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An anonymous reader shares a report: Google has been trying to publicly pressure Apple into adopting the GSMA's RCS (Rich Communications Service) messaging protocol for a long time now, with nothing to show for it. As a matter of fact, Apple CEO Tim Cook seemed to completely dismiss the idea when he answered a question on the subject by saying that consumers should buy their moms an iPhone. Google and its Android platform aren't giving up that easily and they've just released a snarky ad to continue criticizing Apple's preferred messaging platform. The ad's called "iPager" and mimics Apple's marketing language to reveal a retro-styled beeper, indicating that Apple's behind the curve with its chosen messaging platform. The spot states that the iPager uses "outdated messaging tech" to "text with Android," citing many of the perceived disadvantages of sticking with SMS technology when communicating with Android phones. Google didn't invent this comparison whole-cloth, as the 30-year-old SMS tech actually dates back to old-school pagers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Several Slashdot readers have shared this report: Folks, what you've heard so far is true. Apple's new FineWoven iPhone cases and accessories are bad. Like, really bad. I've been puzzling over them for the past week, looking at them from different angles. Picking them up, setting them down, petting them. Seven days later, I still can't make sense of them and have no other choice but to say it out loud: FineWoven is very bad. FineWoven is a new fabric option you'll find on iPhone 15 cases, AirTag holders, and MagSafe wallets. Apple calls it a "luxurious and durable microtwill." It's silky, almost slippery to the touch, and costs $59 for any of the phone cases, $35 for an AirTag holder, and $99 for one of the new watch bands -- not the most expensive phone cases you can buy, but pretty darn pricey. Apple is pitching them as a premium replacement of sorts for the leather accessories it discontinued. The company won't sell leather iPhone cases and straps anymore because making them at Apple's scale "has a significant carbon footprint," according to Lisa Jackson, the company's environmental policy VP. That's fair; as my colleague Justine Calma puts it, "Cattle are a big source of greenhouse gas emissions because cows burp out methane, which is even more potent than CO2 when it comes to its ability to trap heat on the planet." If you want a fancy first-party iPhone case, then your new, more sustainable option would be FineWoven. But FineWoven is very much not the premium material that leather is. When I popped the MagSafe wallet out of its box, I could clearly see some places where it was already showing wear along the edges. Little bits of lint immediately caught on the fabric, too. And then there's the fingernail test.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: DuckDuckGo, a privacy-centric search engine founded about 15 years ago, has languished with a small market share as consumers face difficulties switching from Google when the behemoth is the default option on computer screens, the upstart's founder said in an antitrust trial. Founded in 2008, DuckDuckGo currently has about a 2.5% share of the market for search in the US, said CEO Gabriel Weinberg, and conducts about 100 million searches a day globally. In comparison, Google conducts several billion searches daily. Weinberg said about 30% to 40% of DuckDuckGo's users have a "strong preferencea for privacy and that most of the company's users switch over from Google." The company considers Google to be "far and away" its biggest competitor. "Switching is way harder than it needs to be," Chief Executive Officer Gabriel Weinberg said in federal court on Thursday. "There's just too many steps."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At an event today focused on AI and security tools and new Surface devices, Microsoft announced that Windows 11 users will soon be able to take better advantage of passkeys, the digital credentials that can be used as an authentication method for websites and apps. From a report: Once the expanded passkeys support rolls out, Windows 11 users will be able to create a passkey using Windows Hello, Windows' biometric identity and access control feature. They'll then be able to use that passkey to access supported webs or apps using their face, fingerprint or PIN. Windows 11 passkeys can be managed on the devices on which they're stored, or saved to a mobile phone for added convenience. "For the past several years, we've been committed to working with our industry partners and the FIDO Alliance to further the passwordless future with passkeys," Microsoft wrote in a blog post this morning. "Passkeys are the cross-platform, cross-ecosystem future of accessing websites and applications." Microsoft began rolling out support for passkey management several months ago in the Windows Insider dev channel, but this marks the capability's general availability.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MGM Resorts brought to an end a 10-day computer shutdown prompted by efforts to shield from a cyberattack data including hotel reservations and credit card processing, the casino giant said Wednesday, as analysts and academics measured the effects of the event. From a report: "We are pleased that all of our hotels and casinos are operating normally," the Las Vegas-based company posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. It reported last week that the attack was detected Sept. 10. Rival casino owner Caesars Entertainment also disclosed last week to federal regulators that it was hit by a cyberattack Sept. 7. It said that its casino and online operations were not disrupted but it could not guarantee that personal information about tens of millions of customers, including driver's licenses and Social Security numbers of loyalty rewards members, had not been compromised. Caesars, based in Reno, is widely reported to have paid $15 million of a $30 million ransom sought by a group called Scattered Spider for a promise to secure the data.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft just showed off its new high-end convertible laptop, the Surface Laptop Studio 2, at its launch event in New York City. The Laptop Studio 2 keeps the overall aesthetic of its predecessor, including the pull-forward 14.4-inch display that makes it a much more touch-friendly device but adds some welcome power-user features. From a report: The Studio 2, which starts at $1,999, runs on Intel's 13th Generation chips -- specifically the i7 H class -- with an Nvidia RTX 4050 or RTX 4060 GPU inside. It also has an Intel Neural Processing Unit, or NPU, which is the first Intel NPU in a Windows computer. (There were rumblings that Microsoft might be making this chip itself, but it appears not.) You can configure it with up to 2TB of storage and 64 gigs of RAM. In all, Microsoft says it's "the most powerful Surface we've ever built" and promises twice the performance of the previous device. The Studio 2 also offers some big new connectivity options: it has two USB-C ports, one USB-A port, a microSD card reader, and the Surface Slim Pen 2. In addition, there's a new customizable and more responsive haptic touchpad that Microsoft calls "the most inclusive touchpad on any laptop."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cisco agreed to buy Splunk in a deal valued at about $28 billion, representing its biggest acquisition yet and a massive push into software and artificial intelligence-powered data analysis. From a report: Cisco will pay $157 a share in cash, the companies said in a statement Thursday, or a 31% premium to Splunk's previous closing price on Wednesday. Cisco has been expanding its software and services business in an attempt to rely less on its hallmark networking hardware. The Silicon Valley giant has traditionally generated the bulk of its revenue from equipment that forms the backbone of computer networks, but that's been changing. Last month Cisco outlined the headway it's making in artificial intelligence and security technology. The deal is also arguably just as much a bet on artificial intelligence as it is on the business of software and data security. Earlier this year, Splunk announced a new line of AI offerings that it said would, among other things, allow companies to detect and respond to anomalies in their data faster. The merger offers the companies' AI products "substantial scale" and more visibility into data, they said in Thursday's statement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft will release its next big Windows 11 update, 23H2, on September 26th. The update will include the new AI-powered Windows Copilot feature, a redesigned File Explorer, a new Ink Anywhere feature for pen users, big improvements to the Paint app, native RAR and 7-zip file support, a new volume mixer, and much more. From a report: Windows Copilot is the headline feature for the Windows 11 23H2 update, bringing the same Bing Chat feature straight to the Windows 11 desktop. It appears as a sidebar in Windows 11, allowing you to control settings on a PC, launch apps, or simply answer queries. It's integrated all over the operating system, too: Microsoft executives demoed using Copilot to write text messages using data from your calendar, navigation options in Outlook, and more. This is also Microsoft's latest attempt to deliver a digital assistant inside Windows after the company shut down the Cortana app inside Windows 11 last month. It might be more successful this time, particularly as it's powered by the same technologies behind Bing Chat, so you can ask real questions and get answers (that might not always be accurate) in return. [...] Microsoft is also adding native RAR and 7-zip support to Windows 11 with this update. That means you'll be able to easily open files like tar, 7-zip, rar, gz, and many others using the libarchive open-source project that's now built into Windows 11. Microsoft is also planning to provide support for creating these file formats in 2024.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rupert Murdoch is stepping down as chair of Fox and News Corp, after building a media empire over seven decades that revolutionized news and entertainment and made him one of the world's most influential and controversial tycoons. WSJ: Murdoch, 92 years old, will exit his roles atop each company as of November, when they hold annual meetings, the companies said. He will be appointed chairman emeritus of each company. His eldest son, Lachlan Murdoch, who has served as co-chair of News Corp, will become sole chair of that company and will continue as Fox Corp executive chair and CEO. "For my entire professional life, I have been engaged daily with news and ideas, and that will not change. But the time is right for me to take on different roles," Rupert Murdoch wrote in a memo to staff. His decision to step back solidifies Lachlan Murdoch as his successor. He called Lachlan a "passionate, principled leader" who can take the companies into the future. Murdoch is one of a handful of media barons, along with the likes of John Malone, Ted Turner and Sumner Redstone, who shaped the modern era of media. He has wielded influence in political and financial capitals, earning credit from his boosters and blame from his critics. Murdoch has remained active in his later years, pursuing big deals to reshape his companies. Murdoch is stepping back at an important moment for both wings of his media empire, as they confront fundamental challenges in the media landscape. Fox, a relatively small player in an entertainment industry now dominated by titans, is wrestling with the profound implications of cable cord-cutting and the growth of streaming. News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, Times of London and other publications, is trying to find the right formula for digital growth amid a fierce battle for subscribers and online-ad dollars.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Computer Weekly: A doctoral thesis by American investigative journalist and post-doctoral researcher Jacob Appelbaum has now revealed unpublished information from the Snowden archive. These revelations go back a decade, but remain of indisputable public interest: - The NSA listed Cavium, an American semiconductor company marketing Central Processing Units (CPUs) - the main processor in a computer which runs the operating system and applications -- as a successful example of a "SIGINT-enabled" CPU supplier. Cavium, now owned by Marvell, said it does not implement back doors for any government. - The NSA compromised lawful Russian interception infrastructure, SORM. The NSA archive contains slides showing two Russian officers wearing jackets with a slogan written in Cyrillic: "You talk, we listen." The NSA and/or GCHQ has also compromised Key European LI [lawful interception] systems. - Among example targets of its mass surveillance program, PRISM, the NSA listed the Tibetan government in exile. These revelations have surfaced for the first time thanks to a doctoral thesis authored by Appelbaum towards earning a degree in applied cryptography from the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. Communication in a world of pervasive surveillance is a public document and has been downloaded over 18,000 times since March 2022 when it was first published. [...] We asked Jacob Appelbaum, currently a post-doctoral researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology, why he chose to publish those revelations in a technically written thesis rather than a mass-circulation newspaper. He replied: "As an academic, I see that the details included are in the public interest, and highly relevant for the topic covered in my thesis, as it covers the topic of large-scale adversaries engaging in targeted and mass surveillance." According to The Register, "Marvell (the owner of Cavium since 2018) denies the allegations that it or Cavium placed backdoors in products at the behest of the U.S. government. Appelbaum's thesis wasn't given much attention until it was mentioned in Electrospaces.net's security blog last week.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Waymo announced a "tour across Los Angeles" that allows curious residents the opportunity to ride in fully autonomous vehicles as the Alphabet-owned company begins to lay the groundwork for the launch of a commercial robotaxi service. The Verge reports: Waymo says it will make six multi-week "tour stops" in LA neighborhoods where people can hail a self-driving car without anyone in the front seat. Interested Angelenos can snag early access tickets at several pop-up events throughout the city or sign up for a waitlist. Once they receive a ticket, riders can use Waymo's fully driverless vehicles for free within the service area for one week during the allotted time. The tour is as follows: Santa Monica and Venice Beach October 11th-November 18th; Century City November 20th-December 17th; West Hollywood December 17th-January 7th; Mid City January 8th-23rd; Koreatown January 24th-February 8th; and Downtown LA February 9th-March 3rd. Waymo's operational design domain -- the area in which its robotaxis are programmed to travel -- stretches from the West Side to Downtown LA, an area that's larger than San Francisco but smaller than its coverage in Phoenix.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SpaceX just extended its Falcon 9 rocket-reuse record. Space.com reports: The Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Tuesday at 11:38 p.m. EDT (0338 GMT Sept. 20), carrying 22 of SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites toward low Earth orbit (LEO). The rocket's first stage came back to Earth 8.5 minutes after launch, landing on a SpaceX drone ship stationed at sea. It was the 17th liftoff and landing for this Falcon 9's first stage, according to a SpaceX mission description. Those figures are unprecedented; the previous mark was 16, held by two different Falcon 9 boosters. The 22 Starlink satellites, meanwhile, deployed from the Falcon 9's upper stage 62.5 minutes after launch as planned. Tuesday night's liftoff extended another record as well: It was SpaceX's 65th orbital mission of the year. The company's previous mark, 61, was set in 2022. You can watch a recorded video of the launch here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: On the outskirts of the small town of Folschviller in eastern France stand three nondescript sheds. One of these temporary structures has recently become a hive of activity due to a continuous stream of visitors, including scientists, journalists, and the public. The shed sits above a borehole first drilled in 2006 and houses a gas measurement system called SysMoG, which was originally developed to determine the underground methane concentration. While the device did detect almost pure methane (99 percent) at a depth of 650 meters, probing further down, the borehole resulted in an unexpected and surprising discovery: hydrogen in high concentration. "At 1,100 meters, the concentration of dissolved hydrogen is 14 percent. At 3,000 meters, the estimated concentration could be as high as 90 percent," Jacques Pironon, director of research at GeoRessources lab at the University de Lorraine, said. Based on the estimates of methane resources and the concentration of hydrogen detected so far, scientists have conjectured that the Lorraine region in eastern France, of which Folschviller is a part, could contain 46 million tons of white -- or naturally produced -- hydrogen. That would make it one of the world's largest known hydrogen deposits. This remarkable discovery was not the objective of the project, called Regalor. Instead, it aimed to determine the feasibility of methane production in the Lorraine region and to record the presence of traces of other gases. "Our original research was related to the study of carboniferous sediments in northeast France. This was important as Lorraine was one of France's largest coal-producing regions," Pironon said. [...] Soon, the researchers will start taking measurements in three other boreholes at similar depths to understand if the hydrogen concentration remains high as you move laterally from the site of the original borehole. "If the concentration is similar, the next step, which is being discussed with the authorities, would be to drill a hole 3,000 meters deep to validate the evolution of the hydrogen concentration with depth," he said. The deeper borehole could also throw up another surprise. "Besides knowing the level of hydrogen concentration, we will also know if hydrogen is present in dissolved form or in gaseous state at these depths," Pironon said. This study could also shed light on the source of this hydrogen. According to Pironon, there are two hypotheses, one of which is related to the presence of the mineral siderite. "Hydrogen could be produced by the reaction between water and siderite, which is made of iron carbonates. We consider that the siderite could be oxidized by water molecules to produce hydrogen. The oxygen then combines with iron to produce iron oxide." According to Pironon, the other hypothesis relates its presence to the chemical processes that form coal, which, along with the release of methane, can also produce hydrogen.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A few months after getting FDA approval for human trials, Neuralink is looking for its first test subjects. The Verge reports: The six-year initial trial, which the Elon Musk-owned company is calling "the PRIME Study," is intended to test Neuralink tech designed to help those with paralysis control devices. The company is looking for people (PDF) with quadriplegia due to vertical spinal cord injury or ALS who are over the age of 22 and have a "consistent and reliable caregiver" to be part of the study. The PRIME Study (which apparently stands for Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface, even though that acronym makes no sense) is set to research three things at once. The first is the N1 implant, Neuralink's brain-computer device. The second is the R1 robot, the surgical robot that actually implants the device. The third is the N1 User App, the software that connects to the N1 and translates brain signals into computer actions. Neuralink says it's planning to test both the safety and efficacy of all three parts of the system. Those who participate in the PRIME Study will first participate in an 18-month study that involves nine visits with researchers. After that, they'll spend at least two hours a week on brain-computer interface research sessions and then do 20 more visits over the next five years. Neuralink doesn't say how many subjects it's looking for or when it plans to begin the study but does say it only plans to compensate "for study-related costs" like travel to and from the study location. (Also not clear: where that location is. Neuralink only says it has received approval from "our first hospital site.")Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Parents in the U.S. whose children purchased items in the popular game Fortnite without their permission will be able to claim a refund from today. The BBC reports: The U.S. regulator accused the game of tricking players into making unintended purchases and breaching privacy. Fortnite developer Epic Games agreed to pay $245 million in refunds in 2022. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has now begun the process of contacting 37 million people to alert them to the compensation. The FTC said Epic Games duped players with "deceptive interfaces" that could trigger purchases while the game loaded, and accused it of having default settings that breached people's privacy. In total, it agreed to a settlement of $520 million with Epic Games over the concerns. This includes a $275 million fine relating to how Fortnite collects data on its users, including those aged under 13, without informing parents. It is the largest fine ever levied by the FTC for breaking a rule. The rest of the settlement will be paid out as refunds.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hayden Field writes via CNBC: Naba Banerjee is a proud party pooper. As the person in charge of Airbnb's worldwide ban on parties, she's spent more than three years figuring out how to battle party "collusion" by users, flag "repeat party houses" and, most of all, design an anti-party AI system with enough training data to halt high-risk reservations before the offender even gets to the checkout page. It's been a bit like a game of whack-a-mole: Whenever Banerjee's algorithms flag some concerns, new ones pop up. Airbnb defines a party as a gathering that occurs at an Airbnb listing and "causes significant disruption to neighbors and the surrounding community," according to a company rep. To determine violations, the company considers whether the gathering is an open-invite one, and whether it involves excessive noise, trash, visitors, parking issues for neighbors, and other factors. Banerjee joined the company's trust and safety team in May 2020 and now runs that group. In her short time at the company, she's overseen a ban on high-risk reservations by users under age 25, a pilot program for anti-party AI in Australia, heightened defenses on holiday weekends, a host insurance policy worth millions of dollars, and this summer, a global rollout of Airbnb's reservation screening system. Some measures have worked better than others, but the company says party reports dropped 55% between August 2020 and August 2022 -- and since the worldwide launch of Banerjee's system in May, more than 320,000 guests have been blocked or redirected from booking attempts on Airbnb. Overall, the company's business is getting stronger as the post-pandemic travel boom starts to fade. Last month, the company reported earnings that beat analysts' expectations on earnings per share and revenue, with the latter growing 18% year over year, despite fewer-than-expected numbers of nights and experiences booked via the platform.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A suspicious phone company is on the verge of having all its calls blocked by US-based telcos after being accused of ignoring orders to investigate and block robocalls. One Owl Telecom is a US-based gateway provider that routes phone calls from outside the U.S. to consumer phone companies such as Verizon. "Robocalls on One Owl's network apparently bombarded consumers without their consent with prerecorded messages about fictitious orders," the Federal Communications Commission said yesterday. On August 1, the FCC sent One Owl a Notification of Suspected Illegal Robocall Traffic (PDF) ordering it to investigate robocall traffic identified by USTelecom's Industry Traceback Group, block all of the identified traffic within 14 days, and "continue to block the identified gateway traffic as well as substantially similar traffic on an ongoing basis." One Owl apparently hasn't taken any of the required steps, the FCC said yesterday. "One Owl never responded, and the [FCC Enforcement] Bureau is not aware of any measures One Owl has taken to comply with the Notice," an FCC order said. Blocking robocall traffic from companies like One Owl is a bit like playing whack-a-mole. The FCC said it previously took enforcement actions "against two other entities to whom One Owl is closely related: Illum Telecommunication Limited and One Eye LLC. While operating under different corporate names, these entities have shared personnel, IP addresses, customers, and a penchant for disregarding FCC rules." If One Owl doesn't provide an adequate response within 14 days, all phone companies receiving calls from it "will then be required to block and cease accepting all traffic received from One Owl beginning 30 days after release of the Final Determination Order," the FCC said. "One Owl faces a simple choice -- comply or lose access to U.S. communications networks," FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan Egal said in a press release.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At its fall hardware event Wednesday, Amazon revealed an all-new Alexa voice assistant powered by its new Alexa large language model. The Verge reports: According to Dave Limp, Amazon's current SVP of devices and services, this new Alexa can understand conversational phrases and respond appropriately, interpret context more effectively, and complete multiple requests from one command. In an interview with The Verge ahead of the event, Limp explained that the new Alexa LLM "is a true generalizable large language model that's very optimized for the Alexa use case; it's not what you find with a Bard or ChatGPT or any of these things." However, this all-new Alexa isn't being unleashed everywhere, on everyone, all at once. The company is rolling it out slowly through a preview program "in the coming months" -- and only in the US. Clearly, there have been lessons learned from the missteps of Microsoft and Google, and Amazon is proceeding with caution. "When you connect an LLM to the real world, you want to minimize hallucinations -- and while we think we have the right systems in place ... there is no substitute for putting it out in the real world," says Limp. If you want to be notified when you can join the preview, tell your Echo device, "Alexa, let's chat," and your interest will be registered. Unsurprisingly, this superpowered Alexa may not always be free. Limp said that while Alexa, as it is today, will remain free, "the idea of a superhuman assistant that can supercharge your smart home, and more, work complex tasks on your behalf, could provide enough utility that we will end up charging something for it down the road."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yelp is releasing a new index that tracks every U.S. establishment it's ever caught engaging in "suspicious" activity to influence its reviews. Engadget reports: [T]he index is the first time the company has offered a single place where users can find a historical record of every business that's ever been subject to such a warning as well as a current list of businesses with active alerts on their pages. For Yelp, the index is both its latest move in a long-running war on fake reviews, as well as a nod to a changing regulatory environment in which fake reviews are attracting increasing scrutiny from regulators.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: When HashiCorp announced it was changing its Terraform license in August, it set off a firestorm in the open source community, and actually represented an existential threat to startups that were built on top of the popular open source project. The community went into action and within weeks they had written a manifesto, and soon after that launched an official fork called OpenTF. Today, that group went a step further when the Linux Foundation announced OpenTofu, the official name for the Terraform fork, which will live forever under the auspices of the foundation as an open source project. At the same time, the project announced it would be applying for entry into the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). "OpenTofu is an open and community-driven response to Terraform's recently announced license change from a Mozilla Public License v2.0 (MPLv2) to a Business Source License v1.1 providing everyone with a reliable, open source alternative under a neutral governance model," the foundation said in a statement. The name is deliberately playful says Yevgeniy (Jim) Brikman from the OpenTofu founding team, who is also co-founder of Gruntwork. "I'm glad your reaction was to laugh. That's a good thing. We're trying to keep things a little more humorous," Brikman told TechCrunch, but the group is dead serious when it comes to building an open fork. [...] "The first thing was to get an alpha release out there. So you can go to the OpenTofu website and download OpenTofu and start using it and trying it out," he said. "Then the next thing is a stable release. That's coming in the very near future, but there's work to do. Once you have a stable release, people can start using it. Then we can start growing adoption, and once we start growing adoption, some of the big players will start stepping in when some of the big players start stepping in other big players will start stepping in as well."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At the Open Source Summit Europe in Bilbao, Spain, the Linux Foundation this week announced the launch of the Unified Acceleration (UXL) Foundation. The group's mission is to deliver "an open standard accelerator programming model that simplifies development of performant, cross-platform applications." From a report: The foundation's founding members include the likes of Arm, Fujitsu, Google Cloud, Imagination Technologies, Intel, Qualcomm and Samsung. The company most conspicuously missing from this list is Nvidia, which offers its own CUDA programming model for working with its GPUs. At its core, this new foundation is an evolution of the oneAPI initiative, which is also aimed to create a new programming model to make it easier for developers to support a wide range of accelerators, no matter whether they are GPUs, FPGAs or other specialized accelerators. Like with the oneAPI spec, the aim of the new foundation is to ensure that developers can make use of these technologies without having to delve deep into the specifics of the underlying accelerators and the infrastructure they run on.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yesterday's massive leaks from the Microsoft vs. FTC case have a large swath of the gaming world expecting that a more powerful, disc-free Xbox Series X refresh could be coming as soon as next year. But Xbox boss Phil Spencer is warning that players shouldn't put too much stock in what he called "old emails and documents." ArsTechnica adds: "It is hard to see our team's work shared in this way because so much has changed and there's so much to be excited about right now, and in the future," Spencer wrote on social media late Tuesday. "We will share the real plans when we are ready." Spencer followed up that post with a memo sent to the Xbox team, apologizing for the unintentional disclosure of internal plans. "I know this is disappointing, even if many of the documents are well over a year old and our plans have evolved," the memo reads, in part. "I also know we all take the confidentiality of our plans and our partners' information very seriously. This leak obviously is not us living up to that expectation... That said, there's so much more to be excited about, and when we're ready, we'll share the real plans with our players." While Spencer's statements are vague about who was responsible for the "unintentional disclosure" of Microsoft's plans, a representative for the FTC was quick to push the blame on the company itself. "The FTC was not responsible for uploading Microsoft's plans for its games and consoles to the court website," FTC Director of the Office of Public Affairs Douglas Farrar wrote early Tuesday. In a follow-up post, Farrar pointed to a court order resealing the leaked information (too late for it to prevent the spread of the information, of course), which notes that "Microsoft provided the link on September 14 and the Court uploaded the exhibits to [the] internet page established for this case." Further reading: Microsoft's Phil Spencer Says Acquiring Nintendo Would Be 'a Career Moment' Microsoft's Next Xbox, Coming 2028, Envisions Hybrid Computing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slash_Account_Dot writes: The first thing you'll see if you search Google for "tank man" right now will not be the iconic picture of the unidentified Chinese man who stood in protest in front of a column of tanks leaving Tiananmen Square, but an entirely fake, AI-generated selfie of that historical event. While the AI-generated selfie doesn't appear to be deliberate misinformation, it highlights an inherent problem with the current state of generative AI and the internet: It is exceedingly easy to use AI tools to generate endless images, text, and audio with little more than a click of a button, and as this content floods every online platform, we, and the platforms we use to surface information, still don't have a good way to identify and differentiate it from human-made content, manually or automatically.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A sysadmin and his partner pleaded guilty this week to being part of a "massive" international ring that sold software licenses worth $88 million for "significantly below the wholesale price." From a report: Brad and Dusti Pearce admitted one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and each face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. After agreeing to a plea deal, the Pearces must also forfeit at least $4 million as well as gold, silver, collectible coins, cryptocurrency, and a vehicle, and "make full restitution to their victims," the US Department of Justice said. The pair from Tuttle, Oklahoma -- a city better known for its cattle ranchers and alfafa hay than pirated software -- were alleged to have sold pirated Avaya business telephone system software licenses. The licenses were then used to unlock features of the popular telephone system, which is used by thousands of companies around the globe. Dusti Pearce was said by prosecutors to have looked after the accounting side of the business, although only the wire fraud charge remains under the plea deal. Brad Pearce had previously worked as a customer service employee at Avaya, and was said to have used his admin privileges to "generate tens of thousands of ADI software license keys" that he sold to his main customer, Jason Hines, as well as "other customers, who in turn sold them to resellers and end users around the globe," said the DoJ.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Simon Hill, reporting for Wired: Every new hardware announcement is always described as "the best ever," but Amazon's new Eero Max 7 mesh might just be a real leap forward. This is Eero's first tri-band mesh router that utilizes the latest Wi-Fi 7 standard, promising roughly double the speeds of its previous flagship system up to 4.3 Gigabits per second. Theoretically, you can download a 4K movie in 10 seconds. The router has a larger design than its predecessor, which allows for more antennas, cooling without the need for a fan, and space for four Ethernet ports. But all this comes at a hefty price -- a single Eero Max 7 costs a whopping $600. It's early days for Wi-Fi 7, so as new models come out, we'll see these prices dramatically drop. The Eero Max 7 supports the 2.4-GHz, 5-GHz, and 6-GHz bands and is fully backward compatible with all previous Wi-Fi versions; it runs the same TrueMesh software and app as other Eero systems, so it can be mixed and matched with any existing Eeros you have. However, you won't be able to take advantage of those Wi-Fi 7 upgrades and speeds without a Wi-Fi 7-supported device, which there are very few of right now. A common criticism of Eero routers (and most mesh Wi-Fi systems) is the lack of Ethernet ports. The Eero Pro 6E only offered two ports rated at 2.5 Gbps and 1 Gbps. Despite the Eero Max 7's larger size, it's still recognizably an Eero finished in shiny white plastic, but it's much larger than previous releases. That allows for four Ethernet ports, two rated at 10 Gbps and two at 2.5 Gbps. Accounting for packet overhead, tethered speeds max out at 9.4 Gbps.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A trade group for U.S. authors has sued OpenAI in Manhattan federal court on behalf of prominent writers including John Grisham, Jonathan Franzen, George Saunders, Jodi Picault and "Game of Thrones" novelist George R.R. Martin, accusing the company of unlawfully training its popular artificial-intelligence based chatbot ChatGPT on their work. From a report: The proposed class-action lawsuit filed late on Tuesday by the Authors Guild joins several others from writers, source-code owners and visual artists against generative AI providers. In addition to Microsoft-backed OpenAI, similar lawsuits are pending against Meta Platforms and Stability AI over the data used to train their AI systems. Other authors involved in the latest lawsuit include "The Lincoln Lawyer" writer Michael Connelly and lawyer-novelists David Baldacci and Scott Turow.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China accused the U.S. of infiltrating Huawei servers beginning in 2009, part of a broad-based effort to steal data that culminated in tens of thousands of cyber-attacks against Chinese targets last year. From a report: The Tailored Access Operations unit of the National Security Agency carried out the attacks in 2009, which then continuously monitored the servers, China's Ministry of State Security said in a post on its official WeChat account on Wednesday. It didn't provide details of attacks since 2009. Cyberattacks are a point of tension between Washington and Beijing, which has accused its political rival of orchestrating attacks against Chinese targets ever since Edward Snowden made explosive allegations about U.S. spying. Washington and cybersecurity researchers have said the Asian country has sponsored attacks against the West. The ministry's accusations emerged as the two countries battle for technological supremacy. Huawei in particular has spurred alarm in Washington since the telecom leader unveiled a smartphone powered by an advanced chip it designed, which was made by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. That's in spite of years-long U.S. sanctions intended to cut Huawei off from the American technology it needs to design sophisticated chips and phones. The U.S. has been "over-stretching" the concept of national security with its clampdown on Chinese enterprises, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters at a regular press briefing in Beijing on Wednesday. "What we want to tell the US is that suppression and containing of China will not stop China's development. It will only make us more resolved in our development," Mao said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As equities soared in 2020 and consumers flocked to trading apps like Robinhood, Apple and Goldman Sachs were working on an investing feature that would let consumers buy and sell stocks, CNBC reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the plans. From the report: The project was shelved last year as the markets turned south, said the sources, who asked not to be named because they weren't authorized to speak on the matter. The effort, which has not been previously reported, would have added to Apple's suite of financial products powered by Goldman. Apple first teamed up with the Wall Street bank to offer a credit card in 2019, and then added buy now, pay later (BNPL) loans and a high-yield savings account. The company said last month that the savings account offering had climbed past $10 billion in user deposits.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A few lucky WhatsApp beta testers got a surprising treat this week: the company appears to be testing a version of its iOS app that is also optimized for the iPad. As first spotted by WABetaInfo, version 23.19.1.71 of WhatsApp's TestFlight app includes the new iPad app as well. From what we can see in screenshots, the iPad app works exactly like you'd expect. You connect to it by scanning a QR code the same way you'd link your account to any other device. You'll see a list of your conversations on the left and your current chat on the right. It's pretty much the iOS app, but instead of seeing one pane at a time, you see both. It almost makes you wonder what took so long, especially when WhatsApp head Will Cathcart said all the way back in January of 2022 that "we'd love to do it."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The International Criminal Court said Tuesday that it detected "anomalous activity affecting its information systems" last week and took urgent measures to respond. It didn't elaborate on what it called a "cybersecurity incident." Court spokesman Fadi El Abdallah said in a written statement that extra "response and security measures are now ongoing" with the assistance of authorities in the Netherlands, where the court is based. "Looking forward, the Court will be building on existing work presently underway to strengthen its cyber security framework, including accelerating its use of cloud technology," his statement added. The court declined to go into any more detail about the incident, but said that as it "continues to analyze and mitigate the impact of this incident, priority is also being given to ensuring that the core work of the Court continues."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Steven Vaughan-Nichols writes via ZDNet: BILBAO, Spain: At the Open Source Summit Europe, Jonathan Corbet, Linux kernel developer and executive editor of Linux Weekly News, caught everyone up with what's new in the Linux kernel and where it's going from here. Here's one major change coming down the road: Long-term support (LTS) for Linux kernels is being reduced from six to two years. Currently, there are six LTS Linux kernels -- 6.1, 5.15, 5.10, 5.4, 4.19, and 4.14. Under the process to date, 4.14 would roll off in January 2024, and another kernel would be added. Going forward, though, when the 4.14 kernel and the next two drop off, they won't be replaced. Why? Simple, Corbet explained: "There's really no point to maintaining it for that long because people are not using them." I agree. While I'm sure someone out there is still running 4.14 in a production Linux system, there can't be many of them. Another reason, and a far bigger problem than simply maintaining LTS, according to Corbet, is that Linux code maintainers are burning out. It's not that developers are a problem. The last few Linux releases have involved an average of more than 2,000 programmers -- including about 200 new developers coming on board -- working on each release. However, the maintainers -- the people who check the code to see if it fits and works properly -- are another matter.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After manufacturing crystals of an HIV drug in space, the first orbital factory is stuck in orbit after being denied reentry back to Earth due to safety concerns. Gizmodo reports: The U.S. Air Force denied a request from Varda Space Industries to land its in-space manufacturing capsule at a Utah training area, while the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) did not grant the company permission to reenter Earth's atmosphere, leaving its spacecraft hanging as the company scrambles to find a solution, TechCrunch first reported. A spokesperson from the FAA told TechCrunch in an emailed statement that the company's request was not granted at this time "due to the overall safety, risk and impact analysis." Gizmodo reached out to Varda Space to ask which regulatory requirements have not been met, but the company responded with a two-word email that ominously read, "no comment." The California-startup did provide an update on its spacecraft through X (formerly Twitter). "We're pleased to report that our spacecraft is healthy across all systems. It was originally designed for a full year on orbit if needed," Varda Space wrote on X. "We look forward to continuing to collaborate w/ our gov partners to bring our capsule back to Earth as soon as possible." Varda Space Industries launched its first test mission on June 12, "successfully sending a 200-pound (90-kilogram) capsule designed to carry drug research into Earth's orbit," reported CNN. "The experiment, conducted in microgravity by simple onboard machines, aims to test whether it would be possible to manufacture pharmaceuticals in space remotely."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: A new study shows the isolation and sequencing of more than a century-old RNA molecules from a Tasmanian tiger specimen preserved at room temperature in a museum collection. This resulted in the reconstruction of skin and skeletal muscle transcriptomes from an extinct species for the first time. The researchers note that their findings have relevant implications for international efforts to resurrect extinct species, including both the Tasmanian tiger and the wooly mammoth, as well as for studying pandemic RNA viruses. The findings have been published in the journal Genome Research.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The infrastructure behind popular AI workloads is so demanding that Schneider Electric has suggested it may be time to reevaluate the way we build datacenters. The Register reports: In a recent white paper [PDF], the French multinational broke down several of the factors that make accommodating AI workloads so challenging and offered its guidance for how future datacenters could be optimized for them. The bad news is some of the recommendations may not make sense for existing facilities. The problem boils down to the fact that AI workloads often require low-latency, high-bandwidth networking to operate efficiently, which forces densification of racks, and ultimately puts pressure on existing datacenters' power delivery and thermal management systems. Today it's not uncommon for GPUs to consume upwards of 700W and servers to exceed 10kW. Hundreds of these systems may be required to train a large language model in a reasonable timescale. According to Schneider, this is already at odds with what most datacenters can manage at 10-20kW per rack. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that training workloads benefit heavily from maximizing the number of systems per rack as it reduces network latency and costs associated with optics. In other words, spreading the systems out can reduce the load on each rack, but if doing so requires using slower optics, bottlenecks can be introduced that negatively affect cluster performance. The situation isn't nearly as dire for inferencing -- the act of putting trained models to work generating text, images, or analyzing mountains of unstructured data -- as fewer AI accelerators per task are required compared to training. Then how do you safely and reliably deliver adequate power to these dense 20-plus kilowatt racks and how do you efficiently reject the heat generated in the process? "These challenges are not insurmountable but operators should proceed with a full understanding of the requirements, not only with respect to IT, but to physical infrastructure, especially existing datacenter facilities," the report's authors write. The whitepaper highlights several changes to datacenter power, cooling, rack configuration, and software management that operators can implement to mitigate the demands of widespread AI adoption.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google announced today that it is opening access to more contributors to participate in Road Mapper, a tool where you can add missing roads to Google Maps in areas of the world that need it most. TechCrunch reports: Road Mapper is an invite-only platform where people participate in challenges, drawing roads located in areas with a large population, yet have a significant amount of road network missing from Google Maps. Users draw road geometry using satellite images. The drawings then go through a review process and, if accepted, will be live on Google Maps in a few days. Those interested in joining Road Mapper can fill out Google's online form. Plus, top contributors that have mapped the most roads can now refer up to five contributors via the Road Mapper Referral form. Google's blog post notes that its contributors have mapped more than 1.5 million kilometers of roads, enabling more than 200 million people to navigate with Google Maps. That's pretty impressive considering Road Mapper only launched two years ago.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX is looking to claw back luxury property and "millions of dollars in fraudulently transferred and misappropriated funds" from the parents of Sam Bankman-Fried, the exchange's disgraced ex-CEO and founder. CNBC reports: In a Monday court filing, lawyers representing the bankruptcy estate of the failed exchange alleged that Allan Joseph Bankman and his wife, Barbara Fried, "exploited their access and influence within the FTX enterprise to enrich themselves, directly and indirectly, by millions of dollars." The lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, goes on to claim that "despite knowing or blatantly ignoring that the FTX Group was insolvent or on the brink of insolvency," Bankman and Fried discussed with their son the transfer of a $10 million cash gift and a $16.4 million luxury property in The Bahamas. The suit alleges that as early as 2019, Sam's father also directly participated in efforts to cover up a whistleblower complaint which threatened to "expose the FTX Group as a house of cards." The filing also details emails written by Bankman in which he complained to the FTX US Head of Administration that his annual salary was $200,000, when he was "supposed to be getting $1M/yr." That grievance was ultimately elevated to his son in an email, according to the lawsuit: "Gee, Sam I don't know what to say here. This is the first [I] have heard of the 200K a year salary! Putting Barbara on this." The filing characterizes the correspondence as Bankman lobbying his son to "massively increase his own salary." Within two weeks, the suit claims that Bankman-Fried had collectively gifted his parents $10 million in funds coming from Alameda, and within three months, the couple was deeded the $16.4 million property in The Bahamas. According to the partially-redacted filing, Bankman-Fried's parents also "pushed for tens of millions of dollars in political and charitable contributions, including to Stanford University, which were seemingly designed to boost Bankman's and Fried's professional and social status." Fried is also accused of encouraging her son and others within the company to avoid, if not violate, federal campaign finance disclosure rules by "engaging in straw donations or otherwise concealing the FTX Group as the source of the contributions."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes: Toyota, the world's largest automaker, has a problem. Although the company is famous for pioneering lean methods of manufacturing and being an early pioneer of hybrid electric powertrains, the switch to battery electric vehicles caught it somewhat unprepared. As rivals locked up contracts for critical minerals and formed joint ventures with battery makers (or built their own), Toyota has appeared to fall behind. Now, it has released a new roadmap showing how it will regain competitiveness and sell 3.5 million EVs by 2030. After some early experiments with electric-converted RAV4s (including a partnership with Tesla), Toyota has finally released a modern BEV, the bZ4x. The car had a difficult launch -- a recall for wheels falling off will lead to that -- but a week's test of a bZ4x exceeded our low expectations. A look at the car's specs makes clear Toyota's problem, though: There are different battery packs for the single-motor and dual-motor versions, made by Panasonic and CATL, respectively. [...] "We will need various options for batteries, just like we have different variations of engines. It is important to offer battery solutions compatible with a variety of models and customer needs," said Takero Kato, president of BEV Factory. To that end, Toyota is working on four different solutions. Three of these will use liquid electrolytes and are meant for different applications. A performance-focused liquid electrolyte lithium-ion battery is slated to be the first to appear in 2026. Toyota says it's targeting a 20-minute fast-charging time and wants these cells to be 20 percent cheaper than the cells used in the bZ4x. The company plans to use this in a BEV that can travel almost 500 miles (800 km) on a single charge. For lower-cost vehicles, Toyota is looking at lithium iron phosphate cells, a chemistry that's already extremely popular in China and is being used by Tesla. Toyota plans to construct these as bipolar batteries, where the active materials for the anode and cathode are on either side of a common electrode carrier rather than having separate electrodes for each. (Toyota already uses this approach for the nickel metal hydride batteries it uses in many of its hybrid models.) LFP cells are targeting a 40 percent cost reduction compared to the bZ4x battery and 20 percent more range. LFP cells don't charge as fast, but Toyota wants a 10-80 percent DC fast-charging time of 30 minutes. If it pans out, the company expects these cells in 2026 or 2027. There's also a high-performance lithium-ion chemistry in development, though it may not be ready until 2028. Toyota wants to combine its bipolar electrode structure with a high percentage of nickel in the cathode to create a pack with extremely long range -- up to 621 miles (1,000 km). But it's also targeting a 10 percent cost reduction compared to the performance-focused pack mentioned earlier. The fourth battery technology is one that Toyota has talked about a lot in the past -- solid state. Both electrodes and electrolytes in a solid state battery are solid, which means the battery can be smaller and lighter than a cell with liquid electrodes. The technology is tantalizing, but it's troubled by the formation of dendrites -- spikes of lithium crystals that can grow and puncture the cathode. Toyota says it has made a breakthrough in durability for lithium-ion solid state cells -- it's being coy as to exactly what -- that has allowed it to switch to putting these batteries into mass production, with commercial use scheduled for 2027 or 2028. Interestingly, Toyota was originally planning to use solid state cells in its hybrids only, but it appears to have revised that idea and will put them in BEVs, with a target range of more than 600 miles and a fast-charging time of just 10 minutes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Bard is getting support for Extensions today, incorporating essential apps like Google Maps, YouTube, Hotels, and Flights to simplify data retrieval and accelerate the creative process. Android Police reports: This integration ensures that users can seamlessly amalgamate data from myriad sources, thereby accelerating your creative process or just making it easier to accomplish basic tasks across the board. These tools were originally teased at I/O before their wider release today. The company posted an excellent explainer of how this works on its YouTube channel. With today's update, you can now sync Bard with your Gmail, Docs, and Drive. This capability ensures that the AI collaborates with your personal content, making data retrieval and summarization more fluid. With the enhancement of the Google It button, Bard's responses can be cross-checked with Google Search, instilling greater trust in AI-generated data. Additionally, conversations initiated by others via Bard can be continued in your account, emphasizing collaborative creativity. You can learn more about Google Bard Extensions here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is planning to refresh its Xbox Series X console in 2024 with an all-new design and features. The Verge reports: Codenamed Brooklin, the unannounced console refresh has been accidentally revealed in new FTC v. Microsoft documents this week. The new Xbox Series X design looks a lot more cylindrical than the existing console and will ship without a disc drive. Internal confidential Microsoft documents reveal it has 2TB of storage (up from 1TB), a USB-C front port with power delivery, and an "all-new, more immersive controller." The new controller, codenamed Sebile, is set to be announced early next year for $69.99 and will include an accelerometer which should let you merely lift it to wake the gamepad. It has a two-tone color scheme and will support a direct connection to cloud, Bluetooth 5.2, and a presumably updated aoeXbox Wireless 2a connection. Microsoft also lists "precision haptic feedback" and "VCA haptics double as speakers" as specs for the controller. It will also have quieter buttons and thumbsticks, a rechargeable and swappable battery, and modular thumbsticks. Inside the new Xbox Series X design, Microsoft is also adding Wi-Fi 6E support, a Bluetooth 5.2 radio, and the company is shrinking the existing die to 6nm "for improve efficiency." The PSU power will be reduced by 15 percent, according to Microsoft's document. Microsoft is targeting the same $499 launch price of the Xbox Series X. Microsoft lists a roadmap for this new Xbox Series X console and controller, alongside a refreshed Xbox Series S with 1TB of storage. Microsoft just launched a refreshed Xbox Series S in black, but there could be another refresh on the way in 2024 with Wi-Fi 6E support and Bluetooth 5.2. It will also include this new Xbox controller. [...] Microsoft is tentatively planning to launch this new Xbox Series S refresh next September, with the Xbox Series X refresh in November.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The majority of U.S. adults don't believe the benefits of artificial intelligence outweigh the risks, according to a new Mitre-Harris Poll released Tuesday. From a report: 54% of the 2,063 adults in a Mitre-Harris Poll survey in July said they were more concerned about the risks of AI than they were excited about the potential benefits. At the same time, 39% of adults said they believed today's AI technologies are safe and secure -- down 9 points from the previous survey in November 2022. AI operators and the tech industry are eyeing new regulations and policy changes to secure their models and mitigate the security and privacy risks associated with them. The new survey data is some of the first to highlight the growing support for these regulatory efforts. "While the public has started to benefit from new AI capabilities such as ChatGPT, we've all watched as chatbots have spread political disinformation and shared dangerous medical advice," said Douglas Robbins, vice president of engineering and prototyping at the nonprofit security research and development firm Mitre, in a statement. "Strengthening existing government regulation and increasing public and private investments in AI assurance can play a critical role in addressing these concerns," he added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Controversial UK legislation that brings in a new regime of content moderation rules for online platforms and services -- establishing the comms watchdog Ofcom as the main Internet regulator -- has been passed by parliament today, paving the way for Royal Assent and the Online Safety Bill becoming law in the coming days. Speaking during the bill's final stages in the House of Lords, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay reiterated that the government's intention for the legislation is "to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online, particularly for children." Following affirmative votes as peers considered some last stage amendments he added that attention now moves "very swiftly to Ofcom who stand ready to implement this -- and do so swiftly." The legislation empowers Ofcom to levy fines of up to 10% (or up to 18 million pounds whichever is higher) of annual turnover for violations of the regime. The Online Safety (nee Harms) Bill has been years in the making as UK policymakers have grappled with how to response to a range of online safety concerns. In 2019 these efforts manifested as a white paper with a focus on rules for tackling illegal content (such as terrorism and CSAM) but also an ambition to address a broad sweep of online activity that might be considered harmful, such as violent content and the incitement of violence; encouraging suicide; disinformation; cyber bullying; and adult material being accessed by children. The effort then morphed into a bill that was finally published in May 2021. [...] In a brief statement the UK's new web content sheriff gave no hint of the complex challenges that lie ahead -- merely welcoming the bill's passage through parliament and stating that it stands ready to implement the new rulebook. "Today is a major milestone in the mission to create a safer life online for children and adults in the UK. Everyone at Ofcom feels privileged to be entrusted with this important role, and we're ready to start implementing these new laws," said Dame Melanie Dawes, Ofcom's CEO. "Very soon after the Bill receives Royal Assent, we'll consult on the first set of standards that we'll expect tech firms to meet in tackling illegal online harms, including child sexual exploitation, fraud and terrorism." Beyond specific issues of concern, there is over-arching general worry over the scale of the regulatory burden the legislation will apply to the UK's digital economy -- since the rules apply not only to major social media platforms; scores of far smaller and less well resourced online services must also comply or risk big penalties.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers have discovered a never-before-seen backdoor for Linux that's being used by a threat actor linked to the Chinese government. From a report: The new backdoor originates from a Windows backdoor named Trochilus, which was first seen in 2015 by researchers from Arbor Networks, now known as Netscout. They said that Trochilus executed and ran only in memory, and the final payload never appeared on disks in most cases. That made the malware difficult to detect. Researchers from NHS Digital in the UK have said Trochilus was developed by APT10, an advanced persistent threat group linked to the Chinese government that also goes by the names Stone Panda and MenuPass. Other groups eventually used it, and its source code has been available on GitHub for more than six years. Trochilus has been seen being used in campaigns that used a separate piece of malware known as RedLeaves. In June, researchers from security firm Trend Micro found an encrypted binary file on a server known to be used by a group they had been tracking since 2021. By searching VirusTotal for the file name, aalibmonitor.so.2, the researchers located an executable Linux file named "mkmon." This executable contained credentials that could be used to decrypt the libmonitor.so.2 file and recover its original payload, leading the researchers to conclude that "mkmon" is an installation file that delivered and decrypted libmonitor.so.2. The Linux malware ported several functions found in Trochilus and combined them with a new Socket Secure (SOCKS) implementation. The Trend Micro researchers eventually named their discovery SprySOCKS, with "spry" denoting its swift behavior and the added SOCKS component. SprySOCKS implements the usual backdoor capabilities, including collecting system information, opening an interactive remote shell for controlling compromised systems, listing network connections, and creating a proxy based on the SOCKS protocol for uploading files and other data between the compromised system and the attacker-controlled command server.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The sea-ice surrounding Antarctica is well below any previous recorded winter level, satellite data shows, a worrying new benchmark for a region that once seemed resistant to global warming. BBC: "It's so far outside anything we've seen, it's almost mind-blowing," says Walter Meier, who monitors sea-ice with the National Snow and Ice Data Center. An unstable Antarctica could have far-reaching consequences, polar experts warn. Antarctica's huge ice expanse regulates the planet's temperature, as the white surface reflects the Sun's energy back into the atmosphere and also cools the water beneath and near it. Without its ice cooling the planet, Antarctica could transform from Earth's refrigerator to a radiator, experts say. The ice that floats on the Antarctic Ocean's surface now measures less than 17 million sq km - that is 1.5 million sq km of sea-ice less than the September average, and well below previous winter record lows. That's an area of missing ice about five times the size of the British Isles. Dr Meier is not optimistic that the sea-ice will recover to a significant degree. Scientists are still trying to identify all the factors that led to this year's low sea-ice - but studying trends in Antarctica has historically been challenging. In a year when several global heat and ocean temperature records have broken, some scientists insist the low sea-ice is the measure to pay attention to. "We can see how much more vulnerable it is," says Dr Robbie Mallett, of the University of Manitoba, who is based on the Antarctic peninsula. Already braving isolation, extreme cold and powerful winds, this year's thin sea-ice has made his team's work even more difficult. "There is a risk that it breaks off and drifts out to sea with us on it," Dr Mallett says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

U.S. News & World Report's 2024 college rankings features many of the usual prestigious institutions at the top of the list, but also vaults some schools much higher after the publisher revised its grading system to reward different criteria. From a report: U.S News' ranking algorithm now based more than 50% of an institution's score on what it describes as "success in enrolling and graduating students from all backgrounds with manageable debt and post-graduate success." The system also places greater emphasis on "social mobility," which generally refers to an individual making gains in education, income and other markers of socioeconomic status. Overall, more than a dozen public universities shot up 50 spots on the annual list of the U.S.' best colleges, while several elite private schools largely held their ground, the new report shows. "The significant changes in this year's methodology are part of the ongoing evolution to make sure our rankings capture what is most important for students as they compare colleges and select the school that is right for them," U.S. News CEO Eric Gertler said in a statement. The change comes after a chorus of critics complained that the publication's rankings reinforce elitism and do little to help students find schools that suit their academic needs and financial circumstances. A growing number of schools, including elite institutions such as Columbia University and the Harvard and Yale law schools, also have stopped participating in the ranking and publicly criticized U.S. News' methodology.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said she was "upset" when China's Huawei released a new phone with an advanced chip during her visit to the country last month but noted that the US has no evidence China can make those components "at scale." From a report: "We are trying to use every single tool at our disposal to deny the Chinese the ability to advance their technology in ways that can hurt us," Raimondo testified at a congressional hearing Tuesday. The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security this month opened an investigation into Huawei's phone and the "purported" 7-nanometer chip, made by China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp, which was discovered in a teardown of the handset that TechInsights conducted for Bloomberg News. It is unclear whether SMIC has approval from Commerce to supply Huawei, which has been blacklisted by the US. Raimondo said she won't comment on any active investigations, but that the Commerce Department will investigate every time it appears a company may have violated US export controls.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger, plotting a comeback for the once-dominant chipmaker, made the case that the company's technology will be vital to an industrywide boom in artificial intelligence computing. From a report: Speaking at Intel's annual Innovation conference, Gelsinger pointed to advances that his company is making in production technology and software developer tools for AI. The opportunity will only grow as more artificial intelligence capabilities are powered by personal computers, he said. "AI represents a generational shift, giving rise to a new era of global expansion where computing is even more foundational to a better future for all," Gelsinger said. "For developers, this creates massive societal and business opportunities to push the boundaries of what's possible, to create solutions to the world's biggest challenges." Gelsinger is trying to fire up interest in Intel's technology and return to an era when its annual conferences offered a road map for the whole computing industry. He argues that artificial intelligence use won't be confined to the data centers of giant cloud providers, which rely heavily on chips from Nvidia. Instead, it will fan out into new areas, including the now-moribund PC market.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Department of Homeland Security wants Congress and other federal agencies to help it streamline 52 different cyber reporting requirements to protect critical infrastructure and ease regulatory burdens on hacking victims. On Tuesday, it released a 107-page report that it hopes will serve as a road map to smooth that process. From a report: More than 30 federal agencies and departments, including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Comptroller of the Currency and US Secret Service, have met since June 2022 to hammer out how to reduce regulatory overlap as the federal government grapples with the messy state of cyber reporting rules. They are among members of the Cybersecurity Incident Reporting Council, which was set up as part of a new cyber reporting law passed last year and developed the report recommendations. "Everybody is desperate for some harmonization and standardization here," Robert Silvers, DHS's under secretary for strategy, policy and plans who chairs the council, told Bloomberg News in an interview. "This is a first-of-its-kind effort." Federal agencies know well that cyber reporting requirements have become "too much of a patchwork," Silvers added. There are already 45 existing reporting requirements administered by 22 federal agencies, spanning national and economic security concerns to consumer and privacy protections, according to the report. Seven more requirements are expected, including the reporting law that created the council, and a further five are under consideration, according to the report.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel has taken the wraps off its forthcoming next-gen Meteor Lake processors following its successful 12th (Alder Lake) and 13th Gen (Raptor Lake) processors with its new E- and P-core design. WindowsCentral: Its first chip built on the Intel 4 process node with Foveros 3D packaging, Intel calls Meteor Lake its "biggest architectural shift in 40 years" and that it will "lay the foundation for innovations for the PC," as noted by Tim Wilson, VP, Design and Engineering Group and GM, SoC Design at Intel. Meteor Lake is Intel's next-gen CPU and the first built on the Intel 4 process, which is part of Intel's long-term goal of "5 nodes in 4 years." Previous generation naming would suggest it would be called Intel 14th Gen, but Intel is moving away from its older naming schema. Some reports have suggested Meteor Lake may reflect a reboot in generation numbers. Current rumors suggest Intel 14th Gen is simply a refresh of Raptor Lake, although Meteor Lake may play a part in that for laptops. Meteor Lake processors are expected to ship in late 2023 or early 2024 in new laptops with thinner and lighter designs, better cooling, and much better battery life. The significant change for Meteor Lake is what Intel calls disaggregation, which means the breaking down of core components into separate 'tiles' on the SoC. Meteor Lake features four Tiles, including:Compute Tile: New E-core and P-core microarchitecture, built on Intel 4 process technologySoC Tile: Low power island E-cores, NPU, Wi-Fi 6E/7, native HDMI 2.1 and 8K HDR AV1 supportGraphics Tile: Integrated Intel Arc architectureIO Tile: Thunderbolt 4 (and presumably Thunderbolt 5) and PCIe Gen5Read more of this story at Slashdot.

European governments have "systematically" shrunk their railways and starved them of funding while pouring money into expanding their road network, a report has found. The Guardian: The length of motorways in Europe grew 60% between 1995 and 2020 while railways shrank 6.5%, according to research from the German thinktanks Wuppertal Institute and T3 Transportation. For every $1 governments spent building railways, they spent $1.7 building roads. "This is a political choice," said Lorelei Limousin, a climate campaigner with Greenpeace, which commissioned the report. "We see the consequences today with the climate, but also with people who have been left without an alternative solution to cars." The report found the EU, Norway, Switzerland and the UK spent $1.6tn between 1995 and 2018 to extend their roads -- but just $0.99tn to extend their rail networks. In the four years that followed (2018-21), the average gap in investment in rail and road decreased from 66% to 34%. During that time, seven countries invested more in rail than roads -- Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the UK -- while the rest spent more on roads than rail.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The documents in the FTC v. Microsoft case also reveal Microsoft's far future plans for 2028 -- by which the company believed it could achieve "full convergence" of its cloud gaming platform and physical hardware to deliver "cloud hybrid games." From a report: "Our vision: develop a next generation hybrid game platform capable of leveraging the combined power of the client and cloud to deliver deeper immersion and entirely new classes of game experiences." Those are the words on just one slide from a leaked presentation dubbed "The Next Generation of Gaming at Microsoft," which appears to be a May 2022 pitch document entirely around this idea. The company imagined you playing these games using the combined power of a sub-$99 gadget -- possibly a handheld -- and its xCloud platform simultaneously.Read more of this story at Slashdot.