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"Security experts expect many more companies to disclose that they've been hacked by Russian intelligence agents who stole emails from executives," reports the Washington Post, "following disclosures by Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise in the past week."Microsoft said late Thursday that it had found more victims and was in the process of notifying them. A spokesperson declined to say how many. But three experts in and out of government said that the attack was deeper and broader than the disclosures to date reveal. Two said that more than 10 companies, and perhaps far more, are expected to come forward... The Securities and Exchange Commission last year strengthened the rules that require companies to notify their stockholders of computer intrusions that could have a material impact on company results. That helped spur the recent disclosures. A spokesperson for America's Department of Homeland Security said "at this time we are not aware of impacts to Microsoft customer environments or products," according to the article. (Although the Washington Post adds that "The Microsoft and HPE breaches are especially concerning because so many other companies and agencies rely on them for cloud services, including email.") The attackers were potentially spying on Microsoft's senior leadership team "for weeks or months," reports the Verge, citing a newly-published analysis by Microsoft:Crucially, the non-production test tenant account that was breached didn't have two-factor authentication enabled. [A cyber-breaching group named Nobelium from Russia's foreign intelligence service] "tailored their password spray attacks to a limited number of accounts, using a low number of attempts to evade detection," says Microsoft. From this attack, the group "leveraged their initial access to identify and compromise a legacy test OAuth application that had elevated access to the Microsoft corporate environment...." This elevated access allowed the group to create more malicious OAuth applications and create accounts to access Microsoft's corporate environment and eventually its Office 365 Exchange Online service that provides access to email inboxes... Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) revealed earlier this week that the same group of hackers had previously gained access to its "cloud-based email environment." HPE didn't name the provider, but the company did reveal the incident was "likely related" to the "exfiltration of a limited number of [Microsoft] SharePoint files as early as May 2023."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a change that reflects AI's growing influence -- and potentially disruptive power -- in Hollywood, Netflix added generative AI to the list of potential risk factors on its annual report filed with the SEC. From a report: In Netflix's 10-K report filed Friday, it added this new section to the long section of risk factors (which are required under SEC rules) in the section about video competition: "[N]ew technological developments, including the development and use of generative artificial intelligence, are rapidly evolving. If our competitors gain an advantage by using such technologies, our ability to compete effectively and our results of operations could be adversely impacted." Netflix also added this wording: "In addition, the use or adoption of new and emerging technologies may increase our exposure to intellectual property claims, and the availability of copyright and other intellectual property protection for AI-generated material is uncertain." Aside from those two sections, the risk factors on Netflix's 10-K for 2023 -- totaling some 10,000 words -- remained largely the same. To be sure, the changes here are very small, in the grand scheme of things. And keep in mind that these are all the potential risk factors that companies like Netflix must communicate to investors.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bank of America is cracking down on employees who aren't following its return-to-office mandate, sending "letters of education" warnings of disciplinary action to employees who have been staying home. The Guardian: Some employees at the bank received letters that said they had failed to meet the company's "workplace excellence guidelines" despite "requests and reminders to do so," according to the Financial Times. The letter warned employees that failure to follow return-to-office expectations could lead to "further disciplinary action."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fossil Group has decided to call it quits on smartwatches. The company announced Friday that it would leave the smartwatch business and redirect resources to its less-smart goods instead. From a report: The company has been one of the most prolific makers of Wear OS smartwatches over the years, and its absence will leave a large gap in the market. "As the smartwatch landscape has evolved significantly over the past few years, we have made the strategic decision to exit the smartwatch business," Fossil spokesperson Amanda Castelli tells The Verge. "Fossil Group is redirecting resources to support our core strength and the core segments of our business that continue to provide strong growth opportunities for us: designing and distributing exciting traditional watches, jewelry, and leather goods under our own as well as licensed brand names." This means that the Gen 6, which first launched in 2021, will be the last Fossil smartwatch. Castelli says the company will continue to keep existing Wear OS watches updated "for the next few years."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The creator of an audio deepfake of US President Joe Biden urging people not to vote in this week's New Hampshire primary has been suspended by ElevenLabs, according to a person familiar with the matter. ElevenLabs' technology was used to make the deepfake audio, according to Pindrop Security, a voice-fraud detection company that analyzed it. ElevenLabs was made aware this week of Pindrop's findings and is investigating, the person said. Once the deepfake was traced to its creator, that user's account was suspended, said the person, asking not to be identified because the information isn't public. ElevenLabs, a startup that uses artificial intelligence software to replicate voices in more than two dozen languages, said in a statement that it couldn't comment on specific incidents. But added, "We are dedicated to preventing the misuse of audio AI tools and take any incidents of misuse extremely seriously."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cargo theft from freight trains in the Los Angeles area has surged, with detectives estimating over 90 containers being opened daily and that theft on their freight trains in the Union Pacific area was up some 160 percent from the previous year. Nationally, cargo theft neared $1 billion in losses last year. Companies decline comment but California's governor publicly questioned the widespread railroad theft. Most arrested were not organized; many were homeless people nearby opportunistically taking fallen boxes off tracks. Theft stems largely from e-commerce boom that reshaped freight shipping to meet consumer demand, opening vulnerabilities. Railroad police forces and online retailers aim to combat this but concede difficulty tracking stolen goods resold anonymously online. Some products stolen from containers even get resold back on Amazon. The New York Times Magazine: Sometimes products stolen out of Amazon containers are resold by third-party sellers back on Amazon in a kind of strange ouroboros, in which the snakehead of capitalism hungrily swallows its piracy tail. Last June, California's attorney general created what was touted as a first-of-its-kind agreement among online retailers that committed them to doing a better job tracking, reporting and preventing stolen items from being resold on their platforms. While declining to comment on specific cases, a spokesperson for Amazon told me that the company is working to improve the process of vetting sellers: The number of "bad actor attempts" to create new selling accounts on Amazon decreased to 800,000 in 2022 from six million in 2020.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple is widely expected to unveil major new artificial intelligence features with iOS 18 in June. Code found by 9to5Mac in the first beta of iOS 17.4 shows that Apple is continuing to work on a new version of Siri powered by large language model technology, with a little help from other sources. In fact, Apple appears to be using OpenAI's ChatGPT API for internal testing to help the development of its own AI models. According to this code, iOS 17.4 includes a new SiriSummarization private framework that makes calls to the OpenAI's ChatGPT API. This appears to be something Apple is using for internal testing of its new AI features. There are multiple examples of system prompts for the SiriSummarization framework in iOS 17.4 as well. This includes things like "please summarize," "please answer this questions," and "please summarize the given text." Apple is unlikely to use OpenAI models to power any of its artificial intelligence features in iOS 18. Instead, what it's doing here is testing its own AI models against ChatGPT. For example, the SiriSummarization framework can do summarization using on-device models. Apple appears to be using its own AI models to power this framework, then internally comparing its results against the results of ChatGPT. In total, iOS 17.4 code suggests Apple is testing four different AI models. This includes Apple's internal model called "Ajax," which Bloomberg has previously reported. iOS 17.4 shows that there are two versions of AjaxGPT, including one that is processed on-device and one that is not.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple's new rules in the European Union mean browsers like Firefox can finally use their own engines on iOS. Although this may seem like a welcome change, Mozilla spokesperson Damiano DeMonte tells The Verge it's "extremely disappointed" with the way things turned out. From a report: "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," DeMonte says. "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." In iOS 17.4, Apple will no longer force browsers in the EU to use WebKit, the underlying engine that powers Safari. The change opens the door for other popular engines, such as Blink, which is used by Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, as well as Gecko, the engine used by Firefox. It also means third-party browsers could become fully functional on iOS without any of the limitations that come along with WebKit.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

California lawmakers are drawing up multiple plans to require watermarks on content created by AI to curb the abuses within the emerging technology, which has affected sectors from political races to the stock market. From a report: At least five lawmakers have promised or are considering different proposals that would require AI companies to implement some type of verification that a video, photo, or written work was made by the technology. The activity comes as advanced AI has rapidly evolved to create realistic images or audio on an unprecedented level. Advocates worry the technology could be ripe for abuse and lead to a wider proliferation of deepfakes, where a person's likeness is digitally manipulated to typically misrepresent them -- with it already being used in the presidential race. But such measures are likely to face scrutiny by the tech sector. Amid a pivotal election year and an online world full of disinformation, the ability to know what's real or not is crucial, said Drew Liebert, director of the California Initiative for Technology and Democracy. The harm from AI is already happening, with Liebert noting the aftermath of an AI-generated photo that went viral in May of last year that falsely portrayed another terrorist attack in the US. "The famous photograph now that was put on the internet that alleged that the Pentagon was attacked, that actually caused momentarily a [$500 billion] dollar loss in the stock market," he said. The loss would not as been as severe, he said, "if people would have been able to instantly determine that it was not a real image at all." Ask Slashdot:Could a Form of Watermarking Prevent AI Deep Faking?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Global regulators, aviation security specialists and manufacturers failed to reach an agreement on a quick technical fix to the problem of GPS spoofing near war zones, instead calling for better training of pilots to deal with the issue, Reuters reports, citing sources briefed on the talks. From the report: Airlines have been urging quick action after a series of incidents where navigation systems were disrupted to show a false location or wrong time, though aircraft flight controls remained intact. Spoofing might involve one country's military sending false Global Positioning System signals to an enemy plane or drone to hinder its ability to function, which has a collateral effect on nearby airliners. GPS jamming and spoofing have grown worse in Eastern Europe, the Black Sea and the Middle East, according to industry group OpsGroup. GPS is a growing part of aviation infrastructure as it replaces traditional radio beams used to guide planes towards landing. The first international meeting bringing together the sector was held on Thursday in Cologne, Germany, organized by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and international trade group the International Air Transport Association (IATA). GPS interference "can pose significant challenges to aviation safety," and requires that airlines increase data-sharing on jamming and spoofing events, EASA and IATA said in a joint statement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm can relate to Americans' anxiety over electric vehicles. The former governor of Michigan and longtime EV owner (who currently drives a Ford Mach-E) says she has experienced her own challenges with public charging on road trips. She has heard from drivers who are reluctant to give up their eight-cylinder engines and large trucks and SUVs for an electric model. But she is convinced that more Americans will soon realize the benefits of owning one, helping to change the current anti-EV rhetoric in this country.[...] "All of those factories that I was talking about regarding building electric vehicles and electric vehicle batteries, 60% of them are going into red states. So, you know, people in red states love their EVs, too, and are working at these factories," Granholm said. "I just think that over time, the political nonsense about it will die down and people's experience will speak much more loudly."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple faces strong action if changes to its App Store do not meet incoming European Union regulations, the bloc's industry chief said on Friday. Reuters: In a move designed to comply with the EU's incoming Digital Markets Act (DMA), the company will soon allow software developers to distribute their apps to Apple devices via alternative stores. From early March, developers will be able to offer alternative app stores on iPhones and opt out of using Apple's in-app payment system, which charges commissions of up to 30%. However, critics have said the changes do not go far enough, arguing Apple's fee structure remains unfair, and that the changes may be in violation of the DMA. Asked about Apple's plans, EU industry chief Thierry Breton exclusively told Reuters: "The DMA will open the gates of the internet to competition so that digital markets are fair and open. Change is already happening. As from 7 March we will assess companies' proposals, with the feedback of third parties." He added: "If the proposed solutions are not good enough, we will not hesitate to take strong action."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

prisoninmate shares a 9to5linux report: Flathub is currently one of the most popular app stores for Linux serving 1.6 billion downloads of over 2,400 apps in the Flatpak format, of which more than 850 apps have been verified by their original authors. And now, Flathub proudly announced today that it surpassed 1 million active users of Flatpak apps. The team believes that the recent growth in users comes from several factors, including the availability of some very popular apps (e.g. Firefox, Thunderbird, VLC, Spotify, OBS Studio, Google Chrome, Telegram), support for new and verified apps, the inclusion of Flathub as the default app source for the Steam Deck's desktop mode, as well as the growing adoption among many popular GNU/Linux distributions like Fedora Linux, Linux Mint, KDE neon, and others.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Astronomers have discovered a mysterious group of giant elderly stars at the heart of the Milky Way that are emitting solar system-sized clouds of dust and gas. The stars, which have been named "old smokers," sat quietly for many years, fading almost to invisibility, before suddenly puffing out vast clouds of smoke. The discovery was made during the monitoring of almost a billion stars in infrared light during a 10-year survey of the night sky. The Guardian: The astronomers had set out to capture rarely seen newborn stars -- known as protostars -- while undergoing the equivalent of a stellar growth spurt. During these periods, young stars rapidly acquire mass by gorging on surrounding star-forming gas, leading to a sudden increase in luminosity. The team tracked hundreds of millions of stars and identified 32 erupting protostars that increased in brightness at least 40-fold and in some cases more than 300-fold. Another group of red giant stars near the centre of the Milky Way unexpectedly showed up in the analysis, however. When they were studied in more detail using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, seven of the stars were deemed to be a new type of red giant star, which the researchers named "old smokers." Convection currents and instabilities within the star could trigger the release of enormous columns of smoke, Prof Philip Lucas of the University of Hertfordshire, who led the observations, suggested.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nintendo plans to launch a new 8-inch LCD-equipped Switch game console this year, well-regarded analyst firm Omdia said Friday [unpaywalled-link]. Bloomberg: The new device from the Kyoto-based games maker will be responsible for a doubling in shipments of so-called amusement displays in 2024, Hayase said in Tokyo on Friday. His research focuses on small and medium displays and he bases annual forecasts on checks with companies in the supply chain. Nintendo's seven-year-old Switch has sold over 132 million units and is approaching the end of its life cycle. The company has been tight-lipped about any potential successor, but expectations have narrowed to this year's holiday period for the release of the next generation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In response to new EU regulations, Apple on Thursday outlined plans to allow iOS developers to distribute apps outside the App Store starting in March, though developers must still submit apps for Apple's review and pay commissions. Now critics say the changes don't go far enough and Apple retains too much control. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney: They are forcing developers to choose between App Store exclusivity and the store terms, which will be illegal under DMA (Digital Markets Act), or accept a new also-illegal anticompetitive scheme rife with new Junk Fees on downloads and new Apple taxes on payments they don't process. 37signals's David Heinemeier Hansson, who is also the creator of Ruby on Rails: Let's start with the extortion regime that'll befell any large developer who might be tempted to try hosting their app in one of these new alternative app stores that the EU forced Apple to allow. And let's take Meta as a good example. Their Instagram app alone is used by over 300 million people in Europe. Let's just say for easy math there's 250 million of those in the EU. In order to distribute Instagram on, say, a new Microsoft iOS App Store, Meta would have to pay Apple $11,277,174 PER MONTH(!!!) as a "Core Technology Fee." That's $135 MILLION DOLLARS per year. Just for the privilege of putting Instagram into a competing store. No fee if they stay in Apple's App Store exclusively. Holy shakedown, batman! That might be the most blatant extortion attempt ever committed to public policy by any technology company ever. And Meta has many successful apps! WhatsApp is even more popular in Europe than Instagram, so that's another $135M+/year. Then they gotta pay for the Facebook app too. There's the Messenger app. You add a hundred million here and a hundred million there, and suddenly you're talking about real money! Even for a big corporation like Meta, it would be an insane expense to offer all their apps in these new alternative app stores. Which, of course, is the entire point. Apple doesn't want Meta, or anyone, to actually use these alternative app stores. They want everything to stay exactly as it is, so they can continue with the rake undisturbed. This poison pill is therefore explicitly designed to ensure that no second-party app store ever takes off. Without any of the big apps, there will be no draw, and there'll be no stores. All of the EU's efforts to create competition in the digital markets will be for nothing. And Apple gets to send a clear signal: If you interrupt our tool-booth operation, we'll make you regret it, and we'll make you pay. Don't resist, just let it be. Let's hope the EU doesn't just let it be. Coalition of App Fairness, an industry body that represents over 70 firms including Tinder, Spotify, Proton, Tile, and News Media Europe: "Apple clearly has no intention to comply with the DMA. Apple is introducing new fees on direct downloads and payments they do nothing to process, which violates the law. This plan does not achieve the DMA's goal to increase competition and fairness in the digital market -- it is not fair, reasonable, nor non-discriminatory," said Rick VanMeter, Executive Director of the Coalition for App Fairness. "Apple's proposal forces developers to choose between two anticompetitive and illegal options. Either stick with the terrible status quo or opt into a new convoluted set of terms that are bad for developers and consumers alike. This is yet another attempt to circumvent regulation, the likes of which we've seen in the United States, the Netherlands and South Korea. Apple's 'plan' is a shameless insult to the European Commission and the millions of European consumers they represent -- it must not stand and should be rejected by the Commission."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The National Security Agency buys certain logs related to Americans' domestic internet activities from commercial data brokers, according to an unclassified letter by the agency. The New York Times: The letter [PDF], addressed to a Democratic senator and obtained by The New York Times, offered few details about the nature of the data other than to stress that it did not include the content of internet communications. Still, the revelation is the latest disclosure to bring to the fore a legal gray zone: Intelligence and law enforcement agencies sometimes purchase potentially sensitive and revealing domestic data from brokers that would require a court order to acquire directly. It comes as the Federal Trade Commission has started cracking down on companies that trade in personal location data that was gathered from smartphone apps and sold without people's knowledge and consent about where it would end up and for what purpose it would be used. In a letter to the director of national intelligence dated Thursday, the senator, Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, argued that "internet metadata" -- logs showing when two computers have communicated, but not the content of any message -- "can be equally sensitive" as the location data the F.T.C. is targeting. He urged intelligence agencies to stop buying internet data about Americans if it was not collected under the standard the F.T.C. has laid out for location records. "The U.S. government should not be funding and legitimizing a shady industry whose flagrant violations of Americans' privacy are not just unethical, but illegal," Mr. Wyden wrote.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

George Carlin's estate is suing over the release of a comedy special that uses generative AI to mimic the deceased comedian's voice and style of humor. From a report: The lawsuit, filed in California federal court on Thursday, accuses the creators of the special of utilizing without consent or compensation George Carlin's entire body of work consisting of five decades of comedy routines to train an AI chatbot, which wrote the episode's script. It also takes issue with using his voice and likeness for promotional purposes. The complaint seeks a court order for immediate removal of the special, as well as unspecified damages. It's among the first legal actions taken by the estate of a deceased celebrity for unlicensed use of their work and likeness to manufacture a new, AI-generated creation and was filed as Hollywood is sounding the alarm over utilization of AI to impersonate people without consent or compensation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

cusco writes: After three years and 72 flights of its 5-flight mission the mission of the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars is finally over. Images show that Ingenuity suffered damage to one of its rotor blades and will not be able to take off again. NASA's press release, also shared by cusco: Ingenuity landed on Mars Feb. 18, 2021, attached to the belly of NASA's Perseverance rover and first lifted off the Martian surface on April 19, proving that powered, controlled flight on Mars was possible. After notching another four flights, it embarked on a new mission as an operations demonstration, serving as an aerial scout for Perseverance scientists and rover drivers. In 2023, the helicopter executed two successful flight tests that further expanded the team's knowledge of its aerodynamic limits. [...] Over an extended mission that lasted for almost 1,000 Martian days, more than 33 times longer than originally planned, Ingenuity was upgraded with the ability to autonomously choose landing sites in treacherous terrain, dealt with a dead sensor, cleaned itself after dust storms, operated from 48 different airfields, performed three emergency landings, and survived a frigid Martian winter. Designed to operate in spring, Ingenuity was unable to power its heaters throughout the night during the coldest parts of winter, resulting in the flight computer periodically freezing and resetting. These power "brownouts" required the team to redesign Ingenuity's winter operations in order to keep flying. With flight operations now concluded, the Ingenuity team will perform final tests on helicopter systems and download the remaining imagery and data in Ingenuity's onboard memory. The Perseverance rover is currently too far away to attempt to image the helicopter at its final airfield.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Netflix is on everything. It's on your phone, computer, and game console, going all the way back to the Nintendo Wii. Hell, you can get your Netflix fix on a Peloton. One place where Netflix won't be is Apple's upcoming Vision Pro VR headset. Why isn't Netflix planning an app for what is Apple's big $3,500 gamble on the future of augmented reality? According to co-CEO Greg Peters, it's because the company doesn't know if anybody's actually going to use it. Gizmodo: More specifically, he called the device "subscale," adding that he didn't know if it would be "relevant to most of our members." That was in an interview with business analyst Ben Thompson, where Peters implied his company is being far more selective, at least when it comes to Apple's $3,500 "spatial computer." "We have to be careful about making sure that we're not investing in places that are not really yielding a return, and I would say we'll see where things go with Vision Pro," the Netflix co-CEO said. The interview dropped barely a day after Peters got done extolling how the company gained more than 13 million new subscribers in the last three months of 2023 while also mentioning potentially increasing subscription prices. Other common apps like Spotify and YouTube also don't plan to have a Vision Pro-specific app at launch, instead directing people to log on through their Safari browser. Peters added that they still want to work with Apple, and "sometimes we find a great space of overlap. We can move very, very quickly. Sometimes it takes a little bit longer." The investment Netflix is talking about is not unchecking a box to enable the iPad app on the Vision Pro.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI is always making slight adjustments to its models and pricing, and today brings just such an occasion. From a report: The company has released a handful of new models and dropped the price of API access -- this is primarily of interest to developers, but also serves as a bellwether for future consumer options. GPT-3.5 Turbo is the model most people interact with, usually through ChatGPT, and it serves as a kind of industry standard now -- if your answers aren't as good as ChatGPT's, why bother? It's also a popular API, being lower cost and faster than GPT-4 on a lot of tasks. So paying users will be pleased to hear that input prices are dropping by 50% and output by 25%, to $0.0005 per thousand tokens in, and $0.0015 per thousand tokens out. As people play with using these APIs for text-intensive applications, like analyzing entire papers or books, those tokens really start to add up. And as open source or self-managed models catch up to OpenAI's performance, the company needs to make sure its customers don't just leave. Hence the steady ratcheting down of prices -- though it's also a natural result of streamlining the models and improving their infrastructure.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cruise, the driverless car subsidiary of General Motors, said in a report on Thursday that an adversarial approach taken (non-paywalled link) by its top executives toward regulators had led to a cascade of events that ended with a nationwide suspension of Cruise's fleet. From a report: The roughly 100-page report was compiled by a law firm that Cruise hired to investigate whether its executives had misled California regulators about an October crash in San Francisco in which a Cruise vehicle dragged a woman 20 feet. The investigation found that while the executives had not intentionally misled state officials, they had failed to explain key details about the incident. In meetings with regulators, the executives let a video of the crash "speak for itself" rather than fully explain how one of its vehicles severely injured the pedestrian. The executives later fixated on protecting Cruise's reputation rather than giving a full account of the accident to the public and media, according to the report, which was written by the Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan law firm. The company said that the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission were investigating the incident, as well as state agencies and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The report is central to Cruise's efforts to regain the public's trust and eventually restart its business. Cruise has been largely shut down since October, when the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended its license to operate because its vehicles were unsafe. It responded by pulling its driverless cars off the road across the country, laying off a quarter of its staff and replacing Kyle Vogt, its co-founder and chief executive, who resigned in November, with new leaders.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Trade Commission launched an inquiry (non-paywalled link) on Thursday into the multibillion-dollar investments by Microsoft, Amazon and Google in the artificial intelligence start-ups OpenAI and Anthropic, broadening the regulator's efforts to corral the power the tech giants can have over A.I. The New York Times: These deals have allowed the big companies to form deep ties with their smaller rivals while dodging most government scrutiny. Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, while Amazon and Google have each committed billions of dollars to Anthropic, another leading A.I. start-up. Regulators have typically focused on bringing antitrust lawsuits against deals where the tech giants are buying rivals outright or using acquisitions to expand into new businesses, leading to increased prices and other harm, and have not regularly challenged stakes that the companies buy in start-ups. The F.T.C.'s inquiry will examine how these investment deals alter the competitive landscape and could inform any investigations by federal antitrust regulators into whether the deals have broken laws. The F.T.C. said it would ask Microsoft, OpenAI, Amazon, Google and Anthropic to describe their influence over their partners and how they worked together to make decisions. It also said it would demand that they provide any internal documents that could shed light on the deals and their potential impact on competition.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

PlayStation 5 system update blocks Cronus Zen controller adapter. The $100+ device promises controller compatibility but also enables gameplay "amplification." Sony crackdown follows concerns over GamePacks providing unfair advantages in Call of Duty and other online multiplayer titles. Cronus admits no timeframe for a fix. Workaround requires avoiding update or using Remote Play.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Starting today Apple is opening up its App Store to allow game streaming apps and services. From a report: This means that services like Xbox Cloud Streaming and GeForce Now, which previously were only accessible on iOS via a web browser, will be able to offer full-featured apps. "Developers can now submit a single app with the capability to stream all of the games offered in their catalog," Apple wrote in a blog post. These changes apply "worldwide," according to the company. In 2020, Apple appeared to have carved out a space for these cloud gaming services in the App Store. But that turned out not to be the case, as all games available through each service had to be submitted and reviewed as a standalone app. So the shift to allow one app with a large catalog of games marks a major change. As part of today's announcement, Apple said that "each experience made available in an app on the App Store will be required to adhere to all App Store Review Guidelines and its host app will need to maintain an age rating of the highest age-rated content included in the app." Apple also says that developers will now "be able to provide enhanced discovery opportunities for streaming games, mini-apps, mini-games, chatbots, and plug-ins that are found within their apps," and that "mini-apps, mini-games, chatbots, and plug-ins will be able to incorporate Apple's In-App Purchase system to offer their users paid digital content or services for the first time, such as a subscription for an individual chatbot."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The iPhone's app ecosystem is about to go through its biggest shake-up since the App Store launched in 2008. Today, Apple announced how it plans to change the rules for developers releasing iOS software in the European Union in response to the bloc's Digital Markets Act (DMA) coming into force in March. The big news is that third-party app stores will be allowed on iOS for the first time, breaking the Apple App Store's position as the sole distributor of iPhone apps. The changes will arrive with iOS 17.4 in March. From a report: Here's how the new "alternative app marketplaces," as Apple called them, will work. Users in the EU and on iOS 17.4 will be able to download a marketplace from that marketplace's website. In order to be used on an iPhone, those marketplaces have to go through Apple's approval process, and once you download one, you have to explicitly give it permission to download apps to your device. But once the marketplace is approved and on your device, you can download anything you want -- including apps that violate App Store guidelines. You can even set a non-App Store marketplace as the default on your device. Developers, meanwhile, can choose whether to use Apple's payment services and in-app purchases or integrate a third-party system for payments without paying an additional fee to Apple. If the developer wants to stick with Apple's existing in-app payment system, there's an additional 3 percent processing fee. Apple still plans to keep a close eye on the app distribution process. All apps must be "notarized" by Apple, and distribution through third-party marketplaces is still managed by Apple's systems. Developers will only be allowed to distribute a single version of their app across different app stores, and they'll still have to abide by some basic platform requirements, like getting scanned for malware. Apple says that anyone looking to develop an alternative app marketplace will have to provide evidence that it can financially "guarantee support for developers and customers." Apple wants "a stand-by letter of credit from an A-rated (or equivalent by S&P, Fitch, or Moody's) financial Institution of 1 million Euro prior to receiving the entitlement. It will need to be auto-renewed on a yearly basis."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When is cancer not cancer? It's an unexpected question that has stirred the world of cancer treatment in recent years, most notably now with prostate cancer. WSJ: A growing number of doctors are advocating what might seem like an unusual position: That low-grade prostate cancers that grow very slowly or not at all shouldn't be called cancer or carcinoma. The reason, they say, is that those words scare men, their families and sometimes even their doctors into seeking more aggressive treatment than patients need -- leaving men with debilitating side effects -- rather than pursuing a carefully monitored wait-and-see approach. A name change wouldn't be unprecedented. Certain other forms of thyroid, cervical and bladder cancers have been reclassified, sometimes partly to avoid scaring people about cancers that are unlikely to spread. "The word 'cancer' engenders so much anxiety and fear," says Dr. Laura Esserman, a professor of surgery and radiology at the University of California, San Francisco and director of its Breast Care Center, who is advocating for a type of lower-risk breast cancer to be renamed. "Patients think if I don't do something tomorrow, this is going to kill me. In fact, that's not true."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The 2023 Hugo Awards for science fiction hosted in China sparked controversy by excluding several authors without explanation, raising censorship concerns. Works removed included RF Kuang's bestseller "Babel," an episode of "The Sandman," and author Xiran Jay Zhao. The prestigious Hugo Awards are voted on by science fiction fans and marked the first time the annual World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) was held in China. With no reasons given for the exclusions, revealed only when nomination statistics were posted, questions emerged whether there had been interference or censorship in the process from Chinese authorities. The removed works included Kuang's speculative fiction novel "Babel," which recently won fiction book of the year in the British book awards. Bruce66423 shares a report: Recently released documents showed that several works or authors -- some with links to China -- had been excluded from the ballot despite receiving enough nominations to be included on their respective shortlists. The excluded nominees include Kuang and Zhao, authors who were born in China but are now based in the west. Concerns have been raised that the authors were targeted for political reasons, connected to the fact that the ruling Chinese Communist party exerts a tight control on all cultural events that take place inside its borders. [...] Episode six of The Sandman, which is based on a comic book written by Neil Gaiman, was excluded from the best dramatic presentation category, despite receiving enough nominations to be on the final ballot. Gaiman has publicly criticised the Chinese authorities for imprisoning writers. [...] Writing on Facebook, Gaiman said: "Until now, one of the things that's always been refreshing about the Hugos has been the transparency and clarity of the process ... This is obfuscatory, and without some clarity it means that whatever has gone wrong here is unfixable, or may be unfixable in ways that don't damage the respect the Hugos have earned over the last 70 years."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is laying off 1,900 workers -- or around 8% of Microsoft Gaming's 22,000 employees. The majority of layoffs are at Activision Blizzard, though cuts will impact Xbox and ZeniMax employees, too. The memo from Microsoft Gaming chief Phil Spencer: It's been a little over three months since the Activision, Blizzard, and King teams joined Microsoft. As we move forward in 2024, the leadership of Microsoft Gaming and Activision Blizzard is committed to aligning on a strategy and an execution plan with a sustainable cost structure that will support the whole of our growing business. Together, we've set priorities, identified areas of overlap, and ensured that we're all aligned on the best opportunities for growth. As part of this process, we have made the painful decision to reduce the size of our gaming workforce by approximately 1900 roles out of the 22,000 people on our team. The Gaming Leadership Team and I are committed to navigating this process as thoughtfully as possible. The people who are directly impacted by these reductions have all played an important part in the success of Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax and the Xbox teams, and they should be proud of everything they've accomplished here. We are grateful for all of the creativity, passion and dedication they have brought to our games, our players and our colleagues. We will provide our full support to those who are impacted during the transition, including severance benefits informed by local employment laws. Those whose roles will be impacted will be notified, and we ask that you please treat your departing colleagues with the respect and compassion that is consistent with our values. Looking ahead, we'll continue to invest in areas that will grow our business and support our strategy of bringing more games to more players around the world. Although this is a difficult moment for our team, I'm as confident as ever in your ability to create and nurture the games, stories and worlds that bring players together.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Illegal subscription services that steal films or TV shows bring in $2 billion a year in ads and subscriber fees (non-paywalled link). From a report: Ever since taking on Netflix at its own game, old Hollywood has struggled to turn a profit in streaming, with the likes of Disney+, Peacock and Paramount+ losing billions of dollars each year, sparking concerns on Wall Street that the services will never be as profitable as cable once was. But the age of streaming has been a boon for some unintended winners: pirates that use software to rip a film or television show in seconds from legitimate online video platforms and host the titles on their own, illegitimate services, which rake in about $2 billion annually from ads and subscriptions. With no video production costs, illicit streaming sites such as myflixer and projectfreetv have achieved profit margins approaching 90%, according to the Motion Picture Association, a trade group representing Hollywood studios that's working to crack down on the thousands of illegal platforms that have cropped up in recent years. Initially the rise of legitimate online businesses such as Netflix actually helped curb digital piracy, which had largely been based on file uploads. But now piracy involving illegal streaming services as well as file-sharing costs the US economy about $30 billion in lost revenue a year and some 250,000 jobs, estimates the US Chamber of Commerce's Global Innovation Policy Center. The global impact is about $71 billion annually. In the US, which counts almost 130 subscription piracy sites, the MPA estimates that the top three combined have about 2 million users paying $5 to $10 per month for films, TV shows and live sports. Analysts say the user number could soar as the cost of subscriptions from legitimate companies such as Walt Disney approach $20 per month as they seek to bolster the finances of their streaming platforms. "Some of these pirate websites have gotten more daily visits than some of the top 10 legitimate sites," says Karyn Temple, the MPA's general counsel. "That really shows how prolific they are."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A wide-spanning investigation by 404 Media reveals more details about a secretive spy tool that can tracks billions of phone profiles through the advertising industry called Patternz. From the report: Hundreds of thousands of ordinary apps, including popular ones such as 9gag, Kik, and a series of caller ID apps, are part of a global surveillance capability that starts with ads inside each app, and ends with the apps' users being swept up into a powerful mass monitoring tool advertised to national security agencies that can track the physical location, hobbies, and family members of people to build billions of profiles, according to a 404 Media investigation. 404 Media's investigation, based on now deleted marketing materials and videos, technical forensic analysis, and research from privacy activists, provides one of the clearest examinations yet of how advertisements in ordinary mobile apps can ultimately lead to surveillance by spy firms and their government clients through the real time bidding data supply chain. The pipeline involves smaller, obscure advertising firms and advertising industry giants like Google. In response to queries from 404 Media, Google and PubMatic, another ad firm, have already cut-off a company linked to the surveillance firm.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Pokemon Company said Thursday it has not granted any permission to "another company," referring to viral new game Palworld-developer Pocketpair, to use Pokemon intellectual property or assets and "intends to investigate and take appropriate measures" against the fast-growing survival game operator. From a report: The statement is Pokemon Company's first acknowledgement of Palworld's fast-growing survival title, which has sold over 8 million copies in less than six days, exceeding the performance of even the most popular AAA titles. But as TechCrunch previously reported, Palworld is also attracting a growing number of fans of Japan's legendary firm over perceived plagiarism and uncanny resemblance. However, its fusion of monster collecting, automation, and survival/crafting mechanics has struck a chord with players nonetheless.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New York City declared Wednesday that it's the first city to issue an advisory officially designating social media as an environmental toxin. From a report: In response to the danger social media poses to the mental health of young people, the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene issued an advisory identifying unrestricted access to and use of social media as a public health hazard. The department urged parents and caregivers to delay giving children access to a smartphone or social media until at least age 14. They also urged federal and state policymakers to expand on legislative proposals that protect youth from "predatory practices by social media companies."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dominic Gates, reporting for Seattle Times: The fuselage panel that blew off an Alaska Airlines jet earlier this month was removed for repair then reinstalled improperly by Boeing mechanics on the Renton final assembly line, a person familiar with the details of the work told The Seattle Times. If verified by the National Transportation Safety Board investigation, this would leave Boeing primarily at fault for the accident, rather than its supplier Spirit AeroSystems, which originally installed the panel into the 737 MAX 9 fuselage in Wichita, Kan. That panel, a door plug used to seal a hole in the fuselage sometimes used to accommodate an emergency exit, blew out of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 as it climbed out of Portland on Jan. 5. The hair-raising incident drew fresh and sharp criticism of Boeing's quality control systems and safety culture, which has been under the microscope since two fatal 737 MAX crashes five years ago. Last week, a different person -- an anonymous whistleblower who appears to have access to Boeing's manufacturing records of the work done assembling the specific Alaska Airlines jet that suffered the blowout -- on an aviation website separately provided many additional details about how the door plug came to be removed and then mis-installed. "The reason the door blew off is stated in black and white in Boeing's own records," the whistleblower wrote. "It is also very, very stupid and speaks volumes about the quality culture at certain portions of the business." The self-described Boeing insider said company records show four bolts that prevent the door plug from sliding up off the door frame stop pads that take the pressurization loads in flight, "were not installed when Boeing delivered the airplane." the whistleblower stated. "Our own records reflect this." NTSB investigators already publicly raised the possibility that the bolts had not been installed. Further reading:Alaska Air CEO Says Loose Bolts Found in 'Many' Boeing Jets.Delta Air Lines Boeing 757 Lost Nose Wheel Before Takeoff, FAA Says.FAA Calls for Door-Plug Checks on Second Boeing Jet.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple's longest-running product is an increasingly small part of the company's business. And yet, it's never been more successful. Jason Snell, writing for The Verge: Twenty years ago, on the Mac's 20th anniversary, I asked Steve Jobs if the Mac would still be relevant to Apple in the age of the iPod. He scoffed at the prospect of the Mac not being important: "of course" it would be. Yet, 10 years later, Apple's revenue was increasingly dominated by the iPhone, and the recent success of the new iPad had provided another banner product for the company. When I interviewed Apple exec Phil Schiller for the Mac's 30th anniversary, I found myself asking him about the Mac's relevance, too. He also scoffed: "Our view is, the Mac keeps going forever," he said. Today marks 40 years since Jobs unveiled the original Macintosh at an event in Cupertino, and it once again feels right to ask what's next for the Mac. Next week, Apple will release financial results that will reinforce that Mac sales are among the best they've been in the product's history. Then, a day later, Apple will release a new device, the Vision Pro, that will join the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch in an ever-expanding lineup of which the Mac is only one small part. As the Mac turns 40, it's never been more successful -- or more irrelevant to Apple's bottom line. It's undergone massive changes in the past few years that ensure its survival but also lash it to a hardware design process dominated by the iPhone. Being middle-aged can be complicated. Mac users -- and I've been one of them for 34 of those 40 years -- have been on the defensive for most of the platform's existence. The original Mac cost $2,495 (equivalent to more than $7,300 today), and it had to compete with Apple's own Apple II series, which was more affordable and wildly successful. The Mac was far from a sure thing, even at Apple: in the years after the Mac was first introduced, Apple released multiple new Apple II models. (One even had a mouse and ran a version of the Mac's Finder file manager.) It took a long time for the Mac to emerge from the Apple II's shadow. And as revolutionary as the Mac's interface was -- it was the first popular personal computer to have a mouse-driven, menu-oriented user interface rather than a simple command line -- it also had to overcome an enormous amount of resistance for being such an outlier. Once Microsoft truly embraced the Mac's interface style with Windows, it took over the world, leaving the Mac with measly market share and diminishing prospects. Further reading: Apple Shares the Secret of Why the 40-Year-Old Mac Still Rules.Greg Joswiak on the Mac's Enduring Appeal.Mac at 40: The Eras Tour.40 Years Later, the Original Mac is More Amazing Than Ever.The Birth of the Mac: Rolling Stone's 1984 Feature on Steve Jobs and His Whiz Kids (March 1, 1984).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tony Isaac writes: The doomsday clock remains at 90 seconds to midnight, the same as last year. Interestingly, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists added 'AI' to the list of threats that they consider to be existential threats to humanity, but didn't move the hands of the clock as a result of adding that threat. My take is that they consider AI to be a very low-grade threat, but it makes me wonder why they included it at all.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nvidia is launching RTX Video HDR in its 551.23 Game Ready driver update, enabling RTX GPU owners to use AI to convert SDR videos to HDR in Microsoft Edge and Chrome. While subtle, it can add color detail to non-HDR YouTube videos when viewed on an HDR monitor. Like Nvidia's prior RTX Video Super Resolution for upscaling and sharpening web videos, the effect is minor but noticeable when toggling on and off.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From its founding, OpenAI said its governing documents were available to the public. When WIRED requested copies after the company's boardroom drama, it declined to provide them. Wired: Wealthy tech entrepreneurs including Elon Musk launched OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit research lab that they said would involve society and the public in the development of powerful AI, unlike Google and other giant tech companies working behind closed doors. In line with that spirit, OpenAI's reports to US tax authorities have from its founding said that any member of the public can review copies of its governing documents, financial statements, and conflict of interest rules. But when WIRED requested those records last month, OpenAI said its policy had changed, and the company provided only a narrow financial statement that omitted the majority of its operations. "We provide financial statements when requested," company spokesperson Niko Felix says. "OpenAI aligns our practices with industry standards, and since 2022 that includes not publicly distributing additional internal documents." OpenAI's abandonment of the long-standing transparency pledge obscures information that could shed light on the recent near-implosion of a company with crucial influence over the future of AI and could help outsiders understand its vulnerabilities. In November, OpenAI's board fired CEO Sam Altman, implying in a statement that he was untrustworthy and had endangered its mission to ensure AI "benefits all humanity." An employee and investor revolt soon forced the board to reinstate Altman and eject most of its own members, with an overhauled slate of directors vowing to review the crisis and enact structural changes to win back the trust of stakeholders.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, is seeking to retract six scientific studies and correct 31 others that were published by the institute's top researchers, including its CEO. The researchers are accused of manipulating data images with simple methods, primarily with copy-and-paste in image editing software, such as Adobe Photoshop. The accusations come from data sleuth Sholto David and colleagues on PubPeer, an online forum for researchers to discuss publications that has frequently served to spot dubious research and potential fraud. On January 2, David posted on his research integrity blog, For Better Science, a long list of potential data manipulation from DFCI researchers. The post highlighted many data figures that appear to contain pixel-for-pixel duplications. The allegedly manipulated images are of data such as Western blots, which are used to detect and visualize the presence of proteins in a complex mixture. DFCI Research Integrity Officer Barrett Rollins told The Harvard Crimson that David had contacted DFCI with allegations of data manipulation in 57 DFCI-led studies. Rollins said that the institute is "committed to a culture of accountability and integrity," and that "every inquiry about research integrity is examined fully." The allegations are against: DFCI President and CEO Laurie Glimcher, Executive Vice President and COO William Hahn, Senior Vice President for Experimental Medicine Irene Ghobrial, and Harvard Medical School professor Kenneth Anderson. The Wall Street Journal noted that Rollins, the integrity officer, is also a co-author on two of the studies. He told the outlet he is recused from decisions involving those studies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Abstract of a paper published on pre-print server arXiv: We show that content on the web is often translated into many languages, and the low quality of these multi-way translations indicates they were likely created using Machine Translation (MT). Multi-way parallel, machine generated content not only dominates the translations in lower resource languages; it also constitutes a large fraction of the total web content in those languages. We also find evidence of a selection bias in the type of content which is translated into many languages, consistent with low quality English content being translated en masse into many lower resource languages, via MT. Our work raises serious concerns about training models such as multilingual large language models on both monolingual and bilingual data scraped from the web.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon's Ring home doorbell unit says it will stop letting police departments request footage from users' video doorbells and surveillance cameras, retreating from a practice that was criticized by civil liberties groups and some elected officials. Bloomberg: Next week, the company will disable its Request For Assistance tool (non-paywalled link), the program that had allowed law enforcement to seek footage from users on a voluntary basis, Eric Kuhn, who runs Ring's Neighbors app, said in a blog post on Wednesday. Police and fire departments will have to seek a warrant to request footage from users or show the company evidence of an ongoing emergency. Kuhn didn't say why Ring was disabling the tool. Yassi Yarger, a spokesperson, said Ring had decided to devote its resources to new products and experiences in the Neighbors app that better fit with the company's vision. The aim is to make Neighbors, which had been focused on crime and safety, into more of a community hub, she said. New features announced on Wednesday -- one called Ring Moments that lets users post clips and a company-produced Best of Ring -- highlight that push.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Since the emergence of Midjourney and other image generators, artists have been watching and wondering whether AI is a great opportunity or an existential threat. Now, after a list of 16,000 names emerged of artists whose work Midjourney had allegedly used to train its AI -- including Bridget Riley, Damien Hirst, Rachel Whiteread, Tracey Emin, David Hockney and Anish Kapoor -- the art world has issued a call to arms against the technologists. British artists have contacted US lawyers to discuss joining a class action against Midjourney and other AI firms, while others have told the Observer that they may bring their own legal action in the UK. "What we need to do is come together," said Tim Flach, president of the Association of Photographers and an internationally acclaimed photographer whose name is on the list. "This public showing of this list of names is a great catalyst for artists to come together and challenge it. I personally would be up for doing that." The 24-page list of names forms Exhibit J in a class action brought by 10 American artists in California against Midjourney, Stability AI, Runway AI and DeviantArt. Matthew Butterick, one of the lawyers representing the artists, said: "We've had interest from artists around the world, including the UK."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Boeing 757 plane operated by Delta Air Lines lost a nose wheel as it prepared to take off from Atlanta's main airport on Saturday, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. It was the latest troubling episode involving one of the manufacturer's aircraft. The New York Times: Delta Air Lines Flight 982 was preparing to take off from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport for a trip to BogotA, Colombia, at about 11:15 a.m. Saturday when a "nose wheel came off and rolled down the hill," the agency said in a preliminary report. More than 170 passengers who were aboard had to deplane, but no one was hurt, the report said. The F.A.A. said that it was continuing its investigation. It's been a turbulent period for Boeing, which has been fraught in recent years with safety concerns after deadly catastrophes. The manufacturer faces renewed scrutiny after a door plug blew off a new Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 plane at 16,000 feet on Jan. 5 just after it took off from the Portland International Airport in Oregon. No one was seriously injured then, but passengers were exposed to whipping winds on the plane's harrowing return to Portland. The F.A.A. then ordered about 170 Boeing 737 Max 9 planes to be grounded in the United States until they could be inspected. The plane that lost a wheel in Atlanta on Saturday, a Boeing 757, is a different model.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In response to a new European law intended to limit Apple's control over iPhone apps, Apple plans to allow sideloading with restrictions. Users will be able to download apps outside the App Store for the first time, but Apple will review each app, collect fees from developers, and add other limits, WSJ reported Wednesday. The policies will apply only in Europe and test enforcement of the law. Spotify, Meta, Microsoft and others are preparing new direct download options in anticipation. Apple has defended controlling downloads via the App Store as necessary for iPhone security and quality, but critics call it anticompetitive and say Apple collects unfairly high commissions. Apple's approach aims to maintain oversight despite the law, but its plans could still change. Further reading: Apple's App Store Rule Changes Draw Sharp Rebuke From Critics.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Testing a person's blood for a type of protein called phosphorylated tau, or p-tau, could be used to screen for Alzheimer's disease with "high accuracy," even before symptoms begin to show, a new study suggests. CNN: The study involved testing blood for a key biomarker of Alzheimer's called p-tau217, which increases at the same time as other damaging proteins -- beta amyloid and tau -- build up in the brains of people with the disease. Currently, to identify the buildup of beta amyloid and tau in the brain, patients undergo a brain scan or spinal tap, which often can be inaccessible and costly. But this simple blood test was found to be up to 96% accurate in identifying elevated levels of beta amyloid and up to 97% accurate in identifying tau, according to the study published Monday in the journal JAMA Neurology. "What was impressive with these results is that the blood test was just as accurate as advanced testing like cerebrospinal fluid tests and brain scans at showing Alzheimer's disease pathology in the brain," Nicholas Ashton, a professor of neurochemistry at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and one of the study's lead authors, said in an email. The study findings came as no surprise to Ashton, who added that the scientific community has known for several years that using blood tests to measure tau or other biomarkers has the potential to assess Alzheimer's disease risk. "Now we are close to these tests being prime-time and this study shows that," he said. Alzheimer's disease, a brain disorder that affects memory and thinking skills, is the most common type of dementia, according to the National Institutes of Health.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Netflix said that user engagement with games on the service tripled in 2023. Engadget: "[Despite] games still being small, and certainly not yet material relative to our film and series business, we're pleased with this progress," the company said in its earnings report on Tuesday. As an example, the company pointed to the addition of the Grand Theft Auto trilogy to the service last year, although it isn't clear how much the trilogy, which only arrived on Netflix on December 14, helped drive engagement in the final two weeks of the year. Netflix said that Grand Theft Auto has become its "most successful launch to date" in terms of installs and engagement. It didn't say how many people had downloaded the trilogy since it was released on the platform, however. Some customers had signed up for Netflix just to play the Grand Theft Auto games, the company said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alaska Air Group found loose bolts on "many" of its Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft following the midair blowout of a panel on one of its planes earlier this month, the carrier's chief executive officer said in an interview with NBC. Bloomberg: The accident has prompted some "very tough, candid conversations" with Boeing about the planemaker's operations, Alaska CEO Ben Minicucci told NBC in the interview, which aired late Tuesday. "I am angry. I'm more than frustrated and disappointed," he said. "My demand on Boeing is what are they going to do to improve their quality programs in-house?" US safety regulators ordered all Max 9 planes grounded following the Jan. 5 incident, which left a gaping hole in the side of a jet and forced an emergency landing. No one was seriously injured. Minicucci said there was a "guardian angel" on the flight. Manufacturing quality at Boeing is facing deep scrutiny from regulators, customers and the planemaker itself in the wake of the blowout. While Alaska and United Airlines Holdings, another large operator of the Max model, have performed inspections on some of the aircraft, they're awaiting final specifications from the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing before the planes can fly again. "Boeing is better than this," Minicucci said. "Flight 1282 should never have happened."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ebay said Tuesday that it plans to lay off 9% of the company's workforce, equal to about 1,000 full-time jobs, as the tech industry continues to downsize to start 2024. From a report: Jamie Iannone, Ebay's CEO, told employees in a letter published on a corporate blog, that the company will also "scale back the number of contracts we have within our alternate workforce over the coming months." Iannone said the job cuts are necessary because Ebay's "overall headcount and expenses have outpaced the growth of our business. To address this, we're implementing organizational changes that align and consolidate certain teams to improve the end-to-end experience, and better meet the needs of our customers around the world. Shortly, we will begin notifying those employees whose roles have been eliminated and entering into a consultation process in areas where required."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple, reaching a make-or-break point in its decade-old effort to build a car, has pivoted to a less ambitious design with the intent of finally bringing an electric vehicle to market. Bloomberg: After previously envisioning a truly driverless car, the company is now working on an EV with more limited features, according to people with knowledge of the project. Even so, Apple's goal for a release date continues to slip. With the latest changes, the company looks to introduce the car in 2028 at the earliest, roughly two years after a recent projection, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private. Apple's secretive effort to create a car is one of the most ambitious endeavors in its history, and one of its more tumultuous. Since it began taking shape in 2014, the project -- codenamed Titan and T172 -- has seen several bosses come and go. There have been multiple rounds of layoffs, key changes in strategy and numerous delays. But it remains one of the company's potential next big things -- an entirely new category for the device maker that could help reinvigorate sales growth. Apple's revenue stalled last year as it contended with a maturing smartphone industry and a slowdown in China, its biggest overseas market.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Although Netflix no longer allows new or returning members to sign up for the ad-free Basic subscription that costs $11.99 per month, company executives told investors while reporting its earnings results today that it's retiring the plan in some countries where ad-supported plans are available. It's starting with Canada and the UK in the second quarter of this year. From a report: That leaves subscribers with Netflix's $15.49 per month option as Netflix's cheapest ad-free plan. Going from $11.99 to $15.49 per month is a pretty big jump, and means there's really no middle ground for ad-free plans. Otherwise, subscribers will have to pay $6.99 per month for its ad-supported basic plan or $22.99 per month for the Premium tier. Netflix stopped letting new subscribers sign up for its Basic plan in Canada last year before rolling out the change to the US and UK.Read more of this story at Slashdot.