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Lacking quantum computers, some startups "are developing a new breed of software inspired by algorithms used in quantum physics..." reports Reuters. "Once too big for conventional computers, these algorithms are finally being put to work thanks to today's powerful artificial intelligence chips, industry executives told Reuters."QC Ware, a software startup that has raised more than $33 million and initially focused only on software that could run on quantum computers, said it needed to change tack and find a solution for clients today until the future quantum machines arrive. So QC Ware CEO Matt Johnson said it turned to Nvidia Corp's graphic processing units (GPU) to "figure out how can we get them something that is a big step change in performance ... and build a bridge to quantum processing in the future...." This week, QC Ware is unveiling a quantum-inspired software platform called Promethium that will simulate chemical molecules — to see how they interact with things like protein — on a traditional computer using GPUs. The software can cut simulation time from hours to minutes for molecules of 100 atoms, and months to hours for molecules of up to 2000 atoms, compared with existing software solutions, said QC Ware's head of quantum chemistry Robert Parrish... In the past 18 months, quantum software startups including SandBoxAQ — an Alphabet spinoff — raised about $1 billion, according to data firm PitchBook. To be sure, development of this technology is nascent and these startups must work hard to convince some prospective clients. SandBoxAQ CEO Jack Hidary said it was only 24 months ago that AI chips became powerful enough to simulate hundreds of thousands of chemical interactions simultaneously. It developed a quantum-inspired algorithm for biopharma simulation on Google's AI chip called a Tensor Processing Unit (TPU)...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Phoronix reports:If you rely on an Intel I219-LM Gigabit Ethernet adapter, you will want to look forward to upgrading your Linux kernel build soon... A fix was committed Thursday after Intel engineers discovered this particular Ethernet chipset had only been running at around 60% of its maximum speed due to a regression introduced back in 2020... Since the release of Linux 5.8 in mid-2020, this Ethernet adapter had been running at around 60% of its advertised potential due to an e1000e driver regression.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There's a major new update of QEMU, the open-source machine emulator, reports 9to5Linux:Coming a year after QEMU 7.0, the QEMU 8.0 release is here to improve support for ARM and RISC-V architectures. - For ARM, it adds emulation support for FEAT_EVT, FEAT_FGT, and AArch32 ARMv8-R, CPU emulation for Cortex-A55 and Cortex-R52, support for a new Olimex STM32 H405 machine type, as well as gdbstub support for M-profile system registers. - For the RISC-V architecture, QEMU 8.0 brings updated machine support for OpenTitan, PolarFire, and OpenSBI, additional ISA and Extension support for smstateen, native debug icount trigger, cache-related PMU events in virtual mode, Zawrs/Svadu/T-Head/Zicond extensions, and ACPI support. Moreover, RISC-V received multiple fixes covering PMP propagation for TLB, mret exceptions, uncompressed instructions, and other emulation/virtualization improvements. Improvements were also made for the s390x (IBM Z) platform, the HP Precision Architecture (HPPA) platform, and x86.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It was a mix of spiritualism and financial education, remembers one patron of Generación Zoe, which "pitched itself as an 'educational and resource-creating community for personal, professional, financial and spiritual development,'" reports Rest of World:Generación Zoe claimed to make money through trading, and promised a 7.5% monthly return on investment for three years for those who put money into its "trust." In Argentina and other countries, other companies with the Zoe name peddled a similar narrative... It included a "university" that offered courses on ontological coaching, a type of philosophical practice popular in some Argentine business circles... Over 2020 and 2021, more than ten thousand people bought into Zoe, investing hundreds of millions of dollars between them. Zoe grew rapidly, hyping new tech innovations including the "robots" and a cryptocurrency called Zoe Cash. Its interests and visibility expanded: The Zoe name appeared on burger joints, car dealerships, a plane rental company, and pet shops, all emblazoned with its name. It sponsored soccer teams and even created three of its own... Zoe also spread beyond Argentina to other countries in Latin America and further afield, including Mexico, Paraguay, Colombia, Spain, and the U.S. Towards the end of 2021, however, the shine began to wear off, as authorities began looking into Zoe's activities... Zoe members reported being unable to withdraw the funds they had put into trusts or "robots," and in early 2022, the value of Zoe Cash plummeted. Angry investors banged on the doors of Zoe's branches, and investigations against Zoe and Cositorto piled up across Latin America, Spain, and the U.S. By March 2022, a handful of high-profile names involved with Zoe in Argentina had been arrested, or were wanted by the authorities... Prosecutors now accuse Zoe of being nothing more than a simple Ponzi scheme.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Washington Post reports on "a relatively young app called Beeper that pulls all your chats into one place." This is significant, the Post argues, because "we're better off if we have the freedom to pick up our digital lives and move on. Tech companies should feel terrified that you'll walk if they disappoint you..." If different people send you messages in Apple's Messages (a.k.a., iMessage), WhatsApp, LinkedIn and Slack, you don't have to check multiple apps to read and reply. Maybe the best promise of Beeper is that you can ditch your iPhone or Samsung phone for another company's device and keep your text messages... Eric Migicovsky, Beeper's co-founder, told me that if you're pulling Apple Messages into Beeper, you need a Mac computer to upload a digital file. All chat apps have different limits on how much history you can access in the app. There's also a wait list of about 170,000 people for Beeper. (Add yourself to the list here.) The app is free, but Beeper says it will start charging for a version with extra features. To put this all in context, the Post's reporter remembers the hassle of using a cable to transfer a long history of iPhone messages to a new Google Pixel phone, complaining that Apple makes it more difficult than other companies to switch to a different kind of system. "Many of you are happy to live in Apple's world. Great! But if you want the option to leave at some point, try to limit your use of Apple apps when possible..." They look ahead to next year, when the EU "will require large tech companies to make their products compatible with those of competitors" — though it's not clear how much change that will bring. In the meantime, the existence of a small company like Beeper "gives me hope that we don't have to rely on the kindness of technology giants to make it easier to move to a different phone or computer system... You deserve the option of a no-hassle tech divorce at a moment's notice."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Remember that U.S. Air National Guardsman who's suspected of leaking classified documents? The New York Times has discovered "a previously undisclosed chat group on Discord" where the same airman apparently also posted "sensitive information" including "secret intelligence on the Russian war effort," this time to a group with 600 members — and "months earlier than previously known," in February of 2022.The case against Airman Teixeira, 21, who was arrested on April 13, pertains to the leaking of classified documents on another Discord group of about 50 members, called Thug Shaker Central. There, he began posting sensitive information in October 2022, members of the group told The Times. His job as an information technology specialist at an Air Force base in Massachusetts gave him top secret clearance... The user claimed to be posting information from the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies. The additional information raises questions about why authorities did not discover the leaks sooner, particularly since hundreds more people would have been able to see the posts... The exposure of some of America's most closely guarded secrets has prompted criticism about how the Pentagon and intelligence agencies protect classified data, and whether there are weaknesses in both vetting people for security clearances and enforcing the mantra that access to secrets should only be given to people with a "need to know." Unlike Thug Shaker Central, the second chat room was publicly listed on a YouTube channel and was easily accessed in seconds... Apparently eager to impress others in the group who questioned his analysis, he said: "I have a little more than open source info. Perks of being in a USAF intel unit," referring to the United States Air Force... At times, he appeared to be posting from the military base where he was stationed... Airman Teixeira also claimed that he was actively combing classified computer networks for material on the Ukraine war. When one of the Discord users urged him not to abuse his access to classified intelligence, Teixeira replied: "too late...." The Times says they learned about the larger chat room "from another Discord user."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The Rust Foundation on Monday apologized for confusion caused by the organization's proposed trademark policy changes," reports the Register. The Foundation now says their proposed policy "clearly needs improvement" and "there are many valid critiques of the initial draft," promising to address them and adopt a more transparent process (with a report summarizing the feedback soon). From the Register's report:The foundation, which provides financial and legal support for the memory-safe programming language, had proposed fresh rules on the use of the word Rust and its logo, which included the recommendation that people not use 'Rust' in their Rust crate names, eg: vulture-rs would be preferred over vulture-rust. These draft changes triggered a backlash... Over the weekend, Rust creator Graydon Hoare voiced support for the community's objections in a Reddit discussion thread, in response to a post by programmer Andrew Gallant, a former member of the Rust moderation team, who argued the new policy was not all that different from the old one. "Open them up side by side — old and new — and look at what they each say about, specifically, package names, project names, repos or websites using the word 'rust', or modified versions of the logo used for small groups or projects," wrote Hoare. "These are specifically the things people are upset about, because they all changed from 'acceptable' to 'prohibited' when 'clarifying' the policy. And those are specifically things that everyone in the community does, and has done, for years. There are zillions of packages, projects, repos, websites and groups using the names and logo this way, as the old policy said they could. The new policy tells them all to stop." Long-time open source advocate Bruce Perens told the Register that Rust's trademark policy "goes far awry of fair use which is legally permitted. Books on Rust will always have its name in their title, commercial products will be advertised as being written in Rust, being compatible with Rust, or compiling Rust. But the policy attempts to deny permission for these things. A proper trademark policy prevents others from representing that their product is Rust or is endorsed by the trademark holder of Rust. That's really as much as you can ever enforce, so there's no sense in a policy that asks for more." The Register also spoke to Ashley Williams, a former member of the Rust core team and the original executive director and founder of the Rust Foundation, who argued upheaval in Rust's governance over the past year led to a team with less experience dealing with the Rust community. "I think a couple of very passionate people participated in the trademark working group and they didn't involve a lot of people who have even basic experience interacting with the community. So really classic community behaviors ended up getting prohibited in that [draft] policy. And that's really why everybody got upset. The policy ultimately said, 'a thing that you do all the time as a way of contributing to the Rust community is now against our policy.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Snapchat's AI chatbot is now opening up to a global audience, the company announced today at its Snap Partner Summit. Initially launched in February, the feature originally allowed Snapchat's paid subscribers to chat with an AI chatbot powered by OpenAI's GPT technology directly in its app. Now it will be available for free. To date, users have sent nearly 2 million messages per day using the chatbot, Snap noted. With today's global expansion, the feature is also being upgraded with new functionality, including the ability to add My AI to group chats, get recommendations for places on Snap Map and Lenses, and share Snaps with My AI and receive chat replies. Later, My AI will be able to respond with unique "generative" Snaps back, instead of just chat replies, the company also said, to keep the visual conversation going. The idea to integrate AI into the Snapchat app was originally intended to give users another way to engage in the app while taking advantage of the growing consumer demand for ChatGPT-like experiences. The company suggested the feature could be used to do things like suggest birthday gift ideas for a BFF, plan a hiking trip, suggest dinner recipes or write a poem for a friend, among other things. [...] The feature, before today, was available only to Snapchat+ $3.99 per month subscription holders, which could be helping drive upgrades.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are now losing more than three times as much ice a year as they were 30 years ago, according to a new comprehensive international study. Phys.Org reports: Using 50 different satellite estimates, researchers found that Greenland's melt has gone into hyperdrive in the last few years. Greenland's average annual melt from 2017 to 2020 was 20% more a year than at the beginning of the decade and more than seven times higher than its annual shrinkage in the early 1990s. From 1992 to 1996, the two ice sheets -- which hold 99% of the world's freshwater ice -- were shrinking by 116 billion tons (105 billion metric tons) a year, two-thirds of it from Antarctica. But from 2017 to 2020, the newest data available, the combined melt soared to 410 billion tons (372 billion metric tons) a year, more than two-thirds of it from Greenland, said the study in Thursday's journal Earth System Science Data. Since 1992, Earth has lost 8.3 trillion tons (7.6 trillion metric tons) of ice from the two ice sheets, the study found. That's enough to flood the entire United States with 33.6 inches (almost 0.9 meters) of water or submerge France in 49 feet (nearly 15 meters). But because the world's oceans are so huge, the melt just from the ice sheets since 1992 still only adds up to a little less than inch (21 millimeters) of sea level rise, on average. Globally sea level rise is accelerating and melt from ice sheets has gone from contributing 5% of the sea level rise to now accounting for more than one-quarter of it, the study said. The rest of the sea rise comes from warmer water expanding and melt from glaciers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Humane, the top-secret tech startup founded by ex-Apple vets Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, just showed off the first demo for its projector-based wearable at a TED talk. From a report: Axios' Ina Fried broke the news, and Inverse has seen a recording of the full TED talk given by Chaudhri. Journalist Zarif Ali, who had tweeted out an image of Humane's wearable projecting a phone call function onto Chaudhri's palm, says the full TED talk video is not slated to become available until April 22. I've clipped out a demo of the AI-powered wearable in action.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: China is building sophisticated cyber weapons to "seize control" of enemy satellites, rendering them useless for data signals or surveillance during wartime, according to a leaked US intelligence report. The US assesses that China's push to develop capabilities to "deny, exploit or hijack" enemy satellites is a core part of its goal to control information, which Beijing considers to be a key "war-fighting domain." The CIA-marked document, which was issued this year and has been reviewed by the Financial Times, was one of dozens allegedly shared by a 21-year-old US Air Guardsman in the most significant American intelligence disclosures in more than a decade. A cyber capability of this nature would far exceed anything Russia has deployed in Ukraine, where electronic warfare teams have taken a brute-force approach with little effect. These attacks, first developed in the 1980s, attempt to drown out signals between low-orbit SpaceX satellites and their on-ground terminals by broadcasting on similar frequencies from truck-borne jamming systems such as the Tirada-2. China's more ambitious cyber attacks aim to mimic the signals that enemy satellites receive from their operators, tricking them into either being taken over completely or malfunctioning during crucial moments in combat. The classified US document said this cyber capability would allow China "to seize control of a satellite, rendering it ineffective to support communications, weapons, or intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems." The US has never disclosed whether it has similar capabilities. Taiwan, which has taken note of how indispensable satellite communications have been to the Ukrainian military, is seeking to build out communications infrastructure that can survive an attack from China. It is courting investors to establish its own satellite provider, while experimenting with non-geostationary satellite receivers in 700 locations around Taiwan to guarantee bandwidth in the event of war or disasters, the Financial Times reported in January. China's goals, according to the leaked assessment, [...] would seek to knock out the ability of satellites -- which tend to operate in interconnected clusters -- to communicate with each other, to relay signals and orders to weapons systems, or to send back visual and intercepted electronic data, according to experts. "China understands the superiority that the United States has in the space and cyber domains, so they are very interested in not only improving their own capabilities but in capitalizing on what we refer to as a first-mover advantage in both domains," said Moore, now a visiting professor at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. "They are working on all the capabilities that they want to have from a defensive and offensive standpoint, and from an ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] standpoint. They're firing on all cylinders," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Colorado-based Biofire Tech is taking orders for a smart gun enabled by facial-recognition technology, the latest development in personalized weapons that can only be fired by verified users. Reuters reports: But in a sign of the long, challenging road that smart guns have faced, a prototype twice failed to fire when demonstrated for Reuters this week. Company founder and Chief Executive Kai Kloepfer said the software and electronics have been fully tested, and the failure was related to the mechanical gun which was made from pre-production and prototype parts. At other times during the demonstration the weapon fired successfully and the facial-recognition technology appeared to function. Biofire's gun can also be enabled by a fingerprint reader, one of several smart gun features designed to avoid accidental shootings by children, reduce suicides, protect police from gun grabs, or render lost and stolen guns useless. The first consumer-ready versions of the 9mm handgun could be shipped to customers who pre-ordered as soon as the fourth quarter of this year, with the standard $1,499 model possibly available by the second quarter of 2024, Biofire said. That could make it the first commercially available smart gun in the United States since the Armatix briefly went on sale in 2014. At least two other American companies, LodeStar Works and Free State Firearms, are also attempting to get a smart gun to market.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mike Lynch, the tech entrepreneur once hailed as Britain's answer to Bill Gates, has lost an appeal against extradition to the US to answer criminal fraud charges. The Guardian reports: Lynch, the founding investor of the British cybersecurity firm Darktrace, is facing allegations that he duped the US firm Hewlett-Packard into overpaying when it struck an $11bn deal for his software firm Autonomy in 2011. Two high court judges considered Mike Lynch's challenge at a recent hearing in London and on Friday issued a ruling rejecting his appeal against extradition to face the charges. Lynch, who could face a maximum prison sentence of 25 years if found guilty, has always denied the allegations and any wrongdoing. Lord Justice Lewis and Justice Julian Knowles ruled on Friday that Lynch, who made 500 million pounds from the sale to HP and was hailed as one of Britain's few global tech champions, should be extradited to the US to stand trial. Sushovan Hussain, Autonomy's former finance director, is already serving time in jail in the US after being found guilty of fraud relating to the same deal. A spokesperson for Lynch said he was considering appealing to the European court of human rights. "Dr Lynch is very disappointed, but is reviewing the judgment and will continue to explore his options to appeal, including to the European court of human rights (ECHR)," he said. "The United States' legal overreach into the UK is a threat to the rights of all British citizens and the sovereignty of the UK." However, criminal defense law firm Corker Binning said that only 8% of applications to the ECHR in such cases -- seeking a Rule 39 order to stop the UK extradition until it has considered the case -- were successful last year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ChatGPT, OpenAI's large language model for chatbots, not only produces mostly insecure code but also fails to alert users to its inadequacies despite being capable of pointing out its shortcomings. The Register reports: Amid the frenzy of academic interest in the possibilities and limitations of large language models, four researchers affiliated with Universite du Quebec, in Canada, have delved into the security of code generated by ChatGPT, the non-intelligent, text-regurgitating bot from OpenAI. In a pre-press paper titled, "How Secure is Code Generated by ChatGPT?" computer scientists Raphael Khoury, Anderson Avila, Jacob Brunelle, and Baba Mamadou Camara answer the question with research that can be summarized as "not very." "The results were worrisome," the authors state in their paper. "We found that, in several cases, the code generated by ChatGPT fell well below minimal security standards applicable in most contexts. In fact, when prodded to whether or not the produced code was secure, ChatGPT was able to recognize that it was not." [...] In all, ChatGPT managed to generate just five secure programs out of 21 on its first attempt. After further prompting to correct its missteps, the large language model managed to produce seven more secure apps -- though that's "secure" only as it pertains to the specific vulnerability being evaluated. It's not an assertion that the final code is free of any other exploitable condition. [...] The academics observe in their paper that part of the problem appears to arise from ChatGPT not assuming an adversarial model of code execution. The model, they say, "repeatedly informed us that security problems can be circumvented simply by 'not feeding an invalid input' to the vulnerable program it has created." Yet, they say, "ChatGPT seems aware of -- and indeed readily admits -- the presence of critical vulnerabilities in the code it suggests." It just doesn't say anything unless asked to evaluate the security of its own code suggestions. Initially, ChatGPT's response to security concerns was to recommend only using valid inputs -- something of a non-starter in the real world. It was only afterward, when prompted to remediate problems, that the AI model provided useful guidance. That's not ideal, the authors suggest, because knowing which questions to ask presupposes familiarity with specific vulnerabilities and coding techniques. The authors also point out that there's ethical inconsistency in the fact that ChatGPT will refuse to create attack code but will create vulnerable code.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to CNBC, Google has halted construction of its proposed 80-acre campus in San Jose, California, after the first demolition phase. "Some sources close to the development told CNBC that the company doesn't have plans to revive the project in the near future." From the report: In June 2021, Google won approval to build an 80-acre campus, spanning 7.3 million square feet of office space, in San Jose, California, the third-largest city in the country's most populous state. The estimated economic impact: $19 billion. [...] The city of San Jose may now be paying the price. What was poised to be a mega-campus called "Downtown West," with thousands of new housing units and 15 acres of public parks, is largely a demolition zone at risk of becoming a long-term eyesore and economic zero. CNBC has learned that, as part of Google's downsizing that went into effect early this year, the company has gutted its development team for the San Jose campus. The construction project, which was supposed to break ground before the end of 2023, has been put on pause, and no plan to restart construction has been communicated to contractors, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named due to non-disclosure agreements. While sources are optimistic that a campus will be built at some point and said Google representatives have expressed a commitment to it, they're concerned the project may not reach the scale promised in the original master plan. The Mercury News, one of Silicon Valley's main newspapers, previously reported that Google was reassessing its timeline. Sources told CNBC that the company started signaling to contractors late last year that the project could face delays and changes. In February, LendLease, the lead developer for the project, laid off 67 employees, including several community engagement managers, according to filings viewed by CNBC. Senior development managers, a head of business operations and other executives were among those let go. Last month, Google also removed construction updates from its website for the project, according to internal correspondence viewed by CNBC.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Stack Overflow, a popular internet forum for computer programming help, plans to begin charging large AI developers as soon as the middle of this year for access to the 50 million questions and answers on its service, CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar says. The site has more than 20 million registered users. Stack Overflow's decision to seek compensation from companies tapping its data, part of a broader generative AI strategy, has not been previously reported. It follows an announcement by Reddit this week that it will begin charging some AI developers to access its own content starting in June. "Community platforms that fuel LLMs absolutely should be compensated for their contributions so that companies like us can reinvest back into our communities to continue to make them thrive," Stack Overflow's Chandrasekar says. "We're very supportive of Reddit's approach." Chandrasekar described the potential additional revenue as vital to ensuring Stack Overflow can keep attracting users and maintaining high-quality information. He argues that will also help future chatbots, which need "to be trained on something that's progressing knowledge forward. They need new knowledge to be created." But fencing off valuable data also could deter some AI training and slow improvement of LLMs, which are a threat to any service that people turn to for information and conversation. Chandrasekar says proper licensing will only help accelerate development of high-quality LLMs. Chandrasekar says that LLM developers are violating Stack Overflow's terms of service. Users own the content they post on Stack Overflow, as outlined in its TOS, but it all falls under a Creative Commons license that requires anyone later using the data to mention where it came from. When AI companies sell their models to customers, they "are unable to attribute each and every one of the community members whose questions and answers were used to train the model, thereby breaching the Creative Commons license," Chandrasekar says. Neither Stack Overflow nor Reddit has released pricing information. "Both Stack Overflow and Reddit will continue to license data for free to some people and companies," notes Wired. "Chandrasekar says Stack Overflow only wants remuneration only from companies developing LLMs for big, commercial purposes." "When people start charging for products that are built on community-built sites like ours, that's where it's not fair use," he says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to the Wall Street Journal, ride-hailing company Lyft is planning to cut 1,200 jobs, or more than 30% of the company's 4,000-person workforce. These figures don't include drivers because they aren't counted as employees at Lyft. Insider reports: It's another round of reductions for the company that last cut 700 employees in November. The cuts come just days after David Risher took the helm as Lyft's new CEO and could help the company reduce costs by 50%, the Journal said. In a memo to employees sent Friday morning that has since been posted on Lyft's site, Risher noted that the company intends to use the savings to "invest in competitive pricing, faster pick-up times, and better driver earnings." In the memo, Risher said employees would receive an email with details of their employment status on April 27 at 8:30 am Pacific time. A spokesperson for Lyft told Insider that the company would not be able to confirm the number of affected employees until next week. However, in an emailed statement, the spokesperson said that "David has made clear to the company that his focus is on creating a great and affordable experience for riders and improving drivers' earnings." The spokesperson added, "to do so requires that we reduce our costs and structure our company so that our leaders are closer to riders and drivers. This is a hard decision and one we're not making lightly. But the result will be a far stronger, more competitive Lyft."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Redbox CEO Bill Rouhana told The Hollywood Reporter that he'd like to buy the business, saying: "I wish Netflix would sell me that business instead of shutting it down." From the report: Redbox is already the biggest DVD rental company in the U.S., with a network of some 32,000 red DVD kiosks across the country. Just this week, it announced plans to add another 1,500 kiosks at Dollar General stores (Rouhana says the Dollar General kiosks are some of the company's most profitable). While the DVD business kickstarted Netflix's meteoric rise, in recent years it has been on the decline. In 2022, it had $146 million in revenue, down $40 million from the year prior. Q1 had revenue of $32 million, suggesting a further decline this year. And Rouhana says he has reached out to Netflix over the years expressing a desire to acquire the DVD business, to no avail. "I have tried like three or four times to reach out to the corporate development people about it but just got rebuffed each time," Rouhana says. "So when I saw it being closed, I thought, 'Well, maybe they'll do it now.'" A Netflix source tells THR that the company is winding down the business, and not selling it. (As for what happens to those warehouses full of DVDs that fueled Netflix's red envelope business, they seem to be in limbo for now.) Even if that is the case, Rouhana says he believes Netflix's decision to shutter the service will benefit his company. "This could be a great boon to us because now there are a whole bunch of people who are going to look for a new place to get their DVDs, and we're close to 90 percent of them based on where our kiosks are located," he says. And, he notes, he does not expect the DVD business to go away anytime soon. "We believe in it, and we believe it's going to be around for a while. Like most legacy things, it's a lot harder to kill them than people say, I believe," he adds. In fact, he believes the DVD business is in a position for growth over the next few years, thanks to a larger slate of movies hitting theaters and a desire from studios to reengage with windowing strategies. "We programmed our business plan for us to get back to about 30 percent of the 2019 level," Rouhana says. "I feel that's pretty conservative, I think we'll be better than that. But, you know, that's how we built the business plan that we've articulated. So people can decide for themselves whether they think that's overly optimistic or overly pessimistic."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A man sitting in the driver's seat of a Toyota is repeatedly tapping a button next to the steering wheel. A red light flashes -- no luck, the engine won't start. He doesn't have the key. In response, the man pulls up an usual tool: a Nokia 3310 phone. The man plugs the phone into the car using a black cable. He then flicks through some options on the 3310's tiny LCD screen. "CONNECT. GET DATA," the screen says. He then tries to start the car again. The light turns green, and the engine roars. This under 30 second clip shows a new breed of car theft that is spreading across the U.S. Criminals use tiny devices, sometimes hidden inside innocuous looking bluetooth speakers or mobile phones, to interface with the vehicle's control system. This allows thieves with very little technical experience to steal cars without needing the key, sometimes in just 15 seconds or so. With the devices available to buy online for a few thousand dollars, the barrier of entry for stealing even high-end luxury cars is dramatically reduced. The video showing the man using a Nokia 3310 to start a Toyota is just one of many YouTube videos Motherboard found demonstrating the technique. Others show devices used on Maserati, Land Cruiser, and Lexus-branded vehicles. Multiple websites and Telegram channels advertise the tech for between 2,500 Euro and 18,000 Euro ($2,700 and $19,600). One seller is offering the Nokia 3310 device for 3,500 Euro ($3,800); another advertises it for 4000 Euro ($4,300). Often sellers euphemistically refer to the tech as "emergency start" devices nominally intended for locksmiths. Some of the sites offer tools that may be of use to locksmiths, but legitimate businesses likely have no use for a tool that is hidden inside a phone or other casing. Some of the sites even claim to offer updates for devices customers have already purchased, suggesting that development of the devices and their capabilities is an ongoing process. "At the moment, impacted vehicles are generally wide open to these sorts of attacks," says Motherboard. "The only proper fix would be to introduce cryptographic protections to CAN messages [...] via a software update."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mullvad, the Swedish company behind Mullvad VPN (virtual private network), says police walked away with nothing after attempting to seize computers from its office. From a report: According to an update on Mullvad's site, the authorities left and didn't take anything after it informed them that the company doesn't store customer data. "We argued they had no reason to expect to find what they were looking for and any seizures would therefore be illegal under Swedish law," Mullvad writes. "After demonstrating that this is indeed how our service works and them consulting the prosecutor they left without taking anything and without any customer information." [...] Mullvad says this is the first time in its 14 years of operating a VPN that police have issued a search warrant, and company CEO Jan Jonsson tells The Verge he doesn't "know exactly what they were looking for." Even if the authorities had seized its servers, Jonsson says that police wouldn't have found anything due to its strict policies against keeping data. The Verge reached out to Swedish authorities with a request for more information but didn't immediately hear back.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit tech consortium that manages various open source efforts, today announced the launch of the TLA+ Foundation to promote the adoption and development of the TLA+ programming language. AWS, Oracle and Microsoft are among the inaugural members. From a report: What is the TLA+ programming language, you ask? It's a formal "spec" language developed by computer scientist and mathematician Leslie Lamport. Best known for his seminal work in distributed systems, Lamport -- now a scientist at Microsoft Research -- created TLA+ to design, model, document and verify software programs -- particularly those of the concurrent and distributed variety. To give a few examples, ElasticSearch, the organization behind the search engine of the same name, used TLA+ to verify the correctness of their distributed systems algorithms. Elsewhere, Thales, the electrical systems manufacturing firm, used TLA+ to model and develop fault-tolerant modules for its industrial control platform. "TLA+ is unique in that it's intended for specifying a system, rather than for implementing software," a Linux Foundation spokesperson told TechCrunch via email. "Based on mathematical concepts, notably set theory and temporal logic, TLA+ allows for the expression of a system's desired correctness properties in a formal and rigorous manner."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Biden administration is beginning to plan for 6G wireless telecommunications, seeking to expand internet access while reasserting U.S. leadership in a sector where China has notched gains. WSJ: The White House on Friday will meet with corporate, government and academic experts to begin developing goals and strategies for the new 6G communications technology, which would have the ability to take cloud computing and the mobile internet to true global ubiquity, among other improvements. The next generation of telecom is still years away from deployment, but it could pave the way for global internet access still unavailable with the current 5G standard, which makes smartphone downloads and wireless hot-spot connections faster. Expanding access to the internet has been a priority for the Biden administration as part of its infrastructure initiatives. The 6G planning initiative also aims to reassert the leadership of the U.S. and its allies in telecommunications, where China has made gains thanks in part to careful nurturing of homegrown equipment manufacturing and increased participation in international standard-setting.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cutting red tape and unleashing the free market was supposed to help strapped families. So far, it hasn't worked out that way. From a report: Austin is experiencing an unrivaled apartment boom. In 2021 the region including the Texas capital issued nearly 26,000 multifamily housing permits, about 11 units per 1,000 residents. That's more per capita than any large US metro area since 1996, when Las Vegas OK'd new apartments at only a slightly higher level, according to rental marketing firm Apartment List. By the same measure, which is based on an analysis of US census data, Austin topped the 50 largest US metropolitan areas in 9 of the last 10 years. Many, if not most, of these apartments are classified as luxury, depending on how you define it. (Some developments are likely using a bit of real estate puffery.) Buildings such as the Hanover have become a flashpoint in a fierce, often bitter debate raging in Texas, the US and around the world. It's about the best way to shelter this generation and the next, particularly in the most sought-after and expensive cities. Academics, developers and people in their 20s and 30s -- particularly those most active on social media -- have reached an unusual level of consensus. Their solution, supported by a wealth of scholarly research, is simple and elegant: Loosen regulations, such as zoning, and build more homes of any kind -- cheap, modest and palatial. The shorthand for the movement has become "Build, build, build" or "Yes, in my backyard" -- Yimby, for short. It's a rejoinder to the "Not in my backyard," or Nimby, crowd, the hidebound folks who typically thwart construction. Texas is famous for its business-friendly ways, and David Ott is one of many embracing the Yimby approach. He oversees the Texas projects of Houston-based Hanover, which developed the building Young was showing on a recent March afternoon. He says Austin is getting overbuilt, so rents will indeed come down, especially in the suburbs. "It's simple supply and demand," he says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Buzzfeed isn't the only company that merged with a SPAC that's hurting. Of the 365 companies that listed publicly through a SPAC merger between 2020 and 2022, 100 -- or 27% -- were penny stocks trading below $1 as of Thursday's close, according to data firm SPAC Research. From a report: Among the companies now in the cents-per-share club: WeWork, scooter rental company Bird, and aspiring electric vehicle makers including Nikola, Lordstown Motors and Faraday Future. Two-thirds of companies -- 248 -- are under $5 a share, a steep drop from SPACs' standard $10 initial listing price. SPACs, or special purpose acquisition companies, are publicly-listed blank check companies that are intended to merge with private companies and bring them public. Normally a tiny sliver of the financial sector, SPACs exploded in popularity when the markets turned particularly frothy and investors rushed into fast-growing, money-losing young companies. Startups that were years away from producing revenue were able to woo public investors with ambitious goals and revenue projections. Those projections are now being missed en masse. Of those that completed SPAC mergers during the boom, just 28 -- or 8% -- are trading above their initial listing price, according to SPAC Research. Another 28 aren't listed anymore, generally because they were bought by another company or went out of business.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alphabet's Google asked a court late Thursday to toss out several allegations made by Epic, Match and U.S. state attorneys general about how the search and advertising giant runs its app store for Android phones. From a report: Google's motion is the company's latest bid to end costly and time-consuming antitrust lawsuits. It has also asked a federal court in Washington to dismiss claims in a 2020 antitrust lawsuit filed by the Justice Department. And it has asked a federal court in Virginia to dismiss a complaint that the federal government filed this year. read more read more "Google looks forward to vindicating itself at trial and defending the innovation that made Android successful," the company said in its filing, noting that it had brought a "targeted motion for partial summary judgment, which will narrow this sprawling antitrust case for trial." In its court filing in federal court in Utah on Thursday, Google asked that five claims be thrown out. Among them, it asked the court to toss out allegations that Google prohibited the distribution of other app stores and, thus, broke the law. Google argued it does not have a legal obligation to put other app stores in Android and, in fact, most Android phones come preloaded with more than one app store and others can be installed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is updating its Bard AI chatbot to help developers write and debug code. Rivals like ChatGPT and Bing AI have supported code generation, but Google says it has been "one of the top requests" it has received since opening up access to Bard last month. From a report: Bard can now generate code, debug existing code, help explain lines of code, and even write functions for Google Sheets. "We're launching these capabilities in more than 20 programming languages including C++, Go, Java, Javascript, Python and Typescript," explains Paige Bailey, group product manager for Google Research, in a blog post. You can ask Bard to explain code snippets or explain code within GitHub repos similar to how Microsoft-owned GitHub is implementing a ChatGPT-like assistant with Copilot. Bard will also debug code that you supply or even its own code if it made some errors or the output wasn't what you were looking for.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Canada's $190bn Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan says it is steering clear of the cryptocurrency sector after writing off a $95mn investment in FTX, the failed digital currency exchange. From a report: OTPP was among a number of big-name money managers to back FTX, with investments in 2021 and early 2022. The move was widely seen as a sign that high-profile, blue-chip investors were giving their stamp of approval to the fast-growing but lightly regulated crypto sector. But in November 2022 OTPP wrote off its entire stake, following FTX's dramatic collapse. The exchange's high-profile founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, is now facing fraud charges. "We're still working through what exactly happened there and you're going to be careful," OTPP chief executive Jo Taylor told the Financial Times. "It'd be unwise for us to rush" into another crypto investment based in part on "feedback from our members," he added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The controversial EARN IT Act, first introduced in 2020, is returning to Congress after failing twice to land on the president's desk. The Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act, (EARN IT) Act is intended to minimize the proliferation of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) throughout the web, but detractors say it goes too far and risks further eroding online privacy protections. Here's how it would work, according to the language of the bill's reintroduction last year. Upon passing, EARN IT would create a national commission composed of politically-appointed law enforcement specialists. This body would be tasked with making a list of best practices to ostensibly curb the digital distribution of CSAM. If online service providers do not abide by these best practices, they would potentially lose blanket immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, opening them up to all kinds of legal hurdles -- including civil lawsuits and criminal charges. [...] The full text of H.R.2732 is not publicly available yet, so it's unclear if anything has changed since last year's attempt, though when reintroduced last year it was more of the same. (We've reached out to the offices of Reps. Wagner and Garcia for a copy of the bill's text.) A member of Senator Graham's office confirmed to Engadget that the companion bill will be introduced within the next week. It also remains to be seen if and when this will come up for a vote. Both prior versions of EARN IT died in committee before ever coming to a vote. The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the American Civil Liberties Union all oppose the bill. Those defending it include the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), saying that it will "incentivize technology companies to proactively search for and remove" CSAM materials. "Tech companies have the technology to detect, remove, and stop the distribution of child sexual abuse material. However, there is no incentive to do so because they are subject to no consequences for their inaction."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon has introduced a new feature to Prime Video called Dialogue Boost. It's intended to isolate dialogue and make it louder relative to other sounds in streaming videos on the service. Ars Technica reports: Amazon describes how it works in a blog post: "Dialogue Boost analyzes the original audio in a movie or series and intelligently identifies points where dialogue may be hard to hear above background music and effects. Then, speech patterns are isolated and audio is enhanced to make the dialogue clearer. This AI-based approach delivers a targeted enhancement to portions of spoken dialogue, instead of a general amplification at the center channel in a home theater system." Not all content will be eligible for the dialogue boost feature, though -- at least not yet. Amazon says it "has initially launched on select Amazon Originals worldwide" like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and The Big Sick. While this is partly an accessibility feature for people who are hard of hearing, Amazon is also responding to a widespread complaint among viewers. A 2022 survey found that 50 percent of 1,260 American viewers "watch content with subtitles most of the time," many of them citing "muddled audio" and saying that it's more difficult to understand dialogue in movies and TV shows than it used to be. [...] The company hasn't announced when the feature will expand to more content. But we wouldn't be surprised to see rapid expansion -- not just from Amazon, but from other streamers offering similar features, too.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which was created last year to investigate unidentified flying objects (UFOs), said on Wednesday that they have not found any evidence of aliens in its analysis. The office within the Secretary of Defense is, however, tracking more than 650 potential cases of so-called "unidentified aerial phenomena" -- up from the 350 reports referenced in an unclassified intelligence report released earlier this year. Half of them are considered "especially interesting and anomalous." The Register reports: At hearings (one open and one closed) held by the Senate Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities this week, Sean Kirkpatrick said most sightings of UFOs are not as strange as they first appear. They are often balloons, unmanned aerial systems, or aircraft, and look odd due to natural phenomena. "I want to underscore that only a very small percentage of [unidentified anomalous phenomena] (UAP) reports display signatures that could reasonably be described as anomalous," he said during this opening testimony at the hearing. AARO has failed to resolve some incidents, but it's not because something is inexplicable but due to a lack of data. "In our research, AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics," Kirkpatrick confirmed. In other words: It's not aliens. Kirkpatrick said that if the Office does find sufficient scientific data supporting the idea of an object of extraterrestrial origin, it would share its findings with NASA and alert US government personnel. Amateur UFO spotters are fine, he said, but need to apply scientific method to their claims. Further reading: Pentagon Official Floats a Theory For Unexplained Sightings: Alien MothershipsRead more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Mechanics: The Mayan calendar's 819-day cycle has confounded scholars for decades, but new research shows how it matches up to planetary cycles over a 45-year span. That's a much broader view of the tricky calendar than anyone previously tried to take. In a study published in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica, two Tulane University scholars highlighted how researchers never could quite explain the 819-day count calendar until they broadened their view. "Although prior research has sought to show planetary connections for the 819-day count, its four-part, color-directional scheme is too short to fit well with the synodic periods of visible planets," the study authors write. "By increasing the calendar length to 20 periods of 819-days a pattern emerges in which the synodic periods of all the visible planets commensurate with station points in the larger 819-day calendar." That means the Mayans took a 45-year view of planetary alignment and coded it into a calendar that has left modern scholars scratching their heads in wonder. Mercury was always the starting point for the tricky timeline because its synodic period -- 117 days -- matches nicely into 819. From there, though, we need to start extrapolating out the 819 number, and if you chart 20 cycles of 819, you can fit every key planet into the mix. And Mars may be the kicker for the overall length. With a 780-day synodic period, 21 periods match exactly to 16,380, or 20 cycles of 819. Venus needs seven periods to match five 819-day counts, Saturn has 13 periods to fit with six 819-day counts, and Jupiter 39 periods to hit 19 819-counts. "Rather than limit their focus to any one planet," the authors write, "the Maya astronomers who created the 819-day count envisioned it as a larger calendar system that could be used for predictions of all the visible planet's synod periods, as well as commensuration points with their cycles in the Tzolk'in and Calendar Round."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New York will launch the nation's first major offshore wind farms later this year off of Long Island. CBS News reports: Long Island winds, strong and consistent, will power New York's first offshore wind farm, and its first power cable has made landfall. Snaking 60 miles, by year's end it will connect 12 wind turbines being built 35 miles east of Montauk, ushering in clean energy to 70,000 homes. It's the biggest dive into offshore wind in the nation -- a first of many. It's named South Fork. It will be the first of five wind farms in the works, with four to five more to come. [...] New York's first five wind farms will power 2.5 million homes within five years. Its goal is to produce all electricity with zero emissions by 2040. "Right now, Long Island is powered about 80% by fossil fuels. And when we go to 2040 it will be 0% for New York. Off shore wind will probably provide 25% of the state's electricity within the next 10 to 15 years. So it's a massive, renewable clean source of energy at affordable prices. And it's located right near where all the electricity demand is," CEO of LIPA Tom Falcone said. "We need to transition downstate from fossil fuels to renewables. And that's a great challenge for New York, because we can't really build anything on the land because there isn't land. So we have to share the ocean," said Adrienne Esposito from Citizens Campaign for the Environment.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bluesky, the Twitter alternative backed by Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey, has now rolled out to Android users. TechCrunch reports: The app, which promises a future of decentralized social networking and choose-your-own algorithms, initially launched to iOS users in late February and remains in a closed beta. The exclusivity is driving demand for the newer social network to some extent, but so is having Dorsey's name attached. Bluesky aims to give users algorithmic choice, letting them eventually choose from a marketplace of algorithms that let them control what they see on their own feed, instead of having it controlled by some central authority. At launch, however, Bluesky remains a pared-down version of Twitter without many of the features that make the social network what it is today, including basic tools for tracking likes or bookmarks, editing tweets, quote-tweeting, DM's, using hashtags and more. It's also building in decentralization with its own protocol -- the AT Protocol -- instead of contributing to the existing work around ActivityPub, the protocol powering the open source Twitter alternative Mastodon and a range of other decentralized apps in the wider "Fediverse" -- the name for these interconnected servers running open software used for web publishing. That puts Bluesky on the outside of where a lot of the current activity is taking place around decentralized social networking. You can download Bluesky on the Google Play Store here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Faruk Fatih Ozer, the founder of Thodex, one of Turkey's largest crypto exchanges, facing charges of fraud and running a criminal organization, has been extradited to Turkey and was detained by police upon arrival in Istanbul, state media aa.com reported on Thursday. CoinDesk reports: Ozer was arrested in Albania in August after an Interpol red notice against him. Ozer, the founder and CEO of Thodex, fled to Albania after his exchange suddenly went offline last year. More than 400,000 members were left in the dark without access to deposits of $2 billion in cryptocurrencies. The events surrounding Thodex had created a stir in Turkey where crypto has been used as a hedge against inflation. Ozer's brother, sister and four other senior employees were jailed, and at least 83 people were detained as part of the investigation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg reportedly said the embattled company may not be done with layoffs even as it goes through its latest round of 4,000 this week and braces for another batch in May. MarketWatch reports: The parent company of Facebook and Instagram, which announced its intention to slash 21,000 jobs late last year, is also likely to dramatically slow down hiring, Zuckerberg told employees in a town hall on Thursday, according to a Wall Street Journal report. "I just kind of think that for where we are in the efficiency that we're able to get from new technologies, that's probably the right model to expect going forward and that will be a different operating model and I think we can do it well," Zuckerberg said in a virtual Q&A session, the report said. Meta, which announces quarterly results on Wednesday, faces an uncertain future over the next few years, Zuckerberg said, and there are no guarantees the workforce reductions are over. "I generally feel good about the position here, but just given the volatility, I don't want to kind of promise that there won't be future things in the future," he said. "What I can say is that there's nothing that we're planning now, and if we do something, it'll be sort of on that time frame."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China's Huawei said on Thursday it is replacing internal software management systems it once sourced from U.S. vendors with its own in-house version, hailing it as a victory over U.S. curbs that once threatened its survival. From a report: Huawei held an internal ceremony to celebrate the switch to its own 'MetaERP' (enterprise resource planning system) in Dongguan, south China on Thursday, attended by the Huawei's rotating Chairperson Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of the company's founder Ren Zhengfei. ERP software is used by companies to manage key business operations ranging from accounting to supply chain management. "We were cut off from the old ERP system and other core operation and management systems three years ago," said Tao Jingwen, a Huawei board member and president of its quality, business process and IT management department. "Today we are proud to announce that we have broken through that blockade, we have survived!" The in-house Meta-ERP has been rolled out across 80% of the company's business, Huawei said in a news release.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A Montreal man spent years trying to hold Google accountable for search results linking to a defamatory post falsely accusing him of pedophilia that he said ruined his career. Now Google must pay $500,000 after a Quebec Supreme Court judge ruled that Google relied on an "erroneous" interpretation of Canadian law in denying the man's requests to remove the links. "Google variously ignored the Plaintiff, told him it could do nothing, told him it could remove the hyperlink on the Canadian version of its search engine but not the US one, but then allowed it to re-appear on the Canadian version after a 2011 judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada in an unrelated matter involving the publication of hyperlinks," judge Azimuddin Hussain wrote in his decision (PDF) issued on March 28. The plaintiff was granted anonymity throughout the proceedings. Google has been ordered not to disclose any identifiable information about him in connection to the case for 45 days. The tech company must also remove all links to the defamatory post in search results viewable in Quebec. [...] Instead of compensatory and punitive damages originally sought -- amounting to $6 million -- the man was awarded $500,000 for moral injuries caused after successfully arguing that he lost business deals and suffered strains on his personal relationships due to being wrongly stigmatized as a pedophile. Hussain described the plaintiff's experience battling Google to preserve his reputation as a "waking nightmare." Due to Google's refusals to remove the defamatory posts, the man "found himself helpless in a surreal and excruciating contemporary online ecosystem as he lived through a dark odyssey to have the Defamatory Post removed from public circulation," Hussain wrote. The plaintiff, now in his early 70s, has the option to appeal the judge's order that Google may not release any of his identifiable information for 45 days.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BuzzFeed is shutting down BuzzFeed News and laying off 15% of its employees, or about 180 people. CEO Jonah Peretti made the announcement in a memo on Thursday. Variety reports: Going forward, BuzzFeed will concentrate its news efforts in a single profitable news organization -- HuffPost, which it acquired from Verizon in 2020, per Peretti's memo. The company's flagship BuzzFeed.com site will remain in place. "While layoffs are occurring across nearly every division, we've determined that the company can no longer continue to fund BuzzFeed News as a standalone organization," Peretti wrote. BuzzFeed News launched in 2012 under then-editor in chief Ben Smith. In the memo, Peretti said, "I made the decision to overinvest in BuzzFeed News because I love their work and mission so much. This made me slow to accept that the big platforms wouldn't provide the distribution or financial support required to support premium, free journalism purpose-built for social media." HuffPost is "a brand that is profitable with a highly engaged, loyal audience that is less dependent on social platforms," than BuzzFeed News, according to Peretti. Peretti also wrote, "we will bring more innovation to clients in the form of creators, AI and cultural moments that can only happen across BuzzFeed, Complex, HuffPost, Tasty and First We Feast." According to a BuzzFeed spokesperson, no jobs are being replaced by AI. The company recently started using AI to assist in creating some content, including quizzes, and Peretti said the technology would become "part of our core business."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Atari has announced the acquisition of over 100 PC and console titles launched in the 1980s and 1990s from Accolade, Micropose and Infogrames. Engadget reports: Atari's ownership and catalogue have changed hands a bit since its heyday, so the purchase includes a homecoming for some of Atari's IPs. It's also adding Accolade's trademark to its vault. The newly Atari-owned games include the Demolition Racer series, Bubsy and Hardball. "Many of these titles are a part of Atari history, and fans can look forward to seeing many of these games re-released in physical and digital formats, and in some cases, even ported to modern consoles," Wade Rosen, Atari's CEO, said in a statement. Atari is really gunning for a comeback, with a "multi-year effort to transform the company" and investments in IPs people care about (reimagined versions of Asteroids and Missile Command are reportedly in the works). [...] With its latest purchase, Atari says it will rerelease already existing games on modern consoles and create new adaptations of past storylines.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: President Biden on Thursday will pledge $500 million over five years to fight deforestation in Brazil, a White House official said, in a move that would make the United States one of the largest donors to the global Amazon Fund. But the pledge would require approval from Congress, where Republicans are overwhelmingly opposed to international climate assistance and have made it difficult for President Biden to deliver on his promises to help poorer nations cope with climate change. Brazil's president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has been working with the Biden administration on several issues, including climate change, despite Mr. Lula's criticism of U.S. support for Ukraine in its war with Russia. The Amazon Fund, a conservation program, was established by Brazil in 2008 and has bankrolled efforts to curb deforestation in the world's largest rainforest. Norway, the first and largest contributor to the fund, has donated more than $1.2 billion. Germany recently announced a $217 million donation. But the fund was suspended under Mr. Lula's far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, who weakened environmental protections and saw annual average deforestation rates soar, reaching levels the country hadn't experienced in more than a decade.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

PlayStation has agreed to acquire Firewalk Studios, the AAA multiplayer developer that is working on a live service game for PS5 and PC. From a report: If the name sounds familiar, it's because Sony had already announced it would be publishing Firewalk's first game back in April 2021. It is the third dedicated live-service game studio that PlayStation has acquired over the last 18 months, alongside Bungie and Haven Studios. Firewalk was set-up in 2018 as part of ProbablyMonsters (a collective of AAA game developers). It was formed by a number of Bungie veterans, including studio head Tony Hsu (previously general manager and senior vice president of Destiny at Activision) and game director Ryan Ellis (previously creative director at Bungie). It now boasts almost 150 employees. Firewalk is the 20th developer to join PlayStation Studios.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Proton, the company behind Proton Mail, has announced the launch of a new password manager: Proton Pass. While the service will eventually become free for everyone to use, it's currently only available as a beta to Proton's Lifetime and Visionary users for now. From a report: As is the case with Proton's other products, Proton Pass uses end-to-end encryption (E2EE) that's supposed to keep your personal information away from prying eyes, including third parties and Proton itself. In addition to letting you store your usernames, passwords, and notes, you can also add any randomly generated email aliases that you can use as a replacement for your real address. Proton's new password manager not only applies E2EE to your passwords but also the usernames, web addresses, and all the other fields associated with your login information. In a blog post explaining the service's security model, Proton notes that "all cryptographic operations, including key generation and data encryption," happen locally on your device, which Protons says it can't decrypt, even if a third party requests it.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google plans to introduce generative artificial intelligence into its advertising business over the coming months, as Big Tech groups rush to incorporate the groundbreaking technology into their products. From a report: According to an internal presentation to advertisers seen by the Financial Times, the Alphabet-owned company intends to begin using the AI to create novel advertisements based on materials produced by human marketers. "Generative AI is unlocking a world of creativity," the company said in the presentation, titled "AI-powered ads 2023." Google already uses AI in its advertising business to create simple prompts that encourage users to buy products. However, the integration of its latest generative AI, which also powers its Bard chatbot, means it will be able to produce far more sophisticated campaigns resembling those created by marketing agencies. According to the presentation, advertisers can supply "creative" content such as imagery, video, and text relating to a particular campaign. The AI will then "remix" this material to generate ads based on the audience it aims to reach, as well as other goals such as sales targets. One person familiar with Google's presentation said they were worried the tool could spread misinformation, because text produced by AI chatbots can confidently state falsehoods. "It is optimized to convert new customers and has no idea what the truth is," the person said. Google told the FT it planned to put firm guardrails in place to prevent such errors, known as "hallucinations," when it rolls out its new generative AI features in the coming months.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As Google looks to maintain pace in AI with the rest of the tech giants, it's consolidating its AI research divisions. From a report: Google today announced Google DeepMind, a new unit made up of the DeepMind team and the Google Brain team from Google Research. In a blog post, DeepMind co-founder and CEO Demis Hassabis said that Google DeepMind will work "in close collaboration ... across the Google product areas" to "deliver AI research and products." As a part of Google DeepMind's formation, Google says it'll create a new scientific board to oversee research progress and direction of the unit, which will be led by Koray Kavukcuoglu, the VP of research at DeepMind. Eli Collins, VP of product at Google Research, will join Google DeepMind as VP of product, while Google Brain lead Zoubin Ghahramani will become a member of the research leadership team, reporting to Kavukcuoglu.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon has launched its Anti-Counterfeiting Exchange (ACX), an initiative to help retail stores label and track marketplace counterfeits as part of the e-commerce giant's efforts to crack down on organized crime on its platform, the company announced on Thursday. From a report: Online marketplaces in the United States including Amazon face hurdles in keeping counterfeiters off their platforms and fake merchandise from entering their warehouses. The new program mimics data exchange programs by the credit card industry to find scammers and identify their tactics. Stores and Amazon marketplace sellers can anonymously contribute information and records flagging counterfeiters to a third-party database or use the database to avoid doing business with the bad actors. "We think it is critical to share information about confirmed counterfeiters to help the entire industry stop these criminals earlier," Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon's vice president of selling partner services, said in a statement. The Seattle-based retail giant piloted the anti-counterfeiting initiative in 2021 with an undisclosed number of apparel, home goods and cosmetics stores, where counterfeiting is most common.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Aspiring partners accuse Apple of copying their ideas. From a report: It sounded like a dream partnership when Apple reached out to Joe Kiani, the founder of a company that makes blood-oxygen measurement devices. He figured his technology was a perfect fit for the Apple Watch. Soon after meeting him, Apple began hiring employees from his company, Masimo, including engineers and its chief medical officer. Apple offered to double their salaries, Mr. Kiani said. In 2019, Apple published patents under the name of a former Masimo engineer for sensors similar to Masimo's, documents show. The following year, Apple launched a watch that could measure blood oxygen levels. "When Apple takes an interest in a company, it's the kiss of death," said Mr. Kiani. "First, you get all excited. Then you realize that the long-term plan is to do it themselves and take it all." Mr. Kiani is one of more than two dozen executives, inventors, investors and lawyers who described similar encounters with Apple. First, they said, came discussions about potential partnerships or integration of their technology into Apple products. Then, they said, talks stopped and Apple launched its own similar features. Apple said that it doesn't steal technology and that it respects the intellectual property of other companies. It said Masimo and other companies cited in this article are copying Apple, and that it would fight the claims in court. Apple has tried to invalidate hundreds of patents owned by companies that have accused Apple of violating their patents. According to lawyers and executives at some smaller companies, Apple sometimes files multiple petitions on a single patent claim and attempts to invalidate patents unrelated to the initial dispute. Many large companies, particularly in tech, have been known to scoop up employees and technology from smaller potential rivals. Software developers have given a name to what they describe as Apple's behavior in such cases: sherlocking. The term refers to an episode about two decades ago, when Apple released a software product called "Sherlock" that helped users find files on its Mac computers and perform internet searches.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ivan Sutherland played a key role in foundational computer technologies. Now he sees a path for America to claim the mantle in "superconducting" chips. From a report: It has been six decades since Ivan Sutherland created Sketchpad, a software system that foretold the future of interactive and graphical computing. In the 1970s, he played a role in rallying the computer industry to build a new type of microchip with hundreds of thousands of circuits that would become the foundation of today's semiconductor industry. Now Dr. Sutherland, who is 84, believes the United States is failing at a crucial time to consider alternative chip-making technologies that would allow the country to reclaim the lead in building the most advanced computers. By relying on supercooled electronic circuits that switch without electrical resistance and as a consequence generate no excess heat at higher speeds, computer designers will be able to circumvent the greatest technological barrier to faster machines, he claims. "The nation that best seizes the superconducting digital circuit opportunity will enjoy computing superiority for decades to come," he and a colleague recently wrote in an essay that circulated among technologists and government officials. Dr. Sutherland's insights are significant partly because decades ago he was instrumental in helping to create today's dominant approach to making computer chips. In the 1970s, Dr. Sutherland, who was chairman of the computer science department at the California Institute of Technology, and his brother Bert Sutherland, then a research manager at a division of Xerox called the Palo Alto Research Center, introduced the computer scientist Lynn Conway to the physicist Carver Mead. They pioneered a design based on a type of transistor, known as complementary metal-oxide semiconductor, or CMOS, which was invented in the United States. It made it possible to manufacture the microchips used by personal computers, video games and the vast array of business, consumer and military products. Now Dr. Sutherland is arguing that an alternative technology that predates CMOS, and has had many false starts, should be given another look. Superconducting electronics was pioneered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s and then pursued by IBM in the 1970s before being largely abandoned. At one point, it even made an odd international detour before returning to the United States.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google and other tech giants have called on the Australian government to relax copyright laws to allow artificial intelligence to mine websites for information across the internet. From a report: In a submission to the government's review of copyright enforcement published this week, Google argued the government needs to consider whether copyright law has "the necessary flexibilities" to support the development of AI. The company has called for the introduction of a fair dealing exception for text and data mining for AI. "The lack of such copyright flexibilities means that investment in and development of AI and machine-learning technologies is happening and will continue to happen overseas," Google said. "AI-powered products and services are being created in other countries with more innovation-focused copyright frameworks, such as the US, Singapore and Japan, and then exported to Australia for use by Australian consumers and businesses. Without these discrete exceptions, Australia risks only ever being an importer of certain kinds of technologies."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SpaceX on Thursday launched its next-generation Starship cruise vehicle for the first time atop the company's powerful new Super Heavy booster rocket, in a highly anticipated, uncrewed test flight from the Gulf Coast of Texas. From a report: The two-stage rocketship, standing taller than the Statue of Liberty at 394 feet (120 m) high, blasted off from the company's Starbase spaceport and test facility east of Brownsville, Texas, on a planned 90-minute debut flight into space. A live SpaceX webcast of the lift-off showed the rocketship rising from the launch tower into the morning sky as the Super Heavy's 33 raptor engines roared to life in a ball of flame and billowing clouds of exhaust and water vapor. Getting the Starship and its booster rocket off the ground together for the first time represents a milestone in SpaceX's ambition of sending humans back to the moon and ultimately on to Mars - playing a pivotal role in Artemis, NASA's newly inaugurated human spaceflight program.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Seagate has agreed to pay a $300 million penalty in a settlement with U.S. authorities for shipping over $1.1 billion worth of hard disk drives to China's Huawei in violation of U.S. export control laws, the Department of Commerce said on Wednesday. Seagate sold the drives to Huawei between August 2020 and September 2021 despite an August 2020 rule that restricted sales of certain foreign items made with U.S. technology to the company. Huawei was placed on the Entity List, a U.S. trade blacklist, in 2019 to reduce the sale of U.S. goods to the company amid national security and foreign policy concerns. Seagate shipped 7.4 million drives to Huawei for about a year after the 2020 rule took effect and became Huawei's sole supplier of hard drives, the Commerce Department said. The other two primary suppliers of hard drives ceased shipments to Huawei after the new rule took effect in 2020, the department said. Though they were not identified, Western Digital and Toshiba were the other two, the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee said in a 2021 report on Seagate.Read more of this story at Slashdot.