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Longtime Slashdot reader backslashdot writes: Commentary, video, and a publication in this week's Nature Neuroscience herald a significant advance in brain-computer interface (BCI) technology, enabling speech by decoding electrical activity in the brain's sensorimotor cortex in real-time. Researchers from UC Berkeley and UCSF employed deep learning recurrent neural network transducer models to decode neural signals in 80-millisecond intervals, generating fluent, intelligible speech tailored to each participant's pre-injury voice. Unlike earlier methods that synthesized speech only after a full sentence was completed, this system can detect and vocalize words within just three seconds. It is accomplished via a 253-electrode array chip implant on the brain. Code and the dataset to replicate the main findings of this study are available in the Chang Lab's public GitHub repository.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The James Webb Space Telescope has revealed that a surprising majority of galaxies rotate clockwise, challenging the long-held belief in a directionally uniform universe; this anomaly could suggest either our universe originated inside a rotating black hole or that astronomers have been misinterpreting the universe's expansion due to observational biases. Smithsonian Magazine reports: The problem is that astronomers have long posited that galaxies should be evenly split between rotating in one direction or the other, astronomer Dan Weisz from the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved with the study, wrote for Astronomy back in 2017. "This stems from the idea that we live in an 'isotropic' universe, which means that the universe looks roughly the same in every direction. By extension, galaxies shouldn't have a preferred direction of spin from our perspective," he added. According to Shamir, there are two strong potential explanations for this discrepancy. One explanation is that the universe came into existence while in rotation. This theory would support what's known as black hole cosmology: the hypothesis that our universe exists within a black hole that exists within another parent universe. In other words, black holes create universes within themselves, meaning that the black holes in our own universe also lead to other baby universes. "A preferred axis in our universe, inherited by the axis of rotation of its parent black hole, might have influenced the rotation dynamics of galaxies, creating the observed clockwise-counterclockwise asymmetry," Nikodem Poplawski, a theoretical physicist at the University of New Haven who was not involved in the study, tells Space.com's Robert Lea. "The discovery by the JWST that galaxies rotate in a preferred direction would support the theory of black holes creating new universes, and I would be extremely excited if these findings are confirmed." Another possible explanation involves the Milky Way's rotation. Due to an effect called the Doppler shift, astronomers expect galaxies rotating opposite to the Milky Way's motion to appear brighter, which could explain their overrepresentation in telescopic surveys. "If that is indeed the case, we will need to re-calibrate our distance measurements for the deep universe," Shamir explains in the statement. "The re-calibration of distance measurements can also explain several other unsolved questions in cosmology such as the differences in the expansion rates of the universe and the large galaxies that according to the existing distance measurements are expected to be older than the universe itself." The findings have been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tech manufacturers continue misleading consumers with impressive-sounding but less useful specs like milliamp-hours and megahertz, while hiding the one measurement that matters most: watts. The Verge argues that the watt provides the clearest picture of a device's true capabilities by showing how much power courses through chips and how quickly batteries drain. With elementary math, consumers could easily calculate battery life by dividing watt-hours by power consumption. The Verge: The Steam Deck gaming handheld is my go-to example of how handy watts can be. With a 15-watt maximum processor wattage and up to 9 watts of overhead for other components, a strenuous game drains its 49Wh battery in roughly two hours flat. My eight-year-old can do that math: 15 plus 9 is 24, and 24 times 2 is 48. You can fit two hour-long 24-watt sessions into 48Wh, and because you have 49Wh, you're almost sure to get it. With the least strenuous games, I'll sometimes see my Steam Deck draining the battery at a speed of just 6 watts -- which means I can get eight hours of gameplay because 6 watts times 8 hours is 48Wh, with 1Wh remaining in the 49Wh battery. Unlike megahertz, wattage also indicates sustained performance capability, revealing whether a processor can maintain high speeds or will throttle due to thermal constraints. Watts is also already familiar to consumers through light bulbs and power bills, but manufacturers persist with less transparent metrics that make direct comparisons difficult.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new paper [PDF] from the AI Disclosures Project claims OpenAI likely trained its GPT-4o model on paywalled O'Reilly Media books without a licensing agreement. The nonprofit organization, co-founded by O'Reilly Media CEO Tim O'Reilly himself, used a method called DE-COP to detect copyrighted content in language model training data. Researchers analyzed 13,962 paragraph excerpts from 34 O'Reilly books, finding that GPT-4o "recognized" significantly more paywalled content than older models like GPT-3.5 Turbo. The technique, also known as a "membership inference attack," tests whether a model can reliably distinguish human-authored texts from paraphrased versions. "GPT-4o [likely] recognizes, and so has prior knowledge of, many non-public O'Reilly books published prior to its training cutoff date," wrote the co-authors, which include O'Reilly, economist Ilan Strauss, and AI researcher Sruly Rosenblat.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes an op-ed from Ars Technica's Scharon Harding: TVs offer us an escape from the real world. After a long day, sometimes there's nothing more relaxing than turning on your TV, tuning into your favorite program, and unplugging from the realities around you. But what happens when divisive, potentially offensive messaging infiltrates that escape? Even with streaming services making it easy to watch TV commercial-free, it can still be difficult for TV viewers to avoid ads with these sorts of messages. That's especially the case with budget brands, which may even force controversial ads onto TVs when they're idle, making users pay for low-priced TVs in unexpected, and sometimes troubling, ways. [...] Buying a budget TV means accepting some trade-offs. Those trade-offs have historically been around things like image quality and feature sets. But companies like Vizio are also asking customers to accept questionable advertising decisions as they look to create new paths to ad revenue. Numerous factors are pushing TV OS operators deeper into advertising. Brands are struggling to grow profits as people buy new TVs less frequently. As the TV market gets more competitive, hardware is also selling for cheaper, with some companies selling TVs at a loss with hopes of making up for it with ad sales. There's concern that these market realities could detract from real TV innovation. And as the Secretary Noem ad reportedly shown to Vizio TV owners has highlighted, another concern is the lack of care around which ads are being shown to TV owners -- especially when all they want is simple "ambient background" noise. Today, people can disable ambient mode settings that show ads. But with some TV brands showing poor judgment around where they sell and place ads, we wouldn't bank on companies maintaining these boundaries forever. If the industry can't find a way to balance corporate needs with appropriate advertising, people might turn off not only their TVs more often, but also unplug from those brands completely. Some of the worst offenders highlighted in the article include Vizio TVs' "Scenic Mode," which activates when the TV is idle and displays "relaxing, ambient content" accompanied by ads. Roku City takes a similar approach with its animated cityscape screensaver, saturated with brand logos and advertisements. Even Amazon Fire TV and premium brands like LG have adopted screensaver ads, showing that this intrusive trend isn't limited to budget models.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With the signing of HB25-1040 on Monday, Colorado now defines nuclear as a "clean energy resource" since it doesn't release large amounts of climate-warming emissions. "The category was previously reserved for renewables like wind, solar and geothermal, which don't carry the radioactive stigma that's hobbled fission power plants following disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima," notes Colorado Public Radio. From the report: In an emailed statement, Ally Sullivan, a spokesperson for the governor's office, said the law doesn't advance any specific nuclear energy project, and no utility has proposed building a nuclear power plant in Colorado. It does, however, allow nuclear energy to potentially serve as one piece of the state's plan to tackle climate change. "If nuclear energy becomes sufficiently cost-competitive, it could potentially become part of Colorado's clean energy future. However, it must be conducted safely, without harming communities, depleting other natural resources or replacing other clean energy sources," Sullivan said. By redefining nuclear energy as "clean," the law would let future fission-based power plants obtain local grants previously reserved for other carbon-free energy sources, and it would allow those projects to contribute to Colorado's renewable energy goals. It also aligns state law with a push to reshape public opinion of nuclear energy. Nuclear energy proponents promise new reactor designs are smaller and safer than hulking power plants built in the 20th century. By embracing those systems, bill supporters claimed Colorado could meet rising energy demand without abandoning its ambitious climate goals.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Substack has announced it will legally support foreign writers lawfully residing in the U.S. who face government targeting over their published work, partnering with the nonprofit FIRE to expand its existing Defender program. The Verge reports: In their announcement, Substack and FIRE mention the international Tufts University student who was arrested by federal agents last week. Her legal team links her arrest to an opinion piece she co-wrote for the school's newspaper last year, which criticized Tufts for failing to comply with requests to divest from companies with connections to Israel. "If true, this represents a chilling escalation in the government's effort to target critics of American foreign policy," Substack and FIRE write. The initiative builds on Substack's Defender program, which already offers legal assistance for independent journalists and creators on the platform. The company says it has supported "dozens" of Substack writers facing claims of defamation and trademark infringement since it launched the program in the US in 2020. It has since brought Substack Defender to writers in Canada and the UK.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, has filed for an IPO aiming for a $5 billion valuation. It marks the company's second attempt at going public amid renewed momentum in the crypto sector and signs of recovery in tech IPO markets. CNBC reports: A prior merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) collapsed in late 2022 amid regulatory challenges. Since then, Circle has made strategic moves to position itself closer to the heart of global finance, including the announcement last year that it would relocate its headquarters from Boston to One World Trade Center in New York. Circle reported $1.68 billion in revenue and reserve income in 2024, up from $1.45 billion in 2023 and $772 million in 2022. The company reported net income last year of about $156 million., down from $268 million a year earlier. A successful IPO would make Circle one of the most prominent pure-play crypto companies to list on a U.S. exchange. Coinbase went public through a direct listing in 2021 and has a market cap of about $44 billion.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MoffettNathanson has crowned YouTube the "New King of All Media" as the Alphabet-owned video platform has become a major force in Hollywood, dominating time spent watching TV. From a report: The firm estimates that YouTube as a standalone business could be worth as much as $550 billion -- or nearly 30% of the tech giant's current valuation. The figure is based on the firm's analysis of enterprise value as a multiple of revenue in 2024 for Netflix (10.5x revenue), Meta (8.8x), Roku (2.4x), Warner Bros. Discovery (1.4x), Fox (1.3x) and Disney (1.3x). In 2024, YouTube was the second-largest media company by revenue at $54.2 billion, trailing behind only Disney. However, the MoffettNathanson analysts predict YouTube will take the top spot in 2025, becoming a leader in both engagement and revenue. "YouTube has the potential to become the central aggregator for all things professional video, positioning itself to capture a share of the $85 billion consumer Pay TV market and the ~$30 billion streaming ex. Netflix market in the U.S.," they wrote in a Monday research note. "On monetization, when comparing YouTube's massive TV screen engagement to its estimated TV revenue, it remains significantly under-monetized relative to its scaled reach and differentiated offering. This signals a substantial runway for improving its monetization strategy."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mozilla plans to introduce a suite of paid professional services for its open-source Thunderbird email client, transforming the application into a comprehensive communication platform. Dubbed "Thunderbird Pro," the package aims to compete with established ecosystems like Gmail and Office 365 while maintaining Mozilla's commitment to open-source software. The Pro tier will include four core services: Thunderbird Appointment for streamlined scheduling, Thunderbird Send for file sharing (reviving the discontinued Firefox Send), Thunderbird Assist offering AI capabilities powered by Flower AI, and Thundermail, a revamped email client built on Stalwart's open-source stack.Initially, Thunderbird Pro will be available free to "consistent community contributors," with paid access for other users. Mozilla Managing Director Ryan Sipes indicated the company may consider limited free tiers once the service establishes a sustainable user base. This initiative follows Mozilla's 2023 announcement about "remaking" Thunderbird's architecture to modernize its aging codebase, addressing user losses to more feature-rich competitors.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A professional YouTuber in Queensland has been ordered to pay $350,000 plus interest and costs to the former world record score holder for Donkey Kong, after the Brisbane district court found the YouTuber had defamed him "recklessly" with false claims of a link between a lawsuit and another YouTuber's suicide. William "Billy" Mitchell, an American gamer who had held world records in Donkey Kong and Pac-Man going back to 1982, as recognized by the Guinness World Records and the video game database Twin Galaxies, brought the case against Karl Jobst, seeking $400,000 in general damages and $50,000 in aggravated damages. Jobst, who makes videos about "speed running" (finishing games as fast as possible), as well as gaming records and cheating in games, made a number of allegations against Mitchell in a 2021 YouTube video. He accused Mitchell of cheating, and "pursuing unmeritorious litigation" against others who had also accused him of cheating, the court judgment stated. The court heard Mitchell was accused in 2017 of cheating in his Donkey Kong world records by using emulation software instead of original arcade hardware. Twin Galaxies investigated the allegation, and subsequently removed Mitchell's scores and banned him from participating in its competitions. The Guinness World Records disqualified Mitchell as a holder of all his records -- in both Donkey Kong and Pac-Man -- after the Twin Galaxies decision. The judgment stated that Jobst's 2021 video also linked the December 2020 suicide of another YouTuber, Apollo Legend, to "stress arising from [his] settlement" with Mitchell, and wrongly asserted that Apollo Legend had to pay Mitchell "a large sum of money."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The FTC has warned that any buyer of 23andMe must honor the company's current privacy policy, which ensures consumers retain control over their genetic data and can delete it at will. FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson emphasized that such promises must be upheld, given the uniquely sensitive and immutable nature of genetic information. The Record reports: The letter, sent to the DOJ's United States Trustee Program, highlights several assurances 23andMe makes in its privacy policy, including that users are in control of their data and can determine how and for what purposes it is used. The company also gives users the ability to delete their data at will, the letter says, arguing that 23andMe has made "direct representations" to consumers about how it uses, shares and safeguards their personal information, including in the case of bankruptcy. Pointing to statements that the company's leadership has made asserting that user data should be considered an asset, Ferguson highlighted that 23andMe's privacy statement tells users it does not share their data with insurers, employers, public databases or law enforcement without a court order, search warrant or subpoena. It also promises consumers that it only shares their personal data in cases where it is needed to provide services, Ferguson added. The genetic testing and ancestry company is explicit that its data protection guidelines apply to new entities it may be sold or transferred to, Ferguson said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A federal judge struck down Arkansas' Social Media Safety Act, ruling it unconstitutional for broadly restricting both adult and minor speech and imposing vague requirements on platforms. Engadget reports: In a ruling (PDF), Judge Timothy Brooks said that the law, known as Act 689 (PDF), was overly broad. "Act 689 is a content-based restriction on speech, and it is not targeted to address the harms the State has identified," Brooks wrote in his decision. "Arkansas takes a hatchet to adults' and minors' protected speech alike though the Constitution demands it use a scalpel." Brooks also highlighted the "unconstitutionally vague" applicability of the law, which seemingly created obligations for some online services, but may have exempted services which had the "predominant or exclusive function [of]... direct messaging" like Snapchat. "The court confirms what we have been arguing from the start: laws restricting access to protected speech violate the First Amendment," NetChoice's Chris Marchese said in a statement. "This ruling protects Americans from having to hand over their IDs or biometric data just to access constitutionally protected speech online." It's not clear if state officials in Arkansas will appeal the ruling. "I respect the court's decision, and we are evaluating our options," Arkansas Attorney general Tim Griffin said in a statement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: What does it take to get OpenAI and Anthropic -- two competitors in the AI assistant market -- to get along? Despite a fundamental difference in direction that led Anthropic's founders to quit OpenAI in 2020 and later create the Claude AI assistant, a shared technical hurdle has now brought them together: How to easily connect their AI models to external data sources. The solution comes from Anthropic, which developed and released an open specification called Model Context Protocol (MCP) in November 2024. MCP establishes a royalty-free protocol that allows AI models to connect with outside data sources and services without requiring unique integrations for each service. "Think of MCP as a USB-C port for AI applications," wrote Anthropic in MCP's documentation. The analogy is imperfect, but it represents the idea that, similar to how USB-C unified various cables and ports (with admittedly a debatable level of success), MCP aims to standardize how AI models connect to the infoscape around them. So far, MCP has also garnered interest from multiple tech companies in a rare show of cross-platform collaboration. For example, Microsoft has integrated MCP into its Azure OpenAI service, and as we mentioned above, Anthropic competitor OpenAI is on board. Last week, OpenAI acknowledged MCP in its Agents API documentation, with vocal support from the boss upstairs. "People love MCP and we are excited to add support across our products," wrote OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on X last Wednesday. MCP has also rapidly begun to gain community support in recent months. For example, just browsing this list of over 300 open source servers shared on GitHub reveals growing interest in standardizing AI-to-tool connections. The collection spans diverse domains, including database connectors like PostgreSQL, MySQL, and vector databases; development tools that integrate with Git repositories and code editors; file system access for various storage platforms; knowledge retrieval systems for documents and websites; and specialized tools for finance, health care, and creative applications. Other notable examples include servers that connect AI models to home automation systems, real-time weather data, e-commerce platforms, and music streaming services. Some implementations allow AI assistants to interact with gaming engines, 3D modeling software, and IoT devices.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With America's national debt sitting comfortably over the $36.2 trillion mark, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is warning the burden could one day be the reason the dollar is dethroned as the reserve currency of the world. From a report: He argues that decentralized currencies like Bitcoin could replace the dollar as worldwide organizations lose faith in national currencies and seek an independent solution. Fink explained his theory in his 2025 letter to shareholders, writing: "The U.S. has benefited from the dollar serving as the world's reserve currency for decades. But that's not guaranteed to last forever. "The national debt has grown at three times the pace of GDP since Times Square's debt clock started ticking in 1989. This year, interest payments will surpass $952 billion -- exceeding defense spending. By 2030, mandatory government spending and debt service will consume all federal revenue, creating a permanent deficit. If the U.S. doesn't get its debt under control, if deficits keep ballooning, America risks losing that position to digital assets like Bitcoin."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google's AI arm DeepMind has been holding back the release of its world-renowned research, as it seeks to retain a competitive edge in the race to dominate the burgeoning AI industry. From a report: The group, led by Nobel Prize-winner Sir Demis Hassabis, has introduced a tougher vetting process and more bureaucracy that made it harder to publish studies about its work on AI, according to seven current and former research scientists at Google DeepMind. Three former researchers said the group was most reluctant to share papers that reveal innovations that could be exploited by competitors, or cast Google's own Gemini AI model in a negative light compared with others. The changes represent a significant shift for DeepMind, which has long prided itself on its reputation for releasing groundbreaking papers and as a home for the best scientists building AI. Meanwhile, huge breakthroughs by Google researchers -- such as its 2017 "transformers" paper that provided the architecture behind large language models -- played a central role in creating today's boom in generative AI. Since then, DeepMind has become a central part of its parent company's drive to cash in on the cutting-edge technology, as investors expressed concern that the Big Tech group had ceded its early lead to the likes of ChatGPT maker OpenAI. "I cannot imagine us putting out the transformer papers for general use now," said one current researcher. Among the changes in the company's publication policies is a six-month embargo before "strategic" papers related to generative AI are released. Researchers also often need to convince several staff members of the merits of publication, said two people with knowledge of the matter.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Credit card interest rates, which averaged 23% in 2023, are significantly higher than any other major loan product primarily due to non-diversifiable default risk and banks' market power, according to research published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The comprehensive study, which analyzed 330 million monthly credit card accounts, found that while high default losses contribute to elevated rates, they explain only part of the picture. Even high-FICO borrowers pay spreads exceeding 7% above the federal funds rate. Researchers determined that credit card banks have substantial pricing power, achieved through exceptionally high operating expenses -- about 4-5% of dollar balances annually -- with marketing costs ten times higher than those at other banks. "Credit card charge-off rates are highly correlated with default rates on banks' other loans as well as on corporate bonds," the researchers said, noting that default risk cannot be diversified away across lending markets, particularly during economic downturns. The study estimated that exposure to aggregate default risk carries a premium of 5.3% per year, which fully explains the relationship between return on assets and credit scores. Credit cards are ubiquitous in American finance, with 74% of adults owning at least one card, and the payment method accounting for 70% of retail spending. According to the research, 60% of accounts carry balances month-to-month.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

London's mayor has axed a cyber crime helpline for the victims of online abuse, triggering a backlash from campaigners who argue that women and girls will be left struggling to access vital support. From a report: The service, which was shut down on Tuesday, assisted victims of fraud, revenge porn and cyberstalking to protect their digital identity. During its 18-months of operation it led to 2,060 cases being opened. The helpline was launched in 2023 as a one-year pilot scheme with $220,000 in funding from the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime (Mopac), and was later extended by six months. Conservative London Assembly member Emma Best said an informal evaluation showed the helpline "was working" and was going to be extended for another year. However, Sadiq Khan said that the scheme would be closed. "It was a pilot and pilots are what they say on the tina... we will receive an end of project report, we have collected the data and the results of that report will inform our future work," he said, speaking at Mayor's Question Time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is rolling out a new encryption model for Gmail that allows enterprise users to send encrypted messages without requiring recipients to use custom software or exchange encryption certificates. The feature, launching in beta today, initially supports encrypted emails within the same organization, with plans to expand to all Gmail inboxes "in the coming weeks" and third-party email providers "later this year." Unlike Gmail's current S/MIME-based encryption, the new system lets users simply toggle "additional encryption" in the email draft window. Non-Gmail recipients will receive a link to access messages through a guest Google Workspace account, while Gmail users will see automatically decrypted emails in their inbox.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Economic models have systematically underestimated how global heating will affect people's wealth, according to a new study that finds 4C warming will make the average person 40% poorer -- an almost four-fold increase on some estimates. The Guardian: The study by Australian scientists suggests average per person GDP across the globe will be reduced by 16% even if warming is kept to 2C above pre-industrial levels. This is a much greater reduction than previous estimates, which found the reduction would be 1.4%. Scientists now estimate global temperatures will rise by 2.1C even if countries hit short-term and long-term climate targets. Criticisms have mounted in recent years that a set of economic tools known as integrated assessment models (IAM) -- used to guide how much governments should invest in cutting greenhouse gas emissions -- have failed to capture major risks from climate change, particularly extreme weather events. The new study, in the journal Environmental Research Letters, took one of the most popular economic models and enhanced it with climate change forecasts to capture the impacts of extreme weather events across global supply chains.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: China's Xiaomi said on Tuesday that it was actively cooperating with police after a fatal accident involving a SU7 electric vehicle on March 29 and that it had handed over driving and system data. The incident marks the first major accident involving the SU7 sedan, which Xiaomi launched in March last year and since December has outsold Tesla's Model 3 on a monthly basis. Xiaomi's shares, which had risen by 34.8% year to date, closed down 5.5% on Wednesday, underperforming a 0.2% gain in the Hang Seng Tech index. Xiaomi did not disclose the number of casualties but said initial information showed the car was in the Navigate on Autopilot intelligent-assisted driving mode before the accident and was moving at 116 kph (72 mph). A driver inside the car took over and tried to slow it down but then collided with a cement pole at a speed of 97 kph, Xiaomi said. The accident in Tongling in the eastern Chinese province of Anhui killed the driver and two passengers, Chinese financial publication Caixin reported on Tuesday citing friends of the victims. In a rundown of the data submitted to local police posted on a Weibo account of the company, Xiaomi said NOA issued a risk warning of obstacles ahead and its subsequent immediate takeover only happened seconds before the collision. Local media reported that the car caught fire after the collision. Xiaomi did not mention the fire in the statement. The report notes that the car was a "so-called standard version of the SU7, which has the less-advanced smart driving technology without LiDAR."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Britain's flagship AI agency will slash the number of projects it backs and prioritize work on defense, environment and health as it seeks to respond to technological advances and criticism of its record. From a report: The Alan Turing Institute -- named after the pioneering British computer scientist -- will shut or offload almost a quarter of its 101 current initiatives and is considering job cuts as part of a change programme that led scores of staff to write a letter expressing their loss of confidence in the leadership in December. Jean Innes, appointed chief executive in July 2023, argued that huge advances in AI meant the Turing needed to modernise after being founded as a national data science institute by David Cameron's government a decade ago this month. "The Turing has chalked up some really great achievements," Innes said in an interview. "[But we need] a big strategic shift to a much more focused agenda on a small number of problems that have an impact in the real world." A review last year by UK Research and Innovation, the government funding body, found "a clear need for the governance and leadership structure of the Institute to evolve." It called for a move away from the dominance of universities to a structure more representative of AI in UK.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anthropic said it will start sweeping physical offices for hidden devices as part of a ramped-up security effort as the AI race intensifies. From a report: The company, backed by Amazon and Google, published safety and security updates in a blog post on Monday, and said it also plans to establish an executive risk council and build an in-house security team. Anthropic closed its latest funding round earlier this month at a $61.5 billion valuation, which makes it one of the highest-valued AI startups. In addition to high-growth startups, tech giants including Google, Amazon and Microsoft are racing to announce new products and features. Competition is also coming from China, a risk that became more evident earlier this year when DeepSeek's AI model went viral in the U.S. Anthropic said in the post that it will introduce "physical" safety processes, such as technical surveillance countermeasures -- or the process of finding and identifying surveillance devices that are used to spy on organizations. The sweeps will be conducted "using advanced detection equipment and techniques" and will look for "intruders."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The first flight of Isar Aerospace's Spectrum rocket didn't last long on Sunday. The booster's nine engines switched off as the rocket cartwheeled upside-down and fell a short distance from its Arctic launch pad in Norway, punctuating the abbreviated test flight with a spectacular fiery crash into the sea. If officials at Isar Aerospace were able to pick the outcome of their first test flight, it wouldn't be this. However, the result has precedent. The first launch of SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket in 2006 ended in similar fashion. "Today, we know twice as much about our launch system as yesterday before launch," Daniel Metzler, Isar's co-founder and CEO, wrote on X early Monday. "Can't beat flight testing. Ploughing through lots of data now." Isar Aerospace, based in Germany, is the first in a crop of new European rocket companies to attempt an orbital launch. If all went according to plan, Isar's Spectrum rocket would have arced to the north from Andoya Spaceport in Norway and reached a polar orbit. But officials knew there was only a low chance of reaching orbit on the first flight. For this reason, Isar did not fly any customer payloads on the Spectrum rocket, designed to deliver up to 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) of payload mass to low-Earth orbit. [...] Isar declared the launch a success in its public statements, but was it? [...] Metzler, Isar's chief executive, was asked last year what he would consider a successful inaugural flight of Spectrum. "For me, the first flight will be a success if we don't blow up the launch site," he said at the Handelsblatt innovation conference. "That would probably be the thing that would set us back the most in terms of technology and time." This tempering of expectations sounds remarkably similar to statements made by Elon Musk about SpaceX's first flight of the Starship rocket in 2023. By this measure, Isar officials can be content with Sunday's result. The company is modeling its test strategy on SpaceX's iterative development cycle, where engineers test early, make fixes, and fly again. This is in stark contrast to the way Europe has traditionally developed rockets. The alternative to Isar's approach could be to "spend 15 years researching, doing simulations, and then getting it right the first time," Metzler said. With the first launch of Spectrum, Isar has tested the rocket. Now, it's time to make fixes and fly again. That, Isar's leaders argue, will be the real measure of success. "We're super happy," Metzler said in a press call after Sunday's flight. "It's a time for people to be proud of, and for Europe, frankly, also to be proud of." You can watch a replay of the live launch webcast on YouTube.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Software engineer Sergey Tselovalnikov weighs in on the new hype: The term caught on and Twitter quickly flooded with posts about how AI has radically transformed coding and will soon replace all software engineers. While AI undeniably impacts the way we write code, it hasn't fundamentally changed our role as engineers. Allow me to explain. [...] Vibe coding is interacting with the codebase via prompts. As the implementation is hidden from the "vibe coder", all the engineering concerns will inevitably get ignored. Many of the concerns are hard to express in a prompt, and many of them are hard to verify by only inspecting the final artifact. Historically, all engineering practices have tried to shift all those concerns left -- to the earlier stages of development when they're cheap to address. Yet with vibe coding, they're shifted very far to the right -- when addressing them is expensive. The question of whether an AI system can perform the complete engineering cycle and build and evolve software the same way a human can remains open. However, there are no signs of it being able to do so at this point, and if it one day happens, it won't have anything to do with vibe coding -- at least the way it's defined today. [...] It is possible that there'll be a future where software is built from vibe-coded blocks, but the work of designing software able to evolve and scale doesn't go away. That's not vibe engineering -- that's just engineering, even if the coding part of it will look a bit different.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel Chief Executive Officer Lip-Bu Tan said the chipmaker will spin off assets that aren't central to its mission and create new products including custom semiconductors to try to better align itself with customers. From a report: Intel needs to replace the engineering talent it has lost, improve its balance sheet and better attune manufacturing processes to meet the needs of potential customers, Tan said. Speaking at his first public appearance as CEO, at the Intel Vision conference Monday in Las Vegas, Tan didn't specify what parts of Intel he believes are no longer central to its future. "We have a lot of hard work ahead," Tan said, addressing the company's customers in the audience. "There are areas where we've fallen short of your expectations." The veteran semiconductor executive is trying to restore the fortunes of a company that dominated an industry for decades, but now finds itself chasing rivals in most of the areas that define success in the field. A key question confronting its leadership is whether a turnaround is best served by the company remaining whole or splitting up its key product and manufacturing operations. Tan gave no indication that he will seek to divest either part of Intel. Instead, he highlighted the problems he needs to fix to get both units performing more successfully. Intel's chips for data center and AI-related work in particular are not good enough, he said. "We fell behind on innovation," the CEO said. "We have been too slow to adapt and meet your needs."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bruce66423 shares a report from the BBC: A former GCHQ intern has admitted risking national security by taking top secret data home with him on his mobile phone. Hasaan Arshad, 25, pleaded guilty to an offence under the Computer Misuse Act on what would have been the first day of his trial at the Old Bailey in London. The charge related to committing an unauthorised act which risked damaging national security. Arshad, from Rochdale in Greater Manchester, is said to have transferred sensitive data from a secure computer to his phone, which he had taken into a top secret area of GCHQ on 24 August 2022. [...] The court heard that Arshad took his work mobile into a top secret GCHQ area and connected it to work station. He then transferred sensitive data from a secure, top secret computer to the phone before taking it home, it was claimed. Arshad then transferred the data from the phone to a hard drive connected to his personal home computer. "Seriously? What on earth was the UK's equivalent of the NSA doing allowing its hardware to carry out such a transfer?" questions Bruce66423.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Taiwanese authorities have accused 11 Chinese companies, including SMIC, of secretly setting up disguised entities in Taiwan to illegally recruit tech talent from firms like Intel and Microsoft. The Register reports: One of those companies is apparently called Yunhe Zhiwang (Shanghai) Technology Co., Ltd and develops high-end network chips. The Bureau claims its chips are used in China's "Data East, Compute West" strategy that, as we reported when it was announced in 2022, calls for five million racks full of kit to be moved from China's big cities in the east to new datacenters located near renewable energy sources in country's west. Datacenters in China's east will be used for latency-sensitive applications, while heavy lifting takes place in the west. Staff from Intel and Microsoft were apparently lured to work for Yunhe Zhiwang, which disguised its true ownership by working through a Singaporean company. The Investigation Bureau also alleged that China's largest chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), used a Samoan company to establish a presence in Taiwan and then hired local talent. That's a concerning scenario as SMIC is on the USA's "entity list" of organizations felt to represent a national security risk. The US gets tetchy when its friends and allies work with companies on the entity list. A third Chinese entity, Shenzhen Tongrui Microelectronics Technology, disguised itself so well Taiwan's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology lauded it as an important innovator and growth company. As a result of the Bureau's work, prosecutors' offices in seven Taiwanese cities are now looking into 11 Chinese companies thought to have hidden their ties to Beijing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI plans to release a new open-weight language model -- its first since GPT-2 -- in the coming months and is seeking community feedback to shape its development. "That's according to a feedback form the company published on its website Monday," reports TechCrunch. "The form, which OpenAI is inviting 'developers, researchers, and [members of] the broader community' to fill out, includes questions like 'What would you like to see in an open-weight model from OpenAI?' and 'What open models have you used in the past?'" From the report: "We're excited to collaborate with developers, researchers, and the broader community to gather inputs and make this model as useful as possible," OpenAI wrote on its website. "If you're interested in joining a feedback session with the OpenAI team, please let us know [in the form] below." OpenAI plans to host developer events to gather feedback and, in the future, demo prototypes of the model. The first will take place in San Francisco within a few weeks, followed by sessions in Europe and Asia-Pacific regions. OpenAI is facing increasing pressure from rivals such as Chinese AI lab DeepSeek, which have adopted an "open" approach to launching models. In contrast to OpenAI's strategy, these "open" competitors make their models available to the AI community for experimentation and, in some cases, commercialization.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Google has agreed to pay $100 million in cash to settle a long-running lawsuit claiming it overcharged advertisers by failing to provide promised discounts and charged for clicks on ads outside the geographic areas the advertisers targeted. A preliminary settlement of the 14-year-old class action, which began in March 2011, was filed late Thursday in the San Jose, California, federal court, and requires a judge's approval. Advertisers who participated in Google's AdWords program, now known as Google Ads, accused the search engine operator of breaching its contract by manipulating its Smart Pricing formula to artificially reduce discounts. The advertisers also said Google, a unit of Mountain View, California-based Alphabet, misled them by failing to limit ad distribution to locations they designated, violating California's unfair competition law. Thursday's settlement covers advertisers who used AdWords between January 1, 2004, and December 13, 2012. Google denied wrongdoing in agreeing to settle. "This case was about ad product features we changed over a decade ago and we're pleased it's resolved," spokesman Jose Castaneda said in an emailed statement. Lawyers for the plaintiffs may seek fees of up to 33% of the settlement fund, plus $4.2 million for expenses. According to court papers, the case took a long time as the parties produced extensive evidence, including more than 910,000 pages of documents and multiple terabytes of click data from Google, and participated in six mediation sessions before four different mediators.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Chrome extension Honey has lost over 4 million users after a viral video exposed it for hijacking affiliate codes and misleading users about finding the best coupon deals. 9to5Google reports: As we reported in early January, Honey had lost around 3 million users immediately after the video went viral, but ended up gaining back around 1 million later on. Now, as of March 2025, Honey is down to 16 million users on Chrome, down from its peak of 20 million. This drop comes after new Chrome policy has taken effect which prevents Honey, and extensions like it, from practices including taking over affiliate codes without disclosure or without benefit to the extension's users. Honey has since updated its extension listing with disclosure, and we found that the behavior shown in the December video no longer occurs.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI is having another viral moment after releasing Images for ChatGPT last week, with millions of people creating Studio Ghibli-inspired AI art. In a post on X today, CEO Sam Altman said the company has "added one million users in the last hour" alone. A few days prior he begged users to stop generating images because he said "our GPUs are melting."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: The creator of an open source genetic database is shutting it down and deleting all of its data because he has come to believe that its existence is dangerous with "a rise in far-right and other authoritarian governments" in the United States and elsewhere. "The largest use case for DTC genetic data was not biomedical research or research in big pharma," Bastian Greshake Tzovaras, the founder of OpenSNP, wrote in a blog post. "Instead, the transformative impact of the data came to fruition among law enforcement agencies, who have put the genealogical properties of genetic data to use." OpenSNP has collected roughly 7,500 genomes over the last 14 years, primarily by allowing people to voluntarily submit their own genetic information they have downloaded from 23andMe. With the bankruptcy of 23andMe, increased interest in genetic data by law enforcement, and the return of Donald Trump and rise of authoritarian governments worldwide, Greshake Tzovaras told 404 Media he no longer believes it is ethical to run the database. "I've been thinking about it since 23andMe was on the verge of bankruptcy and been really considering it since the U.S. election. It definitely is really bad over there [in the United States]," Greshake Tzovaras told 404 Media. "I am quite relieved to have made the decision and come to a conclusion. It's been weighing on my mind for a long time." Greshake Tzovaras said that he is proud of the OpenSNP project, but that, in a world where scientific data is being censored and deleted and where the Trump administration has focused on criminalizing immigrants and trans people, he now believes that the most responsible thing to do is to delete the data and shut down the project. "Most people in OpenSNP may not be at particular risk right now, but there are people from vulnerable populations in here as well," Greshake Tzovaras said. "Thinking about gender representation, minorities, sexual orientation -- 23andMe has been working on the whole 'gay gene' thing, it's conceivable that this would at some point in the future become an issue." "Across the globe there is a rise in far-right and other authoritarian governments. While they are cracking down on free and open societies, they are also dedicated to replacing scientific thought and reasoning with pseudoscience across disciplines," Greshake Tzovaras wrote. "The risk/benefit calculus of providing free & open access to individual genetic data in 2025 is very different compared to 14 years ago. And so, sunsetting openSNP -- along with deleting the data stored within it -- feels like it is the most responsible act of stewardship for these data today." "The interesting thing to me is there are data preservation efforts in the U.S. because the government is deleting scientific data that they don't like. This is approaching that same problem from a different direction," he added. "We need to protect the people in this database. I am supportive of preserving scientific data and knowledge, but the data comes second -- the people come first. We prefer deleting the data."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The post-Covid rebound of live events is all the more evidence that movie theaters are never coming back, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos told Semafor in an interview at the Paley Center for Media Friday. "Nearly every live thing has come back screaming," Sarandos said. "Broadway's breaking records right now, sporting events, concerts, all those things that we couldn't do during COVID are all back and bigger than ever. The theatrical box office is down 40 to 50% from pre-COVID, and this year is down 8% already, so the trend is not reversing. You've gotta look at that and say, 'What is the consumer trying to tell you?'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Micron will raise prices for DRAM and NAND flash memory chips through 2026 as AI and data center demand strains supply chains, the U.S. chipmaker confirmed Monday. The move follows a market rebound from previous oversupply, with memory prices steadily climbing as producers cut output while AI and high-performance computing workloads grow. Rivals Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are expected to implement similar increases. Micron cited "un-forecasted demand across various business segments" in communications to channel partners. The price hikes will impact sectors ranging from consumer electronics to enterprise data centers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft has closed its IoT & AI Insider Lab in Shanghai's Zhangjiang hi-tech zone, marking the latest sign of the US tech giant's retreat from China amid rising geopolitical tensions. The Shanghai lab, meant to help with domestic development of the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, closed earlier this year, according to people who work in the Zhangjiang AI Island area. Opened in May 2019, Microsoft's IoT & AI Insider Lab was touted as a flagship collaboration between the global tech giant and Zhangjiang, the innovation hub of Shanghai's Pudong district, where numerous domestic and international semiconductor and AI companies have set up shop. The lab covered roughly 2,800 square meters (30,000 square feet).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Learning to code has become sort of become pointless as AI increasingly dominates programming tasks, said Replit founder and chief executive Amjad Masad. "I no longer think you should learn to code," Masad wrote on X. The statement comes as major tech executives report significant AI inroads into software development. Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently revealed that 25% of new code at the tech giant is AI-generated, though still reviewed by engineers. Furthermore, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicted AI could generate up to 90% of all code within six months. Masad called this shift a "bittersweet realization" after spending years popularizing coding through open-source work, Codecademy, and Replit -- a platform that now uses AI to help users build apps and websites. Instead of syntax-focused programming skills, Masad recommends learning "how to think, how to break down problems... how to communicate clearly, with humans and with machines."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Two scientific journals that experimented with paying peer reviewers found the practice sped up the review process without compromising quality, according to findings published this month. Critical Care Medicine offered $250 to half of 715 invited reviewers, with 53% accepting compared to 48% of unpaid reviewers. Paid reviews were completed one day faster on average. In a more dramatic result, Biology Open saw reviews completed in 4.6 business days when paying reviewers $284 per review, versus 38 days for unpaid reviews. "For the editors it has been extremely helpful because, prior to this, in some areas it was very difficult to secure reviewers," said Alejandra Clark, managing editor of Biology Open.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

France's competition authority has fined Apple 150 million euros ($162 million) for abusing its market dominance through its App Tracking Transparency system, ruling the privacy initiative unfairly disadvantages app developers. The watchdog determined that requiring third-party developers to use two pop-ups for tracking permissions while Apple's own apps need just one tap creates an "excessively complex" process that particularly harms smaller publishers lacking sufficient proprietary data for alternative targeting. The authority acknowledged the system's privacy benefits, but concluded the framework is "neither necessary nor proportionate" with data protection goals. The regulator is not requiring Apple to modify the system, only imposing the fine for past practices. Apple must display a summary of the decision on its website for seven days.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has announced that it's overhauling its Blue Screen of Death error message in Windows 11. From a report: The new design drops the traditional blue color, frowning face, and QR code in favor of a simplified screen that looks a lot more like the black screen you see when Windows is performing an update. It's not immediately clear if this new BSOD will remain as a black screen once Microsoft ships the final version of this update. "We're previewing a new, more streamlined UI for unexpected restarts which better aligns with Windows 11 design principles and supports our goal of getting users back into productivity as fast as possible," explains Microsoft in a blog post about the change. "We've simplified your experience while preserving the technical information on the screen."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A prominent computer scientist who has spent 20 years publishing academic papers on cryptography, privacy, and cybersecurity has gone incommunicado, had his professor profile, email account, and phone number removed by his employer, Indiana University, and had his homes raided by the FBI. No one knows why. Xiaofeng Wang has a long list of prestigious titles. He was the associate dean for research at Indiana University's Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, a fellow at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a tenured professor at Indiana University at Bloomington. According to his employer, he has served as principal investigator on research projects totaling nearly $23 million over his 21 years there. He has also co-authored scores of academic papers on a diverse range of research fields, including cryptography, systems security, and data privacy, including the protection of human genomic data.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

California has 11.3% of America's population - but bought 30% of America's new zero-emission vehicles. That's according to figures from the California Air Resources Board, which also reports 1 in 4 Californians have chosen a zero-emission car over a gas-powered one... for the last two years in a row. But what about chargers? It turns out that California now has 48% more public and "shared" private EV chargers than the number of gasoline nozzles. (California has 178,000 public and "shared" private EV chargers, versus about 120,000 gas nozzles.) And beyond that public network, there's more than 700,000 Level 2 chargers installed in single-family California homes, according to the California Energy Commission. Of the 178,000 public/"shared" private chargers, "Over 162,000 are Level 2 chargers," according to an announcement from the governor's office, while nearly 17,000 are fast chargers. (A chart shows a 41% jump in 2024 - though the EV news site Electrek notes that of the 73,537 chargers added in 2024, nearly 38,000 are newly installed, while the other 35,554 were already plugged in before 2024 but just recently identified.)California approved a $1.4 billion investment plan in December to expand zero-emission transportation infrastructure. The plan funds projects like the Fast Charge California Project, which has earmarked $55 million of funding to install DC fast chargers at businesses and publicly accessible locations.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Certification Authority/Browser Forum "is a cross-industry group that works together to develop minimum requirements for TLS certificates," writes Google's Security blog. And earlier this month two proposals from Google's forward-looking roadmap "became required practices in the CA/Browser Forum Baseline Requirements," improving the security and agility of TLS connections...Multi-Perspective Issuance Corroboration Before issuing a certificate to a website, a Certification Authority (CA) must verify the requestor legitimately controls the domain whose name will be represented in the certificate. This process is referred to as "domain control validation" and there are several well-defined methods that can be used. For example, a CA can specify a random value to be placed on a website, and then perform a check to verify the value's presence has been published by the certificate requestor. Despite the existing domain control validation requirements defined by the CA/Browser Forum, peer-reviewed research authored by the Center for Information Technology Policy of Princeton University and others highlighted the risk of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) attacks and prefix-hijacking resulting in fraudulently issued certificates. This risk was not merely theoretical, as it was demonstrated that attackers successfully exploited this vulnerability on numerous occasions, with just one of these attacks resulting in approximately $2 million dollars of direct losses. The Chrome Root Program led a work team of ecosystem participants, which culminated in a CA/Browser Forum Ballot to require adoption of MPIC via Ballot SC-067. The ballot received unanimous support from organizations who participated in voting. Beginning March 15, 2025, CAs issuing publicly-trusted certificates must now rely on MPIC as part of their certificate issuance process. Some of these CAs are relying on the Open MPIC Project to ensure their implementations are robust and consistent with ecosystem expectations... Linting Linting refers to the automated process of analyzing X.509 certificates to detect and prevent errors, inconsistencies, and non-compliance with requirements and industry standards. Linting ensures certificates are well-formatted and include the necessary data for their intended use, such as website authentication. Linting can expose the use of weak or obsolete cryptographic algorithms and other known insecure practices, improving overall security... The ballot received unanimous support from organizations who participated in voting. Beginning March 15, 2025, CAs issuing publicly-trusted certificates must now rely on linting as part of their certificate issuance process. Linting also improves interoperability, according to the blog post, and helps reduce the risk of non-compliance with standards that can result in certificates being "mis-issued". And coming up, weak domain control validation methods (currently permitted by the CA/Browser Forum TLS Baseline Requirements) will be prohibited beginning July 15, 2025. "Looking forward, we're excited to explore a reimagined Web PKI and Chrome Root Program with even stronger security assurances for the web as we navigate the transition to post-quantum cryptography."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The big set of open-source graphics driver updates for Linux 6.15 have been merged," writes Phoronix, "but Linux creator Linus Torvalds isn't particularly happy with the pull request."The new "hdrtest" code is for the Intel Xe kernel driver and is around trying to help ensure the Direct Rendering Manager header files are self-contained and pass kernel-doc tests - basic maintenance checks on the included DRM header files to ensure they are all in good shape. But Torvalds accused the code of not only slowing down the full-kernel builds, but also leaving behind "random" files for dependencies "that then make the source tree nasty," reports Tom's Hardware:While Torvalds was disturbed by the code that was impacting the latest Linux kernel, beginning his post with a "Grr," he remained precise in his objections to it. "I did the pull, resolved the (trivial) conflicts, but I notice that this ended up containing the disgusting 'hdrtest' crap that (a) slows down the build because it's done for a regular allmodconfig build rather than be some simple thing that you guys can run as needed (b) also leaves random 'hdrtest' turds around in the include directories," he wrote. Torvalds went on to state that he had previously complained about this issue, and inquired why the hdr testing is being done as a regular part of the build. Moreover, he highlighted that the resulting 'turds' were breaking filename completion. Torvalds underlined this point - and his disgust - by stating, "this thing needs to *die*." In a shot of advice to fellow Linux developers, Torvalds said, "If you want to do that hdrtest thing, do it as part of your *own* checks. Don't make everybody else see that disgusting thing...." He then noted that he had decided to mark hdrtest as broken for now, to prevent its inclusion in regular builds. As of Saturday, all of the DRM-Next code had made it into Linux 6.15 Git, notes Phoronix. "But Linus Torvalds is expecting all this 'hdrtest' mess to be cleaned up."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Microsoft built things. It broke things." That's how the Seattle Times kicks off a series of articles celebrating Microsoft's 50th anniversary - adding that Microsoft also gave some people "a lucrative retirement early in their lives, and their own stories to tell." What did they remember from Microsoft's earliest days?Scott Oki joined Microsoft as employee no. 121. The company was small; Gates was hands-on, and hard to please. "One of his favorite phrases was 'that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard,'" Oki says. "He didn't use that on me, so I feel pretty good about that." Another, kinder phrase that pops to Oki's mind when discussing the international division he founded at Microsoft is "bringing home the bacon." An obsession with rapid revenue growth permeated Microsoft in those early days. Oki was about three weeks into the job as marketing manager when he presented a global expansion plan to Gates. "Had I done business internationally before? No," Oki said. "Do I speak a language other than English? No." But Gates gave Oki a $1 million budget to found the international division and sell Microsoft products overseas. He established subsidiaries in the most important markets at the time: Japan, United Kingdom, Germany and France. And, because he had a few bucks left over, Australia. "Of the initial subsidiaries we started, every single one of them was profitable in its first year," he says... Oki left Microsoft on March 1, 1992, 10 years to the day after he was hired. Other memories shared by early Microsoft employees:One recent graudate remembered her parents in Spokane saying "I think that's Mary and Bill Gates' son's company. If that kid is anything like those two, that is going to be a great company,'" She got her first job at Microsoft in 1992 - and 33 years later, she's a senior director at Microsoft Philanthropies.The Times also interviewed one of Microsoft's first lawyers, who remembers that "The day the U.S. government sued Microsoft ... that was a tough day for me. It kind of turned my world upside down for about the next eight years."Microsoft senior VP Brad Chase remembers negotiating with the Rolling Stones for the rights to their song "Start Me Up" for the Windows 95 ad campaign. ("Chase is quick to dispel any rumor that Mick Jagger called up Bill Gates and got $12 million. But he won't say how much the company paid.") But Chase does tell the Times that Bill Gates "used to say all of the time, 'We're going to bet the company on Windows.' That was a huge bet because Windows, frankly, was a lousy product in its early days."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What happens when you ask Copilot to "write a program that can be run on an iPhone 16 to select 15 random photos from the phone, tint them to random colors, and display the photos on the phone"? That's what TouchDevelop did for the long-discontinued Windows Phone in a 2013 Microsoft Research 'SmartSynth' natural language code generation demo. ("Write scripts by tapping on the screen.") Long-time Slashdot reader theodp reports on what happens when, 14 years later, you pose the same question to Copilot:"You'll get lots of code and caveats from Copilot, but nothing that you can execute as is. (Compare that to the functioning 10 lines of code TouchDevelop program). It's a good reminder that just because GenAI can generate code, it doesn't necessarily mean it will generate the least amount of code, the most understandable or appropriate code for the requestor, or code that runs unchanged and produces the desired results. theodp also reminds us that TouchDevelop "was (like BASIC) abandoned by Microsoft..."Interestingly, a Microsoft Research video from CS Education Week 2011 shows enthusiastic Washington high school students participating in an hour-long TouchDevelop coding lesson and demonstrating the apps they created that tapped into music, photos, the Internet, and yes, even their phone's functionality. This shows how lacking iPhone and Android still are today as far as easy programmability-for-the-masses goes. (When asked, Copilot replied that Apple's Shortcuts app wasn't up to the task).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. and China "are racing to build a truly useful humanoid worker," the Wall Street Journal wrote Saturday, adding that "Whoever wins could gain a huge edge in countless industries." "The time has come for robots," Nvidia's chief executive said at a conference in March, adding "This could very well be the largest industry of all."China's government has said it wants the country to be a world leader in humanoid robots by 2027. "Embodied" AI is listed as a priority of a new $138 billion state venture investment fund, encouraging private-sector investors and companies to pile into the business. It looks like the beginning of a familiar tale. Chinese companies make most of the world's EVs, ships and solar panels - in each case, propelled by government subsidies and friendly regulations. "They have more companies developing humanoids and more government support than anyone else. So, right now, they may have an edge," said Jeff Burnstein [president of the Association for Advancing Automation, a trade group in Ann Arbor, Michigan].... Humanoid robots need three-dimensional data to understand physics, and much of it has to be created from scratch. That is where China has a distinct edge: The country is home to an immense number of factories where humanoid robots can absorb data about the world while performing tasks. "The reason why China is making rapid progress today is because we are combining it with actual applications and iterating and improving rapidly in real scenarios," said Cheng Yuhang, a sales director with Deep Robotics, one of China's robot startups. "This is something the U.S. can't match." UBTech, the startup that is training humanoid robots to sort and carry auto parts, has partnerships with top Chinese automakers including Geely... "A problem can be solved in a month in the lab, but it may only take days in a real environment," said a manager at UBTech... With China's manufacturing prowess, a locally built robot could eventually cost less than half as much as one built elsewhere, said Ming Hsun Lee, a Bank of America analyst. He said he based his estimates on China's electric-vehicle industry, which has grown rapidly to account for roughly 70% of global EV production. "I think humanoid robots will be another EV industry for China," he said. The UBTech robot system, called Walker S, currently costs hundreds of thousands of dollars including software, according to people close to the company. UBTech plans to deliver 500 to 1,000 of its Walker S robots to clients this year, including the Apple supplier Foxconn. It hopes to increase deliveries to more than 10,000 in 2027. Few companies outside China have started selling AI-powered humanoid robots. Industry insiders expect the competition to play out over decades, as the robots tackle more-complicated environments, such as private homes. The article notes "several" U.S. humanoid robot producers, including the startup Figure. And robots from Amazon's Agility Robotics have been tested in Amazon warehouses since 2023. "The U.S. still has advantages in semiconductors, software and some precision components," the article points out. But "Some lawmakers have urged the White House to ban Chinese humanoids from the U.S. and further restrict Chinese robot makers' access to American technology, citing national-security concerns..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader jrnvk writes: The Verge is reporting that Microsoft will soon make it harder to run the well-publicized bypassnro command in Windows 11 setup. This command allows skipping the Microsoft account and online connection requirements on install. While the command will be removed, it can still be enabled by a regedit change - for now. "However, there's no guarantee Microsoft will allow this additional workaround for long," writes the Verge. (Though they add "There are other workarounds as well" involving the unattended.xml automation.) In its latest Windows 11 Insider Preview, the company says it will take out a well-known bypass script... Microsoft cites security as one reason it's making this change. ["This change ensures that all users exit setup with internet connectivity and a Microsoft Account."] Since the bypassnro command is disabled in the latest beta build, it will likely be pushed to production versions within weeks.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The giant financial news site Bloomberg "has been experimenting with using AI to help produce its journalism," reports the New York Times. But "It hasn't always gone smoothly." While Bloomberg announced on January 15 that it would add three AI-generated bullet points at the top of articles as a summary, "The news outlet has had to correct at least three dozen A.I.-generated summaries of articles published this year." (This Wednesday they published a "hallucinated" date for the start of U.S. auto tariffs, and earlier in March claimed president Trump had imposed tariffs on Canada in 2024, while other errors have included incorrect figures and incorrect attribution.)Bloomberg is not alone in trying A.I. - many news outlets are figuring out how best to embrace the new technology and use it in their reporting and editing. The newspaper chain Gannett uses similar A.I.-generated summaries on its articles, and The Washington Post has a tool called "Ask the Post" that generates answers to questions from published Post articles. And problems have popped up elsewhere. Earlier this month, The Los Angeles Times removed its A.I. tool from an opinion article after the technology described the Ku Klux Klan as something other than a racist organization. Bloomberg News said in a statement that it publishes thousands of articles each day, and "currently 99 percent of A.I. summaries meet our editorial standards...." The A.I. summaries are "meant to complement our journalism, not replace it," the statement added.... John Micklethwait, Bloomberg's editor in chief, laid out the thinking about the A.I. summaries in a January 10 essay, which was an excerpt from a lecture he had given at City St. George's, University of London. "Customers like it - they can quickly see what any story is about. Journalists are more suspicious," he wrote. "Reporters worry that people will just read the summary rather than their story." But, he acknowledged, "an A.I. summary is only as good as the story it is based on. And getting the stories is where the humans still matter." A Bloomberg spokeswoman told the Times that the feedback they'd received to the summaries had generally been positive - "and we continue to refine the experience."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As Rust approaches its 10th anniversary, "there is an important piece of documentation missing that many other languages provide," notes the Rust Foundation. While there's documentation and tutorials - there's no official language specification:In December 2022, an RFC was submitted to encourage the Rust Project to begin working on a specification. After much discussion, the RFC was approved in July 2023, and work began. Initially, the Rust Project specification team (t-spec) were interested in creating the document from scratch using the Rust Reference as a guiding marker. However, the team knew there was already an external Rust specification that was being used successfully for compiler qualification purposes - the FLS. Thank Berlin-based Ferrous Systems, a Rust-based consultancy who assembled that description "some years ago," according to a post on the Rust blog: They've since been faithfully maintaining and updating this document for new versions of Rust, and they've successfully used it to qualify toolchains based on Rust for use in safety-critical industries. [The Rust Foundation notes it part of the consultancy's "Ferrocene" Rust compiler/toolchain.] Seeing this success, others have also begun to rely on the FLS for their own qualification efforts when building with Rust. The Rust Foundation explains:The FLS provides a structured and detailed reference for Rust's syntax, semantics, and behavior, serving as a foundation for verification, compliance, and standardization efforts. Since Rust did not have an official language specification back then, nor a plan to write one, the FLS represented a major step toward describing Rust in a way that aligns with industry requirements, particularly in high-assurance domains. And the Rust Project is "passionate about shipping high quality tools that enable people to build reliable software at scale," adds the Rust blog. So...It's in that light that we're pleased to announce that we'll be adopting the FLS into the Rust Project as part of our ongoing specification efforts. This adoption is being made possible by the gracious donation of the FLS by Ferrous Systems. We're grateful to them for the work they've done in assembling the FLS, in making it fit for qualification purposes, in promoting its use and the use of Rust generally in safety-critical industries, and now, for working with us to take the next step and to bring the FLS into the Project. With this adoption, we look forward to better integrating the FLS with the processes of the Project and to providing ongoing and increased assurances to all those who use Rust in safety-critical industries and, in particular, to those who use the FLS as part of their qualification efforts. More from the Rust Foundation:The t-spec team wanted to avoid potential confusion from having two highly visible Rust specifications in the industry and so decided it would be worthwhile to try to integrate the FLS with the Rust Reference to create the official Rust Project specification. They approached Ferrous Systems, which agreed to contribute its FLS to the Rust Project and allow the Rust Project to take over its development and management... This generous donation will provide a clearer path to delivering an official Rust specification. It will also empower the Rust Project to oversee its ongoing evolution, providing confidence to companies and individuals already relying on the FLS, and marking a major milestone for the Rust ecosystem. "I really appreciate Ferrous taking this step to provide their specification to the Rust Project," said Joel Marcey, Director of Technology at the Rust Foundation and member of the t-spec team. "They have already done a massive amount of legwork...." This effort will provide others who require a Rust specification with an official, authoritative reference for their work with the Rust programming language... This is an exciting outcome. A heartfelt thank you to the Ferrous Systems team for their invaluable contribution! Marcey said the move allows the team "to supercharge our progress in the delivery of an official Rust specification." And the co-founder of Ferrous Systems, Felix Gilcher, also sounded excited. "We originally created the Ferrocene Language Specification to provide a structured and reliable description of Rust for the certification of the Ferrocene compiler. As an open source-first company, contributing the FLS to the Rust Project is a logical step toward fostering the development of a unified, community-driven specification that benefits all Rust users."Read more of this story at Slashdot.