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The literary magazine Bookforum has announced that its current issue would be its last [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], dealing a significant blow to literary journalism, which has been vastly diminished in recent years. The New York Times: "We are so proud of the contribution Bookforum has made to the literary community," the magazine said on Twitter after announcing its closure, "and are immensely grateful to the advertisers, subscribers and booksellers who made our mission possible over the years." Bookforum was one of the few remaining publications devoted to books, running a mix of reviews, essays and interviews. Among the articles it published over the years were interviews with writers like Jhumpa Lahiri and Marlon James, and essays on Philip Roth and George Saunders. So called "little" magazines -- independent and noncommercial journals, often with readership in the low four figures -- are experiencing a renaissance, with the recent launching of many new publications such as The Drift and Forever Magazine. At the same time, national legacy journals funded by corporations are struggling to stay afloat in an era of consolidation. Astra Magazine, an international magazine of literature published by Astra Publishing House, ceased publication earlier this year after two issues, while The Washington Post Magazine announced that its final issue will run at the end of December. (The Post's books section, Book World, has recently made a comeback, however.) Bookforum and its sister publication, Artforum, were acquired by Penske Media Corporation last week. Penske did not respond to questions about the decision to shutter Bookforum. David Velasco, the editor of Artforum, said that magazine would continue operations. Bookforum's website will continue to offer access to the archives for the near future, according to Kate Koza, who is the associate publisher at Artforum and Bookforum, and will stay on at Artforum.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft aims to secure internet access for 100 million more people in Africa by 2025, teaming up with a satellite provider and setting the stage for longer-term cloud adoption, its President Brad Smith said. From a report: The software maker has long pushed to bring more people online, playing the role of facilitator among telecoms and electricity providers, governments and non-profits. Since 2017, it helped widen connectivity for 50 million people, including nearly 10 million in Africa, under its so-called Airband initiative. Now, Microsoft is tapping satellite technology for the program for the first time, aiming to reach remote areas that have had little connectivity. In news pegged to the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, Microsoft said Wednesday it is working with Viasat to expand access in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other countries globally. Smith said the effort was "building a new market for access to the internet, for the use of the cloud, for the power of AI, the ability to harness data. All of these things connect with our business."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

couchslug writes: Mozilla's Firefox once commanded a large chunk of the browser market share, but now it stands under a pitiful 5 percent. Google money removes need to compete from a management POV as they'll get paid either way but they're still leaving money on the table. What should Mozilla do to help Firefox regain its lost market share? Not so long ago Internet Explorer was only used to download Firefox when geeks reloaded Windows machines for others. Today, Edge, however pathetic, still outranks Firefox. Were FF not arguably the best available browser for Linux, share would be even less. Were you the king for a day what would you do to make Firefox great again? If you dropped or deprecated Firefox what shooed you off? This is not about Firefox being good or bad but about regaining casually discarded market share.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tether said it is winding down its practice of lending out its own stablecoins to customers by next year, addressing a broad risk to the wider crypto world. From a report: In a blog post published on its website Tuesday, the company said it would reduce secured loans issued and denominated in tether to zero throughout 2023. The growth in Tether's secured-loan program was the subject of a Wall Street Journal article earlier this month. With about $66 billion tether in circulation, tether is the market's largest stablecoin, a digital asset that is supposed to have a fixed value pegged to the U.S. dollar. The appeal of tether is that, unlike bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that experience volatile price swings, one coin could be sold or redeemed for $1. Tether isn't a household name, but it is a cornerstone to the crypto ecosystem. Traders often use tether as an easier way to buy crypto than through bank accounts or wire transfers. Stablecoin issuers take pains to demonstrate that they have ample funds available for redemptions. Cash and other safe financial instruments easily convertible into dollars make up the vast majority of the assets Tether lists in quarterly financial reports, but the company's secured-loan program has been growing. Tether can't be certain the loans will be paid back, that it could sell the loans to a buyer for dollars in a pinch or that the collateral it holds will be adequate. That could make it difficult for Tether to cover a large volume of redemptions in a crisis.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has once again been caught allowing its legitimate digital certificates to sign malware in the wild, a lapse that allows the malicious files to pass strict security checks designed to prevent them from running on the Windows operating system. ArsTechnica: Multiple threat actors were involved in the misuse of Microsoft's digital imprimatur, which they used to give Windows and endpoint security applications the impression malicious system drivers had been certified as safe by Microsoft. That has led to speculation that there may be one or more malicious organizations selling malicious driver-signing as a service. In all, researchers have identified at least nine separate developer entities that abused the certificates in recent months. The abuse was independently discovered by four third-party security companies, which then privately reported it to Microsoft. On Tuesday, during Microsoft's monthly Patch Tuesday, the company confirmed the findings and said it has determined the abuse came from several developer accounts and that no network breach has been detected. The software maker has now suspended the developer accounts and implemented blocking detections to prevent Windows from trusting the certificates used to sign the compromised certificates. "Microsoft recommends that all customers install the latest Windows updates and ensure their anti-virus and endpoint detection products are up to date with the latest signatures and are enabled to prevent these attacks," company officials wrote.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In mid-2020, FTX's chief engineer made a secret change to the cryptocurrency exchange's software. He tweaked the code to exempt Alameda Research, a hedge fund owned by FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, from a feature on the trading platform that would have automatically sold off Alameda's assets if it was losing too much borrowed money. In a note explaining the change, the engineer, Nishad Singh, emphasized that FTX should never sell Alameda's positions. "Be extra careful not to liquidate," Singh wrote in the comment in the platform's code, which it showed he helped author. Reuters reviewed the code base, which has not been previously reported. The exemption allowed Alameda to keep borrowing funds from FTX irrespective of the value of the collateral securing those loans. That tweak in the code got the attention of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which charged Bankman-Fried with fraud on Tuesday. The SEC said the tweak meant Alameda had a "virtually unlimited line of credit." Furthermore, the billions of dollars that FTX secretly lent to Alameda over the next two years didn't come from its own reserves, but rather were other FTX customers' deposits, the SEC said. The auto-liquidation exemption written into FTX code allowed Alameda to continually increase its line of credit until it "grew to tens of billions of dollars and effectively became limitless," the SEC complaint said. It was one of two ways that Bankman-Fried diverted customer funds to Alameda. The other was a mechanism whereby FTX customers deposited over $8 billion in traditional currency into bank accounts secretly controlled by Alameda. These deposits were reflected in an internal account on FTX that was not tied to Alameda, which concealed its liability, the complaint said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday asked the Biden administration to weigh in on song-lyric website Genius' attempt to revive a lawsuit over Google's alleged theft of its work. From a report: The justices are considering whether to hear ML Genius Holdings LLC's bid to overturn a U.S. appeals court's ruling that its case against Google LLC was preempted by federal copyright law. The Supreme Court often asks for the solicitor general's input on cases in which the U.S. government may have an interest. Genius, formerly known as Rap Genius, keeps a database of song lyrics and annotations maintained by volunteers. It sued Google and its partner LyricFind in New York state court in 2019 for allegedly posting its lyric transcriptions at the top of Google search results without permission. Genius argued Google violated its terms of service by stealing its work and reposting it on Google webpages, decreasing traffic to Genius' site. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in March affirmed a decision to dismiss the case, finding Genius' breach-of-contract claims were based on copyright concerns and should have been brought under copyright law.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: On Dec. 10, 2022, the relatively new cybercrime forum Breached featured a bombshell new sales thread: The user database for InfraGard, including names and contact information for tens of thousands of InfraGard members. The FBI's InfraGard program is supposed to be a vetted Who's Who of key people in private sector roles involving both cyber and physical security at companies that manage most of the nation's critical infrastructures -- including drinking water and power utilities, communications and financial services firms, transportation and manufacturing companies, healthcare providers, and nuclear energy firms. "InfraGard connects critical infrastructure owners, operators, and stakeholders with the FBI to provide education, networking, and information-sharing on security threats and risks," the FBI's InfraGard fact sheet reads. KrebsOnSecurity contacted the seller of the InfraGard database, a Breached forum member who uses the handle "USDoD" and whose avatar is the seal of the U.S. Department of Defense. USDoD said they gained access to the FBI's InfraGard system by applying for a new account using the name, Social Security Number, date of birth and other personal details of a chief executive officer at a company that was highly likely to be granted InfraGard membership. The CEO in question -- currently the head of a major U.S. financial corporation that has a direct impact on the creditworthiness of most Americans -- did not respond to requests for comment. USDoD told KrebsOnSecurity their phony application was submitted in November in the CEO's name, and that the application included a contact email address that they controlled -- but also the CEO's real mobile phone number. "When you register they said that to be approved can take at least three months," USDoD said. "I wasn't expected to be approve[d]." But USDoD said that in early December, their email address in the name of the CEO received a reply saying the application had been approved. While the FBI's InfraGard system requires multi-factor authentication by default, users can choose between receiving a one-time code via SMS or email. "If it was only the phone I will be in [a] bad situation," USDoD said. "Because I used the person['s] phone that I'm impersonating." USDoD said the InfraGard user data was made easily available via an Application Programming Interface (API) that is built into several key components of the website that help InfraGard members connect and communicate with each other. USDoD said after their InfraGard membership was approved, they asked a friend to code a script in Python to query that API and retrieve all available InfraGard user data. "InfraGard is a social media intelligence hub for high profile persons," USDoD said. "They even got [a] forum to discuss things." USDoD acknowledged that their $50,000 asking price for the InfraGard database may be a tad high, given that it is a fairly basic list of people who are already very security-conscious. Also, only about half of the user accounts contain an email address, and most of the other database fields -- like Social Security Number and Date of Birth -- are completely empty. [...] While the data exposed by the infiltration at InfraGard may be minimal, the user data might not have been the true end game for the intruders. USDoD said they were hoping the imposter account would last long enough for them to finish sending direct messages as the CEO to other executives using the InfraGuard messaging portal.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tim Cook has tweeted an admission that Apple uses Sony image sensors in its iPhones as part of the CEO's supplier tour of Japan. "We've been partnering with Sony for over a decade to create the world's leading camera sensors for iPhone," Cook tweeted, and thanked Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida for showing him around the Kumamoto facility. The Verge reports: Apple largely keeps tight-lipped about the specifics of the hardware components that go into each iPhone, so outright confirming that it's used Sony camera sensors for over a decade is notable. Apple's website tends to just list the specs of each iPhone's camera -- such as resolution, aperture, and field of view -- rather than the specific components used. But hardware specifics have tended to matter less in the age of computational photography. Tim Cook's visit to Sony's facility suggests this partnership isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and a recent report in Nikkei Asia offers some clues as to what the companies are working on for future iPhones. Sony is said to have developed a new image sensor that uses a new semiconductor architecture to capture more light and reduce both over- and underexposure. The new sensor is expected to feature in Apple's next generation of iPhones, but will also ship to other smartphone manufacturers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tesla has launched Steam integration inside its Model S and Model X electric cars with thousands of games now playable. Electrek reports: Today, Tesla launched Steam Beta for Model S and Model X as part of its "holiday update." We reported all the details of Tesla's holiday update earlier today for most Tesla vehicles, but the Steam integration is only for the refreshed Model S and Model X produced over the last two years. That's because Tesla's two flagship vehicles are equipped with a more powerful entertainment computer designed for video games. With the unveiling of the new Model S and Model X, Tesla announced the new gaming computer: "Up to 10 teraflops of processing power enables in-car gaming on-par with today's newest consoles via Tesla Arcade. Wireless controller compatibility allows gaming from any seat." A known chip leaker, Patrick Schur, posted a diagram of Tesla's new gaming computer powered by the AMD Navi 23 GPU. The system is integrated and connects directly to two touchscreens inside the Model S and Model X to play games, watch entertainment, and perform other functions. Musk also revealed that the new computer has more storage space to be able to handle more games on the platform at the same time, which is going to be useful to handle your Steam library. The holiday update also brings support for Apple Music, an update to Dog Mode, improvements to Tesla's "Light Show" feature, and a bunch of smaller features/updates.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The company said a possible melanoma vaccine it is studying with pharmaceutical giant Merck fared well in a small study of patients who had the cancer surgically removed. The drugmakers said a combination of the vaccine and Merck's immunotherapy Keytruda led to a statistically significant improvement in survival before the cancer returned in patients with advanced melanoma. [...] Like Spikevax (the vaccine used to help protect against COVID-19), the potential skin cancer vaccine uses mRNA technology. It trains a patient's immune system to recognize and respond specifically to mutations in the DNA of the patient's tumor. In a mid-stage clinical trial involving 157 patients, researchers compared the vaccine-Keytruda combination with Keytruda alone. Keytruda, Merck's top seller, primes the body's immune system to detect and fight tumor cells. Regulators have approved it to treat several types of cancer. The patient group that took the potential vaccine and Keytruda saw a 44% reduction in the risk of death or the cancer returning, the companies said. The treatments continued for about a year in both groups unless the disease came back or side effects became too severe. Merck and Moderna expect to start a phase 3 study next year, and the companies say they intend to expand their approach to other tumor types.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google employees asked executives at an all-hands meeting whether the AI chatbot that's going viral represents a "missed opportunity" for the company. Google's Jeff Dean said the company has much more "reputational risk" in providing wrong information and thus is moving "more conservatively than a small startup." CNBC reports: Google employees are seeing all the buzz around ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot that was released to the public at the end of November and quickly turned into a Twitter sensation. Some of them are wondering where Google is in the race to create sophisticated chatbots that can answer user queries. After all, Google's prime business is web search, and the company has long touted itself as a pioneer in AI. Google's conversation technology is called LaMDA, which stands for Language Model for Dialogue Applications. At a recent all-hands meeting, employees raised concerns about the company's competitive edge in AI, given the sudden popularity of ChatGPT, which was launched by OpenAI, a San Francisco-based startup that's backed by Microsoft. "Is this a missed opportunity for Google, considering we've had Lamda for a while?" read one top-rated question that came up at last week's meeting. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Jeff Dean, the long-time head of Google's AI division, responded to the question by saying that the company has similar capabilities but that the cost if something goes wrong would be greater because people have to trust the answers they get from Google. Pichai said at the meeting that the company has "a lot" planned in the space for 2023, and that "this is an area where we need to be bold and responsible so we have to balance that." Google, which has a market cap of over $1.2 trillion, doesn't have that luxury. Its technology has stayed largely in-house so far, Dean told employees, emphasizing that the company has much more "reputational risk" and is moving "more conservatively than a small startup." "We are absolutely looking to get these things out into real products and into things that are more prominently featuring the language model rather than under the covers, which is where we've been using them to date," Dean said. "But, it's super important we get this right." He went on to say "you can imagine for search-like applications, the factuality issues are really important and for other applications, bias and toxicity and safety issues are also paramount." Dean said the technology isn't where it needs to be for a broad rollout and that current publicly-available models have issues. Pichai said that 2023 will mark a "point of inflection" for the the way AI is used for conversations and in search. "We can dramatically evolve as well as ship new stuff," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader UnanimousCoward writes: Forbes has published a transcript of SBF's planned testimony as well as a synopsis which, of course, will not happen now. At no point does he admit fraudulent behavior and does not address the (multi-)billion dollar loans that helped contribute to the flywheel Ponzi scheme. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested yesterday by the Royal Bahamas Police Force. He was set to testify virtually before the House Financial Services Committee about the exchange's collapse on Tuesday (today). Here are the key takeaways from SBF's draft testimony, as highlighted by Forbes: - Bankman-Fried is being ghosted by FTX's court-appointed CEO John Ray.- Bankman-Fried says that FTX.US general counsel and former Sullivan & Cromwell partner, Ryne Miller, put intense pressure on Bankman-Fried and others to rush into filing for Chapter 11.- Bankman-Fried believes that John Ray and law firms managing the bankruptcy, including Sullivan and Cromwell, are dusting off the Enron playbook in an effort to reap enormous fees from FTX's bankruptcy.- The Chapter 11 team is not playing nice with foreign regulators.- Bankman-Fried thinks that John Ray and the U.S. Bankruptcy Court is bullying the Bahamian government and overstepping its rights as the main domicile for FTX International.- Bankman-Fried devotes seven pages to a section he calls "Misstatements," detailing instances where John Ray and team are disseminating false and inaccurate information about the companies he created.- FTX did not have a risk management team.- Bankman-Fried claims that there are signed Letters of Intent (LOIs) from prospective investors that could recapitalize the exchange.- Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao orchestrated a negative public relations campaign to bring down FTX.- Having eliminated FTX as its largest global competitor, Binance is now averaging approximately 70% of global cryptocurrency volume.- Bankman-Fried wants to set the record straight on false reports of hard partying at FTX and on his own drug usage. He says he has never been drunk in his life, and has been on an antidepressant for the last decade.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China is working on a more than 1 trillion yuan ($143 billion) support package for its semiconductor industry, three sources said, in a major step towards self sufficiency in chips and to counter U.S. moves aimed at slowing its technological advances. Reuters reports: Beijing plans to roll out what will be one of its biggest fiscal incentive packages over five years, mainly as subsidies and tax credits to bolster semiconductor production and research activities at home, said the sources. It signals, as analysts have expected, a more direct approach by China in shaping the future of an industry which has become a geopolitical hot button due to soaring demand for chips and which Beijing regards as a cornerstone of its technological might. It will also likely further raise concerns in the United States and its allies about China's competition in the semiconductor industry, say analysts. Some U.S. lawmakers are already worried about China's chip production capacity build up. The plan could be implemented as soon as the first quarter of next year [...]. The majority of the financial assistance would be used to subsidize the purchases of domestic semiconductor equipment by Chinese firms, mainly semiconductor fabrication plants, or fabs, they said. Such companies would be entitled to a 20% subsidy on the cost of purchases [...]. In August, President Joe Biden signed the Chips and Science Act, which includes more than $52 billion for U.S. companies producing computer chips, as well as billions more in tax credits to encourage investment in semiconductor manufacturing. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. passed a sweeping set of regulations that aim to choke off China's access to advanced chips, the tools necessary to manufacture years-old designs, and the service and support mechanisms needed to keep chip fabrication systems running smoothly.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Apple has confirmed that an iPhone software update it released two weeks ago fixed a zero-day security vulnerability that it now says was actively exploited. The update, iOS 16.1.2, landed on November 30 and rolled out to all supported iPhones -- including iPhone 8 and later -- with unspecified "important security updates." In a disclosure to its security updates page on Tuesday, Apple said the update fixed a flaw in WebKit, the browser engine that powers Safari and other apps, which if exploited could allow malicious code to run on the person's device. The bug is called a zero-day because the vendor is given zero days notice to fix the vulnerability. Apple said security researchers at Google's Threat Analysis Group, which investigates nation state-backed spyware, hacking and cyberattacks, discovered and reported the WebKit bug. Apple said in its Tuesday disclosure that it is aware that the vulnerability was exploited "against versions of iOS released before iOS 15.1," which was released in October 2021. As such, and for those who have not yet updated to iOS 16, Apple also released iOS and iPadOS 15.7.2 to fix the WebKit vulnerability for users running iPhones 6s and later and some iPad models. The bug is tracked as CVE-2022-42856, or WebKit 247562. It's not clear for what reason Apple withheld details of the bug for two weeks.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers at U.C. Berkeley's Sky Computing Lab have launched SkyPilot, an open source framework for running ML and Data Science batch jobs on any cloud, or multiple clouds, with a single cloud-agnostic interface. Datanami reports: SkyPilot uses an algorithm to determine which cloud zone or service provider is the most cost-effective for a given project. The program considers a workload's resource requirements (whether it needs CPUs, GPUs, or TPUs) and then automatically determines which locations (zone/region/cloud) have available compute resources to complete the job before sending it to the least expensive option to execute. The solution automates some of the more challenging aspects of running workloads on the cloud. SkyPilot's makers say the program can reliably provision a cluster with automatic failover to other locations if capacity or quota errors occur, it can sync user code and files from local or cloud buckets to the cluster, and it can manage job queueing and execution. The researchers claim this comes with substantially reduced costs, sometimes by more than 3x. SkyPilot developer and postdoctoral researcher Zongheng Yang said in a blog post that the growing trend of multi-cloud and multi-region strategies led the team to build SkyPilot, calling it an "intercloud broker." He notes that organizations are strategically choosing a multi-cloud approach for higher reliability, avoiding cloud vendor lock-in, and stronger negotiation leverage, to name a few reasons. To save costs, SkyPilot leverages the large price differences between cloud providers for similar hardware resources. Yang gives the example of Nvidia A100 GPUs, and how Azure currently offers the cheapest A100 instances, but Google Cloud and AWS charge a premium of 8% and 20% for the same computing power. For CPUs, some price differences can be over 50%. [...] The project has been under active development for over a year in Berkeley's Sky Computing Lab, according to Yang, and is being used by more than 10 organizations for use cases including GPU/TPU model training, distributed hyperparameter turning, and batch jobs on CPU spot instances. Yang says users are reporting benefits including reliable provisioning of GPU instances, queueing multiple jobs on a cluster, and concurrently running hundreds of hyperparameter trials.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DoNotPay, the company that bills itself as "the world's first robot lawyer," is launching a new AI-powered chatbot that can help you negotiate bills and cancel subscriptions without having to deal with customer service. The Verge reports: In a demo of the tool posted by DoNotPay CEO Joshua Browder, the chatbot manages to get a discount on a Comcast internet bill through Xfinity's live chat. Once it connects with a customer service representative, the bot asks for a better rate using account details provided by the customer. The chatbot cites problems with Xfinity's services and threatens to take legal action, to which the representative responds by offering to take $10 off the customer's monthly internet bill. This tool builds upon the many neat services DoNotPay already offers, which mainly allows customers can generate and submit templates to various entities, helping them to file complaints, cancel subscriptions, fight parking tickets, and much more. It even uses machine learning to highlight the most important parts of a terms of service agreement and helps customers shield their photos from facial recognition searches. But this is the first time DoNotPay's using an AI chatbot to interact with a representative in real time. The report notes that DoNotPay's bot is "built on top of OpenAI's GPT-3 API, the underlying toolset used by OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot that tons of people have been playing around with to generate detailed (and sometimes nonsensical) responses."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: New Zealand has introduced a steadily rising smoking age to stop those aged 14 and under from ever being able to legally buy cigarettes in world-first legislation to outlaw smoking for the next generation. New Zealand is believed to be the first country in the world to implement the annually rising smoking age, ensuring tobacco cannot be sold to anyone born on or after January 1, 2009. It will be accompanied by a slew of other measures to make smoking less affordable and accessible, including dramatically reducing the legal amount of nicotine in tobacco products and forcing them to be sold only through specialty tobacco stores, rather than corner stores and supermarkets. The country has also increased funding for health services and campaigns, and rolled out quitting services specifically for Mori and Pacific communities. The number of stores legally allowed to sell cigarettes will be reduced to a tenth of their existing levels -- from 6,000 to just 600 nationwide. The laws passed their final reading on Tuesday evening, and will come into force in 2023, as New Zealand attempts to reach its goal of making the country "smoke-free" by 2025. [...] The new laws, however, will not restrict vape sales. Data indicates that at least some New Zealanders haveswapped their nicotine habit from cigarettes to vapes. Associate health minister Ayesha Verrall said at the law's passing on Tuesday: "Thousands of people will live longer, healthier lives and the health system will be $5 billion better off from not needing to treat the illnesses caused by smoking, such as numerous types of cancer, heart attacks, strokes, amputations." "For decades we have permitted tobacco companies to maintain their market share by making their deadly product more and more addictive. It is disgusting and it is bizarre. We have more regulations in this country on the safety of the sale of a sandwich than on a cigarette."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is preparing to allow alternative app stores on its iPhones and iPads, part of a sweeping overhaul aimed at complying with strict European Union requirements coming in 2024. From a report: Software engineering and services employees are engaged in a major push to open up key elements of Apple's platforms, according to people familiar with the efforts. As part of the changes, customers could ultimately download third-party software to their iPhones and iPads without using the company's App Store, sidestepping Apple's restrictions and the up-to-30% commission it imposes on payments. The moves -- a reversal of long-held policies -- are a response to EU laws aimed at leveling the playing field for third-party developers and improving the digital lives of consumers. For years, regulators and software makers have complained that Apple and Google, which run the two biggest mobile app stores, wield too much power as gatekeepers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The European Union took a significant step toward completing a deal with the U.S. that would allow personal information about Europeans to be stored legally on U.S. soil, reducing the threat of regulatory action against thousands of companies that routinely transmit such information. From a report: The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, on Tuesday published a draft approval of the preliminary deal it struck in March with the U.S. government. The agreement would re-establish a framework that makes it easy for businesses to transfer such information again following the invalidation of a previous agreement by an EU court in 2020. As part of the new deal, the U.S. is offering -- and has started to implement -- new safeguards on how its intelligence authorities can access that data. If concluded, the deal could resolve one of the thorniest outstanding issues between the two economic giants. Hanging in the balance has been the ability of businesses to use U.S.-based data centers to do things such as sell online ads, measure their website traffic or manage company payroll in Europe. Blocking data transfers could upend billions of dollars of trade from cross-border data activities, including cloud services, human resources, marketing and advertising, if they involve sending or storing information about Europeans on U.S. soil, tech advocates say.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China has hit back against sweeping US export controls on chips, filing a dispute with the World Trade Organization and escalating the tech war between the two countries. From a report: China's commerce ministry said on Monday its WTO complaint was a legal and necessary measure to defend its "legitimate rights and interests," after the US Department of Commerce introduced sanctions in early October to make it harder for China to buy or develop advanced semiconductors. "At a minimum, the case is about China pushing back on how it's perceived as an unfair actor in the global trading world," said Ben Kostrzewa, an expert on US-China trade relations at Hogan Lovells. The complaint is the first step in a WTO mediation process, in which the case would normally be put before the Appellate Body. But that body has been suspended due to disagreements among member states, and Kostrzewa said China's complaint was unlikely to "create any legal effect" unless the group resumed its work. The move comes just weeks after US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping used their first in-person meeting as leaders to signal a joint desire to improve ties between the world's two biggest economies after relations plunged to a multi-decade low.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scientists studying fusion energy at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California announced on Tuesday that they had crossed a major milestone in reproducing the power of the sun in a laboratory. From a report: Scientists for decades have said that fusion, the nuclear reaction that makes stars shine, could provide a future source of bountiful energy. The result announced on Tuesday is the first fusion reaction in a laboratory setting that actually produced more energy than it took to start the reaction. "This is such a wonderful example of a possibility realized, a scientific milestone achieved, and a road ahead to the possibilities for clean energy," Arati Prabhakar, the White House science adviser, said during a news conference on Tuesday morning at the Department of Energy's headquarters in Washington, D.C. "And even deeper understanding of the scientific principles that are applied here." From an environmental perspective, fusion has always had a strong appeal. Within the sun and stars, fusion continually combines hydrogen atoms into helium, producing sunlight and warmth that bathes the planets. In experimental reactors and laser labs on Earth, fusion lives up to its reputation as a very clean energy source, devoid of the pollution and greenhouse gases produced by the burning of fossil fuels and the dangerous long-lived radioactive waste created by current nuclear power plants, which use the splitting of uranium to produce energy. There was always a nagging caveat, however. In all of the efforts by scientists to control the unruly power of fusion, their experiments consumed more energy than the fusion reactions generated. That changed at 1:03 a.m. on Dec. 5 when 192 giant lasers at the laboratory's National Ignition Facility blasted a small cylinder about the size of a pencil eraser that contained a frozen nubbin of hydrogen encased in diamond.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A press release from the office of U.S. Senator Marco Rubio: TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, is required by Chinese law to make the app's data available to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). From the FBI Director to FCC Commissioners to cybersecurity experts, everyone has made clear the risk of TikTok being used to spy on Americans. U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) introduced bipartisan legislation to ban TikTok from operating in the United States. The Averting the National Threat of Internet Surveillance, Oppressive Censorship and Influence, and Algorithmic Learning by the Chinese Communist Party Act (ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act) would protect Americans by blocking and prohibiting all transactions from any social media company in, or under the influence of, China, Russia, and several other foreign countries of concern. U.S. Representatives Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) introduced companion legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Binance has seen withdrawals of $1.9 billion in the last 24 hours, blockchain data firm Nansen said on Tuesday, as the world's biggest crypto exchange said it had "temporarily paused" withdrawals of the USDC stablecoin. From a report: Scrutiny of how crypto exchanges such as Binance and its now-bankrupt former rival FTX handle customer deposits is under close scrutiny from users and regulators. FTX's founder Sam Bankman-Fried was charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday with defrauding investors. Binance, whose dominance of crypto was cemented by the fall of FTX, last week tweeted a so-called proof-of-reserves report by audit firm Mazars. The report showed its holdings of bitcoin exceeded customer deposits on a single day in November. The $1.9 billion ethereum-based withdrawals marks the largest daily outflow over a 24-hour period since June 13, the Nansen data showed, and accounted for the majority of the funds being pulled in the last seven days.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX and Alameda Research for violations of federal commodities laws. From a report: The top US derivatives regulator claims Bankman-Fried and other FTX executives took hundreds of millions of dollars in loans from Alameda they used to buy real estate and make donations to politicians. "At Bankman-Fried's direction, FTX executives created features in the underlying code for FTX that allowed Alameda to maintain an essentially unlimited line of credit on FTX," the CFTC said in a complaint filed Tuesday in Manhattan federal court. Further reading: SEC Charges Sam Bankman-Fried With Defrauding Investors in FTX; and FTX Founder Arrested.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China outpaces efforts by U.S. intelligence agencies to harness power of publicly available data. From a report: As Russian troops surged toward Ukraine's border last fall, a small Western intelligence unit swung into action, tracking signs Moscow was preparing to invade. It drew up escape routes for its people and wrote twice-daily intelligence reports. The unit drafted and sent to its leaders an assessment on Feb. 16, 2022, that would be eerily prescient: Russia, it said, would likely invade Ukraine on Feb. 23, U.S. East Coast time. The intelligence shop had just eight analysts and used only publicly available information, not spy satellites and secret agents. It belonged to multinational chemicals company Dow, not to any government. "I'm leading an intelligence center that accurately predicted the invasion of Ukraine without any access to sensitive sources," said John Robert, Dow's director of global intelligence and protection, whose unit helps the company manage business risk and employee safety. Supercharged by the Ukraine war, the rise of open-source intelligence, or OSINT, which comprises everything from commercial satellite imagery to social-media posts and purchasable databases, poses revolutionary challenges for the Central Intelligence Agency and its sister spy agencies, according to former senior officials who spent decades working in those agencies' classified spaces. Dow is just one of a fast-growing number of companies, nonprofit groups and countries transforming publicly available data into intelligence for strategic and economic advantage. China has the largest, most focused effort, while U.S. spy agencies, with deeply ingrained habits of operating in the shadows, have been slow to adapt to a world in which much of what is important isn't secret, according to dozens of officials and many studies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Samuel Bankman-Fried with orchestrating a scheme to defraud equity investors in FTX, the crypto trading platform of which he was the CEO and co-founder. Investigations as to other securities law violations and into other entities and persons relating to the alleged misconduct are ongoing. From a statement: According to the SEC's complaint, since at least May 2019, FTX, based in The Bahamas, raised more than $1.8 billion from equity investors, including approximately $1.1 billion from approximately 90 U.S.-based investors. In his representations to investors, Bankman-Fried promoted FTX as a safe, responsible crypto asset trading platform, specifically touting FTX's sophisticated, automated risk measures to protect customer assets. The complaint alleges that, in reality, Bankman-Fried orchestrated a years-long fraud to conceal from FTX's investors (1) the undisclosed diversion of FTX customers' funds to Alameda Research, his privately-held crypto hedge fund; (2) the undisclosed special treatment afforded to Alameda on the FTX platform, including providing Alameda with a virtually unlimited "line of credit" funded by the platform's customers and exempting Alameda from certain key FTX risk mitigation measures; and (3) undisclosed risk stemming from FTX's exposure to Alameda's significant holdings of overvalued, illiquid assets such as FTX-affiliated tokens. The complaint further alleges that Bankman-Fried used commingled FTX customers' funds at Alameda to make undisclosed venture investments, lavish real estate purchases, and large political donations. "We allege that Sam Bankman-Fried built a house of cards on a foundation of deception while telling investors that it was one of the safest buildings in crypto," said SEC Chair Gary Gensler. "The alleged fraud committed by Mr. Bankman-Fried is a clarion call to crypto platforms that they need to come into compliance with our laws. Compliance protects both those who invest on and those who invest in crypto platforms with time-tested safeguards, such as properly protecting customer funds and separating conflicting lines of business. It also shines a light into trading platform conduct for both investors through disclosure and regulators through examination authority. To those platforms that don't comply with our securities laws, the SEC's Enforcement Division is ready to take action."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: While anti-fog sprays work to a certain extent, warming a glass surface is a better way of keeping it fog-free. A new coating material is designed to do so, and it utilizes light-absorbing gold nanoparticles instead of electricity. Most of the anti-fog sprays used on things like eyeglasses incorporate hydrophilic (water-attracting) molecules. These draw in and evenly dispense condensation, making it easier to see through. By contrast, your car's rear window uses integrated elements to heat the glass, keeping condensation from forming in the first place. Developed by a team at the ETH Zurich research institute, the new coating likewise uses heat -- but it doesn't require electricity. Instead, it uses a layer of clustered gold nanoparticles, sandwiched between two ultra-thin layers of titanium oxide -- the whole coating is just 10 nanometers thick, which is about one twelfth the thickness of a sheet of gold leaf. The gold nanoparticles absorb much of the infrared spectrum of incoming sunlight, causing the coating to become up to 8 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the ambient temperature. That said, the nanoparticles absorb very little visible light, allowing the coating to stay transparent. The refractive properties of the titanium oxide boost the efficiency of the heating effect. Additionally, the outer layer helps protect the gold from wear and tear. And as an added bonus, because the gold layer is electrically conductive, a power source such as a battery could be used to heat the coating when direct sunlight isn't an option. The study has been published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Almost all clothing is made by hand due to robots' inability to handle limp fabrics," writes Slashdot reader jonzornow. "A new approach avoids these issues by temporarily stiffening fabric. A robotic system developed to use this technique is now heading to its first factory for testing." Reuters reports: Work at Siemens grew out of efforts to create software to guide robots that could handle all types of flexible materials, such as thin wire cables, said [Eugen Solowjow, who heads a project at a Siemens lab in San Francisco that has worked on automating apparel manufacturing since 2018.], adding that they soon realized one of the ripest targets was clothing. The global apparel market is estimated to be worth $1.52 trillion, according to independent data platform Statista. Siemens worked with the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing Institute in Pittsburgh, created in 2017 and funded by the Department of Defense to help old-line manufacturers find ways to use the new technology. They identified a San Francisco startup with a promising approach to the floppy fabric problem. Rather than teach robots how to handle cloth, the startup, Sewbo Inc., stiffens the fabric with chemicals so it can be handled more like a car bumper during production. Once complete, the finished garment is washed to remove the stiffening agent. "Pretty much every piece of denim is washed after it's made anyway, so this fits into the existing production system," said Zornow, Sewbo's inventor. This research effort eventually grew to include several clothing companies, including Levi's and Bluewater Defense LLC, a small U.S.-based maker of military uniforms. They received $1.5 million in grants from the Pittsburgh robotics institute to experiment with the technique. [...] Sanjeev Bahl, who opened a small jeans factory in downtown Los Angeles two years ago called Saitex, has studied the Sewbo machines and is preparing to install his first experimental machine. Leading the way through his factory in September, he pointed to workers hunched over old-style machines and said many of these tasks are ripe for the new process. "If it works," he said, "I think there's no reason not to have large-scale (jeans) manufacturing here in the U.S. again."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The United States Air Force (USAF) has successfully tested its first prototype hypersonic missile. Space.com reports: The service's new AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon, or ARRW ("Arrow") is expected to be the United States military's first hypersonic weapon to reach operational status. The exact speed of the AGM-183A isn't known, although the Lockheed Martin-designed weapon is said to be based on previous test vehicles built by DARPA that have an alleged maximum speed of Mach 20, or 15,000 mph (24,000 kph). The successful ARRW test was conducted on Friday (Dec. 9) in a training range off the coast of California, according to a USAF statement released Monday (Dec. 12). "This test was the first launch of a full prototype operational missile," officials wrote in the statement. "Following the ARRW's separation from the aircraft, it reached hypersonic speeds greater than five times the speed of sound, completed its flight path and detonated in the terminal area. Indications show that all objectives were met." According to the U.S. Air Force, the missile is designed to "hold fixed, high-value, time-sensitive targets at risk in contested environments," meaning it will be used to target pre-determined assets on the ground such as fixed missile sites, radar stations, air defense installations, infrastructure facilities or even adversary headquarters buildings -- basically anything important in a battlefield environment that can't be moved and needs to be destroyed quickly. [...] Now that the ARRW has successfully flown, it's likely the service could reevaluate its plans to scrap planned purchases of the AGM-183A. The AGM-183A is what is known as a boost-glide vehicle, which refers to warheads or projectiles that glide toward their targets after being lofted by a rocket booster.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: Google was originally set to phase out Chrome support for old Manifest v2 extensions in 2023, but that's now being postponed. In 2021, Google announced its deprecation plans and last provided an update this September. On Friday, the company said that the "Manifest V2 deprecation timelines are under review and the experiments scheduled for early 2023 are being postponed." The original plan called for Chrome Beta, Dev, and Canary builds to start experiments that turned off Manifest V2 extension support. Additionally, Manifest V3 would be required to get the "Featured" badge in the Chrome Web Store. After "monitoring comments from the developer community," Google identified "common challenges posed by the migration": "...specifically the service worker's inability to use DOM capabilities and the current hard limit on extension service worker lifetimes. We're mitigating the former with the Offscreen Documents API (added in Chrome 109) and are actively pursuing a solution to the latter." Google says it's "committed to providing developers solutions to migration challenges with new functionality, bug fixes, and adequate time for adoption." With the first step delayed, Google is also "evaluating all downstream milestones as well." This includes the original June 2023 plan to start testing the deprecation in Chrome Stable. The final step in January 2024 would have been to remove all MV2 Chrome extensions from the Web Store. Google will provide an "updated phase-out plan and schedule by March of 2023." Compared to the previous iteration, Manifest V3 is prioritizing privacy, though some complain that it's at the expense of ad blockers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China's Cyberspace Administration has issued guidelines on how to do deepfakes the right way. The Register reports: [T]he Cyberspace Administration (CAC) has issued regulations that prohibit their creation without the subject's permission, or to depict or utter anything that could be considered as counter to the national interest. Anything counter to socialist values falls under that description, as does any form of "Illegal and harmful information" or using AI-generated humans in an attempt to deceive or slander. But the rules also suggest China expects synthetic humans will be widely used. For instance, they allow use of deepfakes in applications such as chatbots. In such scenarios, deepfakes must be flagged as digital creations. The document also envisages that deepfakes will be used by online publishers, which must take into account China's myriad other rules about acceptable online content. Including the one that censpored images of Winnie the Pooh online, as the beloved bear - as depicted by illustrator E. H. Shepard - was felt to resemble, and mock, China's president-for-probably-life Xi Jinping. The Register therefore suggests it will be a very, very, brave Chinese developer that creates a photorealistic ursine chatbot or avatar. The regulations also spell out how the creators of deepfakes -- who are termed "deep synthesis service providers" -- must take care that their AI/ML models and algorithms are accurate and regularly revised, and ensure the security of data they collect. The rules also include a requirement for registration of users -- including their real names. Because allowing an unknown person to mess with deepfakes would not do. The rules are pitched as ensuring that synthesis tech avoids the downsides and delivers benefits to China. Or, as Beijing puts it (albeit in translation), deepfakes must "Promote the healthy development of internet information services and maintain a good ecology of cyberspace." The regulations come into force on January 10, 2023.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new report from CIRP says that only about 24 percent of recent iPhones purchased in the US were sold directly by Apple. Instead, the most popular way to buy a new iPhone was through a wireless carrier, which accounted for 67 percent of sales. The Verge reports: CIRP (Consumer Intelligence Research Partners) surveys iPhone buyers to find out which models they're buying and where they're shopping -- information Apple doesn't disclose. Outside of carriers and Apple retail, CIRP attributes 4 percent of iPhone sales to Best Buy and 5 percent to "other," which includes Target and Walmart. Those are just tiny slivers of the pie compared to the gigantic piece wireless carriers are eating.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Activision Blizzard employees developing the upcoming dark fantasy action role-playing game "Diablo IV" say it will be hard to meet a June 6, 2023, release date without working significant overtime, in a process they say has been plagued by mismanagement. The release date, which has not been announced publicly, comes in the same month that Microsoft's proposed $68.7 billion acquisition is set to close. The Washington Post reports: Fifteen current and former Blizzard employees spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about company operations. They described a mounting sense of dissatisfaction and malaise among employees as they endured leadership changes at Activision Blizzard and on the "Diablo IV" team. The Diablo team has been losing talent for over a year, as employees look for more competitive wages and better work conditions elsewhere, according to employees. One group of about 20 developers working on one portion of the game saw about half of its members leave within a year, according to two former employees. Blizzard did not comment on attrition on the "Diablo IV" team. Last January, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick attributed the company's stock price drop to the game delay of Diablo in a Venture Beat interview, rather than an ongoing sexual harassment lawsuit filed against the company in July of 2021. "I think what affected the stock price more than [the sexual harassment investigation] is pushing out [the release dates of] 'Overwatch' and 'Diablo,'" he said, explaining that was one of the reasons he was selling the company to Microsoft. His comments frustrated some of the company's developers, who felt he was blaming them unfairly. "Crunching" in the video game industry is a common practice, but it's become controversial in recent years, even while game developers continue working late into the evenings and weekends, sometimes secretly. Despite wishing to avoid crunch, some Blizzard employees in recent months find themselves facing down long hours again, unwilling to publish an unfinished product. They described consequences of crunch that included chronic back injuries, insomnia and anxiety, as well as less time to spend with family or to maintain romantic relationships. [...] "We were never going to hit our date without crunch," said a former Blizzard employee of a previously-intended "Diablo IV" internal release date. "And even with crunch, I don't even know if we would have hit our date." Activision Blizzard is offering "Diablo IV" developers a deal in which they will gain twice as many company stock shares when the game releases. Employees said they were offered more stock to stay on based on their position and seniority, from around $5,000 in value for entry-level workers to upward of $50,000 for more senior employees. [...] "Diablo IV" had multiple internal, unannounced release dates. At one point, 2021 was floated as an internal goal. A more specific date emerged -- December 2022 -- after the title was publicly announced in 2019 at the company's annual gaming convention BlizzCon. Developers appealed for more time to avoid massive cuts to the game. After moving the date to April 2023, the team felt it still needed more time and was able to get the June date approved. The June date feels harder to move, several employees say. "We're at the point where they're not willing to delay the game anymore," said a current Blizzard Albany employee. "So we all just have to go along and figure out how much we're willing to hurt ourselves to make sure the game gets released in a good enough state."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Royal Bahamas Police Force arrested FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, a press statement said. CoinDesk reports: The arrest came after the U.S. filed criminal charges against Bankman-Fried, the statement said, and the nation expects the U.S. to request The Bahamas extradite Bankman-Fried in short order. "As a result of the notification received and the material provided therewith, it was deemed appropriate for the Attorney General to seek SBF's arrest and hold him in custody pursuant to our nation's Extradition Act," the statement, attributed to Attorney General Ryan Pinder, said. "At such time as a formal request for extradition is made, The Bahamas intends to process it promptly, pursuant to Bahamian law and its treaty obligations with the United States." A tweet from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York confirmed that prosecutors in the U.S. indicted Bankman-Fried, though the indictment remains under seal. In the Bahamas' statement, Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis said the country would continue pursuing its own investigation into FTX's collapse, alongside the U.S.'s criminal charges. Bankman-Fried was set to testify virtually before the House Financial Services Committee about the exchange's collapse on Tuesday.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Microsoft is seeking to address European Union antitrust concerns about its business practices prompted by a complaint from Salesforce.com's workspace messaging app Slack, people familiar with the matter said. The move, which may head off the opening of a formal EU antitrust investigation, underscores once again Microsoft's new preference for working out issues with regulators rather than jousting with them as it did in the previous decade. Microsoft found itself in the European Commission's crosshairs again last year after Slack alleged the U.S. software giant has unfairly integrated its workplace chat and video app Teams into its Office product. Microsoft introduced Teams in 2017, aiming for a slice of the fast-growing and lucrative workplace collaboration market. It has made a preliminary offer of concessions to try to allay the EU competition enforcer's concerns, one of the people said. The company has previously said it created Teams to combine the ability to collaborate with the ability to connect via video and that it gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic while Slack suffered from its absence of video-conferencing. The EU antitrust watchdog sent questionnaires, its second batch, to rivals in October, asking for more details on Microsoft's interoperability and bundling practices, suggesting it may be preparing the ground for a formal probe, other people familiar with the matter told Reuters last month.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to CEO Eben Upton, "hundreds of thousands" of Raspberry Pi Zero, 3A+, and 4 models should show up next year. Ars Technica reports: In a "Supply chain update" blog post ("It's good news!"), CEO Eben Upton wrote that Raspberry Pi has "set aside a little over a hundred thousand units, split across Zero W, 3A+, and the 2GB and 4GB variants of Raspberry Pi 4, for single-unit sales." During the pandemic-spurred component shortage, most of the Pis produced every month were going to businesses, leaving those in need of one or two for a project refreshing rpilocator and cursing their timing. Zeros will start showing up first, then 3A+, then different models of 4. Upton acknowledged this reality (and even linked the locator) and asked that people buy only from approved resellers and consider the Pico and Pico W lines for projects that might fit, as those lines remain strong. As of this morning, a few 3A+ and CM4 models showed an optimistic green on the rpilocator spreadsheet. Raspberry Pi will continue to serve its commercial and industrial customers, Upton wrote, but will "make sure that inventory-building behavior which would otherwise prolong the shortage for everybody else can't take place." Meanwhile, Raspberry Pi will increase the percentage of boards designated for single-unit sales. With that change and future chip allocations, Upton expects that by the end of the third quarter of 2023, things will be back to how they were before the Great Pi Shortage, with "hundreds of thousands of units available at any given time."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The testimony of the new FTX CEO, John Ray III, is now public (PDF), and it includes some shocking revelations about the nature of the cryptocurrency firm. The court documents show that Alameda Research borrowed FTX customer funds for trading and investment purposes without any limits. Watcher Guru reports: In the court documents, Ray relayed a detailed account of how Alameda Research would utilize FTX customer assets. Subsequently, the firm utilized them for the purposes of trading and investment. The document noted, "The ability of Alameda, the crypto hedge fund within the FTX Group, to borrow funds held at FTX.com to be utilized for its own trading or investments without any effective limits." As the shocking statement was reported under inappropriate business practices that Ray has uncovered amidst his disappointment. Ray revealed that access to those funds was not at all protected from management. The statement noted, "The use of computer infrastructure that gave individuals in senior management access to systems that stored customer assets," according to the documents. Furthermore, Ray revealed that "Private keys to access hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto assets," lacked property security or description. Conversely, Ray notes that assets were commingled, and the platform lacked proper documentation of nearly 500 investments made by the FTX group. UPDATE 12/12/22 00:13 UTC: FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried ArrestedRead more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Lensa's AI popularity has had a notable impact on the App Store's Top Charts. The popular photo and video editing app recently went viral over its new "magic avatars" feature, powered by the open source Stable Diffusion model, allowing users to turn their selfies into styled portraits of themselves as sci-fi, anime, or fantasy characters, among other artistic renderings. Consumer demand for the app, and for AI edits more broadly, has now pushed numerous other "AI" apps into the U.S. App Store's Top Charts. As of Monday, the top three spots on the U.S. App Store are now all held by AI photo editors, and even more AI art apps are newly ranking in the Top 100. The No. 1 spot on the U.S. App Store, however, continues to be held by Lensa AI, which has seen 12.6 million global installs in the first 11 days of December, up 600% from the 1.8 million installs it saw during a similar time frame in November (Nov. 20 through Nov. 30), according to new data from app store intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The U.S. accounted for 3.6 million of those new December installs, estimates indicate. In fact, 8 out of the top 100 apps by downloads on the U.S. App Store were AI art apps during the Dec. 1 through Dec. 11 time frame, the firm's analysis found. Following Lensa AI, the generic-sounding app AI Art: AI Image Generator has keyword-stuffed its app's name to rank in second place, promising AI avatars and AI art from text. Dawn -- AI Avatars is in the No. 3 position, offering AI avatars that can be changed with a text prompt. [...] In addition to highly ranking overall among iPhone apps, the U.S. App Store's Graphics & Design category is also now filled with AI art apps within its own Top Charts. Here, Dawn is the No. 1 Top Free app, followed by AI Art and Wonder to round out the top 3. Profile AI: AI Avatar Creator, Inspire -- AI Art Generator, and Dream by Wombo -- AI Art Tool are ranked 8, 9, and 10, respectively. Lesser known "AI" apps pop up as you scroll down the category's Top 50 as well, filing slots No. 14, 19, 21, 25, 27, 31, 36, 44, and 47 -- too many to list. All use the keyword "AI" in their app's name along and reference activities like "AI art" or "AI avatars." And of course, the U.S. Photo & Video category's Top Charts have several AI apps charting as well, including No. 1 Lensa, No. 5 Prequel, No. 7 Voi, No. 8 Meitu, and No. 26 FacePlay. AI app demand is not limited to the App Store, however. Many of the same apps are trending on Google Play, too. When both app stores' rankings are combined, Lensa AI remains No. 1, AI Art is No. 2, Wonder is No. 8, Meitu is No. 10, Prequel is No. 68, Dawn is No. 72, Dream is No. 77 and FacePlay is No. 90.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Software quality issues may have cost the U.S. economy $2.41 trillion in 2022. From a report: This statistic is unearthed in Synopsys's 'The Cost of Poor Software Quality in the US: A 2022 Report.' The report's findings reflect that as of 2022, the cost of poor software quality in the U.S. -- which includes cyberattacks due to existing vulnerabilities, complex issues involving the software supply chain, and the growing impact of rapidly accumulating technical debt -- have led to a build-up of historic software deficiencies. Co-sponsored by Synopsys, the report was produced by the Consortium for Information & Software Quality (CISQ), an organization developing international standards to automate software quality measurement and promoting the development and maintenance of secure, reliable, and trustworthy software. The report highlights several key areas of CPSQ growth, including: Cybercrime losses due to a rising number of software vulnerabilities. Losses rose 64% from 2020 to 2021 and are on track for a further 42% increase from 2021 to 2022. The quantity and cost of cybercrime incidents have been on the rise for over a decade, and now account for a sum equivalent to the world's third-largest economy after the U.S. and China.Software supply chain problems with underlying third-party components are up significantly. This year's report shows that the number of failures due to weaknesses in open-source software components accelerated by an alarming 650% from 2020 to 2021.Technical debt has become the largest obstacle to making changes in existing code bases. Technical debt refers to software development rework costs from the accumulation of deficiencies leaving data and systems potentially vulnerable. This year's report illustrates that deficiencies aren't being resolved, leading technical debt to increase to approximately $1.52 trillion.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tax authorities from Australia, Canada, France, the UK and the USA have conducted a joint probe into "electronic sales suppression software" -- applications that falsify point of sale data to help merchants avoid paying tax on their true revenue. From a report: A Friday announcement from the Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement (known as the J5), states that the probe "resulted in the arrest of five individuals in the United Kingdom who allegedly designed and sold electronic sales suppression systems internationally." Those responsible allegedly started to export their wares during the COVID-19 pandemic. "These dodgy sales suppression tools allow retailers to keep a separate set of books and launder the money in one transaction," explained J5 chief and Australian Taxation Office deputy commissioner John Ford. "They conceal and transfer this income anonymously, sometimes offshore."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: According to a recent IDC forecast, the PC and tablet markets are expected to shrink. Shipments for tablets and PCs will decline almost 12% in 2022, the research firm reported, and are expected to decline further in 2023. But excess inventory is already forcing suppliers to heavily discount products and shift from the premium segment to more mid-range products, the analysts said. On the other hand, the report states that tablet and PC shipments will continue to remain above pre-pandemic levels. But uncertain economic conditions will threaten inventory and increase market saturation next year. "The reality is that both PC and tablet makers will struggle in the coming months as not only are volumes expected to decline, but so will average selling prices," Jitesh Ubrani, IDC's research manager for mobility and consumer device trackers, said in a release. In October of this year, IDC reported that tablet shipments were down 8.8%, signaling the fifth straight quarter of the tablet market's decline. This market contraction followed two years of massive growth, which can be mostly attributed to economic factors.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A little-known phone monitoring app called Xnspy has stolen data from tens of thousands of iPhones and Android devices, the majority whose owners are unaware that their data has been compromised. From a report: Xnspy is one of many so-called stalkerware apps sold under the guise of allowing a parent to monitor their child's activities, but are explicitly marketed for spying on a spouse or domestic partner's devices without their permission. Its website boasts, "to catch a cheating spouse, you need Xnspy on your side," and, "Xnspy makes reporting and data extraction simple for you." Stalkerware apps, also known as spouseware, are surreptitiously planted by someone with physical access to a person's phone, bypassing the on-device security protections, and are designed to stay hidden from home screens, which makes them difficult to detect. Once installed, these apps will silently and continually upload the contents of a person's phone, including their call records, text messages, photos, browsing history and precise location data, allowing the person who planted the app near-complete access to their victim's data. But new findings show many stalkerware apps are riddled with security flaws and are exposing the data stolen from victims' phones. Xnspy is no different.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The once-thriving esports industry has fallen on hard times as funding sources dwindle and signs abound that athletic competition via video games doesn't have anywhere near the earning potential investors anticipated. From a report: Sports-business billionaires and gaming executives had hopes that esports could one day could scale into an organization like the National Basketball Association. But after a boom five years ago, several prominent esports teams and organizations, particularly in the US, are contracting, the result of a broad economic downturn, a venture capital industry that's no longer willing to accept growth without profits and a crypto meltdown that has undercut a significant source of backing. Since the summer, Team SoloMid and 100 Thieves -- the two most valuable esports organizations according to Forbes -- have terminated dozens of positions in total. In November, Evil Geniuses, one of the oldest esports groups, disbanded its North America team that competed in the highly popular game Defense of the Ancients 2 and shifted their operations to South America. Game publishers, too, are shrinking their esports operations and that's trickling down to tournament organizers, teams and players. In early November, Riot Games said it will close its official Wild Rift leagues outside of Asia next year, choosing to focus solely on the world's biggest mobile gaming market. And a popular Super Smash Bros. tournament was terminated after not getting a license from Nintendo. Investors who were once eager to get in early on what was expected to be a booming industry are now scrutinizing the business fundamentals and not much liking what they see. In 2018, a record $4.5 billion was invested in the industry, including from private equity firms jumping in for the first time, according to a report by Deloitte. That bounty has faded and venture capital investment in esports is the lowest it's been since 2016 -- excluding 2020, when pandemic restrictions threw into question the viability of live esports tournaments -- according to data provided by PitchBook.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft's Chromium-based Edge browser was an improvement over the initial version of Edge in many ways, including its support for Windows 7 and Windows 8. But the end of the road is coming: Microsoft has announced that Edge will end support for Windows 7 and Windows 8 in mid-January of 2023, shortly after those operating systems stop getting regular security updates. From a report: Support will also end for Microsoft Edge Webview2, which can use Edge's rendering engine to embed webpages in non-Edge apps. The end-of-support date for Edge coincides with the end of security update support for both Windows 7 and Windows 8 on January 10, and the end of Google Chrome support for Windows 7 and 8 in version 110. Because the underlying Chromium engine in both Chrome and Edge is open source, Microsoft could continue supporting Edge in older Windows versions if it wanted, but the company is using both end-of-support dates to justify a clean break for Edge.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After almost a decade of running the operation, Meta has shut down Facebook Connectivity. From a report: Meta, formerly Facebook, confirmed to Light Reading it would fold what is now called Meta Connectivity into two other groups within the company: "Infrastructure" and "Central Products." The moves make sense considering Meta's "Infrastructure" team handles the company's work in areas such as subsea cabling. The action will not affect Meta's participation in the Telecom Infra Project (TIP), which it helped to found in 2016. That group continues to develop open and disaggregated standards for various telecom technologies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Japan and the Netherlands have agreed in principle to join the US in tightening controls over the export of advanced chipmaking machinery to China, Bloomberg News reported according to people familiar with the matter, a potentially debilitating blow to Beijing's technology ambitions. From the report: The two countries are likely to announce in the coming weeks that they'll adopt at least some of the sweeping measures the US rolled out in October to restrict the sale of advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment, according to the people, who asked not to be named because they are not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. The Biden administration has said the measures are aimed at preventing Beijing's military from obtaining advanced semiconductors. The three-country alliance would represent a near-total blockade of China's ability to buy the equipment necessary to make leading-edge chips. The US rules restricted the supply from American gear suppliers Applied Materials, Lam Research and KLA. Japan's Tokyo Electron and Dutch lithography specialist ASML Holding are the two other critical suppliers that the US needed to make the sanctions effective, making their governments' adoption of the export curbs a significant milestone. "There's no way China can build a leading-edge industry on their own. No chance," said Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Light infrastructure has expanded alongside population growth but it's not only star gazing in jeopardy -- cultures, wildlife, science and human health are all threatened. From a report: Some researchers call light pollution cultural genocide. Generations of complex knowledge systems, built by Indigenous Australians and Torres Strait Islanders upon a once-clear view of the Milky Way, are being lost. In the natural world, the mountain pygmy possum, a marsupial native to Australia, is critically endangered. Its main food source, the bogong moth, is being affected by artificial outdoor lighting messing with its migration patterns. Sea turtles are exhibiting erratic nesting and migration behaviours due to lights blasting from new coastal developments. So how bright does our future look under a blanket of light? "If you go to Mount Coot-tha, basically the highest point in Brisbane, every streetlight you can see from up there is a waste of energy," Brendan Downs says. "Why is light going up and being wasted into the atmosphere? There's no need for it." Around the world, one in three people can't see the Milky Way at night because their skies are excessively illuminated. Four in five people live in towns and cities that emit enough light to limit their view of the stars. In Europe, that figure soars to 99%. Blame skyglow -- the unnecessary illumination of the sky above, and surrounding, an urban area. It's easy to see it if you travel an hour from a city, turn around, then look back towards its centre.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Three more UK universities have banned fossil fuel companies from recruiting students through their career services, with one citing the industry as a "fundamental barrier to a more just and sustainable world." From a report: The University of the Arts London, University of Bedfordshire, and Wrexham Glyndwr University join Birkbeck, University of London, which was the first to adopt a fossil-free careers service policy in September. The moves follow a campaign supported by the student-led group People & Planet, which is now active in dozens of universities. The group said universities have been "propping up the companies most responsible for destroying the planet," while the climate crisis was "the defining issue of most students' lifetimes." The campaign is backed by the National Union of Students and the Universities and College Union, which represents academics and support staff. "The approach supports future generations to make meaningful career decisions," said Lynda Powell, the executive director of operations at Wrexham Glyndwr University (WGU). "Through this we are supporting the development of a sustainable workforce for the future."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Edward White in Seoul and Qianer Liu in Hong Kong, reporting for Financial Times: China is under-reporting coronavirus cases and fatalities, obscuring the scale and severity of the health crisis just as the world's most populous country enters its deadliest phase of the pandemic, analysts warn. Official statistics on Friday revealed no new deaths and only 16,363 locally transmitted coronavirus cases in China, less than half the peak caseload reported last month. That is despite a stunning U-turn over the past week to relax President Xi Jinping's heavy-handed pandemic controls, which means the virus is certain to spread. The sweeping changes to Xi's zero-Covid policy allow asymptomatic or mild cases to isolate at home rather than in centralised quarantine, and slashed China's mass testing and contact tracing requirements. The sudden reversal came weeks after Covid-19 cases hit a record high of more than 40,000 a day, with every region of the country reporting an Omicron outbreak. Despite the official numbers suggesting the caseload had halved, Raymond Yeung, China economist at ANZ bank, said that on-the-ground observations indicated some cities, including Baoding, in the northern province of Hebei, already had "high infection numbers." More big cities, he said, would soon endure similar levels of infections. "Like Hong Kong, the actual infection data will no longer be informative. As the 'official' infection figures decline, the government can eventually claim their successÂagainst the virus," Yeung said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.