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An influential industry group that represents Google, Meta and Amazon among other tech firms has expressed concerns about the digital competition law recommended by an Indian parliamentary panel that seeks to regulate their alleged anticompetitive practices, calling the proposal "absolutist and regressive" in nature in the latest escalation of tension between U.S. tech giants and New Delhi. From a report: The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance recommended last month that the government enact a digital competition act to regulate anticompetitive business practices by Big Tech companies on its platforms, prohibiting them from preferentially promoting their in-house brands or not supporting third-party systems. The competition act, the panel said, "will be a boon not only for our country and its nascent startup economy but also for the entire world." Industry group Asia Internet Coalition said in a statement that the proposed digital competition law may hurt digital innovation in India and could impact the investments by businesses in India and have "disproportionate costs" to consumers in the South Asian market. "The report put forward by the committee is prescriptive, absolutist and regressive in nature," it added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AmiMoJo writes: Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko has signed a new law that legalizes piracy of movies, music, TV shows and software owned by rightsholders from 'unfriendly countries'. The law also allows goods protected by intellectual property law to be imported from any country without obtaining permission from rightsholders. Lukashenko's support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine led to new sanctions being imposed by the EU, U.S. and other countries. In common with Russia, Belarus relies on intellectual property owned by foreign rightsholders that are currently unable or unwilling to supply and/or license it. So, to ensure legal access to pirated movies, music, TV shows and software, the government drafted a new law to restrict intellectual property rights.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Identity thieves have been exploiting a glaring security weakness in the website of Experian, one of the big three consumer credit reporting bureausBrian Krebs reported Monday. From the report: Normally, Experian requires that those seeking a copy of their credit report successfully answer several multiple choice questions about their financial history. But until the end of 2022, Experian's website allowed anyone to bypass these questions and go straight to the consumer's report. All that was needed was the person's name, address, birthday and Social Security number. In December, KrebsOnSecurity heard from Jenya Kushnir, a security researcher living in Ukraine who said he discovered the method being used by identity thieves after spending time on Telegram chat channels dedicated to the cashing out of compromised identities. "I want to try and help to put a stop to it and make it more difficult for [ID thieves] to access, since [Experian is] not doing shit and regular people struggle," Kushnir wrote in an email to KrebsOnSecurity explaining his motivations for reaching out. "If somehow I can make small change and help to improve this, inside myself I can feel that I did something that actually matters and helped others." Kushnir said the crooks learned they could trick Experian into giving them access to anyone's credit report, just by editing the address displayed in the browser URL bar at a specific point in Experian's identity verification process.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

House Republicans plan to launch a new investigative panel this week that will demand copies of White House emails, memos and other communications with Big Tech companies, Axios reported Monday, citing sources. From the report: Speaker Kevin McCarthy plans a quick spate of red-meat actions and announcements to reward hardliners who backed him through his harrowing fight for the gavel. The new panel, the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, is partly a response to revelations from Elon Musk in the internal documents he branded the "Twitter Files." The subcommittee will be chaired by House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan -- a close McCarthy ally, and a favorite of the hard right. The probe into communications between tech giants and President Biden's aides will look for government pressure that could have resulted in censorship or harassment of conservatives -- or squelching of debate on polarizing policies, including the CDC on COVID. The request for documents will be followed by "compulsory processes," including subpoenas if needed, a GOP source tells Axios. In December, Jordan wrote letters to top tech platforms asking for information about "'collusion' with the Biden administration to censor conservatives on their platforms."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The American Farm Bureau Federation and machinery manufacturer Deere signed a memorandum of understanding on Sunday that ensures farmers have the right to repair their own farm equipment or go to an independent technician. From a report: As the agriculture sector accelerates its adoption of technology, the reliance on high-tech machinery such as GPS-guided combines and tractors has become more common-place. But equipment makers such as Deere have generally required customers to use their parts and service divisions for repairs and until recently, only allowed authorized dealers the means and tools to access the complex computerized systems of their tractors and other machinery. The Farm Bureau's memorandum of understanding with Deere "will ensure farmers everywhere are able to repair our own equipment," Farm Bureau president Zippy Duvall said, speaking at the federation's convention in Puerto Rico.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Saturday night in the Silicon Valley city of San Jose, the assistant police chief tweeted out praise for their recently-upgraded Automatic License Plate Readers:Officers in Air3 [police helicopter], monitoring the ALPR system, got alerted to 3 stolen cars. They directed ground units to the cars. All 3 drivers in custody! No dangerous vehicle pursuits occurred, nor were they needed. 2 drivers tried to run away. But, you can't outrun a helicopter!" There's photos — one of the vehicles appears to be a U-Haul pickup truck — and the tweet drew exactly one response, from San Jose mayor Matt Mahan:"Nice job...! Appreciate the excellent police work and great to see ALPRs having an impact. Don't steal cars in San Jose!" Some context: The San Jose Spotlight (a nonprofit local news site) noted that prior to last year license plate readers had been mounted exclusively on police patrol cars (and in use since 2006). But last year the San Jose Police Department launched a new "pilot program" with four cameras mounted at a busy intersection, that "captured nearly 300,000 plate scans in just the last month, according to city data." By August this had led to plans for 150 more stationary ALPR cameras, a local TV station reported. "Just this week, police said they solved an armed robbery and arrested a suspected shooter thanks to the cameras."During a forum to update the community, San Jose police also mentioned success stories in other cities like Vallejo where they've reported a 100% increase in identifying stolen vehicles. San Jose is now installing hundreds around the city and the first batch is coming in the next two to three months.... The biggest concern among those attending Wednesday's virtual forum was privacy. But the city made it clear the data is only shared with trained police officers and certain city staff, no out-of-state or federal agencies. "Anytime that someone from the San Jose Police Department accesses the ALPR system, they have to input a reason, the specific plates they are looking for and all of that information is logged so that we can keep track of how many times its being used and what its being used for," said Albert Gehami, Digital Privacy Officer for San Jose. More privacy concerns were raised in September, reports the San Jose Spotlight:The San Jose City Council unanimously approved a policy Tuesday that formally bans the police department from selling any license plate data, using that information for investigating a person's immigration status or for monitoring legally protected activities like protests or rallies. Even with these new rules, some privacy advocates and community groups are still opposed to the technology. Victor Sin, chair of the Santa Clara Valley Chapter of ACLU of Northern California, expressed doubt that the readers are improving public safety. He made the comments in a letter to the council from himself and leaders of four other community organizations. "Despite claims that (automated license plate reader) systems can reduce crime, researchers have expressed concerns about the rapid acquisition of this technology by law enforcement without evidence of its efficacy," the letter reads. Groups including the Asian Law Alliance and San Jose-Silicon Valley NAACP also said the city should reduce the amount of time it keeps license plate data on file down from one year..... Mayor Sam Liccardo said he's already convinced the readers are useful, but added the council should try to find a way to measure their effect. "It's probably not a bad idea for us to decide what are the outcomes we're trying to achieve, and if there is some reasonable metric that captures that outcome in a meaningful way," Liccardo said. "Was this used to actually help us arrest anybody, or solve a crime or prevent an accident?" An EFF position paper argues that "ALPR data is gathered indiscriminately, collecting information on millions of ordinary people."By plotting vehicle times and locations and tracing past movements, police can use stored data to paint a very specific portrait of drivers' lives, determining past patterns of behavior and possibly even predicting future ones — in spite of the fact that the vast majority of people whose license plate data is collected and stored have not even been accused of a crime.... [ALPR technology] allows officers to track everyone..." Maybe the police officer's tweet was to boost public support for the technology? It's already led to a short report from another local news station:San Jose police recovered three stolen cars using their automated license-plate recognition technology (ALPR) on Saturday, according to officials with the San Jose Police Department. Officers inside of Air3, one of SJPD's helicopters, spotted three stolen cars using ALPR before directing ground units their way. Police say no pursuits occurred, though two of the drivers tried to run away.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"A recent viral moment highlights just how nervous the artist community is about artificial intelligence," reports Fast Company:It started earlier this week, when French comic book author Claire Wendling posted a screenshot of a curious passage in Adobe's privacy and personal data settings to Instagram. It was quickly reposted on Twitter by another artist and campaigner, Jon Lam, where it subsequently spread throughout the artistic community, drawing nearly 2 million views and thousands of retweets. (Neither Wendling nor Lam responded to requests to comment for this story.) The fear among those who shared the tweet was simple: That Photoshop, and other Adobe products, are tracking artists that use their apps to see how they work — in essence, stealing the processes and actions that graphic designers have developed over decades of work to mine for its own automated systems. The concern is that what is a complicated, convoluted artistic process becomes possible to automate — meaning "graphic designer" or "artist" could soon join the long list of jobs at risk of being replaced by robots.... The reality may be more complex. An Adobe spokesperson says that the company is not using customer accounts to train AI. "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," said the company spokesperson in a written statement to Fast Company. "We are currently reviewing our policy to better define Generative AI use cases."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Envy the lumberjacks, for they perform the happiest, most meaningful work on earth," writes the Washington Post. "Or at least they think they do. Farmers, too."Agriculture, logging and forestry have the highest levels of self-reported happiness — and lowest levels of self-reported stress — of any major industry category, according to our analysis of more than 13,000 time journals from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' American Time Use Survey. (Additional reporting sharpened our focus on lumberjacks and foresters, but almost everyone who works on farms or in forests stands out.) The time-use survey typically asks people to record what they were doing at any given time during the day. But in four recent surveys, between 2010 and 2021, they also asked a subset of those people — more than 13,000 of them — how meaningful those activities were, or how happy, sad, stressed, pained and tired they felt on a six-point scale.... [H]appiness and meaning aren't always correlated. Heath-care and social workers rate themselves as doing the most meaningful work of anybody (apart from the laudable lumberjacks), but they rank lower on the happiness scale. They also rank high on stress. The most stressful sectors are the industry including finance and insurance, followed by education and the broad grouping of professional and technical industries, a sector that includes the single most stressful occupation: lawyers. Together, they paint a simple picture: A white collar appears to come with significantly more stress than a blue one. The Post credits "adjacency to nature" as boosting the happiness in forestry-related professions (as well as many recreational activities). The Post spoke to one forestry advocate who even argued that "Forestry forces you to work on a slower time scale. It pushes you to have a generational outlook."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares this report from the Los Angeles Times:The University of California strike is over, culminating last month in significant improvements in wages and working conditions after 48,000 teaching assistants, tutors, researchers and postdoctoral scholars walked off their jobs in the nation's largest labor action of academic workers. But the effects of the historic strike still reverberate across the nation, helping energize an unprecedented surge of union activism among academic workers that could reshape the teaching and research enterprise of American higher education. In 2022 alone, graduate students representing 30,000 peers at nearly a dozen institutions filed documents with the National Labor Relations Board for a union election. They include USC, Northwestern, Yale, Johns Hopkins, the University of Chicago, Boston University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Caltech plans to officially kick off its organizing campaign this month, and other academic researchers are working to form unions at the University of Alaska, Western Washington University, the National Institutes of Health and such influential think tanks as the Brookings Institution and Urban Institute. A confluence of several factors has propelled the burst of labor activism: disaffection with rising inflation, unaffordable housing, limited healthcare, growing student debt, university treatment of academic workers during the pandemic, and a more union-friendly Biden administration. But students and labor experts also point to the influence of the UC strike, which drew national attention by marshaling four UAW bargaining units on all 10 campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to pull off a massive walkout that shut down classes, suspended research, roiled finals and upended grading — ultimately winning some of the largest wage gains ever secured by academic workers. In the article there's examples of stipends recently increasing at other universities, either as a result of student strikes or the need "to remain competitive" in attracting top talent. A Cornell senior lecturer/director of labor education research also cites some interesting statistics from a 2021 Gallup poll: 77% of people between the ages of 18 and 34 support unions — the largest level of support among all age demographics.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"To date, about 500 people have been put in cryogenic stasis after legal death," writes a Bloomberg Opinion technology columnist, "with the majority of them in the U.S. "But a few thousand more, including Emil Kendziorra, are on waiting lists, wearing bracelets or necklaces with instructions for emergency responders. "Kendziorra, 36, runs Berlin-based Tomorrow Biostasis GmbH, one of the first cryonics businesses in Europe to join a market dominated by American firms organizations like The Alcor Life Extension Foundation and The Cryonics Institute. The former cancer doctor has several hundred people on his firm's waiting list. They skew to their late 30s, male and tend to work in technology. Patients can choose to have their entire body preserved and held upside down in a four-person dewars, a thermos-like aluminum vat filled with liquid nitrogen, or just preserve their brain, which is cheaper. Kendziorra says cryopreservation overall has become less expensive over the past few decades on an inflation-adjusted basis, a claim that he bases on historic prices published by his peers, who he says are making a collective effort to bring down costs. That could be critical to shifting cryonics from a fringe pursuit to something a little more mainstream, especially since it is no longer just for billionaires like PayPal Inc. co-founder Peter Thiel (who has reportedly signed up with Alcor). Kendziorra, for instance, has made cryonics just another monthly subscription by capitalizing on insurance, he told me during a Twitter Spaces discussion on cryonics last month. His customers pay a 25-euro ($26.54) monthly fee to Tomorrow Biostasis, and they also make the company the beneficiary of a minimum 100,000-euro life insurance payout upon their legal death. Kendziorra says that covers the full cost of cryonics including the biggest outlay: maintenance over the next century or so. All told, most of his customers are paying about 50 euros a month for both the company's subscription fee and the life insurance policy for the option of a long sleep at death. Of course, most companies don't survive for more than a century, so Tomorrow Biostasis also partners with a non-profit group in Switzerland to carry out the storage of customers on its behalf.... The domain itself is largely funded by wealthy individuals including CEOs of tech companies, angel investors and scientists, Kendziorra says, adding that for them to invest in his own firm, their primary motivation shouldn't be "monetary" but rather to help further the field. The mechanics all sound sensible, but that still leaves the question of whether cryonics will work, medically speaking. Doctors and scientists have used words like quackery, pseudoscience and outright fraud to describe the field. Clive Cohen, a neuroscientist from Kings College London, has called it a "hopeless aspiration that reveals an appalling ignorance of biology." The Association of Cryobiology has compared it to turning a hamburger back into a cow.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CNN reports that 32-year-old Katelyn McClure "has been sentenced to three years in state prison for her role in scamming more than $400,000 from GoFundMe donors, by claiming to be collecting money for a homeless man."In 2017, McClure claimed she ran out of gas and was stranded on Interstate 95 in Philadelphia. The homeless man, Johnny Bobbitt Jr., supposedly saw her and gave her his last $20 for gas. McClure and her then-boyfriend, Mark D'Amico, posted about the "good deed" on social media, including a picture of her with Bobbitt on a highway ramp. They also started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for the homeless veteran, saying they wanted to pay it forward to the good Samaritan and get him off the streets. The story went viral and made national headlines, with more than 14,000 donors contributing. The scammers netted around $367,000 after fees, according to court documents.... Bobbitt, who received $75,000 from the fundraiser, according to prosecutors, took civil action against D'Amico and McClure and the scam soon became public.... D'Amico and Bobbitt were charged in 2018 alongside McClure for concocting the scheme, prosecutors said. McClure pleaded guilty to one count of theft by deception in the second degree in 2019, according to the Burlington County prosecutor. Bobbitt pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit theft by deception in 2019 and was sentenced to a five-year special probation period which includes drug treatment. D'Amico also pleaded guilty and agreed to a five-year term in New Jersey state prison, as well as restitution of GoFundMe and the donors, in 2019. "The gas part is completely made up, but the guy isn't," McClure texted a friend (according to CNN). "I had to make something up to make people feel bad." So what happened to "the guy" from the highway ramp? Prosecutors note that if Bobbitt "fails to adhere to the tightly-structured regimen of treatment and recovery services, which includes frequent testing for drug use, he could be sentenced to five years in state prison." And they add that the judge "also ruled that McClure, a former state Department of Transportation worker, is permanently barred from ever holding another position as a public employee." Their statement points out that the 2017 campaign was at the time the largest fraud ever perpetrated through GoFundMe — which voluntarily reimbursed the 14,000-plus donors.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Wheat now provides 20% of the calories consumed by humans every day," writes the Guardian. Unfortunately, "Thanks to human-induced global heating, our planet faces a future of increasingly severe heat waves, droughts and wildfires that could devastate harvests in future, triggering widespread famine in their wake. "But the crisis could be averted thanks to remarkable research now being undertaken by researchers at the John Innes Centre in Norwich."They are working on a project to make wheat more resistant to heat and drought. Such efforts have proved to be extremely tricky but are set to be the subject of a new set of trials in a few weeks as part of a project in which varieties of wheat — created, in part, by gene-editing technology — will be planted in field trials in Spain. The ability of these varieties to withstand the heat of Iberia will determine how well crop scientists will be able to protect future arable farms from the worst vicissitudes of climate change, and so bolster food production for the Earth's billions, says the John Innes Centre team.... "A key tool in this work was gene editing, which allowed us to make precise changes in wheat DNA. Without it, we would still be struggling with this. It has made all the difference." This was an especially difficult struggle because wheat genetics includes multiple ancestral genomes, the article points. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for submitting the story.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Verge is decrying "a genre of video that derives its entertainment value from unwitting passersby" — like filming pedestrians in a neighborhood in New York City:Many viewers on TikTok ate it up, but others pushed back on the idea that there's humor in filming and posting an unsuspecting neighbor for content. This year, I saw more and more resistance to the practice that's become normal or even expected.... [P]eople who have been featured in videos unbeknownst to them have pointed out that even if there's no ill will, it's just unnerving and weird to be filmed by others as if you're bit characters in the story of their life. One TikTok user, @hilmaafklint, landed in a stranger's vlog when they filmed her to show her outfit. She didn't realize it had happened until another stranger recognized her and tagged her in the video. "It's weird at best, and creepy and a safety hazard at worst," she says in a video.... Even before TikTok, public space had become an arena for constant content creation; if you step outside, there's a chance you'll end up in someone's video. It could be minimally invasive, sure, but it could also shine an unwanted spotlight on the banal moments that just happen to get caught on film. This makeshift, individualized surveillance apparatus exists beyond the state-sponsored systems — the ones where tech companies will hand over electronic doorbell footage without a warrant or where elected officials allow police to watch surveillance footage in real time. We're watched enough as it is. So if you're someone who makes content for the internet, consider this heartfelt advice and a heads-up. If you're filming someone for a video, please ask for their consent. And if I catch you recording me for content, I will smack your phone away.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"France's data protection authority, CNIL, fined Apple €8 million (about $8.5 million) Wednesday," reports Gizmodo, "for illegally harvesting iPhone owners' data for targeted ads without proper consent."It's an unusual sanction for the iPhone maker, which has faced fewer legal penalties over privacy than its Big Tech competitors. Apple makes privacy a selling point for its devices, plastering "Privacy. That's iPhone." across 40-foot billboards across the world.... Apple failed to "obtain the consent of French iPhone users (iOS 14.6 version) before depositing and/or writing identifiers used for advertising purposes on their terminals," the CNIL said in a statement. The CNIL's fine calls out the search ads in Apple's App Store, specifically. A French court fined the company over $1 million in December over its commercial practices related to the App Store.... With iPhones running iOS 14.6 and below, Apple's Personalized Advertising privacy setting was turned on by default, leaving users to seek out the control on their own if they wanted to protect their information. That violates EU privacy law, according to the CNIL.... The newer versions of the iPhone operating system corrected the problem, presenting users with a prompt before the advertising data was collected.Gizmodo also notes this response from an Apple spokesperson. "We are disappointed with this decision given the CNIL has previously recognized that how we serve search ads in the App Store prioritizes user privacy, and we will appeal. Apple Search Ads goes further than any other digital advertising platform we are aware of by providing users with a clear choice as to whether or not they would like personalized ads." Gizmodo calls France's fine "a signal that Apple may face a less friendly regulatory future in Europe."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon isn't the only company that's started drone-delivery services. Kiplinger.com reports:Walmart has 37 stores set up for drone delivery to homes and businesses — six stores in Arizona, four in Arkansas, nine Walmarts in Florida, two in North Carolina, 11 in Texas, two in Utah and three in Virginia. Walmart has partnered with drone delivery service DroneUp Delivery to deliver customers' packages that weigh 10 pounds or less. Walmart says that more than 10,000 items are available for drone delivery and items can arrive as quickly as 30 minutes after the order has been placed. There are restrictions: Customers must live within one mile of participating stores. Orders are accepted on the DroneUp Delivery website from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. local time. "If it fits safely, it flies," Walmart said in a statement. "Participating stores will house a DroneUp delivery hub inclusive of a team of certified pilots, operating within FAA guidelines, that safely manage flight operations for deliveries. Once a customer places an order, the item is fulfilled from the store, packaged, loaded into the drone and delivered right to their yard using a cable that gently lowers the package." Oh, and the top-selling item at one of Walmart's drone ports? Hamburger Helper. Just sayin'. The Street notes predictions of increasing numbers of drone deliveries: A March 2022 report by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. found that more than 660,000 commercial drone deliveries were made to customers in the past three years and more than 2,000 drone deliveries are occurring each day worldwide. The report projected that this year close to 1.5 million deliveries will be made by drones, about triple the number in 2021. But Business Insider reported last May that at least eight Amazon drones had crashed during testing in the past year, including one that sparked a 20-acre brush fire in eastern Oregon in June of 2021 after the drone's motors failed. It's part of why The Street writes that the very idea of drone-delivery service has also "hit some turbulence along the way."There's plenty of skepticism about the practicality of broad-scale use of delivery drones. "[Because] of technical and financial limitations, drones are unlikely to be the future of package delivery on a mass scale," The New York Times' Shira Ovide reported in June. And safety is a critical concern. In 2018, hundreds of flights at Gatwick Airport near London were canceled following reports of drone sightings close to the runway. In September a delivery drone crashed into power lines in the Australian town of Browns Plains and knocked out power for more than 2,000 customers. A survey by the business intelligence firm Morning Consult found that 57% of the respondents said they had little or no trust in the devices for deliveries, compared with 43% who said they had "a lot" or "some" trust. Respondents said they were worried about unsuccessful deliveries of items and threats to personal and data privacy related to using drones for delivery, including deliveries performed by Chinese-made drones.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"A new Linux malware downloader created using SHC (Shell Script Compiler) has been spotted in the wild," reports the site Bleeping Computer, "infecting systems with Monero cryptocurrency miners and DDoS IRC bots... "The analysts say the attacks likely rely on brute-forcing weak administrator account credentials over SSH on Linux servers.... "According to ASEC researchers, who discovered the attack, the SHC loader was uploaded to VirusTotal by Korean users, with attacks generally focused on Linux systems in the same country.... When the SHC malware downloader is executed, it will fetch multiple other malware payloads and install them on the device. One of the payloads is an XMRig miner that is downloaded as a TAR archive from a remote URL and extracted to "/usr/local/games/" and executed.... The second payload retrieved, dropped, and loaded by the SHC malware downloader is a Perl-based DDoS IRC bot. The malware connects to the designated IRC server using configuration data and goes through a username-based verification process. If successful, the malware awaits commands from the IRC server, including DDoS-related actions such as TCP Flood, UDP Flood, and HTTP Flood, port scanning, Nmap scanning, sendmail commands, process killing, log cleaning, and more. ASEC warns that attacks like these are typically caused by using weak passwords on exposed Linux servers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Singaporean inventor and tech pioneer Sim Wong Hoo passed away on January 4th at the age of 67," reports Engadget:Sim may not be a household name these days, but he founded Creative Technology (or Creative Labs in the US), the company behind the Sound Blaster brand of sound cards, back in 1981. Sound Blasters were some of the first sound cards available to consumers, and there was a time when you had to make sure your system worked with them if you wanted to listen to music and play games. Sim established his business in the US and started selling Sound Blasters a few years later, after which Creative became the first Singaporean company to be listed on the Nasdaq exchange. The integration of sound boards into the motherboard ended Sound Blaster's popularity, but Bloomberg says the cards provided audio for more than 400 million PCs. Under his leadership, Creative also launched a range of MP3 players, and Sim once tried to take on Apple by spending $100 million on advertising and marketing in its bid to dethrone the iPod. In 2006, Creative sued Apple for violating its patent for portable media system menus. The companies filed more lawsuits against each other after that before Apple settled with Creative and paid the company $100 million for the technology outlined in its patent.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"We are seeing, across the gamut, products that impact our privacy, products that create cybersecurity risks, that have overarchingly long-term environmental impacts, disposable products, and flat-out just things that maybe should not exist." That's the CEO of the how-to repair site iFixit, introducing their third annual "Worst in Show" ceremony for the products displayed at this year's CES. But the show's slogan promises it's also "calling out the most troubling trends in tech." For example, the EFF's executive director started with two warnings. First, "If it's communicating with your phone, it's generally communicating to the cloud too." But more importantly, if a product is gathering data about you and communicating with the cloud, "you have to ask yourself: is this company selling something to me, or are they selling me to other people? And this year, as in many past years at CES, it's almost impossible to tell from the products and the advertising copy around them! They're just not telling you what their actual business model is, and because of that — you don't know what's going on with your privacy." After warning about the specific privacy implications of a urine-analyzing add-on for smart toilets, they noted there was a close runner-up for the worst privacy: the increasing number of scam products that "are basically based on the digital version of phrenology, like trying to predict your emotions based upon reading your face or other things like that. There's a whole other category of things that claim to do things that they cannot remotely do." To judge the worst in show by environmental impact, Consumer Reports sent the Associate Director for their Product Sustainability, Research and Testing team, who chose the 55-inch portable "Displace TV" for being powered only by four lithium-ion batteries (rather than, say, a traditional power cord). And the "worst in show" award for repairability went to the Ember Mug 2+ — a $200 travel mug "with electronics and a battery inside...designed to keep your coffee hot." Kyle Wiens, iFixit's CEO, first noted it was a product which "does not need to exist" in a world which already has equally effective double-insulated, vaccuum-insulated mugs and Thermoses. But even worse: it's battery powered, and (at least in earlier versions) that battery can't be easily removed! (If you email the company asking for support on replacing the battery, Wiens claims that "they will give you a coupon on a new, disposable coffee mug. So this is the kind of product that should not exist, doesn't need to exist, and is doing active harm to the world. "The interesting thing is people care so much about their $200 coffee mug, the new feature is 'Find My iPhone' support. So not only is it harming the environment, it's also spying on where you're located!" The founder of SecuRepairs.org first warned about "the vast ecosystem of smart, connected products that are running really low-quality, vulnerable software that make our persons and our homes and businesses easy targets for hackers." But for the worst in show for cybersecurity award, they then chose Roku's new Smart TV, partly because smart TVs in general "are a problematic category when it comes to cybersecurity, because they're basically surveillance devices, and they're not created with security in mind." And partly because to this day it's hard to tell if Roku has fixed or even acknowledged its past vulnerabilities — and hasn't implemented a prominent bug bounty program. "They're not alone in this. This is a problem that affects electronics makers of all different shapes and sizes at CES, and it's something that as a society, we just need to start paying a lot more attention to." And US Pirg's "Right to Repair" campaign director gave the "Who Asked For This" award to Neutrogena's "SkinStacks" 3D printer for edible skin-nutrient gummies — which are personalized after phone-based face scans. ("Why just sell vitamins when you could also add in proprietary refills and biometic data harvesting.")Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: "A new lawsuit filed by Seattle Public Schools against TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Snap, Instagram, and their parent companies alleges that the social media giants have 'successfully exploited the vulnerable brains of youth' for their own profit, using psychological tactics that have led to a mental health crisis in schools," reports GeekWire. "The suit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Seattle, seeks "the maximum statutory and civil penalties permitted by law," making the case that the companies have violated Washington state's public nuisance law." From GeekWire's report:The district alleges that it has suffered widespread financial and operational harm from social media usage and addiction among students. The lawsuit cites factors including the resources required to provide counseling services to students in crisis, and to investigate and respond to threats made against schools and students over social media. 'This mental health crisis is no accident,' the suit says. 'It is the result of the Defendants' deliberate choices and affirmative actions to design and market their social media platforms to attract youth.'" The lawsuit cites President Joe Biden's statement in his 2022 State of the Union address that "we must hold social media platforms accountable for the national experiment they're conducting on our children for profit." The suit says the school district "brings this action to do just that."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The Tiobe index gauges language popularity using a formula that assesses searches on programming languages in Google, Bing, Yahoo, Wikipedia, and other search engines," writes InfoWorld. And they add that this year the "vaunted" C++ programming language was the index's biggest gainer in 2022. TIOBE's announcement includes their calculation that C++ rose 4.62% in popularity in 2022: Runners up are C (+3.82%) and Python (+2.78%). Interestingly, C++ surpassed Java to become the number 3 of the TIOBE index in November 2022. The reason for C++'s popularity is its excellent performance while being a high level object-oriented language. Because of this, it is possible to develop fast and vast software systems (over millions of lines of code) in C++ without necessarily ending up in a maintenance nightmare. So which programming languages are most popular now? For what it's worth, here's TIOBE's latest ranking: - Python- C- C++- Java- C#- Visual Basic - JavaScript- SQL- Assembly Language- PHP InfoWorld adds that "Helping C++ popularity was the publication of new language standards with interesting features, such as C++ 11 and C++ 20." More from TIOBE:What else happened in 2022? Performance seemed to be important. C++ competitor Rust entered the top 20 again (being at position #26 one year ago), but this time it seems to be for real. Lua, which is known for its easy interfacing with C, jumped from position #30 to #24. F# is another language that made an interesting move: from position #74 to position #33 in one years' time. Promising languages such as Kotlin (from #29 to #25), Julia (from #28 to #29) and Dart (from #37 to #38) still have a long way to go before they reach the top 20. Let's see what happens in 2023.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From a report:Have you ever wondered what your dog would say if it could speak to you? FluentPet promises the next best thing — buttons the company says you can train your pet to push if it's hungry, needs to go outside, or wants to play.... "We find that actually when dogs kind of know that they're being understood because they have the precision and specificity of the buttons, then they complain less because they're no longer wondering whether they actually communicated what they wanted to," said Leo Trottier, FluentPet CEO. At CES, the company announced FluentPet Connect, a new app that notifies owners when their dog presses a button and collects data on how the buttons are used. FluentPet's starter kit comes with hextiles, a speaker, and six buttons for $159.95. The app does not require a subscription.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Luke Iseman, a serial inventor and the former director of hardware at Y Combinator, has raised at least $500,000 to launch his sunlight reflection company, Make Sunsets," reports CNBC. "Make Sunsets plans to launch three balloon test launches releasing sulfur dioxide to cool the atmosphere in January from the land Iseman owns in Baja, Mexico.""We make reflective, high-altitude, biodegradable clouds that cool the planet. Mimicking natural processes, our 'shiny clouds' are going to prevent catastrophic global warming," reads the site's About page.... The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines released thousands of tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, temporarily lowering average global temperatures by about 1 degree Fahrenheit, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The idea of replicating these conditions to fight climate change has generally been dismissed as more science fiction than real science. But as the effects of climate change have grown more dire and obvious, the idea has gotten more serious attention, and the White House is in the process of coordinating a five-year research plan to study it. On the downside, injecting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere could damage the ozone layer, cause respiratory illness and create acid rain. It would also cost as little as $10 billion per year to run a program that cools the Earth by 1 degree Celsius, UCLA environmental law professor Edward Parson told CNBC in 2022. That's remarkably cheap compared to other mitigation techniques.... In January, Make Sunsets plans to launch three latex weather balloons that will release anywhere between 10 and 500 grams of sulfur dioxide. The balloons will include a flight tracking computer, a geo-locating tracking device, and a camera, mostly provided by hobbyist suppliers. Within a week of each flight, Make Sunsets will publish data on its website about what it was able to find.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Windows 8.1 receives one more batch of security patches on the coming Tuesday," reports Ghacks, "before Microsoft lays the operating system to rest."Windows 8.1 does not get the same Extended Security Updates treatment that Windows 7 received for the past three years. Once the last patch has been released, it is game over for the operating system. Windows 8.1 users may continue using it, but the system's security issues will no longer be fixed by Microsoft or anyone else. Browsers and other programs will stop getting updates, and some websites will refuse to work as new technologies are no longer supported by the browsers. Windows 7, which receives the last ESU patches on Tuesday as well, looks to be in a similar situation on first glance. Microsoft won't release updates for it anymore, even though there is still demand for that. The article does note that 0patch, a third-party security platform from the Slovenia-based digital security lab ACROS Security, "will support Windows 7 with at least two additional years of critical security updates." (The cost: around $25 per year.)Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Car & Driver reports on what they found in the menus of a 2023 BMW X1:BMW TeleService and Remote Software Upgrade showed a message that read Activated, while BMW Drive Recorder had options to subscribe for one month, one year, three years, or "Unlimited...." We reached out to BMW to ask about the menus we found and to learn more about its plan for future subscriptions. The company replied that it doesn't post a comprehensive list of prices online because of variability in what each car can receive. "Upgrade availability depends on factors such as model year, equipment level, and software version, so this keeps things more digestible for consumers," explained one BMW representative. Our X1 for example, has an optional $25-per-year charge for traffic camera alerts, but that option isn't available to cars without BMW Live Cockpit. Instead of listing all the available options online, owners can see which subscriptions are available for their car either in the menus of the vehicle itself or from a companion app. BMW USA may not want to confuse its customers by listing all its options in one place, but BMW Australia has no such reservations. In the land down under, heated front seats and a heated steering wheel are available in a month-to-month format, as is BMW's parking assistant technology. In contrast, BMW USA released a statement in July saying that if a U.S.-market vehicle is ordered with heated seats from the factory, that option will remain functional throughout the life of the vehicle. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sinij for submitting the story.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CNN reports:Two men were arrested on New Year's Eve for allegedly shutting down four Washington state power substations in late December that led to power outages for thousands across Pierce County. Matthew Greenwood and Jeremy Crahan have been charged with conspiracy to damage energy facilities and Greenwood faces a separate charge of possessing illegal short-barreled rifles.... The two cut off power to thousands of locals and caused at least $3 million worth of damage, according to charging documents. Investigators identified Greenwood and Crahan almost immediately after the attacks took place by using cell phone data that allegedly showed both men in the vicinity of all four substations, according to court documents. Surveillance images cited in the court documents also showed images of one of the men and of the getaway car.... The two face up to 20 years behind bars if convicted of conspiring to attack energy facilities. In addition, possession of an unregistered firearm is punishable by up to ten years in prison, according to a statement from the Department of Justice. But identifying the suspects was apparently pretty simple. "When law enforcement served a search warrant on the home of the suspects, they recovered distinctive clothing pictured in the surveillance photos." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the story.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Aboard the International Space Station right now is a metal box, the size of a desktop PC tower," reports Popular Mechanics. "Inside, a nozzle is helping build little test parts that aren't possible to make on Earth." The Washington Post reports:Backed by MIT's Space Exploration Initiative, astronauts on board the International Space Station on Friday completed a roughly 45-day experiment using a small microwave-sized box that injects resin into silicone skins to build parts, such as nuts and bolts. Now, after the parts travel back to Earth this weekend, scientists will evaluate the test pieces to examine whether they were made successfully — a process that could take weeks. If so, it paves the way for astronauts to build huge parts that would be nearly impossible on Earth thanks to gravity and could upgrade space construction.It lets you build and modify space stations "quicker, cheaper and with less complexity," said Ariel Ekblaw, the founder of the Space Exploration Initiative. "It starts to unlock more opportunities for exploration." The silicone skin is like a balloon filled with resin instead of air, an MIT engineer/researcher told Popular Science — with the resin then cured and solidified by a flash of ultraviolet light. (After which astronauts can cut away the silicone skin.) The best part? The skin and the resin are both readily available off-the-shelf products.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"More than half a million people who deposited money with collapsed crypto lender Celsius Network have been dealt a major blow to their hopes of recovering their funds," reports the Washington Post, "with the judge in the company's bankruptcy case ruling that the money belongs to Celsius and not to the depositors."The judge, Martin Glenn, found that Celsius's terms of use — the lengthy contracts that many websites publish but few consumers read — meant "the cryptocurrency assets became Celsius's property." The ruling underscores the Wild West nature of the unregulated crypto industry. On Thursday, New York Attorney General Letitia James moved to impose a kind of order, or at least legal repercussions, on Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky, whom she accused in a lawsuit of defrauding hundreds of thousands of consumers.... And while Glenn's ruling won't affect FTX, whose terms of use were different, some analysts saw the ruling as spreading beyond Celsius. "There are many other platforms that feature terms of use that are similar to Celsius's," said Aaron Kaplan, a lawyer with the financial-focused firm of Gusrae Kaplan Nusbaum and co-founder of his own crypto company. Customers need to "understand the risks that they are taking when depositing their assets onto insufficiently regulated platforms," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"More than half a million people who deposited money with collapsed crypto lender Celsius Network have been dealt a major blow to their hopes of recovering their funds," reports the Washington Post, "with the judge in the company's bankruptcy case ruling that the money belongs to Celsius and not to the depositors."The judge, Martin Glenn, found that Celsius's terms of use — the lengthy contracts that many websites publish but few consumers read — meant "the cryptocurrency assets became Celsius's property." The ruling underscores the Wild West nature of the unregulated crypto industry. On Thursday, New York Attorney General Letitia James moved to impose a kind of order, or at least legal repercussions, on Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky, whom she accused in a lawsuit of defrauding hundreds of thousands of consumers.... And while Glenn's ruling won't affect FTX, whose terms of use were different, some analysts saw the ruling as spreading beyond Celsius. "There are many other platforms that feature terms of use that are similar to Celsius's," said Aaron Kaplan, a lawyer with the financial-focused firm of Gusrae Kaplan Nusbaum and co-founder of his own crypto company. Customers need to "understand the risks that they are taking when depositing their assets onto insufficiently regulated platforms," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

America's Federal Trade Commission "took an a bold move on Thursday aimed at shifting the balance of power from companies to workers," reports NPR:The agency proposed a new rule that would prohibit employers from imposing noncompete agreements on their workers, a practice it called exploitative and widespread, affecting some 30 million American workers. "The freedom to change jobs is core to economic liberty and to a competitive, thriving economy," said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan in a statement. "Noncompetes block workers from freely switching jobs, depriving them of higher wages and better working conditions, and depriving businesses of a talent pool that they need to build and expand." Noncompete agreements restrict workers from quitting their jobs and taking new jobs at rival companies or starting up similar businesses of their own within a certain time period — typically between six months and two years. They're used across a broad array of industries, including in high-paying white-collar fields such as banking and tech, but also in many low-wage sectors as well, as President Biden has pointed out. "These aren't just high-paid executives or scientists who hold secret formulas for Coca-Cola so Pepsi can't get their hands on it," Biden said in a speech about competition in 2021. "A recent study found one in five workers without a college education is subject to non-compete agreements...." The FTC estimates that a ban on noncompete agreements could increase wages by nearly $300 billion a year by allowing workers to pursue better opportunities. The rule does not take effect immediately. The public has 60 days to offer comment on the proposed rule, after which a final rule could be published and then enforced some months after that. Thanks to Slashdot reader couchslug for submitting the story.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OS News cheers the first official release of Vanilla OS, calling it "an immutable desktop Linux distribution that brings some interesting new technologies to the table, such as the Apx package manager." From the official release announcement:"By default, Apx provides a container based on your Linux distribution (Ubuntu 22.10 for Vanilla OS 22.10) and wraps all commands from the distribution's package manager (apt for Ubuntu). Nevertheless, you can install packages from other package distributions.... Using the --dnf flag with apx will create a new container based on Fedora Linux. Here, apx will manage packages from Fedora's DNF repository, tightly integrating them with the host system. ZDNet calls Vanilla OS "a new take on Linux that is equal parts heightened security and user-friendly." Among other things, "the developers opted to switch to ABRoot, which allows for fully atomic transactions between 2 root partitions."The official release announcement explains: ABRoot will check which partition is the present root partition (i.e A), then it will mount an overlay on top of it and perform the transaction. If the transaction succeeds, the overlay will be merged with the future root partition (i.e B). On your next boot, the system will automatically switch to the new root partition (B). In case of failure, the overlay will be discarded and the system will boot normally, without any changes to either partition. But ZDNet explains why this comes in handy:Another really fascinating feature is called Smart Updates, which is enabled in the Vanilla OS Control Center, and ensures the system will not update if it's either under a heavy load or the battery is low. To enable this, open the Vanilla OS Control Center, click on the Updates tab, and then click the ON/OFF slider for SmartUpdate. Once enabled, updates will go through ABRoot transitions and aren't applied until the next reboot. Not only does this allow the updates to happen fully in the background, but it also makes them atomic, so they only proceed when it's guaranteed they will succeed. The only caveat to this system is that you are limited to either weekly or monthly updates, as there is no daily option for scheduling. However, if you're doing weekly updates, you should be good to go.... Setting aside that which makes Vanilla OS special, the distribution is as stock a GNOME experience as you'll find and does a great job serving as your desktop operating system. It's easy to use, reliable, and performs really well...especially considering this is the first official release. "Every wallpaper has a light and a dark version," adds the release announcement, "so you can choose the one that best suits your needs."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot has covered the legal hijinx of Malibu Media over the years. Now Ars Technica reports that the studio could be destroyed by unpaid taxes:Over the past decade, Malibu Media has emerged as a prominent so-called "copyright troll," suing thousands of "John Does" for allegedly torrenting adult content hosted on the porn studio's website, "X-Art." Whether defendants were guilty or not didn't seem to matter to Malibu, critics claimed, as much as winning as many settlements as possible. As courts became more familiar with Malibu, however, some judges grew suspicious of the studio's litigiousness. As early as 2012, a California judge described these lawsuits as "essentially an extortion scheme," and by 2013, a Wisconsin judge ordered sanctions, agreeing with critics who said that Malibu's tactics were designed to "harass and intimidate" defendants into paying Malibu thousands in settlements. By 2016, Malibu started losing footing in this arena — and even began fighting with its own lawyer. At that point, file-sharing lawsuits became less commonplace, with critics noting a significant reduction in Malibu's lawsuits over the next few years. Now, TorrentFreak reports that Malibu's litigation machine appears to finally be running out of steam — with its corporate status suspended in California sometime between mid-2020 and early 2021 after failing to pay taxes. Last month, a Texas court said that Malibu has until January 20 to pay what's owed in back taxes and get its corporate status reinstated. If that doesn't happen over the next few weeks, one of Malibu's last lawsuits on the books will be dismissed, potentially marking the end of Malibu's long run of alleged copyright trolling.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Hey Disney" is the answer to a riddle that nobody asked: What do you get when you cross Amazon's Alexa voice assistant with the voices of Disney characters? Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes:In a few months (and for a few bucks) you'll be able to purchase what Amazon calls a "first-of-its-kind voice assistant" for your Echo devices. Yes, your favorite Disney, Pixar, and Star Wars characters will be available to tell you jokes or play trivia games — whether it's Mickey Mouse, Dory the fish from Finding Nemo, or Olaf the snowman from Frozen.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Apple has informed suppliers that it has canceled plans to release a fourth-generation iPhone SE in 2024, according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Kuo previously said that the fourth-generation iPhone SE would be canceled or postponed, but he now firmly believes that the device has been canceled. In a post on Medium today, Kuo said that Apple planned to introduce its first in-house 5G chip in the fourth-generation iPhone SE, but that is obviously no longer expected to happen since the device is apparently canceled. Instead, Kuo said it is likely that Apple will continue to rely on Qualcomm for 5G chips in 2024, including for the iPhone 16 series. Kuo said Apple planned to test the 5G chip in the iPhone SE before rolling it out to iPhone 16 models to ensure that real-world performance was acceptable: "Due to concerns that the performance of the in-house baseband chip may not be up to par with Qualcomm's, Apple initially planned to launch its baseband chip in 2024 and let the low-end iPhone SE 4 adopt it first, and decide whether to let the iPhone 16 use its baseband chip depending on the development status of iPhone SE 4. However, the cancelation of the iPhone SE 4 has significantly increased the chances of Qualcomm remaining the exclusive supplier of baseband chips for the 2H24 new iPhone 16 series, which is better than the market consensus that Qualcomm will start losing iPhone orders in 2024."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An international project in nuclear fusion may face years of delays, its boss has said, weeks after scientists in the United States announced a breakthrough in their own quest for the coveted goal. The Guardian reports: The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (Iter) project seeks to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy. Installed at a site in southern France, the decades-old initiative has a long history of technical challenges and cost overruns. Fusion entails forcing together the nuclei of light atomic elements in a super-heated plasma, held by powerful magnetic forces in a doughnut-shaped chamber called a tokamak. Iter's previously stated goal was to create the plasma by 2025. But that deadline will have to be postponed, Pietro Barabaschi -- who in September became the project's director general -- told Agence France-Presse during a visit to the facility. The date "wasn't realistic in the first place," even before two major problems surfaced, Barabaschi said. One problem, he said, was wrong sizes for the joints of blocks to be welded together for the installation's 19 metres by 11 metres (62ft by 36ft) chamber. The second was traces of corrosion in a thermal shield designed to protect the outside world from the enormous heat created during nuclear fusion. Fixing the problems "is not a question of weeks, but months, even years," Barabaschi said. A new timetable is to be worked out by the end of this year, he said, including some modification to contain the expected cost overrun, and to meet the French nuclear safety agency's security requirements. Barabaschi said he hoped Iter would be able to make up for the delays as it prepares to enter the full phase, scheduled for 2035.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers have spent decades trying to figure out how ancient Romans were able to make concrete that's survived for two millennia. "Now, a team of investigators from MIT, Harvard University, and laboratories in Italy and Switzerland, has made progress in this field, discovering ancient concrete-manufacturing strategies that incorporated several key self-healing functionalities," reports MIT News. From the report: For many years, researchers have assumed that the key to the ancient concrete's durability was based on one ingredient: pozzolanic material such as volcanic ash from the area of Pozzuoli, on the Bay of Naples. This specific kind of ash was even shipped all across the vast Roman empire to be used in construction, and was described as a key ingredient for concrete in accounts by architects and historians at the time. Under closer examination, these ancient samples also contain small, distinctive, millimeter-scale bright white mineral features, which have been long recognized as a ubiquitous component of Roman concretes. These white chunks, often referred to as "lime clasts," originate from lime, another key component of the ancient concrete mix. Previously disregarded as merely evidence of sloppy mixing practices, or poor-quality raw materials, the new study suggests that these tiny lime clasts gave the concrete a previously unrecognized self-healing capability. [...] Upon further characterization of these lime clasts, using high-resolution multiscale imaging and chemical mapping techniques [...], the researchers gained new insights into the potential functionality of these lime clasts. Historically, it had been assumed that when lime was incorporated into Roman concrete, it was first combined with water to form a highly reactive paste-like material, in a process known as slaking. But this process alone could not account for the presence of the lime clasts. [MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering, Adam Masic] wondered: "Was it possible that the Romans might have actually directly used lime in its more reactive form, known as quicklime?" Studying samples of this ancient concrete, he and his team determined that the white inclusions were, indeed, made out of various forms of calcium carbonate. And spectroscopic examination provided clues that these had been formed at extreme temperatures, as would be expected from the exothermic reaction produced by using quicklime instead of, or in addition to, the slaked lime in the mixture. Hot mixing, the team has now concluded, was actually the key to the super-durable nature. "The benefits of hot mixing are twofold," Masic says. "First, when the overall concrete is heated to high temperatures, it allows chemistries that are not possible if you only used slaked lime, producing high-temperature-associated compounds that would not otherwise form. Second, this increased temperature significantly reduces curing and setting times since all the reactions are accelerated, allowing for much faster construction." During the hot mixing process, the lime clasts develop a characteristically brittle nanoparticulate architecture, creating an easily fractured and reactive calcium source, which, as the team proposed, could provide a critical self-healing functionality. As soon as tiny cracks start to form within the concrete, they can preferentially travel through the high-surface-area lime clasts. This material can then react with water, creating a calcium-saturated solution, which can recrystallize as calcium carbonate and quickly fill the crack, or react with pozzolanic materials to further strengthen the composite material. These reactions take place spontaneously and therefore automatically heal the cracks before they spread. Previous support for this hypothesis was found through the examination of other Roman concrete samples that exhibited calcite-filled cracks. According to MIT, the team is working to commercialize their modified cement material. The findings have been published in the journal Science Advances.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Interesting Engineering: A program trained with the help of artificial intelligence is set to help a defendant contest his case in a U.S. court next month, New Scientist reported. Instead of addressing the court, the program, which will run on a smartphone, will supply appropriate responses through an earpiece to the defendant, who can then use them in the courtroom. [...] In a new development, a company, DoNotPay, which has been training AI, has now claimed that its program will be able to defend a speeding case that is due to be heard in a U.S. court in February 2023. Identities of the individual and the court remain under wraps, but we do know that the defendant is contesting a speeding ticket. Since this is the AI's very first case, DoNotPay is ready to take on the burden of punishment if the AI's advice does not help the client. Since it is a speeding ticket, DoNotPay will pay for the speeding ticket. If it wins though, it will have a massive victory to its credit. The real big question, though, is whether this is legal in the court of law. CEO Joshua Browder told New Scientist that it had found a court where listening via an earpiece was within the rules, even though it might not be in the spirit of the rules.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The popular gaming tech company just announced the Leviathan V2 Pro at CES 2023, the latest addition to its existing range of soundbars designed to provide compact, low-profile audio for PC gamers. The Verge reports: Created in partnership with THX and Audioscenic, Razer claims that the Leviathan V2 Pro can envelop a user with "3D audio" by combining beamforming surround sound with head-tracking AI technology. A built-in IR camera can detect the user's position, allowing the soundbar to optimize sound by adapting the audio beams to the listener's position in real time. There are two modes available for the 3D audio feature: THX Spatial Audio Virtual Headset for stereo content that allegedly mimics positional audio typically found in headsets and THX Spatial Audio Virtual Speakers for multi-channel audio that fills a room like a home theatre system. Given this is a Razer product, it also comes with customizable Chroma RGB lighting effects across 30 different lighting zones -- dwarfing the 18 zones you get on the standard Leviathan V2 soundbar. The Razer Leviathan V2 Pro also comes with a subwoofer to enhance bass. A dedicated 3.5mm input for the subwoofer is included on the rear of the soundbar, alongside a second 3.5mm port for headphones, a power adapter port, and a single USB-C port to connect to your PC. The Leviathan V2 Pro also supports Bluetooth 5.0 if you want to wirelessly connect it to your computer or mobile device. Interesting features and funky lighting aside, pricing is going to be the hardest sell for the Leviathan V2 Pro. Starting at $399.99, it's considerably more expensive than both the standard Leviathan V2 ($249.99) and Leviathan V2 X ($99.99), but you do at least get more ports with this latest model. The Leviathan V2 Pro will be available to buy from February 2023 (if you have deep enough pockets for the purchase).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A moderator on Reddit'sReddit's largest art forum with 22 million members went on lockdown this week after debates and accusations about what constitutes AI-generated art went viral. Motherboard reports: On December 27, a digital artist named Ben Moran tweeted that moderators of r/Art banned them from the subreddit for breaking their "no AI art" rule. Moran had posted an image of their digital illustration, titled "a muse in warzone," and moderators removed it and banned them from the subreddit. Moran posted a screenshot of the direct message thread with a mod of the subreddit, where they appealed the ban and claimed that they didn't use AI at all: "I can give you guys the process or the PSD file of that painting," Moran wrote, claiming that they're not using any AI-supported technology and that the punishment is "not right." They also linked to their portfolio on DeviantArt. "I don't believe you," a moderator for r/art replied. "Even if you did 'paint' it yourself, it's so obviously an Al-prompted design that it doesn't matter. If you really are a 'serious' artist, then you need to find a different style, because A) no one is going to believe when you say it's not Al, and B) the AI can do better in seconds what might take you hours. Sorry, it's the way of the world." Moran told Motherboard that this piece was a commission from their Vietnam-based studio, Kart Studio, which was established three years ago. The studio consists of a group of digital artists who collaborate on pieces, they said. A full-body portrait with a complex background can cost upwards of $500, according to Kart Studio's website, with the studio sending the commissioner the art at various stages, including the initial sketch. For the muse illustration, a different artist started it, and Moran stepped in to complete it. It took Moran a month to complete (about 100 hours, they said) and they wanted to show the final piece to the community on Reddit.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mercedes-Benz will be the first automaker to launch a Level 3 automated driving system in the United States. The Drive reports: The news comes as part of a series of announcements made by Mercedes at the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, noting that it has received official approval from the Nevada Department of Transportation to operate its Drive Pilot system on state roads. It expects to receive its formal certification within two weeks. In addition to Nevada, Mercedes has also applied for similar permissions in California, though it has not yet received approval. The automaker is optimistic that it will in time. Level 3 driving assistance is defined by the SAE as a conditional hands-free automated driving system, meaning that the person behind the wheel is not actually driving while the system is engaged. However, the vehicle may request that the driver take over if certain driving conditions aren't met, unlike Level 4 and 5 which will not prompt the driver to take over once the system is engaged in its operational design domain. Mercedes' selling point for Drive Pilot is to enable its customers to reclaim their time while in the vehicle. Specifically, the automaker says it will allow drivers to "focus on certain secondary activities such as communicating with colleagues via In-Car Office, browsing the web or relaxing while watching a movie." It's unclear just how much time drivers will get back, or where the system will be used, as Drive Pilot is currently limited to just 37 miles per hour elsewhere in the world.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Every day between 6 to 11 pm GMT, Neuro-sama streams herself playing Minecraft and osu, a musical rhythm game. Like many V-tubers, or virtual YouTubers, Neuro-sama appears as a Japanese anime-style character who interacts with her over 50,000 followers by responding to their comments in the chat. But there's one thing that separates Neuro-sama from her peers: she is controlled entirely by AI. [...] Vedal, the AI's pseudonymous creator, says that Neuro-sama was created as a fun experiment. "I made her a Twitch streamer so that she can interact with her audience in real time. A lot of the fun comes from her interactions with Twitch chat," Vedal told Motherboard. "I think the fans play an important role in her success and how fun her streams are. Having the interactions with Twitch chat are what makes her entertaining to watch, without that I don't think she would be as successful." Neuro-sama often impresses online users with her ability to successfully play games such as Minecraft and osu while also interacting with them in a conversational way. Vedal told Motherboard that Neuro-sama has already beaten the top-ranking osu player in a 1 v. 1 game. Though she is not allowed to be ranked on the main osu leaderboard, Neuro-sama is currently ranked number one on the private server she plays on. Neuro-sama's earliest incarnation was first created in 2018, when Vedal made an AI that learned to play osu. But at the time, the virtual streamer did not have an avatar or speaking capabilities. Relaunched in December 2022, Vedal used a free sample avatar from Live2D, an online avatar maker, and paired it with an anime-style voice to create Neuro-sama. Vedal said that there are plans for her to get her own custom avatar and for her to play more games in the future. Like many modern AI chatbots, Vedal says Neuro-sama was made using a large language model, or LLM, a type of AI model trained from massive amounts of text taken from the open internet. As Motherboard has previously reported, many open-source AI models have a high propensity for human bias, and often mimic racist and sexist stereotypes. So while Neuro-sama's streams are 100 percent automated, Vedal has a team that monitors and moderates her and the chat.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Four years after introducing its MicroLED technology at CES 2018, Samsung claims the technology is ready for the masses and "will set the standard for picture quality in 2023," reports Engadget. From the report: At CES 2023, the company announced it would offer 50-, 63-, 76-, 89-, 101-, 114- and 140-inch MicroLED models, greatly expanding the amount of choice consumers have when it comes to the new display technology. Samsung didn't provide pricing and availability information for the expanded line, but the company claims the new models are its most affordable MicroLED TVs to date. [...] The set sports a 240Hz variable refresh rate and 2-nanosecond response time. It also offers 20-bit black detail for "intense" contrast. Samsung is also promising upgrades for its Neo QLED sets, starting with the line's new flagship. The QN900C features an 8K Quantum MiniLED-lit panel capable of maxing out at 4,000 nits of brightness. As with Samsung's 2022 Neo QLED sets, the QN900C features a 14-bit backlight. However, the TV offers even better contrast thanks to a tweak the company made to its 8K Real Depth Enhancer Pro software. Samsung is also promising improved picture quality when viewing older movies and TV shows thanks to the inclusion of its new Auto HDR Remastering algorithm, which can automatically apply HDR effects to standard dynamic range content. For those who would prefer a 4K set, there's also the QN935C. Samsung's new 4K flagship features a redesigned power board that eliminates the need for an external connection box and allows for bezels that are less than 20mm thick. The QN935C also features top-firing speakers, allowing the set to produce Dolby Atmos sound without a dedicated soundbar. You can use both the QN900C and QN935C as a smart home hub thanks to the fact Samsung's entire 2023 Neo QLED line will feature built-in Zigbee and Matter Thread all-in-one modules. As for its OLED models, Samsung announced the 2023 QD-OLED TV line, which will offer up to 2,000 nits of peak brightness and support 144Hz refresh rates -- all while being more energy efficient than before. "Additionally, the company has gone out of its way to get the panels AMD FreeSync Premium Pro certified," adds Engadget.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) will now automatically encrypt all new objects added on buckets on the server side, using AES-256 by default. BleepingComputer reports: While the server-side encryption system has been available on AWS for over a decade, the tech giant has enabled it by default to bolster security. Administrators will not have to take any actions for the new encryption system to affect their buckets, and Amazon promises it won't have any negative performance impact. Administrators may leave the system to encrypt at the default 256-bit AES or choose one of the alternative methods, namely SSE-C or SSE-KMS. The first option (SSE-C) gives bucket owners control of the keys, while the second (SSE-KMS) lets Amazon do the key management. However, bucket owners can set different permissions for each KMS key to maintain more granular control over the asset access system. To confirm that the changes have been applied to your buckets, admins can configure CloudTrail to log data events at no extra cost. Then perform a test object upload, and look in the event logs for the "SSEApplied": "Default_SSE_S3." field in the log for the uploaded file. To retroactively encrypt objects already in S3 buckets, follow this official guide. "This change puts another security best practice into effect automatically -- with no impact on performance and no action required on your side," reads Amazon's announcement. "S3 buckets that do not use default encryption will now automatically apply SSE-S3 as the default setting. Existing buckets currently using S3 default encryption will not change."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Scharon Harding: Like it or not, companies are set on making foldable PCs a thing. Asus' Zenbook 17 Fold OLED turned out to be one of 2022's most adventurous laptops, and Lenovo is planning its second foldable, the 16-inch ThinkPad X1 Fold for this spring. Assuming an operating system and apps that play well with the form factor, foldables excite multitaskers, workers, and creatives who can benefit from larger, yet still portable, display options, especially those who don't need a keyboard and touchpad at all times. But foldable PCs are very new and have their faults, from durability and compatibility concerns to the crease that can visibly run down the display's middle. Lenovo's Yoga Book 9i announced today at CES in Las Vegas aims to boost pixel count in a way that feels both more and less obvious: replacing the keyboard and touchpad with another laptop-size screen. It's the dual-screen PC for people who want all the pixels but none of the fold. Lenovo's press release calls the Yoga Book 9i the 'first full-size dual screen OLED laptop' among vendors selling at least 1 million units a year. Targeting creative consumers who also want a machine with strong productivity that's also fit for entertainment, the laptop has two 13.3-inch OLED panels connected by the soundbar hinge that Lenovo has been using in its Yoga convertible lineup for a while. Each OLED screen has 2880x1800 pixels in a 16:10 aspect ratio. That's 255.36 pixels per inch (ppi) for each panel and 10,368,000 pixels total. That's 12.5 to 25 percent more total pixels than a 4K screen, depending on whether it's 16:9 or 16:10. Each screen runs at a 60 Hz refresh rate and claims a max brightness of 400 nits. Each screen's brightness is individually adjustable. Lenovo also claims 100 percent DCI-P3 coverage, and each screen supports Dolby Vision HDR. The Yoga Book 9i will come with a physical Bluetooth keyboard that you can use detached from the system or magnetically docked to the bottom two-thirds of the lower screen. Alternatively, you can use a virtual keyboard on the southern screen. With a physical or virtual keyboard docked, you can use the remaining top third of that display for Windows widgets, such as the Weather, News, and Sticky Notes. But if you don't use Windows widgets, the area is kind of useless because you can't use it for anything else, like a shrunken window. With the virtual keyboard on display, I was also able to quickly bring up a virtual touchpad by sliding the virtual keyboard up with my fingers. If this touchpad works well, it's a clever inclusion for times that you want more traditional navigation but don't have a mouse on hand. [...] The Yoga Book 9i is designed for "users with large budgets seeking a premium system with a unique form factor that remains portable while providing more screen than the usual laptop," writes Harding in conclusion. The 2-in-1 will start at $2,100 and go on sale in June.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: ChatGPT's artificial intelligence generated dialogue has gotten pretty sophisticated -- to the point where it can write convincing sounding essays. So Edward Tian, a computer science student at Princeton, built an app called GPTZero that can "quickly and efficiently" label whether an essay was written by a person or ChatGPT. In a series of recent tweets, Tian provided examples of GPTZero in progress; the app determined John McPhee's New Yorker essay "Frame of Reference" to be written by a person, and a LinkedIn post to be created by a bot. On Twitter, he said he created the app over the holidays, and was motivated by the increasing possibility of AI plagiarism. Further reading:1. OpenAI is developing a watermark to identify work from its GPT text AI;2. OpenAI's attempts to watermark AI text hit limits;3. A metadata 'watermark' could be the solution to ChatGPT plagiarism fears.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told employees last year that he had no plans for further layoffs. But according to current IBM employees, managers continue to face pressure to reduce headcount and are trying to do without Resource Actions -- what Big Blue calls formal layoffs. The Register: Instead, they're trying to encourage employees to leave on their own through redeployment and eliminating jobs without formally doing so. An IBM employee who asked not to be identified and has been with the company for more than two decades told The Register that multiple people in part of the Systems group (the individual and four colleagues) had been "redeployed to look for another job within IBM." These individuals are expected to continue in their jobs for an indeterminate period while using some work time to find and apply for another internal position -- which may or may not be available, or may require relocation. No end date was specified for the job search but our source suggested that affected individuals have until the end of Q1 2023. After a redeployed employee fails to find another internal position, Redeployment Initiative may become a Resource Action -- a layoff.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved a new Alzheimer's drug that may modestly slow the pace of cognitive decline early in the disease, but also carries risks of swelling and bleeding in the brain. From a report: The approval of the drug, lecanemab, to be marketed as Leqembi, is likely to generate considerable interest from patients and physicians. Studies of the drug -- an intravenous infusion administered every two weeks -- suggest it is more promising than the scant number of other treatments available. Still, several Alzheimer's experts said it was unclear from the medical evidence whether Leqembi could slow cognitive decline enough to be noticeable to patients. Even a recent report of findings from a large 18-month clinical trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and co-written by scientists from the lead company making the drug, concluded that "longer trials are warranted to determine the efficacy and safety of lecanemab in early Alzheimer's disease." Eisai, a Japanese pharmaceutical company, led the development and testing of the drug. It is partnering with the American company Biogen, maker of the controversial Alzheimer's drug Aduhelm, for its commercialization and marketing, and the companies will split the profits equally. Eisai said the list price for Leqembi (pronounced le-KEM-bee) would be $26,500 per year. The price is slightly lower than Aduhelm's, but higher than that recommended by some analysts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Communications Commission isn't done dragging data breach policy into the modern era. From a report: The agency has proposed rules that would improve reporting for breaches at carriers. Most notably, the move would scrap a mandatory wait of seven business days before a telecom can warn customers about a security incident. Hackers would have a shorter window of opportunity to abuse your data without your knowledge, to put it another way. The proposal would also clarify that carriers must notify the FCC, FBI and Secret Service of any reportable data breaches. Providers would likewise have to alert customers to inadvertent breaches, such as leaving account info exposed. The Commission is simultaneously asking for public input on whether or not breach alerts should include specific information to help people take action. such as the nature of the compromised data.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For the first time since 2012, the US Environmental Protection Agency is proposing an update to the federal air quality standard for fine soot -- a long-awaited step to reduce deadly air pollution. From a report: The current standard, which has been in place for more than a decade, limits the average annual amount of fine particle pollution to 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air. The EPA is proposing reducing that limit to 9 to 10 micrograms, though it will be taking public comment on a range as low as 8 and as high as 11 migrograms per cubic meter. The final standard will be a single digit somewhere in that range. Fine particulate matter -- called PM2.5 -- pollutes outdoor air by the burning of fossil fuels like gasoline, diesel and oil, as well as wood. It is the tiniest pollutant yet among the most dangerous. When inhaled, it travels deep into lung tissue, where it can enter the bloodstream and can contribute to cardiovascular disease, asthma and other respiratory illnesses. Exposure to this pollution has also been linked to an increased risk of lung cancer in people who have never smoked. Scientists recently found a possible mechanism for that increased risk -- some air pollution particles may promote mutations in cells in the airways.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The PS5 looks to have a design fault that can take months to appear and only seems to happen if you use the console while it's in a vertical orientation. From a report: As Wololo reports, hardware repair specialists working on PS5 consoles that fail to boot are finding the problem is caused by the liquid metal thermal interface Sony used on the custom AMD Zen 2 CPU.When the PS5 is oriented in a vertical position, over time the liquid metal is moving and spilling out on to the components surrounding the CPU. This also means the liquid metal is no longer evenly spread across the chip it's meant to help cool.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cloud computing giant Rackspace has confirmed hackers accessed customer data during last month's ransomware attack. From a report: The attack, which Rackspace first confirmed on December 6, impacted the company's hosted Exchange email environment, forcing the web giant to shut down the hosted email service following the incident. At the time, Rackspace said it was unaware "what, if any, data was affected." In its latest incident response update published on Friday, Rackspace admitted that the hackers gained access to the personal data of 27 customers. Rackspace said the hackers accessed PST files, typically used to store backup and archived copies of emails, calendar events and contacts from Exchange accounts and email inboxes. Rackspace said about 30,000 customers used its hosted Exchange service -- which it will now discontinue -- at the time of the ransomware attack. "We have already communicated our findings to these customers proactively, and importantly, according to Crowdstrike, there is no evidence that the threat actor actually viewed, obtained, misused, or disseminated any of the 27 Hosted Exchange customers' emails or data in the PSTs in any way," said Rackspace. The company added that customers that haven't been contacted directly can "be assured" that their data was not accessed by attackers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.