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Britain's antitrust regulator on Thursday announced an in-depth probe of Adobe's $20 billion bid for cloud-based designer platform Figma, after the Photoshop owner said it would not offer any remedies to ease the regulator's concerns. From a report: The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said late last month it had found the deal could lead to less choice for designers of digital apps, websites and other products, and identified concerns in the supply of screen design software, where the companies compete. It had given Adobe five working days to submit proposals to address its concerns. But on July 7, the U.S. company told the CMA it would not offer any remedies, the CMA said on Thursday. Figma and Adobe both directed Reuters to the companies' response in June, when the regulator had flagged these concerns. "We look forward to establishing these facts in the next phase of the process and successfully completing the transaction," a spokesperson for Adobe added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Telly's free 55-inch 4K dual-screen TV sets are set to arrive at users' homes this week -- but of course, there's a catch. From a report: The start-up, which plans to ship some 500,000 free, ad-supported TVs in 2023 in the U.S., is calling the initial wave a "public beta program." The company says the new Telly households represent a diverse cross-section of the U.S. population, although the initial user base overindexes on education level and household income -- and also skews toward Gen Zers and millennials. According to Telly, more than 250,000 people have signed up to receive a free TV set, which displays an always-on, rotating ad unit on a 9-inch-high second screen situated below the main 55-inch one. Each unit also includes a free Chromecast with Google TV adapter. The bulk of the half-million TVs will go out in the fourth quarter of 2023, Telly chief strategy officer Dallas Lawrence said: "We think there's no better Black Friday deal than free." To receive the free TV, Telly users must submit detailed demographic info (such as age, gender and address), as well as purchasing behaviors, brand preferences and viewing habits, and they must agree to let their data be used for serving targeted ads. Telly's TVs include a sensor that detects how many people are in front of the screen at any given moment. So what's the catch? Telly users must agree to several conditions under the company's terms of service. If someone doesn't abide by the TOS, Telly reserves the right to demand the TV be shipped back -- otherwise, it will charge up to $1,000 to the credit card associated with a given account. Also read: Telly, the 'Free' Smart TV With Ads, Has Privacy Policy Red Flags.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In recent years, private equity firms have been gobbling up physician practices to form powerful medical groups across the country, according to a new report. The New York Times: In more than a quarter of local markets -- in places like Tucson, Ariz.; Columbus, Ohio; and Providence, R.I. -- a single private equity firm owned more than 30 percent of practices in a given specialty in 2021. In 13 percent of the markets, the firms owned groups employing more than half the local specialists. The medical groups were associated with higher prices in their respective markets, particularly when they controlled a dominant share, according to a paper by researchers at the Petris Center at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a progressive think tank in Washington, D.C. When a firm controlled more than 30 percent of the market, the cost of care in three specialties -- gastroenterology, dermatology, and obstetrics and gynecology -- increased by double digits. The paper, published by the American Antitrust Institute, documented substantial private equity purchases across multiple medical specialties over the last decade. Urology, ophthalmology, cardiology, oncology, radiology and orthopedics have also been major targets for such deals. "It's shocking when you look at it," said Laura Alexander, director of markets and competition policy for the Washington Center, who said private equity firms dominated only a handful of markets a decade ago. By looking at individual markets, the researchers were able to document the local impact. "National rates mask this much more acute problem in local markets," she said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The former chief executive officer of bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network was arrested following a probe into the company's collapse, Bloomberg reported Thursday. From the report: The arrest took place Thursday morning, according to the person, who asked not to be identified because the criminal case isn't public. The Securities and Exchange Commission also filed a lawsuit against Mashinsky and the company Thursday, according to court records. Celsius was one of several high-profile crypto firms that imploded last year. The company gained popularity paying high interest rates on digital-asset deposits. But following the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin and a downturn in the digital-asset markets the company was left with a giant hole in its balance sheet and unable to meet an influx of customer withdrawals.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether OpenAI's ChatGPT artificial-intelligence system has harmed individuals by publishing false information about them, according to a letter the agency sent to the company. WSJ: The letter, reported earlier by The Washington Post and confirmed by a person familiar with the matter, also asked detailed questions about the company's data-security practices, citing a 2020 incident in which the company disclosed a bug that allowed users to see information about other users' chats and some payment-related information.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: One of the world's longest commercial trials of a seaweed supplement that the global meat industry hopes could slash methane from beef cattle has recorded much lower reductions in the potent greenhouse gas than previous studies. Putting the supplement into the diets of 40 wagyu cattle in an Australian feedlot for 300 days cut the methane they produced by 28%. The supplement was derived from the red seaweed species Asparagopsis, which has been widely promoted as being able to cut methane by more than 80%, with some experiments suggesting reductions as high as 96%. Globally, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization estimates, methane from burping cattle -- known as enteric emissions -- releases about 2.1 billion tons of CO2-equivalent a year, compared with the 37.5 billion tons of CO2 from burning fossil fuels. But because methane is about 80 times more potent than CO2 at warming the planet over a 20-year period, cutting methane is seen as a way to slow global heating faster. The trial, reported by the red meat industry's marketing and research group Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA), also found animals given the supplement ate less food and weighed 15kg less by the time they were sent for slaughter. Dr Fran Cowley, a livestock scientist at the University of New England who led the trial, said it was the longest run so far using the red seaweed. She said more research was needed to understand why the wagyu in the trial had not delivered the same level of emissions reductions as other experiments. One factor could be the way the methane was measured in the trial, which used an open-air system in a feedlot compared with animals measured in dedicated indoor chambers. But the trial report noted that other experiments over shorter timeframes using the same open-air measurement technique had recorded higher methane reductions. The seaweed was freeze-dried, mixed in canola oil and added to the animals' feed. In this trial it was given to the animals at slightly lower concentrations than other experiments that showed much higher methane reductions. Cowley said it was also not clear why the animals on the supplement ate less food and put on weight more slowly. Accounting for the extra 35 days the animals would have taken to reach the same weight would have theoretically meant the emissions savings were cut from 28% to 19% as they would have been alive for longer, all the time emitting methane. The study also found that the seaweed supplement had no effect on the wagyu's flavor or other properties.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is launching its AI-backed note-taking tool to "a small group of users in the US," the company said in a blog post. Formerly referred to as Project Tailwind at Google I/O earlier this year, the new app is now known as NotebookLM (the LM stands for Language Model). The Verge reports: The core of NotebookLM seems to actually start in Google Docs. ("We'll be adding additional formats soon," the blog post says.) Once you get access to the app, you'll be able to select a bunch of docs and then use NotebookLM to ask questions about them and even create new stuff with them. Google offers a few ideas for things you might do in NotebookLM, such as automatically summarizing a long document or turning a video outline into a script. Google's examples, even back at I/O, seemed primarily geared toward students: you might ask for a summary of your class notes for the week or for NotebookLM to tell you everything you've learned about the Peloponnesian War this semester. These are the kinds of features you'll hear about in practically any AI product, but Google is hoping that by limiting the underlying model only to the information you've added yourself, it can both improve the model's responses and help mitigate its tendency to confidently lie about everything. (Google's not unique in this idea, either: Dropbox, Mem, Notion, and many others are pursuing similar hyper-specific AI tools of their own.) NotebookLM also has citations built in, which should make it easier to quickly fact-check the automatically generated responses. But Google does warn that NotebookLM might still hallucinate and that the model won't always get it right. It also, of course, depends on the information you provide -- if you wrote down the wrong dates for the Peloponnesian War in class, it can't help you. Google says that the NotebookLM model only has access to the documents you choose to upload and that your data is neither available to others nor is it used to train new AI models. This is one of the trickiest parts of a product like this: Google is asking users to give their private information to an AI model in exchange for some convenient and useful features, and that tradeoff gets more complicated the more sensitive the information becomes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A private Chinese company launched into orbit on Wednesday the world's first methane-liquid oxygen rocket, beating U.S. rivals in sending what could become the next generation of launch vehicles into space. Reuters reports: The Zhuque-2 carrier rocket blasted off at 9 a.m. (0100 GMT) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China and completed its flight according to plan, state media reported. It was the second attempt by Beijing-based LandSpace, one of the earliest firms in China's commercial launch sector, to launch the Zhuque-2. A first attempt in December failed. Wednesday's launch put China ahead of U.S. rivals, including Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, in the race to launch carrier vehicles fueled by methane, which is deemed less polluting, safer, cheaper and a suitable propellant in a reusable rocket. LandSpace also became the second private Chinese company to launch a liquid-propellent rocket. In April, Beijing Tianbing Technology successfully launched a kerosene-oxygen rocket, taking another step towards developing rockets that can be re-fueled and reused.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Perseverance rover's Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals (SHERLOC) instrument, designed to analyze organic chemicals on Mars, has provided valuable insights into the presence and distribution of potential organic materials on the surface of Mars. The findings have been published in the journal Nature. An anonymous reader shares a report from Ars Technica: SHERLOC comes with a deep-UV laser to excite molecules into fluorescing, and the wavelengths they fluoresce at can tell us something about the molecules present. It's also got the hardware to do Raman spectroscopy simultaneously. Collectively, these two capabilities indicate what kinds of molecules are present, though they can't typically identify specific chemicals. And, critically, SHERLOC provides spatial information, telling us where sample-specific signals come from. This allows the instrument to determine which chemicals are located in the same spot in a rock and thus were likely formed or deposited together. SHERLOC can sample rocks simply by being held near them. The new results are based on a set of samples from two rock formations found on the floor of the Jezero crater. In some cases, the imaging was done by pointing it directly at a rock; in others, the rock surface, and any dust and contaminants it contained, was abraded away by Perseverance before the imaging was done. SHERLOC identified a variety of signatures of potential organic material in these samples. There were a few cases where it was technically possible that the signatures were produced by a very specific chemical that lacked carbon (primarily cerium salts). But, given the choice between a huge range of organic molecules or a very specific salt, the researchers favor organic materials as the source. One thing that was clear was that the level of organic material present changed over time. The deeper, older layer called Seitah only had a tenth of the material found in the Maaz rocks that formed above them. The reason for this difference isn't clear, but it indicates that either the production or deposition of organic material on Mars has changed over time. Between the different samples and the ability to resolve different regions of the samples, the researchers were able to identify distinct signals that each occurred in many samples. While it wasn't possible to identify the specific molecule responsible, they were able to say a fair bit about them. One signal came from samples that contained a ringed organic compound, along with sulfates. The most common signal came from a two-ringed organic molecule, and was associated with various salts: phosphate, sulfate, silicates, and potentially a perchlorate. Another likely contained a benzene ring associated with iron oxides. A different ringed compound was found in two of the samples. Overall, the researchers conclude that these differences are significant. The fact that distinct organic chemicals are consistently associated with different salts suggests that there were either several distinct ways of synthesizing the organics or that they were deposited and preserved under distinct conditions. Many of the salts seen here are also associated with either water-based deposition or water-driven chemical alteration of the rock -- again, consistent with the processes involved changing over time. Collectively, the researchers say this argues against the organic chemicals simply having been delivered to Mars on a meteorite.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Disney, Netflix, and other media and entertainment giants are pushing back against the FTC's "click to cancel" proposal (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source) that would make it easier for people to cancel streaming, gaming, and other services. Insider reports: Companies of all stripes have angered consumers by making services all too easy to sign up for but often confoundingly difficult to cancel, with gyms and news outlets considered among the worst offenders. The FTC has gone after individual companies; it recently sued Amazon, alleging the etailer "tricked" people into signing up for Amazon Prime. That followed the FTC's proposal in March for a regulation that's intended "to make it as easy for consumers to cancel their enrollment as it was to sign up." The policy would cover providers of both digital and physical subscriptions, from streamers and gym memberships to phone companies and cable TV distributors. The new rule would require companies to offer a simple mechanism for users to cancel subscriptions the same way they signed up. For example, you wouldn't have to cancel a service in person or over the phone if you signed up for it online. "I can't tell you how much time I've spent trying to cancel subscriptions I never wanted, let alone the cost!" one person wrote in a comment to the FTC. The Internet & Television Association, which counts Disney, Paramount, and Warner Bros. Discovery as members, said in its public comment that the proposed reg is so vague, it would lead marketers to be excessive in their disclosures, leaving consumers "inundated" and "confused." The reg would even infringe on its members' freedom of speech, the association argued. "The proposal would also severely curtail or, in some cases, even prohibit companies from communicating with their customers, in violation of the First Amendment," the association wrote. Sirius XM wrote in its comments that one proposed requirement -- that companies maintain records of phone calls with customers -- would cost the company "several million" dollars a year to comply with. The Entertainment Software Association, the video gaming trade organization, noted that the FTC's proposed disclosure requirements "would interfere with game play and customer enjoyment." The ESA wrote that "most consumers understand autorenewal offers and are knowing and willing participants in the marketplace" and that letting customers cancel immediately would prevent member companies from offering them alternative plans or discounts. The ESA was joined in its comments by the Digital Media Association and Motion Picture Association, whose members include Netflix, Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Universal Pictures. The FTC will examine the feedback it's received through public comment before considering a final rule.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chipotle has developed a robot that can cut the 50-minute process of making guacamole in half. "The fast-casual chain developed the collaborative robot, or cobot, in partnership with Vebu Labs, a California-based robotics startup," reports CNBC. "Chipotle also announced Wednesday that its $50 million venture arm, Cultivate Next, is investing in Vebu. Financial terms weren't disclosed." From the report: To prepare avocados using the Autocado, Chipotle employees load up the device with a full case of the ripe fruit. The Autocado can hold up to 25 pounds at one time. Then, the machine vertically orients the avocados, slices them in half and removes their cores and skin. A bowl at the bottom collects the fruit, which employees can then hand mash and mix with the rest of the guacamole ingredients. Chipotle still wants employees to have a hand in making their guacamole. "There's no plan to test automated guac made in our restaurant," Curt Garner, Chipotle's chief technology officer, told CNBC. Employees don't have to monitor the Autocado while it prepares the avocados and can even use the top of the device as more counter space to prepare other ingredients. The prototype is "very close" to design for manufacture, according to Garner. Chipotle expects to test the Autocado in restaurants later this year. Eventually, Vebu plans to add machine learning capabilities and sensors to the Autocado that will help it evaluate the quality of avocados. Preparing avocados for guacamole routinely ranks as one of employees' least favorite tasks, Garner said. It's also one of the most dangerous duties in Chipotle kitchens, sometimes resulting in knife injuries. On top of saving time and labor costs, the robot could also cut food waste. If the chain deploys the Autocado across its footprint of more than 3,200 locations, it could help save millions of dollars on avocados annually, the company said. Despite those savings, guacamole will probably still cost customers extra. "It's worth it," Garner said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader Ammalgam shares a report from CRM Rank: Salesforce, the leading provider of software for customer relations management, announced that it will implement a price increase for some of its cloud and marketing tools starting in August. The company's decision to raise prices, the first in seven years, was met with a positive market response as its shares surged nearly 4% during early trading on Tuesday. This move by Salesforce aligns with the current trend among technology companies, including Salesforce itself, to invest in generative artificial intelligence (AI) and incorporate it into their products and services. To enhance its software capabilities, Salesforce has dedicated over $20 billion to research and development efforts over the past seven years. These investments have led to the introduction of new features, particularly generative AI tools, aimed at providing enhanced value to customers. The revised prices will apply to a range of Salesforce products, including Tableau, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Industries. Both new and existing customers will be subject to price adjustments, ensuring consistency across the customer base. Salesforce detailed the new price increases in a statement, saying: "New list pricing will go into effect globally for new customers and existing customers purchasing new clouds in August 2023. The new list prices will be Professional Edition $80 (up $5), Enterprise Edition $165 (up $15) and Unlimited Edition $330 (up $30). These editions will be priced comparably in other currencies. Similar list price increases will go into effect for Industries, Marketing Cloud Engagement and Account Engagement, CRM Analytics and Tableau."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: The macOS Sonoma update that is in testing allows Mac owners who opt to use Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or another browser to use Apple's Password Manager for filling passwords. Developers and public beta testers running macOS Sonoma can use their iCloud Keychain passwords with non-Safari browsers at this time, autofilling passwords and one-time codes. Third-party browsers can also save new passwords. Apple has made an iCloud Passwords Chrome extension available for macOS Sonoma users, and it can be downloaded and installed to access Apple passwords on the Chrome browser or any Chromium-based browser. Apple plans to release a similar extension for the Microsoft Edge browser in the near future. Google and other browser developers are also working on implementing support for Passkeys, the password alternative that Apple introduced last year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, the parent company of Redbox, has partnered with TikTok to stream the platform's short-form videos on screens atop approximately 3,000 Redbox kiosks across the United States. Deadline reports: Third-party brands will also have their ads run alongside the TikTok videos via Chicken Soup's ad platform Crackle Connex. The agreement covers roughly 10% of the total network of Redbox kiosks, which are generally located outside of grocery, convenience and big box retail stores. The out-of-home ad deal is part of a growing effort across the industry to identify alternatives to linear TV and place brand messages in venues like gas stations, elevators and other locations. "TikTok is the go-to destination for short-form video consumption by over a billion people globally," said Philippe Guelton, chief revenue officer of Crackle Connex. "This new partnership provides advertisers a unique opportunity to reach new audiences and drive engagement. Our Redbox kiosks are in high-traffic locations where millions of people frequently shop, such as grocery stores or value retailers. We look forward to working with TikTok on expanding this partnership as our DOOH network expands."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Democratic senators, including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, are calling (PDF) for an investigation into popular online tax filing companies, accusing them of sharing sensitive taxpayer data with Meta and Google without user consent. The Verge reports: On Tuesday, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and others asked the Justice Department, Federal Trade Commission, Treasury Department, and the IRS to investigate whether TaxSlayer, H&R Block, and TaxAct violated taxpayer privacy laws by sharing sensitive user information with the two tech firms. Senators also released (PDF) their own report Wednesday detailing the accusations, first raised by The Markup last November. The report alleges that for years, tax preparation companies infused their products with Meta and Google tracking pixels that revealed identifying information -- like a user's full name, address, and date of birth. The senators also suggest that some of the information provided, like the forms a user accessed, could be used to show "whether taxpayers were eligible for certain deductions or exemptions." The senators claim that the companies did not receive user consent to share this information, which could violate laws banning tax preparers from sharing tax return information with third parties, especially since much of this data could be used for advertising purposes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: One recent study found that the U.S. was currently ranked somewhere around 32nd globally, behind countries like Russia, Lithuania, and Bulgaria [on broadband affordability] (you can find the full breakdown here): "The United States and Canada both have one of the highest internet costs," Alex Tofts, the Broadband Expert for Broadband Genie, said in a summary. "It's driven by a lack of competition and bigger distances to connect, with lower population density than other developed countries. However, both have average wages in the top fifteen in the world, compensating for the high cost of internet." For decades, people (mostly the industry) tried to suggest the problem was because America was just so gosh darn big. But you'll notice that China and Russia, (ranked 25th and 17th, respectively) still perform better. Data routinely shows that affordability is the key obstacle to access, yet it's only been in the last few years that you've started to see this reality reflected in U.S. policymaking. [...] But again, the cause of this problem is very clear: monopolization and consolidation, protected by corruption. Few U.S. markets have the choice of more than one broadband provider at next-generation speeds. And that's because federal and state lawmakers are so comically corrupt, they routinely let AT&T, Comcast, Charter, or Verizon lobbyists endlessly merge, crush all competition, then literally write state or federal legislation and policy over several decades. But it's not all doom and gloom. Decades of federal policy corruption and dysfunction have created an extremely strong, local, bipartisan grassroots movement for better broadband access. In countless towns and cities, municipalities, cooperatives, city-owned utilities, and creative new partnerships are building new, open access fiber networks with an eye on competition and cost. [...] Still, it's comical and grotesque that it's 2023 and a country that fancies itself a technology giant still can't meaningfully tackle equitable broadband access and affordability. And that telecom and media policy has basically become a boring afterthought in the era of "Big Tech." Ensuring equitable access to an essential utility is just too boring for most 2023 policy circles, much less the modern attention economy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China's Huawei is plotting a return to the 5G smartphone industry by the end of this year, according to research firms, signalling a comeback after a U.S. ban on equipment sales decimated its consumer electronics business. From a report: Huawei should be able to procure 5G chips domestically using its own advances in semiconductor design tools along with chipmaking from Semiconductor Manufacturing International Co (SMIC), three third-party technology research firms covering China's smartphone sector told Reuters. The firms, citing industry sources including Huawei suppliers, spoke on condition of anonymity because of confidentiality agreements with clients. A return to the 5G phone market would mark a victory for the company that for almost three years said it was in "survival" mode. Huawei's consumer business revenue peaked at 483 billion yuan ($67 billion) in 2020, before plummeting by almost 50% a year later. The Shenzhen-based tech giant once vied with Apple and Samsung to be the world's biggest handset maker until rounds of U.S. restrictions beginning in 2019 cut its access to chipmaking tools essential for producing its most advanced models.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

U.S. regulators will soon decide on a petition filed by General Motors' Cruise self-driving technology unit seeking permission to deploy up to 2,500 self-driving vehicles annually without human controls, a top auto safety official said on Wednesday. From a report: The petition, filed in February 2022, seeks government approval to deploy vehicles annually without steering wheels, mirrors, turn signals or windshield wipers. National Highway Traffic Safety acting Administrator Ann Carlson said Wednesday the agency "will issue a decision "in the coming weeks." "The central issue is deciding whether vehicles that are driven not by humans but by computers need to comply with safety standards that are fundamentally about human drivers: requirements for mirrors, sun visors, windshield wipers and so forth," Carlson said. Cruise currently offers a limited service in San Francisco with a small fleet of Chevrolet Bolt vehicles fitted with driverless technology. Cruise wants to deploy its Origin vehicle, which has subway-like doors and no steering wheels.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

swinferno shares a report: VanMoof -- the Amsterdam-based e-bike maker that once bragged about being the "most funded e-bike company in the world" -- has turned to the Dutch courts for legal protection in order to give the company time to pay its bills. The company is exploring all possible routes out of its debt, including a possible sale, according to a source familiar with the matter. All options are on the table as the company looks for a path to survival. The company is also temporarily closing its brand stores. Amid rumors of trouble, angry customers descended on VanMoof's flagship Amsterdam store and service center (and former global HQ) on Wednesday to claim their bikes that had been brought in for service weeks ago. The closures are meant to safeguard VanMoof employees. The so-called preliminary "surseance van betaling" (which translates to "suspension of payment") that VanMoof has entered is typically granted for a period of up to 18 months and -- importantly -- is designed to help companies avoid bankruptcy. However, it's also often the first step toward bankruptcy proceedings. Under Dutch law, creditors cannot claim their debts during the suspension of payment period, which ends once all creditors are paid, a final agreement with creditors is reached (private or judicial), or when the company is declared bankrupt.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The crypto-mining company formerly known as Hive Blockchain Technologies is pivoting to artificial intelligence and web3, and has changed its name accordingly. From a report: The Vancouver-based miner has dropped the "blockchain" marker and said that its new branding as Hive Digital Technologies is intended to reflect "its mission to drive advancements" in AI applications like ChatGPT, and to "support the new web3 ecosystem." Hive intends to use its existing fleet of Nvidia graphics processing units "for computational tasks on a massive scale," according to a July 12 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The vast majority of crypto-mining companies are focused on Bitcoin and use specialized chips that are different from so-called GPUs. Hive is among a handful of companies that deploy GPUs at scale to mine Ether, the second largest cryptocurrency by market value. A recent set of changes on the Ethereum blockchain has meant that these GPUs are no longer necessary, which is a problem for the Ether miners who hold large stocks of them.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Play announced a major shift in policy today, allowing developers to incorporate digital assets such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) into their apps and games in the store. From a report: Companies that decide to offer the ability to buy, sell or earn tokenized assets will be required to make it clear in the Play Console that there are blockchain-based elements in the app. In a blog post shared with CoinDesk, Joseph Mills, Google Play's Group Product Manager, wrote that this will allow partners to reimagine "traditional games with user-owned content" and boost "user loyalty through unique NFT rewards." Reddit, which has seen enormous success with its Avatar NFTs, was one of the partners working with Google on the new policy. Matt Williamson, Reddit's senior engineering manager, was quoted in the post as saying that the updated guidelines are "aimed at creating a level playing field that promotes user trust, and responsible usage of blockchain technology." The post by Mills stressed the importance of user trust, noting "while tokenized assets are meant to build more enriched, immersive experiences, as an added user protection, developers may not promote or glamorize any potential earning from playing or trading activities."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Elon Musk announced the formation of what he's calling xAI, whose goal is to "understand the true nature of the universe." The team at xAI, led by Musk, includes individuals who have previously worked at DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Tesla, and the University of Toronto. "Collectively we contributed some of the most widely used methods in the field, in particular the Adam optimizer, Batch Normalization, Layer Normalization, and the discovery of adversarial examples. We further introduced innovative techniques and analyses such as Transformer-XL, Autoformalization, the Memorizing Transformer, Batch Size Scaling, and uTransfer. We have worked on and led the development of some of the largest breakthroughs in the field including AlphaStar, AlphaCode, Inception, Minerva, GPT-3.5, and GPT-4," xAI said in a blog post.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chinese hackers exploited a flaw in Microsoft's cloud email service to gain access to the email accounts of U.S. government employees, the technology giant has confirmed. From a report: The hacking group, tracked as Storm-0558, compromised approximately 25 email accounts, including government agencies, as well as related consumer accounts linked to individuals associated with these organizations, according to Microsoft. [...] Microsoft's investigation determined that Storm-0558, a China-based hacking group that the firm describes as a "well-resourced" adversary, gained access to email accounts using Outlook Web Access in Exchange Online (OWA) and Outlook.com by forging authentication tokens to access user accounts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A U.S. judge has dismissed a lawsuit in which the founder of WallStreetBets, which helped ignite investors' fascination with "meme" stocks, accused Reddit of wrongly banning him from moderating the community and usurping his trademark rights. From a report: Jaime Rogozinski, who founded WallStreetBets in 2012, said Reddit ousted him in April 2020 as a pretext to keep him from controlling a "a famous brand that helped Reddit rise to a $10 billion valuation" by late 2021. Rogozinski had applied to trademark "WallStreetBets" in March 2020, when the community reached 1 million subscribers. It now has 14 million. In a 15-page decision, U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney in San Francisco rejected Rogozinski's claim that he owns the WallStreetBets trademark because the market associated it with him and he made the brand famous. She also dismissed Rogozinski's state law claims related to his ouster, saying either that they were preempted by a federal law that provides "broad immunity" to websites publishing mainly outside content, or that he lacked standing to sue.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: On his way to catch a flight, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) was asked to have his photo taken by a facial recognition machine at airport security. The Transportation Security Administration has been testing use of facial recognition software to verify travelers' identification at some airports. Use of the technology is voluntary, the TSA has told the public and Congress. If you decline, a TSA agent is supposed to verify your identification, as we have done at airport security for years. When Merkley said no to the face scan at Washington's Reagan National Airport, he was told it would cause a significant delay, a spokeswoman for the senator said. There was no delay. The spokeswoman said the senator showed his photo ID to the TSA agent and cleared security. Is facial recognition technology really voluntary if a United States senator has trouble saying no? The TSA is using facial recognition technology for a limited purpose that the agency says is accurate. As flying reaches record highs again this summer, the technology could improve safety and efficiency with fewer risks than controversial uses of facial recognition such as police trying to identify crime suspects from vast numbers of images. But problems encountered by Merkley and others raise questions about whether the technology can be used fairly and how far it might spread in American life without true oversight.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Singapore's sovereign wealth fund Temasek is not currently looking to invest in crypto companies amid regulatory uncertainty in the sector, its Chief Investment Officer Rohit Sipahimalani said. From a report: "There's a lot of regulatory uncertainty in this environment. And I do think that be very difficult for us to make another investment and exchange in the middle of all this regulatory uncertainty," Sipahimalani told CNBC in a Tuesday interview. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged top U.S. crypto exchange Ripple for breaching local securities laws by selling its native token XRP without first registering it with the regulator.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan is taking on the world's biggest technology companies -- and losing. From a report: Khan failed Tuesday in her latest effort to block a big-tech deal when a federal judge denied her agency's bid to block Microsoft from closing its purchase of videogame publisher Activision Blizzard. The FTC suffered a similar setback earlier this year when it tried to thwart Meta Platforms' purchase of a virtual-reality gaming company. Khan, who gained prominence as a critic of Amazon, entered office in 2021 vowing to stiffen antitrust enforcement. Past enforcers were too cautious about bringing tough cases, she has said, and failed to confront the rise of companies such as Facebook owner Meta that gained monopoly-like power in digital industries, she said. "I'm certainly not someone who thinks success is marked by a 100% court record," Khan said last year in remarks at the University of Chicago. "If you just never bring those hard cases, I think there is severe cost to that, that can lead to stagnation and stasis." Under the Biden administration, antitrust agencies have challenged more mergers than in previous years, including some that historically the government wouldn't have tried to block. Microsoft and Activision aren't head-to-head competitors, making the case against the deal less straightforward and more dependent on the FTC's prediction that the combined company would abuse its power to hurt competition in the future.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mark Zuckerberg has used Meta's might to push Threads to a fast start -- but that may only work up to a point. Mike Isaac, writing at The New York Times: A big tech company with billions of users introduces a new social network. Leveraging the popularity and scale of its existing products, the company intends to make the new social platform a success. In doing so, it also plans to squash a leading competitor's app. If this sounds like Instagram's new Threads app and its push against its rival Twitter, think again. The year was 2011 and Google had just rolled out a social network called Google+, which was aimed as its "Facebook killer." Google thrust the new site in front of many of its users who relied on its search and other products, expanding Google+ to more than 90 million users within the first year. But by 2018, Google+ was relegated to the ash heap of history. Despite the internet search giant's enormous audience, its social network failed to catch on as people continued flocking to Facebook -- and later to Instagram and other social apps. In the history of Silicon Valley, big tech companies have often become even bigger tech companies by using their scale as a built-in advantage. But as Google+ shows, bigness alone is no guarantee of winning the fickle and faddish social media market. This is the challenge that Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, now faces as he tries to dislodge Twitter and make Threads the prime app for real-time, public conversations. If tech history is any guide, size and scale are solid footholds -- but ultimately can only go so far. What comes next is much harder. Mr. Zuckerberg needs people to be able to find friends and influencers on Threads in the serendipitous and sometimes weird ways that Twitter managed to accomplish. He needs to make sure Threads isn't filled with spam and grifters. He needs people to be patient about app updates that are in the works.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Two small spacecraft should have now been cruising through the Solar System on the way to study unexplored asteroids, but after several years of development and nearly $50 million in expenditures, NASA announced Tuesday the probes will remain locked inside a Lockheed Martin factory in Colorado. That's because the mission, called Janus, was supposed to launch last year as a piggyback payload on the same rocket with NASA's much larger Psyche spacecraft, which will fly to a 140-mile-wide (225-kilometer) metal-rich asteroid -- also named Psyche -- for more than two years of close-up observations. Problems with software testing on the Psyche spacecraft prompted NASA managers to delay the launch by more than a year. An independent review board set up to analyze the reasons for the Psyche launch delay identified issues with the spacecraft's software and weaknesses in the plan to test the software before Psyche's launch. Digging deeper, the review panel determined that NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the Psyche mission, was encumbered by staffing and workforce problems exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Psyche is now back on track for liftoff in October on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, but Janus won't be aboard. Janus was designed to fly to two binary asteroids -- consisting of two bodies near one another -- that orbit the Sun closer to Earth than the metallic asteroid Psyche. While the Psyche mission can still reach its asteroid destination and accomplish its science mission with a launch this year, the asteroids targeted by Janus will have changed positions in the Solar System by too much since last year. They are no longer accessible to the two Janus spacecraft without flying too far from the Sun for their solar arrays to generate sufficient power. When it became clear the two Janus target asteroids were no longer reachable, scientists on the Janus team and NASA management agreed last year to remove the twin spacecraft from the Psyche launch. Scientists considered other uses for the suitcase-size Janus spacecraft, which were already built and were weeks away from shipment to Florida to begin final launch preparations when NASA decided to delay the launch of Psyche. One of the ideas to repurpose the Janus spacecraft was to send the probes to fly by asteroid Apophis, a space rock bigger than the Empire State Building that will encroach within 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) from our planet's surface in 2029. For a time soon after its discovery in 2004, scientists said there was a small chance Apophis could impact Earth in 2029 or later this century, but astronomers have now ruled out any risk of a collision for the next 100-plus years. In the end, Janus fell victim to the delay of the Psyche mission and tight budget constraints at NASA. The agency said Tuesday it has directed the Janus team to "prepare the spacecraft for long-term storage."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA has expanded its contracts with Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace to design and develop new spacesuits, providing each company with an additional $5 million. Engadget reports: NASA has ordered a spacesuit from Axiom Space meant for use in Low Earth Orbit, specifically for spacewalks outside the International Space Station. The original contract for Axiom was for a spacewalking system that the Artemis III astronauts will wear on the lunar surface when they land on the moon. Axiom unveiled a prototype for its original order in March, showcasing a suit with joints that allow wearers to move around with ease and a helmet equipped with a light and an HD camera. Meanwhile, Collins Aerospace has received an order for a spacesuit meant for use on the lunar surface. The company was previously contracted to develop a spacewalking suit for use outside the ISS. In other words, each company has received a new order that mirrors the other's previous one. Redundancy is an important part of space tech development. In this case, spacesuits meant for the same purpose developed by two different companies could ensure that astronauts will have something to use if the other one fails for any reason. That said, the new task orders are for the companies' initial "design modification work" -- they're essentially modifying their original suits for a new purpose -- and NASA wants to see them first before committing to their continued development. Axiom told SpaceNews that if NASA decides to push through with the new spacesuits' development, the full order will cost the agency $142 million over four years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Blue Origin's BE-4 rocket engine exploded during testing, causing significant damage and potential delays to the company's rocket launches, including those for its customer United Launch Alliance (ULA). CNBC reports: During a firing on June 30 at a West Texas facility of Jeff Bezos' space company, a BE-4 engine detonated about 10 seconds into the test, according to several people familiar with the matter. Those people described having seen video of a dramatic explosion that destroyed the engine and heavily damaged the test stand infrastructure. The engine that exploded was expected to finish testing in July. It was then scheduled to ship to Blue Origin's customer United Launch Alliance for use on ULA's second Vulcan rocket launch, those people said. A Blue Origin spokesperson, in a statement to CNBC on Tuesday, confirmed the company "ran into an issue while testing Vulcan's Flight Engine 3." "No personnel were injured and we are currently assessing root cause," Blue Origin said, adding "we already have proximate cause and are working on remedial actions." The company noted it "immediately" made its customer ULA aware of the incident. ULA is the rocket-building joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, which competes primarily with Elon Musk's SpaceX, especially going head-to-head over the most lucrative military launch contracts. Blue Origin also said it will be able to "continue testing" engines in West Texas. The company previously built two stands for the tests. "We will be able to meet our engine delivery commitments this year and stay ahead of our customer's launch needs," Blue Origin added. BE-4as test failure threatens to further push back the already-delayed first Vulcan launch -- which was recently rescheduled to the fourth quarter of this year -- while Blue Origin examines the cause of the problem. Each Vulcan rocket uses a pair of BE-4 engines to launch. ULA waited anxiously for years to receive delivery of the first set. A month ago, ULA completed a key milestone in preparation for the first Vulcan launch, known as Cert-1, with a short static fire test of the rocket using the first pair of BE-4 flight engines. [...] At the same time that Blue Origin needs to get BE-4 working well and humming off the production line for its main customer, the company also needs the engines for its own reusable New Glenn rocket that's in development. While Vulcan uses two BE-4 engines, each New Glenn rocket requires seven BE-4 engines, meaning Blue Origin needs to produce dozens a year to support both rockets.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Toronto Star: Nassir the gorilla, languid in the heat of a summer afternoon, sits just within reach of a faded sign taped to the glass of his enclosure at the Toronto Zoo, advising visitors not to share images on their cellphones with the swinging bachelor. "We've had a lot of members and guests that actually will put their phones up to the glass and show him videos," says Maria Franke, the zoo's director of wildlife conservation and welfare. "And Nassir is so into those videos. It was causing him to be distracted and not interacting with the other gorillas, and you know, being a gorilla. He was just so enthralled with gadgets and phones and the videos." Gorillas, it seems, share more than just 98 per cent of our DNA. Zookeepers have discovered they can become every bit as interested in cellphones as the bipedal visitors who pay to see them. [...] Biologist Rob Laidlaw sees animal interest in technology as a manifestation of their need for stimulation -- a result of the boredom they experience in captivity. He says keeping such animals stimulated is a huge challenge, even for sanctuary organizations that provide sprawling enclosures. "They're looking for any opportunity they can find to engage intellectually," said Laidlaw, a chartered biologist and executive director of Zoocheck, an animal protection organization. Laidlaw says technology has its uses in zoos, but the emphasis needs to remain on providing as many animals as possible with environments that are as close to their native habitats as possible. "My fear is always that people see these things and think they're a panacea when in fact they're not. They're just one little tiny facet of relieving the boredom of animals." As most teenagers do, Nassir seems to have grown out of his preoccupation with cellphones, says Franke. He is strongly bonded to his half-brother, Sadiki, who shares the zoo's rainforest habitat with him. "It's like Nassir was a little boy, all he wanted to to do was sit in the basement and play games on the computer," said Franke. "I'm not really sure what the content of the videos was. Was it gorillas in the wild? I have no idea. Was it a cartoon? I have no idea. But obviously, there was something that was attracting him to it." But just in case he isn't quite over it, the note to the public remains up -- for now.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Steven Vaughan-Nichols writes via ZDNet: I'd been waiting for Oracle to throw its hat into the ring for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Linux source-code fight. I knew it was only a matter of time. On July 10, Oracle's Edward Screven, chief corporate architect, and Wim Coekaerts, head of Oracle Linux development, declared: "IBM's actions are not in your best interest. By killing CentOS as a RHEL alternative and attacking AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux, IBM is eliminating one way your customers save money and make a larger share of their wallet available to you." In fact, Oracle now presents itself as an open-source Linux champion: "Oracle has always made Oracle Linux binaries and source freely available to all. We do not have subscription agreements that interfere with a subscriber's rights to redistribute Oracle Linux. On the other hand, IBM subscription agreements specify that you're in breach if you use those subscription services to exercise your GPLv2 rights." As of June 21, IBM no longer publicly releases RHEL source code -- in short, the gloves are off, and the fight's on. But this is also just the latest move in a fight that's older than many of you. [...] Mike McGrath, Red Hat's vice president of core platforms, explained why Red Hat would no longer be releasing RHEL's code, but only CentOS Stream's code, because "thousands of [Red Hat] people spend their time writing code to enable new features, fixing bugs, integrating different packages and then supporting that work for a long time ... We have to pay the people to do that work." That sentiment is certainly true. But I also feel that Oracle takes the worst possible spin, with Screven and Coekaerts commenting: "IBM doesn't want to continue publicly releasing RHEL source code because it has to pay its engineers? That seems odd, given that Red Hat as a successful independent open source company chose to publicly release RHEL source and pay its engineers for many years before IBM acquired Red Hat in 2019 for $34 billion." So, what will Oracle do now? For starters, Oracle Linux will continue to be RHEL-compatible through RHEL 9.2. After that release -- and without access to the published RHEL source code -- there are no guarantees. But Screven and Coekaerts suggest that "if an incompatibility does affect a customer or ISV, Oracle will work to remediate the problem." As for Oracle Linux's code: "Oracle is committed to Linux freedom. Oracle makes the following promise: as long as Oracle distributes Linux, Oracle will make the binaries and source code for that distribution publicly and freely available. Furthermore, Oracle welcomes downstream distributions of every kind, community, and commercial. We are happy to work with distributors to ease that process, work together on the content of Oracle Linux, and ensure Oracle software products are certified on your distribution."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

John.Banister writes: SUSE announced that they're spending $10 million on maintaining a fork of RHEL, with the source code of the fork to be freely available to all. I don't know that people who want to copy RHEL source will necessarily see copying the source of a fork as furthering their goals, but it could be that SUSE will build a nice alternative enterprise Linux to complement their current product. And, I reckon, better SUSE than Oracle, since I keep reading comments on people getting screwed by Oracle, but not so many on people getting screwed by SUSE. ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols writes: This all started when Red Hat's VP of core platforms, Mike McGrath, declared, "CentOS Stream will now be the sole repository for public RHEL-related source code releases. For Red Hat customers and partners, source code will remain available via the Red Hat Customer Portal." That may not sound like much to you, but those were fighting words to many open-source and Linux distributors. According to Linux's fundamental license, the GPLv2, no restrictions can be placed on distributing the source code to those who've received the binaries. In the view of many in the open-source community, that's exactly what Red Hat has done. Others see this as the latest step in the long dance between Red Hat's business licensing demands and open-source licensing. Red Hat has had conflicts with the RHEL clones since 2005, when Red Hat's trademarks were the issue of the day. Usually, these fights stayed confined to the RHEL and its immediate clone rivals. Not this time. Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen, SUSE CEO, said this: "For decades, collaboration and shared success have been the building blocks of our open-source community. We have a responsibility to defend these values. This investment will preserve the flow of innovation for years to come and ensures that customers and community alike are not subjected to vendor lock-in and have genuine choice tomorrow as well as today." What does that mean? While SUSE will continue to invest in and support its own Linux distributions, SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) and openSUSE, SUSE plans on creating its own RHEL-compatible clone. Once completed, this new distro will be contributed to an open-source foundation, which will provide ongoing free access to alternative source code.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In late 2021, VanMoof claimed to be "the most funded e-bike company in the world" after raising a total of $182 million in the two years prior -- a figure that would later surpass $200 million. Now, according to multiple sources spoken to by TechCrunch, the Dutch e-bike company's strategy and momentum "appear to have steered dangerously off course." From the report: Our sources tell us that VanMoof is working on securing a bridge round that will help it stay afloat. Sources also claim that senior staff, including the CEO and a co-founder, as well as the president (who is also an investor) have left executive roles in the business. The company has refused to provide any on-the-record comment on its status until later this week. But the facts are plain: The company has, as of June 29 and by its own admission, stopped taking orders. VanMoof also filed paperwork, revealed in January, of its need to raise money to stave off bankruptcy. Customers, annoyed with the pauses and other delays in servicing existing bikes on the road, have turned to social media like Reddit and Twitter to air their complaints and debate whether the company is going bust or not. The first recent, visible cracks in the company appeared in late June when potential customers discovered its online ordering system was no longer working. [...] The story changed again a few days later. In response to TechCrunch's questions about the ordering system, a spokesperson said that the pause was actually intentional (a feature not a bug!). Despite the summer period being the peak season for the cycling market, a VanMoof spokesperson claimed it would be pausing orders to catch up on production and delivery. The company didn't answer any of TechCrunch's multiple questions about why VanMoof was behind on orders (supply chain issues? lacking funds?), what the company's current capacity was, how many orders were outstanding, or when VanMoof hoped to begin sales again. As of the time of publication, the sales pause was going on 12 days. Despite the pause and the other details, VanMoof had been sending out communications that imply it's business-as-usual at the e-bike company. On June 27 it announced that KwikFit NL, the car maintenance chain, would be a new service partner. The day before that it issued a firmware update and a video was posted of a panel that co-founder Taco Carlier participated in. But there have been a number of warning signs in plain sight for months that tell a different story. [...]Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Australian user data is accessible to TikTok employees based in China on a "very strict basis," the company's head of data security, Will Farrell, has said. In their first public appearance before Australian members of parliament since the government joined Canada, the US and the UK in banning TikTok from government-owned devices amid concerns about the company's connections to China, TikTok executives were questioned at length by a parliamentary committee examining foreign interference on social media. Liberal senator and chair of the committee James Paterson, who has led the opposition's push against the app, questioned how many times Australian user data had been accessed by TikTok staff based within China. Farrell could not provide the number immediately, but admitted it did happen. Farrell said there were "a number of protections in place", including that employees only get the minimum amount of access to data to do their job, and when they access that data they need to provide a business justification that needs to be approved by their manager and the database owner within TikTok. If the data is being accessed across a national border, it has to be approved by the global security team based in the US, which also monitors all data access. "Employees can't get access without a clear justification and levels of approval," Farrell said. A similar security review would apply if an employee based in China tried to change the recommendations algorithm, he said. The company's local head of public policy, Ella Woods-Joyce, said China's 2017 national security law -- which requires companies to give the government any personal data relevant to national security -- would apply to any company that had operations and staff in China. When asked on what ground TikTok would refuse to comply with the law, Woods-Joyce said TikTok had never been asked for personal data by the Chinese government and would refuse if asked. [...] It was revealed in December that employees had used the app to attempt to identify the source of a leak to journalists. Hunter told the committee that he stood by the sentiments expressed in his original article, and blamed "rogue employees" who had since been fired from the company for accessing the data. He said "serious misconduct from these rogue employees" had taken place. He said GPS location information was not collected in Australia.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to Statcounter, the Linux share on the desktop has passed 3% for the first time. GamingOnLinux reports: While it has been close a couple of times, the trend according to their stats is pretty clear that Linux use has been slowly rising over the last few years. This does not include ChromeOS, even though it's based on Linux, as they track that separately so this is just plain desktop Linux. Across this year their stats show for Linux: January - 2.91%February - 2.94%March - 2.85%April - 2.83%May - 2.7%June - 3.07%Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Amazon doesn't want to comply with Europe's Digital Services Act, and to avoid the rules the company is arguing that it doesn't meet the definition of a Very Large Online Platform under EU law. Amazon filed an appeal at the EU General Court to challenge the European Commission decision that Amazon meets the criteria and must comply with the new regulations. "We agree with the EC's objective and are committed to protecting customers from illegal products and content, but Amazon doesn't fit this description of a 'Very Large Online Platform' (VLOP) under the DSA and therefore should not be designated as such," Amazon said in a statement provided to Ars today. The Digital Services Act includes content moderation requirements, transparency rules, and protections for minors. Targeted advertising based on profiling toward children will no longer be permitted, for example. Amazon argued that the new law is supposed to "address systemic risks posed by very large companies with advertising as their primary revenue and that distribute speech and information," and not businesses that are primarily retail-based. "The vast majority of our revenue comes from our retail business," Amazon said. Amazon also claims it's unfair that some retailers with larger businesses in individual countries weren't on the list of 19 companies that must comply with the Digital Services Act. The rules only designate platforms with over 45 million active users in the EU as of February 17. Amazon said it is "not the largest retailer in any of the EU countries where we operate, and none of these largest retailers in each European country has been designated as a VLOP. If the VLOP designation were to be applied to Amazon and not to other large retailers across the EU, Amazon would be unfairly singled out and forced to meet onerous administrative obligations that don't benefit EU consumers." Those other companies Amazon referred to include Poland's Allegro or the Dutch Bol.com, according to a Bloomberg report. Neither of those platforms appears to have at least 45 million active users. A summary of the appeal provided by Amazon claimed the designation "is based on a discriminatory criterion and disproportionately violates the principle of equal treatment and the applicant's fundamental rights." In response, the EC said that "it would defend its position in court and added that Amazon still must comply with the rules by end of August, regardless of the appeal," Bloomberg wrote. "The scope of the DSA is very clear and is defined to cover all platforms that expose their users to content, including the sale of products or services, which can be illegal," the commission said in statement reported by Bloomberg. "For marketplaces as for social networks, very wide user reach increases the risks and the platforms' responsibilities to address them."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"CNN reports on a wide-ranging class action lawsuit claiming Google scraped and misused data to train its AI systems," writes long-time Slashdot reader david.emery. "This goes to the heart of what can be done with information that is available over the internet." From the report: The complaint alleges that Google "has been secretly stealing everything ever created and shared on the internet by hundreds of millions of Americans" and using this data to train its AI products, such as its chatbot Bard. The complaint also claims Google has taken "virtually the entirety of our digital footprint," including "creative and copywritten works" to build its AI products. The complaint points to a recent update to Google's privacy policy that explicitly states the company may use publicly accessible information to train its AI models and tools such as Bard. In response to an earlier Verge report on the update, the company said its policy "has long been transparent that Google uses publicly available information from the open web to train language models for services like Google Translate. This latest update simply clarifies that newer services like Bard are also included." [...] The suit is seeking injunctive relief in the form of a temporary freeze on commercial access to and commercial development of Google's generative AI tools like Bard. It is also seeking unspecified damages and payments as financial compensation to people whose data was allegedly misappropriated by Google. The firm says it has lined up eight plaintiffs, including a minor. "Google needs to understand that 'publicly available' has never meant free to use for any purpose," Tim Giordano, one of the attorneys at Clarkson bringing the suit against Google, told CNN in an interview. "Our personal information and our data is our property, and it's valuable, and nobody has the right to just take it and use it for any purpose." The plaintiffs, the Clarkson Law Firm, previously filed a similar lawsuit against OpenAI last month.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cancer cells-to-be accumulate a series of specific genetic changes in a predictable and sequential way years before they are identifiable as pre-malignancies, researchers at Stanford Medicine have found. Stanford Medicine blog: Many of these changes affect pathways that control cell division, structure and internal messaging -- leaving the cells poised to go bad long before any visible signs or symptoms occur. The study is the first to exhaustively observe the natural evolution of the earliest stages of human cancers, starting with cells that have a single cancer-priming mutation and culminating with a panel of descendants harboring a galaxy of genetic abnormalities. Identifying the first steps associated with future cancer development could not only facilitate earlier-than-ever diagnosis -- when a deadly outcome is but a twinkle in a rogue cell's eye -- but may also highlight novel interventions that could stop the disease in its tracks, the researchers say. "Ideally, we would find ways to intercept this progression before the cells become truly cancerous," said Christina Curtis, PhD, professor of medicine, of genetics and of biomedical data science. "Can we identify a minimal constellation of genetic alterations that imply the cell will progress? And, if so, can we intervene? The striking reproducibility in the genetic changes we observed from multiple donors suggests it's possible."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Birds have never shied away from turning human rubbish into nesting materials, but even experts in the field have raised an eyebrow at the latest handiwork to emerge from urban crows and magpies. From a report: Nests recovered from trees in Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Antwerp in Belgium were found to be constructed almost entirely from strips of long metal spikes that are often attached to buildings to deter birds from setting up home on the structures. The discovery prompted researchers at the Natural History Museum in Rotterdam and the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden to scour the internet for further examples, leading to the identification of two more anti-bird spike nests: one in Enschede in the Netherlands and another in Glasgow. "I really thought I'd seen it all," said Kees Moeliker, the director of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam, who studied the crow's nest found during tree maintenance near the city's main railway station. "I didn't expect this. These anti-bird spikes are meant to deter birds, they are supposed to scare them off, but on the contrary, the birds just utilise them." While the Rotterdam nest was made by crows, the other three were built by magpies, which construct large dome-like nests. The crows used the anti-bird spikes as a sturdy construction material, but the magpies may have appreciated their intended use: they placed most of the spikes on the nest's roof where they could deter predators, including other birds and weasels. [...] It is not the first time birds have been found to incorporate urban materials into their nests. In 1933, a South African museum reported a crow's nest fashioned from hard-drawn copper, galvanised iron and barbed wire. Nails, screws and even drug users' syringes have all found their way into birds' nests.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An artificial intelligence researcher who co-authored one of Google's most influential papers in the field is leaving the company to launch a startup. From a report: Llion Jones, who helped write the pioneering AI paper "Attention Is All You Need," confirmed to Bloomberg that he will depart Google Japan later this month. He said he plans to start a company after taking time off. "It was not an easy decision leaving Google, it's been a fantastic decade with them but it's time to try something different," Jones wrote in a message to Bloomberg. "It also feels like good timing to build something new given the momentum and progress in AI."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mark Lucovsky, the former head of operating systems on Google's augmented reality team, has left the company. From a report: In a tweet on Monday, Lucovsky says "changes in AR leadership and Google's unstable commitment and vision" contributed to his decision. Lucovsky's departure adds to the numerous challenges Google's AR team has faced in recent months, including a round of layoffs and the resignation of Google's former head of VR, Clay Bavor. In June, a report from Insider indicated that Google has given up on its plans to build AR glasses, codenamed Project Iris. It's also discontinued the enterprise edition of Google Glass.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Roger Thomas Clark, also known as Variety Jones, will spend much of the rest of his life in prison for his key role in building the world's first dark web drug market. Wired: Nearly ten years ago, the sprawling dark web drug market known as the Silk Road was torn offline in a law enforcement operation coordinated by the FBI, whose agents arrested that black market's boss, Ross Ulbricht, in a San Francisco library. It would take two years for Ulbricht's second-in-command -- an elusive figure known as Variety Jones -- to be tracked down and arrested in Thailand. Today, a decade after the Silk Road's demise, Clark has been sentenced to join his former boss in federal prison. In a Manhattan courtroom on Monday, Roger Thomas Clark -- also known by his online handles including Variety Jones, Cimon and Plural of Mongoose -- was sentenced to 20 years behind bars for his role in building and running Silk Road. Clark, a 62-year-old Canadian national, will now likely spend much of the rest of his life incarcerated for helping to pioneer the anonymous, cryptocurrency-based model for online illegal sales of drugs and other contraband that still persists on the dark web today. The sentence is the maximum Clark faced in accordance with the plea agreement he made with prosecutors. Clark "misguidedly turned his belief that drugs should be legal into material assistance for a criminal enterprise," Judge Sidney Stein said in his sentencing statement. "These beliefs crossed over into patently illegal behavior." Stein added that Clark was "clear-eyed and intentional" in his work as Ulbricht's "right-hand man" in the Silk Road's operations. "The sentence must reflect the vast criminal enterprise of which he was a leader," Stein said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The number of coins circulating in Japan has fallen by an unprecedented amount, suggesting the nation's households are coming to the end of their long love affair with the piggy bank. From a report: The national stock of coins rose steadily since 1970, but has fallen sharply on a year-on-year basis for 18 straight months, according to Bank of Japan data. The turnround has been sparked by a combination of the Covid pandemic, banking fees, inflation and the rise of cashless payment technology. The popularity of cashless payments -- which some have linked with the idea that coins were perceived as "dirty" and a vector for Covid -- accelerated sharply in 2022. Cashless transactions accounted for 36 per cent of all consumer payments, compared with 15 per cent a decade earlier. Analysts said the public's shift away from coins may also signal a wider change in Japanese attitudes towards saving. The sharpest drop has been in circulation of the largest denomination 500 Yen ($3.5) coin. This is the most common coin given to children to keep in their piggy banks, a tradition that seeks to establish solid patterns of saving and deferred gratification at an early age.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel has decided to stop making its Next Unit of Computing (NUC), but the company will encourage partners to keep making the small form-factor (SFF) PCs, the company said Tuesday. From a report: Intel's NUC championed compact PCs, while leaving larger chassis options to partners like Dell and HP. But Intel's decision seems like a natural one, given that Intel has refocused on its core businesses during a period in which it also invested heavily in its own manufacturing operations and foundry business. An Intel spokesman confirmed an initial report by Serve The Home, saying that Intel will continue to support the existing NUCs it has already shipped into the market. "We have decided to stop direct investment in the Next Unit of Compute (NUC) Business and pivot our strategy to enable our ecosystem partners to continue NUC innovation and growth," the Intel spokesman said in an email.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Burger King is causing a stir in Thailand with its new offering: a burger with no meat and a jaw-dropping amount of cheese. From a report: This week, the Thai operator of the fast food chain introduced what it calls the "real cheeseburger," a bun filled with as many as 20 slices of American cheese. The item launched on Thai menus Sunday, at a reduced price of 109 Thai baht ($3.1), compared with the usual price of 380 baht ($10.9). It quickly went viral on social media in Thailand, with many users on TikTok posting videos of them trying the new sandwich. "This is no joke. This is for real," Burger King said in a Sunday social media post. At one Burger King branch in Bangkok on Tuesday, a shift manager was overheard saying the outlet had to stop taking delivery orders so they could have enough stock left for walk-in diners.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A California judge is allowing Microsoft to close its acquisition of Activision Blizzard after five days of grueling testimony. From a report: Microsoft still faces an ongoing antitrust case by the Federal Trade Commission, but Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley has listened to arguments from both the FTC and Microsoft and decided to deny the regulator's request for a preliminary injunction. In a ruling submitted today, Judge Corley said the following: Microsoft's acquisition of Activision has been described as the largest in tech history. It deserves scrutiny. That scrutiny has paid off: Microsoft has committed in writing, in public, and in court to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for 10 years on parity with Xbox. It made an agreement with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to Switch. And it entered several agreements to for the first time bring Activision's content to several cloud gaming services. This Court's responsibility in this case is narrow. It is to decide if, notwithstanding these current circumstances, the merger should be halted -- perhaps even terminated -- pending resolution of the FTC administrative action. For the reasons explained, the Court finds the FTC has not shown a likelihood it will prevail on its claim this particular vertical merger in this specific industry may substantially lessen competition. To the contrary, the record evidence points to more consumer access to Call of Duty and other Activision content. The motion for a preliminary injunction is therefore DENIED.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The European Commission is poised to break a promise to outlaw all but the most essential of Europe's hazardous chemicals, leaked documents show. Bruce66423 shares a report: The pledge to "ban the most harmful chemicals in consumer products, allowing their use only where essential" was a flagship component of the European green deal when it was launched in 2020. It was expected that between 7,000 and 12,000 hazardous substances would be prohibited from use in all saleable products in an update to the EU's Reach regulation, including many "forever chemicals" -- or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) -- which accumulate in nature and human bodies, and have been linked to various hormonal, reproductive and carcinogenic illnesses. But the Guardian has learned that the EU's executive is on the brink of a climbdown under heavy pressure from Europe's chemical industry and rightwing political parties. The industry-led backlash is causing internal disquiet over the threat to public health and policymaking. One EU official said: "We are being pushed to be less strict on industry all the time."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anthropic, an artificial intelligence startup positioning itself as the builder of a safer kind of chatbot, has released a new version of its AI bot, named Claude. From a report: Anthropic said that Claude 2 is available to anyone in the US or UK online at claude.ai, and businesses can access it via an application programming interface. The new release on Tuesday comes several months after Anthropic began offering an earlier version of Claude to businesses that wanted to add it to their products. Previously, the bot was tested by a handful of companies including Quora, which built it into an app called Poe that lets users ask questions. Like its predecessor, Claude 2 is built atop a large language model and can be used for written tasks like summarizing, searching, answering questions and coding. Both models can currently take in large chunks of text -- a user can ask it to summarize a book, for instance -- though Claude 2 can generate longer responses than its predecessor. Responses can reach up to about 3,000 words, according to data provided by the company. Claude 2 will also offer more accurate responses on some topics, such as coding and grade-school-level math, the company said. Anthropic's goal has been for Claude to be less susceptible than other chatbots to manipulation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.