in the atmosphere caused mostly by burning fossil fuels. The "existential threat" to the reef from the climate crisis was "now realised," the scientists wrote, and without ambitious and rapid cuts to greenhouse gas emissions "we will likely be witness to the demise of one of the Earth's natural wonders." The research comes two weeks after the World Heritage committee decided not to place the reef, which covers an area larger than Italy, on its list of sites "in danger," saying it would consider the question again in 2026.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Security researchers from SafeBreach have found what they say is a Windows downgrade attack that's invisible, persistent, irreversible and maybe even more dangerous than last year's BlackLotus UEFI bootkit. From a report: After seeing the damage that UEFI bootkit could do by bypassing secure boot processes in Windows, SafeBreach's Alon Leviev became curious whether there were any other fundamental Windows components that could be abused in a similar manner. He hit the jackpot in one of the most unlikely places: The Windows update process. "I found a way to take over Windows updates to update the system, but with control over all of the actual update contents," Leviev told us in an interview ahead of his Black Hat USA conference presentation today detailing his findings. Using his technique, having compromised a machine so that he could get in as a normal user, Leviev was able to control which files get updated, which registry keys are changed, which installers get used, and the like. And he was able to do all of it while side-stepping every single integrity verification implemented in the Windows update process. After that, "I was able to downgrade the OS kernel, DLLs, drivers ... basically everything that I wanted." To make matters worse, Leviev said that poking and prodding around the vulnerabilities he found enabled him to attack the entire Windows virtualization stack, including virtualization-based security (VBS) features that are supposed to isolate the kernel and make attacker access less valuable.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For more than 30 years, the world's largest iceberg was stuck in the Antarctic. Five times the size of New York City's land area and more than 1,000 feet deep, the mammoth piece of ice finally became loose in 2020 and began a slow drift toward the Southern Ocean. Now, A23a, as it's known, is spinning in place. From a report: After leaving Antarctic waters, the iceberg got stuck in a vortex over a seamount, or an underwater mountain. Imagine a 1,400-square-mile piece of ice as deep as the Empire State Building spinning slowly but steadily enough to fully rotate it on its head over the course of about 24 days. The iceberg is spinning near the South Orkney Islands, about 375 miles northeast of the Antarctic Peninsula, "maintaining a chill 15 degree rotation per day," the British Antarctic Survey, the United Kingdom's polar research institute, said on social media. "It's basically just sitting there, spinning around and it will very slowly melt as long as it stays there," said Alex Brearley, a physical oceanographer and head of the Open Oceans research group at the British Antarctic Survey. "What we don't know is how quickly it will actually come out of this." A23a has been embroiled in drama since the start, a trait it picked up from its parent-berg. A23, which was even bigger than A23a, was one of three icebergs that broke off, or calved, from the Filchner Ice Shelf in 1986. At the time of the calving, A23 was home to a Soviet Union research center and researchers eventually had to abandon the base. A23a broke off later that year and hit bottom in the Weddell Sea, where it would remain for 34 more years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Things aren't working out well for Humane, a heavily-funded startup that launched an eponymous AI device earlier this year. Despite significant funding from prominent Silicon Valley figures, the product has been grappling with negative reviews -- and now more pressing issues are emerging. An anonymous reader shares a report: Shortly after Humane released its $699 AI Pin in April, the returns started flowing in. Between May and August, more AI Pins were returned than purchased, according to internal sales data obtained by The Verge. By June, only around 8,000 units hadn't been returned, a source with direct knowledge of sales and return data told me. As of today, the number of units still in customer hands had fallen closer to 7,000, a source with direct knowledge said. At launch, the AI Pin was met with overwhelmingly negative reviews. Our own David Pierce said it "just doesn't work," and Marques Brownlee called it "the worst product" he's ever reviewed. Now, Humane is attempting to stabilize its operations and maintain confidence among staff and potential acquirers. The New York Times reported in June that HP is considering purchasing the company, and The Information reported last week that Humane is negotiating with its current investors to raise debt, which could later be converted into equity.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI is upending India's technology outsourcing business. The industry is pivoting to adapt, but the changes could cost a large number of coveted jobs. From a report: The country's big outsourcing companies are already using AI and have plans to integrate it throughout their businesses. That might not save the low-end operations that run call centers or do other basic tasks within the so-called business process outsourcing sector.A AI is threatening to disrupt most businesses around the world, not just India's $250 billion outsourcing industry. The outsourcing boom in India over the past few decades created the "getting Bangalore-d" phenomenon in the U.S., often used for Americans who lost their jobs to more affordable Indian talent. AI's impact could have big repercussions as the industry employs 5.4 million people, according to tech-industry body Nasscom, and contributes about 8% of the country's economy. More than 80% of companies in the S&P 500 outsource some operations to India, according to HSBC.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Parody site creator David Senk has rebuffed CrowdStrike's attempt to shut down his "ClownStrike" website, which lampoons the cybersecurity firm's role in a recent global IT outage. Senk swiftly contested the Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice, asserting fair use for parody. When hosting provider Cloudflare failed to acknowledge his counter-notice, Senk defiantly relocated the site to a Finnish server beyond U.S. jurisdiction. The IT consultant decried the takedown as "corporate cyberbullying," accusing CrowdStrike of exploiting copyright law to silence criticism. Despite CrowdStrike's subsequent admission that parody sites were not intended targets, Senk is remaining resolute, demanding a public apology and refusing to return to Cloudflare's services.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Logitech has quashed its earlier remarks about building a subscription-based mouse, following widespread backlash to comments made by CEO Hanneke Faber. The Swiss-American computer peripherals maker clarified that the "forever mouse" concept, mentioned by Faber in a recent podcast interview, was merely speculative internal discussion and not a planned product.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Reddit just wrapped up its second earnings call as a public company and CEO Steve Huffman hinted at some significant changes that could be coming to the platform. During the call, the Reddit co-founder said the company would begin testing AI-powered search results later this year. "Later this year, we will begin testing new search result pages powered by AI to summarize and recommend content, helping users dive deeper into products, shows, games and discover new communities on Reddit," Huffman said. He didn't say when those tests would begin, but said it would use both first-party and third-party models. Huffman noted that search on Reddit has "gone unchanged for a long time" but that it's a significant opportunity to bring in new users. He also said that search could one day be a significant source of advertising revenue for the company. Huffman hinted at other non-advertising sources of revenue as well. He suggested that the company might experiment with paywalled subreddits as it looks to monetize new features.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Disney Plus will soon no longer let you share your password with people outside your household. From a report: During an earnings call on Wednesday, Disney CEO Bob Iger said the crackdown will kick off "in earnest" this September. The timeline for Disney's password-sharing crackdown has been a bit confusing so far. In February, Disney announced plans to roll out paid sharing and also began notifying users about the change. It then launched paid sharing in a "few countries" in June but provided no information on when it would reach the US.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: For U.S. chip giant Intel, the darling of the computer age before it fell on harder times in the AI era, things might have been quite different. About seven years ago, the company had the chance to buy a stake in OpenAI, then a fledgling non-profit research organization working in a little-known field called generative AI, four people with direct knowledge of those discussions told Reuters. Over several months in 2017 and 2018, executives at the two companies discussed various options, including Intel buying a 15% stake for $1 billion in cash, three of the people said. They also discussed Intel taking an additional 15% stake in OpenAI if it made hardware for the startup at cost price, two people said. Intel ultimately decided against a deal, partly because then-CEO Bob Swan did not think generative AI models would make it to market in the near future and thus repay the chipmaker's investment, according to three of the sources, who all requested anonymity to discuss confidential matters.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chinese scientists discovered water molecules in lunar samples brought back by the Chang'e 5 moon probe, marking the first time whole H2O molecules were found in lunar material. The findings have been published in Nature Astronomy. Smithsonian Magazine reports: The team used X-ray diffraction to analyze the grains of moon soil, in which they found a lunar mineral dubbed ULM-1 whose mass is made up of more than 40 percent water and also includes ammonia. "This is a new form of water stored on the moon," Xiaolong Chen, co-author of the study and physics researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, tells New Scientist's Alex Wilkins. In the words of CNN's Jessie Yeung, water on the moon is nothing new. Though the samples brought back by the U.S. Apollo missions seemed to show that the moon was dry and lifeless, a recent study suggests that water or hydroxyl may be trapped in glass beads on the moon's surface -- and solar winds could turn the hydroxyl (chemical formula OH) into H2O, according to Yeung. And both American and Indian spacecrafts separately registered what is believed to be water on the moon's surface. This recent discovery, however, marks the first time scientists have found whole molecules of H2O in lunar samples. The findings suggest that "water molecules can persist in sunlit areas of the moon in the form of hydrated salts," the authors write in the study.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to a recent study, SpaceX's new Starlink direct-to-cell (DTC) satellites are nearly five times brighter than traditional Starlinks due to their lower orbit. While these satellites offer the promise of widespread connectivity, their increased brightness poses challenges for astronomical observations, prompting SpaceX to consider applying brightness mitigation techniques. Space.com reports: The higher luminosity of these DTCs compared to regular Starlinks is partly because they circle Earth at just 217 miles (350 kilometers) above the surface, which is lower than traditional Starlink internet satellites, whose altitude is 340 miles (550 kilometers), the study reported. [...] At the time the study was conducted, SpaceX had not yet applied its routine brightness mitigation techniques to the DTCs, such as adjusting their chassis and solar panels to reduce the portion of spacecraft illuminated by the sun, study lead author Anthony Mallama of the IAU Centre for the Protection of Dark and Quiet Skies from Satellite Constellation Interference (IAU-CPS) told Space.com. SpaceX began applying brightness mitigation techniques to regular Starlinks in 2020, after astronomers voiced serious concerns about the satellites' trails streaking across telescope images, rendering them unusable. Prior to launch, the company now applies a mirror-like dielectric surface to the underside of each Starlink chassis, to help reflect sunlight into space rather than scattering it toward Earth. Post launch, the company adjusts spacecraft chassis and solar panels to further reduce luminosity. Together, these techniques are very effective, reducing Starlink satellites' brightness by a factor of 10, Mallama said. If SpaceX applies these brightness mitigation techniques to the DTCs, which are nearly the same size as the regular Starlinks, the DTCs would still be 2.6 times brighter than their traditional counterparts, Mallama and his colleagues reported in the recent study, which was reviewed internally by IAU-CPS and posted to the preprint server arXiv last month. However, while DTCs are brighter objects, they move at a faster apparent rate and spend more time in Earth's shadow than regular Starlinks, which would offset some of their negative impact on astronomy observations, the study noted. "I see it as a tradeoff in parameters rather than an absolute better/worse kind of situation," John Barentine, a principal consultant at Arizona-based Dark Sky Consulting who was not involved with the new study, told Space.com.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: For the first time in 40 years, the Environmental Protection Agency has taken emergency action to stop the use of a pesticide (source may be paywalled; alternative source) linked to serious health risks for unborn babies. Tuesday's emergency order applies to dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate, also known as DCPA, a weedkiller used on crops such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage and onions. When pregnant farmworkers and others are exposed to the pesticide, their babies can experience changes to fetal thyroid hormone levels, which are linked to low birth weight, impaired brain development, decreased IQ and impaired motor skills later in life. "DCPA is so dangerous that it needs to be removed from the market immediately," Michal Freedhoff, assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, said in a statement. "It's EPA's job to protect people from exposure to dangerous chemicals. In this case, pregnant women who may never even know they were exposed could give birth to babies that experience irreversible lifelong health problems." The European Union banned DCPA in 2009. But the EPA has been slower to act, frustrating some environmental and public health advocates. In an interview, Freedhoff said that EPA scientists have tried for years to get more information on health risks from the sole manufacturer of the pesticide, AMVAC Chemical. But she said the company refused to turn over the data, including a study on the effects of DCPA on thyroid development and function, until November 2023. "We did make some good-faith efforts to work with the company," Freedhoff said. "But in the end, we didn't think any of the measures proposed by the company would be implementable, enforceable or effective." "DCPA has been used in the United States since the late 1950s," notes the report. "After the pesticide is applied, it can linger in the soil, contaminating crops later grown in those fields, including broccoli, cilantro, green onions, kale and mustard greens." "The emergency order Tuesday temporarily suspends all registrations of the pesticide under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act. The agency plans to permanently suspend these registrations within the next 90 days."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mike Masnick, a semi-regular Slashdot contributor and founder of the tech blog Techdirt, is joining the board of Bluesky, where he "will be providing advice and guidance to the company to help it achieve its vision of a more open, more competitive, more decentralized online world." Masnick writes: In the nearly three decades that I've been writing Techdirt I've been writing about what is happening in the world of the internet, but also about how much better the internet can be. That won't change. I will still be writing about what is happening and where I believe we should be going. But given that there are now people trying to turn some of that better vision into a reality, I cannot resist this opportunity to help them achieve that goal. The early internet had tremendous promise as a decentralized system that enabled anyone to build what they wanted on a global open network, opening up all sorts of possibilities for human empowerment and creativity. But over the last couple of decades, the internet has moved away from that democratizing promise. Instead, it has been effectively taken over by a small number of giant companies with centralized, proprietary, closed systems that have supplanted the more open network we were promised. There are, of course, understandable reasons why those centralized systems have been successful, such as by providing a more user-friendly experience on the front-end. But there was a price to pay: losing user autonomy, privacy and the benefits of decentralization (not to mention losing a highly dynamic, competitive internet). The internet need not be so limited, and over the years I've tried to encourage people and companies to make different choices to return to the original promise and benefits of openness. With Bluesky, we now have one company who is trying. "Mike's work has been an inspiration to us from the start," says Jay Graber, CEO of Bluesky. "Having him join our board feels like a natural progression of our shared vision for a more open internet. His perspective will help ensure we're building something that truly serves users as we continue to evolve Bluesky and the AT Protocol."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At the Flash Memory Summit 2024 this week, NVM Express published the NVMe 2.1 specifications, which hope to enhance storage unification across AI, cloud, client, and enterprise. Phoronix's Michael Larabel writes: New NVMe capabilities with the revised specifications include: - Enabling live migration of PCIe NVMe controllers between NVM subsystems.- New host-directed data placement for SSDs that simplifies ecosystem integration and is backwards compatible with previous NVMe specifications.- Support for offloading some host processing to NVMe storage devices.- A network boot mechanism for NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF).- Support for NVMe over Fabrics zoning.- Ability to provide host management of encryption keys and highly granular encryption with Key Per I/O.- Security enhancements such as support for TLS 1.3, a centralized authentication verification entity for DH-HMAC-CHAP, and post sanitization media verification.- Management enhancements including support for high availability out-of-band management, management over I3C, out-of-band management asynchronous events and dynamic creation of exported NVM subsystems from underlying NVM subsystem physical resources. You can learn more about these updates at NVMExpress.org.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Zack Whittaker reports via TechCrunch: A cyberattack on Mobile Guardian, a U.K.-based provider of educational device management software, has sparked outages at schools across the world and has left thousands of students unable to access their files. Mobile Guardian acknowledged the cyberattack in a statement on its website, saying it identified "unauthorized access to the iOS and ChromeOS devices enrolled to the Mobile Guardian platform." The company said the cyberattack "affected users globally," including in North America, Europe and Singapore, and that the incident resulted in an unspecified portion of its userbase having their devices unenrolled from the platform and "wiped remotely." "Users are not currently able to log in to the Mobile Guardian Platform and students will experience restricted access on their devices," the company said. Mobile device management (MDM) software allows businesses and schools to remotely monitor and manage entire fleets of devices used by employees or students. Singapore's Ministry of Education, touted as a significant customer of Mobile Guardian on the company's website since 2020, said in a statement overnight that thousands of its students had devices remotely wiped during the cyberattack. "Based on preliminary checks, about 13,000 students in Singapore from 26 secondary schools had their devices wiped remotely by the perpetrator," the Singaporean education ministry said in a statement. The ministry said it was removing the Mobile Guardian software from its fleet of student devices, including affected iPads and Chromebooks.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Before WordPerfect, the most popular work processor was WordStar. Now, the last ever DOS version has been bundled and set free by one of its biggest fans. WordStar 7.0d was the last-ever DOS release of the classic word processor, and it still has admirers today. A notable enthusiast is Canadian SF writer Robert J Sawyer, who wrote the book that became the TV series Flashforward. Thanks to his efforts you can now try out this pinnacle of pre-Windows PC programs for professional prose-smiths. Sawyer has taken the final release, packaged it up along with some useful tools -- including DOS emulators for modern Windows -- and shared the result. Now you, too, can revel in the sheer unbridled power of this powerful app. The download is 680MB, but as well as the app itself, full documentation, and some tools to help translate WordStar documents to more modern formats, it also includes copies of two FOSS tools that will let you run this MS-DOS application on modern Windows: DOSbox-X and vDosPlus. "The program has been a big part of my career -- not only did I write all 25 of my novels and almost all of my short stories with it (a few date back to the typewriter era), I also in my earlier freelance days wrote hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles with WordStar," says Sawyer.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Italy's telecoms regulator AGCOM has summoned Google and Cloudflare to a September meeting to discuss strategies for combating online piracy, six months after launching its Piracy Shield blocking system. The move comes as IPTV piracy remains resilient despite new anti-piracy legislation passed in the country last year. The law introduced harsher penalties for providers and consumers of pirated content, including fines for watching pirate streams. It also granted more aggressive site-blocking powers. Major stream suppliers appear minimally affected by overseas laws. however. AGCOM chief Massimiliano Capitanio seeks commitments from Google to limit pirate services in search results, according to TorrentFreak. The regulator also wants Cloudflare to address IPTV providers using its services to evade blocking.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is discontinuing its USB CD and DVD player accessory, the Apple USB SuperDrive. "As noted by one of our readers, it's no longer possible to buy an Apple USB SuperDrive online via the official Apple Store in the US," reports 9to5Mac. "The product's webpage says that it's 'Sold Out,' and given that it's a product introduced in 2008, it seems very unlikely that Apple will ever produce new units again." From the report: Customers can still use their location to see if there's still a unit available for pickup at one of the Apple Retail Stores. The product is still available in other countries such as the UK and Brazil. However, it's probably only a matter of time before Apple's USB SuperDrive disappears from all stores. The MacBook Air was the first MacBook without a built-in CD drive, which led the company to introduce an optical drive sold separately. Apple completely phased out optical drives from its computers in 2013, when all the Macs available in the lineup no longer had a CD reader.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook's AI-generated content problem is being fueled by its own creator bonus program, according to an investigation by 404 Media. The program incentivizes users, particularly from developing countries, to flood the platform with AI-generated images for financial gain. The outlet found that influencers in India and Southeast Asia are teaching followers how to exploit Facebook's algorithms and content moderation systems to go viral with AI-generated images. Many use Microsoft's Bing Image Creator to produce bizarre, often emotive content that garners high engagement. "The post you are seeing now is of a poor man that is being used to generate revenue," said Indian YouTuber Gyan Abhishek in a video, pointing to an AI image of an emaciated elderly man. He claimed users could earn "$100 for 1,000 likes" through Facebook's bonus program. While exact payment rates vary, 404 Media verified that consistent viral posting can lead to significant earnings for users in countries like India. Meta has defended the program to 404 Media, stating it works as intended if content meets community standards and engagement is authentic.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Reddit user discovered the backend prompts for Apple Intelligence in the developer beta of macOS 15.1, offering a rare glimpse into the specific guidelines for Apple's AI functionalities. Some of the most notable instructions include: "Do not write a story that is religious, political, harmful, violent, sexual, filthy, or in any way negative, sad, or provocative"; "Do not hallucinate"; and "Do not make up factual information." MacRumors reports: For the Smart Reply feature, the AI is programmed to identify relevant questions from an email and generate concise answers. The prompt for this feature is as follows: "You are a helpful mail assistant which can help identify relevant questions from a given mail and a short reply snippet. Given a mail and the reply snippet, ask relevant questions which are explicitly asked in the mail. The answer to those questions will be selected by the recipient which will help reduce hallucination in drafting the response. Please output top questions along with set of possible answers/options for each of those questions. Do not ask questions which are answered by the reply snippet. The questions should be short, no more than 8 words. The answers should be short as well, around 2 words. Present your output in a json format with a list of dictionaries containing question and answers as the keys. If no question is asked in the mail, then output an empty list. Only output valid json and nothing else." The Memories feature in Apple Photos, which creates video stories from user photos, follows another set of detailed guidelines. The AI is instructed to generate stories that are positive and free of any controversial or harmful content. The prompt for this feature is: "A conversation between a user requesting a story from their photos and a creative writer assistant who responds with a story. Respond in JSON with these keys and values in order: traits: list of strings, visual themes selected from the photos; story: list of chapters as defined below; cover: string, photo caption describing the title card; title: string, title of story; subtitle: string, safer version of the title. Each chapter is a JSON with these keys and values in order: chapter: string, title of chapter; fallback: string, generic photo caption summarizing chapter theme; shots: list of strings, photo captions in chapter. Here are the story guidelines you must obey: The story should be about the intent of the user; The story should contain a clear arc; The story should be diverse, that is, do not overly focus the entire story on one very specific theme or trait; Do not write a story that is religious, political, harmful, violent, sexual, filthy or in any way negative, sad or provocative. Here are the photo caption list guidelines you must obey. Apple's AI tools also include a general directive to avoid hallucination. For instance, the Writing Tools feature has the following prompt: "You are an assistant which helps the user respond to their mails. Given a mail, a draft response is initially provided based on a short reply snippet. In order to make the draft response nicer and complete, a set of question and its answer are provided. Please write a concise and natural reply by modifying the draft response to incorporate the given questions and their answers. Please limit the reply within 50 words. Do not hallucinate. Do not make up factual information."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Unlike Tesla, which hopes to develop its own bipedal 'bot to work on its production line sometime next year, BMW has brought in a robot from Figure AI. The Figure 02 robot has hands with sixteen degrees of freedom and human-equivalent strength. "We are excited to unveil Figure 02, our second-generation humanoid robot, which recently completed successful testing at the BMW Group Plant Spartanburg. Figure 02 has significant technical advancements, which enable the robot to perform a wide range of complex tasks fully autonomously," said Brett Adcock, founder and CEO of Figure AI. BMW wanted to test how to integrate a humanoid robot into its production process -- how to have the robot communicate with the production line software and human workers and determine what requirements would be necessary to add robots to the mix. The Figure robot was given the job of inserting sheet metal parts into fixtures as part of the process of making a chassis. BMW says this required particular dexterity and that it's an ergonomically awkward and tiring task for humans. Now that the trial is over, Figure's robot is no longer working at Spartanburg, and BMW says it has "no definite timetable established" to add humanoid robots to its production lines. "The developments in the field of robotics are very promising. With an early-test operation, we are now determining possible applications for humanoid robots in production. We want to accompany this technology from development to industrialization," said Milan Nedeljkovi, BMW's board member responsible for production. BMW Group published a video of the Figure 02 robot on YouTube.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes: After issuing mea culpas over diversity and compensation equity issues, tech companies began to promote their K-12 CS education philanthropy initiatives as corrective measures as they sought to deflect criticism and defeat shareholder calls for greater transparency into hiring and compensation practices. In 2016, for instance, Amazon argued it was already working with tech-backed nonprofits such as Code.org, the Anita Borg Institute, and Girls Who Code to increase women's and minorities' involvement in tech as it sought the SEC's permission to block a shareholder vote on a proposal on gender pay equality. As such, it wasn't terribly surprising to see the nation's tech giants again remind the public of their K-12 CS philanthropy efforts as they recently announced quarterly earnings. In the Addressing Racial Injustice and Inequity section of its most recent 10-K Annual Report SEC filing, Microsoft boasted, "We also expanded our Technology Education and Learning Support ("TEALS") program to reach nearly 550 high schools across 21 racial equity expansion regions with the support of nearly 1,500 volunteers, 12% of whom identify as Black or African American." An Amazon press release claimed the company is inspiring Girl Scouts to explore the future of STEM by awarding girls aged 7-and-up a co-branded Girl Scouts and Amazon patch for attending in-person or virtual Amazon warehouse tours. "As humanity looks to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) for new ideas and discoveries," Amazon explained, "it is more important than ever to harness the unique insights, skills, and potential of girls. [..] That's why Amazon partnered with Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) to host exclusive tours [of Amazon fulfillment centers] for troops around the nation to showcase the importance and diversity of careers in STEM." Most recently, a press release celebrated the move of Google's Code Next high school program into a lab located in the newly-rehabbed Michigan Central Station, which has thus far enrolled approximately 100 students. "Google has called Michigan home for over 15 years with offices in Detroit and Ann Arbor. We're dedicated to investing in the city and providing its students with the resources and inspiration they need to excel," said Shanika Hope, Director, Google Education and Social Impact. "We're excited to bring our Code Next program to Michigan Central, empowering Detroit's youth with computer science education to help them reach their full potential in the classroom and beyond."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

U.S. Judge Amit Mehta released a 286-page ruling Monday in the Google search antitrust case, revealing key details of the tech giant's business practices. The document is packed with factual findings and legal conclusions and some amazing comments. Here's one, for instance: Google pays Apple billions of dollars a year to be the default search engine in Safari. But according to Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of services, there's no other meaningful alternative. During the trial, he said that "there's no price that Microsoft could ever offer" to Apple to get the company to preload Bing in Safari. "I don't believe there's a price in the world that Microsoft could offer us," Cue said at another point. "They offered to give us Bing for free. They could give us the whole company." For Google, this is a sign that they've earned their default status (which, incidentally, they pay Apple gobs of money to maintain). Judge Mehta says that this is an indication that the "market reality is that Google is the only real choice as the default GSE [general search engine]." (Of course, Cue's opinion doesn't mean Bing is objectively bad. Elsewhere, the opinion notes that Bing's search quality is comparable to Google's on desktop, though it falls behind on mobile.)Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel has announced significant progress on its 18A process technology, with lead products successfully powering on and booting operating systems. The company's Panther Lake client processor and Clearwater Forest server chip, both built on 18A, achieved these milestones less than two quarters after tape-out. The 18A node, featuring RibbonFET gate-all-around transistors and PowerVia backside power delivery, is on track for production in 2025. Intel released the 18A Process Design Kit 1.0 in July, enabling foundry customers to leverage these advanced technologies in their designs. "Intel is out ahead of everyone else in the industry with these innovations," Kevin O'Buckley, Intel's new head of Foundry Services stated, highlighting the node's potential to drive next-generation AI solutions. Clearwater Forest will be the industry's first mass-produced, high-performance chip combining RibbonFET, PowerVia, and Foveros Direct 3D packaging technology. It also utilizes Intel's 3-T base-die technology, showcasing the company's systems foundry approach. Intel expects its first external customer to tape out on 18A in the first half of 2025. EDA and IP partners are updating their tools to support customer designs on the new node. The success of 18A is crucial for Intel's ambitions to regain process leadership and grow its foundry business.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Speaking of Google launching a new TV streaming device, the company says it's "ending production of Chromecast" after 11 years of selling the streaming dongles. From a report: Even though Chromecast devices will now be available "while supplies last," Google says it will continue to push software and security updates to its newer devices without specifying which ones. The most recent update to the lineup was the Chromecast with Google TV released in 2022. But now, Google says "technology has evolved dramatically" since the launch of the original Chromecast in 2013. "We invested heavily in embedding Google Cast technology into millions of TV devices, including Android TV," Google writes. "We are taking the next step in evolving how streaming TV devices can add even more capabilities to your smart TV, built on top of the same Chromecast technology."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google has revealed technical details of its in-house data transfer tool, called Effingo, and bragged that it uses the project to move an average of 1.2 exabytes every day. As explained in a paper [PDF] and video to be presented on Thursday at the SIGCOMM 2024 conference in Sydney, bandwidth constraints and the stubbornly steady speed of light mean that not even Google is immune to the need to replicate data so it is located close to where it is processed or served. Indeed, the paper describes managed data transfer as "an unsung hero of large-scale, globally-distributed systems" because it "reduces the network latency from across-globe hundreds to in-continent dozens of milliseconds." The paper also points out that data transfer tools are not hard to find, and asks why a management layer like Effingo is needed. The answer is that the tools Google could find either optimized for transfer time or handled point-to-point data streams -- and weren't up to the job of handling the 1.2 exabytes Effingo moves on an average day, at 14 terabytes per second. To shift all those bits, Effingo "balances infrastructure efficiency and users' needs" and recognizes that "some users and some transfers are more important than the others: eg, disaster recovery for a serving database, compared to migrating data from a cluster with maintenance scheduled a week from now."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft said Delta Air Lines turned down repeated offers for assistance following last month's catastrophic system outage, echoing claims by CrowdStrike in an increasingly contentious conflict between the carrier and its technology partners. From a report: Microsoft employees reached out to Delta to give technical support every day from July 19 through July 23, and "each time Delta turned down Microsoft's offers to help," according to a letter Tuesday from the technology giant's attorneys to Delta's representatives. Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella also personally emailed Delta CEO Ed Bastian and never heard back. "Even though Microsoft's software had not caused the CrowdStrike incident, Microsoft immediately jumped in and offered to assist Delta at no charge," according to the letter, which was signed by Mark Cheffo of Dechert LLP. The claims, in response to Delta's hiring of attorney David Boies, heighten the tension after Delta suggested it would try to seek compensation for a breakdown it expects to cost it $500 million this quarter. The airline was slower to recover than competitors after an errant software update from CrowdStrike affected Microsoft systems, creating a cascading effect that led Delta to cancel thousands of flights over several days.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google today unveiled its new Google TV Streamer, a $99.99 set-top box replacing the Chromecast. The device, shipping September 24, boasts improved performance with a 22% faster processor (over its predecessor), doubled RAM, and 32GB storage. It integrates Thread and Matter for smart home control, featuring a side-panel accessible via the remote. The Streamer supports Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos and includes an Ethernet port. Design changes include a low-profile form factor in two colors and a redesigned remote with a finder function. Software enhancements use Gemini AI for content summaries and custom screensavers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mainframe computers, stalwarts of high-speed data processing, are finding new relevance in the age of AI. Banks, insurers, and airlines continue to rely on these industrial-strength machines for mission-critical operations, with some now exploring AI applications directly on the hardware, WSJ reported in a feature story. IBM, commanding over 96% of the mainframe market, reported 6% growth in its mainframe business last quarter. The company's latest zSystem can process up to 30,000 transactions per second and hold 40 terabytes of data. WSJ adds: Globally, the mainframe market was valued at $3.05 billion in 2023, but new mainframe sales are expected to decline through 2028, IDC said. Of existing mainframes, however, 54% of enterprise leaders in a 2023 Forrester survey said they would increase their usage over the next two years. Mainframes do have limitations. They are constrained by the computing power within their boxes, unlike the cloud, which can scale up by drawing on computing power distributed across many locations and servers. They are also unwieldy -- with years of old code tacked on -- and don't integrate well with new applications. That makes them costly to manage and difficult to use as a platform for developing new applications.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mozilla, the non-profit behind the Firefox browser, faces an uncertain future following Monday's landmark antitrust ruling against Google. The decision, which found Google illegally maintained its search monopoly, puts Mozilla's primary funding source at risk. In 2021-2022, Mozilla received $510 million from Google out of $593 million total revenue, according to its latest financial report. Fortune adds: You can be sure that critics of the judge's ruling will highlight the potentially devastating impact on Mozilla to make the case that the antitrust ruling will have unintended consequences on smaller tech industry players. Others might argue that Mozilla hasn't done enough with those spoils to differentiate its Firefox browser, or that it could cut a deal with another search engine like Bing if its Google deal goes away completely. Either way, Google will appeal the suit so a long battle may ensue. And there's another big domino to fall: the judge will rule on the remedy or remedies -- essentially, the business-model penalties -- that Google will face. Apple also stands to lose more than $20 billion a year that Google pays the iPhone-maker to be the default search engine on Safari. But as Fortune notes, "Apple is a large, diversified company with many sources of revenue."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Hackers delivered malware to Windows and Mac users by compromising their Internet service provider and then tampering with software updates delivered over unsecure connections, researchers said. The attack, researchers from security firm Volexity said, worked by hacking routers or similar types of device infrastructure of an unnamed ISP. The attackers then used their control of the devices to poison domain name system responses for legitimate hostnames providing updates for at least six different apps written for Windows or macOS. The apps affected were the 5KPlayer, Quick Heal, Rainmeter, Partition Wizard, and those from Corel and Sogou. Because the update mechanisms didn't use TLS or cryptographic signatures to authenticate the connections or downloaded software, the threat actors were able to use their control of the ISP infrastructure to successfully perform machine-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks that directed targeted users to hostile servers rather than the ones operated by the affected software makers. These redirections worked even when users employed non-encrypted public DNS services such as Google's 8.8.8.8 or Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 rather than the authoritative DNS server provided by the ISP. "That is the fun/scary part -- this was not the hack of the ISPs DNS servers," Volexity CEO Steven Adair wrote in an online interview. "This was a compromise of network infrastructure for Internet traffic. The DNS queries, for example, would go to Google's DNS servers destined for 8.8.8.8. The traffic was being intercepted to respond to the DNS queries with the IP address of the attacker's servers." In other words, the DNS responses returned by any DNS server would be changed once it reached the infrastructure of the hacked ISP. The only way an end user could have thwarted the attack was to use DNS over HTTPS or DNS over TLS to ensure lookup results haven't been tampered with or to avoid all use of apps that deliver unsigned updates over unencrypted connections. As an example, the 5KPlayer app uses an unsecure HTTP connection rather than an encrypted HTTPS one to check if an update is available and, if so, to download a configuration file named Youtube.config. StormBamboo, the name used in the industry to track the hacking group responsible, used DNS poisoning to deliver a malicious version of the Youtube.config file from a malicious server. This file, in turn, downloaded a next-stage payload that was disguised as a PNG image. In fact, it was an executable file that installed malware tracked under the names MACMA for macOS devices or POCOSTICK for Windows devices. As for the hacked ISP, the security firm said "it's not a huge one or one you'd likely know." "In our case the incident is contained but we see other servers that are actively serving malicious updates but we do not know where they are being served from. We suspect there are other active attacks around the world we do not have purview into. This could be from an ISP compromise or a localized compromise to an organization such as on their firewall."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI co-founder John Schulman announced Monday that he is leaving to join rival AI startup Anthropic. CNBC reports: The move comes less than three months after OpenAI disbanded a superalignment team that focused on trying to ensure that people can control AI systems that exceed human capability at many tasks. Schulman had been a co-leader of OpenAI's post-training team that refined AI models for the ChatGPT chatbot and a programming interface for third-party developers, according to a biography on his website. In June, OpenAI said Schulman, as head of alignment science, would join a safety and security committee that would provide advice to the board. Schulman has only worked at OpenAI since receiving a Ph.D. in computer science in 2016 from the University of California, Berkeley. "This choice stems from my desire to deepen my focus on AI alignment, and to start a new chapter of my career where I can return to hands-on technical work," Schulman wrote in the social media post. He said he wasn't leaving because of a lack of support for new work on the topic at OpenAI. "On the contrary, company leaders have been very committed to investing in this area," he said. The leaders of the superalignment team, Jan Leike and company co-founder Ilya Sutskever, both left this year. Leike joined Anthropic, while Sutskever said he was helping to start a new company, Safe Superintelligence Inc. "Very excited to be working together again!" Leike wrote in reply to Schulman's message.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scientists studying lunar samples brought back by the Apollo missions have determined that the moon's thin atmosphere is produced largely by meteorite impacts. "Our findings provide a clearer picture of how the moon's surface and atmosphere interact over long timescales, [and] enhance our understanding of space weathering processes," said Dr Nicole Nie, the co-author of the new study based at MIT's department of Earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences. The Guardian reports: Writing in the journal Science Advances, Nie and her colleagues describe how the lunar atmosphere must be constantly replenished because its atoms are continuously being lost to space, primarily because of the moon's weak gravity, or trapped on the lunar surface. Ultraviolet photons from the sun can rerelease the latter, but the researchers say replenishment of the atmosphere is thought to rely on atoms being released from within lunar minerals -- either via vaporisation by meteorite impacts, or by solar wind sputtering, a process in which charged particles from the sun hit the moon and eject atoms. But which of the two factors dominates had been unclear, with data from Nasa's lunar atmosphere and dust environment explorer, launched in 2013, suggesting both were at play. Nie and colleagues unpicked the conundrum by studying the different forms, or isotopes, of potassium and rubidium in 10 samples of lunar soil from the Apollo missions. The team say meteorite impacts and solar wind sputtering both favor the release of lighter forms of the elements, but that the actual proportion of heavy to light isotopes that end up in the lunar atmosphere and soil would differ depending on the process. "After measuring the isotopic compositions of lunar soils, we built a mathematical model taking into account various space weathering processes, and solve for the contribution of each of them by matching the measured isotopic compositions," said Nie. The results suggest about 70% of the moon's atmosphere is down to impact vaporization and 30% to solar wind sputtering.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Distracted driving isn't only a result of drivers using their phones when they should be paying attention. But it is a significant cause of the problem, accounting for at least 13 percent of distracted driving deaths and rising to 1 in 5 for young drivers. Now, a study conducted with customers of the Progressive insurance company has tested different strategies to get those drivers to put their phones down in the car, and it found two that significantly reduced handheld use, with the effect persisting after the end of the study. The study recruited 1,653 customers already enrolled in its Progressive Snapshot program, which involves the use of a smartphone app that detects phone use while driving. Before the start of the trial, the participants all averaged more than 6.4 minutes per hour of handheld use while driving -- Progressive says its safest customers have handheld usage of less than 1 minute per hour while driving. [...] Paying drivers on top of competitive gamification was the most effective way to get them to put down their phones. This group reduced its handheld usage by 27.6 percent, or 89 seconds/hour, compared to the control. That reduction was maintained at the same level throughout the post-intervention period for this arm.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a note to clients, seen by Slashdot, brokerage house Jefferies writes: Netflix's last price hike on the standard plan was in Jan 2022, its ad- supported plan remains the cheapest (among major players) in the industry, and its move into live sports increases pricing power - for these 3 reasons we suspect a price hike in Q4 or December of this year could be coming on the standard plan. As stated in the Q4 2023 letter (following the announcement of WWE Raw coming in 2025): "As we invest in and improve Netflix, we'll occasionally ask our members to pay a little extra to reflect those improvements, which in turn helps drive the positive flywheel of additional investment." We believe Netflix has been positioning itself throughout this year for a year-end price hike. December / 2025 will have major content releases supporting a pricing increase including the Christmas NFL game, Squid Game 2 on Dec. 26th (season 1 - the #1 watched NFLX show of all time), WWE Raw starting Jan 2025, and Stranger Things 5 coming in 2025 (season 3 / 4 in top 10 of all-time).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

iPhone and Apple Watch users in California will soon be able to add their digital ID and driver's license to the Wallet app, as revealed by new landing pages on the state DMV website. This feature follows a slow rollout since its announcement, with only five states currently supporting it. MacRumors reports: "Now you can add your California driver's license or state ID to Apple Wallet on iPhone and Apple Watch so you can present it easily and securely in person and in app," reads the landing page, which contains broken links and placeholder images, and is still missing a proper website security certificate. The webpages were discovered on Sunday by Jimmy Obomsawin, after someone added a link to the landing pages in an Apple Wallet Wikipedia entry last Wednesday.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With Windows 10's end-of-life update coming next October, it appears that users are finally making the jump to its successor. As spotted by Neowin, Windows 11 crossed the 30% market share mark for the first time since its release. From the report: According to Statcounter's latest findings, last month, Windows 11 reached a new all-time high of 30.83%, gaining 1.08 points in just one month or 7.17 points year-over-year (it was at 23.66% in July 2023). Just as Windows 11 climbs, Windows 10 loses its market share. It is now below 65%, or 64.99%, to be precise, or -1.06 points in one month. Year-over-year change is 11.15 points (it was at 71.14% in July 2023).[...] Other Windows versions, which are now long unsupported, still have a fair share of customers who refuse to jump-ship. Windows 7, for one, is the third most popular Windows with a 3.04% market share (+0.08 points). Windows 8.1 is fourth with 0.42% (+0.02 points), and Windows XP is fifth with 0.38% (-0.01 points).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Silicon Valley's fascination with AI has led to parents enrolling children as young as five in AI-focused summer camps. "It's common for kids on summer break to attend space, science or soccer camp, or even go to coding school," writes Priya Anand via the San Francisco Standard. "But the growing effort to teach kindergarteners who can barely spell their names lessons in 'Advanced AI Robot Design & AR Coding' shows how far the frenzy has extended." From the report: Parents who previously would opt for coding camps are increasingly interested in AI-specific programming, according to Eliza Du, CEO of Integem, which makes holographic augmented reality technology in addition to managing dozens of tech-focused kids camps across the country. "The tech industry understands the value of AI," she said. "Every year it's increasing." Some Bay Area parents are so eager to get their kids in on AI's ground floor that they try to sneak toddlers into advanced courses. "Sometimes they'll bring a 4-year-old, and I'm like, you're not supposed to be here," Du said. Du said Integem studied Common Core education standards to ensure its programming was suitable for those as young as 5. She tries to make sure parents understand there's only so much kids can learn across a week or two of camp. "Either they set expectations too high or too low," Du said of the parents. As an example, she recounted a confounding comment in a feedback survey from the parent of a 5-year-old. "After one week, the parent said, "My child did not learn much. My cousin is a Google engineer, and he said he's not ready to be an intern at Google yet.' What do I say to that review?" Du said, bemused. "That expectation is not realistic." Even less tech-savvy parents are getting in on the hype. Du tells of a mom who called the company to get her 12-year-old enrolled in "AL" summer camp. "She misread it," Du said, explaining that the parent had confused the "I" in AI with a lowercase "L."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: On July 19, Yelp informed select indie developers that they would have to switch to paid accounts, due to high API usage. Developers were given four days to make the change, in a move that echoes recent communication bungles by Reddit and Twitter. When the developers replied to the July 19 email, Yelp sent a deck of pricing tiers with base pricing starting from $229 per month for a limit of 1,000 API calls per day. Developers were concerned that other, more affordable options weren't mentioned in the deck. Yelp said the pricing is equivalent and simply presented in different ways. The method of communication and lack of transparency has angered developers, some of whom shuttered their services, even after Yelp gave them a 90-day leeway and apologized. While the company has issued an apology email to developers and extended their free usage by 90 days, it may not be enough to keep these frustrated developers from moving to new platforms. "We apologize for last week's abbreviated transition that impacted a small percentage of developers and have extended access to these users," a company spokesperson told TechCrunch. "Yelp sunsetted free, commercial, unlimited use of the Yelp Fusion API in 2019 and has been in the process of migrating developers to a paid program over the last several years. The developer community is important to Yelp, and we've heard their feedback about the transition period from the free Yelp Fusion API to our paid program."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Members of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) are striking against the video game industry due to failed negotiations over AI-related worker protections. "The guild began striking on Friday, July 26th, preventing over 160,000 SAG-AFTRA members from taking new video game projects and impeding games already in development from the biggest publishers to the smallest indie studios," notes The Verge. From the report: Negotiations broke down due to disagreements over worker protections around AI. The actors union, SAG-AFTRA, negotiates the terms of the interactive media agreement, or IMA, with a bargaining committee of video game publishers, including Activision, Take-Two, Insomniac Games, WB Games, and others that represent a total of 30 signatory companies. Though SAG-AFTRA and the video game bargaining group were able to agree on a number of proposals, AI remained the final stumbling block resulting in the strike. SAG-AFTRA's provisions on AI govern both voice and movement performers with respect to digital replicas -- or using an existing performance as the foundation to create new ones without the original performer -- and the use of generative AI to create performances without any initial input. However, according to SAG-AFTRA, the bargaining companies disagreed about which type of performer should be eligible for AI protections. SAG-AFTRA chief contracts officer Ray Rodriguez said that the bargaining companies initially wanted to offer protections to voice, not motion performers. "So anybody doing a stunt or creature performance, all those folks would have been left unprotected under the employers' offer," Rodriguez said in an interview with Aftermath. Rodriguez said that the companies later extended protections to motion performers, but only if "the performer is identifiable in the output of the AI digital replica." SAG-AFTRA rejected this proposal as it would potentially exclude a majority of movement performances. "Their proposal would carve out anything that doesn't look and sound identical to me," said Andi Norris, a member of SAG-AFTRA's IMA negotiating committee, during a press conference. "[The proposal] would leave movement specialists, including stunts, entirely out in the cold, to be replaced ... by soulless synthetic performers trained on our actual performances." The bargaining game companies argued that the terms went far enough and would require actors' approval. "Our offer is directly responsive to SAG-AFTRA's concerns and extends meaningful AI protections that include requiring consent and fair compensation to all performers working under the IMA. These terms are among the strongest in the entertainment industry," wrote Audrey Cooling, a representative working on behalf of the video game companies on the bargaining committee in a statement to The Verge.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has introduced a new feature for Safari that allows users to block distracting elements on web pages, such as sign-in popups, some autoplay videos and even ads (temporarily). The feature is called "Distraction Control" and is rolling out today in iOS 18 beta 5. 9to5Mac reports: Distraction Control is accessible via the same Page Menu interface in Safari as Reader and Viewer. Here, users will find a new "Hide Distracting Items" option to enable Distraction Control. Users will then be prompted to select different elements on a webpage that they feel are distracting. Users will have to manually choose each item on a webpage that they wish to hide. Distraction Control will persist through page refreshes and reloads, assuming that the hidden item does not change. Apple says that nothing is proactively hidden with this feature; only items that a user manually selects are hidden. Apple also emphasizes that this feature is not meant to serve as an ad blocker. While a user can technically use Distraction Control to hide an ad on a website temporarily, that ad will re-appear when the page is refreshed or otherwise reloaded. In fact, the first time a user activates Distraction Control, Safari will display a pop-up that emphasizes the feature will not permanently remove ads or other areas of a website that frequently change. If a user chooses to hide something like a GDPR banner or a cookies request pop-up, Distraction Control behaves in the same way as if the user manually clicked to dismiss that pop-up. This means Distraction Control will serve as neither an "Accept" nor "Decline" for that cookies request. Finally, if a user wishes to unhide an item, they can click back into the Page Menu interface in Safari and choose "Show Hidden Items."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Indonesia said it has banned the privacy-oriented search engine DuckDuckGo, citing concerns that it could be used to access pornography and online gambling websites which are illegal in the country, the communications ministry said on Friday. Indonesia, with the world's biggest Muslim population, has strict rules that ban the sharing online of content deemed obscene. Social media platform Reddit and video-hosting platform Vimeo are blocked. Usman Kansong, a communications ministry official, told Reuters that DuckDuckGo had been blocked "because of the many complaints made to us about the rampant online gambling and pornography content in its search results." The ministry did not say how DuckDuckGo differs from other search engines such as Alphabet's Google but on its website, DuckDuckGo said it offered several products intended to "help people protect their online privacy" including the search engine, which it said has been praised by privacy advocates.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google's payments to make its search engine the default on smartphone web browsers violates US antitrust law, a federal judge ruled Monday, handing a key victory to the Justice Department. From a report: Judge Amit Mehta in Washington said that the Alphabet unit's $26 billion in payments effectively blocked any other competitor from succeeding in the market. Antitrust enforcers alleged that Google has illegally maintained a monopoly over online search and related advertising. The government said that Google has paid Apple, Samsung and others billions over decades for prime placement on smartphones and web browsers. This default position has allowed Google to build up the most-used search engine in the world, and fueled more than $300 billion in annual revenue largely generated by search ads.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

snydeq writes: CSO Online's Evan Schuman reports on a design flaw in Microsoft Authenticator that causes it to often overwrite authentication accounts when a user adds a new one via QR scan. "But because of the way the resulting lockout happens, the user is not likely to realize the issue resides with Microsoft Authenticator. Instead, the company issuing the authentication is considered the culprit, resulting in wasted corporate helpdesk hours trying to fix an issue not of that company's making." Schuman writes: "The core of the problem? Microsoft Authenticator will overwrite an account with the same username. Given the prominent use of email addresses for usernames, most users' apps share the same username. Google Authenticator and just about every other authenticator app add the name of the issuer -- such as a bank or a car company -- to avoid this issue. Microsoft only uses the username." The flaw appears to have been in place since Authenticator was released in 2016. Users have complained about this issue in the past to no avail. In its two correspondences with Schuman, Microsoft first laid blame on users, then on issuers. Several IT experts confirmed the flaw, with one saying, "It's possible that this problem occurs more often than anyone realizes because [users] don't realize what the cause is. If you haven't picked an authentication app, why would you pick Microsoft?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker has signed a bill into law that will significantly curb the penalties companies could face for improperly collecting and using fingerprints and other biometric data from workers and consumers. From a report: The bill passed by the legislature in May and signed by Pritzker, a Democrat, on Friday amends the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) so that companies can be held liable only for a single violation per person, rather than for each time biometric data is allegedly misused. The amendments will dramatically limit companies' exposure in BIPA cases and could discourage plaintiffs' lawyers from filing many lawsuits in the first place, management-side lawyers said. "By limiting statutory damages to a single recovery per individual ... companies in most instances will no longer face the prospect of potentially annihilative damages awards that greatly outpace any privacy harms," David Oberly, of counsel at Baker Donelson in Washington, D.C., said before the bill was signed. BIPA, a 2008 law, requires companies to obtain permission before collecting fingerprints, retinal scans and other biometric information from workers and consumers. The law imposes penalties of $1,000 per violation and $5,000 for reckless or intentional violations.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Reeling from security and optics issues, Microsoft appears to be trying to correct its story. An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft made it clear earlier this year that it was planning to make security its top priority, following years of security issues and mounting criticisms. Starting today, the software giant is now tying its security efforts to employee performance reviews. Kathleen Hogan, Microsoft's chief people officer, has outlined what the company expects of employees in an internal memo obtained by The Verge. "Everyone at Microsoft will have security as a Core Priority," says Hogan. "When faced with a tradeoff, the answer is clear and simple: security above all else." A lack of security focus for Microsoft employees could impact promotions, merit-based salary increases, and bonuses. "Delivering impact for the Security Core Priority will be a key input for managers in determining impact and recommending rewards," Microsoft is telling employees in an internal Microsoft FAQ on its new policy. Microsoft has now placed security as one of its key priorities alongside diversity and inclusion. Both are now required to be part of performance conversations -- internally called a "Connect" -- for every employee, alongside priorities that are agreed upon between employees and their managers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nvidia scraped videos from YouTube, Netflix and other online platforms to compile training data for its AI products, 404 Media reported Monday, citing internal documents. The tech giant used this content to develop various AI projects, including its Omniverse 3D world generator and self-driving car systems, the report said. Some employees expressed concerns about potential legal issues surrounding the use of such content, the report said, adding that the management assured them of executive-level approval. Nvidia defended its actions, asserting they were "in full compliance with the letter and the spirit of copyright law" and emphasizing that copyright protects specific expressions rather than facts or ideas.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Elon Musk has reignited his legal battle against OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, by filing a new lawsuit in a California federal court. The suit, which revives a six-year-old dispute, accuses OpenAI founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman of breaching the company's founding principles by prioritizing commercial interests over public benefit. Musk's complaint alleges that OpenAI's multibillion-dollar partnership with Microsoft contradicts the original mission to develop AI responsibly for humanity's benefit. The lawsuit describes the alleged betrayal in dramatic terms, claiming "perfidy and deceit... of Shakespearean proportions." OpenAI has not yet commented on the new filing. In response to Musk's previous lawsuit, which was withdrawn seven weeks ago, the company stated its commitment to building safe artificial general intelligence for the benefit of humanity.Read more of this story at Slashdot.