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Apple today announced that Advanced Data Protection is expanding beyond the United States. MacRumors reports: Starting with iOS 16.3, the security feature will be available globally, giving users to option to enable end-to-end encryption for many additional iCloud data categories, including Photos, Notes, Voice Memos, Messages backups, device backups, and more. iOS 16.3 is currently in beta and expected to be released to the public next week. By default, Apple stores encryption keys for some iCloud data types on its servers to ensure that users can recover their data if they lose access to their Apple ID account. If a user enables Advanced Data Protection, the encryption keys are deleted from Apple's servers and stored on a user's devices only, preventing Apple, law enforcement, or anyone else from accessing the data, even if iCloud servers were to be breached. iCloud already provides end-to-end encryption for 14 data categories without Advanced Data Protection turned on, including Messages (excluding backups), passwords stored in iCloud Keychain, Health data, Apple Maps search history, Apple Card transactions, and more. Advanced Data Protection expands this protection to the vast majority of iCloud categories, with major exceptions including the Mail, Contacts, and Calendar apps. For more information, you can read Apple's Advanced Data Protection support document.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In early January, Adobe came under fire for language used in its terms and conditions that seemed to indicate that it could use photographers' photos to train generative artificial intelligence systems. The company has reiterated that this is not the case. PetaPixel reports: The language of its "Content analysis" section in its Privacy and Personal Data settings says that by default, users give Adobe permission to "analyze content using techniques such as machine learning (e.g., for pattern recognition) to develop and improve our products and services." That sounded a lot like artificial intelligence-based (AI) image generators. One of the sticking points of this particular section is that Adobe makes it an opt-out, not an opt-in, so many photographers likely had no idea they were already agreeing to it. "Machine learning-enabled features can help you become more efficient and creative," Adobe explains. "For example, we may use machine learning-enabled features to help you organize and edit your images more quickly and accurately. With object recognition in Lightroom, we can auto-tag photos of your dog or cat." When pressed for comment in PetaPixel's original coverage on January 5, Adobe didn't immediately respond leaving many to assume the worst. However, a day later, the company did provide some clarity on the issue to PetaPixel that some photographers may have missed. "We give customers full control of their privacy preferences and settings. The policy in discussion is not new and has been in place for a decade to help us enhance our products for customers. For anyone who prefers their content be excluded from the analysis, we offer that option here," a spokesperson from Adobe's public affairs office told PetaPixel. "When it comes to Generative AI, Adobe does not use any data stored on customers' Creative Cloud accounts to train its experimental Generative AI features. We are currently reviewing our policy to better define Generative AI use cases." In an interview with Bloomberg, Adobe Chief Product Officer Scott Belsky said: "We are rolling out a new evolution of this policy that is more specific. If we ever allow people to opt-in for generative AI specifically, we need to call it out and explain how we're using it." "We have to be very explicit about these things."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ArsTechnica: We've said it before, and we'll say it again: USB-C is confusing. A USB-C port or cable can support a range of speeds, power capabilities, and other features, depending on the specification used. Today, USB-C can support various data transfer rates, from 0.48Gbps (USB 2.0) all the way to 40Gbps (USB4, Thunderbolt 3, and Thunderbolt 4). Things are only about to intensify, as today the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) published the USB4 Version 2.0 spec. It adds optional support for 80Gbps bidirectional bandwidth as well as the optional ability to send or receive data at up to 120Gbps. The USB-IF first gave us word of USB4 Version 2.0 in September, saying it would support a data transfer rate of up to 80Gbps in either direction (40Gbps per lane, four lanes total), thanks to a new physical layer architecture (PHY) based on PAM-3 signal encoding. For what it's worth, Intel also demoed Thunderbolt at 80Gbps but hasn't released an official spec yet. USB4 Version 2.0 offers a nice potential bump over the original USB4 spec, which introduced optional support for 40Gbps operation. You just have to be sure to check the spec sheets to know what sort of performance you're getting. Once USB4 Version 2.0 products come out, you'll be able to hit 80Gbps with USB-C passive cables that currently operate at 40Gbps, but you'll have to buy a new cable if you want a longer, active 80Gbps. In a statement to CNET, USB-IF said they don't expect to see supporting products for the new spec for "at least 12 to 18 months." The USB Implementers Forum also updated the USB Type-C Cable and Connector and USB Power Delivery specifications today to accommodate USB4 Version 2.0.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Boston Dynamics released a demo of its humanoid robot Atlas, showing it pick up and deliver a bag of tools to a construction worker. While Atlas could already run and jump over complex terrain, the new hands, or rudimentary grippers, "give the robot new life," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The claw-like gripper consists of one fixed finger and one moving finger. Boston Dynamics says the grippers were designed for heavy lifting tasks and were first demonstrated in a Super Bowl commercial where Atlas held a keg over its head. The videos released today show the grippers picking up construction lumber and a nylon tool bag. Next, the Atlas picks up a 2x8 and places it between two boxes to form a bridge. The Atlas then picks up a bag of tools and dashes over the bridge and through construction scaffolding. But the tool bag needs to go to the second level of the structure -- something Atlas apparently realized and quickly throws the bag a considerable distance. Boston Dynamics describes this final maneuver: 'Atlas' concluding move, an inverted 540-degree, multi-axis flip, adds asymmetry to the robot's movement, making it a much more difficult skill than previously performed parkour." A behind the scenes video describing how Atlas is able to recognize and interact with objects is also available on YouTube.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is officially shutting down its Stadia cloud gaming service today, Wednesday, January 18, after having failed to gain the traction that the company was expecting. Google servers that host the service are due to shut down at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time. MacRumors reports: Launched in November 2019, the service was designed to allow for cloud-based gaming across a range of devices, including PCs, Chromebooks, Macs, iPhones, and iPads. Reports began emerging in early 2021 of Stadia's underwhelming uptake among gamers, shortly after Google's decision to kill its only in-house Stadia game development studio, Stadia Games and Entertainment (SG&E), only two years into its life. Since announcing the shutdown in September 2022, Google has promised to refund any and all Stadia purchases. They've also recently offered a tool to make Stadia controller capable of using Bluetooth, allowing them to be used with other gaming platforms.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: According to a new study, a little over 70 percent of prescription drugs advertised on television were rated as having "low therapeutic value," meaning they offer little benefit compared with drugs already on the market. The study, appearing in JAMA Open Network, aligns with longstanding skepticism that heavily promoted drugs have high therapeutic value. "One explanation might be that drugs with substantial therapeutic value are likely to be recognized and prescribed without advertising, so manufacturers have greater incentive to promote drugs of lesser value," said the authors, which include researchers at Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth. For the new study, researchers led by Aaron Kesselheim, who leads Harvard's Program On Regulation, Therapeutics, And Law (PORTAL), looked at monthly lists of the top-advertised drugs on TV in the US between 2015 and 2021. They also looked up therapeutic value ratings for those drugs from independent health assessment agencies in Canada, France, and Germany. The value ratings were based on drugs' therapeutic benefit, safety profile, and strength of evidence, as compared with existing drugs. Any drug rated "moderate" or above was classified as a "high value" drug for the study. For drugs with multiple ratings, the study authors used the most favorable rating, which they note could overestimate the proportion of higher-benefit drugs. Of the top advertised drugs, 73 had at least one value rating. Collectively, pharmaceutical companies spent $22.3 billion on advertising for those 73 drugs between 2015 and 2021. Even with the generous ratings, 53 of the 73 drugs (roughly 73 percent) were categorized as low-benefit. Collectively, these low-benefit drugs accounted for $15.9 billion of the ad spending. The top three low-benefit drugs by dollar amount were Dulaglutide (type 2 diabetes), Varenicline (smoking cessation), and Tofacitinib (rheumatoid arthritis). The outlook for change is bleak, the authors note. "Policy makers and regulators could consider limiting direct-to-consumer advertising to drugs with high therapeutic or public health value or requiring standardized disclosure of comparative effectiveness and safety data," Kesselheim and his colleagues concluded, "but policy changes would likely require industry cooperation or face constitutional challenge." The report notes that the U.S. is "one of only two countries that allows direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug advertisements, such as TV commercials." The other is New Zealand.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Genesis Global Capital is laying the groundwork for a bankruptcy filing as soon as this week, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday, citing people with knowledge of the situation. From a report: The cryptocurrency lending unit of Digital Currency Group has been in confidential negotiations with various creditor groups amid a liquidity crunch. It has warned that it may need to file for bankruptcy if it fails to raise cash, Bloomberg previously reported. Financial pressure at Barry Silbert's DCG began to emerge after the collapse of hedge fund Three Arrows Capital. Genesis suspended withdrawals in November, soon after crypto exchange FTX -- where Genesis held some of its funds -- filed for bankruptcy. The failures have had ripple effects on crypto exchange Gemini Trust, run by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. Gemini Earn -- a service that let Gemini's users get yield for lending out their coins through Genesis -- stopped redemptions as well.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Email marketing and newsletter giant Mailchimp says it was hacked and that dozens of customers' data was exposed. From a report: It's the second time the company was hacked in the past six months. Worse, this breach appears to be almost identical to a previous incident. Mailchimp said in an unattributed blog post that its security team detected an intruder on January 11 accessing one of its internal tools used by Mailchimp customer support and account administration, though the company did not say for how long the intruder was in its systems, if known. Mailchimp said the hacker targeted its employees and contractors with a social engineering attack. The hacker then used those compromised employee passwords to gain access to data on 133 Mailchimp accounts, which the company notified of the intrusion. One of those targeted accounts belongs to e-commerce giant WooCommerce. In a note to customers, WooCommerce said it was notified by Mailchimp a day later that the breach may have exposed the names, store web addresses and email addresses of its customers, though it said no customer passwords or other sensitive data was taken.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The forest carbon offsets approved by the world's leading provider and used by Disney, Shell, Gucci and other big corporations are largely worthless and could make global heating worse, according to a new investigation. The Guardian: The research into Verra, the world's leading carbon standard for the rapidly growing $2bn voluntary offsets market, has found that, based on analysis of a significant percentage of the projects, more than 90% of their rainforest offset credits -- among the most commonly used by companies -- are likely to be "phantom credits" and do not represent genuine carbon reductions. The analysis raises questions over the credits bought by a number of internationally renowned companies -- some of them have labelled their products "carbon neutral," or have told their consumers they can fly, buy new clothes or eat certain foods without making the climate crisis worse. But doubts have been raised repeatedly over whether they are really effective. The nine-month investigation has been undertaken by the Guardian, the German weekly Die Zeit and SourceMaterial, a non-profit investigative journalism organisation. It is based on new analysis of scientific studies of Verra's rainforest schemes. It has also drawn on dozens of interviews and on-the-ground reporting with scientists, industry insiders and Indigenous communities. The findings -- which have been strongly disputed by Verra -- are likely to pose serious questions for companies that are depending on offsets as part of their net zero strategies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University developed a method for detecting the three dimensional shape and movements of human bodies in a room, using only WiFi routers. From a report: To do this, they used DensePose, a system for mapping all of the pixels on the surface of a human body in a photo. DensePose was developed by London-based researchers and Facebook's AI researchers. From there, according to their recently-uploaded preprint paper published on arXiv, they developed a deep neural network that maps WiFi signals' phase and amplitude sent and received by routers to coordinates on human bodies. Researchers have been working on "seeing" people without using cameras or expensive LiDAR hardware for years. In 2013, a team of researchers at MIT found a way to use cell phone signals to see through walls; in 2018, another MIT team used WiFi to detect people in another room and translate their movements to walking stick-figures.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Wikipedia editors are waiting to hear you scream. On Wednesday, Wikipedia is set to make its new skin the default on English Wikipedia -- its first new skin since 2010 -- and the team of designers and volunteer editors are waiting with some mix of excitement and trepidation. From a report: On Sunday, several dozen Wikipedia editors nursed cocktails in midtown Manhattan at the afterparty for Wikipedia Day, the annual celebration of Wikipedia's Jan. 14, 2001, founding. The group -- a nerdy crowd of librarians, students, software engineers, and others who spend their free time creating an encyclopedia -- usually meets in quiet libraries instead of ritzy open bars, but this was a special occasion: Wikipedia's 22nd birthday (as well as its 21st and 20th, which the group had only commemorated online). Plus, someone had offered the space as a donation. Gathered on a leather couch, speaking loudly over the DJ's groovy music, their conversation meandered from class-action lawsuits against a water park to bird photography to Vector 2022, Wikipedia's first big redesign in 12 years, set to debut as the default on English Wikipedia on Wednesday. Eyes lit up. People leaned in. Anticipation was palpable. "We're going to be able to hear screams from space," joked a Wikimedian who goes by the username Enterprisey, who has spent months contributing to the redesign. Pharos, a longtime contributor, mentioned that Swahili Wikipedia had unanimously voted to reject the new skin and curtly demanded a return to the old skin. "I had never seen Swahili Wikipedia so outspoken about something. Pretty exciting," he said. For all the hype, Vector 2022 isn't dramatically different -- that's why it shares a name with the previous skin, Vector 2010. All the scaffolding is the same: Wikipedia is still Wikipedia, just with more whitespace, a more prominent search bar and language switcher, and a sticky table of contents. There's also a collapsible sidebar and maximum line width, which make the site more clean and less cluttered. But those changes have been scrupulously discussed and debated (over and over and over). Wikipedia is not the scrappy web experiment it once was. [...] But it doesn't look all that different than it did 23 years ago, when it was run by a few guys in an office in Florida. The text-heavy website resembles an email inbox, or Craigslist, or Old Reddit. It's a barrage of straightforward white and blue text, a rather unsightly assemblage of lines and squares. It's not trendy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon has started its biggest-ever round of jobs cuts -- a culling that will ultimately affect 18,000 workers around the globe. From a report: Amazon began notifying employees by email early Wednesday, Doug Herrington, the company's worldwide retail chief, said in a memo. He said the company aimed to communicate with all laid-off workers in the US, Canada and Costa Rica by the end of the day. Notifications in China will be sent after the Chinese New Year, and in other regions the company must consult with employee representatives before finalizing layoffs. The world's largest e-commerce company is grappling with slowing online sales growth and bracing for a possible recession that could affect the spending power of its customers. Microsoft announced it was cutting 10,000 jobs Wednesday, becoming the latest in a long line of tech companies to trim its ranks. Herrington said Amazon's cuts were part of an effort to lower costs "so we can continue investing in the wide selection, low prices and fast shipping that our customers love." He said the company would "continue investing meaningfully" in growth areas including groceries, Amazon's business-to-business sales program, services for third-party sellers and healthcare. The eliminations started last year and initially fell hardest on Amazon's Devices and Services group, which builds the Alexa digital assistant and Echo smart speakers. The latest round will mostly affect the retail division and human resources.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hundreds of federal, state and local U.S. law-enforcement agencies have access without court oversight to a database of more than 150 million money transfers between people in the U.S. and in more than 20 countries, according to internal program documents and an investigation by Sen. Ron Wyden. WSJ: The database, housed at a little-known nonprofit called the Transaction Record Analysis Center, or TRAC, was set up by the Arizona state attorney general's office in 2014 as part of a settlement reached with Western Union to combat cross-border trafficking of drugs and people from Mexico. It has since expanded to allow officials of more than 600 law-enforcement entities -- from federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to small-town police departments in nearly every state -- to monitor the flow of funds through money services between the U.S. and countries around the world. TRAC's data includes the full names of the sender and recipient as well as the transaction amount. Rich Lebel, TRAC's director, said the program has directly resulted in hundreds of leads and busts involving drug cartels and other criminals seeking to launder money, and has revealed patterns of money flow that help law-enforcement agencies get a broader grasp on smuggling networks. "It's a law-enforcement investigative tool," Mr. Lebel said. "We don't broadcast it to the world, but we don't run from or hide from it either." Mr. Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said TRAC allows the government to "serve itself an all-you-can-eat buffet of Americans' personal financial data while bypassing the normal protections for Americans' privacy." Internal records, including TRAC meeting minutes and copies of 140 subpoenas from the Arizona attorney general, were obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. They show that any authorized law-enforcement agency can query the data without a warrant to examine the transactions of people inside the U.S. for evidence of money laundering and other crimes. One slideshow prepared by a TRAC investigator showed how the program's data could be used to scan for categories such as "Middle Eastern/Arabic names" in bulk transaction records.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Department of Justice: A complaint was unsealed this morning in federal court in Brooklyn charging Anatoly Legkodymov, a Russian national and senior executive of Bitzlato Ltd. (Bitzlato), a Hong Kong-registered cryptocurrency exchange, with conducting a money transmitting business that transported and transmitted illicit funds and that failed to meet U.S. regulatory safeguards, including anti-money laundering requirements. Legkodymov was arrested last night in Miami and is scheduled to be arraigned this afternoon in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. French authorities and the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) are taking concurrent enforcement actions. According to court documents, Legkodymov is a senior executive and the majority shareholder of Bitzlato Ltd. (Bitzlato), a Hong Kong-registered cryptocurrency exchange that operates globally. Bitzlato has marketed itself as requiring minimal identification from its users, specifying that "neither selfies nor passports [are] required." On occasions when Bitzlato did direct users to submit identifying information, it repeatedly allowed them to provide information belonging to "straw man" registrants. As a result of these deficient know-your-customer (KYC) procedures, Bitzlato allegedly became a haven for criminal proceeds and funds intended for use in criminal activity. Bitzlato's largest counterparty in cryptocurrency transactions was Hydra Market, an anonymous, illicit online marketplace for narcotics, stolen financial information, fraudulent identification documents, and money laundering services that was the largest and longest running darknet market in the world. Hydra Market users exchanged more than $700 million in cryptocurrency with Bitzlato, either directly or through intermediaries, until Hydra Market was shuttered by U.S. and German law enforcement in April 2022. Bitzlato also received more than $15 million in ransomware proceeds.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Music streaming service Spotify, along with other media firms such as Deezer, urged the European Commission to take action against Apple for anticompetitive and unfair practices, in a joint industry letter on Wednesday. From a report: The letter, addressed to the European Union antitrust regulator's Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager, demanded the Commission to act fast for the welfare of European consumers. Spotify has for years accused Apple of abusing its market position using its App Store rules to stifle competition. It has previously submitted antitrust complaints against Apple in various countries, alleging the 30% charge Apple requires developers to pay on its App Store has forced Spotify to "artificially inflate" its own prices. "We are writing to you to call for swift and decisive action by the European Commission against anticompetitive and unfair practices by certain global digital gatekeepers, and Apple in particular," read the letter, which was signed by chief executives of media firms Schibsted, Proton and Basecamp.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More than 4,400 Internet-exposed servers are running versions of the Sophos Firewall that's vulnerable to a critical exploit that allows hackers to execute malicious code, a researcher has warned. From a report: CVE-2022-3236 is a code-injection vulnerability allowing remote code execution in the User Portal and Webadmin of Sophos Firewalls. It carries a severity rating of 9.8 out of 10. When Sophos disclosed the vulnerability last September, the company warned it had been exploited in the wild as a zero-day. The security company urged customers to install a hotfix and, later on, a full-blown patch to prevent infection. According to recently published research, more than 4,400 servers running the Sophos firewall remain vulnerable. That accounts for about 6 percent of all Sophos firewalls, security firm VulnCheck said, citing figures from a search on Shodan. "More than 99% of Internet-facing Sophos Firewalls haven't upgraded to versions containing the official fix for CVE-2022-3236," VulnCheck researcher Jacob Baines wrote. "But around 93% are running versions that are eligible for a hotfix, and the default behavior for the firewall is to automatically download and apply hotfixes (unless disabled by an administrator). It's likely that almost all servers eligible for a hotfix received one, although mistakes do happen. That still leaves more than 4,000 firewalls (or about 6% of Internet-facing Sophos Firewalls) running versions that didn't receive a hotfix and are therefore vulnerable."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The smartphone industry capped off another dismal year with a 17% year over year drop for Q4. That number puts the full year's shipping figures 11% below 2021, per new numbers from Canalys, which refer to it as "an extremely challenging year for all vendors." From a report: It's been one thing after another from the industry. Slowing figures pre-dated 2020, while the pandemic and its various knock-on effects have continued tossing up roadblocks. For 2022, the same macroeconomic headwinds that have impacted practically every facet of life took their own toll on the industry. Notably, the figures for the quarter and the year were at their lowest in nearly a decade. The firm tells TechCrunch, "we have to go back to 2013 to find lower numbers -- and back then the market situation was very different as the technology was a lot more emerging." Apple returned to the top spot for Q4, at a quarter of the total market. Samsung held onto No. 2, but still captured the top spot for the entirety of 2022.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said the technology industry must learn to be efficient as demand slows. From a report: "During the pandemic there was rapid acceleration. I think we are going to go through a phase today where there is some amount of normalization in demand," Nadella said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "We will have to do more with less -- we will have to show our own productivity gains with our own technology." The company on Wednesday said it will cut 10,000 jobs through the end of FY23 Q3.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has announced a new $299 HomePod smart speaker with a similar form factor to the original HomePod released in 2018. From a report: It will be sold alongside the HomePod Mini, the smaller version of the speaker introduced in 2020, and features support for the new smart home standard Matter, allowing it to control compatible accessories. The new HomePod is available to order starting today, and will begin shipping February 3rd. The original HomePod had an unusually rocky lifespan for an Apple product. Originally announced in 2017 with a December ship date, the $349 smart speaker was subsequently delayed to February 2018. When it was eventually released, the HomePod's voice assistant Siri fared poorly against Alexa and Google Assistant, and reviewers criticized how locked into Apple's ecosystem the smart speaker was. Despite getting a $50 price cut in 2019, the HomePod was eventually discontinued in 2021.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CoinTelegraph: Venture capital firm Digital Currency Group (DCG) has told shareholders it is halting its quarterly dividend payments until further notice as it attempts to preserve liquidity. According to the letter sent to shareholders on Jan. 17, the firm is focused on "strengthening our balance sheet by reducing operating expenses and preserving liquidity." Its financial issues are derived from the woes of its subsidiary, crypto broker Genesis Global Trading, which reportedly owes creditors more than $3 billion and DCG is also considering selling some of the assets within its portfolio. Customers are currently unable to withdraw funds from Genesis after it halted withdrawals on Nov. 16, which has prompted Cameron Winklevoss -- on behalf of his exchange Gemini and its users with funds on Genesis -- to call for the board of DCG to remove Barry Silbert as CEO of the firm in a Jan. 10 open letter. According to Winklevoss, Genesis owes Gemini $900 million for funds that were lent to Genesis as part of Gemini's Earn program, which offers customers the ability to earn an annual yield of up to 7.4%. He also claimed DCG owed $1.675 billion to Genesis although DCG boss Barry Silbert denied this. Soon after, on Jan. 12, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) poured fuel on the fire charging both firms with offering unregistered securities through the Earn program. DCG "owns Grayscale Investments and its series of digital asset trusts and has invested in over 200 companies within the crypto industry including recognizable names such as blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis, stablecoin issuer Circle and digital asset exchange Kraken," notes the report.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China has lifted its unofficial ban on Marvel titles, bestowing release dates for two major superhero tentpoles, "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" and "Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania." Variety reports: "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever," which was released everywhere else in the world last November, will open in China on Feb. 7. Shortly after, "Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania" will be released on Feb. 17, the same day the sequel touches down in the U.S. and the U.K. The dates were released via Marvel's Chinese social media accounts. Those movies will be the first Marvel adventures to play in China since 2019's "Avengers: Endgame" (which made a staggering $632 million in the territory) and "Spider-Man: Far From Home" (which brought in $198 million in the territory). In the past, Marvel movies have been extremely popular in China, with "Black Panther" grossing $105 million and "Ant-Man and the Wasp" earning $121 million in the country. It's not clear why recent titles from Disney and other major studios have been denied release in China. But it is most likely sabre rattling directed towards the U.S. during a period of increased tensions, especially with jingoistic political events like the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party and the 20th National Congress happening in 2021 and 2022 respectively.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has postponed the launch of its lightweight augmented-reality glasses indefinitely due to technical challenges, but is still planning to unveil its first mixed-reality headset this year, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday. Reuters reports: The iPhone maker's mixed-reality headset - which combines both augmented and virtual reality -- is set to launch in this year's spring event, Bloomberg said, adding that the device will cost around $3,000. Apple's mixed-reality device would compete with the likes of Meta Platforms' Quest Pro virtual and mixed-reality headset, which it launched late last year for $1,500, half of the Apple device's reported price. The Cupertino, California-based company now plans to focus on lowering the price of the follow-up version of its mixed-reality device, expected as soon as 2024 or early 2025, instead of working on the AR glasses, according to the report. Apple will aim to do so by using chips on par with those in the iPhone rather than components found in higher-end Mac computers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Dust that billows up from desert storms and arid landscapes has helped cool the planet for the past several decades, and its presence in the atmosphere may have obscured the true extent of global heating caused by fossil fuel emissions. Atmospheric dust has increased by about 55% since the mid-1800s, an analysis suggests. And that increasing dust may have hidden up to 8% of warming from carbon emissions. The analysis by atmospheric scientists and climate researchers in the US and Europe attempts to tally the varied, complex ways in which dust has affected global climate patterns, concluding that overall, it has worked to somewhat counteract the warming effects of greenhouse gasses. The study, published in Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, warns that current climate models fail to take into account the effect of atmospheric dust. About 26m tons of dust are suspended in our atmosphere, scientists estimate. Its effects are complicated. Dust, along with synthetic particulate pollution, can cool the planet in several ways. These mineral particles can reflect sunlight away from the Earth and dissipate cirrus clouds high in the atmosphere that warm the planet. Dust that falls into the ocean encourages the growth of phytoplankton -- microscopic plants in the ocean -- that absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. Dust can also have a warming effect in some cases -- darkening snow and ice, and prompting them to absorb more heat. But after they tallied everything up, it seemed clear to researchers that the dust had an overall cooling effect.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, the founders of collapsed crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC), are hoping to raise $25 million to start a new crypto exchange called GTX, according to two separate pitch decks obtained by The Block. Three Arrows Capital was one of the largest hedge funds in crypto until last year's collapse of the Terra ecosystem left it facing significant losses. The financial advisory firm Teneo has been handling the liquidation of 3AC's assets and the hedge fund has filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in New York. From the report: News of the fundraise comes two months after exchange giant FTX imploded, leaving more than a million creditors out of pocket. The new exchange takes advantage of the situation offering depositors the ability to transfer their FTX claims to GTX and receive immediate credit in a token called USDG, the pitch deck said. The exchange's name is even a spin on "FTX," with one of the GTX pitch decks opening with the line "because G comes after F." The Three Arrows pair are partnering with Mark Lamb and Sudhu Arumugam, who founded CoinFlex, a crypto exchange which is in the process of restructuring. The exchange's executive team is also made up of several CoinFlex executives including the firm's general counsel and chief technology officer, per one of the decks. GTX will leverage Coinflex's technology to build the exchange and a legal team will be responsible for overseeing the onboarding of claims for all the recent crypto bankruptcies such as Celsius and Voyager, according to the decks. The exchange is looking to launch as soon as possible -- potentially as soon as February -- and is estimating that the claims market is worth around $20 billion, according to the decks.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Netflix is expected to report its slowest quarterly revenue growth on Thursday as its ad-supported plan struggles to attract customers in the saturating U.S. market, which could pressure the company to pull back on content spending this year. Reuters reports: The streaming pioneer has been reeling under strained consumer spending, rising costs of financing production and increased competition from Disney+ and Amazon Prime. It had pinned its hopes on the launch of the ad-supported tier, but analysts say they have not seen a burst of subscriptions. The company is expected to have added 4.5 million subscribers in the fourth quarter - the lowest addition for the holiday period since 2014. It added 8.3 million subscribers a year ago. The $6.99 per month ad-supported plan does not have access to all titles and is not cheap enough to win over significant numbers of customers in the United States and Canada, analysts say. That is likely to draw focus on Netflix's aggressive content spending, which finance chief Spencer Neumann said in July would total about $17 billion annually for the next couple of years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Discord has acquired the Gas social app, a poll-based app for friends to share compliments with each other. "The app is designed for anonymous compliments and positive affirmations or, as kids say, gassing your friends up," reports The Verge. From the report: Gas has polls that ask users to vote for things like the most beautiful person they've met or the classmate that isn't afraid to get in trouble. It has soared in popularity among high schoolers since launching in August. One of the co-creators of TBH, a very similar teenager app acquired and shut down by Facebook, created Gas, which has caught the attention of more than 1 million daily active users and 30,000 new users per hour in October. "Gas' founders have a proven track record of creating exciting apps and experiences, and we're thrilled to work with their team to take things to the next level," says Discord in a blog post announcing the Gas acquisition. "At this time, Gas will continue as its own standalone app and the Gas team will be joining Discord to help our efforts to continue to grow across new and core audiences." Discord hasn't disclosed the terms of its Gas acquisition, but it's clearly part of a broader and continued effort to target communities and users outside of just gaming.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Britishvolt, a prominent battery start-up that generated enthusiasm from British politicians but never commercially produced a battery, filed for insolvency on Tuesday. The collapse deals a blow to Britain's ambitions to develop low-carbon businesses to replace some of the trade lost under Brexit. It also threatens the future of Britain's auto industry, which requires domestic sources of electric batteries if it is to thrive. Founded in 2019, Britishvolt promoted itself as a British domestic champion. It had plans to build a 3.8 billion pound (or $4.7 billion) battery factory near Blyth in northeast England, creating 3,000 jobs. Despite forming partnerships with companies like the carmaker Aston Martin and Glencore, the commodities trading house, it failed to raise enough money to either construct the factory or perfect its battery technologies. The company said Tuesday that it was forced into administration, analogous to filing for bankruptcy. On Tuesday, all but 26 of the 232 employees at Britishvolt's main unit learned that they had lost their jobs. The insolvency raises important questions about the future of the British auto industry. The government is pushing carmakers to rapidly convert to building electric cars, with a ban on sales of new gasoline and diesel-powered cars beginning 2030. The idea is to both meet far-reaching targets on reducing emissions and to keep pace with an enormous shift to electric cars that is rippling through the global auto industry. Experts, though, say Britain does not have sufficient sources lined up to build the batteries that make up a high proportion of the contents of electric vehicles. Ideally, these devices should be made near car assembly plants in order to meet local content rules and because they are heavy and costly to ship.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to new research, Google is working on a new Bluetooth tracker device to compete with Apple's AirTags. 9to5Google reports: Since 2021, Google has included ultra-wideband (UWB) connectivity in its high-end "Pro" phones like the Pixel 6 Pro and Pixel 7 Pro. For now, the hardware has only been used for niche cases like unlocking a luxury car or sending files to a friend, but it's been clear that Google intends for UWB to be used more often. [...] To build up its own "Finder Network," compete with Apple AirTags, and potentially make UWB more useful on Pixel phones, Google is reportedly developing its own tracking accessory. The information comes courtesy of Android researcher and frequent Pixel leaker Kuba Wojciechowski. The tracker is said to be in development under the codename "Grogu" -- a reference to the popular Star Wars series "The Mandalorian" -- alongside the alternate names "GR10" and "Groguaudio." The only other tidbits that have been uncovered so far suggest that the Nest team is seemingly taking lead on the development and that the tracker may be available in multiple colors. The "Groguaudio" codename suggests that Google's tracker would potentially come equipped with a speaker. On Apple's AirTags, a built-in speaker serves as both a privacy measure and a location aid, as if you move someone else's AirTag after it's been separated from them, it will beep. This is just one of many potential privacy issues that Google will need to work through before launching a tracker accessory like this one.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Following controversial changes to Dungeons & Dragons' decades-old Open Gaming License (OGL), "many prominent third-party RPG publishers now say they're abandoning the OGL, regardless of what changes [publisher Wizards of the Coast (WotC)] officially releases in a coming new version," reports Ars Technica. "What's more, many in the community have now lost faith in WotC's stewardship of the licensed rules system that has underpinned so much of the industry's last two decades." From the report: Pathfinder publisher Paizo Inc. is behind perhaps the biggest effort to move the industry away from WotC's OGL. The company announced last Thursday that it is creating a new Open RPG Creative License (ORC) designed to be "open, perpetual, and irrevocable." [...] Regardless of the legal fate of the OGL, Paizo says it wants to "irrevocably and unquestionably keep alive the spirit of the Open Game License" with its new ORC. The system-agnostic license, designed with the help of IP law firm Azora Law, will eventually be controlled and protected by a nonprofit akin to the Linux Foundation, the company says. Until that new license is ready, upcoming Paizo products will be printed without any explicit license, the company says. Paizo's ORC effort has already drawn some significant support from the community. Call of Cthulhu and Runequest publisher Chaosium, which never used the WotC OGL for its products in the first place, nonetheless writes that it's "very happy to be working with the rest of the industry to come up with a system-wide OGL that anyone can use." Popular D&D module publisher Kobold Press has also lent its support to Paizo's ORC product but stopped just short of committing to use it for its just-announced Core Fantasy ruleset, codenamed Project Black Flag. Instead, Kobold says it is "wait[ing] to see exactly what shape the Open Gaming License might take in this new era" and "will review the terms and consider whether they fit the needs of our audience and our business goals" when the updated OGL is eventually released. Mutants & Masterminds publisher Green Ronin is also on board with the ORC, with founder and President Chris Pramas publicly comparing the current OGL fiasco to WotC's disastrous attempt to push a new Game System License for the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons back in 2008. Apart from the companies backing Paizo's ORC -- including Legendary Games and Rogue Genius -- some tabletop publishers are creating their own licenses or finding other ways to extricate themselves from the WotC OGL. Blade Runner RPG and Mutant: Year Zero publisher Free League, for instance, says it's overhauling its unique Year Zero Engine to remove any WotC OGL content. At the same time, it's creating a new "irrevocable, worldwide, and royalty-free" license for anyone who wants to use that engine in their own games. [...] Old-School Essentials publisher Necrotic Gnome has similarly announced that it's "moving away from the OGL" for its future products. The company is leaving a bit of wiggle room, saying it will be "keeping an eye on developments" and that its next move "will depend on how the OGL topic develops over the coming months." But Necrotic Gnome adds that "the direction is clear," and that direction is toward "an alternative open license," which could end up being Paizo's ORC. Arcadia publisher MCDM and publisher Basic Fantasy also have plans to abandon the D&D 5th edition ruleset. "Troll Lord Games, meanwhile, publicly abandoned the OGL weeks ago and liquidated its existing stock of 5th-edition D&D products, 'never to be revisited again, in any edition,'" adds Ars.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes: If you've searched for external SSDs on Amazon.com recently, you may have noticed something weird: mixed in with the 1TB and 2TB drives from brands like Samsung and SanDisk are a bunch of listings for 16TB SSDs, mostly around $100, and with surprisingly high user ratings. Every single one is a scam, even if they're shipped by Amazon. Josh Hendrickson -- Editor-in-Chief of Review Geek -- bought one of the "16TB SSDs" and tore it down to reveal ageneric 64GB microSD card on a USB 2.0 card reader. Adrian Kingsley-Huges, writing for ZDNet in May 2022, found the exact same thing. Different packaging and different case colors, but the same trick. The Verge confirmed that several fake 16TB drives showed up on the first page of results for "external SSD," and over half the results for "16TB SSD" were fakes -- the rest were either 16TB enterprise hard drives, multi-drive enclosures, and one actual 16TB external drive, which costs $2,400 and contains two 8TB SSDs. While the top fake had a 3.6-star rating, the next two were 4.8 and 4.2, respectively. How are such obvious fakes getting such high ratings? It's the scam Hendrickson calls "review merging," and Consumer Reports calls "review hijacking." As Hendrickson explains, some third-party sellers take old listings and replace them with new items, leaving the reviews but changing everything else. A quick scan of one fake 16TB drive listing showed five-star reviews for laptop chargers, basketball backpacks, stickers, screen protectors, Mardi Gras beads, and mousepads. The sellers gather good reviews for cheap generic products, swap in a more expensive fake, and then take it down when bad reviews start piling up.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: Eating one freshwater fish caught in a river or lake in the United States is the equivalent of drinking a month's worth of water contaminated with toxic "forever chemicals," new research said on Tuesday. The invisible chemicals, called PFAS, were first developed in the 1940s to resist water and heat and are now used in items such as non-stick pans, textiles, fire suppression foams and food packaging. But the indestructibility of PFAS, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, means the pollutants have built up over time in the air, soil, lakes, rivers, food, drinking water and even our bodies. There have been growing calls for stricter regulation for PFAS, which have been linked to a range of serious health issues including liver damage, high cholesterol, reduced immune responses and several kinds of cancer. To find out PFAS contamination in locally caught fish, a team of researchers analyzed more than 500 samples from rivers and lakes across the United States between 2013 and 2015. The median level of PFAS in the fish was 9,500 nanograms per kilogram, according to a study published in the journal Environmental Research. Nearly three quarters of the detected "forever chemicals" were PFOS, one of the most common and hazardous of the thousands of forms of PFAS. Eating just one freshwater fish equalled drinking water with PFOS at 48 parts per trillion for a month, the researchers calculated. Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency lowered the level of PFOS in drinking water it considers safe to 0.02 parts per trillion. The total PFAS level in the freshwater fish was 278 times higher than what has been found in commercially sold fish, the study said. "This study is important because it provides the first evidence for widespread transfer of PFAS directly from fish to humans," said David Andrews, a senior scientist at the non-profit Environmental Working Group, which led research. He's calling for much more stringent regulation to bring an end to all non-essential uses of PFAS. The new findings appear in the journal Environmental Research.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft plans to cut thousands of jobs with some roles expected to be eliminated in human resources and engineering divisions, according to media reports on Tuesday. From a report: The expected layoffs would be the latest in the U.S. technology sector, where companies including Amazon.com and Meta have announced retrenchment exercises in response to slowing demand and a worsening global economic outlook. Microsoft's move could indicate that the tech sector may continue to shed jobs. "From a big picture perspective, another pending round of layoffs at Microsoft suggests the environment is not improving, and likely continues to worsen," Morningstar analyst Dan Romanoff said. U.K broadcaster Sky News reported, citing sources, that Microsoft plans to cut about 5% of its workforce, or about 11,000 roles.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A viral tweet today highlights a somewhat frustrating limitation with the Apple TV software. As of a recent software update, tvOS expects users have access to an iPhone or iPad in order to do things like accept new iCloud terms and conditions, or update their Apple ID settings. Although most people who use the Apple TV 4K box are deeply ensconced in the Apple ecosystem, this doesn't apply to everyone. Up until recently, the Apple TV could be used essentially independently. It was assumed to be a standalone device, not an accessory. Not so much, anymore. Moreover, these changes mean Apple TV users who have Macs -- but no personal iOS devices -- are also left in the lurch. Most of the Apple TV can be used without needing access to other Apple hardware. You can set up the Apple TV from scratch completely independently, install apps, and make purchases. Typical Apple ID management duties can be performed from a web browser on a PC, if occasionally necessary. However, there are some tasks -- seemingly more prevalent than ever as of tvOS 16 -- that the Apple TV expects you to do on an iOS device signed in with the same account. This viral tweet from @hugelgupf showcases perhaps the most egregious example: accepting new iCloud terms and conditions requires an iOS device.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Environmental groups are pushing New York state to scrutinize a crypto mining company's purchase of a gas-fired power plant, contending in a new lawsuit that turning the power plant into a crypto mine would go against the state's climate goals and dump more pollution on nearby neighborhoods. From a report: Sierra Club and the Clean Air Coalition of Western New York filed a suit on Friday that challenges the New York Public Service Commission's (PSC) approval of the sale. Under state law, the commission has to give the green light before the transfer of ownership of a power plant can take place. Until now, the commission has mostly focused on whether such a sale would affect residents' electricity rates or create a monopoly. The commission needs to start taking climate change and environmental injustice into consideration because of a sweeping climate law passed in 2019, the new lawsuit argues.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Indian government has proposed making the Press Bureau of India and its other agencies the arbiter of truth on what information is misleading for social media firms and other internet companies as they oversee their users' data in the South Asian market. From a report: The proposal by the Ministry of Electronics and IT came as part of an amendment to the nation's IT rules. In the current draft, the ministry asks social media firms and online gaming companies to undertake due diligence on the content users "host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, store, update or share" and ensure that they are not "patently false and untrue or misleading in nature." The change proposes that the social media firms and gaming companies use the judgment of the Press Information Bureau, a nodal agency, of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting or other agency authorized by the Central Government for fact checking or "in respect of any business of the Central Government, by its department in which such business is transacted." The Press Bureau of India's fact checks have been scrtunized and found to be misleading in some instances by the local media.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DIY-minded Samsung owners now have officially supported options to repair more smartphones and, for the first time, laptops from that firm. From a report: The company announced Tuesday that its Self-Repair program now covers Galaxy S22, Galaxy S22+, Galaxy S22 Ultra phones as well as Galaxy Book Pro 15-inch and Galaxy Book Pro 360 (15-inch) laptops. Samsung says S22-series owners will be able to buy kits to swap out "display assemblies, back glass, and charging ports." For the two Galaxy Book laptops, both introduced in 2021, the parts menu covers "the case front, case rear, display, battery, touchpad, power key with fingerprint reader, and rubber foot."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wikipedia should be treated differently to the big social media firms in the Online Safety Bill, a leading member of its foundation says. From a report: The encyclopaedia is written and edited entirely by thousands of volunteers around the world. The Wikimedia Foundation's Rebecca MacKinnon also says a proposed change to the bill,would "limit freedom of expression". The bill aims to protect people from harmful content online. The Wikimedia Foundation is the not-for-profit organisation which hosts the encyclopaedia. Ms MacKinnon says the foundation is concerned about the effect of the bill on volunteer-run sites. She told the BBC that the threat of "harsh" new criminal penalties for tech bosses "will affect not only big corporations, but also public interest websites such as Wikipedia".Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Over 290 MSI motherboards are reportedly affected by an insecure default UEFI Secure Boot setting that allows any operating system image to run regardless of whether it has a wrong or missing signature. From a report: This discovery comes from a Polish security researcher named Dawid Potocki, who claims that he did not receive a response despite his efforts to contact MSI and inform them about the issue. The issue, according to Potocki, impacts many Intel and AMD-based MSI motherboards that use a recent firmware version, affecting even brand-new MSI motherboard models.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The United Kingdom wants to become the safest place for children to grow up online. Many UK lawmakers have argued that the only way to guarantee that future is to criminalize tech leaders whose platforms knowingly fail to protect children. From a report: Today, the UK House of Commons reached a deal to appease those lawmakers, Reuters reports, with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's government agreeing to modify the Online Safety Bill to ensure its passage. It now appears that tech company executives found to be "deliberately" exposing children to harmful content could soon risk steep fines and jail time of up to two years. The agreement was reached during the safety bill's remaining stages before a vote in the House of Commons. Next, it will move on to review by the House of Lords, where the BBC reports it will "face a lengthy journey." Sunak says he will revise the bill to include new terms before it reaches the House of Lords, where lawmakers will have additional opportunities to revise the wording. Reports say that tech executives responsible for platforms hosting user-generated content would only be liable if they fail to take "proportionate measures" to prevent exposing children to harmful content, such as materials featuring child sexual abuse, child abuse, eating disorders, and self-harm. Some measures that tech companies can take to avoid jail time and fines of up to 10 percent of a company's global revenue include adding age verification, providing parental controls, and policing content. If passed, the Online Safety Bill would make managers liable for holding tech companies to their own community guidelines, including content and age restrictions. If a breach of online safety duties is discovered, UK media regulator Ofcom would be responsible for prosecuting tech leaders who fail to respond to enforcement notices. Anyone found to be acting in good faith to police content and protect kids reportedly won't be prosecuted.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Election Commission has dismissed a complaint from Republicans that Google's Gmail app aided Democratic candidates by sending GOP fundraising emails to spam at a far higher rate than Democratic solicitations. From a report: The Republican National Committee and others contended that the alleged benefit amounted to unreported campaign contributions to Democrats. But in a letter to Google last week, the FEC said it "found no reason to believe" that Google made prohibited in-kind corporate contributions, and that any skewed results from its spam filter algorithms were inadvertent. "Google has credibly supported its claim that its spam filter is in place for commercial reasons and thus did not constitute a contribution" within the meaning of federal campaign laws, according to an FEC analysis reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee complained to the FEC last year, citing an academic study that showed that nearly 70% of emails from Republican candidates were sent to spam compared with fewer than 1 in 10 from Democrat candidates from 2019 to 2020. The RNC and other campaign committees argued that Google's "overwhelmingly disproportionate suppression of Republican emails" constituted an illegal corporate contribution to Democratic candidates. But the FEC disagreed, finding that Google established that it maintains its spam filter settings to aid its business in keeping out malware, phishing attacks and scams, and not for the purpose of benefiting any political candidates.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Mac Mini is Apple's next computer to get the bump up to the M2 chip -- and this time around, it's being offered with the Pro version of Apple's processor, too. From a report: The new model was announced this morning in a press release, with a starting price of $599, and is available to order today, with availability beginning Tuesday, January 24th. The Mac Mini's baseline configuration includes the M2 chip, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. It features an HDMI port, Gigabit Ethernet, and a standard headphone jack, alongside two USB-A ports and two Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) ports -- an upgrade from the Thunderbolt 3 ports on the previous generation. The M2 Pro configuration of the new Mac Mini features 16GB of RAM, 512GB of SSD storage, and an additional two Thunderbolt 4 ports alongside the ports already available on the standard M2 model. This configuration will set you back $1,299, more than double the price of the baseline model. This is the first time Apple has brought Pro-tier chips to the Mini. The Mini was previously only offered with the entry-level M1 chip -- the same one used in MacBook Air. This time, it's being offered with one of Apple's more powerful chip series. The M2 Max, however, is so far only being offered in the MacBook Pro.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has announced new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros, featuring its latest M2 Pro and Max chips. From a report: The M2 Pro model will launch with a 12-core CPU, up to 19-core GPU, and up to 32GB of unified memory, while the M2 Max includes up to 38 cores of GPU power and support for up to 96GB of unified memory. The new 14-inch MacBook Pro with M2 Pro starts at $1,999, with the 16-inch model starting at $2,499. Both are available to order online today and will start shipping and appearing in Apple stores on January 24th. Apple says the M2 Pro has double the amount of transistors the M2 shipped with and nearly 20 percent more than the M1 Pro. It also features 200GB/s of unified memory bandwidth, twice what's available on the regular M2. All of this power should result in better performance in apps like Adobe Photoshop and Xcode. Apple claims the MacBook Pro with M2 Pro "is able to process images in Adobe Photoshop up to 40 percent faster than with M1 Pro, and as much as 80 percent faster than MacBook Pro with an Intel Core i9 processor." The M2 Max chip has the same 12-core CPU as the M2 Pro, but much like the M1 Max, it really pushes the GPU power more. Apple claims the M2 Max is up to 30 percent faster than the M1 Max in graphics and can apparently "tackle graphics-intensive projects that competing systems can't even run." Chips aside, the latest MacBook Pro models now include Wi-Fi 6E3 and a "more advanced HDMI" (probably HDMI 2.1) that supports 8K displays up to 60Hz and 4K displays up to 240Hz.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Getty Images is suing Stability AI, creators of popular AI art tool Stable Diffusion, over alleged copyright violation. From a report: In a press statement shared with The Verge, the stock photo company said it believes that Stability AI "unlawfully copied and processed millions of images protected by copyright" to train its software and that Getty Images has "commenced legal proceedings in the High Court of Justice in London" against the firm. Getty Images CEO Craig Peters told The Verge in an interview that the company has issued Stability AI with a "letter before action" -- a formal notification of impending litigation in the UK.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: It was landing at Singapore's international airport a decade ago that sparked Shara Ticku's idea to create a lab-grown alternative to palm oil. "In 2013 I flew to Singapore, and when I landed I had to wear a mask," says the boss of US tech firm C16 Biosciences. "The air was toxic because they were burning the rainforest in Indonesia." Indonesian farmers, who were clearing land for palm oil and other crops, were blamed for the fires and the smoke that drifted across the sea to Singapore. Fast forward to today, and her business has just commercially released an alternative to palm oil that is created from yeast cells. Palm oil remains the world's most-produced vegetable oil, accounting for 40% of the total, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). [...] The widely-documented problem with this usage is that this demand for palm oil has led to significant deforestation in areas where oil palm trees can grow -- low-lying, hot, wet areas near the equator. The use of this land for palm oil cultivation, 85% of which is in Indonesia and Malaysia, has increased almost nine-fold from 3.3 million hectares (eight million acres) in 1970 to 28.7 million hectares in 2020. In financial terms, one report valued the worldwide palm oil industry at $62.3 billion in 2021. And such is the continuing growth in demand, this figure is expected to increase to $75.7 billion by 2028. To try to reduce the world's reliance on palm oil, Ms Ticku, who was formerly an investment banker, and her co-founders set up C16 Biosciences in New York City in 2018. Backed by multi-million dollar funding from Microsoft founder Bill Gates, the company has spent the past four years developing and finessing their product, which is called Palmless. They grow a strain of yeast that naturally produces an oil with very similar properties to palm, which they harvest. The yeast is fed on sugars from sugar cane plants grown on land already used for arable farming. "Our process takes less than seven days from start to finish," says a spokeswoman for C16 Biosciences. "For a traditional oil palm tree, the oil wouldn't be ready to harvest until years after the seed is planted, and most trees don't reach peak production until seven years later." She adds that the company is now "actively collaborating on partnerships in the beauty and home categories -- for example, moisturizers, nourishing oils, soaps and cancels". "[And] we plan to enter into food in 2024." Chris Chuck, professor of bioprocess engineering at the University of Bath, leads another team that has created its own yeast-sourced alternative. "After hundreds of generations of yeast, and years of trial and error, they arrived at a unique strain called metschnikowia pulcherrima, or MP for short," reports the BBC. "MP is said to be hardy and not fussy what it eats. It can be fed on grass and food waste. And at the point of harvesting, its cells are full of oil. Even the leftover yeast cell biomass need not go to waste. It can be used for other products, for example creating a substitute for soya protein." Prof Chuck says the aim is for the oil to be as sustainable as possible. "In the best case scenarios we've modeled," he says, "it could be even just a couple of percent of the greenhouse gas emissions from palm oil grown in Indonesia or Malaysia."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sweeping the area of 12.3 standard NFL fields each rotation, with gargantuan 140-meter (459-ft) blades, the MySE 18.X-28X will be the largest wind turbine ever built. New Atlas reports: [T]he new MySE 18.X-28X promises to push "beyond the 18 MW threshold," with a mind-boggling swept area of 66,052 sq m (711,000 sq ft). MingYang says it'll handle "the most extreme ocean conditions," including level-17 typhoons with wind speeds over 56.1 m/s (202 km/h / 125.5 mph). Given an average wind speed of 8.5 m/s (30.6 km/h / 19 mph), MingYang projects it will produce 80 GWh of energy per year, "sufficient to supply 96,000 residents." Why go to the trouble of making these things so enormous? Well, increasing the swept area of your fan increases the slice of sky you're harvesting energy from, and it bumps up your overall yield. But perhaps more importantly, wind farms need to be thought of as total systems. One of the biggest costs in an offshore installation is the work needed at the sea bed to root these huge turbines down and give the wind something to push against. So both MingYang and CSSC sell these mammoth mega-turbines primarily as cost-cutting measures that'll help bring down the capital cost of wind farm setup, and eventually the cost of the energy they produce. "Compared to the installation of 13MW models," reads a statement by MingYang on LinkedIn, "the higher output of the MySE18.X-28X would save 18 units required for a 1GW wind farm, shaving off construction costs by 120,000 - 150,000 USD/MW." New Atlas calculated this to "represent a CAPEX saving of $120-150 million on a gigawatt-scale project." "For reference, the 1.2-GW Hornsea One Project, built using 7-MW turbines, is estimated to have cost "at least $5.153 billion, so while $150 million can't be considered chump change, it might represent a couple of percent on a project this big."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a blog post this evening, Microsoft announced the general availability of Azure OpenAI Service, which allows businesses to power their apps with large-scale AI models, including GPT-3.5, DALL-E 2, and Codex. VentureBeat reports: According to a press statement, availability is "restricted to customers who meet and adhere to the standards for responsible and ethical AI principles that Microsoft has set and published (linked here). Customers are required to apply for access describing their intended use-case or application before they are given access to the service." Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella tweeted the announcement, adding that "ChatGPT is coming soon to the Azure Open AI Service, which is now generally available, as we help customers apply the world's most advanced AI models to their own business imperatives." OpenAI tweeted the news, adding that "We've learned a lot from the ChatGPT research preview and have been making important updates based on user feedback. ChatGPT will be coming to our API and Microsoft's Azure OpenAI Service soon."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: China's population declined in 2022, the National Bureau of Statistics said Tuesday. The drop was the first since the early 1960s, according to Yi Fuxian, a critic of China's one-child policy and author of the book "Big Country With an Empty Nest." Mainland China's population, excluding foreigners, fell by 850,000 people in 2022 to 1.41 billion, the statistics bureau said. The country reported 9.56 million births and 10.41 million deaths for 2022. In 2021, China's population grew by the slowest increase on record. The mainland China population, excluding foreigners, rose by 480,000 to 1.41 billion people at the end of 2021, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. New births on the mainland fell by 13% in 2021 to 10.62 million babies, the data showed. In 2020, new births fell by 22%, according to the data. "The population will likely trend down from here in coming years," said Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management. "This is very important, with implications for potential growth and domestic demand." The National Bureau of Statistics also reported that China's economy expanded by 3% in 2022, far below the government's target. "It also marks one of the worst performances in nearly half a century," reports CNN. This is a developing story...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

fahrbot-bot shares a report from Engadget: Lightning rods have been used to safely guide strikes into the ground since Benjamin Franklin's day, but their short range (roughly the same radius as the height) and fixed-in-place design makes them ineffective for protecting large areas. The technology may finally be here to replace them in some situations. European researchers have successfully tested a system that uses terawatt-level laser pulses to steer lighting toward a 26-foot rod. It's not limited by its physical height, and can cover much wider areas -- in this case, 590 feet -- while penetrating clouds and fog. ["The experiment was performed on Santis Mountain, in northeast Switzerland," adds The Washington Post. "A 407-foot (124-meter) communications tower there, equipped with a lightning rod, is struck roughly a hundred times a year."] The design ionizes nitrogen and oxygen molecules, releasing electrons and creating a plasma that conducts electricity. As the laser fires at a very quick 1,000 pulses per second, it's considerably more likely to intercept lightning as it forms. In the test, conducted between June and September 2021, lightning followed the beam for nearly 197 feet before hitting the rod. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Photonics. A video of the work has also been published on YouTube.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last month, CircleCI urged users to rotate their secrets following a breach of the company's systems. The company confirmed in a blog post on Friday that some customers' data was stolen in the breach. While the customer data was encrypted, cybercriminals obtained the encryption keys able to decrypt the data. TechCrunch reports: The company said in a detailed blog post on Friday that it identified the intruder's initial point of access as an employee's laptop that was compromised with malware, allowing the theft of session tokens used to keep the employee logged in to certain applications, even though their access was protected with two-factor authentication. The company took the blame for the compromise, calling it a "systems failure," adding that its antivirus software failed to detect the token-stealing malware on the employee's laptop. Session tokens allow a user to stay logged in without having to keep re-entering their password or re-authorizing using two-factor authentication each time. But a stolen session token allows an intruder to gain the same access as the account holder without needing their password or two-factor code. As such, it can be difficult to differentiate between a session token of the account owner, or a hacker who stole the token. CircleCi said the theft of the session token allowed the cybercriminals to impersonate the employee and gain access to some of the company's production systems, which store customer data. "Because the targeted employee had privileges to generate production access tokens as part of the employee's regular duties, the unauthorized third party was able to access and exfiltrate data from a subset of databases and stores, including customer environment variables, tokens, and keys," said Rob Zuber, the company's chief technology officer. Zuber said the intruders had access from December 16 through January 4. Zuber said that while customer data was encrypted, the cybercriminals also obtained the encryption keys able to decrypt customer data. "We encourage customers who have yet to take action to do so in order to prevent unauthorized access to third-party systems and stores," Zuber added. Several customers have already informed CircleCi of unauthorized access to their systems, Zuber said. Zuber said that CircleCi employees who retain access to production systems "have added additional step-up authentication steps and controls," which should prevent a repeat-incident, likely by way of using hardware security keys.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to The Register, IBM has shifted the roles of US IBM Systems employees developing AIX over to the Indian office. From the report: Prior to this transition, said to taken place in the third quarter of 2022, AIX development was split more or less evenly between the US and India, an IBM source told The Register. With the arrival of 2023, the entire group had been moved to India. Roughly 80 US-based AIX developers were affected, our source estimates. We're told they were "redeployed," and given an indeterminate amount of time to find a new position internally, in keeping with practices we reported last week based on claims by other IBM employees. Evidently, the majority of those redeployed found jobs elsewhere at IBM. A lesser number of staff are evidently stuck in "redeployment limbo," with no IBM job identified and no evident prospects at the company. "It also appears that these people in 'redeployment' limbo within IBM are all older, retirement eligible employees," our source said. "The general sense among my peers is that redeployment is being used to nudge older employees out of the company and to do so in a manner that avoids the type of scrutiny that comes with layoffs." Layoffs generally come with a severance payment and may have reporting requirements. Redeployments -- directing workers to find another internal position, which may require relocating -- can avoid cost and bureaucracy. They also have the potential to encourage workers to depart on their own. We're told that IBM does not disclose redeployment numbers to its employees and does not report how internal jobs were obtained -- through internal search, with the assistance of management -- or were not obtained -- employees left in limbo or who choose to leave rather than wait.Read more of this story at Slashdot.