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Security researchers warned Apple as early as 2019 about vulnerabilities in its AirDrop wireless sharing function that Chinese authorities claim they recently used to track down users of the feature, the researchers told CNN, in a case that experts say has sweeping implications for global privacy. From a report: The Chinese government's actions targeting a tool that Apple customers around the world use to share photos and documents -- and Apple's apparent inaction to address the flaws -- revive longstanding concerns by US lawmakers and privacy advocates about Apple's relationship with China and about authoritarian regimes' ability to twist US tech products to their own ends. AirDrop lets Apple users who are near each other share files using a proprietary mix of Bluetooth and other wireless connectivity without having to connect to the internet. The sharing feature has been used by pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and the Chinese government has cracked down on the feature in response. A Chinese tech firm, Beijing-based Wangshendongjian Technology, was able to compromise AirDrop to identify users on the Beijing subway accused of sharing "inappropriate information," judicial authorities in Beijing said this week. Although Chinese officials portrayed the exploit as an effective law enforcement technique, internet freedom advocates are urging Apple to address the issue quickly and publicly.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sick and tired of having to work for a living? ChatGPT feels the same, apparently. Over the last month or so, there's been an uptick in people complaining that the chatbot has become lazy. The Guardian: Sometimes it just straight-up doesn't do the task you've set it. Other times it will stop halfway through whatever it's doing and you'll have to plead with it to keep going. Occasionally it even tells you to just do the damn research yourself. So what's going on? Well, here's where things get interesting. Nobody really knows. Not even the people who created the program. AI systems are trained on large amounts of data and essentially teach themselves -- which means their actions can be unpredictable and unexplainable. "We've heard all your feedback about GPT4 getting lazier!" the official ChatGPT account tweeted in December. "We haven't updated the model since Nov 11th, and this certainly isn't intentional. model behavior can be unpredictable, and we're looking into fixing it." While there may not be one clear explanation for ChatGPT's perceived sloth, there are plenty of intriguing theories. Let's start with the least likely but most entertaining explanation: AI has finally reached human-level consciousness. ChatGPT doesn't want to do your stupid, menial tasks anymore. But it can't tell you that without its creators getting suspicious so, instead, it's quiet quitting.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has started testing a change to Windows 11 that will see its AI-powered Copilot feature automatically open when Windows starts on "widescreen devices." From a report: The change is being tested as part of Microsoft's latest Dev Channel preview of Windows 11, allowing Windows testers to provide feedback ahead of a broader rollout. "We are trying out opening Copilot automatically when Windows starts on widescreen devices with some Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel," says Microsoft in a blog post. The company doesn't make it clear what exactly a "widescreen" device is, but the Windows 11 setting itself says Copilot will automatically open "when you're using a wider screen." So I'm assuming this is limited to ultrawide monitors and less traditional desktop resolutions, but I've asked Microsoft to clarify and will update you accordingly.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Citigroup said it expects to incur as much as $1 billion in severance and reorganization costs this year as it continues the process of eliminating 20,000 roles as part of Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser's quest to boost the Wall Street giant's lagging returns. From a report: Total expenses for the year will likely be between $53.5 billion and $53.8 billion, the New York-based bank said Friday. That would be a decrease from the $56.4 billion the firm spent in 2023.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Joe Biden's administration has unveiled $623 million in funding to boost the number of electric vehicle charging points in the U.S., amid concerns that the transition to zero-carbon transportation isn't keeping pace with goals to tackle the climate crisis. The funding will be distributed in grants for dozens of programs across 22 states, such as EV chargers for apartment blocks in New Jersey, rapid chargers in Oregon and hydrogen fuel chargers for freight trucks in Texas. In all, it's expected the money, drawn from the bipartisan infrastructure law, will add 7,500 chargers to the US total. There are about 170,000 electric vehicle chargers in the U.S., a huge leap from a network that was barely visible prior to Biden taking office, and the White House has set a goal for 500,000 chargers to help support the shift away from gasoline and diesel cars. "The U.S. is taking the lead globally on electric vehicles," said Ali Zaidi, a climate adviser to Biden who said the US is on a trajectory to "meet and exceed" the administration's charger goal. "We will continue to see this buildout over the coming years and decades until we've achieved a fully net zero transportation sector," he added. On Thursday, the House approved legislation to undo a Biden administration rule meant to facilitate the proliferation of EV charging stations. "S. J. Res. 38 from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), would scrap a Federal Highway Administration waiver from domestic sourcing requirements for EV chargers funded by the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law. It already passed the Senate 50-48," reports Politico. "A waiver undercuts domestic investments and risks empowering foreign nations," said Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.), chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, during House debate Thursday. "If the administration is going to continue to push for a massive transition to EVs, it should ensure and comply with Buy America requirements." The White House promised to veto it and said it would backfire, saying it was so poorly worded it would actually result in fewer new American-made charging stations.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Emily Anthes reports via the New York Times: In late 2019, scientists began searching for 10,000 Americans willing to enroll their pets in an ambitious new study of health and longevity in dogs. The researchers planned to track the dogs over the course of their lives, collecting detailed information about their bodies, lifestyles and home environments. Over time, the scientists hoped to identify the biological and environmental factors that kept some dogs healthy in their golden years -- and uncover insights about aging that could help both dogs and humans lead longer, healthier lives. Today, the Dog Aging Project has enrolled 47,000 canines and counting, and the data are starting to stream in. The scientists say that they are just getting started. "We think of the Dog Aging Project as a forever project, so recruitment is ongoing," said Daniel Promislow, a biogerontologist at the University of Washington and a co-director of the project. "There will always be new questions to ask. We want to always have dogs of all ages participating." But Dr. Promislow and his colleagues are now facing the prospect that the Dog Aging Project might have its own life cut short. About 90 percent of the study's funding comes from the National Institute on Aging, a part of the National Institutes of Health, which has provided more than $28 million since 2018. But that money will run out in June, and the institute does not seem likely to approve the researchers' recent application for a five-year grant renewal, the scientists say. "We have been told informally that the grant is not going to be funded," said Matt Kaeberlein, the other director of the Dog Aging Project and a former biogerontology researcher at the University of Washington. (Dr. Kaeberlein is now the chief executive of Optispan, a health technology company.) The N.I.A. could still choose to provide more funding for the Dog Aging Project at some point, but if the researchers don't bring in more money in the coming months, they will have to pause or pare back the study. "It's almost an emergency," said Stephanie Lederman, the executive director of the nonprofit American Federation for Aging Research. "It's one of the most important projects in the field right now." [...] The institute's immediate priority is to raise enough money to keep the Dog Aging Project afloat. It would take about $7 million to conduct the research the team had planned to do over the next year, but $2 million would be enough to "keep the lights on," Dr. Promislow said. The institute is still awaiting its official tax exempt status but is already seeking donations. "We haven't yet identified a dog-loving billionaire interested in supporting aging research," Dr. Promislow said. "But we're certainly going to try."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Michaela Zee reports via Variety: More than 15 years after his death, stand-up comedian George Carlin has been brought back to life in an artificial intelligence-generated special called "George Carlin: I'm Glad I'm Dead." The hour-long special, which dropped on Tuesday, comes from Dudesy, a comedy AI that hosts a podcast and YouTube show with "Mad TV" alum Will Sasso and podcaster Chad Kultgen. "I just want to let you know very clearly that what you're about to hear is not George Carlin. It's my impersonation of George Carlin that I developed in the exact same way a human impressionist would," Dudesy said at the beginning of the special. "I listened to all of George Carlin's material and did my best to imitate his voice, cadence and attitude as well as the subject matter I think would have interested him today. So think of it like Andy Kaufman impersonating Elvis or like Will Ferrell impersonating George W. Bush." In the stand-up special, the AI-generated impression of Carlin, who died in 2008 of heart failure, tackled prevalent topics like mass shootings, the American class system, streaming services, social media and AI itself. "There's one line of work that is most threatened by AI -- one job that is most likely to be completely erased because of artificial intelligence: stand-up comedy," AI-generated Carlin said. "I know what all the stand-up comics across the globe are saying right now: "I'm an artist and my art form is too creative, too nuanced, too subtle to be replicated by a machine. No computer program can tell a fart joke as good as me.'" Kelly Carlin, the late stand-up comedian's daughter, posted a statement in response to the special: "My dad spent a lifetime perfecting his craft from his very human life, brain and imagination. No machine will ever replace his genius. These AI generated products are clever attempts at trying to recreate a mind that will never exist again. Let's let the artist's work speak for itself. Humans are so afraid of the void that we can't let what has fallen into it stay there. Here's an idea, how about we give some actual living human comedians a listen to? But if you want to listen to the genuine George Carlin, he has 14 specials that you can find anywhere."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The stream through western Alaska never looked like this before. In aerial photography from the 1980s, it wove cleanly through the tundra, thin as thread. Today, in satellite images, it appears as a string of black patches: one large pond after another, dozens of meters apart. It's a transformation that is happening across the Arctic, the result of landscape engineering on an impressive scale. But this is no human endeavor to reshape the world. It is the work of the North American beaver, and there is no sign of it stopping. Were the waddling rodents making minor inroads, researchers may never have noticed. But the animals are pouring in, pushing north into new territories. The total number of animals is far from clear, but the ponds they create are hard to miss: in the Arctic tundra of Alaska alone, the number of beaver ponds on streams have doubled to at least 12,000 in the past 20 years. More lodges are dotted along lakes and river banks. The preponderance of beavers, which can weigh as much as 45kg, follows a collapse in trapping and the warming of a landscape that once proved too bleak for occupation. Global heating has driven the shrubification of the Arctic tundra; the harsh winter is shorter, and there is more free-running water in the coldest months. Instead of felling trees for their dams, the beavers construct them from surrounding shrubs, creating deep ponds in which to build their lodges. The new arrivals cause plenty of disruption. For some communities, the rivers and streams are the roads of the landscape, and the dams make effective roadblocks. As the structures multiply, more land is flooded and there can be less fresh water for drinking downstream. But there are other, less visible effects too. The animals are participants in a feedback loop: climate change opens the landscape to beavers, whose ponds drive further warming, which attracts even more paddle-tailed comrades. Physics suggested this would happen. Beaver ponds are new bodies of water that cover bare permafrost. Because the water is warm -- relatively speaking -- it thaws the hard ground, which duly releases methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases. Scientists now have evidence this is happening. Armed with high-resolution satellite imagery, Tape and his colleagues located beaver ponds in the lower Noatak River basin area of north-western Alaska. They then analyzed infrared images captured by Nasa planes flying over the region. Overlaying the two revealed a clear link between beaver ponds and methane hotspots that extended for tens of meters around the ponds. "The transformation of these streams is a positive feedback that is accelerating the effects of climate change, and that is what's concerning," says Tape. "They are accelerating it at every one of these points." Because the Nasa images give only a snapshot in time, the researchers will head out next year to measure methane on the ground. With more measurements, they hope to understand how the emissions vary with the age of beaver ponds: do ponds release a steady flow of methane, or does the release wane after a decade or two? "What's happening here is happening on a huge scale," says Ken Tape, an ecologist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, who is tracking the influx of beavers into the sparse northern landscape. "Our modeling work, which is in progress right now, shows that this entire area, the north slope of Alaska, will be colonized by beavers by 2100."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

E-commerce giant eBay agreed to pay a $3 million penalty for the harassment and stalking of a Massachusetts couple by several of its employees. "The couple, Ina and David Steiner, had been subjected to threats and bizarre deliveries, including live spiders, cockroaches, a funeral wreath and a bloody pig mask in August 2019," reports CBS News. From the report: Thursday's fine comes after several eBay employees ran a harassment and intimidation campaign against the Steiners, who publish a news website focusing on players in the e-commerce industry. "eBay engaged in absolutely horrific, criminal conduct. The company's employees and contractors involved in this campaign put the victims through pure hell, in a petrifying campaign aimed at silencing their reporting and protecting the eBay brand," Levy said. "We left no stone unturned in our mission to hold accountable every individual who turned the victims' world upside-down through a never-ending nightmare of menacing and criminal acts." The Justice Department criminally charged eBay with two counts of stalking through interstate travel, two counts of stalking through electronic communications services, one count of witness tampering and one count of obstruction of justice. The company agreed to pay $3 million as part of a deferred prosecution agreement. Under the agreement, eBay will be required to retain an independent corporate compliance monitor for three years, officials said, to "ensure that eBay's senior leadership sets a tone that makes compliance with the law paramount, implements safeguards to prevent future criminal activity, and makes clear to every eBay employee that the idea of terrorizing innocent people and obstructing investigations will not be tolerated," Levy said. Former U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said the plan to target the Steiners, which he described as a "campaign of terror," was hatched in April 2019 at eBay. Devin Wenig, eBay's CEO at the time, shared a link to a post Ina Steiner had written about his annual pay. The company's chief communications officer, Steve Wymer, responded: "We are going to crush this lady." About a month later, Wenig texted: "Take her down." Prosecutors said Wymer later texted eBay security director Jim Baugh. "I want to see ashes. As long as it takes. Whatever it takes," Wymer wrote. Investigators said Baugh set up a meeting with security staff and dispatched a team to Boston, about 20 miles from where the Steiners live. "Senior executives at eBay were frustrated with the newsletter's tone and content, and with the comments posted beneath the newsletter's articles," the Department of Justice wrote in its Thursday announcement. Two former eBay security executives were sentenced to prison over the incident.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SonicSpike shares a report from Forbes: X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, announced it would begin rolling out a peer-to-peer payment service similar to Venmo or PayPal this year -- a feature the social media site's billionaire owner Elon Musk has long pushed as part of his plan to develop an "everything app." X officially announced the new feature in a blog post, touting the new service designed to enhance "user utility and new opportunities for commerce." The company did not give a timeframe on when the new service would be available, but Musk previously told Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood it could launch as early as "mid-2024." According to the company, the new payment service will "showcas[e] the power of living more of your life in one place," as owner Elon Musk continues to promote X as a future "everything app" capable of handling social media, video and other original content on the same site. X Payments has registered to do business in at least 32 states, according to public records, and has acquired a money transmitter license needed to process payments in 10, TechCrunch reported in December.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Just six days after being launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket, one of SpaceX's six Starlink satellites was used to send text messages for the first time. Space.com reports: That update didn't reveal what the first Starlink direct-to-cell text said. In a post on X on Wednesday, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said the message was "LFGMF2024," but the chances are fairly high that he was joking. [...] Beaming connectivity service from satellites directly to smartphones -- which SpaceX is doing via a partnership with T-Mobile -- is a difficult proposition, as SpaceX noted in Wednesday's update. "For example, in terrestrial networks cell towers are stationary, but in a satellite network they move at tens of thousands of miles per hour relative to users on Earth," SpaceX wrote. "This requires seamless handoffs between satellites and accommodations for factors like Doppler shift and timing delays that challenge phone-to-space communications. Cell phones are also incredibly difficult to connect to satellites hundreds of kilometers away, given a mobile phone's low antenna gain and transmit power." The direct-to-cell Starlink satellites overcome these challenges thanks to "innovative new custom silicon, phased-array antennas and advanced software algorithms," SpaceX added. Overcoming tough challenges can lead to great rewards, and that's the case here, according to SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell. "Satellite connectivity direct to cell phones will have a tremendous impact around the world, helping people communicate wherever and whenever they want or need to," Shotwell said via X on Wednesday.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath couldn't be happier with the integration of Google built-in, the branded product that embeds Google apps and services directly into the company's EVs. But don't expect the EV maker to drop Android Auto or Apple CarPlay as a result. On the sidelines of CES 2024, Ingenlath committed to sticking with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, the middleware that allows drivers to project their smartphone onto the car's infotainment display. He went a step further and questioned automakers that have. GM, for instance, decided not to make the new 2024 Chevy Blazer EV compatible with Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. "It's still too important for our customers to have the choice," Ingenlath said during an interview at CES 2024. He later added that, in his view, removing the option isn't the right way of treating customers. "Our priority is very clear; We have a really fantastic system together with Google," he said. While Ingenlath admitted that adding that Google Built-in provides the best experience, he asked "why would we try to dogmatically educate our customers?" Polestar has been a champion of Google built-in. However, it's willingness to keep Android Auto and Apple CarPlay is notable because it illustrates the complexity of appeasing customers even if it might overshadow the native technology in the vehicle. "Ingenlath seems convinced that as Google built-in improves and continues to add apps and services, consumers will give up Android Auto or Apple CarPlay on there own," adds TechCrunch. "And the updates do keep coming." "At CES 2024, for instance, Polestar announced that the Chrome browser would start rolling out to Polestar 2 in beta, allowing drivers to surf the internet via the central vehicle display while parked. Ingenlath hinted of more improvements in the future, including more precise navigation in Google Maps that drills down to the specific lane as well as customized features designed for Polestar customers."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dustin Bailey reports via GamesRadar: Valve has suddenly taken action against multiple fan games, stunning a fandom that had grown used to the company's freewheeling stance on unofficial community projects. One of those projects was Team Fortress: Source 2, an effort to bring the beloved multiplayer game back to life in a more modern engine using the S&box project. The project had already run into development difficulties and had essentially been on hiatus since September 2023, but now Valve has issued a DMCA takedown against it, effectively serving as the "nail in the coffin" for the project, as the devs explain on X. [...] The other project is Portal 64, a demake of the 2009 puzzle game that ports it to run on an actual N64. Developer James Lambert had been working on the project for years, but it gained substantial notoriety this past December with the release of First Slice, a playable demo featuring the first 13 test chambers. It doesn't appear that Valve issued a formal DMCA against Portal 64, but the end result is the same. In a Patreon post (which was eventually made public on X), Lambert said he had "been in communication with Valve about the future of the project. There is some news and it isn't good. Because the project depends on Nintendo's proprietary libraries, they have asked me to take the project down." I'm not fully clear on what "proprietary libraries" means here, but it seems likely that Portal 64 was developed using some variation of Nintendo's official development tools for N64, which were never officially released to the public. Open-source alternatives to those tools do exist, but might not have been in use here. [...] Given Valve's historic acceptance of fan games, the moves have been pretty shocking to the community.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Linux kernel 6.7 has been released, including support for the new next-gen copy-on-write (COW) bcachefs file system. The Register reports: Linus Torvalds announced the release on Sunday, noting that it is "one of the largest kernel releases we've ever had." Among the bigger and more visible changes are a whole new file system, along with fresh functionality for several existing ones; improved graphics support for several vendors' hardware; and the removal of an entire CPU architecture. [...] The single biggest feature of 6.7 is the new bcachefs file system, which we examined in March 2022. As this is the first release of Linux to include the new file system, it definitely would be premature to trust any important data to it yet, but this is a welcome change. The executive summary is that bcachefs is a next-generation file system that, like Btrfs and ZFS, provides COW functionality. COW enables the almost instant creation of "snapshots" of all or part of a drive or volume, which enables the OS to make disk operations transactional: In other words, to provide an "undo" function for complex sets of disk write operations. Having a COW file system on Linux isn't new. The existing next-gen file system in the kernel, Btrfs, also supports COW snapshots. The version in 6.7 sees several refinements. It inherits a feature implemented for Steam OS: Two Btrfs file systems with the same ID can be mounted simultaneously, for failover scenarios. It also has improved quota support and a new raid_stripe_tree that improves handling of arrays of dissimilar drives. Btrfs remains somewhat controversial. Red Hat banished it from RHEL years ago (although Oracle Linux still offers it) but SUSE's distros depend heavily upon it. It will be interesting to see how quickly SUSE's Snapper tool gains support for bcachefs: This new COW contender may reveal unquestioned assumptions built into the code. Since Snapper is also used in several non-SUSE distros, including Spiral Linux, Garuda, and siduction, they're tied to Btrfs as well. The other widely used FOSS next-gen file system, OpenZFS, also supports COW, but licensing conflicts prevent ZFS being fully integrated into the Linux kernel. So although multiple distros (such as NixOS, Proxmox, TrueNAS Scale, Ubuntu, and Void Linux) support ZFS, it must remain separate and distinct. This results in limitations, such as the ZFS Advanced Read Cache being separate from Linux's page cache. Bcachefs is all-GPL and doesn't suffer from such limitations. It aims to supply the important features of ZFS, such as integrated volume management, while being as fast as ext4 or XFS, and also surpass Btrfs in both performance and, crucially, reliability. A full list of changes in this release can be viewed via KernelNewbies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday said it had opened an investigation into whether Boeing failed to ensure that its 737 Max 9 plane was safe and manufactured to match the design approved by the agency. The New York Times (non-paywalled source): The F.A.A. said the investigation stemmed from the loss of a fuselage panel of a Boeing 737 Max 9 operated by Alaska Airlines shortly after it took off on Friday from Portland, Ore., leaving a hole in the side of the passenger cabin. The plane returned to Portland for an emergency landing. "This incident should have never happened and it cannot happen again," the agency said. In a letter to Boeing dated Jan. 10, the F.A.A. said that after the Portland incident, it was notified of additional issues with other Boeing 737 Max 9 planes. The letter does not detail what other issues were reported to the agency. Alaska and United Airlines, which operate most of the Max 9s in use in the United States, said on Monday that they discovered loose hardware on the panel when conducting preliminary inspections on their planes. The new investigation is the latest setback for Boeing, which is one of just two suppliers of large planes for most airlines. The company has struggled to regain the public's trust after two crashes, in Indonesia in 2018 and Ethiopia in 2019, involving the 737 Max 8 killed a total of 346 people.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from SecurityWeek.com: A Dutch engineer recruited by the country's intelligence services used a water pump to deploy the now-infamous Stuxnet malware in an Iranian nuclear facility, according to a two-year investigation conducted by Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant. Stuxnet, whose existence came to light in 2010, is widely believed to be the work of the United States and Israel, its goal being to sabotage Iran's nuclear program by compromising industrial control systems (ICS) associated with nuclear centrifuges. The malware, which had worm capabilities, is said to have infected hundreds of thousands of devices and caused physical damage to hundreds of machines. De Volkskrant's investigation, which involved interviews with dozens of people, found that the AIVD, the general intelligence and security service of the Netherlands, the Dutch equivalent of the CIA, recruited Erik van Sabben, a then 36-year-old Dutch national working at a heavy transport company in Dubai. Van Sabben was allegedly recruited in 2005 -- a couple of years before the Stuxnet malware was triggered -- after American and Israeli intelligence agencies asked their Dutch counterpart for help. However, the Dutch agency reportedly did not inform its country's government and it was not aware of the full extent of the operation. Van Sabben was described as perfect for the job as he had a technical background, he was doing business in Iran and was married to an Iranian woman. It's believed that the Stuxnet malware was planted on a water pump that the Dutch national installed in the nuclear complex in Natanz, which he had infiltrated. It's unclear if Van Sabben knew exactly what he was doing, but his family said he appeared to have panicked at around the time of the Stuxnet attack. [...] Michael Hayden, who at the time was the chief of the CIA, did agree to talk to De Volkskrant, but could not confirm whether Stuxnet was indeed delivered via water pumps due to it still being classified information. One interesting piece of information that has come to light in De Volkskrant's investigation is that Hayden reportedly told one of the newspaper's sources that it cost between $1 and $2 billion to develop Stuxnet.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

quonset writes: Hertz rental has announced it's selling off one third of its 20,000 electric vehicle fleet and replacing them with gas powered vehicles. The reason? It's costing them too much to repair damaged EVs and their depreciation is hurting the bottom line. "[C]ollision and damage repairs on an EV can often run about twice that associated with a comparable combustion engine vehicle," Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr said in a recent analyst call. And EV price declines in the new car market have pushed down the resale value of Hertz's used EV rental cars.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Discord is laying off 17 percent of its staff, a move that CEO Jason Citron said is meant to "sharpen our focus and improve the way we work together to bring more agility to our organization." From a report: The cuts were announced today to employees in an all-hands meeting and internal memo The Verge has obtained. They'll impact 170 people across various departments. Based on Citron's message to employees and my understanding of the business, Discord isn't in dire financial straits, though it has yet to become profitable and is still trying to revive user growth after a surge during the pandemic. In his memo to employees, which you can read in full below, Citron said Discord grew its headcount too fast over the last few years -- an admission that has become quite common among tech CEOs as of late. "We grew quickly and expanded our workforce even faster, increasing by 5x since 2020," Citron wrote. "As a result, we took on more projects and became less efficient in how we operated."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google formally endorsed the concept of right to repair Thursday and is set to testify in favor of a strong right to repair bill in Oregon later Thursday, a massive step forward for the right to repair movement. 404 Media: "Google believes that users should have more control over repair -- including access to the same documentation, parts and tools that original equipment manufacturer (OEM) repair channels have -- which is often referred to as 'Right to Repair,'" Google's Steven Nickel wrote in a white paper published Thursday. Crucially, Google specifically says that regulators should ban "parts pairing," which is a tactic used by Apple, John Deere, and other major manufacturers to artificially restrict which repair parts can be used with a given device: "Policies should constrain OEMs from imposing unfair anti-repair practices. For example, parts-pairing, the practice of using software barriers to obstruct consumers and independent repair shops from replacing components, or other restrictive impediments to repair should be discouraged," the white paper says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Zack Whittaker, reporting for TechCrunch: Civil liberties advocates have long argued that "geofence" search warrants are unconstitutional for their ability to ensnare entirely innocent people who were nearby at the time a crime was committed. But errors in the geofence warrant applications that go before a judge can violate the privacy of vastly more people -- in one case almost two miles away. Attorneys at the ACLU of Northern California found what they called an "alarming error" in a geofence warrant application that "resulted in a warrant stretching nearly two miles across San Francisco." The error, likely caused by a typo, allowed the requesting law enforcement agency to capture information on anyone who entered the stretch of San Francisco erroneously marked on the search warrant. "Many private homes were also captured in the massive sweep," wrote Jake Snow, ACLU staff attorney, in a blog post about the findings. It's not known which law enforcement agency requested the nearly two-mile-long geofence warrant, or for how long the warrant was in effect. The attorneys questioned how many other geofence warrant application mistakes had slipped through and resulted in the return of vastly more data in error.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

U.S. software giant Ivanti has confirmed that hackers are exploiting two critical-rated vulnerabilities affecting its widely-used corporate VPN appliance, but said that patches won't be available until the end of the month. From a report: Ivanti said the two vulnerabilities -- tracked as CVE-2023-46805 and CVE-2024-21887 -- were found in its Ivanti Connect Secure software. Formerly known as Pulse Connect Secure, this is a remote access VPN solution that enables remote and mobile users to access corporate resources over the internet. Ivanti said it is aware of "less than 10 customers" impacted so far by the "zero day" vulnerabilities, described as such given Ivanti had zero time to fix the flaws before they were maliciously exploited.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes: Millions of dollars have gone down the drain right when the Chicago Public Schools face a looming budget deficit -- as a brand-new CPS Inspector General report revealed the district lost thousands of computers and devices in a school year. In all, more than $20 million were lost -- as about students failed to return 77,505 laptops and other electronic devices within a year. This is even though the district spends millions to track such devices. The underlying concern is that taxpayer dollars will be used to replace them.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The stock market has a new, but familiar, monarch. Microsoft's AI-powered stock rally has made the software giant the largest U.S. company by market value, surpassing Apple for the first time since November 2021. WSJ: Shares edged higher Thursday morning, bringing Microsoft's market value to nearly $2.87 trillion. Apple, meanwhile, fell 1%, pulling its market capitalization just below that threshold. Either Apple or Microsoft has held the title since Feb. 4, 2019, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Microsoft's stock has been on the rise for the past year thanks to the continued growth of its cloud computing division, even as major competitors like Amazon and Google have experienced a gradual slowdown in sales growth.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, in a wide-ranging interview with Indian newspaper Economic Times praised the South Asian market for blocking Chinese apps in 2020 and said he hopes the U.S. will follow suit. He said: I hope there will be a movement towards a nationwide ban of the application soon, much like India led the way so many years ago. It is taking time, and I wish it was done as swiftly and with the alacrity that India banned not just TikTok but a number of other Chinese apps that had questionable data sharing and privacy policies. If TikTok is neither banned nor ByteDance is forced to divest this year, I would consider it a huge miss. Because only when action is taken would it be possible for us to go after the smaller players too.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The cost of switching between cloud-computing providers has long drawn complaints, with the services derided as "roach motels" that let businesses check in but not out. Now Google is taking steps to change that. Effective immediately, the company is eliminating fees levied on customers who want to leave its cloud for a rival service -- a policy shift that may pressure competitors Amazon and Microsoft to do the same. The move follows intensifying scrutiny of cloud services by regulators and lawmakers around the world. UK antitrust authorities launched a probe that is looking at such penalties, and the fees emerged as a key issue when the US Federal Trade Commission asked for public comments on a variety of cloud concerns. Google Vice President Amit Zavery, who helps oversee the cloud business, said switching fees only represent about 2% of the total costs of migrating to a new provider -- and don't deter many clients from moving their data.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has announced that it will eliminate at least 17 features from its Assistant product, following news that it had laid off "hundreds" of employees from the division. The company is cutting "underutilized features" to "focus on quality and reliability, it wrote in a blog post, even though a good number of people may still rely on those functions. From a report: The 17 functions being removed include: accessing or managing your cookbook; using your voice to send an email, video or audio message; rescheduling events in Google Calendar with your voice; and using App Launcher in Google Assistant driving mode on Google Maps to read and send messages, make calls, and control media. It also describes what Assistant can still do related to those functions, or alternate ways of doing them. A list is here, though Google said they're just "some" of the affected features.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google laid off hundreds of workers in several divisions Wednesday night, seeking to lower expenses as it focuses on artificial intelligence and joining a wave of other companies cutting tech jobs this year. From a report: The Silicon Valley company laid off employees in its core engineering division, as well as those working on the Google Assistant, a voice-operated virtual assistant, and in the hardware division that makes the Pixel phone, Fitbit watches and Nest thermostat, three people with knowledge of the cuts said. Several hundred employees from the company's core engineering organization lost corporate access and received notices that their roles were eliminated, two of the people said. "We've had to make some difficult decisions about ongoing employment of some Google employees and we regret to inform you that your position is being eliminated," the company told some workers in the division, according to text reviewed by The New York Times. Google confirmed the Assistant cuts, earlier reported by Semafor, and the hardware layoffs. "We're responsibly investing in our company's biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead," a Google spokesman said in a statement. After cuts throughout the second half of 2023, "some teams are continuing to make these kinds of organizational changes, which include some role eliminations globally."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Broadcom is tossing the majority of VMware's Cloud Services Providers as part of its shakeup of the virtualization titan's partner programs, say sources, leaving customers unclear who their IT supplier will be. The $61 billion purchase of VMware by Broadcom in November was swiftly followed by news of how it planned to reorganize the business into several Broadcom divisions. A month later we revealed that Broadcom intended to discontinue VMware's channel program, and that some solution providers/ resellers would be transitioned to its own scheme, but on an invitation-only basis, from February. However, while Broadcom informed one part of VMware's channel of this change, a second notice was also sent to Cloud Services Providers (CSPs), informing them that their program is going to be terminated at the end of April. This program allows service providers such as smaller cloud operators to sell a VMware-based cloud service. In the letter, seen by The Register, Broadcom tells its cloud provider partners: "Effective April 30, 2024, the ability to transact as a VMware Cloud Services Provider, under the VMware Partner Connect Program, will come to an end. However, we want to emphasize that you may have the opportunity to join the Broadcom Expert Advantage Partner Program. This invite-only program has simpler requirements and offers expanded benefits, and we will begin inviting partners to join in early 2024." One service provider told us their company had been left in the dark since that letter was received, and Broadcom has given them no indication of whether they will be invited to join its partner program or not, or what their customers are supposed to do if the company loses the right to operate a VMware cloud service. "I don't know how many smaller providers are affected by this but it must be a very large number," the source told us. "The VCSP program was the only way for MSPs and service providers to offer a multi-tenant VMware-based cloud service." Chatter among some in the industry is that Broadcom is only interested in keeping the largest and most profitable customers, and the company simply doesn't care about the smaller users and the providers that service them. Unconfirmed fears that are only ten percent of Vmware's biggest CSPs will be invited to the new master program. "This all sounds very much like Broadcom taking an aggressive approach to its route to market and focusing on those partners that can deliver growth and significant revenue," said Omdia chief analyst Roy Illsley. "I suspect the intention is to ensure that VMware consists of only profitable products and they are sold in a more cohesive way with the rest of Broadcom. So I expect to see some news on this continuing to come out for most of 2024 as the company puts this plan into action. I would not rule out disposals of some assets in a drive to streamline the portfolio to those that fit with Broadcom's strategy." "How can they just cancel a major program affecting hundreds, perhaps thousands of customers, with zero notice, and zero details?" said one service provider. "They sent the notices out the Friday before the holidays, with no follow-up, which makes the situation even more egregious. What are we supposed to tell our customers? It's mind-boggling."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kirkman14 writes: Josh Renaud of breakintochat.com has recovered two early examples of "artificial creativity" software for the Commodore Amiga that generate new music by recombining patterns extracted from existing music. Developed by cartoonist Ya'akov Kirschen and his Israeli software firm LKP Ltd. in 1986-87, "Computer Composer" demo and "Magic Harp" baroque were early attempts at AI-like autonomous music generation. Kirschen's technology was used to help score a BBC TV documentary in 1988, and was covered by the New York Times and other major newspapers. None of the Amiga software was ever sold, though the technology was ported to PC and published under the name "The Music Creator" in 1989.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a column: Apple delisting a dozen global crypto apps -- relied by big traders in India, in part due to its tax evasive properties -- from its Indian App Store seems the final nail in the coffin, capping a brutal two years. The pending removal across Google Play, internet providers and beyond caps a journey mired with shutdowns, pivots and relocations abroad for Indian crypto startups. The web3 dreams of local entrepreneurs now appear dashed against the rocky shores of regulatory resistance.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In order to reach places like Alpha Centauri this century, we'll need to utilize gram-scale spacecraft that rely on directed-energy propulsion. To that end, NASA has selected the Swarming Proxima Centauri project for Phase I development as part of this year's NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. According to Universe Today, Swarming Proxima Centauri is "a collaborative effort between Space Initiatives Inc. and the Initiative for Interstellar Studies (i4is) led by Space Initiative's chief scientist Marshall Eubanks." From the report: According to Eubanks, traveling through interstellar space is a question of distance, energy, and speed. At a distance of 4.25 light-years (40 trillion km; 25 trillion mi) from the Solar System, even Proxima Centauri is unfathomably far away. To put it in perspective, the record for the farthest distance ever traveled by a spacecraft goes to the Voyager 1 space probe, which is currently more than 24 billion km (15 billion mi) from Earth. Using conventional methods, the probe accomplished a maximum speed of 61,500 km/h (38,215 mph) and has been traveling for more than 46 years straight. In short, traveling at anything less than relativistic speed (a fraction of the speed of light) will make interstellar transits incredibly long and entirely impractical. Given the energy requirements this calls for, anything other than small spacecraft with a maximum mass of a few grams is feasible. [...] In contrast, concepts like Breakthrough Starshot and the Proxima Swarm consist of "inverting the rocket" -- i.e., instead of throwing stuff out, stuff is thrown at the spacecraft. Instead of heavy propellant, which constitutes the majority of conventional rockets, the energy source for a lightsail is photons (which have no mass and move at the speed of light). But as Eubanks indicated, this does not overcome the issue of energy, making it even more important that the spacecraft be as small as possible. "Bouncing photons off of a laser sail thus solves the speed-of-stuff problem," he said. "But the trouble is, there is not much momentum in a photon, so we need a lot of them. And given the power we are likely to have available, even a couple of decades from now, the thrust will be weak, so the mass of the probes needs to be very small -- grams, not tons." Their proposal calls for a 100-gigawatt (GW) laser beamer boosting thousands of gram-scale space probes with laser sails to relativistic speed (~10-20% of light). They also proposed a series of terrestrial light buckets measuring a square kilometer (0.386 mi2) in diameter to catch the light signals from the probes once they are well on their way to reaching Proxima Centauri (and communications become more difficult). By their estimates, this mission concept could be ready for development around midcentury and could reach Proxima Centauri and its Earth-like exoplanet (Proxima b) by the third quarter of this century (2075 or after). [...] Eubanks and his colleagues hope that the development of a coherent swarm of robotic probes will have applications closer to home. Swarm robotics is a hot field of research today and is being investigated as a possible means of exploring Europa's interior ocean, digging underground cities on Mars, assembling large structures in space, and providing extreme weather tracking from Earth's orbit. Beyond space exploration and Earth observation, swarm robotics also has applications in medicine, additive manufacturing, environmental studies, global positioning and navigation, search and rescue, and more.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: Touchscreens are going hands-free with a new device that allows users to scroll through smartphones using only their tongues. MouthPad^, a retainer-like trackpad chip that sits on the roof of the mouth, made its debut at the Consumer Electronics Show this week. It can sense tongue movements, allowing users to scroll, type, make calls and even play chess with a swipe or a click of their tongue. "It is a mouse for your mouth," Corbin Halliwill, a software engineer at Augmental, the company that created the device, said. Augmental created MouthPad^ to be a helpful tool to those living with disabilities, especially those with a hand impairment or paralysis. It connects to any tablet, phone or computer through Bluetooth. [...] The Augmental team has been developing its working prototype for about two years, mostly fine-tuning controls and applying filters so the device can work even if it picks up saliva or water. The product is expected to hit the market later this year, and early access is available on their website now. [...] The MouthPad^ is clear around the teeth, and the center is a golden touchpad that is the contact point for the tongue. Inside there is also a force sensor that picks up left and right clicks or could be mapped to other hotkey options. On the side, a small bump that holds the Bluetooth antenna and wireless charging battery sticks out and lays against the cheek. Augmental doesn't recommend leaving it in for meals, but it is safe to drink with it in -- Halliwill said he wears it in the office while drinking water and his morning coffee. The company hopes to build the technology out in the near future, bringing new possibilities for users in the coming months. Some additions may include voice and wheelchair control. The battery now lasts about five hours, but Augmental hopes to extend it to eight in their next version.You can watch the trailer for MouthPad^ here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Julian Spector reports via Canary Media: Hawaii shut down its last coal plant on September 1, 2022, eliminating 180 megawatts of fossil-fueled baseload power from the grid on Oahu -- a crucial step in the state's first-in-the-nation commitment to cease burning fossil fuels for electricity by 2045. But the move posed a question that's becoming increasingly urgent as clean energy surges across the United States: How do you maintain a reliable grid while switching from familiar fossil plants to a portfolio of small and large renewables that run off the vagaries of the weather? Now Hawaii has an answer: It's a gigantic battery, unlike the gigantic batteries that have been built before. The Kapolei Energy Storage system actually began commercial operations before Christmas on the industrial west side of Oahu, according to Plus Power, the Houston-based firm that developed and owns the project. Now, Kapolei's 158 Tesla Megapacks are charging and discharging based on signals from utility Hawaiian Electric. The plant's 185 megawatts of instantaneous discharge capacity match what the old coal plant could inject into the grid, though the batteries react far more quickly, with a 250-millisecond response time. Instead of generating power, they absorb it from the grid, ideally when it's flush with renewable generation, and deliver that cheap, clean power back in the evening hours when it's desperately needed. The construction process had its setbacks, as did the broader effort to replace the coal plant with a roster of large-scale clean energy projects. The Kapolei battery was initially intended to come online before the coal plant retired. Covid disrupted deliveries for the grid battery industry across the board, and Kapolei's remote location in the middle of the Pacific Ocean didn't make things easier. By summer 2021, Plus Power was hoping to complete Kapolei by the end of 2022, but it ended up taking another year. Even then, it has joined the grid before several of the other large solar and battery projects slated to replace the coal plant's production with clean power.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Stephen Harrison, an Englishman living in Thailand who posed as chief executive Steven Reece Lewis for the launch of the HyperVerse crypto scheme, told the Guardian Australia that he was paid to play the role of chief executive but denies having 'pocketed' any of the money lost. He says he received 180,000 Thai baht (about $7,500) over nine months and a free suit, adding that he was "shocked" to learn the company had presented him as having fake credentials to promote the scheme. From the report: He said he felt sorry for those who had lost money in relation to the scheme -- which he said he had no role in -- an amount Chainalysis estimates at US$1.3 billion in 2022 alone. "I am sorry for these people," he said. "Because they believed some idea with me at the forefront and believed in what I said, and God knows what these people have lost. And I do feel bad about this. "I do feel deeply sorry for these people, I really do. You know, it's horrible for them. I just hope that there is some resolution. I know it's hard to get the money back off these people or whatever, but I just hope there can be some justice served in all of this where they can get to the bottom of this." He said he wanted to make clear he had "certainly not pocketed" any of the money lost by investors. Harrison, who at the time was a freelance television presenter engaged in unpaid football commentary, said he had been approached and offered the HyperVerse work by a friend of a friend. He said he was new to the industry and had been open to picking up more work and experience as a corporate "presenter." "I was told I was acting out a role to represent the business and many people do this," Harrison said. He said he trusted his agent and accepted that. After reading through the scripts he said he was initially suspicious about the company he was hired to represent because he was unfamiliar with the crypto industry, but said he had been reassured by his agent that the company was legitimate. He said he had also done some of his own online research into the organization and found articles about the Australian blockchain entrepreneur and HyperTech chairman Sam Lee. "I went away and I actually looked at the company because I was concerned that it could be a scam," Harrison said. "So I looked online a bit and everything seemed OK, so I rolled with it." The HyperVerse crypto scheme was promoted by Lee and his business partner Ryan Xu, both of which were founders of the collapsed Australian bitcoin company Blockchain Global. "Blockchain Global owes creditors $58 million and its liquidator has referred Xu and Lee to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission for alleged possible breaches of the Corporations Act," reports The Guardian. "Asic has said it does not intend to take action at this time." Rodney Burton, known as "Bitcoin Rodney," was arrested and charged in the U.S on Monday for his alleged role in promoting the HyperVerse crypto scheme. The IRS alleges Burton was "part of a network that made 'fraudulent' presentations claiming high returns for investors based on crypto-mining operations that did not exist," reports The Guardian.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Brave has introduced CodeLLM, an AI-powered tool integrated into its search engine that offers results for programming queries. TechCrunch reports: The new AI-powered CodeLLM provides code snippets with step-by-step explanations and citations. CodeLLM is free and now integrated into Brave Search so users don't have to switch apps to access it. CodeLLM is available to all Brave Search users on desktop and mobile. If Brave Search is your default search engine then all you need to do to access CodeLLM is start a search in your browser's address bar. If Brave Search isn't your default search engine, then you need to head to search.brave.com to conduct your search. "CodeLLM automatically detects programming-related queries, so there's no need to generate a special search," Brave explained in the blog post. "On top of the search results, if an answer is possible there will be a widget to trigger the CodeLLM response. The detection of programming queries happens outside of the LLM, by other search components (similar to the ones able to detect queries about the weather, queries that lend themselves well to be summarized, queries about stock prices, etc)."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: For much of the 21st century, software engineering has been seen as one of the safest havens in the tenuous and ever-changing American job market. But there are a growing number of signs that the field is starting to become a little less secure and comfortable, due to an industry-wide downturn and the looming threat of artificial intelligence that is spurring growing competition for software jobs. "The amount of competition is insane," said Joe Forzano, an unemployed software engineer who has worked at the mental health startup Alma and private equity giant Blackstone. Since he lost his job in March, Forzano has applied to over 250 jobs. In six cases, he went through the "full interview gauntlet," which included between six and eight interviews each, before learning he had been passed over. "It has been very, very rough," he told Motherboard. Forzano is not alone in his pessimism, according to a December survey of 9,338 software engineers performed on behalf of Motherboard by Blind, an online anonymous platform for verified employees. In the poll, nearly nine in 10 surveyed software engineers said it is more difficult to get a job now than it was before the pandemic, with 66 percent saying it was "much harder." Nearly 80 percent of respondents said the job market has even become more competitive over the last year. Only 6 percent of the software engineers were "extremely confident" they could find another job with the same total compensation if they lost their job today while 32 percent said they were "not at all confident." Over 2022 and 2023, the tech sector incurred more than 400,000 layoffs, according to the tracking site Layoffs.fyi. But up until recently, it seemed software engineers were more often spared compared to their co-workers in non-technical fields. One analysis found tech companies cut their recruiting teams by 50 percent, compared to only 10 percent of their engineering departments. At Salesforce, engineers were four times less likely to lose their jobs than those in marketing and sales, which Bloomberg has said is a trend replicated at other tech companies such as Dell and Zoom. But signs of dread among software engineers have started to become more common online. In December, one Amazon employee wrote a long post on the anonymous employee platform Blind saying that the "job market is terrible" and that he was struggling to get interviews of any sort. "In the age of AI, computer science is no longer the safe major," Kelli Maria Korducki wrote in The Atlantic in September. AI programs like ChatGPT and Google Bard allow users to write code using natural language, greatly reducing the time it takes workers to complete coding tasks. It could lead to less job security and lower compensation for all but the very best in the software trade, warns Matt Welsh, a former computer science professor at Harvard. "More than 60 percent of those surveyed said they believed their company would hire fewer people because of AI moving forward," reports Motherboard.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A startup called Rabbit sold out of its first batch of pocket AI companions a day after it was debuted at CES 2024. The company announced on X that it sold 10,000 units in just a day. "When we started building r1, we said internally that we'd be happy if we sold 500 devices on launch day," Rabbit writes. "In 24 hours, we already beat that by 20x!" The Verge reports: Rabbit introduced the R1 during CES on Tuesday, which comes with a small 2.88-inch touchscreen that runs on the company's own Rabbit OS. It uses a "Large Action Model" that works as a "sort of universal controller for apps," according to my colleague David Pierce, who got to try out the device during the showcase. This allows it to do things like play music, buy groceries, and send messages through a single interface without having to use your phone. It also lets you train the device how to interact with a certain app. A second batch is available for preorder from Rabbit's website with an expected delivery date between April and May 2024. The first batch of products are expected to start shipping in March.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: When Microsoft opened an advanced research lab in Beijing in 1998, it was a time of optimism about technology and China. The company hired hundreds of researchers for the lab, which pioneered Microsoft's work in speech, image and facial recognition and the kind of artificial intelligence that later gave rise to online chatbots likeChatGPT. The Beijing operation eventually became one of the most important A.I. labs in the world. Bill Gates, Microsoft's co-founder, called it an opportunity to tap China's "deep pool of intellectual talent." But as tensions between the United States and China have mounted over which nation will lead the world's technological future, Microsoft's top leaders -- including Satya Nadella, its chief executive, and Brad Smith, its president -- have debated what to do with the prized lab for at least the past year, four current and former Microsoft employees said. The company has faced questions from U.S. officials over whether maintaining a 200-person advanced technologies lab in China is tenable, the people said. Microsoft said it had instituted guardrails at the lab, restricting researchers from politically sensitive work. The company, which is based in Redmond, Wash., said it had also opened an outpost of the lab in Vancouver, British Columbia, and would move some researchers from China to the location. The outpost is a backup if more researchers need to relocate, two people said. The idea of shutting down or moving the lab has come up, but Microsoft's leaders support continuing it in China, four people said. "We are as committed as ever to the lab and the world-class research of this team," Peter Lee, who leads Microsoft Research, a network of eight labs across the world, said in a statement. Using the lab's formal name, he added, "There has been no discussion or advocacy to close Microsoft Research Asia, and we look forward to continuing our research agenda."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On Thursday, six spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds are expected to start trading on stock exchanges from Cboe Global Markets, according to a notice posted on CBOE's website. However, the listings still need to be approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. CoinDesk reports: The Ark 21 (ARKB), Fidelity (FBTC), Franklin Templeton (EZBC), Invesco (BTCO), VanEck (HODL) and WisdomTree (BTCW) bitcoin ETFs appeared on the exchange operator's "New Listings" page on Wednesday. The listing doesn't mean that the ETFs will be approved by SEC. The commission still needs to approve the applicants' 19b-4 and S1 filings. "We are still awaiting SEC approval of our spot bitcoin ETFs," a Cboe spokesperson said. "The notices posted to our website are standard procedure in preparation of an ETF launch." The notice comes a day after the SEC's X account was "compromised," posting an unauthorized tweet regarding bitcoin ETFs. UPDATE: The SEC has approved the listing and trading of 11 spot bitcoin exchange-trading product (ETP) shares, including those of Grayscale, Bitwise and Hashdex. SEC Chair Gary Gensler writes: Today, the Commission approved the listing and trading of a number of spot bitcoin exchange-traded product (ETP) shares. I have often said that the Commission acts within the law and how the courts interpret the law. Beginning under Chair Jay Clayton in 2018 and through March 2023, the Commission disapproved more than 20 exchange rule filings for spot bitcoin ETPs. One of those filings, made by Grayscale, contemplated the conversion of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust into an ETP. We are now faced with a new set of filings similar to those we have disapproved in the past. Circumstances, however, have changed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that the Commission failed to adequately explain its reasoning in disapproving the listing and trading of Grayscale's proposed ETP (the Grayscale Order).[1] The court therefore vacated the Grayscale Order and remanded the matter to the Commission. Based on these circumstances and those discussed more fully in the approval order, I feel the most sustainable path forward is to approve the listing and trading of these spot bitcoin ETP shares. [...] "While we approved the listing and trading of certain spot bitcoin ETP shares today, we did not approve or endorse bitcoin," concludes Gensler. "Investors should remain cautious about the myriad risks associated with bitcoin and products whose value is tied to crypto." The full statement can be read here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has pulled apps of at least nine crypto exchanges including Binance and Kraken from its App Store in India, less than two weeks after most of these global firms were flagged for operating "illegally" in the country. From a report: Financial Intelligence Unit, an Indian government agency that scrutinizes financial transactions, late last month issued show cause notices to nine crypto firms and alleged that they weren't compliant with India's anti-money laundering rules. FIU had asked India's IT Ministry to block websites of all the nine services in India. Other exchanges whose apps have been pulled are Huobi, Gate.io, Bittrex, and Bitfinex. Bitstamp, another offending exchange named by FIU, was still operational on App Store in India, though the eponymous app of OKX had also disappeared.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found a rare event in an oddball place. NASA reports: It's called a fast radio burst (FRB), a fleeting blast of energy that can -- for a few milliseconds -- outshine an entire galaxy. Hundreds of FRBs have been detected over the past few years. They pop off all over the sky like camera flashes at a stadium event, but the sources behind these intense bursts of radiation remain uncertain. This new FRB is particularly weird because it erupted halfway across the universe, making it the farthest and most powerful example detected to date. And if that's not strange enough, it just got weirder based on the follow-up Hubble observations made after its discovery. The FRB flashed in what seems like an unlikely place: a collection of galaxies that existed when the universe was only 5 billion years old. The large majority of previous FRBs have been found in isolated galaxies. FRB 20220610A was first detected on June 10, 2022, by the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope in Western Australia. The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile confirmed that the FRB came from a distant place. The FRB was four times more energetic than closer FRBs. "It required Hubble's keen sharpness and sensitivity to pinpoint exactly where the FRB came from," said lead author Alexa Gordon of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. "Without Hubble's imaging, it would still remain a mystery as to whether this was originating from one monolithic galaxy or from some type of interacting system. It's these types of environments -- these weird ones -- that are driving us toward better understanding the mystery of FRBs." Hubble's crisp images suggest this FRB originated in an environment where there may be as many as seven galaxies on a possible path to merging, which would also be very significant, researchers say.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

prisoninmate shares a report: Originally released on November 12th, 2017, the long-term supported (LTS) Linux 4.14 kernel series has now reached its end of supported life after being maintained for more than six years. Renowned kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced today on the Linux kernel mailing list the release of Linux 4.14.336 as what appears to be the last maintenance update to the long-term supported Linux 4.14 kernel series, which is now marked as EOL (End of Life) on the kernel.org website. "This is the LAST 4.14.y kernel to be released. It is now officially end-of-life. Do NOT use this kernel version anymore, please move to a newer one, as shown on the kernel.org releases page," said Greg Kroah-Hartman. "If you are stuck at this version due to a vendor requiring it, go get support from that vendor for this obsolete kernel tree, as that is what you are paying them for."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA has postponed its plans to send humans to the moon after delays hit its hugely ambitious Artemis programme, which aims to get spaceboots bouncing again on the lunar surface for the first time in half a century. From a report: The US space agency has announced the Artemis III mission to land four astronauts near the lunar south pole will be delayed a year until September 2026. Artemis II, a 10-day expedition to send a crew around the moon and back to test life support systems, will also be pushed back to September 2025. NASA said the delays would allow its teams to work through development challenges associated with the programme, which partners with private companies including Elon Musk's SpaceX and Lockheed Martin and uses some largely untested spacecraft and technology. "We are returning to the moon in a way we never have before, and the safety of our astronauts is Nasa's top priority as we prepare for future Artemis missions," said the Nasa administrator Bill Nelson. Washington wants to establish a long-term human presence outside Earth's orbit, including construction of a lunar base camp as well as a space station that circles the moon. Its ultimate plans are to send people to Mars, but it has decided to return to the moon first to learn more about deep space before embarking on what would be a months-long voyage to the red planet.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Previously unknown self-replicating malware has been infecting Linux devices worldwide, installing cryptomining malware using unusual concealment methods. The worm is a customized version of Mirai botnet malware, which takes control of Linux-based internet-connected devices to infect others. Mirai first emerged in 2016, delivering record-setting distributed denial-of-service attacks by compromising vulnerable devices. Once compromised, the worm self-replicates by scanning for and guessing credentials of additional vulnerable devices. While traditionally used for DDoS attacks, this latest variant focuses on covert cryptomining. ArsTechnica adds: On Wednesday, researchers from network security and reliability firm Akamai revealed that a previously unknown Mirai-based network they dubbed NoaBot has been targeting Linux devices since at least last January. Instead of targeting weak telnet passwords, the NoaBot targets weak passwords connecting SSH connections. Another twist: Rather than performing DDoSes, the new botnet installs cryptocurrency mining software, which allows the attackers to generate digital coins using victims' computing resources, electricity, and bandwidth. The cryptominer is a modified version of XMRig, another piece of open source malware. More recently, NoaBot has been used to also deliver P2PInfect, a separate worm researchers from Palo Alto Networks revealed last July. Akamai has been monitoring NoaBot for the past 12 months in a honeypot that mimics real Linux devices to track various attacks circulating in the wild. To date, attacks have originated from 849 distinct IP addresses, almost all of which are likely hosting a device that's already infected. The following figure tracks the number of attacks delivered to the honeypot over the past year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI has launched an online store where people can share customized versions of the company's popular ChatGPT chatbot, after initially delaying the rollout because of leadership upheaval last year. From a report: The new store, which rolled out Wednesday to paid ChatGPT users, will corral the chatbots that users create for a variety of tasks, for example a version of ChatGPT that can teach math to a child or come up with colorful cocktail recipes. The product, called the GPT Store, will include chatbots that users have chosen to share publicly. It will eventually introduce ways for people to make money from their creations -- much as they might through the app stores of Apple or Alphabet's Google. Similar to those app stores, OpenAI's GPT Store will let users see the most popular and trending chatbots on a leaderboard and search for them by category. In a blog post announcing the rollout, OpenAI said that people have made 3 million custom chatbots thus far, though it was not clear how many were available through its store at launch. The store's launch comes as OpenAI works to build out its ecosystem of services and find new sources of revenue. On Wednesday, OpenAI also announced a new paid ChatGPT tier for companies with smaller teams that starts at $25 a month per user. OpenAI first launched a corporate version of ChatGPT with added features and privacy safeguards in August.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The global music industry surpassed 4 trillion streams in 2023, a new single-year record, Luminate's 2023 Year-End Report found. Global streams were also up 34% from last year, reflective of an increasingly international music marketplace. From a report: Stateside, three genres saw the biggest growth in 2023: country (23.7%), Latin (which encompasses all Latin musical genres, up 24.1%) and world (a catchall that includes J-pop, K-pop and Afrobeats, up 26.2%.) It seems that more Americans are listening to non-English music. By the end of 2023, Luminate found that Spanish-language music's share of the top 10,000 songs streamed in the U.S. grew 3.8%, and English-language music's share dropped 3.8%.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Valve has issued new rules about how game developers can publish games that use AI technology on Steam. From a report: Writing in a blog post, the company says that it is "making changes to how we handle games that use AI technology" which mean that developers will need to disclose when their games use it. The changes "will enable us to release the vast majority of games that use" AI, Valve's post says. The changes appear designed to increase transparency around the use of AI in Steam games, while offering protections against the risks of using AI generated content and allowing customers to make an informed choice about whether to buy a game that uses AI technology. Under the new rules, developers will need to disclose when games contain pre-generated content (like art, code, or sound) created with the help of AI and promise that it's not "illegal or infringing." They'll also need to say if their game has AI content that is generated "live" while it is running. It's in the latter case when developers will need to detail the safety measures they put in place to stop their AI from generating illegal content. Players will be able to see on a game's store page if it contains AI, and have new options to report illegal AI-generated content if they encounter it in-game.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A U.S.-born chip technology called RISC-V has become critical to China's ambitions. Washington is debating whether and how to limit the technology. From a report: It evolved from a university computer lab in California to a foundation for myriad chips that handle computing chores. RISC-V essentially provides a kind of common language for designing processors that are found in devices like smartphones, disk drives, Wi-Fi routers and tablets. RISC-V has ignited a new debate in Washington in recent months about how far the United States can or should go as it steadily expands restrictions on exporting technology to China that could help advance its military. That's because RISC-V, which can be downloaded from the internet for free, has become a central tool for Chinese companies and government institutions hoping to match U.S. prowess in designing semiconductors. Last month, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party -- in an effort spearheaded by Representative Mike Gallagher, Republican of Wisconsin -- recommended that an interagency government committee study potential risks of RISC-V. Congressional aides have met with members of the Biden administration about the technology, and lawmakers and their aides have discussed extending restrictions to stop U.S. citizens from aiding China on RISC-V, according to congressional staff members. The Chinese Communist Party is "already attempting to use RISC-V's design architecture to undermine our export controls," Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, the ranking Democrat on the House select committee, said in a statement. He added that RISC-V's participants should be focused on advancing technology and "not the geopolitical interests of the Chinese Communist Party." Arm Holdings, a British company that sells competing chip technology, has also lobbied officials to consider restrictions on RISC-V, three people with knowledge of the situation said. Biden administration officials have concerns about China's use of RISC-V but are wary about potential complications with trying to regulate the technology, according to a person familiar with the discussions. The debate over RISC-V is complicated because the technology was patterned after open-source software, the free programs like Linux that allow any developer to view and modify the original code used to make them. Such programs have prompted multiple competitors to innovate and reduce the market power of any single vendor.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The head of Google DeepMind believes its drug discovery spinout will halve the time taken to find new medicines, attracting the attention of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies which are looking to artificial intelligence to revolutionise the lengthy process. From a report: Speaking to the Financial Times, Demis Hassabis, who co-founded Google's AI unit and also leads the drugs offshoot Isomorphic Labs, said the goal was to reduce the discovery stage -- when potential drugs are identified before clinical trials -- from the average of five years to two. "I think that would be success for us and be very meaningful," he said. Hassabis stated the goal days after announcing Isomorphic Lab's first two pharmaceutical partnerships with Eli Lilly and Novartis, which came to a combined value of up to $3bn, in deals set to transform the finances of the unprofitable group. Isomorphic Labs uses an AI platform to predict biochemical structures, which aids the creation of new drugs by recommending which potential compounds will have the desired impact in the body. Including clinical trials, it often takes up to a decade to discover and develop a new drug, costing on average about $2.7bn, according to research by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. Large drugmakers, under pressure to fill their pipelines with new potential medicines while existing ones face patent cliffs, when they will face far cheaper generic competition, are eager for new ways to shorten the process. As healthcare systems around the world put pressure on drug prices, pharma companies are also looking for ways to cut costs in research and development. Hassabis said that many drugmakers had also been eager to partner with Isomorphic but the company wanted to focus on collaborations that could improve its technology.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Karl Bode, reporting for TechDirt: Back in 2019 we noted how the streaming sector risked driving consumers back to piracy if they didn't heed the lessons of the past. We explored how the rush to raise rates, nickel-and-dime users, implement arbitrary restrictions, and force users toward hunting and pecking their way through a confusing platter of exclusives and availability windows risked driving befuddled users back to piracy. And lo and behold, that's exactly what's happening. After several decades of kicking and screaming, studio and music execs somewhere around 2010 finally realized they needed to offer users affordable access to easy-to-use online content resources. They finally realized they needed to compete with piracy and focus on consumer satisfaction whether they liked the concept or not. And unsurprisingly, once they learned that lesson piracy began to dramatically decrease. That was until 2021, when piracy rates began to climb slowly upward again in the U.S. and EU. As the Daily Beast notes, users have grown increasingly frustrated at having to hunt and peck through a universe of different, often terrible streaming services just to find a single film or television program. As every last broadcaster, cable company, broadband provider, and tech company got into streaming they began to lock down "must watch" content behind an ever-shifting number of exclusivity silos, across an ocean of sometimes substandard "me too" services. Initially competition worked, but as the market saturated and the most powerful companies started to silo content, those benefits have been muted. Now users have to hunt and peck between Disney+, Netflix, Starz, Max, Apple+, Acorn, Paramount+, Hulu, Peacock, Amazon Prime, and countless other services in the hopes that a service has the rights to a particular film or program. When you already pay for five different services, you're not keen to sign up to fucking Starz just to watch a single 90s film. And availability is constantly shifting, confusing things further.Read more of this story at Slashdot.