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U.S. health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group said Thursday in a filing with government regulators that its subsidiary Change Healthcare was compromised likely by government-backed hackers. From a report: In a filing Thursday, UHG blamed the ongoing cybersecurity incident affecting Change Healthcare on suspected nation state hackers but said it had no timeframe for when its systems would be back online. UHG did not attribute the cyberattack to a specific nation or government, or cite what evidence it had to support its claim. Change Healthcare provides patient billing across the U.S. healthcare system. The company processes billions of healthcare transactions annually and claims it handles around one-in-three U.S. patient records, amounting to around a hundred million Americans. The cyberattack began early Wednesday, according to the company's incident tracker.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

JSTOR: At the end of 2023, JSTOR -- a vast digital library of secondary and primary sources to support teaching and learning -- reached a once unimaginable goal: providing JSTOR access in 1,000 prisons. Spread across four continents, the JSTOR Access in Prison initiative now supports the education and growth of more than 550,000 incarcerated people. Incarcerated learners have been left behind for decades. Limited access to the internet and scarce funding and support for higher education in prisons made access to digital libraries like JSTOR all but impossible. In October 2021, with funding from the Mellon Foundation, JSTOR set an ambitious goal to change that. The aspiration? For every incarcerated college student in the United States to have access to JSTOR, along with the research skills to use it and other digital resources. Prior to 2021, JSTOR developed an offline index of its digital library. At the time, less than twenty prisons had access to it. Since then, developers have created an online version that meets the unique needs of carceral settings, most recently delivering online access on tablets. These changes -- and the leadership of Stacy Burnett, a graduate of the Bard Prison Initiative who was hired to lead the JSTOR Access in Prison initiative -- have enabled 1,000 prisons and more than 500,000 people to gain access to the digital equivalent of a college library.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Stability AI is out today with an early preview of its Stable Diffusion 3.0 next-generation flagship text-to-image generative AI model. The new Stable Diffusion 3.0 model aims to provide improved image quality and better performance in generating images from multi-subject prompts. It will also provide significantly better typography than prior Stable Diffusion models enabling more accurate and consistent spelling inside of generated images. Typography has been an area of weakness for Stable Diffusion in the past and one that rivals including DALL-E 3, Ideogram and Midjourney have also been working on with recent releases. Stability AI is building out Stable Diffusion 3.0 in multiple model sizes ranging from 800M to 8B parameters. Stable Diffusion 3.0 isn't just a new version of a model that Stability AI has already released, it's actually based on a new architecture. "Stable Diffusion 3 is a diffusion transformer, a new type of architecture similar to the one used in the recent OpenAI Sora model," Emad Mostaque, CEO of Stability AI told VentureBeat. "It is the real successor to the original Stable Diffusion." [...] Stable Diffusion 3.0 is taking a different approach by using diffusion transformers. "Stable Diffusion did not have a transformer before," Mostaque said. Transformers are at the foundation of much of the gen AI revolution and are widely used as the basis of text generation models. Image generation has largely been in the realm of diffusion models. The research paper that details Diffusion Transformers (DiTs), explains that it is a new architecture for diffusion models that replaces the commonly used U-Net backbone with a transformer operating on latent image patches. The DiTs approach can use compute more efficiently and can outperform other forms of diffusion image generation. The other big innovation that Stable Diffusion benefits from is flow matching. The research paper on flow matching explains that it is a new method for training Continuous Normalizing Flows (CNFs) to model complex data distributions. According to the researchers, using Conditional Flow Matching (CFM) with optimal transport paths leads to faster training, more efficient sampling, and better performance compared to diffusion paths.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In its fourth quarter earnings statement on Thursday, Mercedes-Benz said it is backing off its plan to only sell electric vehicles after 2030. Instead, the company said it "only expects 50 percent of its sales to be all-electric -- a significant drop from the once rosier outlook," reports The Verge. "Gas and hybrid vehicles will remain a part of the company's future for years to come." From the report: "Customers and market conditions will set the pace of the transformation," Mercedes said in its report. "The company plans to be in a position to cater to different customer needs, whether it's an all-electric drivetrain or an electrified combustion engine, until well into the 2030s." Not even in Europe, where EV sales growth outpaces North America's, does Mercedes expect to transition to EV-only sales anytime soon, the company's CEO Ola Kallenius told Reuters. "It's not going to be 100% in 2030, obviously... from the whole European market, but probably from the Mercedes side as well," he said. In 2021, Mercedes was a lot more bullish about plug-in powertrains, saying that by 2030 it would only sell EVs and completely phase out gas-powered vehicles.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Switzerland is advocating for a United Nations expert group to explore the merits of solar geoengineering. The proposal seeks to ensure multilateral oversight of solar radiation modification (SRM) research, amidst concerns over its potential implications for food supply, biodiversity, and global inequalities. The Guardian reports: The Swiss proposal, submitted to the United Nations environment assembly that begins next week in Nairobi, focuses on solar radiation modification (SRM). This is a technique that aims to mimic the effect of a large volcanic eruption by filling the atmosphere with sulphur dioxide particles that reflect part of the sun's heat and light back into space. Supporters of the proposal, including the United Nations environment program (UNEP), argue that research is necessary to ensure multilateral oversight of emerging planet-altering technologies, which might otherwise be developed and tested in isolation by powerful governments or billionaire individuals. Critics, however, argue that such a discussion would threaten the current de-facto ban on geoengineering, and lead down a "slippery slope" towards legitimization, mainstreaming and eventual deployment. Felix Wertli, the Swiss ambassador for the environment, said his country's goal in submitting the proposal was to ensure all governments and relevant stakeholders "are informed about SRM technologies, in particular about possible risks and cross-border effects." He said the intention was not to promote or enable solar geoengineering but to inform governments, especially those in developing countries, about what is happening. The executive director of the UNEP, Inger Andersen, stressed the importance of "a global conversation on SRM" in her opening address to delegates at a preliminary gathering in Nairobi. She and her colleagues emphasized the move was a precautionary one rather than an endorsement of the technology.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Facial recognition is a common feature for unlocking smartphones and gaming systems, among other uses. But the technology currently relies upon bulky projectors and lenses, hindering its broader application. Scientists have now developed a new facial recognition system that employs flatter, simpler optics that also require less energy, according to a recent paper published in the journal Nano Letters. The team tested their prototype system with a 3D replica of Michelangelo's famous David sculpture and found it recognized the face as well as existing smartphone facial recognition can. [...] Wen-Chen Hsu, of National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University and the Hon Hai Research Institute in Taiwan, and colleagues turned to ultrathin optical components known as metasurfaces for a potential solution. These metasurfaces can replace bulkier components for modulating light and have proven popular for depth sensors, endoscopes, tomography. and augmented reality systems, among other emerging applications. Hsu et al. built their own depth-sensing facial recognition system incorporating a metasurface hologram in place of the diffractive optical element. They replaced the standard vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) with a photonic crystal surface-emitting laser (PCSEL). (The structure of photonic crystals is the mechanism behind the bright iridescent colors in butterfly wings or beetle shells.) The PCSEL can generate its own highly collimated light beam, so there was no need for the bulky light guide or collimation lenses used in VCSEL-based dot projector systems. The team tested their new system on a replica bust of David, and it worked as well as existing smartphone facial recognition, based on comparing the infrared dot patterns to online photos of the statue. They found that their system generated nearly one and a half times more infrared dots (some 45,700) than the standard commercial technology from a device that is 233 times smaller in terms of surface area than the standard dot projector. "It is a compact and cost-effective system, that can be integrated into a single chip using the flip-chip process of PCSEL," the authors wrote. Additionally, "The metasurface enables the generation of customizable and versatile light patterns, expanding the system's applicability." It's more energy-efficient to boot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Reddit has filed its initial public offering (IPO) with the SEC on Thursday. "The company plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol 'RDDT,'" reports CNBC. From the report: Its market debut, expected in March, will be the first major tech initial public offering of the year. It's the first social media IPO since Pinterest went public in 2019. Reddit said it had $804 million in annual sales for 2023, up 20% from the $666.7 million it brought in the previous year, according to the filing. The social networking company's core business is reliant on online advertising sales stemming from its website and mobile app. The company, founded in 2005 by technology entrepreneurs Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, said it has incurred net losses since its inception. It reported a net loss of $90.8 million for the year ended Dec. 31, 2023, compared with a net loss of $158.6 million the year prior. [...] Reddit said it plans to use artificial intelligence to improve its ad business and that it expects to open new revenue channels by offering tools and incentives to "drive continued creation, improvements, and commerce." It's also in the early stages of developing and monetizing a data-licensing business in which third parties would be allowed to access and search data on its platform. For example, Google on Thursday announced an expanded partnership with Reddit that will give the search giant access to the company's data to, among other uses, train its AI models. "In January 2024, we entered into certain data licensing arrangements with an aggregate contract value of $203.0 million and terms ranging from two to three years," Reddit said, regarding its data-licensing business. "We expect a minimum of $66.4 million of revenue to be recognized during the year ending December 31, 2024 and the remaining thereafter." On Wednesday, Reddit said it plans to sell a chunk of its IPO shares to 75,000 of its most loyal users.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Stephanie Saul reports via the New York Times: Yale University will require standardized test scores for admission for students applying to enter for the class entering in the fall of 2025, becoming the second Ivy League university to abandon test-optional policies that had been widely embraced during the Covid pandemic. Yale officials said in an announcement on Thursday that the shift to test-optional policies might have unwittingly harmed students from lower-income families whose test scores could have helped their chances. While it will require standardized tests, Yale said its policy would be "test flexible," permitting students to submit scores from subject-based Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate tests in lieu of SAT or ACT scores. The decision follows a similar decision in February from Dartmouth College. MIT also announced that it had reinstated its testing requirement in 2022.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The first privately built spacecraft has successfully landed on the lunar surface on Thursday. "We can confirm, without a doubt, that our equipment is on the surface of the moon," said Stephen Altemus, CEO of Intuitive Machines, the Houston-based company that operated the Odysseus spacecraft. "Welcome to the moon." From a report: As it approached the surface of the moon, Odysseus lost contact with NASA, resulting in several anxious minutes for those who worked on the joint project. But after approximately 15 minutes of searching, officials confirmed that they were once again receiving signals from the spacecraft. "A commercial lander named Odysseus, powered by a company called Intuitive Machines, launched up on a Space X rocket, carrying a bounty of NASA scientific instruments and bearing the dream of a new adventure, a new adventure in science, innovation and American leadership, well, all of that aced the landing of a lifetime," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said after contact had been reestablished. "Today for the first time in more than a half century, the U.S. has returned to the moon." Altemus had estimated that Odysseus had an 80% chance of successfully landing on the moon, citing previous failed attempts as an advantage. "We've stood on the shoulders of everybody who's tried before us," Altemus said. It was the first American mission to land on the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972 and the first private spacecraft ever to make a soft landing there. While it was a private mission, NASA paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to deliver six instruments to the moon. And the U.S. space agency provided streaming video of the landing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A judge has dismissed (PDF) a complaint from a parent and guardian of a girl, now 15, who was sexually assaulted when she was 12 years old after Snapchat recommended that she connect with convicted sex offenders. According to the court filing, the abuse that the girl, C.O., experienced on Snapchat happened soon after she signed up for the app in 2019. Through its "Quick Add" feature, Snapchat "directed her" to connect with "a registered sex offender using the profile name JASONMORGAN5660." After a little more than a week on the app, C.O. was bombarded with inappropriate images and subjected to sextortion and threats before the adult user pressured her to meet up, then raped her. Cops arrested the adult user the next day, resulting in his incarceration, but his Snapchat account remained active for three years despite reports of harassment, the complaint alleged. Two years later, at 14, C.O. connected with another convicted sex offender on Snapchat, a former police officer who offered to give C.O. a ride to school and then sexually assaulted her. The second offender is also currently incarcerated, the judge's opinion noted. The lawsuit painted a picture of Snapchat's ongoing neglect of minors it knows are being targeted by sexual predators. Prior to C.O.'s attacks, both adult users sent and requested sexually explicit photos, seemingly without the app detecting any child sexual abuse materials exchanged on the platform. C.O. had previously reported other adult accounts sending her photos of male genitals, but Snapchat allegedly "did nothing to block these individuals from sending her inappropriate photographs." Among other complaints, C.O.'s lawsuit alleged that Snapchat's algorithm for its "Quick Add" feature was the problem. It allegedly recklessly works to detect when adult accounts are seeking to connect with young girls and, by design, sends more young girls their way -- continually directing sexual predators toward vulnerable targets. Snapchat is allegedly aware of these abuses and, therefore, should be held liable for harm caused to C.O., the lawsuit argued. Although C.O.'s case raised difficult questions, Judge Barbara Bellis ultimately agreed with Snapchat that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act barred all claims and shielded Snap because "the allegations of this case fall squarely within the ambit of the immunity afforded to" platforms publishing third-party content. According to Bellis, C.O.'s family had "clearly alleged" that Snap had failed to design its recommendations systems to block young girls from receiving messages from sexual predators. Specifically, Section 230 immunity shields Snap from liability in this case because Bellis considered the messages exchanged to be third-party content. Snapchat designing its recommendation systems to deliver content is a protected activity, Bellis ruled. Despite a seemingly conflicting ruling in Los Angeles that found that "Section 230 didn't protect Snapchat from liability for allegedly connecting teens with drug dealers," Bellis didn't appear to consider it persuasive. She did, however, critique Section 230's broad application, suggesting courts are limited without legislative changes, despite the morally challenging nature of some cases.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Princeton professor and technology law researcher Jonathan Mayer has been appointed as the Justice Department's first chief AI officer. The Verge reports: Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that appointing an AI officer was important for the department to "keep pace with rapidly evolving scientific and technological developments." One of Mayer's responsibilities will be to build a team of technical and policy experts around cybersecurity and AI. Mayer will also serve as the department's chief science and technology advisor and help recruit tech talent. Mayer held technology roles in government before his new Justice Department gig, according to his bio in Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy. He served as an adviser on technology law and policy to Vice President Kamala Harris when she was still in the Senate. Mayer was also the chief technologist in the enforcement office of the Federal Communications Commission.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader Rei writes: In a blog post today, Bluesky, the social media network founded by Jay Graber, announced that they have finally opened to federation. Users can now operate their own PDS (backend) servers. How to do so is discussed on the developers' blog and a new Discord channel for PDS administrators. As the blog notes, there are key differences between the AT Protocol/Bluesky federation and ActivityPub/Mastodon federation, including: global conversation (rather than local-server based with remote content only brought in from follows); a decentralized user account not bound to a specific host; user-composable moderation lists not inherently tied to a specific server, offsetting the need for defederation; user-composable feeds/algorithms, not tied to servers; and full account portability, without the need to be initiated by your server, protecting users from rogue admins or servers that disappear. Despite the difference, a number of projects, such as Bridgy-Fed, plan to bridge Bluesky and Mastodon together, with all of Bluesky appearing as a single Mastodon server on ActivityPub, and Mastodon users being translated to a decentralized identifier (DID) for AT Protocol (atproto) calls.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN Business: AT&T's network went down for many of its customers across the United States Thursday morning, leaving customers unable to place calls, text or access the internet. By a little after 3 pm ET, roughly 11 hours after reports of the outage first emerged, the company said that it had restored service to all impacted customers. "We have restored wireless service to all our affected customers. We sincerely apologize to them," AT&T said in a statement. The company added that it is "taking steps to ensure our customers do not experience this again in the future." The Federal Communications Commission confirmed Thursday afternoon that it is investigating the outage. The White House says federal agencies are in touch with AT&T about network outages but that it doesn't have all the answers yet on what exactly led to the interruptions. Although Verizon and T-Mobile customers reported some network outages, too, they appeared far less widespread. T-Mobile and Verizon said their networks were unaffected by AT&T's service outage and customers reporting outages may have been unable to reach customers who use AT&T. Thursday morning, more than 74,000 AT&T customers reported outages on digital-service tracking site DownDetector, with service disruptions beginning around 4 am ET. That's not a comprehensive number: It tracks only self-reported outages. Reports had been rising steadily throughout the morning but leveled off in the 9 am ET hour. By 12:30 pm ET, the DownDetector data showed some 25,000 AT&T customers still reporting outages. By 2 pm ET, fewer than 5,000 customers were still reporting issues. Earlier Thursday, AT&T acknowledged that it had a widespread outage but did not provide a reason for the system failure. By late morning, AT&T said most of its network was back online, and it confirmed Thursday afternoon that service was fully restored. According to an anonymous industry source, the issue for the outage appears to be related to how cellular services hand off calls from one network to the next, a process known as peering. They said there's no indication that it was the result of a cyberattack or other malicious activity. The FCC confirmed that it is investigating the incident. "We are aware of the reported wireless outages, and our Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau is actively investigating," the FCC said in a statement posted on X. "We are in touch with AT&T and public safety authorities, including FirstNet, as well as other providers."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: British comedian Michael McIntyre has a standard bit in his standup routines concerning the many (many!) slang terms posh British people use to describe being drunk. These include "wellied," "trousered," and "ratarsed," to name a few. McIntyre's bit rests on his assertion that pretty much any English word can be modified into a so-called "drunkonym," bolstered by a few handy examples: "I was utterly gazeboed," or "I am going to get totally and utterly carparked." It's a clever riff that sparked the interest of two German linguists. Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer of Chemnitz University of Technology and Peter Uhrig of FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg decided to draw on their expertise to test McIntyre's claim that any word in the English language could be modified to mean "being in a state of high inebriation." Given their prevalence, "It is highly surprising that drunkonyms are still under-researched from a linguistic perspective," the authors wrote in their new paper published in the Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association. Bonus: the authors included an extensive appendix of 546 English synonyms for "drunk," drawn from various sources, which makes for entertaining reading. There is a long tradition of coming up with colorful expressions for drunkenness in the English language, with the Oxford English Dictionary listing a usage as early as 1382: "merry," meaning "boisterous or cheerful due to alcohol; slight drunk, tipsy." Another OED entry from 1630 lists "blinde" (as in blind drunk) as a drunkonym. Even Benjamin Franklin got into the act with his 1737 Drinker's Dictionary, listing 288 words and phrases for denoting drunkenness. By 1975, there were more than 353 synonyms for "drunk" listed in that year's edition of the Dictionary of American Slang. By 1981, linguist Harry Levine noted 900 terms used as drunkonyms.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Supreme Court's conservative majority seemed skeptical Wednesday as the Environmental Protection Agency sought to continue enforcing an anti-air-pollution rule in 11 states while separate legal challenges proceed around the country. From a report: The EPA's "good neighbor" rule is intended to restrict smokestack emissions from power plants and other industrial sources that burden downwind areas with smog-causing pollution. Three energy-producing states -- Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia -- challenged the rule, along with the steel industry and other groups, calling it costly and ineffective. The rule is on hold in a dozen states because of the court challenges. The Supreme Court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, has increasingly reined in the powers of federal agencies, including the EPA, in recent years. The justices have restricted EPA's authority to fight air and water pollution -- including a landmark 2022 ruling that limited EPA's authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants that contribute to global warming. The court also shot down a vaccine mandate and blocked President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness program. The court is currently weighing whether to overturn its 40-year-old Chevron decision, which has been the basis for upholding a wide range of regulations on public health, workplace safety and consumer protections. A lawyer for the EPA said the "good neighbor" rule was important to protect downwind states that receive unwanted air pollution from other states. Besides the potential health impacts, the states face their own federal deadlines to ensure clean air, said Deputy U.S. Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart, representing the EPA.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: When Google Wallet launched in 2022, Google kept the "GPay" app around in a handful of countries. The company announced today that the old Google Pay app is soon going away in the US. That app, which appears as "GPay" on your Android homescreen, was Google's previous vision for mobile payments and finance. It was "designed around your relationships with people and businesses" with conversation-like threads serving as a purchase history, while keeping track of your spending was another big aspect. GPay will stop working in the US from June 4, 2024. It will remain available for users in India and Singapore as Google continues to "build for the unique needs in those countries." As part of the app going away, Google is shutting down peer-to-peer payments that let you send, request, or receive money from others in the US. Google's P2P offering never really took off.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. FTC will order Avast to pay $16.5 million and ban the company from selling the users' web browsing data or licensing it for advertising purposes. From a report: The complaint says Avast violated millions of consumers' rights by collecting, storing, and selling their browsing data without their knowledge and consent while misleading them that the products used to harvest their data would block online tracking. "While the FTC's privacy lawsuits routinely take on firms that misrepresent their data practices, Avast's decision to expressly market its products as safeguarding people's browsing records and protecting data from tracking only to then sell those records is especially galling," said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. "Moreover, the volume of data Avast released is staggering: the complaint alleges that by 2020 Jumpshot had amassed "more than eight petabytes of browsing information dating back to 2014." More specifically, the FTC says UK-based company Avast Limited harvested consumers' web browsing information without their knowledge or consent using Avast browser extensions and antivirus software since at least 2014.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Social media platform Reddit has struck a deal with Google to make its content available for training the search engine giant's AI models. Reuters: The contract with Alphabet-owned Google is worth about $60 million per year, according to one of the sources. The deal underscores how Reddit, which is preparing for a high-profile stock market launch, is seeking to generate new revenue amid fierce competition for advertising dollars from the likes of TikTok and Meta Platform's Facebook.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: I hate cookbooks without pictures. We eat with our eyes first, as chefs love to say, but what's more important to me is that if I'm making a dish for the first time, I want to see what the final product should look like to know I did it right. It's not so much about presentation as it is about knowing that I browned the chicken skin enough. An image of a recipe will not be this useful, I think, if it was AI-generated, and especially so if the fact that the image was AI-generated wasn't disclosed by the recipe. That, to my surprise, is exactly the case with thousands of recipes the grocery delivery service Instacart is suggesting to its users. Some of the recipes include unheard of measurements and ingredients that don't appear to exist. [...] As I was browsing, I noticed that Instacart was offering me recipes that appeared to complement the ingredients I was looking at. The concept doesn't make a ton of sense to me -- I'm going to Instacart for the ingredients I know I need for the food I know I'm going to make, not for food inspo -- but I had to click on a recipe for "Watermelon Popsicle with Chocolate Chips" because it looked weird in the thumbnail. Since I have eyeballs with optical nerves that are connected to a semi-functioning brain I can tell that the image was generated by AI. To be more specific, I can see that the top corner of the plate doesn't match its square shape, that the table-ish looking thing it's resting on is made up of jumbled slats (AI is particularly bad at making these series of long, straight lines), and then there are the titular watermelon popsicles, which defy physical reality. They clip into each other like bad 3D models in a video game, one of them to the left appears hollow, and for some reason they are skewered by what appears to be asparagus spears on the bottom end and capped by impossible small watermelon rinds at the top.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Windows 11 users still clinging to the past are to be dragged into a bright, 23H2-shaped future by Microsoft, whether they want to or not. From a report: Microsoft has added a notification to its Release Health dashboard warning Windows 11 users that it is time for the beatings automatic upgrades to begin. "We are starting to update eligible Windows 11 devices automatically to version 23H2." As for what eligible means, according to Microsoft, this is "Windows 11 devices that have reached or are approaching end of servicing." Support for Windows 11 21H2 came to an end last year on October 10, 2023, and version 22H2 is due to end on October 8, 2024. Win 11 23H2 itself will endure until November 11, 2025, or just after the plug gets pulled on Windows 10. The update comes shortly after Microsoft quashed the last of its compatibility holds in Windows 11 23H2, which affected customers attempting to use the Co-pilot preview with multiple monitors. Icons tended to move unexpectedly between monitors.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon is pushing back against reports that its Freevee service is shuttering. The Wrap: AdWeek reported the news, which it said is part of an effort by the tech giant to shift its focus to Prime Video. Sources familiar with the matter told the outlet that sunsetting Freevee could happen sometime within the second quarter. However, a spokesperson for Amazon said there are "no changes" coming to Freevee. "Amazon Freevee remains an important streaming offering providing both Prime and non-Prime customers thousands of hit movies, shows and originals, all for free," they added. Freevee, which was formerly known as IMDb TV until a rebrand in 2022, offers thousands of premium movies and TV shows, including originals such as "Bosch: Legacy," "Judy Justice" and "Jury Duty" and over 150 free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A spacecraft containing pharmaceutical drugs that were grown on orbit has finally returned to Earth today after more than eight months in space. From a report: Varda Space Industries' in-space manufacturing capsule, called Winnebago-1, landed in the Utah desert at around 4:40 p.m. EST. Inside the capsule are crystals of the drug ritonavir, which is used to treat HIV/AIDS. It marks a successful conclusion of Varda's first experimental mission to grow pharmaceuticals on orbit, as well as the first time a commercial company has landed a spacecraft on U.S. soil, ever. The capsule will now be sent back to Varda's facilities in Los Angeles for analysis, and the vials of ritonavir will be shipped to a research company called Improved Pharma for post-flight characterization, Varda said in a statement. The company will also be sharing all the data collected through the mission with the Air Force and NASA, per existing agreements with those agencies. The first-of-its-kind reentry and landing is also a major win for Rocket Lab, which partnered with Varda on the mission. Rocket Lab hosted Varda's manufacturing capsule inside its Photon satellite bus; through the course of the mission, Photon provided power, communications, attitude control and other essential operations. At the mission's conclusion, the bus executed a series of maneuvers and de-orbit burns that put the miniature drug lab on the proper reentry trajectory. The final engine burn was executed shortly after 4 p.m. EST. Photon burned up in the atmosphere as planned while the capsule, protected by a heat shield and with the aid of a parachute, continued to land.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

U.S. healthcare technology giant Change Healthcare has confirmed a cyberattack on its systems. In a brief statement, the company said it was "experiencing a network interruption related to a cyber security issue." From a report: "Once we became aware of the outside threat, in the interest of protecting our partners and patients, we took immediate action to disconnect our systems to prevent further impact," Change Healthcare wrote on its status page. "The disruption is expected to last at least through the day." The incident began early on Tuesday morning on the U.S. East Coast, according to the incident tracker. The specific nature of the cybersecurity incident was not disclosed. Most of the login pages for Change Healthcare were inaccessible or offline when TechCrunch checked at the time of writing. Michigan local newspaper the Huron Daily Tribune is reporting that local pharmacies are experiencing outages due to the Change Healthcare cyberattack.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AmiMoJo writes: Most of the UK companies that took part in the world's biggest ever four-day working week trial have made the policy permanent, research shows. Of the 61 organisations that took part in a six-month UK pilot in 2022, 54 (89%) are still operating the policy a year later, and 31 (51%) have made the change permanent. More than half (55%) of project managers and CEOs said a four-day week -- in which staff worked 100% of their output in 80% of their time -- had a positive impact on their organisation, the report found. For 82% this included positive effects on staff wellbeing, 50% found it reduced staff turnover, while 32% said it improved job recruitment. Nearly half (46%) said working and productivity improved. The report's author, Juliet Schor, professor of sociology at Boston College, said the results showed "real and long lasting" effects. "Physical and mental health, and work-life balance are significantly better than at six months. Burnout and life satisfaction improvements held steady," she said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has temporarily stopped its latest AI model, Gemini, from generating images of people (non-paywalled link) , as a backlash erupted over the model's depiction of people from diverse backgrounds. From a report: Gemini creates realistic images based on users' descriptions in a similar manner to OpenAI's ChatGPT. Like other models, it is trained not to respond to dangerous or hateful prompts, and to introduce diversity into its outputs. However, some users have complained that it has overcorrected towards generating images of women and people of colour, such that they are featured in historically inaccurate contexts, for instance in depictions of Viking kings. Google said in a statement: "We're working to improve these kinds of depictions immediately. Gemini's image generation does generate a wide range of people. And that's generally a good thing because people around the world use it. But it's missing the mark here." It added that it would "pause the image-generation of people and will re-release an improved version soon."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

jbmartin6 shares a report from Phys.Org: Threatening messages aimed to prevent digital piracy have the opposite effect if you're a man, a new study from the University of Portsmouth has found. According to the research, women tend to respond positively to this kind of messaging, but men typically increase their piracy behaviors by 18%. [...] This paper studies how effective anti-piracy messages are as a deterrent, examining the change in TV and film piracy intentions among 962 adults compared with their past behavior. The three messages examined in the study were verbatim copies of three real-world anti-piracy campaigns. Two of the campaigns used threatening messages to try to combat piracy and the third was educational in tone. One of the threatening messages was from crime reduction charity, Crimestoppers, which focused on the individual's risk of computer viruses, identity fraud, money and data theft and hacking. The other message was based on a campaign by the French government, which used a "three strike" process, whereby infringers were given two written warnings before their internet access was terminated. The educational message was taken from the campaign "Get It Right from a Genuine Site," which focuses on the cost to the economy and to the individual creative people, and signposts consumers away from piracy sites and towards legal platforms such as Spotify or Netflix. The study found that one threatening message influences women to reduce their piracy intentions by over 50%, but men increase their piracy behaviors. The educational messages had no effect on either men or women. "The research shows that anti-piracy messages can inadvertently increase piracy, which is a phenomenon known as psychological reactance," explained [lead author, Kate Whitman, from the University of Portsmouth's Centre for Cybercrime and Economic Crime]. "From an evolutionary psychology point of view, men have a stronger reaction to their freedom being threatened and therefore they do the opposite." Moreover, the study found that participants with the most favorable attitudes towards piracy demonstrated the most polarized changes in piracy intentions -- the threatening messages increased their piracy even more. The study has been published in the Journal of Business Ethics. "I'm not so sure about the author's attribution of this difference to evolutionary psychology, so looking forward to some educational comments on that," adds Slashdot reader jbmartin6.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sarah Perez reports via TechCrunch: The CEO of meditation app Insight Timer, Christopher Plowman, is frustrated. He doesn't think the teachers who leverage his app's marketplace to reach their students should have to share 30% of their income with Apple -- its commission on in-app purchases -- and for the past 12 months, Apple had also agreed. After Apple loosened its rules around in-app donations in 2022, Insight Timer took advantage of the option to adjust a digital donations feature that allowed Insight Timers' teachers to collect "tips" from their user profiles and during live events. Apple reviewed the app and approved its release on the App Store. Now the tech giant has changed its mind -- it wants to collect a commission from this content, and Insight Timer had no choice but to comply or have its iOS business shut down, Plowman says. [...] In section 3.2.1 of Apple's App Review guidelines, the company explains that apps can route around Apple's in-app purchase if the app enables individual users to "give a monetary gift to another individual" and "100% of the funds" go to the receiver of the gift. Insight Timer capitalized on this option to allow its users to tip meditation teachers, healers, musicians, and others who use its app to teach classes on meditation, managing stress, finding happiness or spiritual enlightenment, and more. Insight Timer implemented the feature using Stripe as the payment provider on the back end, as the rule permits. Users can opt to donate funds to the teacher, but they don't have to. Insight Timer's main business is selling premium subscriptions to its app, which offer additional features, like offline listening, journaling, and unlimited access to its courses. Fifty percent of this revenue is shared with the teachers, so they don't have to rely on donations to fund their work. During the time the commission-free donations feature was live, Insight Timer's users donated roughly $100,000 per month to the app's teachers, Plowman says. Apple appeared to have blessed this use case, as the tech giant went on to approve 47 more updates to Insight Timer's app over the course of a 12-month period. When a question arose, Insight Timer explained that these were donations -- it doesn't take a cut of that revenue -- and Apple would approve the app. Late last year, those approvals stopped. An app reviewer told Insight Timer that these donations were no longer considered monetary gifts -- they were now "digital content." That meant they were also now subject to Apple's commissions. This decision doesn't hurt Insight Timer's bottom line, as the app's main business is subscriptions. Instead, it hurts the community of teachers who generate additional funds via users' donations. Now, with Apple demanding 30% of that revenue, the teachers are getting a 30% pay cut overnight, so to speak. Plowman says he went back and forth with Apple over this feature, trying to understand why the donations option that Apple had previously allowed -- 47 times! -- was now subject to commission. Apple compromised and said it would allow the donations' link on teachers' profiles to be subject to its commission-free rules, but all other donations -- from live events, from meditations themselves -- had to be commissioned. It wouldn't allow those links to point to the donation link on the teachers' profiles, either. "And I was like, well, what's the point of building an ice cream stand across the road if you won't let the customers cross the road to buy the ice cream?" Plowman argued. In the end, the two parties didn't reach any sort of resolution. Plowman was given until February to comply with Apple's decision, or his business would be shut out of the App Store.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a warning issued Wednesday, the FDA said it has not authorized or approved any smartwatch or smart ring to measure blood glucose levels. The use of these devices can lead to inaccurate measurements and errors in managing diabetes that can be life-threatening, the agency said. From a report: These unauthorized devices are different from smartwatch apps that display data from FDA-approved continuous glucose monitoring devices that pierce the skin. The FDA did not name specific brands but said the sellers of these unauthorized smartwatches and smart rings advertise using aoenon-invasive techniquesa to measure blood glucose without requiring people to prick their fingers or pierce their skin. However, these devices do not directly test blood glucose levels, the agency said, urging consumers to avoid buying them for that purpose. The agency also advised health care providers to discuss the risk of using unauthorized blood glucose measuring devices with their patients and to help them select an appropriate authorized device for their needs. aoeThe agency is working to ensure that manufacturers, distributors, and sellers do not illegally market unauthorized smartwatches or smart rings that claim to measure blood glucose levels,a the FDA said in the statement. aoeIf your medical care depends on accurate blood glucose measurements, talk to your health care provider about an appropriate FDA-authorized device for your needs." .Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Princeton Engineering: In the blink of an eye, the unruly, superheated plasma that drives a fusion reaction can lose its stability and escape the strong magnetic fields confining it within the donut-shaped fusion reactor. These getaways frequently spell the end of the reaction, posing a core challenge to developing fusion as a non-polluting, virtually limitless energy source. But a Princeton-led team composed of engineers, physicists, and data scientists from the University and the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have harnessed the power of artificial intelligence to predict -- and then avoid -- the formation of a specific plasma problem in real time. In experiments at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility in San Diego, the researchers demonstrated their model, trained only on past experimental data, could forecast potential plasma instabilities known as tearing mode instabilities up to 300 milliseconds in advance. While that leaves no more than enough time for a slow blink in humans, it was plenty of time for the AI controller to change certain operating parameters to avoid what would have developed into a tear within the plasma's magnetic field lines, upsetting its equilibrium and opening the door for a reaction-ending escape. "By learning from past experiments, rather than incorporating information from physics-based models, the AI could develop a final control policy that supported a stable, high-powered plasma regime in real time, at a real reactor," said research leader Egemen Kolemen, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, as well as staff research physicist at PPPL. The research opens the door for more dynamic control of a fusion reaction than current approaches, and it provides a foundation for using artificial intelligence to solve a broad range of plasma instabilities, which have long been obstacles to achieving a sustained fusion reaction. The team published their findings in the journal Nature.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Following a recent ruling from the state supreme court, the University of Alabama at Birmingham health system said it is pausing all in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments for fear of criminal prosecution or punitive damages. On Friday, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are "children," entitled to full personhood rights, and anyone who destroys them could be liable in a wrongful death case. The Hill reports: "We are saddened that this will impact our patients' attempt to have a baby through IVF, but we must evaluate the potential that our patients and our physicians could be prosecuted criminally or face punitive damages for following the standard of care for IVF treatments," the health system said. [...] It is standard practice in IVF to fertilize several eggs and then transfer one into a woman's uterus. Any remaining normally developing embryos can be, at the patient's request and consent, frozen for later use. But legal experts say it's unclear if the standard practice is illegal in Alabama and could make IVF virtually inaccessible in the state. According to the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, the best-developing embryo will be transferred into a patient for an attempt at a pregnancy while the rest are frozen for later use, in case the first one does not develop into a live birth, or the patient later desires another child. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 238,126 patients underwent IVF treatment in 2021, resulting in the births of 97,128 babies, the last year for which statistics were available. There are 453 IVF clinics nationwide.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google's Gemini AI chatbot is under fire for generating historically inaccurate images, particularly when depicting people from different eras and nationalities. Google acknowledges the issue and is actively working to refine Gemini's accuracy, emphasizing that while diversity in image generation is valued, adjustments are necessary to meet historical accuracy standards. 9to5Google reports: The Twitter/X post in particular that brought this issue to light showed prompts to Gemini asking for the AI to generate images of Australian, American, British, and German women. All four prompts resulted in images of women with darker skin tones, which, as Google's Jack Krawcyczk pointed out, is not incorrect, but may not be what is expected. But a bigger issue that was noticed in the wake of that post was that Gemini also struggles to accurately depict human beings in a historical context, with those being depicted often having darker skin tones or being of particular nationalities that are not historically accurate. Google, in a statement posted to Twitter/X, admits that Gemini AI image generation is "missing the mark" on historical depictions and that the company is working to improve it. Google also does say that the diversity represented in images generated by Gemini is "generally a good thing," but it's clear some fine-tuning needs to happen. Further reading: Why Google's new AI Gemini accused of refusing to acknowledge the existence of white people (The Daily Dot)Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In its fourth quarter earnings report today, Nvidia beat Wall Street's forecast for earnings and sales, causing shares to rise about 10% in extended trading. CNBC reports: Here's what the company reported compared with what Wall Street was expecting for the quarter ending in January, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv: Earnings per share: $5.16 adjusted vs. $4.64 expectedRevenue: $22.10 billion vs. $20.62 billion expected Nvidia said it expected $24.0 billion in sales in the current quarter. Analysts polled by LSEG were looking for $5.00 per share on $22.17 billion in sales. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang addressed investor fears that the company may not be able to keep up this growth or level of sales for the whole year on a call with analysts. "Fundamentally, the conditions are excellent for continued growth" in 2025 and beyond, Huang told analysts. He says demand for the company's GPUs will remain high due to generative AI and an industry-wide shift away from central processors to the accelerators that Nvidia makes. Nvidia reported $12.29 billion in net income during the quarter, or $4.93 per share, up 769% versus last year's $1.41 billion or 57 cents per share. Nvidia's total revenue rose 265% from a year ago, based on strong sales for AI chips for servers, particularly the company's "Hopper" chips such as the H100, it said. "Strong demand was driven by enterprise software and consumer internet applications, and multiple industry verticals including automotive, financial services and health care," the company said in commentary provided to investors. Those sales are reported in the company's Data Center business, which now comprises the majority of Nvidia's revenue. Data center sales were up 409% to $18.40 billion. Over half the company's data center sales went to large cloud providers. [...] The company's gaming business, which includes graphics cards for laptops and PCs, was merely up 56% year over year to $2.87 billion. Graphics cards for gaming used to be Nvidia's primary business before its AI chips started taking off, and some of Nvidia's graphics cards can be used for AI. Nvidia's smaller businesses did not show the same meteoric growth. Its automotive business declined 4% to $281 million in sales, and its OEM and other business, which includes crypto chips, rose 7% to $90 million. Nvidia's business making graphics hardware for professional applications rose 105% to $463 million.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PBS: Chinese police are investigating an unauthorized and highly unusual online dump of documents from a private security contractor linked to the nation's top policing agency and other parts of its government -- a trove that catalogs apparent hacking activity and tools to spy on both Chinese and foreigners. Among the apparent targets of tools provided by the impacted company, I-Soon: ethnicities and dissidents in parts of China that have seen significant anti-government protests, such as Hong Kong or the heavily Muslim region of Xinjiang in China's far west. The dump of scores of documents late last week and subsequent investigation were confirmed by two employees of I-Soon, known as Anxun in Mandarin, which has ties to the powerful Ministry of Public Security. The dump, which analysts consider highly significant even if it does not reveal any especially novel or potent tools, includes hundreds of pages of contracts, marketing presentations, product manuals, and client and employee lists. They reveal, in detail, methods used by Chinese authorities used to surveil dissidents overseas, hack other nations and promote pro-Beijing narratives on social media. The documents show apparent I-Soon hacking of networks across Central and Southeast Asia, as well as Hong Kong and the self-ruled island of Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its territory. The hacking tools are used by Chinese state agents to unmask users of social media platforms outside China such as X, formerly known as Twitter, break into email and hide the online activity of overseas agents. Also described are devices disguised as power strips and batteries that can be used to compromise Wi-Fi networks. I-Soon and Chinese police are investigating how the files were leaked, the two I-Soon employees told the AP. One of the employees said I-Soon held a meeting Wednesday about the leak and were told it wouldn't affect business too much and to "continue working as normal." The AP is not naming the employees -- who did provide their surnames, per common Chinese practice -- out of concern about possible retribution. The source of the leak is not known. Jon Condra, an analyst with Recorded Future, a cybersecurity company, called it the most significant leak ever linked to a company "suspected of providing cyber espionage and targeted intrusion services for the Chinese security services." According to Condra, citing the leaked material, I-Soon's targets include governments, telecommunications firms abroad and online gambling companies within China.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The California Public Utilities Commission's Consumer Protection and Enforcement Division (CPED) has suspended Waymo's application to expand its robotaxi service in Los Angeles and San Mateo counties, putting "an abrupt halt to the company's aspirations to expand where it can operate -- at least until June 2024," reports TechCrunch. It does not, however, change the autonomous car company's ability to commercially operate its fleet in San Francisco. From the report: The CPED said on its website that the application has been suspended for further staff review. The "suspension" of an advice letter is a procedural part of the CPUC's standard and robust review process, according to Waymo. San Mateo County Board of Supervisors vice president David J. Canepa took a different stance, however. "Since Waymo has stalled any meaningful discussions on its expansion plans into Silicon Valley, the CPUC has put the brakes on its application to test robotaxi service virtually unfettered both in San Mateo and Los Angeles counties," Canepa said. "This will provide the opportunity to fully engage the autonomous vehicle maker on our very real public safety concerns that have caused all kinds of dangerous situations for firefighters and police in neighboring San Francisco." Waymo noted that it has reached out to two dozen government and business organizations as part of its outreach effort, including officials in cities throughout San Mateo County such as Burlingame, Daly City and Foster City, the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office and local chambers of commerce. [...] The city of South San Francisco, Los Angeles County Department of Transportation, San Francisco County Transportation Authority, San Mateo County Office of the County Attorney and the San Francisco Taxi Workers Alliance have sent letters opposing the expansion.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to the Wall Street Journal (paywalled), Reddit plans to sell a chunk of its IPO shares to 75,000 of its most loyal users. Reuters reports: It aims to reserve an as-yet-undetermined number of shares for 75,000 of its most prolific so-called redditors when it goes public next month, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.The users will have the opportunity to buy Reddit shares at its initial public offering (IPO) price before the stock starts trading, a privilege normally reserved only for big investors, the report said. Reddit's IPO, which has been in the works for more than three years now, would be the first from a major social media company since Pinterest's debut in 2019.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Tuesday, ChatGPT users began reporting unexpected outputs from OpenAI's AI assistant, flooding the r/ChatGPT Reddit sub with reports of the AI assistant "having a stroke," "going insane," "rambling," and "losing it." OpenAI has acknowledged the problem and is working on a fix, but the experience serves as a high-profile example of how some people perceive malfunctioning large language models, which are designed to mimic humanlike output. ChatGPT is not alive and does not have a mind to lose, but tugging on human metaphors (called "anthropomorphization") seems to be the easiest way for most people to describe the unexpected outputs they have been seeing from the AI model. They're forced to use those terms because OpenAI doesn't share exactly how ChatGPT works under the hood; the underlying large language models function like a black box. "It gave me the exact same feeling -- like watching someone slowly lose their mind either from psychosis or dementia," wrote a Reddit user named z3ldafitzgerald in response to a post about ChatGPT bugging out. "It's the first time anything AI related sincerely gave me the creeps." Some users even began questioning their own sanity. "What happened here? I asked if I could give my dog cheerios and then it started speaking complete nonsense and continued to do so. Is this normal? Also wtf is 'deeper talk' at the end?" Read through this series of screenshots below, and you'll see ChatGPT's outputs degrade in unexpected ways. [...] So far, we've seen experts speculating that the problem could stem from ChatGPT having its temperature set too high (temperature is a property in AI that determines how wildly the LLM deviates from the most probable output), suddenly losing past context (the history of the conversation), or perhaps OpenAI is testing a new version of GPT-4 Turbo (the AI model that powers the subscription version of ChatGPT) that includes unexpected bugs. It could also be a bug in a side feature, such as the recently introduced "memory" function.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China's tech firms were caught off guard by breakthroughs in generative artificial intelligence. Beijing's regulations and a sagging economy aren't helping. From a report: In November, a year after ChatGPT's release, a relatively unknown Chinese start-up leaped to the top of a leaderboard that judged the abilities of open-source artificial intelligence systems. The Chinese firm, 01.AI, was only eight months old but had deep-pocketed backers and a $1 billion valuation and was founded by a well-known investor and technologist, Kai-Fu Lee. In interviews, Mr. Lee presented his A.I. system as an alternative to options like Meta's generative A.I. model, called LLaMA. There was just one twist: Some of the technology in 01.AI's system came from LLaMA. Mr. Lee's start-up then built on Meta's technology, training its system with new data to make it more powerful. The situation is emblematic of a reality that many in China openly admit. Even as the country races to build generative A.I., Chinese companies are relying almost entirely on underlying systems from the United States. China now lags the United States in generative A.I. by at least a year and may be falling further behind, according to more than a dozen tech industry insiders and leading engineers, setting the stage for a new phase in the cutthroat technological competition between the two nations that some have likened to a cold war. "Chinese companies are under tremendous pressure to keep abreast of U.S. innovations," said Chris Nicholson, an investor with the venture capital firm Page One Ventures who focuses on A.I. technologies. The release of ChatGPT was "yet another Sputnik moment that China felt it had to respond to." Jenny Xiao, a partner at Leonis Capital, an investment firm that focuses on A.I.-powered companies, said the A.I. models that Chinese companies build from scratch "aren't very good," leading to many Chinese firms often using "fine-tuned versions of Western models." She estimated China was two to three years behind the United States in generative A.I. developments. The jockeying for A.I. primacy has huge implications. Breakthroughs in generative A.I. could tip the global technological balance of power, increasing people's productivity, aiding industries and leading to future innovations, even as nations struggle with the technology's risks. As Chinese firms aim to catch up by turning to open-source A.I. models from the United States, Washington is in a difficult spot. Even as the United States has tried to slow China's advancements by limiting the sale of microchips and curbing investments, it has not held back the practice of openly releasing software to encourage its adoption. For China, the newfound reliance on A.I. systems from the United States -- primarily Meta's LLaMA -- has fueled deeper questions about the country's innovation model, which in recent decades surprised many by turning out world-beating firms like Alibaba and ByteDance despite Beijing's authoritarian controls.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A software error on the part of Firefly Aerospace doomed Lockheed Martin's Electronic Steerable Antenna (ESA) demonstrator to a shorter-than-expected orbital life following a botched Alpha launch. From a report: According to Firefly's mission update, the error was in the Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) software algorithm, preventing the system from sending the necessary pulse commands to the Reaction Control System (RCS) thrusters before the relight of the second stage. The result was that Lockheed's payload was left in the wrong orbit, and Firefly's engineers were left scratching their heads. The launch on December 22, 2023 -- dubbed "Fly the Lightning" -- seemed to go well at first. It was the fourth for the Alpha, and after Firefly finally registered a successful launch a few months earlier in September, initial indications looked good. However, a burn of the second stage to circularize the orbit did not go to plan, and Lockheed's satellite was left in the wrong orbit, with little more than weeks remaining until it re-entered the atmosphere. As it turned out, the Lockheed team completed their primary mission objectives. The payload was, after all, designed to demonstrate faster on-orbit sensor calibration. Just perhaps not quite that fast. Software issues aboard spacecraft are becoming depressingly commonplace. A recent example was the near disastrous first launch of Boeing's CST-100 Starliner, where iffy code could have led, in NASA parlance, to "spacecraft loss." In a recent interview with The Register, former Voyager scientist Garry Hunt questioned if the commercial spaceflight sector of today would take the same approach to quality as the boffins of the past.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's no surprise that the broader tech industry has largely moved away from physical disks to digital subscription-based models. But Microsoft's Gaming CEO Phil Spencer says Xbox isn't trying to do away with disks just yet -- even though making disk slots could become challenging in the future. From a report: "Our strategy does not hinge on people moving all-digital," Spencer said in a recent interview with Game File. "Getting rid of physical, that's not a strategic thing for us." While Spencer implied that disk slots have become somewhat old-school at this point, Xbox consoles will continue to offer both disk-compatible and diskless options if gamers still want to choose. Xbox hasn't confirmed yet whether the previously leaked diskless Xbox refresh of the Series X console is still coming, though. "Gaming consoles themselves have kind of become the last consumer electronic device that has a drive," Spencer conceded, calling it a "real issue." Because so few manufacturers are still making physical disk slots, it's possible making consoles with them could become cost prohibitive in the future. "When you think about cogs that we're going to go put in a console -- and as you have fewer suppliers and fewer buyers -- the cost of the drive does have an impact," Spencer said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel has landed Microsoft as a customer for its made-to-order chip business, marking a key win for an ambitious turnaround effort under Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger. From a report: Microsoft plans to use Intel's 18A manufacturing technology to make a forthcoming chip that the software maker designed in-house, the two companies said at an event Wednesday. They didn't identify the product, but Microsoft recently announced plans for two homegrown chips: a computer processor and an artificial intelligence accelerator. Intel has been seeking to prove it can compete in the foundry market, where companies produce custom chips for clients. It's a major shift for the semiconductor pioneer, which once had the world's most advanced chipmaking facilities and kept them to itself. These days, Intel is racing to catch up with companies like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which leads the foundry industry. Microsoft, meanwhile, is looking to secure a steady supply of semiconductors to power its data-center operations -- especially as demand for AI grows. Designing its own chips also lets Microsoft fine-tune the products to its specific needs. "We need a reliable supply of the most advanced, high-performance and high-quality semiconductors," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement. aoeThat's why we are so excited to work with Intel."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A day after the U.S., UK and EU said they had disrupted the ransomware group LockBit, the State Department said the U.S. is offering a reward of up to $15 million for information leading to the identification or location of the leaders of the ransomware group.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Academics have found that the U.S. mortality declines during recessions, with "reductions in air pollution... a quantitatively important mechanism." Abstract of a paper on National Bureau of Economic Research: We leverage spatial variation in the severity of the Great Recession across the United States to examine its impact on mortality and to explore implications for the welfare consequences of recessions. We estimate that an increase in the unemployment rate of the magnitude of the Great Recession reduces the average, annual age-adjusted mortality rate by 2.3 percent, with effects persisting for at least 10 years. Mortality reductions appear across causes of death and are concentrated in the half of the population with a high school degree or less. We estimate similar percentage reductions in mortality at all ages, with declines in elderly mortality thus responsible for about three-quarters of the total mortality reduction. Recession-induced mortality declines are driven primarily by external effects of reduced aggregate economic activity on mortality, and recession-induced reductions in air pollution appear to be a quantitatively important mechanism. Incorporating our estimates of pro-cyclical mortality into a standard macroeconomics framework substantially reduces the welfare costs of recessions, particularly for people with less education, and at older ages where they may even be welfare-improving.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has updated the iPhone 15's battery lifespan, noting the new handsets can retain 80 percent of their original charging capacity after 1,000 cycles -- double the company's previous estimate -- without any new hardware or software updates. From a report: Not so coincidentally, the change will arrive in time for upcoming EU regulations that will assign an energy grade for phones' battery longevity. Before today, Apple's online support documents quoted iPhone batteries as maintaining 80 percent of their original full charge after 500 cycles. But after the company retested long-term battery health in its 2023 smartphones -- iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max -- it found they can retain 80 percent capacity after at least 1,000 cycles. The company said its support documents will be updated on Tuesday to reflect the new estimate.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is rolling out an upgrade to its iMessage texting platform to defend against future encryption-breaking technologies. From a report: The new protocol, known as PQ3, is another sign that U.S. tech firms are bracing for a potential future breakthrough in quantum computing that could make current methods of protecting users' communications obsolete. "More than simply replacing an existing algorithm with a new one, we rebuilt the iMessage cryptographic protocol from the ground up," an Apple blog post published on Wednesday reads. "It will fully replace the existing protocol within all supported conversations this year." The Cupertino, California-based iPhone maker says its encryption algorithms are state-of-the-art and that it has found no evidence so far of a successful attack on them. Still, government officials and scientists are concerned that the advent of quantum computers, advanced machines that tap in to the properties of subatomic particles, could suddenly and dramatically weaken those protections. Late last year, a Reuters investigation explored how the United States and China are racing to prepare for that moment, dubbed "Q-Day," both by pouring money into quantum research and by investing in new encryption standards known as post-quantum cryptography. Washington and Beijing have traded allegations of intercepting massive amounts of encrypted data in preparation for Q-Day, an approach sometimes dubbed "catch now, crack later." More on Apple's security blog.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Barely a week after launching the latest iteration of its Gemini models, Google today announced the launch of Gemma, a new family of lightweight open-weight models. From a report: Starting with Gemma 2B and Gemma 7B, these new models were "inspired by Gemini" and are available for commercial and research usage. Google did not provide us with a detailed paper on how these models perform against similar models from Meta and Mistral, for example, and only noted that they are "state-of-the-art." The company did note that these are dense decoder-only models, though, which is the same architecture it used for its Gemini models (and its earlier PaLM models) and that we will see the benchmarks later today on Hugging Face's leaderboard. To get started with Gemma, developers can get access to ready-to-use Colab and Kaggle notebooks, as well as integrations with Hugging Face, MaxText and Nvidia's NeMo. Once pre-trained and tuned, these models can then run everywhere. While Google highlights that these are open models, it's worth noting that they are not open-source. Indeed, in a press briefing ahead of today's announcement, Google's Janine Banks stressed the company's commitment to open source but also noted that Google is very intentional about how it refers to the Gemma models.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: As the French startup ecosystem continues to boom -- think Mistral, Poolside, and Adaptive -- today the Paris-based Bioptimus, with a mission to build the first universal AI foundation model for biology, emerged from stealth following a seed funding round of $35 million. The new open science model will connect the different scales of biology with generative AI -- from molecules to cells, tissues and whole organisms. Bioptimus unites a team of Google DeepMind alumni and Owkin scientists (AI biotech startup Owkin is itself a French unicorn) who will take advantage of AWS compute and Owkin's data generation capabilities and access to multimodal patient data sourced from leading academic hospitals worldwide. According to a press release, "this all gives the power to create computational representations that establish a strong differentiation against models trained solely on public datasets and a single data modality that are not able to capture the full diversity of biology." In an interview with VentureBeat, Jean-Philippe Vert, co-founder and CEO of Bioptimus, chief R&D Officer of Owkin and former research lead at Google Brain, said as a smaller, independent company, Bioptimus can move faster than Google DeepMind to gain direct access to the data needed to train biology models. "We have the advantage of being able to more easily and securely collaborate with partners, and have established a level of trust in our work by sharing our AI expertise and making models available to them for research," he said. "This can be hard for big tech to do. Bioptimus will also leverage some of the strongest sovereignty controls in the market today." Rodolphe Jenatton, a former research scientist at Google DeepMind, has also joined the Bioptimus team, telling VentureBeat the Bioptimus work will be released as open source/open science, at a similar level to Mistral's model releases. "Transparency and sharing and community will be key elements for us," he said. Currently, AI models are limited to specific aspects of biology, Vert explained. "For example, several companies are starting to build language models for protein sequences," he said, adding that there are also initiatives to build a foundation model for images of cells. However, there is no holistic view of the totality of biology: "The good news is that the AI technology is converging very quickly, with some architectures that allow to have all the data contribute together to a unified model," he explained. "So this is what we want to do. As far as I know that it does not exist yet. But I'm certain that if we didn't do it, someone else would do it in the near future." The biggest bottleneck, he said, is access to data. "It's very different from training an LLM on text on the web," he said. And that access, he pointed out, is what Bioptimus has in spades, through its Owkin partnership.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jennifer Ouellette reports via Ars Technica: Famed naturalist Charles Darwin amassed an impressive personal library over the course of his life, much of which was preserved and cataloged upon his death in 1882. But many other items were lost, including more ephemeral items like unbound volumes, pamphlets, journals, clippings, and so forth, often only vaguely referenced in Darwin's own records. For the last 18 years, the Darwin Online project has painstakingly scoured all manner of archival records to reassemble a complete catalog of Darwin's personal library virtually. The project released its complete 300-page online catalog -- consisting of 7,400 titles across 13,000 volumes, with links to electronic copies of the works -- to mark Darwin's 215th birthday on February 12. "This unprecedentedly detailed view of Darwin's complete library allows one to appreciate more than ever that he was not an isolated figure working alone but an expert of his time building on the sophisticated science and studies and other knowledge of thousands of people," project leader John van Wyhe of the National University of Singapore said. "Indeed, the size and range of works in the library makes manifest the extraordinary extent of Darwin's research into the work of others."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Disney is outsourcing its DVD and Blu-ray disc business to Sony Pictures Entertainment. Variety reports: As part of the deal, Sony will market, sell and distribute all Disney's new releases and catalog titles on physical media to consumers through retailers and distributors in the U.S. and Canada. Disney will continue to manage its own digital media, like premium video-on-demand. It's unclear if this will result in layoffs at Disney. However, the studio is expected to conduct an internal assessment across all business functions that support physical entertainment amid the transition to Sony, according to sources familiar with the agreement. According to Disney, the licensing model allows the studio to continue to offer films and TV shows through physical retailers and to respond to consumer demand more efficiently. The company said the shift is consistent with strategies it's implemented companywide, as well as transitions in other markets.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Alabama Supreme Court on Friday ruled that frozen embryos are "children," entitled to full personhood rights, and anyone who destroys them could be liable in a wrongful death case. The first-of-its-kind ruling throws into question the future use of assisted reproductive technology (ART) involving in vitro fertilization for patients in Alabama -- and beyond. For this technology, people who want children but face challenges to conceiving can create embryos in clinical settings, which may or may not go on to be implanted in a uterus. In the Alabama case, a hospital patient wandered through an unlocked door, removed frozen, preserved embryos from subzero storage and, suffering an ice burn, dropped the embryos, killing them. Affected IVF patients filed wrongful-death lawsuits against the IVF clinic under the state's Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. The case was initially dismissed in a lower court, which ruled the embryos did not meet the definition of a child. But the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that "it applies to all children, born and unborn, without limitation." In a concurring opinion, Chief Justice Tom Parker cited his religious beliefs and quoted the Bible to support the stance. "Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself," Parker wrote. "Even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory." In 2020, the US Department of Health and Human Services estimated that there were over 600,000 embryos frozen in storage around the country, a significant percentage of which will likely never result in a live birth. The result of this ruling "could mean that any embryos that are destroyed or discarded in the process of IVF or afterward could be the subject of wrongful death lawsuits," notes Ars. [According to national ART data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of egg retrievals that fail to result in a live birth ranges from 46 percent to 91 percent, depending on the patient's age. Meanwhile, the percentage of fertilized egg or embryo transfers that fail to result in a live birth range from 51 percent to 76 percent, depending on age.] "The ruling creates potentially paralyzing liability for ART clinics and patients who use them. Doctors may choose to only attempt creating embryos one at a time to avoid liability attached to creating extras, or they may decline to provide IVF altogether to avoid liability when embryos do not survive the process. This could exacerbate the already financially draining and emotionally exhausting process of IVF, potentially putting it entirely out of reach for those who want to use the technology and putting clinics out of business."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a new report today, Nielsen found that YouTube is once again the overall top streaming service in the U.S., with 8.6% of viewing on television screens. Netflix was a close second at 7.9% of TV usage. TechCrunch reports: In a blog post celebrating the achievement, the Google-owned streaming service announced that viewers now watch a daily average of over 1 billion hours of YouTube content on their televisions, which could indicate that there's a preference for user-generated videos among U.S. consumers rather than traditional TV shows. Sixty-one percent of Gen Z reported that they favor user-generated content over other content formats. [...] Although YouTube may have precedence in the living room, TikTok continues to dominate on mobile devices. The short-form video app recently began testing the ability for TikTokers to upload 30-minute videos, which could step on YouTube's toes. TikTok also entered the spatial reality space, launching a native app on the Apple Vision Pro. Meanwhile, YouTube decided to not build a dedicated app for the device.Read more of this story at Slashdot.