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Editor/publisher Neil Clarke "said he recently had to temporarily shutter the online submission form for his science fiction and fantasy magazine, Clarkesworld," reports CNN, "after his team was inundated with a deluge of 'consistently bad' AI-generated submissions.""They're some of the worst stories we've seen, actually," Clarke said of the hundreds of pieces of AI-produced content he and his team of humans now must manually parse through. "But it's more of the problem of volume, not quality. The quantity is burying us." "It almost doubled our workload," he added... Clarke said he and his team turned to AI-powered detectors of AI-generated work to deal with the deluge of submissions but found these tools weren't helpful because of how unreliably they flag "false positives and false negatives," especially for writers whose second language is English. "You listen to these AI experts, they go on about how these things are going to do amazing breakthroughs in different fields," Clarke said. "But those aren't the fields they're currently working in." They're not the only ones concerned, according to the article. the secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development "recently said the intergovernmental organization has found that AI can improve some aspects of job quality, but there are tradeoffs." "Workers do report, though, that the intensity of their work has increased after the adoption of AI in their workplaces," Cormann said in public remarks, pointing to the findings of a report released by the organization. The report also found that for non-AI specialists and non-managers, the use of AI had only a "minimal impact on wages so far" - meaning that for the average employee, the work is scaling up, but the pay isn't. Ivana Saula, the research director for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, said that workers in her union have said they feel like "guinea pigs" as employers rush to roll out AI-powered tools on the job. And it hasn't always gone smoothly, Saula said. The implementation of these new tech tools has often led to more "residual tasks that a human still needs to do." This can include picking up additional logistics tasks that a machine simply can't do, Saula said, adding more time and pressure to a daily work flow... "It's never just clean cut, where the machine can entirely replace the human," Saula told CNN. "It can replace certain aspects of what a worker does, but there's some tasks that are outstanding that get placed on whoever remains." Workers are also "saying that my workload is heavier" after the implementation of new AI tools, Saula said, and "the intensity at which I work is much faster because now it's being set by the machine." She added that the feedback they are getting from workers shows how important it is to "actually involve workers in the process of implementation."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In 2015 the founders of "Solar AquaGrid" proposed water-saving solar panels to shade irrigation canals, but they "couldn't get anyone to commit," remembers the Associated Press. But "fast forward eight years," and you'll find them "preparing to break ground on the first solar-covered canal project in the United States."The idea is simple: install solar panels over canals in sunny, water-scarce regions where they reduce evaporation and make electricity. A study by the University of California, Merced gives a boost to the idea, estimating that 63 billion gallons of water could be saved by covering California's 4,000 miles of canals. Researchers believe that much installed solar would also generate a significant amount of electricity. But that's an estimate - neither it, nor other potential benefits have been tested scientifically. That's about to change with Project Nexus in California's Central Valley... They thought research from a reputable institution might do the trick, and [in 2021] got funding for UC Merced to study the impact of solar-covered-canals in California... Around the same time, the Turlock Irrigation District, an entity that also provides power, reached out to UC Merced. It was looking to build a solar project to comply with the state's increased goal of 100% renewable energy by 2045. But land was very expensive, so building atop existing infrastructure was appealing. Then there was the prospect that shade from panels might reduce weeds growing in the canals - a problem that costs this utility $1 million annually... The state committed $20 million in public funds, turning the pilot into a three-party collaboration among the private, public and academic sectors. About 1.6 miles (2.6 kilometers) of canals between 20 and 110 feet wide will be covered with solar panels between five and 15 feet off the ground. The UC Merced team will study impacts ranging from evaporation to water quality, said Brandi McKuin, lead researcher on the study. "We need to get to the heart of those questions before we make any recommendations about how to do this more widely," she said. "California isn't first with this technology," the article points out, since India "pioneered it on one of the largest irrigation projects in the world..." But soon even more U.S. canals may be getting solar panels. Arizona's Gila River Indian Community "received funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to install solar on their canals in an effort to save water to ease stress on the Colorado River. And one of Arizona's largest water and power utilities, the Salt River Project, is studying the technology alongside Arizona State University.And a group of more than 100 climate advocacy groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity and Greenpeace, have now sent a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Bureau Commissioner Camille Touton urging them "to accelerate the widespread deployment of solar photovoltaic energy systems" above the Bureau's canals and aqueducts. Covering all 8,000 miles of Bureau-owned canals and aqueducts could "generate over 25 gigawatts of renewable energy - enough to power nearly 20 million homes - and reduce water evaporation by tens of billions of gallons."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes:The number one movie in North America is Warner Bros. Discovery's Barbie, which Deadline reports has teamed up with Oppenheimer to fuel a mind-blowing $300M+ box office weekend. ["Oppenheimer Shatters Expectations with $80 Million Debut," read the headline at Variety.] Now it seems everybody is trying to tap into Barbie buzz, including Microsoft's Xbox [which added Barbie and Ken's cars to Forza Horizon 5] and even Microsoft-backed education nonprofit Code.org. ("Are your students excited about Barbie The Movie? Have them try an HourOfCode [programming game] with Barbie herself!"). The idea is to inspire young students to become coders. But as Code.org shares Instagram images of a software developer Barbie, Slashdot reader theodp remembers when, nine years ago, Code.org's CEO "took to Twitter to blast Barbie and urge for her replacement." They'd joined a viral 2014 Computer Engineer Barbie protest that arose in response to the publication of Barbie F***s It Up Again, a scathing and widely reported-on blog post that prompted Mattel to pull the book Barbie: I Can Be a Computer Engineer immediately from Amazon. This may have helped lead to Barbie's loss of her crown as the most popular girls' toy in the ensuing 2014 holiday season to Disney's Frozen princesses Elsa and Anna, and got the Mattel exec who had to apologize for Computer Engineer Barbie called to the White House for a sit down a few months later. (Barbie got a brainy makeover soon thereafter)... The following year, Disney-owned Lucasfilm and Code.org teamed up on Star Wars: Building a Galaxy with Code, a signature tutorial for the 2015 Hour of Code. Returning to a Disney princess theme in 2016, Disney and Code.org revealed a new Hour of Code tutorial featuring characters from the animated film Moana just a day ahead of its theatrical release. It was later noted that Moana's screenwriters included Pamela Ribon, who penned the 2014 Barbie-blasting blog post that ended Barbie's short reign as the Hour of Code role model of choice for girls. Interestingly, Ribon seems to bear no Barbie grudges either, tweeting on the day of the Barbie movie release, "I was like holy s*** can't wait to see it." To be fair, the movie's trailer promises "If you hate Barbie, this movie is for you," in a deconstruction where Barbie is played by D.C. movies' "Harley Quinn" actress Margot Robbie (Suicide Squad, Birds of Prey), whose other roles include Tonya Harding and the home-wrecking second wife in The Wolf of Wall Street.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Leaving a Ubisoft account inactive for too long "apparently puts it at risk of permanent deletion," writes PC Gamer, calling the policy "a customer-unfriendly practice."A piracy and anti-DRM focused Twitter account, PC_enjoyer, recently shared a screenshot of a Ubisoft support email telling the user that their Ubisoft account had been suspended for "inactivity," and would be "permanently closed" after 30 days. The email provided a link to cancel the move. Now, that sounds like a phishing scam, right? I and many commenters wondered that, looking at the original post, but less than a day later, Ubisoft's verified support account responded to the tweet, seemingly confirming the screenshotted email's legitimacy. "You can avoid the account closure by logging into your account within the 30 days (since receiving the email pictured) and selecting the Cancel Account Closure link contained in the email," Ubisoft Support wrote. "We certainly do not want you to lose access to your games or account so if you have any difficulties logging in then please create a support case with us." I was unable to find anything regarding account closure for inactivity in Ubisoft's US terms of use or its end user licence agreement, but the company does reserve the right to suspend or end services at any time. Ubisoft has a support page titled "Closure of inactive Ubisoft accounts." The page first describes instances where the service clashes with local data privacy laws, then reads: "We may also close long-term inactive accounts to maintain our database. You will be notified by email if we begin the process of closing your inactive account." This page links to another dedicated to voluntarily closing one's Ubisoft account, and seems to operate by the same rules: a 30-day suspension before permanent deletion. "As we will be unable to recover the account once it has been closed, we strongly recommend only putting in the request if you are absolutely sure you would like to close your account." "If you have a good spam filter or just reasonably assume it's a phishing attempt, then you might one day try your old games and find they're just gone," worries long-time Slashdot reader Baron_Yam. "If you're someone who still plays games from decades ago every so often, this is a scenario you might want to think about." The site Eurogamer reports that when a Twitter user complained that "I lost my Ubisoft account, and all the Ubisoft Steam game[s] I've bought are now useless", Ubisoft Support "responded to say that players can raise a ticket if they would like to recover their account." The original tweet now includes this "reader-added context" supplied by other Twitter users - along with three informative links:For added context, Ubisoft can be required under certain data protection laws, such as the GDPR, to close inactive accounts if they deem the data no longer necessary for collection. Ubisoft has claimed they don't close accounts that are inactive for less than 4 years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon has already cut 27,000 jobs in the past few months. Now the Associated Press reports that Amazon "is asking some corporate workers to relocate to other cities as part of its return-to-office policy, which mandates workers to be in the office three days a week."An Amazon spokesperson confirmed on Friday that relocations are happening but would not comment on reports by several news outlets that the tech giant was requiring some workers in smaller offices to move to main offices located in bigger cities. Amazon didn't provide details on the number of employees that will be required to relocate. Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser said the company will provide "relocations benefits" to workers who are asked to move and consider requests for exceptions on a case-by-case basis... Citing internal messages, Business Insider reported earlier Amazon employees who refuse to relocate near main offices of their teams are being told they either have to find a new job internally or leave the company through a "voluntary resignation." "There's more energy, collaboration, and connections happening since we've been working together at least three days per week," an Amazon spokesperson told the Associated Press, adding "we've heard this from lots of employees and the businesses that surround our offices."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For a taste of Comic-Con, one San Diego newspaper is sharing photos of the 30 buildings in San Diego that had their exteriors covered this week with promotional "building wraps" for "the latest TV shows, movies and even a National Geographic special." Some of the stranger announcements this year:Jamie Lee Curtis has co-authored a horror graphic novel with an environmentalist theme called Mother Nature. It was also announced that season 2 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds would include a musical episode. Star Trek: the Next Generation star Jonathan Frakes has directed a Star Trek: Lower Decks episode in which the animated characters crossover into the live-action world of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.And the A.V. Club offers a slideshow with its choices for this year's hottest trailers. Some of the highlights: The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Liveand The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Wheel of Time (Season 2) The Marvels (a new movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe)Agatha Christie's A Haunting In Venice (starring Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot) Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire (Season 2) Harley Quinn (Season 4)Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gizmodo reports:Thousands of top Russian officials and state employees have reportedly been banned from using iPhones and other Apple products over concerns they could serve as surreptitious spying tools for Western intelligence agencies... Russia's trade minister, according to a Financial Times report, said the new ban will take effect Monday, July 17. The move affects a variety of Apple products from iPhones, iPads, and laptops, and builds off of similar restrictions already put in place by the digital development ministry and state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec. Kremlin officials also advised staff working on Vladimir Putin's 2024 presidential re-election campaign against using a variety of US-developed smartphones over similar espionage conveners earlier this year... Russian intelligence officials last month accused the US National Security Agency of hacking into thousands of Russian-owned iPhones and targeting the phones of foreign diplomats based in Russia... To be clear, Russian officials still haven't provided any clear evidence proving the alleged US conspiracy. Apple has also publicly denied the claims and recently told the Times it "has never worked with any government to build a backdoor into any Apple product, and never will." The Financial Times got a skeptical response to that from Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia's Security Council and one of the country's fiercest hardliners. "When a big tech compan...a.aclaims it does not co-operate with the intelligence community - either it lies shamelessly or it is about to [go bust]." Thanks to Slashdot reader dovthelachma for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"If the U.S. is to ease its dependence for lithium on other countries such as China, it may need this quiet corner of southwest Arkansas to lead the way," reports the Wall Street Journal, visiting the "thick-wooded back roads" and "crisscrossing fields where oil drillers gave up long ago" in Magnolia, Arkansas. (Population: 11,105)Exxon Mobil, a new player in the hunt for U.S. lithium, is planning to build one of the world's largest lithium processing facilities not far from Magnolia, with a capacity to produce 75,000 to 100,000 metric tons of lithium a year, according to people familiar with the matter. The Wall Street Journal reported in May that Exxon purchased 120,000 gross acres in the area for a price tag of more than $100 million. A consultant for the seller had estimated the prospect could have the equivalent of 4 million tons of lithium carbonate equivalent, enough to power 50 million EVs... To push the project forward, Exxon will have to profitably scale up the technology used to siphon lithium from brine, which for years has been an elusive goal across the industry... Exxon believes it can leverage its engineering prowess to become a low-cost domestic supplier of lithium, and has had discussions with battery and EV manufacturers, people familiar with the matter said. The company would also benefit from green-energy subsidies included in the Inflation Reduction Act, which allows for tax credits of 10% of the cost of producing lithium. Exxon, which is generally bullish about the future of oil and natural gas, is also preparing for a future less dependent on gasoline. Last year, it projected light-duty vehicle demand for internal combustion engine fuels could peak by 2025, while EVs, hybrids and vehicles powered by fuel cells could grow to more than 50% of new car sales by 2050. "Other companies including Standard Lithium and Tetra Technologies are planning to build capacity in the area..." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There's been several articles on how programmers can adapt to writing code with AI. But presumably AI companies will then gather more data from how real-world programmers use their tools. So long-time Slashdot reader ThePub2000 has a question. "Where's the generative leaps if the humans using it as an assistant don't make leaps forward in a public space?"Let's posit a couple of things: - First, your AI responses are good enough to use.- Second, because they're good enough to use you no longer need to post publicly about programming questions. Where does AI go after it's "perfected itself"? Or, must we live in a dystopian world where code is scrapable for free, regardless of license, but access to support in an AI from that code comes at a price?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last weekend in Portland, Oregon, the Software Freedom Conservancy hosted a new conference called the Free and Open Source Software Yearly. And long-time free software activist Bradley M. Kuhn (currently a policy fellow/hacker-in-residence for the Software Freedom Conservancy) hosted a lively panel discussion on "the recent change" to public source code releases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux which shed light on what may happen next. The panel also included:benny Vasquez, the Chair of the AlmaLinux OS FoundationJeremy Alison, Samba co-founder and software engineer at CIQ (focused on Rocky Linux). Allison is also Jeremy Allison - Sam Slashdot reader #8,157.James (Jim) Wright, Oracle's chief architect for Open Source policy/strategy/compliance/alliances"Red Hat themselves did not reply to our repeated requests to join us on this panel... SUSE was also invited but let us know they were unable to send someone on short notice to Portland for the panel." One interesting audience question for the panel came from Karsten Wade, a one-time Red Hat senior community architect who left Red Hat in April after 21 years, but said he was "responsible for bringing the CentOS team onboard to Red Hat." Wade argued that CentOS "was always doing a clean rebuild from source RPMS of their own..." So "isn't all of this thunder doing Red Hat's job for them, of trying to get everyone to say, 'This thing is not the equivalent to RHEL.'" In response Jeremy Alison made a good point. "None of us here are the arbiters of whether it's good enough of a rebuild of Red Hat Linux. The customers are the arbiters." But this led to an audience member asking a very forward-looking question: what are the chances the community could adopt a new (and open) enterprise Linux standard that distributions could follow. AlmaLinux's Vasquez replied, "Chances are real high... I think everyone sees that as the obvious answer. I think that's the obvious next step. I'll leave it at that." And Oracle's Wright added "to the extent that the market asks us to standardize? We're all responsive." When asked if they'd consider adding features not found in RHEL ("such as high-security gates through reproducible builds") AlmaLinux's Vasquez said "100% -- yeah. One of the things that we're kind of excited about is the opportunities that this opens for us. We had decided we were just going to focus on this north star of 1:1 Red Hat no matter what -- and with that limitation being removed, we have all kinds of options." And CIQ's Alison said "We're working on FIPS certification for an earlier version of Rocky, that Red Hat, I don't believe, FIPS certified. And we're planning to release that." AlmaLinux's Vasquez emphasized later that "We're just going to build Enterprise Linux. Red Hat has done a great job of establishing a fantastic target for all of us, but they don't own the rights to enterprise Linux. We can make this happen, without forcing an uncomfortable conversation with Red Hat. We can get around this." And Alison later applied a "Star Wars" quote to Red Hat's predicament. "The more things you try and grab, the more things slip through your fingers." The more somebody tries to exert control over a codebase, the more the pushback will occur from people who collaborate in that codebase." AlmaLinux's Vasquez also said they're already "in conversations" with independent software vendors about the "flow of support" into non-Red Hat distributions -- though that's always been the case. "Finding ways to reduce the barrier for those independent software vendors to add official support for us is, like, maybe more cumbersome now, but it's the same problem that we've had..." Early in the discussion Oracle's Jim Wright pointed out that even Red Hat's own web site defines open source code as "designed to be publicly accessible - anyone can see, modify, and distribute the code as they see fit." ("Until now," Wright added pointedly...) There was some mild teasing of Oracle during the 50-minute discussion -- someone asked at one point if they'd re-license their proprietary implementation of ZFS under the GPL. But at the end of the panel, Oracle's Jim Wright still reminded the audience that "If you want to work on open source Linux, we are hiring." Read Slashdot's transcript of highlights from the discussion.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Having big U.K. meat-eaters cut some of it out of their diet would be like taking 8 million cars off the road," reports the BBC:That's just one of the findings of new research that scientists say gives the most reliable calculation yet of how what we eat impacts our planet. The Oxford University study is the first to pinpoint the difference high- and low-meat diets have on greenhouse gas emissions, researchers say... [Oxford University] professor Peter Scarborough, who is part of the Livestock Environment And People project surveyed 55,000 people who were divided into big meat-eaters, who ate more than 100g of meat a day, which equates to a big burger, low meat-eaters, whose daily intake was 50g or less, approximately a couple of chipolata sausages, fish-eaters, vegetarians and vegans... The research shows that a big meat-eater's diet produces an average of 10.24 kg of planet-warming greenhouse gasses each day. A low meat-eater produces almost half that at 5.37 kg per day. [Fish diet: 4.74 kg. "Vegetarian" diet: 4.16 kg] And for vegan diets - it's halved again to 2.47 kg a day. The analysis is the first to look at the detailed impact of diets on other environmental measures all together. These are land use, water use, water pollution and loss of species, usually caused by loss of habitat because of expansion of farming. In all cases high meat-eaters had a significantly higher adverse impact than other groups... A separate study also published in Nature Food in 2021 concluded that food production was responsible for a third of all global greenhouse gas emissions. And an independent review for the Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) called for a 30% reduction in meat consumption by 2032 in order to meet the UK's net zero target. "The meat industry said the analysis overstated the impact of eating meat." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader beforewisdom for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Something unexpected happened at this year's Comic-Con, reports Entertainment Weekly:As film and TV actors skipped San Diego Comic-Con in support of the SAG-AFTRA strike, a number of voice actors gathered to show their support - and raise awareness about the threat of artificial intelligence on their industry. The National Association of Voice Actors hosted a panel Saturday morning, where multiple actors and SAG officials spoke to a packed room about how rapidly changing AI technology can threaten both fans and creators... The panelists took a deep dive into the many different forms of AI, particularly in its use in voice work - from original voices like Apple's Siri to synthetic voices copying live actors. All cautioned that AI inherently is not a bad tool and can in some ways enhance voice performances, but fans and actors should push back against exploitative methods. "Voice acting is the tip of the spear of how AI can either be used to lift people up and enhance the opportunities that actors have - or be used in a negative way to steal their voices and crush human creativity," SAG-AFTRA executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland told the crowd. "We need to be very vigilant about that. AI isn't implementing itself. People are choosing to implement AI. So, we've got to reject the idea that this is something that is going to happen to us, and there's nothing to be done about that. That is an absolute myth that is being foisted upon us by the people who want us to think we have no power." Ultimately, the panelists explained, it all comes down to consent. Currently, there are no federal or international laws protecting a person's likeness, and many existing contracts allow a company to capture an actor's voice or likeness and use it "in perpetuity." NAVA and SAG-AFTRA are calling upon voice actors and fans alike to push back, both by establishing protective contract language and by pushing for global laws. In addition, the site also reports that "Actors, cosplayers, and a congressman hit the streets of San Diego during Comic-Con 2023 on Friday to show their support for the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader maxcelcat writes: A fleet of some 500 drives were performing a display over Melbourne's Docklands in the lead up to the FIFA Women's World Cup. About 350 of them didn't come back and are now being fished out of the Yarra River, no doubt somewhat worse for wear. According to the operators, the drones experienced some kind of malfunction or loss of signal, which triggered a fail safe - an automated landing. So hundreds of drones landed safely... on the surface of a river! One local newscaster called it "a spectacular malfunction" (in a report with a brief clip of the drones gently lowering themselves into the water). The report also notes another drone company also once lost 50 drones in a river - worth tens of thousands of dollars - during a Christmas show.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Los Angeles TV station KTLA reports:It's an issue for cities across America: cars parked in bus lanes when they shouldn't be. Now, new AI camera technology is letting the buses themselves write tickets instantly. Santa Monica recently tested the technology with their Big Blue Bus Line. Last year, they provided 7.7 million trips, but not all were on schedule due to cars improperly parked or stopped in dedicated bus lanes. "The question becomes how do we and other cities keep vehicles that should not be in the transit lane out of the lane," said Robert McCall, who oversees Community Engagement for the City of Santa Monica. Santa Monica is among a growing number of cities exploring the use of AI cameras that can spot violations and issue tickets instantly. As buses drive their routes, special cameras capture the license plates of cars that shouldn't be parked or stopped where they are... Already, their cameras are installed in buses in New York City and soon, Washington, DC... During Santa Monica's 45-day pilot, the system identified more than 500 potential violations. Each fine is nearly $300 dollars... Santa Monica still hasn't decided if they'll actually implement this technology, but it paves the way for a bigger trend in the future where AI will write tickets automatically when people break the rules. "Although this might seem like a good way to keep people out of the bus lanes, it seems to me another encroachment on privacy and use of technology in ways that could harm more than help without oversight," writes long-time Slashdot reader neoRUR. "Also what is the role of traffic police when it's all done automatically?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader sonlas writes: The government's green energy plans faced a setback as the Norfolk Boreas offshore windfarm project by Vattenfall was halted due to soaring supply chain costs and rising interest rates. Vattenfall's chief executive Anna Borg said: "It's important to understand that our suppliers are being squeezed. They have problems in their supply chain so it's not so easy to mitigate these situations." The 40% increase in expenses was driven by high global gas prices impacting manufacturing costs, making the project unprofitable. The decision to halt work on the Norfolk Boreas windfarm has cost Vattenfall 415 million, but Borg said the move was "prudent" given the impact of costs on the project's future profitability. In a related news, energy majors BP and TotalEnergies have won a 7GW offshore wind site auction in Germany worth a record $14.1 billion. However, even back in 2022 market experts were warning governments that those additional costs for energy producers have negative impacts. It is important to bear in mind that negative bidding places extra financial burdens on wind farm developers. These additional costs need to be transferred to someone else, either to consumers through increased energy bills or to suppliers, as the developers have less money to invest in the turbines. Those two news are related in the sense that what has been shown so far is that in a world where fossil fuels are cheap and abundant, renewables, and especially offshore windfarm, are cheap and easy to deploy. However, signs are pointing toward a world where fossil fuels supply is not as cheap and abundant as expected, and that may have an impact on plans made by governments to reach Net Zero, or to even just reduce their CO2 emissions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC:Sam Bankman-Fried's younger brother, who was a top lobbyist for failed crypto exchange FTX, considered purchasing the island nation of Nauru in the Pacific to create a fortified apocalypse bunker state, a lawsuit filed in Delaware bankruptcy court shows. Gabe Bankman-Fried was looking at buying Nauru in the "event where 50%-99.99% of people die" to protect his philanthropic allies and create a genetically enhanced human species, according to the suit filed Thursday by attorneys from Sullivan & Cromwell, which is seeking to recover billions of dollars following the collapse of FTX... Along with an unnamed philanthropic officer of FTX, Gabe Bankman-Fried considered buying Nauru, in part to foster "sensible regulation around human genetic enhancement, and build a lab there...." In addition to serving as a haven in case of apocalypse, "probably there are other things it's useful to do with a sovereign country, too," according to a memo between the younger Bankman-Fried and the philanthropic advisor, which was noted in the suit. "A representative for Nauru confirmed the island nation was not and has never been for sale."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Washington Post's "Tech Friend" newsletter has the latest on Google's "Enhanced Safe Browsing" for Chrome and Gmail, which "monitors the web addresses of sites that you visit and compares them to constantly updated Google databases of suspected scam sites."You'll see a red warning screen if Google believes you're on a website that is, for example, impersonating your bank. You can also check when you're downloading a file to see if Google believes it might be a scam document. In the normal mode without Enhanced Safe Browsing, Google still does many of those same security checks. But the company might miss some of the rapid-fire activity of crooks who can create a fresh bogus website minutes after another one is blocked as a scam. This enhanced security feature has been around for three years, but Google recently started putting a message in Gmail inboxes suggesting that people turn on Enhanced Safe Browsing. Security experts told me that it's a good idea to turn on this safety feature but that it comes with trade-offs. The company already knows plenty about you, particularly when you're logged into Gmail, YouTube, Chrome or other Google services. If you turn on Enhanced Safe Browsing, Google may know even more about what sites you're visiting even if you're not signed into a Google account. It also collects bits of visual images from sites you're visiting to scan for hallmarks of scam sites. Google said it will only use this information to stop bad guys and train its computers to improve security for you and everyone else. You should make the call whether you are willing to give up some of your privacy for extra security protections from common crimes. Gmail users can toggle the feature on or off at this URL. Google tells users that enabling the feature will provide "faster and more proactive protection against dangerous websites, downloads, and extensions." The Post's reporter also asked Google why it doesn't just enable the extra security automatically, and "The company told me that because Google is collecting more data in Enhanced Safe Browsing mode, it wants to ask your permission." The Post adds as an aside that "It's also not your fault that phishing scams are everywhere. Our whole online security system is unsafe and stupid... Our goal should be to slowly replace the broken online security system with newer technologies that ditch our crime-prone password system for different methods of verifying we are who we say we are."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In 2018 a doctoral student spotted "a spinning celestial space object," reports CNN. "The unfamiliar object released giant bursts of energy and beamed out radiation three times per hour." But that was just the beginning...In those moments, it became the brightest source of radio waves viewable from Earth through radio telescopes, acting like a celestial lighthouse. Researchers thought the phenomenon might be a remnant of a collapsed star - either a dense neutron star or a dead white dwarf star - with a strong magnetic field. Or perhaps the object was something else entirely... "We were stumped," said Dr. Natasha Hurley-Walker, senior lecturer at the Curtin University node of ICRAR, in a statement. "So we started searching for similar objects to find out if it was an isolated event or just the tip of the iceberg." The team observed the sky using the Murchison Widefield Array, a radio telescope on Wajarri Yamaji Country in outback Western Australia, between July and September 2022. The scientists discovered an object 15,000 light-years from Earth in the Scutum constellation. The object, dubbed GPM J1839-10, released radio waves every 22 minutes. The bursts of energy lasted up to five minutes. Astronomers believe it could be a magnetar, or a rare type of star with extremely strong magnetic fields that is capable of releasing powerful, energetic bursts. But if the object is a magnetar, it defies description because all known magnetars release energy in a matter of seconds, or a few minutes at the most. A study detailing the discovery was published Wednesday in the journal Nature. "This remarkable object challenges our understanding of neutron stars and magnetars, which are some of the most exotic and extreme objects in the Universe," said Hurley-Walker, who was the lead author of the new report... "Assuming it's a magnetar, it shouldn't be possible for this object to produce radio waves. But we're seeing them. And we're not just talking about a little blip of radio emission. Every 22 minutes, it emits a five-minute pulse of radio wavelength energy, and it's been doing that for at least 33 years. Whatever mechanism is behind this is extraordinary." The astronomers "searched through the archives of radio telescopes that have been operational for decades," the article points out - and ultimately confirmed the existence of the phenomenon. "It showed up in observations by the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India and the Very Large Array in the USA had observations dating as far back as 1988," Hurley-Walker said. "That was quite an incredible moment for me. I was five years old when our telescopes first recorded pulses from this object, but no one noticed it, and it stayed hidden in the data for 33 years. They missed it because they hadn't expected to find anything like it."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In 2018 a doctoral student spotted "a spinning celestial space object," reports CNN. "The unfamiliar object released giant bursts of energy and beamed out radiation three times per hour." But that was just the beginning...In those moments, it became the brightest source of radio waves viewable from Earth through radio telescopes, acting like a celestial lighthouse. Researchers thought the phenomenon might be a remnant of a collapsed star - either a dense neutron star or a dead white dwarf star - with a strong magnetic field. Or perhaps the object was something else entirely... "We were stumped," said Dr. Natasha Hurley-Walker, senior lecturer at the Curtin University node of ICRAR, in a statement. "So we started searching for similar objects to find out if it was an isolated event or just the tip of the iceberg." The team observed the sky using the Murchison Widefield Array, a radio telescope on Wajarri Yamaji Country in outback Western Australia, between July and September 2022. The scientists discovered an object 15,000 light-years from Earth in the Scutum constellation. The object, dubbed GPM J1839-10, released radio waves every 22 minutes. The bursts of energy lasted up to five minutes. Astronomers believe it could be a magnetar, or a rare type of star with extremely strong magnetic fields that is capable of releasing powerful, energetic bursts. But if the object is a magnetar, it defies description because all known magnetars release energy in a matter of seconds, or a few minutes at the most. A study detailing the discovery was published Wednesday in the journal Nature. "This remarkable object challenges our understanding of neutron stars and magnetars, which are some of the most exotic and extreme objects in the Universe," said Hurley-Walker, who was the lead author of the new report... "Assuming it's a magnetar, it shouldn't be possible for this object to produce radio waves. But we're seeing them. And we're not just talking about a little blip of radio emission. Every 22 minutes, it emits a five-minute pulse of radio wavelength energy, and it's been doing that for at least 33 years. Whatever mechanism is behind this is extraordinary." The astronomers "searched through the archives of radio telescopes that have been operational for decades," the article points out - and ultimately confirmed the existence of the phenomenon. "It showed up in observations by the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India and the Very Large Array in the USA had observations dating as far back as 1988," Hurley-Walker said. "That was quite an incredible moment for me. I was five years old when our telescopes first recorded pulses from this object, but no one noticed it, and it stayed hidden in the data for 33 years. They missed it because they hadn't expected to find anything like it."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"People are getting increasingly fed up with their car infotainment systems," reports the Verge:According to JD Power's Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout (APEAL) Study, overall satisfaction among car owners is 845 (on a 1,000-point scale), a decrease of two points from a year ago and three points lower than in 2021. That's the first time in the 28-year history of the study that the consumer research firm registered a consecutive year-over-year decline in owner satisfaction... Only 56 percent of owners prefer to use their vehicle's built-in system to play audio, down from 70 percent in 2020, JD Power found. Less than half of owners said they like using their car's native controls for navigation, voice recognition, or to make phone calls... [I]t seems like most people are preferring to use smartphone-mirroring systems like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, which have proven to be incredibly popular over the years... But it seems like people are warming up to native operating systems, as long as they're developed by Google and not the automaker. JD Power found that models that have Android Automotive with Google Automotive's operating system, AAOS, "score higher in the infotainment category than those with no AAOS whatsoever." But here's where things get kind of weird: AAOS without Google Automotive Services (GAS) receives the lowest scores for infotainment of the three categories. Google Automotive Services refers to all the apps and services that come with the car when Google is built into the car - also known as "Google built-in." Ford, GM, and Volvo have all said they will use GAS for their current and upcoming vehicles... That's surely music to GM's ears, which recently made the controversial decision to block access to CarPlay and Android Auto in its future EV lineup in favor of a native Google infotainment system.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares this report from Dice.com:C++ is enjoying a surge in popularity, according to the latest update to the TIOBE Index, which tracks programming languages' "buzz." C++ currently sits right behind C and Python on TIOBE's list. "A few months ago, the programming C++ language claimed position 3 of the TIOBE index (at the expense of Java). But C++ has not finished its rise. C seems to be its next victim," added the note accompanying the data... ["At the moment, the gap between the two is only 0.76%."] Matlab, Scratch and Rust also match their all time high records at respectively positions #10, #12 and #17. So here, according to TIOBE, are the 10 most popular programmings languages: 1. Python2. C3. C++4. Java5. C#6. JavaScript7. Visual Basic8. SQL9. PHP10. MATLABThe site I Programmer digs deeper:C++ was the only one of the top four languages to see a positive year-on-year change in its percentage rating - adding 0.79% to stand at 10.8%. Python had the smallest loss of the entire Top 20, -0.01% leaving it with a share of 13,42% while Visual Basic had the greatest loss at -2.07%. This, combined with JavaScript gaining 1.34%, led to JavaScript overtaking it to occupy #6, its highest ever ranking in the TIOBE Index. They also note that COBOL "had a 3-month rise going from a share of 0.41% in April to 0.86% in July which moved it into #20 on the index."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Axios:Over 20% of the U.S.' population - 80 million people - are expected to face an air temperature or heat index above 105 degrees Fahrenheit this weekend as a record-breaking heat wave persists over most of the South, the National Weather Service (NWS) warns... The extreme temperatures, which have been exacerbated by human-caused climate change, will come after several days of excessive heat and will be an immediate risk to public health... Heat index is what the temperature feels like to the human body when relative humidity is combined with the air temperature, and indices 103 degreesF or above can lead to dangerous heat disorders. "Dozens" of temperature records could break across the Southern U.S., including overnight highs, the NWS said... About 115 million people in over a dozen states from California to Florida were under heat alerts on Thursday morning... The threatening heat is forecast to continue over the Southwest through "at least" July 28 and may expand into other parts of the country... Global temperatures are hitting unprecedented highs, too, this year amid climate change and global warming. Elevated temperatures are also contributing to Canada's worst fire season on record, in which at least 27.1 million acres have burned across the country so far. On Wednesday the city of Phoenix, Arizona - population 1.6 million - "experienced its 20th straight day with a temperature of over 110 degreesF," the article points out. And meanwhile Austin Texas (population 960,000) "saw its 10th straight day of temperatures at or above 105 degreesF for the first time in recorded history." The National Weather Service's advice? "Take the heat seriously and avoid extended time outdoors."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: Google is rolling out ChromeOS 115 as a bigger-than-usual update with a number of user-facing additions over the coming days. Amidst I/O 2023, Google announced the beta availability of Android App Streaming from your Pixel (4a+) or Xiaomi (12T, 12T Pro, 13, 13 Pro) phone running Android 13 and newer with Cross-Device Services installed. It's now entering stable with ChromeOS 115 so that you can stream apps from your mobile device to your Chromebook. This is framed as letting you "complete quick tasks like replying to a conversation, checking on the status of a rideshare or delivery, and editing your shopping list." Android apps, which open in a phone-sized window, can be launched via the Phone Hub where you get a row of Recent apps at the bottom of the panel with the ability to browse all compatible "Apps from your phone." Applications can also open when you tap through a messaging notification. When opening PDFs in the Gallery app, ChromeOS 115 adds a signature tool. Appearing next to Draw in the top toolbar, you can add a signature, which is much easier with a touchscreen than a trackpad and save it for future use. You can place it in any document and resize the signature to ensure line fit. Lastly, Google has updated the keyboard Shortcuts app with "new navigation and taxonomy," improved search, and a "refreshed shortcut visualization" that better shows what to press. Meanwhile, this is unmentioned in the stable release notes, but ChromeOS 115 is testing better windowing options in the beta channel. Hovering over the expand/minimize button in the top-right corner control group will show you a new layout menu. There's Split (half), Partial, Full and Float. That last option is new and makes it so that the window is always on top, just like Picture-in-Picture (PiP) for video. The other options were previously accessed by dragging a window and moving to the left/right side of the screen until an overlay appears. This approach is much more accessible and hopefully sees a wide launch soon. The announcement can be read here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In an effort to discover new 2D materials, a team of scientists from Ames National Laboratory determined the structure of boron monoxide. Phys.Org reports: This compound was first discovered in the 1940s and maintained research interest throughout the years. Scientists were, however, unable to determine the structure of the material due to technological limitations of the time. Using new NMR methods and previously unavailable analytical tools, the team from Ames Lab finally solved the structure of this deceptively simple material. "We initially weren't really looking into studying this particular material," said Frederic Perras, a scientist from Ames Lab and member of the research team. "We were actually trying to make a carbon-free covalent organic framework." A covalent organic framework is a low-density and porous material with a periodically ordered crystal structure. It is composed of organic molecules that are linked together through covalent bonds. [...] Perras explained that boron monoxide is made using a precursor molecule that acts like building blocks. These molecules stick together through dehydration reactions. The key to understating the structure is to figure out how the blocks are physically arranged. "So we developed some NMR methods that allow us to study the orientation of these building blocks relative to each other. Basically, we found that adjacent precursor molecules were getting organized parallel to each other, which matched one of the previously proposed models," Perras said. "We also applied a lot of other techniques, including powder X-ray diffraction, which showed that these nanosheets organized themselves into what's called a turbostratic arrangement," said Perras. He explained that these stacked nanosheets are like a stack of paper thrown onto a desk. Once they land, they are not perfectly aligned, but they remain in a stack. The findings have been published in the journal American Chemical Society.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Astranis, a geostationary communications satellite operator, successfully deployed its "Arcturus" satellite from a Falcon Heavy rocket in May to provide internet connectivity from geostationary space. However, the satellite experienced an unexpected issue with a supplier's component on the solar array drive assembly, affecting its ability to maintain continuous power. Ars Technica reports: "The Astranis engineering team has been doing an incredible job working around the clock to troubleshoot the issue," [Astranis co-founder John Gedmark] said. "We have now reproduced the problem on the ground in a vacuum chamber, zeroed in on the exact source of the failure, and know how to fix it for future spacecraft. Because this failure occurred within the internal workings of a component supplied by an external vendor, we're not in a position to go into the full technical details." The disappointment in Gedmark's update is palpable. "This is a frustrating situation -- the Arcturus spacecraft is in a safe state and fully under our control, the payload and our other Astranis in-house designed components are all working perfectly, and the tanks are fueled for years of on-orbit operation," he said. "But unless something major changes, the mission of providing Internet connectivity in Alaska will be delayed." Astranis was founded in 2015 to determine whether microsatellites built largely in-house could deliver high-speed Internet from geostationary space at a low price. The launch of Arcturus marked the first demonstration that Astranis' small satellite technology worked in space and could survive the harsh radiation and thermal environment previously dominated by much larger satellites that cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Given that this was an effort to test this technology on a shoestring budget, it is perhaps not surprising that the satellite ultimately failed due to some unforeseen problem. The real acid test for Astranis, now, is to ensure that it learns from this failure and that the company's second satellite works in space. In his update, Gedmark said the company understands how to quickly solve this issue on future spacecraft that are in production. The company is also working toward a solution to provide Internet service in Alaska, via Pacific Dataport, as initially planned with Arcturus. The backup plan, he said, "involves a special, multipurpose satellite that can operate as an on-orbit spare and bridge us to a full replacement satellite. We call this satellite UtilitySat. It can operate anywhere in the world, on multiple frequency bands, with the flexibility of a software-defined satellite. UtilitySat has been in the works for over a year, is in the final stages of integration, and is manifested on our very next launch that will take place at the end of this year."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The month of June and the first few days of July were hotter than any in recorded history, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Residents in the south of the US and southern Europe have been enduring sweltering temperatures, bringing excessive heat warnings, wildfires and plummeting air quality. However, records are not just being broken on land -- but in the water. Global ocean sea surface temperatures were higher than any previous June on record, according to a report by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, with satellite readings in the North Atlantic in particular "off the charts." Last month also set a record at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for the biggest difference between expected and actual sea surface temperatures. Water temperatures around Florida, in particular, have been particularly warm. Scientists have also been tracking a large ongoing marine heatwave off the west coast of the US and Canada since it formed in May. While the heatwave has since lessened in the north-east Atlantic, according to non-profit science organization Mercator Ocean International, another in the western Mediterranean now appears to be intensifying, particularly around the Strait of Gibraltar. This week, sea surface temperatures along the coasts of Southern Spain and North Africa were 2-4C (3.6-7.2F) higher than they would normally be at this time of year, with some spots 5C (9F) above the long-term average. Extreme marine temperatures have also recently been observed around Ireland, the UK and in the Baltic Sea, as well as areas near New Zealand and Australia. More recently, scientists suspect a possible heatwave south of Greenland in the Labrador Sea. "We are having these huge marine heatwaves in different areas of the ocean unexpectedly evolve very early in the year, very strong and over large areas," says Karina von Schuckmann, an oceanographer at Mercator Ocean. Carlo Buontempo, director of the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, says scientists expect big temperature variations in the Pacific Ocean associated with the El Nino weather pattern, a phase of planet-warming weather which is just beginning, although NOAA is monitoring a large heatwave in the Gulf of Alaska that has been sitting offshore since late 2022. But what we're currently seeing in the North Atlantic is "truly unprecedented", says Buontempo. Scientists are still trying to unravel its full causes. [...] More broadly, experts say the persistence of recent marine heatwaves is a worrying sign about how climate change is unfolding, alongside heatwaves on land, unusual melting of snow cover in the Himalayas and a loss of sea ice. Von Schuckmann notes that, even if humans stopped pumping CO2 into the air tomorrow, the oceans would continue to warm up for many years yet. "I am concerned as a climate scientist that we are further than we thought we are."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This week the Slackware Linux project is celebrating its 30th anniversary. It is the oldest Linux distribution that is still in active maintenance and development. The Register reports: Version 1.0 of Slackware was announced on the July 16, 1993, and project lead Patrick Volkerding, who still maintains the distribution today, celebrated with a modest announcement: "Hey folks! It's time to acknowledge another one of those milestones... 30 (!) years since I made the post linked below announcing Slackware's first stable release after months of beta testing. Thanks to all of our dedicated contributors, loyal users, and those who have helped us to keep the lights on here. It's really been a remarkable journey that I couldn't have anticipated starting out back in 1993. Cheers! :-)"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Telegram is introducing a new Stories feature that is currently only available for Premium subscribers but will be available to all users eventually. 9to5Mac reports: With Telegram Stories, users are able to share photos and videos that disappear after a while. However, Telegram is trying to do more than its competitors. For instance, users can choose whether a Story will expire after 6, 12, 24, or 48 hours. Most apps make Stories disappear after 24 hours. Telegram also lets users create lists with different contacts for each Story. This means that you can share a specific Story with your best friends and another one just for your coworkers. The interface is similar to what you find in other apps that already offer Stories, with a list of available Stories at the top of the list of chats. Also similar to the Stories feature in apps like Instagram and Snapchat, you can send reactions and reply to someone else's Story. However, there's a catch. While everyone can see Telegram Stories, only those who pay for Telegram Premium can post Stories. "Posting stories is currently available only to subscribers," a message in the app says when non-Premium users try to create a new Story. It's uncertain whether the Stories feature will become free for everyone eventually, but the term "currently" suggests it will. According to Durov, although the Telegram team was initially against the idea of having Stories in the app, the feature was one of the most requested by its users. "Even the skeptics on our team started to appreciate this feature. We can no longer imagine Telegram without it," he said last month.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cerebras Systems and G42 have introduced the Condor Galaxy project, a network of nine interconnected supercomputers designed for AI model training with a combined performance of 36 FP16 ExaFLOPs. The first supercomputer, CG-1, located in California, offers 4 ExaFLOPs of FP16 performance and 54 million cores, focusing on Large Language Models and Generative AI without the need for complex distributed programming languages. AnandTech reports: CG-2 and CG-3 will be located in the U.S. and will follow in 2024. The remaining systems will be located across the globe and the total cost of the project will be over $900 million. The CG-1 supercomputer, situated in Santa Clara, California, combines 64 Cerebras CS-2 systems into a single user-friendly AI supercomputer, capable of providing 4 ExaFLOPs of dense, systolic FP16 compute for AI training. Based around Cerebras's 2.6 trillion transistor second-generation wafer scale engine processors, the machine is designed specifically for Large Language Models and Generative AI. It supports up to 600 billion parameter models, with configurations that can be expanded to support up to 100 trillion parameter models. Its 54 million AI-optimized compute cores and massivefabric network bandwidth of 388 Tb/s allow for nearly linear performance scaling from 1 to 64 CS-2 systems, according to Cerebras. The CG-1 supercomputer also offers inherent support for long sequence length training (up to 50,000 tokens) and does not require any complex distributed programming languages, which is common in case of GPU clusters. This supercomputer is provided as a cloud service by Cerebras and G42 and since it is located in the U.S., Cerebras and G42 assert that it will not be used by hostile states. CG-1 is the first of three 4 FP16 ExaFLOP AI supercomputers (CG-1, CG-2, and CG-3) created by Cerebras and G42 in collaboration and located in the U.S. Once connected, these three AI supercomputers will form a 12 FP16 ExaFLOP, 162 million core distributed AI supercomputer, though it remains to be seen how efficient this network will be. In 2024, G42 and Cerebras plan to launch six additional Condor Galaxy supercomputers across the world, which will increase the total compute power to 36 FP16 ExaFLOPs delivered by 576 CS-2 systems. The Condor Galaxy project aims to democratize AI by offering sophisticated AI compute technology in the cloud. "Delivering 4 exaFLOPs of AI compute at FP16, CG-1 dramatically reduces AI training timelines while eliminating the pain of distributed compute," said Andrew Feldman, CEO of Cerebras Systems. "Many cloud companies have announced massive GPU clusters that cost billions of dollars to build, but that are extremely difficult to use. Distributing a single model over thousands of tiny GPUs takes months of time from dozens of people with rare expertise. CG-1 eliminates this challenge. Setting up a generative AI model takes minutes, not months and can be done by a single person. CG-1 is the first of three 4 ExaFLOP AI supercomputers to be deployed across the U.S. Over the next year, together with G42, we plan to expand this deployment and stand up a staggering 36 exaFLOPs of efficient, purpose-built AI compute."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Reddit is publicly extending an olive branch to the moderator community that it largely enraged over recent weeks. In a post on Wednesday, a Reddit employee detailed outreach efforts from the company, including new weekly feedback sessions, that it hopes can help repair ties with the social media platform and over 50,000 volunteer mods that it relies on. But as you might expect, mods remain skeptical. A Reddit admin going by Go_JasonWaterfalls on the site and claiming the title of Reddit VP of community acknowledged the shattered relationship between mods -- who spend thousands of hours providing free labor and have recently engaged in variously disruptive forms of protest over API pricing on the site -- and Reddit -- which has responded to said protests by ousting some protesting moderators from their posts. "So, we've all had a... time on Reddit lately," Go_JasonWaterfalls wrote. "And I'm here to recognize it, acknowledge that our relationship has been tested, and begin the 'now what?' conversation." Noting that Reddit's "role is facilitation" and to give mods a platform they "can rely on," including necessary tools and resources, Go_JasonWaterfalls emphasized the need for "consistent, inclusive, and direct connection" with mods before detailing outreach efforts, like Weekly Mod Feedback Sessions. The sessions will take place every Tuesday and Thursday through October and "continue into the future as valuable," the Reddit admin said. Redditors have to fill out a form of interest to participate. Reddit can easily turn away those with inactive accounts or who it views as currently being in violation of Reddit's mod or content policies. Go_JasonWaterfalls said Reddit will share notes from feedback sessions in the r/modnews subreddit. Go_JasonWaterfalls also underscored Reddit's Mod Council and Partner Communities programs, the next monthly meeting for the Accessibility Feedback Group, and upcoming in-person events in the US, Brazil, Canada, England, France, and India. Mods, meanwhile, traumatized by a tumultuous past couple of months, have very low expectations of Reddit's efforts. Ars spoke with some who have already participated in similar efforts, like feedback sessions or the Mod Council, and claimed mixed results in regard to Reddit making actual moves in response to mod critiques and suggestions. "The Reddit Mod Council in particular has been one where they will yo-yo on whether or not they listen to moderators. Sometimes they do, most times they don't," Alyssa Videlock, a mod for numerous subreddits, including large ones like r/tumblr and r/lgbt, told Ars. Reddit is refusing to give way on virtually any of the mods' demands, which has included things like more accessible API pricing or more time to adjust to the new pricing for apps they value and broader exemption for apps used by users (including mods) with accessibility needs. Reddit's removal of troubling mods has also helped to obliterate Reddit community trust.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The major gaming platform Roblox has suffered a major data breach, leading to the release of personal information including addresses from those who attended the Roblox Developer Conference between 2017-2020. PCGamer reports: The leak contains almost 4,000 names, phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, and physical addresses. Such identifying information is gold dust for bad actors, and raises serious questions about the data security of one of the largest gaming platforms around. The website haveibeenpwned says the original breach date was 18 December 2020, with the information becoming available on 18 July 2023, with a total of 3,943 compromised accounts. The site notes that as well as all the above information, the leak even includes each individual's t-shirt size. The implications of this for those affected are identity theft and scams, with the quantity of data especially worrying: this is basically all you need to effectively impersonate someone. Beyond the above statement, Roblox has made no further comment, and it's likely that the ramifications of this will continue to unfold for some time, especially if anyone on the list is indeed targeted. Anyone concerned should search on haveibeenpwned and enable two-factor authentication on all accounts (as well as keeping an especially close eye on bank transactions for a while). Troy Hunt, the engineer behind haveibeenpwned, said the leak was posted in 2021 but according to an unnamed source didn't spread outside of niche Roblox communities, while at the time the company did not publicly disclose the leak or alert anyone affected. The leak then appeared on a public forum a few days ago. "Roblox is aware of a third-party security issue where there were indications of unauthorized access to limited personal information of a subset of our creator community," said a Roblox spokesperson to PC Gamer. "We engaged independent experts to support the investigation led by our information security team. Those who are impacted will receive an email communicating the next steps we are taking to support them. We will continue to be vigilant in monitoring and vetting the cyber security posture of Roblox and our third-party vendors."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Earlier this week, Meta announced it has teamed up with Microsoft to launch Llama 2, its "open-source" large language model (LLM) that uses artificial intelligence to generate text, images, and code. In an opinion piece for The Register, long-time ZDNet contributor and technology analyst, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, writes: "Meta is simply open source washing an open but ultimately proprietary LLM." From the report: As Amanda Brock, CEO of OpenUK, said, it's "not an OSI approved license but a significant release of Open Technology ... This is a step to moving AI from the hands of the few to the many, democratizing technology and building trust in its use and future through transparency." And for many developers, that may be enough. [...] But the devil is in the details when it comes to open source. And there, Meta, with its Llama 2 Community License Agreement, falls on its face. As The Register noted earlier, the community agreement forbids the use of Llama 2 to train other language models; and if the technology is used in an app or service with more than 700 million monthly users, a special license is required from Meta. Stefano Maffulli, the OSI's executive director, explained: "While I'm happy that Meta is pushing the bar of available access to powerful AI systems, I'm concerned about the confusion by some who celebrate LLaMa 2 as being open source: if it were, it wouldn't have any restrictions on commercial use (points 5 and 6 of the Open Source Definition). As it is, the terms Meta has applied only allow some commercial use. The keyword is some." Maffulli then dove in deeper. "Open source means that developers and users are able to decide for themselves how and where to use the technology without the need to engage with another party; they have sovereignty over the technology they use. When read superficially, Llama's license says, 'You can't use this if you're Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Bytedance, Alibaba, or your startup grows as big.' It may sound like a reasonable clause, but it also implicitly says, 'You need to ask us for permission to create a tool that may solve world hunger' or anything big like that." Stephen O'Grady, open source licensing expert and RedMonk co-founder, explained it like this: "Imagine if Linux was open source unless you worked at Facebook." Exactly. Maffulli concluded: "That's why open source has never put restrictions on the field of use: you can't know beforehand what can happen in the future, good or bad." The OSI isn't the only open-source-savvy group that's minding the Llama 2 license. Karen Sadler, lawyer and executive director at the Software Freedom Conservancy, dug into the license's language and found that "the Additional Commercial Terms in section 2 of the license agreement, which is a limitation on the number of users, makes it non-free and not open source." To Sadler, "it looks like Meta is trying to push a license that has some trappings of an open source license but, in fact, has the opposite result. Additionally, the Acceptable Use Policy, which the license requires adherence to, lists prohibited behaviors that are very expansively written and could be very subjectively applied -- if you send out a mass email, could it be considered spam? If there's reasonably critical material published, would it be considered defamatory?" Last, but far from least, she "didn't notice any public drafting or comment process for this license, which is necessary for any serious effort to introduce a new license."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A few months ago, the developers behind the Wii/GameCube emulator Dolphin said they were indefinitely postponing a planned Steam release, after Steam-maker Valve received a request from Nintendo to take down the emulator's "coming soon" page. This week, after consulting with a lawyer, the team says it has decided to abandon its Steam distribution plans altogether. "Valve ultimately runs the store and can set any condition they wish for software to appear on it," the team wrote in a blog post on Thursday. "In the end, Valve is the one running the Steam storefront, and they have the right to allow or disallow anything they want on said storefront for any reason." The Dolphin team also takes pains to note that this decision was not the result of an official DMCA notice sent by Nintendo. Instead, Valve reached out to Nintendo to ask about the planned Dolphin release, at which point a Nintendo lawyer cited the DMCA in asking Valve to take down the page. At that point, the Dolphin team says, Valve "told us that we had to come to an agreement with Nintendo in order to release on Steam... But given Nintendo's long-held stance on emulation, we find Valve's requirement for us to get approval from Nintendo for a Steam release to be impossible. Unfortunately, that's that." "As for Nintendo, this incident just continues their existing stance towards emulation," the post continues. "We don't think that this incident should change anyone's view of either company." Despite the disappointing result for the Steam release, the Dolphin team is adamant that "we do not believe that Dolphin is in any legal danger." That's despite the emulator's inclusion of the Wii Common Key, which could run afoul of the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions. The Dolphin Team notes that the Wii Common Key has been freely shared across the Internet since its initial discovery and publication in 2008. And while that key has been in the Dolphin code base since 2009, "no one has really cared," the team writes. [...] With what they believe is a firm legal footing, the team writes that Dolphin development will continue away from Steam, but including a number of UI and quality of life features originally designed for the Steam release. Meanwhile, emulators like RetroArch and the innovative 3dSen continue to be available on Steam, with no immediate sign of a further crackdown from Valve or Nintendo.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

T-Mobile has started charging customers who pay phone bills in-store a new $5 "Payment Support Charge," plus tax. According to The Mobile Report, the new fee went into effect on July 19th, though prepaid customers will be charged the fee later on. From a report: In a flier shared with The Mobile Report announcing the change to its employees, T-Mobile implies the reason behind the fee is to help "enable a digital-enabled future." Yet, as Droid Life points out, employee time spent processing payments may mean less time for more profitable endeavors -- like selling phones or add-ons to plans. Plus, it's a sneaky way to encourage more customers to sign up for AutoPay, which conveniently also offers a $5 per line discount if you pay your bill online -- and only if you use a debit card. T-Mobile recently withdrew the benefit from customers who paid bills with a credit card.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A study that followed thousands of people over 25 years has identified proteins linked to the development of dementia if their levels are unbalanced during middle age. From a report: The findings, published in Science Translational Medicine on 19 July, could contribute to the development of new diagnostic tests, or even treatments, for dementia-causing diseases. Most of the proteins have functions unrelated to the brain. "We're seeing so much involvement of the peripheral biology decades before the typical onset of dementia," says study author Keenan Walker, a neuroscientist at the US National Institute on Aging in Bethesda, Maryland. Equipped with blood samples from more than 10,000 participants, Walker and his colleagues questioned whether they could find predictors of dementia years before its onset by looking at a person's proteome -- the collection of all the proteins expressed throughout the body. They searched for any signs of dysregulation -- when proteins are at levels much higher or lower than normal. The samples were collected as part of an ongoing study that began in 1987. Participants returned for examination six times over three decades, and during this time, around 1 in 5 of them developed dementia. The researchers found 32 proteins that, if dysregulated in people aged 45 to 60, were strongly associated with an elevated chance of developing dementia in later life. It is unclear how exactly these proteins might be involved in the disease, but the link is "highly unlikely to be due to just chance alone," says Walker.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin is back at work. The multibillionaire has been visiting the tech giant's Mountain View, Calif., offices in recent months generally three to four days a week, working alongside researchers as they push to develop the company's next large artificial-intelligence system. WSJ: Brin participated in meetings about AI at Google's offices late last year, but the frequency and intensity of his involvement has picked up, said people familiar with the matter. His new stance is a notable change from the relatively hands-off approach he adopted after stepping down from an executive role at parent company Alphabet in 2019. He has worked closely with a group of researchers building Google's long-awaited AI model Gemini. They have discussed technical matters such as "loss curves," a way of measuring an AI program's performance over time, and Brin has convened weekly discussions of new AI research with Google employees. He also has intervened in personnel matters, such as the hiring of sought-after researchers, the people said. Brin's increased presence at Google reflects the pivotal moment in AI and his longstanding interest in the technology, which Google pioneered but was slower than rivals to turn into new products, said current and former employees.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last month was the planet's warmest June since global temperature record-keeping began in 1850, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in its monthly climate update on Thursday. From a report: The agency also predicts unusually hot temperatures will occur in most of the United States, almost everywhere except the northern Great Plains, during August. The first two weeks of July were also likely the Earth's warmest on human record, for any time of year, according to the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service. Many daily temperature records were set in June across the Southern United States, particularly in Texas and Louisiana. Temperatures in Laredo, Texas, reached 100 degrees on more than 20 days in June. Austin, El Paso and San Antonio reached triple digits on more than 10 days each. The heat index, which also accounts for humidity, was well past 100 much of the time in all of these cities. Extreme heat can be dangerous for anyone's body, but older people and outdoor workers are at particular risk. Summer heat waves in Europe last year may have killed 61,000 people across the continent, according to a recent study. This year's heat and humidity have been devastating in northern Mexico, where more than 100 people have died of heat-related causes, according to reports from the federal health ministry.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The hack of Microsoft's cloud that resulted in the compromise of government emails was an example of a traditional espionage threat, a senior National Security Agency official said. From a report: Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, Rob Joyce, the director of cybersecurity at the N.S.A., said the United States needed to protect its networks from such espionage, but that adversaries would continue to try to secretly extract information from each other. "It is China doing espionage," Mr. Joyce said. "It is what nation-states do. We have to defend against it, we need to push back against it. But that is something that happens." The hackers took emails from senior State Department officials including Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to China. The theft of Mr. Burns's emails was earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal and confirmed by a person familiar with the matter. Daniel J. Kritenbrink, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia, also had his email hacked, a U.S. official said. The emails of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo were also obtained in the hack, which was discovered in June by State Department cybersecurity experts scouring user logs for unusual activity. Microsoft later determined that Chinese hackers had obtained access to email accounts a month earlier.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Reddit is now in charge of r/malefashionadvice, which for a time was the biggest subreddit still closed in protest of the platform's API pricing changes. From a report: The subreddit is now open, meaning Reddit users can browse content in the community once again, though in a restricted mode, meaning only certain users can make new posts. As we reported last week, the moderators of r/malefashionadvice, a subreddit with than 5 million subscribers, had taken the community private and were pushing its users toward Discord and Substack instead. At the time, the moderators expected to be removed after receiving a message from a Reddit admin (employee), ModCodeofConduct, telling them they would be replaced if they didn't reopen.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

op AI companies including OpenAI, Alphabet and Meta Platforms have made voluntary commitments to the White House to implement measures such as watermarking AI-generated content to help make the technology safer, the Biden administration said on Friday. From a report: The companies -- which also include Anthropic, Inflection, Amazon.com and OpenAI partner Microsoft -- pledged to thoroughly test systems before releasing them and share information about how to reduce risks and invest in cybersecurity. The move is seen as a win for the Biden administration's effort to regulate the technology which has experienced a boom in investment and consumer popularity. Since generative AI, which uses data to create new content like ChatGPT's human-sounding prose, became wildly popular this year, lawmakers around the world began considering how to mitigate the dangers of the emerging technology to national security and the economy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T's legacy telephone network may have nearly 200,000 miles of lead-covered cables, according to an estimate by AT&T submitted in a court filing. "Based on its records, AT&T estimates that lead-clad cables represent less than 10 percent of its copper footprint of roughly two million sheath miles of cable, the overwhelming majority of which remains in active service," AT&T wrote in a court filing yesterday in US District Court for the Eastern District of California. "More than two thirds of its lead-clad cabling is either buried or in conduit, followed by aerial cable, and with a very small portion running underwater. There are varying costs of installation, maintenance, and removal by cable type (aerial, buried, buried in conduit, underwater)." Reacting to the court filing, financial analyst firm Raymond James & Associates wrote in a research note, "AT&T is telling us that the total exposure is 200,000 route miles or less." With about two-thirds of the lead cables either buried or installed inside conduit, "We believe the implication for AT&T's data is that the route miles that should be addressed most immediately is about 3.3 percent (or less)," the analyst firm wrote. AT&T's new court filing came in a case filed against AT&T subsidiary Pacific Bell by the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA) in January 2021. The sportfishing group sued AT&T over cables that are allegedly "damaged and discharging lead into Lake Tahoe." The two underwater cables run along the bottom of the western side of Lake Tahoe for a total of eight miles. AT&T "contends that it stopped using the Cables in or around the 1980s or earlier, that the Easements therefore have terminated, and that Defendant no longer owns the Cables," according to a November 2021 settlement. AT&T agreed in that settlement to remove the cables but now says it is at an "impasse" with the CSPA regarding removal. "In this matter, AT&T has always maintained that its lead-clad telecommunications cables pose no danger to those who work and play in the waters of Lake Tahoe, but in 2021, AT&T agreed to remove them simply to avoid the expense of litigation," an AT&T lawyer at the firm Paul Hastings wrote yesterday in a letter to the plaintiff that was attached to the court filing. [...] AT&T's stance that it won't remove the Lake Tahoe cables any time soon is apparently a surprise to the plaintiff. The CSPA said in a court filing last week that in a Zoom meeting on July 10, "AT&T confirmed that it is prepared to commence the removal process on September 6, 2023, as long as the new permit request that AT&T submitted to State Parks in May is approved by State Park." AT&T's filing said the company never "confirmed" that it is prepared to start the cable removal process on September 6. The CSPA argues that the lead-covered cables "have leached, are leaching, and will continue to leach lead into the waters of Lake Tahoe, and that such leaching may present an imminent and substantial endangerment to human health or the environment." Last week, the Wall Street Journal published an investigative report that found evidence of more than 2,000 lead-covered telephone cables installed across the U.S. Teleco stock prices plummeted as a result, since the remediation could cost the telecom industry $60 billion. While members of Congress are putting pressure on telecom companies to act, AT&T does appear to be taking new actions as a result of the investigation. "AT&T is working with union partners to add a voluntary testing program for any employee who works with or has worked with lead-clad cables," which "expands on AT&T's previous practice of providing blood-lead testing for technicians involved in lead-clad cable removal," the company said in its letter to the plaintiff yesterday. AT&T said it is also conducting new testing and site visits at certain locations. AT&T's stock slid to a 30-year low following the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to a new study from online game development platform School XYZ, the exodus of major international video game publishers from Russia led to a sharp rise in the number of video gamers playing pirates games. TorrentFreak reports: Almost seven out of ten video gamers (69%) said they'd played at least one pirated copy in 2022, and more than half (51%) said that they're now pirating more than they did in 2021. As first reported by the Russian news outlet Vedomosti (paywall), the study was conducted across all regions of Russia and took into account all unlicensed game formats, in most cases downloaded from torrent sites. While over a quarter of respondents (27%) said they'd pirated three PC games in 2022, and 20% confessed to pirating more than 10, other figures from the study are more positive. Of the 31% of gamers who reported pirating nothing in 2022, all said that they were opposed to piracy. Just 7% of gamers admitted to buying no games at all in 2022, meaning that 93% bought at least one piece of legitimate content. According to Alexander Kuzmenko, the former editor of Russian videogame magazine and gaming website Igromania (Game Mania), it's not just the departure of publishers including Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo causing problem for gamers. When platforms like Steam and GOG, known for their ease of access, stopped supporting Russian bank cards, barriers appeared in a previously frictionless system. Yegor Tomsky, CEO at Watt Studio, agrees that buying content has become much more difficult. "Players are used to buying games on Steam in one click, and now, to buy a game, you need to perform the same actions as when downloading a pirated version, so everyone chooses to save money," Tomsky says. As the Russian economy faces huge difficulties directly linked to the invasion of Ukraine, some fear that game piracy rates are heading towards the 90%+ mark last seen around two decades ago. People everywhere are trying to save money and according to Konstantin Sakhnov, co-founder of Vengeance Games, overseas game publishers may see lost profits reach $200-$300 million. A report from Kommersant published today indicates that local companies are also feeling the pain. According to data published by job search platform HH.ru, during the first half of 2023 the number of vacancies for video game developers in Russia plummeted 38%.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Astronomers have discovered a two-faced star and are baffled by its bizarre appearance. The Guardian reports: The white dwarf appears to have one side composed almost entirely of hydrogen and the other side made up of helium. It is the first time that astronomers have discovered a lone star that appears to have spontaneously developed two contrasting faces. The object, which is more than 1,000 light years away in the Cygnus constellation, has been nicknamed Janus, after the two-faced Roman god of transition, although its formal scientific name is ZTF J203349.8+322901.1. It was initially discovered by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), an instrument that scans the skies every night from Caltech's Palomar Observatory near San Diego. "The surface of the white dwarf completely changes from one side to the other," said Dr Ilaria Caiazzo, an astrophysicist at Caltech who led the work. "When I show the observations to people, they are blown away." Caiazzo was searching for white dwarfs and one candidate star stood out due to its rapid changes in brightness. Further observations revealed that Janus was rotating on its axis every 15 minutes. Spectrometry measurements, which give the chemical fingerprints of a star, showed that one side of the object contained almost entirely hydrogen and the other almost entirely helium. If seen up close, both sides of the star would be bluish in colour and have a similar brightness, but the helium side would have a grainy, patchwork appearance like that of our own sun, while the hydrogen side would appear smooth. The findings are published in the journal Nature.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: A study published Monday in the Lancet found that the use of hearing aids can reduce the risk of cognitive decline by about half -- 48 percent -- for adults with more risk factors for dementia, such as elevated blood pressure, higher rates of diabetes, lower education and income, and those living alone. The study was presented at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Amsterdam. [...] Over a three-year period, the randomized controlled trial studied nearly 1,000 older adults, ages 70 to 84, in four sites in the United States. The participants included older adults in an ongoing study of cardiovascular health -- Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) -- and others who were healthier than the ARIC adults; both groups were from the same communities at each site. When the two groups were combined, use of hearing aids was shown to have no significant effect on slowing cognitive changes. When the group at higher risk of dementia, the ARIC group, was analyzed separately, however, researchers found that hearing intervention -- counseling with an audiologist and use of hearing aids -- had a significant impact on reducing cognitive decline. Those considered at high risk for dementia were older and had lower cognitive scores, among other factors. When the groups were combined, the slower rate of cognitive decline experienced by the healthier participants may have limited any effect of hearing aids, the researchers suggested. Whether hearing treatment reduces the risk of developing dementia in the long term is still unknown. "That's the next big question -- and something we can't answer yet," said Lin, who is also director of the Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. He said he and his colleagues are planning a long-term follow-up study to attempt to answer that question. There have many studies over the past decade to try to determine why people with hearing loss tend to have worse cognition, said Justin S. Golub, an associate professor of otolaryngology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. One theory is that it requires a lot of effort for people with hearing loss to understand what others are saying -- and that necessary brainpower leaves fewer cognitive resources to process the meaning of what was heard, he said. Another theory relates to brain structure. Research has shown that the temporal lobe of people with hearing loss tends to shrink quicker because it is not receiving as much auditory input from the inner ear. The temporal lobe is connected to other parts of the brain, and "that could have cascading influences on brain structure and function," said Golub, who was not part of the Lancet study. A third theory is that people with hearing loss tend to be less social and, as a result, have less cognitive stimulation, he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Cyber Police Department of the National Police of Ukraine dismantled another massive bot farm, seizing computer equipment, mobile phones, and roughly 150,000 SIM cards of multiple mobile operators. BleepingComputer reports: The bots were used to push Russian propaganda justifying Russia's war in Ukraine, to disseminate illegal content and personal information, and in various other fraudulent activities. In a joint operation, the cyber police and units of the Ukrainian National Police executed 21 search operations in Vinnytsia, Zaporizhzhia, and Lvivand. "The cyber police established that the attackers used special equipment and software to register thousands of bot accounts in various social networks and subsequently launch advertisements that violated the norms and legislation of Ukraine," a cyber police press release reads [machine translation]. "In addition to spreading hostile propaganda, the accounts were also used for unauthorized distribution of personal data of Ukrainian citizens on the Internet, in Internet fraud schemes, and for sending known false messages about threats to citizens' safety, destruction or damage to property." Cyber police in Ukraine have busted several pro-Russian bot farms in the last year, including one last month called "Botoferma" and another one late last year that was working for the Russian secret services. Ukraine also traced a Russian propaganda operation to a bot farm that was secretly operating in the country's own capital of Kyiv last August. "The farm operated more than 1 million bot accounts, which helped the propaganda operation build an audience of over 400,000 users on social media," reports PCMag.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers have warned that leaked information from a ransomware attack on hardware-maker Gigabyte two years ago may contain critical zero-day vulnerabilities that pose a significant risk to the computing world. The vulnerabilities were found in firmware made by AMI for BMCs (baseboard management controllers), which are small computers integrated into server motherboards allowing remote management of multiple computers. These vulnerabilities, which can be exploited by local or remote attackers with access to Redfish remote management interfaces, could lead to unauthorized access, remote code execution, and potential physical damage to servers. Ars Technica reports: Until the vulnerabilities are patched using an update AMI published on Thursday, they provide a means for malicious hackers -- both financially motivated or nation-state sponsored -- to gain superuser status inside some of the most sensitive cloud environments in the world. From there, the attackers could install ransomware and espionage malware that runs at some of the lowest levels inside infected machines. Successful attackers could also cause physical damage to servers or indefinite reboot loops that a victim organization can't interrupt. Eclypsium warned such events could lead to "lights out forever" scenarios. The researchers went on to note that if they could locate the vulnerabilities and write exploits after analyzing the publicly available source code, there's nothing stopping malicious actors from doing the same. And even without access to the source code, the vulnerabilities could still be identified by decompiling BMC firmware images. There's no indication malicious parties have done so, but there's also no way to know they haven't. The researchers privately notified AMI of the vulnerabilities, and the company created firmware patches, which are available to customers through a restricted support page. AMI has also published an advisory here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to NBC News, New York City is using surveillance software with artificial intelligence to track people evading fares in its subway stations. From the report: The system was in use in seven subway stations in May, according to a report on fare evasion published online by the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which oversees New York City's public transportation. The MTA expects that by the end of the year, the system will expand by "approximately two dozen more stations, with more to follow," the report says. The report also found that the MTA lost $690 million to fare evasion in 2022. Joana Flores, an MTA spokesperson, said the AI system doesn't flag fare evaders to New York police, but she declined to comment on whether that policy could change. Tim Minton, the MTA's communications director, said the system tracks fare evasion to figure out how much money the subway isn't collecting. "We're using it essentially as a counting tool," Minton said. "The objective is to determine how many people are evading the fare and how are they doing it." Minton said the videos are stored on the MTA's servers and are kept "for a limited period." New York Gov. Kathy Hochul's office announced last year that the city's transit systems had more than 10,000 surveillance cameras.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Apple Insider: Apple's processor manufacturer TSMC says that it can't find enough skilled workers to open its Arizona facility on time, and mass chip production will have to wait until 2025. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) began work on a first factory in Arizona in 2021. Since then, the plant has seen safety concerns, complaints from TSMC about US taxation, and a claim that US staff don't work hard enough. Most recently, the company announced that it was sending more Taiwanese workers to the US to manage the final stages of making the plant operational. Now according to Nikkei Asia, that move has proven insufficient. "We are encountering certain challenges, as there is an insufficient amount of skilled workers with the specialized expertise required for equipment installation in a semiconductor-grade facility," said TSMC chair Mark Liu. "Consequently we expect the production schedule of N4 [4-nanometer] process technology to be pushed out to 2025," continued Liu. The news comes alongside TSMC's latest earnings report, which shows that the firm's profits have fallen, though they are expected to recover when the iPhone 15 range launches. TSMC blames the results on a slow economic recover in China, and a downturn in the consumer electronics market.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google today announced its support for interoperable end-to-end encrypted communication between large messaging platforms, with plans to integrate the MLS protocol into Google Messages and Android. 9to5Google reports: Google says it is "strongly supportive of regulatory efforts that require interoperability for large end-to-end messaging platforms," which is presumably in reference to the European Union's Digital Markets Act. That regulation would require iMessage to be interoperable with other messaging platforms. To achieve this, Google says this interoperability requires "open, industry-vetted standards, particularly in the area of privacy, security, and end-to-end encryption." If not, end-to-end encrypted group messaging and other advanced features would be "impossible in practice." Specifically, "group messages would have to be encrypted and delivered multiple times to cater for every different protocol." [...] Google says MLS would make possible "practical interoperability across services and platforms, scaling to groups of thousands of multi-device users." This could "unleash a huge field of new opportunities for the users and developers of interoperable messaging services that adopt it."; It is also flexible enough to allow providers to address emerging threats to user privacy and security, such as quantum computing. Google plans to build MLS into its Messages app, which offers E2EE 1:1 and group RCS chats today, and "support its wide deployment across the industry by open sourcing our implementation in the Android codebase." How RCS factors into this remains to be seen.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new study (PDF) from Stanford found that ChatGPT performed worse on certain tasks in June than its March version. The paper supports a widely held, though unproven, notion that the AI language model's performance in coding and compositional tasks has deteriorated in recent months. Fortune reports: The study compared the performance of the chatbot, created by OpenAI, over several months at four "diverse" tasks: solving math problems, answering sensitive questions, generating software code, and visual reasoning. Researchers found wild fluctuations -- called drift -- in the technology's ability to perform certain tasks. The study looked at two versions of OpenAI's technology over the time period: a version called GPT-3.5 and another known as GPT-4. The most notable results came from research into GPT-4's ability to solve math problems. Over the course of the study researchers found that in March GPT-4 was able to correctly identify that the number 17077 is a prime number 97.6% of the times it was asked. But just three months later, its accuracy plummeted to a lowly 2.4%. Meanwhile, the GPT-3.5 model had virtually the opposite trajectory. The March version got the answer to the same question right just 7.4% of the time -- while the June version was consistently right, answering correctly 86.8% of the time. Similarly varying results happened when the researchers asked the models to write code and to do a visual reasoning test that asked the technology to predict the next figure in a pattern. James Zou, a Stanford computer science professor who was one of the study's authors, says the "magnitude of the change" was unexpected from the "sophisticated ChatGPT." The vastly different results from March to June and between the two models reflect not so much the model's accuracy in performing specific tasks, but rather the unpredictable effects of changes in one part of the model on others. [...] The exact nature of these unintended side effects is still poorly understood because researchers and the public alike have no visibility into the models powering ChatGPT. It's a reality that has only become more acute since OpenAI decided to backtrack on plans to make its code open source in March. "These are black-box models," Zou says. "So we don't actually know how the model itself, the neural architectures, or the training data have changed."Read more of this story at Slashdot.