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The Biden administration on Thursday said leading AI companies are among more than 200 entities joining a new U.S. consortium to support the safe development and deployment of generative AI. From a report: Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo announced the U.S. AI Safety Institute Consortium (AISIC), which includes OpenAI, Alphabet's Google, Anthropic and Microsoft along with Facebook-parent Meta Platforms, Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, Palantir, Intel, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America. "The U.S. government has a significant role to play in setting the standards and developing the tools we need to mitigate the risks and harness the immense potential of artificial intelligence," Raimondo said in a statement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has renamed its AI assistant to "Gemini" and unveiled a paid subscription tier offering. The $19.99/month "Gemini Advanced" includes a more powerful AI model and cloud storage integration, targeting users seeking advanced content creation and complex query resolution. Google is also leveraging its Android user base by making Gemini the default digital assistant, aiming to replicate the success of its billion-user products.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Microsoft-backed OpenAI is working on a type of agent software to automate complex tasks by taking over a users' device, The Information reported on Wednesday, citing a person with knowledge on the matter. The agent software will handle web-based tasks such as gathering public data about a set of companies, creating itineraries or booking flight tickets, according to the report, opens new tab. The new assistants -- often called "agents" -- promise to perform more complex personal and work tasks when commanded to by a human, without needing close supervision.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

James Felton reports via IFL Science: One of the deepest metal mines in Europe -- the Pyhasalmi Mine in central Finland -- is to be turned into an enormous gravity battery capable of storing 2 megawatts of energy. [...] Despite the cool name, the idea behind gravity batteries is really simple. During times when energy sources are producing more energy than the demand, the excess energy is used to move weights (in the form of water or sometimes sand) upwards, turning it into potential energy. When the power supply is low, these objects can then be released, powering turbines as our good friend (and deadly enemy) gravity sends them towards the Earth. Though generally gravity batteries take the form of reservoirs, abandoned mines moving sand or other weights up when excess power is being produced have also been suggested. Scottish company Gravitricity created a system of winches and hoists that can be installed in such disused mineshafts. The company will install the system in the 1,400-meter-deep (4,600 feet) zinc and copper mine in Pyhajarvi, Finland. "A study last year by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) estimated that gravity batteries in abandoned underground mines could store up to 70TWh of energy -- enough to meet global electricity demands," reports The Independent. "The repurposed mines could also provide economic benefits to the communities that previously relied on the mine for their livelihoods."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today unveiled new, stricter limits for PM2.5 (particulate smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter), commonly referred to as soot. As NPR notes, these particles are are "one of the deadliest types of air pollution." From the report: The agency lowered the allowable limit for annual PM2.5 levels from 12 micrograms per cubic meter to 9. That's a "significant reduction," says Regan Patterson, an air pollution expert at the University of California, Los Angeles. "The science is clear," says EPA Administrator Michal Regan. "Soot pollution is one of the most dangerous forms of air pollution and is linked to a range of serious and potentially deadly illnesses, including asthma and heart attacks." The new standard represents the first tightening of the rules since 2012, but states will have several years to reach the new limits. The EPA left the daily limits on PM2.5 pollution unchanged, at 35 micrograms per cubic meter, saying the same efforts that will reduce pollution under the revised annual standard will drive down short-term pollution exposures as well. Decades of research have demonstrated that tiny particles are dangerous to people's health at nearly any concentration. The sources vary: fossil fuel combustion, agriculture, and industrial processes all add to the load, as does wildfire smoke and dust. In aggregate, the tiny particles drive millions of premature deaths worldwide each year. The EPA estimates that the new, tighter standards will prevent about 4,500 premature deaths a year by 2032 in the U.S. and prevent about 800,000 asthma-related emergency visits. It estimates the lower pollution exposures could reduce healthcare costs by about $46 billion by that time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Boston Globe: William Straus, like many others, saw the videos in recent days of people behind the wheel of a Tesla in Autopilot mode, sporting their new Apple Vision Pro headsets and typing on an invisible keyboard. "They're all over the Internet, these idiots driving Teslas with their hands up in the air," the state representative said. Some claimed their video was staged. No matter: Straus wants to make it illegal. The Legislature's transportation committee on Wednesday approved language that would ban the use of the new virtual reality headset, or other similar technologies, while behind the wheel in Massachusetts. Straus, the committee's House chair, said he crafted language with his staff over Monday night and Tuesday morning, and added it to an existing proposal that would, among other things, bar drivers from recording or broadcasting themselves while behind the wheel. That it advanced out of committee less than 48 hours later qualifies as light speed by Beacon Hill standards. (The bill must still pass the full House and Senate.) [...] "This is absolutely the correct time to wall this off," said Straus, a Mattapoisett Democrat. "People who operate motor vehicles already have too many distractions." Straus' proposal would explicitly not allow drivers to wear, hold, or "otherwise utilize or interact with a spatial computer," or an augmented reality or mixed reality device. It also would ban drivers from viewing any video, images or text unrelated to operating or navigating the car, be it displayed on a screen or "otherwise worn as a headset or elsewhere on the operator's body." Motorists would face the same fines they do now for using their phone to text while driving: $100 for a first violation, $250 for a second violation and $500 for every violation after that. The driver in the viral video posted on YouTube and linked above said that it was a "skit" that he had made with friends and that he wasn't arrested. "[I] was in the right place at the right time," he told Gizmodo. "That's why we filmed the police."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jakub Lewkowicz reports via SD Times: The Linux Foundation has recently launched the Post-Quantum Cryptography Alliance (PQCA), a collaborative effort aimed at advancing and facilitating the adoption of post-quantum cryptography in response to the emerging threats of quantum computing. This alliance assembles diverse stakeholders, including industry leaders, researchers, and developers, focusing on creating high-assurance software implementations of standardized algorithms. The initiative is also dedicated to supporting the development and standardization of new post-quantum cryptographic methods, aligning with U.S. National Security Agency's guidelines to ensure cryptographic security against quantum computing threats. The PQCA endeavors to serve as a pivotal resource for organizations and open-source projects in search of production-ready libraries and packages, fostering cryptographic agility in anticipation of future quantum computing capabilities. Founding members include AWS, Cisco, Google, IBM, IntellectEU, Keyfactor, Kudelski IoT, NVIDIA, QuSecure, SandboxAQ, and the University of Waterloo. [...] [T]he PQCA plans to launch the PQ Code Package Project aimed at creating high-assurance, production-ready software implementations of upcoming post-quantum cryptography standards, beginning with the ML-KEM algorithm. By inviting organizations and individuals to participate, the PQCA is poised to play a critical role in the transition to and standardization of post-quantum cryptography, ensuring enhanced security measures in the face of advancing quantum computing technology. You can learn more about the PQCA on its website or GitHub.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Citing congressional budget gridlock, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) announced that it will lay off 530 employees, or about 8% of its workforce. SpaceNews reports: In a statement, JPL said it would lay off about 530 employees, as well as 40 contractors, after exhausting other efforts to reduce costs given potential spending reductions for NASA and specifically for Mars Sample Return (MSR), a major program for the Pasadena, California-based center. "After exhausting all other measures to adjust to a lower budget from NASA, and in the absence of a [fiscal year 2024] appropriation from Congress, we have had to make the difficult decision to reduce the JPL workforce through layoffs," JPL stated. "While we still do not have an FY24 appropriation or the final word from Congress on our Mars Sample Return (MSR) budget allocation, we are now in a position where we must take further significant action to reduce our spending," JPL Director Laurie Leshin wrote in a memo. "In the absence of an appropriation, and as much as we wish we didn't need to take this action, we must now move forward to protect against even deeper cuts later were we to wait."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC announced plans to build a second chip factory in Japan by the end of 2027, bringing total investment in its Japan venture to more than $20 billion. "Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co announced plans in 2021 to build a $7 billion chip plant in Kumamoto in southern Japan's Kyushu," notes Reuters. From the report: In a statement, TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, said its majority-owned unit Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing in Kumamoto would build a second fabrication plant, or fab, in response to rising customer demand. The second fab will begin construction by the end of this year and with both factories the site is expected to have total monthly capacity of more than 100,000 12-inch wafers to be used for automotive, industrial, consumer and high performance computing-related applications, TSMC said. The capacity plan may be further adjusted based upon customer demand, it added. TSMC's expansion in Kyushu is central to the Japanese government's efforts to rebuild the country's position as a leading chip manufacturing centre and ensure the stable supply of chips amid trade tensions between the United States and China. The decision to build a second fab is a vote of confidence by TSMC in Japan where construction of the first fab has run smoothly and which, Reuters has reported, it sees as a source of diligent workers with a government that is easy to deal with.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Disney is investing $1.5 billion for an equity stake in Fortnite and Unreal Engine maker Epic Games as part of a broader partnership to create a new Disney gaming universe. The companies plan to create an expansive and open games and entertainment universe. I would say they're building a metaverse, if the word weren't so overused late and out of favor with some. They didn't actually use that word. Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, announced the investment in an interview with CNBC today. The companies will collaborate on a new games and entertainment universe that will further expand the reach of beloved Disney stories and experiences. It will be a multi-year project, built by Epic Games. "It's not just our parks where we're creating new opportunities for consumers to engage with the characters and franchises they love," Iger said in an analyst call. In our new relationship with Epic Games, we're creating a transformational games and entertainment universe that integrates Disney's world-class storytelling into Epic's cultural phenomenon Fortnite, enabling consumers to play, watch, create, and shop for both digital and physical goods. This marks Disney's biggest entry ever into the world of video games, and offers significant opportunities for growth and expansion. The new immersive universe will unleash their own creativity and experience the Disney stories that they love in groundbreaking new ways." Iger added, "Younger audiences in particular are huge consumers of video games. In fact, among millennials, Gen Z and Gen Z is a significant amount of time spent on screen-based platforms, playing video games. This new universe from Disney and Epic provides us with a tremendous opportunity to not only meet more consumers where they are and to allow more audiences to cultivate a bond with Disney's iconic brands and franchises, including Marvel, Star Wars, and much more." The $1.5 billion transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals. In addition to being a world-class games experience and interoperating with Fortnite, the new persistent universe will offer a multitude of opportunities for consumers to play, watch, shop and engage with content, characters and stories from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, Avatar and more. Fortnite teased the partnership in a new video posted on YouTube. The official announcement can be read here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a recent interview with Bloomberg, 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki said the company was considering splitting its consumer and therapeutics businesses in an effort to boost its stock price and maintain its listing. From a report: Bloomberg noted that the stock has lost more than 90% of its value since the company went public in 2021 through a SPAC merger. Bloomberg said the therapeutics business could be an attractive asset for a larger healthcare company. The business currently has two drug candidates in clinical trials and just received approval to commence testing for a third. The company's DNA database of more than 14 million customers is one of the world's largest. Currently, 23andMe derives most of its revenue from its consumer business, Bloomberg added. 23andMe's stock has been trading below $1 since December, hurt by revelations that hackers were able to access the personal information of around 50% of its subscribers. The company is also facing mounting litigation over the incident. The company is expected to release its Q4 earnings report after market close on Wednesday.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One of Waymo's driverless vehicles struck a cyclist in San Francisco on February 6th, causing minor injuries. "It was the latest incident in the city at a time when tensions around autonomous vehicles are particularly high after a driverless Cruise vehicle injured a pedestrian," reports The Verge. From the report: The incident, which was first reported by Reuters, occurred at 3:02PM on February 6th at the intersection of 17th and Mississippi streets in the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. A Google Maps Street View of the intersection shows a flat, well-lit area surrounded by warehouses with unprotected bike lanes on both streets. Police officers arriving at the scene found an autonomous vehicle had struck a cyclist, who only reported "non-life threatening injuries," according to Eve Laokwansathitaya, public information officer with SFPD. A passenger in the Waymo vehicle at the time of the crash was uninjured. The incident remains under investigation, Laokwansathitaya noted. Waymo spokesperson Julia Ilina had more details to share. The Waymo vehicle was stopped at a four-way stop, as an oncoming large truck began to turn into the intersection. The vehicle waited until it was its turn and then also began to proceed through the intersection, failing to notice the cyclist who was traveling behind the truck. "The cyclist was occluded by the truck and quickly followed behind it, crossing into the Waymo vehicle's path," Ilina said. "When they became fully visible, our vehicle applied heavy braking but was not able to avoid the collision." After the incident, Waymo contacted the police, but the cyclist left on their own, reporting only "minor scratches," Ilina added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: While the world awaits closing arguments later this year in the US government's antitrust case over Google's search dominance, a California judge has dismissed a lawsuit from 26 Google users who claimed that Google's default search agreement with Apple violates antitrust law and has ruined everyone's search results. Users had argued (PDF) that Google struck a deal making its search engine the default on Apple's Safari web browser specifically to keep Apple from competing in the general search market. These payments to Apple, users alleged, have "stunted innovation" and "deprived" users of "quality, service, and privacy that they otherwise would have enjoyed but for Google's anticompetitive conduct." They also allege that it created a world where users have fewer choices, enabling Google to prefer its own advertisers, which users said caused an "annoying and damaging distortion" of search results. In an order (PDF) granting the tech companies' motion to dismiss, US District Judge Rita Lin said that users did not present enough evidence to support claims for relief. Lin dismissed some claims with prejudice but gave leave to amend others, allowing users another chance to keep their case -- now twice-dismissed -- at least partially alive. Under Lin's order, users will not be able to amend claims that Google and Apple executives allegedly sealed the default search deal on the condition that Apple would not create its own general search engine through "private, secret, and clandestine personal meetings." Because plaintiffs showed no evidence pinpointing exactly when Apple allegedly agreed to stay out of the general search market, these meetings, Lin reasoned, could just as easily indicate "rational, legal business behavior," rather than an "illegal conspiracy." Users attempted to argue that Google and Apple intentionally hid these facts from the public, but Lin wrote that their "conclusory and vague allegations that defendants 'secretly conducted meetings' and 'engaged in conduct to obfuscate internal communications' are plainly insufficient." Sharing bystander photos documenting Google's Sundar Pichai and Apple's Tim Cook meeting at a restaurant with a manila folder tucked under Pichai's elbow did not help users' case. Lin was also not moved by users demonstrating that Google has a history of destroying evidence, because "they put forth no specific factual allegations that defendants did so in this case." However, users will have 30 days to amend currently "inadequately" alleged claims that "Google's exclusive default agreement, under which Apple set Google as the default search engine for its Safari web browser, foreclosed competition in the general search services market in the United States," Lin wrote. If users miss that deadline, the case will be tossed with no opportunities to further amend claims.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The farmers' protests in Europe are a harbinger of the next big political challenge in global climate action: How to grow food without further damaging Earth's climate and biodiversity. From a report: On Tuesday, after weeks of intense protests in several cities across the continent, came the most explicit sign of that difficulty. The European Union's top official, Ursula von der Leyen, abandoned an ambitious bill to reduce the use of chemical pesticides and softened the European Commission's next raft of recommendations on cutting agricultural pollution. "We want to make sure that in this process, the farmers remain in the driving seat," she said at the European Parliament. "Only if we achieve our climate and environmental goals together will farmers be able to continue to make a living." The farmers argue they're being hit from all sides: high fuel costs, green regulations, unfair competition from producers in countries with fewer environmental restrictions. Nonetheless, agriculture accounts for 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and it's impossible for the European Union to meet its ambitious climate targets, enshrined in law, without making dramatic changes to its agricultural system, including how farmers use chemical pesticides and fertilizers, as well as its vast livestock industry. It also matters politically. Changing Europe's farming practices is proving to be extremely difficult, particularly as parliamentary elections approach in June. Farmers are a potent political force, and food and farming are potent markers of European identity. Agriculture accounts for just over 1 percent of the European economy and employs 4 percent of its population. But it gets one-third of the E.U. budget, mostly as subsidies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Chinese state-sponsored hacking group known as Volt Typhoon has been living in the networks of some critical industries for "at least five years," (non-paywalled link) according to a joint cybersecurity advisory issued by the US and its allies on Wednesday. From a report: The compromised environments are in the continental US and elsewhere, including Guam, the advisory said. It was published by US agencies and their security counterparts in Australia, Canada, the UK and New Zealand. The report comes a week after US officials announced an operation to disrupt Volt Typhoon by deleting malware from thousands of internet-connected devices the group had hijacked to gain access to the networks in critical parts of the economy. Among the sectors targeted were communications, energy, transportation and water systems.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A new open-source language model has claimed the throne of the best in the world, according to the latest rankings from Hugging Face, one of the leading platforms for natural language processing (NLP) research and applications. The model, called "Smaug-72B," was released publicly today by the startup Abacus AI, which helps enterprises solve difficult problems in the artificial intelligence and machine learning space. Smaug-72B is technically a fine-tuned version of "Qwen-72B," another powerful language model that was released just a few months ago by Qwen, a team of researchers at Alibaba Group. What's most noteworthy about today's release is that Smaug-72B outperforms GPT-3.5 and Mistral Medium, two of the most advanced open-source large language models developed by OpenAI and Mistral, respectively, in several of the most popular benchmarks. Smaug-72B also surpasses Qwen-72B, the model from which it was derived, by a significant margin in many of these evaluations.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Linux developers are in the process of patching a high-severity vulnerability that, in certain cases, allows the installation of malware that runs at the firmware level, giving infections access to the deepest parts of a device where they're hard to detect or remove. ArsTechnica: The vulnerability resides in shim, which in the context of Linux is a small component that runs in the firmware early in the boot process before the operating system has started. More specifically, the shim accompanying virtually all Linux distributions plays a crucial role in secure boot, a protection built into most modern computing devices to ensure every link in the boot process comes from a verified, trusted supplier. Successful exploitation of the vulnerability allows attackers to neutralize this mechanism by executing malicious firmware at the earliest stages of the boot process before the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface firmware has loaded and handed off control to the operating system. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-40547, is what's known as a buffer overflow, a coding bug that allows attackers to execute code of their choice. It resides in a part of the shim that processes booting up from a central server on a network using the same HTTP that the the web is based on. Attackers can exploit the code-execution vulnerability in various scenarios, virtually all following some form of successful compromise of either the targeted device or the server or network the device boots from. "An attacker would need to be able to coerce a system into booting from HTTP if it's not already doing so, and either be in a position to run the HTTP server in question or MITM traffic to it," Matthew Garrett, a security developer and one of the original shim authors, wrote in an online interview. "An attacker (physically present or who has already compromised root on the system) could use this to subvert secure boot (add a new boot entry to a server they control, compromise shim, execute arbitrary code)."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An AI chatbot helped increase the number of patients referred for mental-health services through England's National Health Service (NHS), particularly among underrepresented groups who are less likely to seek help, new research has found. MIT Tech Review: Demand for mental-health services in England is on the rise, particularly since the covid-19 pandemic. Mental-health services received 4.6 million patient referrals in 2022 -- the highest number on record -- and the number of people in contact with such services is growing steadily. But neither the funding nor the number of mental-health professionals is adequate to meet this rising demand, according to the British Medical Association. The chatbot's creators, from the AI company Limbic, set out to investigate whether AI could lower the barrier to care by helping patients access help more quickly and efficiently. A new study, published this week in Nature Medicine, evaluated the effect that the chatbot, called Limbic Access, had on referrals to the NHS Talking Therapies for Anxiety and Depression program, a series of evidence-based psychological therapies for adults experiencing anxiety disorders, depression, or both. Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla comments on X: This landmark study codifies what we have believed for so long -- that AI will not only increase the quality of care but also massively improve its access, which is one of the largest barriers to good health in all corners of the globe.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Alibaba Group cut its staff by roughly 20,000 over the course of 2023, adding to a spate of layoffs spanning global tech companies from Silicon Valley to Hangzhou. China's e-commerce pioneer ended December with 219,260 employees, down from close to 240,000 a year earlier, it said in detailing its earnings for the holiday quarter on Wednesday. The company's pace of eliminating roles has been fairly steady, as it reduced headcount by roughly the same number over the course of 2022 as well. Mirroring US peers like Meta Platforms, Alibaba paired the reduction in staff with a significant buyback, extending its authorization for repurchases by another $25 billion on Wednesday. The company bought back $9.5 billion worth of shares in 2023.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The second of a pair of close flybys adds to the treasure trove of data that scientists have about Jupiter's volcanic moon. From a report: On Saturday, NASA's Juno orbiter got a second close-up with Io, Jupiter's third-largest moon and the most volcanic world of our solar system. The Juno spacecraft, which arrived at the gas giant in 2016, is on an extended mission to explore Jupiter's rings and moons. Its latest flyby, which complemented the mission's first close approach on Dec. 30, yielded even more views of the moon's hellish landscape. Io's violent expulsions of sulfur and additional compounds give the moon its orange, yellow and blue hues. The process is similar to what happens around the volcanoes of Hawaii or the geysers in Yellowstone National Park, according to Scott Bolton, a physicist at the Southwest Research Institute who leads the Juno mission. "That must be what Io is like -- on steroids," he said. He added that it probably smells like those places, too. Released on Sunday, the most recent shots of Juno are already ripe for discovery. Dr. Bolton saw on the surface of Io what appears to be a double volcanic plume spewing into space -- something that Juno has never caught before. Other scientists are noticing new lava flows and changes to familiar features spotted in past space missions like the Galileo probe, which made numerous close flybys of Io in the 1990s and 2000s. "That's the beauty of Io," said Jani Radebaugh, a planetary scientist at Brigham Young University who is not part of the Juno mission, but collaborates with the team on Io observations. Unlike our own moon, which remains frozen in time, Dr. Radebaugh said, "Io changes every day, every minute, every second."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has released a new open-source AI model, called "MGIE," that can edit images based on natural language instructions. From a report: MGIE, which stands for MLLM-Guided Image Editing, leverages multimodal large language models (MLLMs) to interpret user commands and perform pixel-level manipulations. The model can handle various editing aspects, such as Photoshop-style modification, global photo optimization, and local editing. MGIE is the result of a collaboration between Apple and researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara. The model was presented in a paper accepted at the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2024, one of the top venues for AI research. The paper demonstrates the effectiveness of MGIE in improving automatic metrics and human evaluation, all while maintaining competitive inference efficiency. MGIE is based on the idea of using MLLMs, which are powerful AI models that can process both text and images, to enhance instruction-based image editing. MLLMs have shown remarkable capabilities in cross-modal understanding and visual-aware response generation, but they have not been widely applied to image editing tasks. MGIE integrates MLLMs into the image editing process in two ways: First, it uses MLLMs to derive expressive instructions from user input. These instructions are concise and clear and provide explicit guidance for the editing process. For example, given the input "make the sky more blue," MGIE can produce the instruction "increase the saturation of the sky region by 20%."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter Dustin Destree shares a report: Android users in Singapore will be blocked from installing apps from unverified sources, a process called sideloading, as part of a new trial by Google to crack down on malware scams. The security tool will work in the background to detect apps that demand suspicious permissions, like those that grant the ability to spy on screen content or read SMS messages, which scammers have been known to abuse to intercept one-time passwords. Singapore is the first country to begin the gradual roll-out of the security feature over the next few weeks, done in collaboration with the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore, according to a statement on Feb 7 by Google, which develops the Android software.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is building prototypes of at least two iPhones that fold widthwise like a clamshell, The Information reported Wednesday. From the report: If Apple ends up launching a foldable iPhone, it would be one of the biggest hardware design changes in the product's history. The foldable iPhones are in early development and aren't on the company's mass production plans for 2024 or 2025, the person said. Apple recently approached at least one manufacturer in Asia for components related to two foldable iPhones of different sizes, they said. The products could be canceled if they don't meet Apple's standards, they said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Disney Plus has started to inform subscribers about new changes to its terms of service that will, among other things, make it harder for people to access the service using log-in credentials that aren't actually theirs. From a report:The updated terms come a few months after Disney Plus implemented similar measures for its Canadian subscribers and just days after Hulu sent out similar notices to users about changes to its own TOS and its plans to stop password sharing in the coming weeks. Like Hulu's terms of service, the changes to Disney Plus' agreement are dated January 25th and are already in effect for new customers. Per Disney Plus' emails, existing subscribers can expect the new restrictions to go into effect on March 14th.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft's prescient bets and aggressive investments in AI have propelled the software giant to become the world's most valuable company. Yet Satya Nadella, its typically reserved chief executive, couldn't resist landing a gloved jab at the rest of the industry. "We have the best model today ... even with all the hoopla, one year after, GPT4 is better," Nadella said at a company event in Mumbai on Wednesday. "We are waiting for the competition to arrive. It will arrive, I'm sure, but the fact [is] that we have the most leading LLM out there."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: AI-generated imagery and other forms of deepfakes depicting child sexual abuse (CSA) could be criminalized in the European Union under plans to update existing legislation to keep pace with technology developments, the Commission announced today. It's also proposing to create a new criminal offense of livestreaming child sexual abuse. The possession and exchange of "pedophile manuals" would also be criminalized under the plan -- which is part of a wider package of measures the EU says is intended to boost prevention of CSA, including by increasing awareness of online risks and to make it easier for victims to report crimes and obtain support (including granting them a right to financial compensation). The proposal to update the EU's current rules in this area, which date back to 2011, also includes changes around mandatory reporting of offenses. Back in May 2022, the Commission presented a separate piece of CSA-related draft legislation, aiming to establish a framework that could make it obligatory for digital services to use automated technologies to detect and report existing or new child sexual abuse material (CSAM) circulating on their platforms, and identify and report grooming activity targeting kids. The CSAM-scanning plan has proven to be highly controversial -- and it continues to split lawmakers in the parliament and the Council, as well as kicking up suspicions over the Commission's links with child safety tech lobbyists and raising other awkward questions for the EU's executive, over a legally questionable foray into microtargeted ads to promote the proposal. The Commission's decision to prioritize the targeting of digital messaging platforms to tackle CSA has attracted a lot of criticism that the bloc's lawmakers are focusing in the wrong area for combatting a complex societal problem -- which may have generated some pressure for it to come with follow-on proposals. (Not that the Commission is saying that, of course; it describes today's package as "complementary" to its earlier CSAM-scanning proposal.) "Fast evolving technologies are creating new possibilities for child sexual abuse online, and raises challenges for law enforcement to investigate this extremely serious and wide spread crime," said Ylva Johansson, commissioner for home affairs, in a statement. "A strong criminal law is essential and today we are taking a key step to ensure that we have effective legal tools to rescue children and bring perpetrators to justice. We are delivering on our commitments made in the EU Strategy for a more effective fight against Child sexual abuse presented in July 2020." The final shape of the proposals will be determined by the EU's co-legislators in the Parliament and Council. "If/when there's agreement on how to amend the current directive on combating CSA, it would enter into force 20 days after its publication in the Official Journal of the EU," adds TechCrunch.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last June, Harvard professor Avi Loeb said he may have found fragments of alien technology from a meteor that landed in the waters off of Papua, New Guinea in 2014. "Since then, several researchers unrelated to the expedition have pushed back on his analysis," reports Boston Public Radio. "One October 2023 paper deemed the spherules were made by human-produced coal ash." Now, Loeb has published new findings that he claims debunk that theory. "What we did is compare 55 elements from the periodic table in coal ash to those special spherules that we found," Loeb said. "And it's clearly very different." From the report: He said his work follows the scientific method: collecting materials, analyzing them and following the evidence. "It's not based on opinions," Loeb said. "And, of course, if you're not part of this scientific process and you are jealous of the attention that it gets, then you can raise a lot of criticism." When asked how he deals with that criticism, he said that, "by now, my skin turned into titanium." [...] He believes more observatories should be built to expand on research of what's passing through closer to Earth, since astronomers are often fixated on faraway objects. "The best approach to figure it out is actually to do the scientific work of building observatories that look out and check what these objects are," Loeb said. "And if they happen to be birds, or airplanes, or Chinese balloons, so be it. We can move on after that. But we need to figure it out, it's our civil duty as scientists. "The universe is so vast that, rather than keep telling ourselves that there is nothing like us, we should search for it," he added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko set a world record for total time spent in space, "surpassing his compatriot Gennady Padalka who logged more than 878 days in orbit," reports Reuters. From the report: At 0830 GMT Kononenko broke the record, Roscosmos said. Kononenko is expected to reach a total of 1,000 days in space on June 5 and by late September he will have clocked 1,110 days. "I fly into space to do my favourite thing, not to set records," Kononenko told TASS in an interview from the International Space Station (ISS) where he is orbiting about 263 miles (423 km) from the earth. "I am proud of all my achievements, but I am more proud that the record for the total duration of human stay in space is still held by a Russian cosmonaut." The 59-year-old took the top spot from Padalka, who accumulated a total of 878 days, 11 hours, 29 minutes and 48 seconds, Roscosmos said. Kononenko said that he worked out regularly to counter the physical effects of "insidious" weightlessness, but that it was on returning to earth that the realisation came of how much life he had missed out on. "I do not feel deprived or isolated," he said."It is only upon returning home that the realisation comes that for hundreds of days in my absence the children have been growing up without a papa. No one will return this time to me." He said cosmonauts could now use video calls and messaging to keep in touch with relatives but getting ready for each new space flight became more difficult due to technological advances. "The profession of a cosmonaut is becoming more complicated. The systems and experiments are becoming more complicated. I repeat, the preparation has not become easier," he said. Kononenko dreamed of going to space as a child and enrolled in an engineering institute, before undergoing cosmonaut training. His first space flight was in 2008. His current trip to the ISS launched last year on a Soyuz MS-24.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Julia Simon reports via NPR: In a D.C. courtroom, a trial is wrapping up this week with big stakes for climate science. One of the world's most prominent climate scientists is suing a right-wing author and a policy analyst for defamation. The case comes at a time when attacks on scientists are proliferating, says Peter Hotez, professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology at Baylor College of Medicine. Even as misinformation about scientists and their work keeps growing, Hotez says scientists haven't yet found a good way to respond. "The reason we're sort of fumbling at this is it's unprecedented. And there is no roadmap," he says. The climate scientist at the center of this trial is Michael Mann. The professor of earth and environmental science at the University of Pennsylvania gained prominence for helping make one of the most accessible, consequential graphs in the history of climate science. First published in the late 1990s, the graph shows thousands of years of relatively stable global temperatures. Then, when humans start burning lots of coal and oil, it shows a spike upward. Mann's graph looks like a hockey stick lying on its side, with the blade sticking straight up. The so-called "hockey stick graph" was successful in helping the public understand the urgency of global warming, and that made it a target, says Kert Davies, director of special investigations at the Center for Climate Integrity, a climate accountability nonprofit. "Because it became such a powerful image, it was under attack from the beginning," he says. The attacks came from groups that reject climate science, some funded by the fossil fuel industry. In the midst of these types of attacks -- including the hacking of Mann's and other scientists' emails by unknown hackers -- Penn State, where Mann was then working, opened an investigation into his research. Penn State, as well as the National Science Foundation, found no evidence of scientific misconduct. But a policy analyst and an author wrote that they were not convinced. The trial in D.C. Superior Court involves posts from right-wing author Mark Steyn and policy analyst Rand Simberg. In an online post, Simberg compared Mann to former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky, a convicted child sex abuser. Simberg wrote that Mann was the "Sandusky of climate science," writing that Mann "molested and tortured data (PDF)." Steyn called Mann's research fraudulent. Mann sued the two men for defamation. Mann also sued the publishers of the posts, National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, but in 2021, the court ruled they couldn't be held liable. In court, Mann has argued that he lost funding and research opportunities. Steyn said in court that if Penn State's president, Graham Spanier, covered up child sexual assault, why wouldn't he cover up for Mann's science. The science in question used ice cores and tree rings to estimate Earth's past temperatures. "If Graham Spanier is prepared to cover up child rape, week in, week out, year in, year out, why would he be the least bit squeamish about covering up a bit of hanky panky with the tree rings and the ice cores?" Steyn asked the court. Mann and Steyn declined to speak to NPR during the ongoing trial. One of Simberg's lawyers, Victoria Weatherford, said "inflammatory does not equal defamatory" and that her client is allowed to express his opinion, even if it were wrong. "No matter how offensive or distasteful or heated it is," Weatherford tells NPR, "that speech is absolutely protected under the First Amendment when it's said against a public figure, if the person saying it believed that what they said was true."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: After almost a year as an invite-only app, Bluesky is now open to the public. Funded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Bluesky is one of the more promising micro-blogging platforms that could provide an alternative to Elon Musk's X. Before opening to the public, the platform had about 3 million sign-ups. Now that anyone can join, the young platform faces a challenge: How can it meaningfully stand up to Threads' 130 million monthly active users, or even Mastodon's 1.8 million? Bluesky looks and functions like Twitter at the outset, but the platform stands out because of what lies under the hood. The company began as a project inside of Twitter that sought to build a decentralized infrastructure called the AT Protocol for social networking. As a decentralized platform, Bluesky's code is completely open source, which gives people outside of the company transparency into what is being built and how. Developers can even write their own code on top of the AT Protocol, so they can create anything from a custom algorithm to an entirely new social platform. "What decentralization gets you is the ability to try multiple things in parallel, and so you're not bottlenecking change on one organization," Bluesky CEO Jay Graber told TechCrunch. "The way we built Bluesky actually lets anyone insert a change into the product." This setup gives users more agency to control and curate their social media experience. On a centralized platform like Instagram, for example, users have revolted against algorithm changes that they dislike, but there's not much they can do to revert or improve upon an undesired app update.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new report from German data recovery company CBL found that devices using NAND chips from reputable brands are declining in quality, with reduced capacity and their manufacturers' logo removed. Furthermore, some USB sticks use the old trick of soldiering a microSD card onto the board. TechSpot reports: Most of the janky USB sticks CBL examined were promotional gifts, the kind given away free with products or by companies at conferences. However, there were some "branded" products that fell into the same inferior-quality category, though CBL didn't say if these were well-known mainstream brands or the kind of brands you've probably never heard of. Technological advancements have also affected these NAND chips, but not in a good way. The chips originally used single-level cell (SLC) memory cells that only stored one bit each, offering less data density but better performance and reliability. In order to increase the amount of storage the chips offered, manufacturers started moving to four bits per cell (QLC), decreasing the endurance and retention. Combined with the questionable components, it's why CBL warns that "You shouldn't rely too much on the reliability of flash memory." The report illustrates how some of the components found in the devices had their manufactures' names removed or obscured. One simply printed text over the top of the company name, while another had been scrubbed off completely. There's also a photo of a microSD card found inside a USB stick that had all of its identifying markings removed. It's always wise to be careful when choosing your storage device and beware of offers that seem too good to be true.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a new video released today, Boston Dynamics' Atlas robot is shown performing "kinetically challenging" work, like moving some medium-weight car parts and precisely picking stuff up. Ars Technica reports: In the latest video, we're on to what looks like "phase 2" of picking stuff up -- being more precise about it. The old clamp hands had a single pivot at the palm and seemed to just apply the maximum grip strength to anything the robot picked up. The most delicate thing Atlas picked up in the last video was a wooden plank, and it was absolutely destroying the wood. Atlas' new hands look a lot more gentle than The Clamps, with each sporting a set of three fingers with two joints. All the fingers share one big pivot point at the palm of the hand, and there's a knuckle joint halfway up the finger. The fingers are all very long and have 360 degrees of motion, so they can flex in both directions, which is probably effective but very creepy. Put two fingers on one side of an item and the "thumb" on the other, and Atlas can wrap its hands around objects instead of just crushing them. Atlas is picking up a set of car struts -- an object with extremely complicated topography that weighs around 30 pounds -- so there's a lot to calculate. Atlas does a heavy two-handed lift of a strut from a vertical position on a pallet, walks the strut over to a shelf, and carefully slides it into place. This is all in Boston Dynamics' lab, but it's close to repetitive factory or shipping work. Everything here seems designed to give the robot a manipulation challenge. The complicated shape of the strut means there are a million ways you could grip it incorrectly. The strut box has tall metal poles around it, so the robot needs to not bang the strut into the obstacle. The shelf is a tight fit, so the strut has to be placed on the edge of the shelf and slid into place, all while making sure the strut's many protrusions won't crash into the shelf.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: According to a recent report published by the Aargauer Zeitung (h/t Golem.de), around three million smart toothbrushes have been infected by hackers and enslaved into botnets. The source report says this sizable army of connected dental cleansing tools was used in a DDoS attack on a Swiss company's website. The firm's site collapsed under the strain of the attack, reportedly resulting in the loss of millions of Euros of business. In this particular case, the toothbrush botnet was thought to have been vulnerable due to its Java-based OS. No particular toothbrush brand was mentioned in the source report. Normally, the toothbrushes would have used their connectivity for tracking and improving user oral hygiene habits, but after a malware infection, these toothbrushes were press-ganged into a botnet. Stefan Zuger from the Swiss branch of the global cybersecurity firm Fortinet provided the publication with a few tips on what people could do to protect their own toothbrushes -- or other connected gadgetry like routers, set-top boxes, surveillance cameras, doorbells, baby monitors, washing machines, and so on. "Every device that is connected to the Internet is a potential target -- or can be misused for an attack," Zuger told the Swiss newspaper. The security expert also explained that every connected device was being continually probed for vulnerabilities by hackers, so there is a real arms race between device software/firmware makers and cyber criminals. Fortinet recently connected an 'unprotected' PC to the internet and found it took only 20 minutes before it became malware-ridden.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta will start detecting and labeling images generated by artificial intelligence from Google and OpenAI's services, among others. According to Reuters, the company will use a set of invisible markers built into the files to help with the identification process. From the report: Meta will apply the labels to any content carrying the markers that is posted to its Facebook, Instagram and Threads services, in an effort to signal to users that the images -- which in many cases resemble real photos -- are actually digital creations, the company's president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, wrote in a blog post. The company already labels any content generated using its own AI tools. Once the new system is up and running, Meta will do the same for images created on services run by OpenAI, Microsoft, Adobe , Midjourney, Shutterstock and Alphabet's Google, Clegg said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Vancouver Sun: A cryptocurrency firm has lost a bid to force B.C. Hydro to provide the vast amounts of power needed for its operations, in a court ruling that upholds the provincial government's right to pause power connections for new crypto miners. Conifex Timber Inc., a forestry firm that branched out into cryptocurrency "mining," had gone to the B.C. Supreme Court to have the policy declared invalid. But Justice Michael Tammen ruled Friday that the government's move in December 2022 to pause new connections for cryptocurrency mining for 18 months was reasonable and not unduly discriminatory. B.C. Hydro CEO Christopher O'Riley had told the court in an affidavit that the data centers proposed by Conifex would have consumed 2.5 million megawatt-hours of electricity a year. That's enough to power and heat more than 570,000 apartments, according to data on the power provider's website. Energy Minister Josie Osborne said when the policy was introduced that cryptocurrency mining consumes "massive amounts of electricity" by running banks of high-powered computers around the clock, but adds "very few jobs" to the local economy. In a statement released Monday, the company said it's "disappointed" with the court's ruling and is considering an appeal. "Conifex continues to believe that the provincial government is missing out on several opportunities available to it to improve energy affordability, accelerate technological innovation, strengthen the reliability and resiliency of the power distribution grid in British Columbia, and achieve more inclusive economic growth," said Conifex in a statement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney are planning to launch a new streaming joint venture that will combine all their sports programming "under a single broadband roof," reports Variety. The move "will put content from ESPN, TNT and Fox Sports on a new standalone app and, in the process, likely shake up the world of TV sports." From the report: The three media giants are slated to launch the new service in the fall. Subscribers would get access to linear sports networks including ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SECN, ACCN, ESPNEWS, ABC, Fox, FS1, FS2, BTN, TNT, TBS, truTV and ESPN+, as well as hundreds of hours from the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL and many top college divisions. Pricing will be announced at a later date. Each company would own one third of the new outlet and license their sports content to it on a non-exclusive basis. The service would have a new brand and an independent management team. The concept surfaces as traditional media companies are grappling with the migration of sports -- the last TV format that generates steady crowds and sustained ratings -- to streaming venues. The concentration of top sports under one roof would be significant. Between them, ESPN and Warner have most rights to the NHL and the NBA, while Fox, Warner and ESPN control at present the majority of rights to Major League Baseball. Only the NFL would enjoy a large presence with entities that are not a part of the joint venture, with "Sunday Night Football" at NBCUniversal, "Thursday Night Football" at Amazon and a Sunday afternoon game at CBS.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The United Kingdom, France and allied countries on Tuesday called for international guidelines for the responsible use of spyware, in an effort to stop the hacking tools from running rampant. From a report: At a conference at London's Lancaster House co-hosted by the British and French government, more than a dozen countries and technology companies signed a declaration saying that "uncontrolled dissemination" of cyber intrusive tools could lead to "unintentional escalation in cyberspace." A 2021 investigation called the Pegasus Project highlighted how spyware tools like the Israeli-made Pegasus software had spread across the world and are being abused in political and corporate hacking campaigns. Despite widespread condemnation, governments' efforts to crack down on malicious hacking software have largely failed -- in part because the tools are popular with many intelligence and security services, including in democratic countries. Among the countries that have signed up to the pledge for international rules guidelines EU members Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Greece, Italy and Poland, as well as the United States, United Kingdom and the African Union. On the industry side, Apple, defense firm BAE Systems, Google, Meta and Microsoft signed up. The group of countries and firms hopes to curb the proliferation and unabated use of intrusive cybertools. They called for principles and policy options to balance human rights and security interests, including policies to use spyware in a aoelegal and responsible manner," in line with international law and under strict oversight by authorities.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The European Commission today recommended reducing carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels by 90 percent by 2040 compared to 1990 levels. From a report: At face value, it's an ambitious target for transforming the European Union's energy system. As always, though, the devil is in the details. And the proposed plan is already garnering a range of strong reactions. A formal proposal still needs to be issued, but it has already faced pushback on how much of those pollution cuts should come from risky tactics aimed at capturing rather than preventing pollution. Some environmental groups are also criticizing a glaring omission in the draft: while it mentions phasing out coal, there's no strategy to phase out oil and gas. "You can set targets to cut greenhouse gases as high as you like, but without a clear plan to phase-out the fossil fuels that are producing them they simply aren't credible. It's like building a bike without pedals, how are you going to power it?" Dominic Eagleton, senior fossil fuels campaigner at the nonprofit Global Witness, said in a statement today. The world actually came tantalizingly close to a deal to phase out fossil fuels during a United Nations climate conference in Dubai last December. Despite dozens of countries pushing for that kind of commitment, the agreement ultimately calls for "transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner." It also carves out room for controversial technologies for capturing carbon dioxide pollution.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has been trying to break into TV for close to two decades. It's here now: Its YouTube TV offering has become one of the biggest pay-TV services in the US. Business Insider: YouTube TV -- which, like conventional pay TV, sells a bundle of dozens of channels -- now has "more than 8 million" subscribers, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan announced Tuesday morning. That makes YouTube the fourth-largest pay TV service in the country, behind Charter and Comcast (14.1 million each) and DirecTV, at around 11 million. YouTube last disclosed subscriber numbers in 2022, when YouTube TV had 5 million customers. It likely got a meaningful boost last fall when it started selling the NFL's Sunday Ticket service as an add-on to its basic package of TV channels. YouTube's ascent into the mainstream of pay TV represents a couple of things. For starters, it shows you that YouTube and its owner Google have been persistent and patient about trying to crack TV, and its enormous twin revenue streams: subscriptions and ads.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: With progress in the battle against cancer progressing slowly on Earth, California researchers have teamed up with astronauts to take the battle to the stars. In space, the weak pull of gravity, also known as microgravity, places cells under incredible stress, causing them to age more rapidly. This phenomenon allows scientists to witness the progression of cancer growth -- and the effect of cancer treatments -- much more rapidly than they could on Earth. When the Axiom 3 spaceflight launched from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Jan. 18, bound for the International Space Station, it took with it four crewmembers and some other unusual passengers -- miniature tumor organoids produced from the cells of cancer patients, grown in the lab by scientists at the University of California San Diego. Axiom 3 was slated for splashdown on Saturday but has been delayed until Tuesday, at the earliest, due to weather, according to SpaceX, which manufactured the Crew Dragon spacecraft used for the mission. It wasn't the first time the team -- led by Dr. Catriona H.M. Jamieson, a hematologist and medical professor at the college -- sent such samples into space. It previously launched stem cells on multiple Space X flights and noticed that pre-leukemic changes occurred, unseen during the same timeframe in controls on the ground. "We said, 'Wait, what if you send cancer up?'" Jamieson tells Fortune. "'Will the cancer go from bad to worse?' And the answer is yes, under conditions of stress" caused by microgravity.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Most people know that Microsoft really wants everyone to move onto Windows 11. But just in case there are some Windows 10 users still unaware of this fact, the company is once again nagging them to upgrade with full-screen, multi-slide popups. The lengthy advertisement for Windows 11 was highlighted by Windows Latest after it installed the optional January update (in preview) on a Windows 10 machine. The nagging Windows 11 upgrade promo consists of an excruciating number of screens (i.e., more than one): The first informs users that they can switch to Windows 11 for free and that they can still use their PC while the newer OS is set up in the background; another is Microsoft recommending the move and noting that users can revert to Windows 10 within the first ten days of upgrading; the last is for those who decide to stay on Windows 10, with a reminder that Windows 11 remains a free upgrade option. There is another panel that lists some of Windows 11 features, but this only appears for those who select the 'See what's inside' button.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. has announced new visa restrictions for individuals and companies misusing commercial spyware to surveil, harass or intimidate journalists, activists and other dissidents. Citing a senior Biden administration official, Reuters adds that the new policy will also apply to investors and operators of the commercial spyware believed to be misused. At least 50 U.S. officials have been targeted by private hacking tools in recent years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is making changes to iOS in Europe to comply with the EU's Digital Markets Act cracking down on Big Tech gatekeepers. The act demands interoperability, fairness and privacy measures including allowing competing browser engines on iOS. Despite better browser choice, Google and Mozilla are unhappy with Apple's proposed changes. Mozilla says restricting browser engine integration to EU apps burdens rivals to build separate implementations. Mozilla's comment: "We are still reviewing the technical details but are extremely disappointed with Apple's proposed plan to restrict the newly-announced BrowserEngineKit to EU-specific apps. The effect of this would be to force an independent browser like Firefox to build and maintain two separate browser implementations -- a burden Apple themselves will not have to bear. Apple's proposals fail to give consumers viable choices by making it as painful as possible for others to provide competitive alternatives to Safari. This is another example of Apple creating barriers to prevent true browser competition on iOS." Google's VP of engineering for Chrome, Parisa Tabriz, commented on DeMonte's statement, saying, "Strong agree with Mozilla. Apple isn't serious about supporting web browser or engine choice on iOS. Their strategy is overly restrictive, and won't meaningfully lead to real choice for browser developers."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Tapestry." "Beacon." "Comprehensive curriculum." "Esteemed faculty." "Vibrant academic community." They're among the laundry list of colorful words, flowery phrases and stale syntax that are likely to tip off admissions committees to applicants who've used AI to help write their college or graduate school essays this year, according to essay consultants who students are hiring en masse to un-ChatGPT, and add a "human touch" to, their submissions. Forbes: "Tapestry" in particular is a major red flag in this year's pool, several essay consultants on the platform Fiverr told Forbes. Mike, an Ivy League alum and former editor-in-chief of the Cornell Business Journal who now edits hundreds of grad school applications each cycle through Capitol Editors, said it's appeared repeatedly in drafts from at least 20 of his clients in recent months. "I no longer believe there's a way to innocently use the word 'tapestry' in an essay; if the word 'tapestry' appears, it was generated by ChatGPT," he told Forbes. Though many such words, on their own, could have come from a human, when a trained eye sees them used over and over again in the same cadence across multiple essays, "it's just a real telltale sign."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DocuSign will cut 6% of its workforce, it said Tuesday, as part of a restructuring plan that aims to improve the company's "financial and operational efficiency." CNBC: The online signature provider said the majority of the employees impacted by the layoffs will be within its sales and marketing organizations. DocuSign employs 7,336 workers, according to its most recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which means the cuts will affect around 440 jobs. DocuSign said the restructuring plan will be largely complete by the end of its second fiscal quarter of 2025, according to the release. The company added that it expects to "meet or exceed" its fourth-quarter and fiscal-2024 guidance that it outlined in a release in December.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mozilla has rolled out a new $9 per month service called Mozilla Monitor Plus that automatically scrubs personal information from over 190 data broker sites. The tool builds on the free Firefox Monitor platform, expanding monitoring capabilities and proactively removing exposed details to protect user privacy. Subscribers will also receive data breach alerts under the new service.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Government hackers last year exploited three unknown vulnerabilities in Apple's iPhone operating system to target victims with spyware developed by a European startup, according to Google. TechCrunch: On Tuesday, Google's Threat Analysis Group, the company's team that investigates nation-backed hacking, published a report analyzing several government campaigns conducted with hacking tools developed by several spyware and exploit sellers, including Barcelona-based startup Variston. In one of the campaigns, according to Google, government hackers took advantage of three iPhone "zero-days," which are vulnerabilities not known to Apple at the time they were exploited. In this case, the hacking tools were developed by Variston, a surveillance and hacking technology startup whose malware has already been analyzed twice by Google in 2022 and 2023. Google said it discovered the unknown Variston customer using these zero-days in March 2023 to target iPhones in Indonesia. The hackers delivered an SMS text message containing a malicious link that infected the target's phone with spyware, and then redirected the victim to a news article by the Indonesian newspaper Pikiran Rakyat. Google did not say who was Variston's government customer in this case.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Andrew Ross Sorkin, reporting for The New York Times: Adam Neumann shot to fame by turning WeWork into a cultural and business phenomenon, before being ousted from the work space operator in dramatic fashion. But for the past several months, he has been trying to buy the now-bankrupt business -- with the help of the hedge fund mogul Dan Loeb, DealBook is the first to report. Neumann's new real estate company Flow Global is pushing WeWork to consider its takeover approach, according to a letter his lawyers sent to WeWork's advisers on Monday. Flow which has already raised $350 million from the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, disclosed in the letter that Loeb's Third Point would help finance a transaction. Flow has sought to buy WeWork or its assets, as well as provide bankruptcy financing to keep it afloat. But Flow's lawyers accused WeWork of stonewalling for months. "We write to express our dismay with WeWork's lack of engagement even to provide information to my clients in what is intended to be a value-maximizing transaction for all stakeholders," wrote the lawyers led by Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel, who also represents Elon Musk and Jay-Z.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Apple Vision Pro owners who forget the passcode they set will need to take the device to an Apple retail location to get it reset, reports Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. There is apparently no on-device way to reset a Vision Pro passcode if it is forgotten. [...] Customers who have forgotten their Vision Pro passcodes have been told by Apple that they will need to visit a retail store for a fix or will need to ship the headset to Apple if there isn't a nearby store. Like Apple's iOS devices, the incorrect passcode cannot be entered too many times or the device will be disabled, with a waiting period before a passcode can be entered again. Removing the passcode requires erasing all content on the Vision Pro. [...] There is an erase content setting on the Vision Pro, but there is no way to get into the reset mode using a combination of button presses. Erasing Vision Pro can only be done through the Settings app. Customers who have the $300 Developer Strap may be able to wipe the device from a Mac, but most users will not be able to get this accessory as it is limited to registered developers in the United States.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AT&T is applying to end its obligation to service landlines in certain areas of California. "The application is pending under the California Public Utilities Commission, but the end of a landline means the end of communication for some people," reports CBS News. From the report: The company said in a statement to CBS13: "Our application seeks approval from the CPUC to remove outdated regulations in California and to help the limited remaining landline consumers transition to modern, alternative services to replace their current outdated ones. All AT&T California customers will continue to receive their traditional landline services until an alternative service becomes available by AT&T or another provider." The CPUC will be holding four public hearings on the matter through March.Read more of this story at Slashdot.