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Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan is taking on the world's biggest technology companies -- and losing. From a report: Khan failed Tuesday in her latest effort to block a big-tech deal when a federal judge denied her agency's bid to block Microsoft from closing its purchase of videogame publisher Activision Blizzard. The FTC suffered a similar setback earlier this year when it tried to thwart Meta Platforms' purchase of a virtual-reality gaming company. Khan, who gained prominence as a critic of Amazon, entered office in 2021 vowing to stiffen antitrust enforcement. Past enforcers were too cautious about bringing tough cases, she has said, and failed to confront the rise of companies such as Facebook owner Meta that gained monopoly-like power in digital industries, she said. "I'm certainly not someone who thinks success is marked by a 100% court record," Khan said last year in remarks at the University of Chicago. "If you just never bring those hard cases, I think there is severe cost to that, that can lead to stagnation and stasis." Under the Biden administration, antitrust agencies have challenged more mergers than in previous years, including some that historically the government wouldn't have tried to block. Microsoft and Activision aren't head-to-head competitors, making the case against the deal less straightforward and more dependent on the FTC's prediction that the combined company would abuse its power to hurt competition in the future.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mark Zuckerberg has used Meta's might to push Threads to a fast start -- but that may only work up to a point. Mike Isaac, writing at The New York Times: A big tech company with billions of users introduces a new social network. Leveraging the popularity and scale of its existing products, the company intends to make the new social platform a success. In doing so, it also plans to squash a leading competitor's app. If this sounds like Instagram's new Threads app and its push against its rival Twitter, think again. The year was 2011 and Google had just rolled out a social network called Google+, which was aimed as its "Facebook killer." Google thrust the new site in front of many of its users who relied on its search and other products, expanding Google+ to more than 90 million users within the first year. But by 2018, Google+ was relegated to the ash heap of history. Despite the internet search giant's enormous audience, its social network failed to catch on as people continued flocking to Facebook -- and later to Instagram and other social apps. In the history of Silicon Valley, big tech companies have often become even bigger tech companies by using their scale as a built-in advantage. But as Google+ shows, bigness alone is no guarantee of winning the fickle and faddish social media market. This is the challenge that Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, now faces as he tries to dislodge Twitter and make Threads the prime app for real-time, public conversations. If tech history is any guide, size and scale are solid footholds -- but ultimately can only go so far. What comes next is much harder. Mr. Zuckerberg needs people to be able to find friends and influencers on Threads in the serendipitous and sometimes weird ways that Twitter managed to accomplish. He needs to make sure Threads isn't filled with spam and grifters. He needs people to be patient about app updates that are in the works.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Two small spacecraft should have now been cruising through the Solar System on the way to study unexplored asteroids, but after several years of development and nearly $50 million in expenditures, NASA announced Tuesday the probes will remain locked inside a Lockheed Martin factory in Colorado. That's because the mission, called Janus, was supposed to launch last year as a piggyback payload on the same rocket with NASA's much larger Psyche spacecraft, which will fly to a 140-mile-wide (225-kilometer) metal-rich asteroid -- also named Psyche -- for more than two years of close-up observations. Problems with software testing on the Psyche spacecraft prompted NASA managers to delay the launch by more than a year. An independent review board set up to analyze the reasons for the Psyche launch delay identified issues with the spacecraft's software and weaknesses in the plan to test the software before Psyche's launch. Digging deeper, the review panel determined that NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the Psyche mission, was encumbered by staffing and workforce problems exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Psyche is now back on track for liftoff in October on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, but Janus won't be aboard. Janus was designed to fly to two binary asteroids -- consisting of two bodies near one another -- that orbit the Sun closer to Earth than the metallic asteroid Psyche. While the Psyche mission can still reach its asteroid destination and accomplish its science mission with a launch this year, the asteroids targeted by Janus will have changed positions in the Solar System by too much since last year. They are no longer accessible to the two Janus spacecraft without flying too far from the Sun for their solar arrays to generate sufficient power. When it became clear the two Janus target asteroids were no longer reachable, scientists on the Janus team and NASA management agreed last year to remove the twin spacecraft from the Psyche launch. Scientists considered other uses for the suitcase-size Janus spacecraft, which were already built and were weeks away from shipment to Florida to begin final launch preparations when NASA decided to delay the launch of Psyche. One of the ideas to repurpose the Janus spacecraft was to send the probes to fly by asteroid Apophis, a space rock bigger than the Empire State Building that will encroach within 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) from our planet's surface in 2029. For a time soon after its discovery in 2004, scientists said there was a small chance Apophis could impact Earth in 2029 or later this century, but astronomers have now ruled out any risk of a collision for the next 100-plus years. In the end, Janus fell victim to the delay of the Psyche mission and tight budget constraints at NASA. The agency said Tuesday it has directed the Janus team to "prepare the spacecraft for long-term storage."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA has expanded its contracts with Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace to design and develop new spacesuits, providing each company with an additional $5 million. Engadget reports: NASA has ordered a spacesuit from Axiom Space meant for use in Low Earth Orbit, specifically for spacewalks outside the International Space Station. The original contract for Axiom was for a spacewalking system that the Artemis III astronauts will wear on the lunar surface when they land on the moon. Axiom unveiled a prototype for its original order in March, showcasing a suit with joints that allow wearers to move around with ease and a helmet equipped with a light and an HD camera. Meanwhile, Collins Aerospace has received an order for a spacesuit meant for use on the lunar surface. The company was previously contracted to develop a spacewalking suit for use outside the ISS. In other words, each company has received a new order that mirrors the other's previous one. Redundancy is an important part of space tech development. In this case, spacesuits meant for the same purpose developed by two different companies could ensure that astronauts will have something to use if the other one fails for any reason. That said, the new task orders are for the companies' initial "design modification work" -- they're essentially modifying their original suits for a new purpose -- and NASA wants to see them first before committing to their continued development. Axiom told SpaceNews that if NASA decides to push through with the new spacesuits' development, the full order will cost the agency $142 million over four years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Blue Origin's BE-4 rocket engine exploded during testing, causing significant damage and potential delays to the company's rocket launches, including those for its customer United Launch Alliance (ULA). CNBC reports: During a firing on June 30 at a West Texas facility of Jeff Bezos' space company, a BE-4 engine detonated about 10 seconds into the test, according to several people familiar with the matter. Those people described having seen video of a dramatic explosion that destroyed the engine and heavily damaged the test stand infrastructure. The engine that exploded was expected to finish testing in July. It was then scheduled to ship to Blue Origin's customer United Launch Alliance for use on ULA's second Vulcan rocket launch, those people said. A Blue Origin spokesperson, in a statement to CNBC on Tuesday, confirmed the company "ran into an issue while testing Vulcan's Flight Engine 3." "No personnel were injured and we are currently assessing root cause," Blue Origin said, adding "we already have proximate cause and are working on remedial actions." The company noted it "immediately" made its customer ULA aware of the incident. ULA is the rocket-building joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, which competes primarily with Elon Musk's SpaceX, especially going head-to-head over the most lucrative military launch contracts. Blue Origin also said it will be able to "continue testing" engines in West Texas. The company previously built two stands for the tests. "We will be able to meet our engine delivery commitments this year and stay ahead of our customer's launch needs," Blue Origin added. BE-4as test failure threatens to further push back the already-delayed first Vulcan launch -- which was recently rescheduled to the fourth quarter of this year -- while Blue Origin examines the cause of the problem. Each Vulcan rocket uses a pair of BE-4 engines to launch. ULA waited anxiously for years to receive delivery of the first set. A month ago, ULA completed a key milestone in preparation for the first Vulcan launch, known as Cert-1, with a short static fire test of the rocket using the first pair of BE-4 flight engines. [...] At the same time that Blue Origin needs to get BE-4 working well and humming off the production line for its main customer, the company also needs the engines for its own reusable New Glenn rocket that's in development. While Vulcan uses two BE-4 engines, each New Glenn rocket requires seven BE-4 engines, meaning Blue Origin needs to produce dozens a year to support both rockets.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Toronto Star: Nassir the gorilla, languid in the heat of a summer afternoon, sits just within reach of a faded sign taped to the glass of his enclosure at the Toronto Zoo, advising visitors not to share images on their cellphones with the swinging bachelor. "We've had a lot of members and guests that actually will put their phones up to the glass and show him videos," says Maria Franke, the zoo's director of wildlife conservation and welfare. "And Nassir is so into those videos. It was causing him to be distracted and not interacting with the other gorillas, and you know, being a gorilla. He was just so enthralled with gadgets and phones and the videos." Gorillas, it seems, share more than just 98 per cent of our DNA. Zookeepers have discovered they can become every bit as interested in cellphones as the bipedal visitors who pay to see them. [...] Biologist Rob Laidlaw sees animal interest in technology as a manifestation of their need for stimulation -- a result of the boredom they experience in captivity. He says keeping such animals stimulated is a huge challenge, even for sanctuary organizations that provide sprawling enclosures. "They're looking for any opportunity they can find to engage intellectually," said Laidlaw, a chartered biologist and executive director of Zoocheck, an animal protection organization. Laidlaw says technology has its uses in zoos, but the emphasis needs to remain on providing as many animals as possible with environments that are as close to their native habitats as possible. "My fear is always that people see these things and think they're a panacea when in fact they're not. They're just one little tiny facet of relieving the boredom of animals." As most teenagers do, Nassir seems to have grown out of his preoccupation with cellphones, says Franke. He is strongly bonded to his half-brother, Sadiki, who shares the zoo's rainforest habitat with him. "It's like Nassir was a little boy, all he wanted to to do was sit in the basement and play games on the computer," said Franke. "I'm not really sure what the content of the videos was. Was it gorillas in the wild? I have no idea. Was it a cartoon? I have no idea. But obviously, there was something that was attracting him to it." But just in case he isn't quite over it, the note to the public remains up -- for now.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Steven Vaughan-Nichols writes via ZDNet: I'd been waiting for Oracle to throw its hat into the ring for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Linux source-code fight. I knew it was only a matter of time. On July 10, Oracle's Edward Screven, chief corporate architect, and Wim Coekaerts, head of Oracle Linux development, declared: "IBM's actions are not in your best interest. By killing CentOS as a RHEL alternative and attacking AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux, IBM is eliminating one way your customers save money and make a larger share of their wallet available to you." In fact, Oracle now presents itself as an open-source Linux champion: "Oracle has always made Oracle Linux binaries and source freely available to all. We do not have subscription agreements that interfere with a subscriber's rights to redistribute Oracle Linux. On the other hand, IBM subscription agreements specify that you're in breach if you use those subscription services to exercise your GPLv2 rights." As of June 21, IBM no longer publicly releases RHEL source code -- in short, the gloves are off, and the fight's on. But this is also just the latest move in a fight that's older than many of you. [...] Mike McGrath, Red Hat's vice president of core platforms, explained why Red Hat would no longer be releasing RHEL's code, but only CentOS Stream's code, because "thousands of [Red Hat] people spend their time writing code to enable new features, fixing bugs, integrating different packages and then supporting that work for a long time ... We have to pay the people to do that work." That sentiment is certainly true. But I also feel that Oracle takes the worst possible spin, with Screven and Coekaerts commenting: "IBM doesn't want to continue publicly releasing RHEL source code because it has to pay its engineers? That seems odd, given that Red Hat as a successful independent open source company chose to publicly release RHEL source and pay its engineers for many years before IBM acquired Red Hat in 2019 for $34 billion." So, what will Oracle do now? For starters, Oracle Linux will continue to be RHEL-compatible through RHEL 9.2. After that release -- and without access to the published RHEL source code -- there are no guarantees. But Screven and Coekaerts suggest that "if an incompatibility does affect a customer or ISV, Oracle will work to remediate the problem." As for Oracle Linux's code: "Oracle is committed to Linux freedom. Oracle makes the following promise: as long as Oracle distributes Linux, Oracle will make the binaries and source code for that distribution publicly and freely available. Furthermore, Oracle welcomes downstream distributions of every kind, community, and commercial. We are happy to work with distributors to ease that process, work together on the content of Oracle Linux, and ensure Oracle software products are certified on your distribution."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

John.Banister writes: SUSE announced that they're spending $10 million on maintaining a fork of RHEL, with the source code of the fork to be freely available to all. I don't know that people who want to copy RHEL source will necessarily see copying the source of a fork as furthering their goals, but it could be that SUSE will build a nice alternative enterprise Linux to complement their current product. And, I reckon, better SUSE than Oracle, since I keep reading comments on people getting screwed by Oracle, but not so many on people getting screwed by SUSE. ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols writes: This all started when Red Hat's VP of core platforms, Mike McGrath, declared, "CentOS Stream will now be the sole repository for public RHEL-related source code releases. For Red Hat customers and partners, source code will remain available via the Red Hat Customer Portal." That may not sound like much to you, but those were fighting words to many open-source and Linux distributors. According to Linux's fundamental license, the GPLv2, no restrictions can be placed on distributing the source code to those who've received the binaries. In the view of many in the open-source community, that's exactly what Red Hat has done. Others see this as the latest step in the long dance between Red Hat's business licensing demands and open-source licensing. Red Hat has had conflicts with the RHEL clones since 2005, when Red Hat's trademarks were the issue of the day. Usually, these fights stayed confined to the RHEL and its immediate clone rivals. Not this time. Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen, SUSE CEO, said this: "For decades, collaboration and shared success have been the building blocks of our open-source community. We have a responsibility to defend these values. This investment will preserve the flow of innovation for years to come and ensures that customers and community alike are not subjected to vendor lock-in and have genuine choice tomorrow as well as today." What does that mean? While SUSE will continue to invest in and support its own Linux distributions, SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) and openSUSE, SUSE plans on creating its own RHEL-compatible clone. Once completed, this new distro will be contributed to an open-source foundation, which will provide ongoing free access to alternative source code.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In late 2021, VanMoof claimed to be "the most funded e-bike company in the world" after raising a total of $182 million in the two years prior -- a figure that would later surpass $200 million. Now, according to multiple sources spoken to by TechCrunch, the Dutch e-bike company's strategy and momentum "appear to have steered dangerously off course." From the report: Our sources tell us that VanMoof is working on securing a bridge round that will help it stay afloat. Sources also claim that senior staff, including the CEO and a co-founder, as well as the president (who is also an investor) have left executive roles in the business. The company has refused to provide any on-the-record comment on its status until later this week. But the facts are plain: The company has, as of June 29 and by its own admission, stopped taking orders. VanMoof also filed paperwork, revealed in January, of its need to raise money to stave off bankruptcy. Customers, annoyed with the pauses and other delays in servicing existing bikes on the road, have turned to social media like Reddit and Twitter to air their complaints and debate whether the company is going bust or not. The first recent, visible cracks in the company appeared in late June when potential customers discovered its online ordering system was no longer working. [...] The story changed again a few days later. In response to TechCrunch's questions about the ordering system, a spokesperson said that the pause was actually intentional (a feature not a bug!). Despite the summer period being the peak season for the cycling market, a VanMoof spokesperson claimed it would be pausing orders to catch up on production and delivery. The company didn't answer any of TechCrunch's multiple questions about why VanMoof was behind on orders (supply chain issues? lacking funds?), what the company's current capacity was, how many orders were outstanding, or when VanMoof hoped to begin sales again. As of the time of publication, the sales pause was going on 12 days. Despite the pause and the other details, VanMoof had been sending out communications that imply it's business-as-usual at the e-bike company. On June 27 it announced that KwikFit NL, the car maintenance chain, would be a new service partner. The day before that it issued a firmware update and a video was posted of a panel that co-founder Taco Carlier participated in. But there have been a number of warning signs in plain sight for months that tell a different story. [...]Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Australian user data is accessible to TikTok employees based in China on a "very strict basis," the company's head of data security, Will Farrell, has said. In their first public appearance before Australian members of parliament since the government joined Canada, the US and the UK in banning TikTok from government-owned devices amid concerns about the company's connections to China, TikTok executives were questioned at length by a parliamentary committee examining foreign interference on social media. Liberal senator and chair of the committee James Paterson, who has led the opposition's push against the app, questioned how many times Australian user data had been accessed by TikTok staff based within China. Farrell could not provide the number immediately, but admitted it did happen. Farrell said there were "a number of protections in place", including that employees only get the minimum amount of access to data to do their job, and when they access that data they need to provide a business justification that needs to be approved by their manager and the database owner within TikTok. If the data is being accessed across a national border, it has to be approved by the global security team based in the US, which also monitors all data access. "Employees can't get access without a clear justification and levels of approval," Farrell said. A similar security review would apply if an employee based in China tried to change the recommendations algorithm, he said. The company's local head of public policy, Ella Woods-Joyce, said China's 2017 national security law -- which requires companies to give the government any personal data relevant to national security -- would apply to any company that had operations and staff in China. When asked on what ground TikTok would refuse to comply with the law, Woods-Joyce said TikTok had never been asked for personal data by the Chinese government and would refuse if asked. [...] It was revealed in December that employees had used the app to attempt to identify the source of a leak to journalists. Hunter told the committee that he stood by the sentiments expressed in his original article, and blamed "rogue employees" who had since been fired from the company for accessing the data. He said "serious misconduct from these rogue employees" had taken place. He said GPS location information was not collected in Australia.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to Statcounter, the Linux share on the desktop has passed 3% for the first time. GamingOnLinux reports: While it has been close a couple of times, the trend according to their stats is pretty clear that Linux use has been slowly rising over the last few years. This does not include ChromeOS, even though it's based on Linux, as they track that separately so this is just plain desktop Linux. Across this year their stats show for Linux: January - 2.91%February - 2.94%March - 2.85%April - 2.83%May - 2.7%June - 3.07%Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Amazon doesn't want to comply with Europe's Digital Services Act, and to avoid the rules the company is arguing that it doesn't meet the definition of a Very Large Online Platform under EU law. Amazon filed an appeal at the EU General Court to challenge the European Commission decision that Amazon meets the criteria and must comply with the new regulations. "We agree with the EC's objective and are committed to protecting customers from illegal products and content, but Amazon doesn't fit this description of a 'Very Large Online Platform' (VLOP) under the DSA and therefore should not be designated as such," Amazon said in a statement provided to Ars today. The Digital Services Act includes content moderation requirements, transparency rules, and protections for minors. Targeted advertising based on profiling toward children will no longer be permitted, for example. Amazon argued that the new law is supposed to "address systemic risks posed by very large companies with advertising as their primary revenue and that distribute speech and information," and not businesses that are primarily retail-based. "The vast majority of our revenue comes from our retail business," Amazon said. Amazon also claims it's unfair that some retailers with larger businesses in individual countries weren't on the list of 19 companies that must comply with the Digital Services Act. The rules only designate platforms with over 45 million active users in the EU as of February 17. Amazon said it is "not the largest retailer in any of the EU countries where we operate, and none of these largest retailers in each European country has been designated as a VLOP. If the VLOP designation were to be applied to Amazon and not to other large retailers across the EU, Amazon would be unfairly singled out and forced to meet onerous administrative obligations that don't benefit EU consumers." Those other companies Amazon referred to include Poland's Allegro or the Dutch Bol.com, according to a Bloomberg report. Neither of those platforms appears to have at least 45 million active users. A summary of the appeal provided by Amazon claimed the designation "is based on a discriminatory criterion and disproportionately violates the principle of equal treatment and the applicant's fundamental rights." In response, the EC said that "it would defend its position in court and added that Amazon still must comply with the rules by end of August, regardless of the appeal," Bloomberg wrote. "The scope of the DSA is very clear and is defined to cover all platforms that expose their users to content, including the sale of products or services, which can be illegal," the commission said in statement reported by Bloomberg. "For marketplaces as for social networks, very wide user reach increases the risks and the platforms' responsibilities to address them."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"CNN reports on a wide-ranging class action lawsuit claiming Google scraped and misused data to train its AI systems," writes long-time Slashdot reader david.emery. "This goes to the heart of what can be done with information that is available over the internet." From the report: The complaint alleges that Google "has been secretly stealing everything ever created and shared on the internet by hundreds of millions of Americans" and using this data to train its AI products, such as its chatbot Bard. The complaint also claims Google has taken "virtually the entirety of our digital footprint," including "creative and copywritten works" to build its AI products. The complaint points to a recent update to Google's privacy policy that explicitly states the company may use publicly accessible information to train its AI models and tools such as Bard. In response to an earlier Verge report on the update, the company said its policy "has long been transparent that Google uses publicly available information from the open web to train language models for services like Google Translate. This latest update simply clarifies that newer services like Bard are also included." [...] The suit is seeking injunctive relief in the form of a temporary freeze on commercial access to and commercial development of Google's generative AI tools like Bard. It is also seeking unspecified damages and payments as financial compensation to people whose data was allegedly misappropriated by Google. The firm says it has lined up eight plaintiffs, including a minor. "Google needs to understand that 'publicly available' has never meant free to use for any purpose," Tim Giordano, one of the attorneys at Clarkson bringing the suit against Google, told CNN in an interview. "Our personal information and our data is our property, and it's valuable, and nobody has the right to just take it and use it for any purpose." The plaintiffs, the Clarkson Law Firm, previously filed a similar lawsuit against OpenAI last month.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cancer cells-to-be accumulate a series of specific genetic changes in a predictable and sequential way years before they are identifiable as pre-malignancies, researchers at Stanford Medicine have found. Stanford Medicine blog: Many of these changes affect pathways that control cell division, structure and internal messaging -- leaving the cells poised to go bad long before any visible signs or symptoms occur. The study is the first to exhaustively observe the natural evolution of the earliest stages of human cancers, starting with cells that have a single cancer-priming mutation and culminating with a panel of descendants harboring a galaxy of genetic abnormalities. Identifying the first steps associated with future cancer development could not only facilitate earlier-than-ever diagnosis -- when a deadly outcome is but a twinkle in a rogue cell's eye -- but may also highlight novel interventions that could stop the disease in its tracks, the researchers say. "Ideally, we would find ways to intercept this progression before the cells become truly cancerous," said Christina Curtis, PhD, professor of medicine, of genetics and of biomedical data science. "Can we identify a minimal constellation of genetic alterations that imply the cell will progress? And, if so, can we intervene? The striking reproducibility in the genetic changes we observed from multiple donors suggests it's possible."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Birds have never shied away from turning human rubbish into nesting materials, but even experts in the field have raised an eyebrow at the latest handiwork to emerge from urban crows and magpies. From a report: Nests recovered from trees in Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Antwerp in Belgium were found to be constructed almost entirely from strips of long metal spikes that are often attached to buildings to deter birds from setting up home on the structures. The discovery prompted researchers at the Natural History Museum in Rotterdam and the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden to scour the internet for further examples, leading to the identification of two more anti-bird spike nests: one in Enschede in the Netherlands and another in Glasgow. "I really thought I'd seen it all," said Kees Moeliker, the director of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam, who studied the crow's nest found during tree maintenance near the city's main railway station. "I didn't expect this. These anti-bird spikes are meant to deter birds, they are supposed to scare them off, but on the contrary, the birds just utilise them." While the Rotterdam nest was made by crows, the other three were built by magpies, which construct large dome-like nests. The crows used the anti-bird spikes as a sturdy construction material, but the magpies may have appreciated their intended use: they placed most of the spikes on the nest's roof where they could deter predators, including other birds and weasels. [...] It is not the first time birds have been found to incorporate urban materials into their nests. In 1933, a South African museum reported a crow's nest fashioned from hard-drawn copper, galvanised iron and barbed wire. Nails, screws and even drug users' syringes have all found their way into birds' nests.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An artificial intelligence researcher who co-authored one of Google's most influential papers in the field is leaving the company to launch a startup. From a report: Llion Jones, who helped write the pioneering AI paper "Attention Is All You Need," confirmed to Bloomberg that he will depart Google Japan later this month. He said he plans to start a company after taking time off. "It was not an easy decision leaving Google, it's been a fantastic decade with them but it's time to try something different," Jones wrote in a message to Bloomberg. "It also feels like good timing to build something new given the momentum and progress in AI."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mark Lucovsky, the former head of operating systems on Google's augmented reality team, has left the company. From a report: In a tweet on Monday, Lucovsky says "changes in AR leadership and Google's unstable commitment and vision" contributed to his decision. Lucovsky's departure adds to the numerous challenges Google's AR team has faced in recent months, including a round of layoffs and the resignation of Google's former head of VR, Clay Bavor. In June, a report from Insider indicated that Google has given up on its plans to build AR glasses, codenamed Project Iris. It's also discontinued the enterprise edition of Google Glass.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Roger Thomas Clark, also known as Variety Jones, will spend much of the rest of his life in prison for his key role in building the world's first dark web drug market. Wired: Nearly ten years ago, the sprawling dark web drug market known as the Silk Road was torn offline in a law enforcement operation coordinated by the FBI, whose agents arrested that black market's boss, Ross Ulbricht, in a San Francisco library. It would take two years for Ulbricht's second-in-command -- an elusive figure known as Variety Jones -- to be tracked down and arrested in Thailand. Today, a decade after the Silk Road's demise, Clark has been sentenced to join his former boss in federal prison. In a Manhattan courtroom on Monday, Roger Thomas Clark -- also known by his online handles including Variety Jones, Cimon and Plural of Mongoose -- was sentenced to 20 years behind bars for his role in building and running Silk Road. Clark, a 62-year-old Canadian national, will now likely spend much of the rest of his life incarcerated for helping to pioneer the anonymous, cryptocurrency-based model for online illegal sales of drugs and other contraband that still persists on the dark web today. The sentence is the maximum Clark faced in accordance with the plea agreement he made with prosecutors. Clark "misguidedly turned his belief that drugs should be legal into material assistance for a criminal enterprise," Judge Sidney Stein said in his sentencing statement. "These beliefs crossed over into patently illegal behavior." Stein added that Clark was "clear-eyed and intentional" in his work as Ulbricht's "right-hand man" in the Silk Road's operations. "The sentence must reflect the vast criminal enterprise of which he was a leader," Stein said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The number of coins circulating in Japan has fallen by an unprecedented amount, suggesting the nation's households are coming to the end of their long love affair with the piggy bank. From a report: The national stock of coins rose steadily since 1970, but has fallen sharply on a year-on-year basis for 18 straight months, according to Bank of Japan data. The turnround has been sparked by a combination of the Covid pandemic, banking fees, inflation and the rise of cashless payment technology. The popularity of cashless payments -- which some have linked with the idea that coins were perceived as "dirty" and a vector for Covid -- accelerated sharply in 2022. Cashless transactions accounted for 36 per cent of all consumer payments, compared with 15 per cent a decade earlier. Analysts said the public's shift away from coins may also signal a wider change in Japanese attitudes towards saving. The sharpest drop has been in circulation of the largest denomination 500 Yen ($3.5) coin. This is the most common coin given to children to keep in their piggy banks, a tradition that seeks to establish solid patterns of saving and deferred gratification at an early age.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel has decided to stop making its Next Unit of Computing (NUC), but the company will encourage partners to keep making the small form-factor (SFF) PCs, the company said Tuesday. From a report: Intel's NUC championed compact PCs, while leaving larger chassis options to partners like Dell and HP. But Intel's decision seems like a natural one, given that Intel has refocused on its core businesses during a period in which it also invested heavily in its own manufacturing operations and foundry business. An Intel spokesman confirmed an initial report by Serve The Home, saying that Intel will continue to support the existing NUCs it has already shipped into the market. "We have decided to stop direct investment in the Next Unit of Compute (NUC) Business and pivot our strategy to enable our ecosystem partners to continue NUC innovation and growth," the Intel spokesman said in an email.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Burger King is causing a stir in Thailand with its new offering: a burger with no meat and a jaw-dropping amount of cheese. From a report: This week, the Thai operator of the fast food chain introduced what it calls the "real cheeseburger," a bun filled with as many as 20 slices of American cheese. The item launched on Thai menus Sunday, at a reduced price of 109 Thai baht ($3.1), compared with the usual price of 380 baht ($10.9). It quickly went viral on social media in Thailand, with many users on TikTok posting videos of them trying the new sandwich. "This is no joke. This is for real," Burger King said in a Sunday social media post. At one Burger King branch in Bangkok on Tuesday, a shift manager was overheard saying the outlet had to stop taking delivery orders so they could have enough stock left for walk-in diners.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A California judge is allowing Microsoft to close its acquisition of Activision Blizzard after five days of grueling testimony. From a report: Microsoft still faces an ongoing antitrust case by the Federal Trade Commission, but Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley has listened to arguments from both the FTC and Microsoft and decided to deny the regulator's request for a preliminary injunction. In a ruling submitted today, Judge Corley said the following: Microsoft's acquisition of Activision has been described as the largest in tech history. It deserves scrutiny. That scrutiny has paid off: Microsoft has committed in writing, in public, and in court to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for 10 years on parity with Xbox. It made an agreement with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to Switch. And it entered several agreements to for the first time bring Activision's content to several cloud gaming services. This Court's responsibility in this case is narrow. It is to decide if, notwithstanding these current circumstances, the merger should be halted -- perhaps even terminated -- pending resolution of the FTC administrative action. For the reasons explained, the Court finds the FTC has not shown a likelihood it will prevail on its claim this particular vertical merger in this specific industry may substantially lessen competition. To the contrary, the record evidence points to more consumer access to Call of Duty and other Activision content. The motion for a preliminary injunction is therefore DENIED.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The European Commission is poised to break a promise to outlaw all but the most essential of Europe's hazardous chemicals, leaked documents show. Bruce66423 shares a report: The pledge to "ban the most harmful chemicals in consumer products, allowing their use only where essential" was a flagship component of the European green deal when it was launched in 2020. It was expected that between 7,000 and 12,000 hazardous substances would be prohibited from use in all saleable products in an update to the EU's Reach regulation, including many "forever chemicals" -- or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) -- which accumulate in nature and human bodies, and have been linked to various hormonal, reproductive and carcinogenic illnesses. But the Guardian has learned that the EU's executive is on the brink of a climbdown under heavy pressure from Europe's chemical industry and rightwing political parties. The industry-led backlash is causing internal disquiet over the threat to public health and policymaking. One EU official said: "We are being pushed to be less strict on industry all the time."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anthropic, an artificial intelligence startup positioning itself as the builder of a safer kind of chatbot, has released a new version of its AI bot, named Claude. From a report: Anthropic said that Claude 2 is available to anyone in the US or UK online at claude.ai, and businesses can access it via an application programming interface. The new release on Tuesday comes several months after Anthropic began offering an earlier version of Claude to businesses that wanted to add it to their products. Previously, the bot was tested by a handful of companies including Quora, which built it into an app called Poe that lets users ask questions. Like its predecessor, Claude 2 is built atop a large language model and can be used for written tasks like summarizing, searching, answering questions and coding. Both models can currently take in large chunks of text -- a user can ask it to summarize a book, for instance -- though Claude 2 can generate longer responses than its predecessor. Responses can reach up to about 3,000 words, according to data provided by the company. Claude 2 will also offer more accurate responses on some topics, such as coding and grade-school-level math, the company said. Anthropic's goal has been for Claude to be less susceptible than other chatbots to manipulation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tencent's WeChat said on Tuesday that iPhone maker Apple had opened a store on its social media platform, marking an expansion of the U.S. firm's retail channels in the world's second largest economy. From a report: The announcement by WeChat, China's dominant messaging app which also provides e-commerce, livestreaming and payment services, said users would be able to buy Apple products including iPhones, iPads and Macs from the store. The move by Apple comes as Chinese consumers increasingly turn to social media platforms such as WeChat and ByteDance's Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, to shop.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Disgraced Theranos co-founder Elizabeth Holmes' prison sentence has been reduced by two years, according to the Bureau of Prisons records. Holmes was sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison for defrauding investors by claiming her blood-testing company provided quick and reliable results but she was found to have lied about the reliability of those tests. Holmes surrendered to the Bureau of Prisons in California on May 30 to serve out her sentence at a minimum-security all-female federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas. Less than two months after she reported to prison, her sentence was quietly changed, with her new release date scheduled for December 29, 2032, the Bureau's site says. The Bureau has not provided additional information for why Holmes' projected release date was shortened, but its site says an inmate's good behavior, substance abuse program completion, and time credits they receive for activities and programs they've completed can result in a lessened sentence. Only last month, Theranos' former president and chief operating officer Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani's 13-year sentence was likewise reduced by two years, making his new projected release date April 11, 2034. Holmes is serving out her remaining nine-year sentence at FPC Bryan, an all-female prison camp, where the women adhere to a strict schedule requiring them to begin work at 6 a.m. each day. Those who are considered eligible to work are assigned jobs earning between 12 cents and $1.15 an hour in roles like food service and factory employment.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to Variety, Hulu is launching a new sub-brand focused on adult animation and anime called Animayhem. From the report: The new hub is meant to capitalize on Hulu's already popular lineup of adult animation and anime shows. Series like "American Dad," "Bob's Burgers," "Family Guy," "Futurama" and "King of the Hill" consistently rank among the service's top 10 shows based on hours streamed, per Hulu. So far this year, over one billion hours of adult animation content has been streamed on Hulu, along with over 288 million hours of anime content, the streamer claims. Hulu currently has 46 adult animated series, which adds up to 174 seasons and 2,600 episodes. For anime, Hulu has 17 films and 272 series, adding up to 435 seasons and 18,400 episodes (including subtitled and English dubbed versions of episodes). As part of the launch, Hulu is debuting a range of ads for Animayhem, which they describe as the "Animation Destination," one of which can be seen below. "When you have the number one offering in adult animation and anime of any major streaming service, creating this destination is obvious. We know exactly where we can meet these fans, because they're already here," said Barrie Gruner, Hulu's executive vice president of marketing and publicity, in an interview with Variety. "I would say that this brand really cements Hulu as the ultimate streaming destination for animation and we're not going to achieve that with single title campaigns," Gruner said. "This is truly an intersection with our original programming and our library." Animayhem will also be coming to San Diego Comic-Con via an immersive experience dubbed "Hulu Animayhem: Into the Second Dimension."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Popular Science describes how NASA's Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) will use a pair of ramps to become the first rover to explore the Moon's south pole when it arrives in late 2024. From the report: "We all know how to work with ramps, and we just need to optimize it for the environment we're going to be in," says NASA's VIPER program manager Daniel Andrews. A VIPER test vehicle recently descended down a pair of metal ramps at NASA's Ames Research Center in California, as seen in the agency's recently published photos, with one beam for each set of the rover's wheels. Because the terrain where VIPER will land -- the edge of the massive Nobile Crater -- is expected to be rough, the engineering team has been testing VIPER's ability to descend the ramps at extreme angles. They have altered the steepness, as measured from the lander VIPER will descend from, and differences in elevation between the ramp for each wheel. "We have two ramps, not just for the left and right wheels, but a ramp set that goes out the back too," Andrews says. "So we actually get our pick of the litter, which one looks most safe and best to navigate as we're at that moment where we have to roll off the lander." VIPER is a scientific successor to NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS mission, which in 2009 confirmed the presence of water ice on the lunar south pole. "It completely rewrote the books on the moon with respect to water," says Andrews, who also worked on the LCROSS mission. "That really started the moon rush, commercially, and by state actors like NASA and other space agencies." The ice, if abundant, could be mined to create rocket propellant. It could also provide water for other purposes at long-term lunar habitats, which NASA plans to construct in the late 2020s as part of the Artemis moon program. But LCROSS only confirmed that ice was definitely present in a single crater at the moon's south pole. VIPER, a mobile rover, will probe the distribution of water ice in greater detail. Drilling beneath the lunar surface is one task. Another is to move into steep, permanently shadowed regions -- entering craters that, due to their sharp geometry, and the low angle of the sun at the lunar poles, have not seen sunlight in billions of years. The tests demonstrate the rover can navigate a 15-degree slope with ease -- enough to explore these hidden dark spots, avoiding the need to make a machine designed for trickier descents. "We think there's plenty of scientifically relevant opportunities, without having to make a superheroic rover that can do crazy things," Andrews says. Developed by NASA Ames and Pittsburgh-based company Astrobotic, VIPER is a square golf-cart-sized vehicle about 5 feet long and wide, and about 8 feet high. Unlike all of NASA's Mars rovers, VIPER has four wheels, not six. "A problem with six wheels is it creates kind of the equivalent of a track, and so you're forced to drive in a certain way," Andrews says. VIPER's four wheels are entirely independent from each other. Not only can they roll in any direction, they can be turned out, using the rover's shoulder-like joints to crawl out of the soft regolith of the kind scientists believe exists in permanently shadowed moon craters. The wheels themselves are very similar to those on the Mars rovers, but with more paddle-like treads, known as grousers, to carry the robot through fluffy regolith. [...] Together with Astrobotic, Andrews and his team have altered the ramps, and they now include specialized etchings down their lengths. The rover can detect this pattern along the rampway, using cameras in its wheel wells. "By just looking down there," the robot knows where it is, he says. "That's a new touch." Andrews is sure VIPER will be ready for deployment in 2024, however many tweaks are necessary. After all, this method is less complicated than a sky crane, he notes: "Ramps are pretty tried and true."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The hush at the end of the musical performance. The pause in a dramatic speech. The muted moment when you turn off the car. What is it that we hear when we hear nothing at all? Are we detecting silence? Or are we just hearing nothing and interpreting that absence as silence? The "Sound of Silence" is a philosophical question that made for one of Simon & Garfunkel's most enduring songs, but it's also a subject that can be tested by psychologists. In a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers used a series of sonic illusions to show that people perceive silences much as they hear sounds. While the study offers no insight into how our brains might be processing silence, the results suggest that people perceive silence as its own type of "sound," not just as a gap between noises. The researchers tested people recruited online with a series of sound illusions. The first test compared a single longer sound with two shorter sounds. The two shorter sounds together added up to the same amount of time as the longer sound. But when people listened to them, they perceived the single sound as lasting longer. To apply that illusion to silence, [Rui Zhe Goh, a graduate student in cognitive science and philosophy at Johns Hopkins University] and colleagues inverted the test. The scientists used sounds of restaurants, busy marketplaces, trains or playgrounds, and inserted chunks of silence for participants to compare. The researchers supposed that if people perceive silences as their own type of sound, then silences should be subject to the same illusion as the sounds. One long silence should be perceived as longer than the total of two shorter silences. But if people perceive silence as a lack of sound, the illusion might not exist. Other tests placed silence in different contexts to produce more sonic illusions. In every case they tested, listeners perceived the illusion of a period of silence being longer just as they would have perceived an illusion of a longer sound. [...] Although the researchers did not study how people's brains responded to silence, Mr. Goh suggested that existing research supported the idea that some neurons and neural processes were involved in the perception of silence. And knowing that we do perceive silence makes silence that much, er, louder: "Silence is a real experience," Mr. Goh said. Maybe we'll all pay more attention to moments of quiet once we know we can hear the "sounds" of silence.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, the majority of Americans (59%) say TikTok is a threat to the national security of the United States. Variety reports: The findings from Pew Research Center's survey of U.S. adults come as TikTok, the popular short-form video app owned by Chinese internet conglomerate ByteDance, continues to be targeted by American lawmakers wary over its ties to China and how TikTok handles user data. Just 17% of Americans say the platform is not a threat to national security, while 23% say they are unsure, per the Pew survey. Opinions about the national security threat posed by TikTok differ by political affiliation and age. Roughly 70% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say TikTok is either a minor or major threat to national security in the U.S., compared with 53% of Democrats and Democratic leaners. The perception of TikTok as a threat also varies by age: Just 13% of adults 18-29 say TikTok is a "major" threat; that rises to 24% among those 30-49, 35% among those 50-64; and 46% among Americans 65 and older. Not surprisingly, adults who do not use TikTok are more likely than those who do to consider it a national security risk. Among non-users, 65% say the app is a security threat, including 36% who view it as a major threat. Among TikTok users, just 9% see it as a major threat and about one-third say it's a minor threat. The Pew survey was conducted May 15-21, 2023. [...] A survey Pew Research Center conducted in March found that 50% of Americans support a U.S. government ban on TikTok, while 22% were opposed and 28% were unsure.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Evernote, the note-taking and task management application, is triggering fears of closure after its parent company Bending Spoon laid off most of the company's staff and announced plans to relocate all operations to Europe. Thurrott reports: Most of the company's "operations will be transitioned to Europe," Bending Spoons CEO Luca Ferrari told SFGate, due to the "significant boost in operational efficiency that will come as a consequence of centralizing operations in Europe." As a result, most of Evernote's staff in the San Francisco Bay area and Chile has been laid off and those offices will be closed for good. Bending Spoons won't confirm how many Evernote employees it laid off, but Ferrari claims all is well. "Our plans for Evernote are as ambitious as ever," he said. "Going forward, a growing, dedicated team based in Europe will continue to assume ownership of the Evernote product. This team will also be in an ideal position to leverage the extensive expertise and strength of the 400-plus workforce at Bending Spoons, many of whom have been working on Evernote full-time since the acquisition." Paul Thurrott notes that Bending Spoons announced plans to acquire Evernote in November 2022. "At the time of the announcement, Mr. Ferrari said that he 'saw the potential' in Evernote, which has struggled in recent years after being a Silicon Valley startup darling a decade or more ago."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is testing its Med-PaLM 2 AI chat technology at the Mayo Clinic and other hospitals. It's based on the company's PaLM 2 large language model (LLM) that underpins Bard, Google's ChatGPT rival. Engadget reports: Unlike the base model, Med-PaLM-2 has been trained on questions and answer from medical licensing exams, along with a curated set of medical expert demonstrations. That gives it expertise in answering health-related questions, and it can also do labor-intensive tasks like summarizing documents and organizing research data, according to the report. During I/O, Google released (PDF) a paper detailing its work on Med-PaLM2. On the positive side, it demonstrated features like "alignment with medical consensus," reasoning ability, and even the ability to generate answers that were preferred by respondents over physician-generated responses. More negatively, it showed the same accuracy problems we've seen on other Chat AI models. In an internal email seen by the WSJ, Google said it believes the updated model could "be of tremendous value in countries that have more limited access to doctors." Still, Google has admitted that the technology is still in its early stages. "I don't feel that this kind of technology is yet at a place where I would want it in my family's healthcare journey," said Google senior research director Greg Corrado. However, he added that the tech "takes the places in healthcare where AI can be beneficial and expands them by 10-fold."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: If you're printing something on actual paper, there's a good chance it's important, like a tax form or a job contract. But popular printing products and services won't promise not to read it. In fact, they won't even promise not to share it with outside marketing firms. The spread of digital file-sharing -- along with obnoxious business practices by printing manufacturers -- has pushed many U.S. households to give up at-home printers and rely on nearby printing services instead. At the same time, major printer manufacturers have adopted mobile apps and cloud-based storage, creating new opportunities to collect personal data from customers. Whether you're walking to the corner store or sending your files to the cloud, it's tough to figure out whether you're printing in private. Ideally, printing services should avoid storing the content of your files, or at least delete daily. Print services should also communicate clearly upfront what information they're collecting and why. Some services, like the New York Public Library and PrintWithMe, do both. Others dodged our questions about what data they collect, how long they store it and whom they share it with. Some -- including Canon, FedEx and Staples -- declined to answer basic questions about their privacy practices. Wondering whether your printer app or printing service stores the content of your documents? Here's The Washington Post Help Desk's at-a-glance guide to printer privacy. Here's a summary of each company's privacy policy as it pertains to storing the content of your files: HP: HP's privacy policy states that it does not store the content of files when using their printers or HP Smart app, providing reassurance that they do not invade privacy by snooping into print jobs.Canon: Canon's privacy policy indicates that it can collect personal data, including files and content, which may be used for marketing purposes. However, Canon did not disclose whether they store, use, or share the content of printed documents.FedEx: FedEx's privacy policy states that it collects user-uploaded information, including the contents of documents uploaded for printing services, leaving room for potential advertising or sharing with third parties. Although FedEx prioritizes customer privacy, it did not specify the extent of encryption or whether document content is included.UPS: While the UPS Store, a subsidiary of UPS, can store the contents of printed documents, it does not use this information for marketing or advertising without user consent. The storage duration is undisclosed, but UPS honors customer requests for data deletion.Staples: According to Staples' privacy policy, the company can store personal data such as copy/print materials, driver's license numbers, passport numbers, and mail contents. They may also use copy/print materials for advertising. The duration of data storage is not disclosed.PrintWithMe: PrintWithMe, a company placing printers in shared spaces, temporarily stores printed documents with a third-party cloud provider for 24 hours. CEO Jonathan Treble assures that the data is never used for advertising.Your local library: The New York Public Library, one of the largest library systems, does not store the contents of printed documents. Their computers only retain file names and delete them at the end of the day. However, privacy policies may vary among different libraries, so it is advisable to inquire beforehand.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: No one in the Android ecosystem can hold a candle to Apple's software support timeline for the iPhone, but there is one company that comes the closest: Fairphone. Following in the footsteps of the Fairphone 2, the Fairphone 3 is also getting an Android-industry-best seven years of OS support. Fairphone continues to run circles around giant tech companies that have a lot more resources than it does, and it's doing this even in the face of component vendors like Qualcomm dropping support for the phone's core components. The company announced today that the Fairphone 3, which was released in 2019, has had its support extended to 2026, making for seven years of updates. The company also just released Android 13 for the Fairphone 3. Google's own 2019 phone, the Pixel 4, shut down support in October 2022. Fairphone strives to make sustainable smartphones, designing its products to be repairable and also offering replacement parts for sale online. Part of that sustainability mission is an absolutely herculean effort to keep the Android updates flowing, even when Qualcomm drops critical software support for the SoC. Fairphone says the Snapdragon 632 SoC in the Fairphone 3 was only supported up to Android 11, so continuing to support the Fairphone 3 meant doing the upgrades all by itself.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last week, Meta's new Twitter competitor, Threads, was launched to the public and achieved an impressive milestone by surpassing 30 million sign-ups in less than 24 hours. This made Threads the fastest app to reach the 1 million users mark, beating ChatGPT's record. In a recent update, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the social media app has now exceeded 100 million users, just days after its initial launch. The Verge reports: Instagram head Adam Mosseri also posted about it, likewise noting that it took just five days to get there. Users aren't just signing up: they're posting, too. As of Thursday, my colleague Alex Heath reported that there have already been more than 95 million posts and 190 million likes shared on the app. That said, Threads is still in its infancy, and we'll have to wait and see if it captures the same cultural cachet that Twitter once did. Meta isn't specifically targeting trying to replace Twitter, according to Instagram head Adam Mosseri, and the company isn't going to actively encourage politics and hard news on the platform, but it could end up being the place people go for a conversation-based social media platform. And while Meta "couldn't be more psyched" about how the launch week has gone, "we don't even know if this thing is retentive yet," Mosseri said. Although the numbers aren't directly comparable, as of last November Twitter had around 260 million monetizable daily active users, per a tweet from owner Elon Musk at the time. More recently, The Wall Street Journal reports it's been telling advertisers that it has around 535 million monetizable monthly active users.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Linus Torvalds has delivered the first release candidate for version 6.5 of the Linux kernel, but warned this release may not go entirely smoothly. From a report: Torvalds's headline assessment of rc1 is "none of it looks hugely unusual." "The biggest single mention probably goes to what wasn't merged, with the bcachefs pull request resulting in a long thread (we didn't hit a hundred emails yet, but it's not far away)." As The Register reported in 2022, bcachefs is a filesystem that's been in development for nigh on a decade without being added to the kernel. Kernel-watching outlet Phoronix on Sunday wrote that the filesystem is in good shape but debate over "code changes needed to the kernel outside of the kernel module itself" have proved contentious. As a result, conversation on the Linux kernel mailing list is "often becoming heated" when the topic turns to bcachefs. In his announcement post for rc1, Torvalds wrote "Let's calm this party down."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Workers at Sega of America have voted to unionize. Engadget reports: In a union representation election with the National Labor Relations Board, the workers voted 91-26 in favor of their unit, which is called the Allied Employees Guild Improving Sega (AEGIS-CWA). Nineteen ballots were challenged, while three were void. As a result, the group has now officially organized with the Communication Workers of America. The unit comprises more than 200 workers in various departments across the company, including the brand marketing, games as a service, localization, marketing services, product development, sales and quality assurance teams. While it's hardly the first games union in North America, the workers say it's "the largest multi-department union of organized workers in the entire gaming industry." However, ZeniMax Workers United/CWA includes around 300 quality assurance workers at ZeniMax Studios. AEGIS-CWA plans to push for improved base pay and benefits, more staff to "eliminate overwork patterns" and more balanced workloads. The workers are also seeking remote work options, clearly defined responsibilities for each role and more.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Vietnam understands the value of education and manages its teachers well. From a report: Their children go through one of the best schooling systems in the world, a status reflected in outstanding performances in international assessments of reading, maths and science. The latest data from the World Bank show that, on aggregate learning scores, Vietnamese students outperform not only their counterparts in Malaysia and Thailand but also those in Britain and Canada, countries more than six times richer. Even in Vietnam itself, student scores do not exhibit the scale of inequality so common elsewhere between the genders and different regions. A child's propensity to learn is the result of several factors -- many of which begin at home with parents and the environment they grow up in. But that is not enough to explain Vietnam's stellar performance. Its distinctive secret lies in the classroom: its children learn more at school, especially in the early years. In a study in 2020, Abhijeet Singh of the Stockholm School of Economics gauged the greater productivity of Vietnam's schools by examining data from identical tests taken by students in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam. He showed that between the ages of five and eight Vietnamese children race ahead. One more year of education in Vietnam increases the probability that a child can solve a simple multiplication problem by 21 percentage points; in India the uplift is six points. Vietnamese schools, unlike those in other poor countries, have improved over time. A study published in 2022 by researchers at the Centre for Global Development, a think-tank based in Washington, dc, found that in 56 of 87 developing countries the quality of education had deteriorated since the 1960s. Vietnam is one of a small minority of countries where schools have consistently bucked this trend.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The European Commission today decided it is safe for personal data to be transferred from the European Union to US-based companies, handing a victory to firms like Facebook and Google despite protests from privacy advocates who worry about US government surveillance. The commission announced that it "adopted its adequacy decision for the EU-US Data Privacy Framework," concluding "that the United States ensures an adequate level of protection -- comparable to that of the European Union -- for personal data transferred from the EU to US companies under the new framework. On the basis of the new adequacy decision, personal data can flow safely from the EU to US companies participating in the Framework, without having to put in place additional data protection safeguards." In May, Facebook-owner Meta was fined 1.2 billion euros for violating the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) with transfers of personal data to the United States and was ordered to stop storing European Union user data in the US within six months. But Meta said at the time that if the pending data-transfer pact "comes into effect before the implementation deadlines expire, our services can continue as they do today without any disruption or impact on users." The data-transfer deal "is expected to face a legal challenge from European privacy advocates, who have long said that the US needs to make substantial changes to surveillance laws," a Wall Street Journal report said today. "Transfers of data from Europe to the US have been in question since an EU court ruled in 2020 that a previous deal allowing trans-Atlantic data flows was illegal because the US didn't give EU individuals an effective way to challenge surveillance of their data by the US government." The EC's announcement said the new framework has "binding safeguards to address all the concerns raised by the European Court of Justice, including limiting access to EU data by US intelligence services to what is necessary and proportionate, and establishing a Data Protection Review Court (DPRC), to which EU individuals will have access." The new court "will be able to order the deletion" of data that is found to have been collected in violation of the new rules. The framework will be administered and monitored by the US Department of Commerce and the "US Federal Trade Commission will enforce US companies' compliance," the EC announcement said. EU residents who challenge data collection will have free access to "independent dispute resolution mechanisms and an arbitration panel." US companies can join the EU-US framework "by committing to comply with a detailed set of privacy obligations, for instance the requirement to delete personal data when it is no longer necessary for the purpose for which it was collected, and to ensure continuity of protection when personal data is shared with third parties," the European Commission said. The latest deal is expected to get challenged, according to the WSJ. European Parliament member Birgit Sippel, who is in Germany's Social Democratic Party, said the "framework does not provide any meaningful safeguards against indiscriminate surveillance conducted by US intelligence agencies," according to The New York Times. The Computer & Communications Industry Association, which represents major tech companies like Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta, said: "Today's decision means that EU and US businesses will soon have full legal certainty again to transfer personal data across the Atlantic... Data flows are vital to transatlantic trade and the EU-US economic relationship, which is worth 5.5 trillion euros per year. Nevertheless, the two economies had been left without guidelines for data transfers after an EU Court ruling invalidated the previous framework back in 2020."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Massachusetts lawmakers are weighing a near total ban on buying and selling of location data drawn from consumers' mobile devices in the state, in what would be a first-in-the-nation effort to rein in a billion-dollar industry. From a report: The legislature held a hearing last month on a bill called the Location Shield Act, a sweeping proposal that would sharply curtail the practice of collecting and selling location data drawn from mobile phones in Massachusetts. The proposal would also institute a warrant requirement for law-enforcement access to location data, banning data brokers from providing location information about state residents without court authorization in most circumstances. Location data is typically collected through mobile apps and other digital services and doesn't include information such as a name or a phone number. But often, a device's movement patterns are enough to derive a possible identity of its owner. For example, where a phone spends its evening and overnight hours is usually the owner's home address and can be cross-checked against other databases for additional insight. The Massachusetts proposal is part of a flurry of state-level activity to better protect the digital privacy of residents in the absence of a comprehensive national law. Ten states have enacted privacy laws in recent years under both Republican and Democratic-controlled legislatures. Several bipartisan proposals are under consideration in Congress but have failed to gain traction.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: If you have any interest in retro-computing, you know it can be difficult to round up the last official bug fixes and updates available for early Internet-era versions of Windows like 95, 98, and NT 4.0. A new independent project called "Windows Update Restored" is aiming to fix that, hosting lightly modified versions of old Windows Update sites and the update files themselves so that fresh installs of these old operating systems can grab years' worth of fixes that aren't present on old install CDs and disks. These old versions of Windows relied primarily on a Windows Update web app to function rather than built-in updaters like the ones used in current Windows versions. Microsoft took down the version of the site that could scan and update Windows 95 and 98 sometime in mid-2011. The Windows Update Restored site is a lightly modified version of Microsoft's original code, and the site itself doesn't use any kind of SSL or TLS encryption, so ancient Internet Explorer versions can still access it without modification. You'll need at least Internet Explorer 5 to access the Windows Update Restored update sites; that browser is no longer available directly from Microsoft, but the Windows Update Restored site offers download links to IE5 and IE5.5 in all supported languages.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chinese customs have apprehended a man attempting the biggest on-the-person CPU smuggling feat we have seen reported. From a report: The perp was stopped at Qingmao Port as he sought to cross from Macau to mainland China with 306 CPUs fashioned into a girdle around his waist. According to China's People's Daily, the smuggler gave himself away as he "was walking in an abnormal posture." We aren't surprised if the smuggler wasn't comfortable, as 306 CPUs weighing 50 g per unit would be over 15 kg (about 33 pounds). Moreover, we have to factor in paper and tape packaging materials, as shown in the images. Another report on this smuggling attempt, posted by Hong Kong's On News, says that the male passenger didn't just wear the CPU 'girdle' around his waist. Some of the 306 CPU payload was taped to his legs. In the images, you can see the slim passenger wearing a black loose-fitting sports shirt. The topmost image shows the shirt rolled up from the waist.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.K.'s largest NHS trust has confirmed it's investigating a ransomware incident as the country's public sector continues to battle a rising wave of cyberattacks. From a report: Barts Health NHS Trust, which runs five London-based hospitals and serves more than 2.5 million patients, was recently added to the dark web leak site of the ALPHV ransomware gang. The gang, also known as BlackCat, says it has stolen 70 terabytes of sensitive data in what it claims is the biggest breach of healthcare data in the United Kingdom. Samples of the allegedly stolen data, seen by TechCrunch, include employee identification documents, including passports and driver licenses, and internal emails labeled "confidential." When asked by TechCrunch, a Barts Health spokesperson did not dispute that it was affected by a security incident that involved the exfiltration of data, nor did they dispute the legitimacy of the stolen data samples shared by ALPHV. "We are aware of claims of a ransomware attack and are urgently investigating," the spokesperson, who did not provide their name, told TechCrunch.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Video Game History Foundation: The Video Game History Foundation, in partnership with the Software Preservation Network, has conducted the first ever study on the commercial availability of classic video games, and the results are bleak. 87% of classic video games released in the United States are critically endangered. Imagine if the only way to watch Titanic was to find a used VHS tape, and maintain your own vintage equipment so that you could still watch it. And what if no library, not even the Library of Congress, could do any better -- they could keep and digitize that VHS of Titanic, but you'd have to go all the way there to watch it. It sounds crazy, but that's the reality we live in with video games, a $180 billion industry, while the games and their history disappear. For accessing nearly 9 in 10 classic games, there are few options: seek out and maintain vintage collectible games and hardware, travel across the country to visit a library, or... piracy. None of those options are desirable, which means that most video games are inaccessible to all but the most diehard and dedicated fans. That's pretty grim! This is where libraries and archives should come in. Anyone should be able to easily explore, research and play classic video games, in the same way that they can read classic novels, listen to classic albums, and watch classic movies. But outdated copyright laws are preventing institutions like ours from doing our jobs.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Some two dozen central banks across emerging and advanced economies are expected to have digital currencies in circulation by the end of the decade, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) found in a survey published on Monday. From a report: Central banks around the globe have been studying and working on digital versions of their currencies for retail use to avoid leaving digital payments to the private sector amid an accelerating decline of cash. Some are also looking at wholesale versions for transactions between financial institutions. Most of the new Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) will emerge in the retail space, where eleven central banks could join peers in the Bahamas, the Eastern Caribbean, Jamaica and Nigeria which already run live digital retail currencies, the BIS found in its survey of 86 central banks conducted late 2022. On the wholesale side, which in future could allow financial institutions to access new functionalities thanks to tokenisation, nine central banks could launch CBDCs, the BIS said. "Enhancing cross-border payments is among the key drivers of central banks' work on wholesale CBDCs," the authors of the report wrote.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new series in China tells the story of a scrappy startup developing the advanced chipmaking technology that multinational trade sanctions today are keeping out of the country. From a report: Airing on Alibaba's Netflix-like Youku from Monday, My Chinese Chip hits on a priority issue for the Beijing government -- semiconductor leadership and self-sufficiency -- and depicts a state-supported firm successfully building lasers for deep ultraviolet lithography machines. An escalating trade war between the US and China has barred the best such DUV gear, provided by ASML, from being sold in the Asian country. My Chinese Chip shows a domestic company overcoming a plethora of challenges to nevertheless succeed. Its trailer opens with a single line in English: "We are executing a lithography machine trading war against China's government." The title can also be read as a pun on My Chinese Heart, as "chip" and "heart" sound the same in Chinese. Its official name in English is The Best Chip.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Comedian Sarah Silverman and two authors have filed copyright infringement lawsuits against Meta and OpenAI for allegedly using their content without permission to train artificial intelligence language models. From a report: The proposed class action lawsuits filed by Silverman, Richard Kadrey and Christopher Golden in San Francisco federal court Friday allege Facebook parent company Meta and ChatGPT maker OpenAI used copyrighted material to train chat bots. The lawsuits underscore the legal risks developers of chat bots face when using troves of copyrighted material to create apps that deliver realistic responses to user prompts. Silverman, Kadrey and Golden allege Meta and OpenAI used their books without authorization to develop their so-called large language models, which their makers pitch as powerful tools for automating tasks by replicating human conversation. In their lawsuit against Meta, the plaintiffs allege that leaked information about the company's artificial intelligence business shows their work was used without permission.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Taiwan's Foxconn has withdrawn from a $19.5 billion semiconductor joint venture with Indian metals-to-oil conglomerate Vedanta, it said on Monday in a setback to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's chipmaking plans for India. From a report: Foxconn, the world's largest contract electronics maker, and Vedanta signed a pact last year to set up semiconductor and display production plants in Modi's home state of Gujarat. "Foxconn has determined it will not move forward on the joint venture with Vedanta," a Foxconn statement said without elaborating on the reasons. The company said it had worked with Vedanta for more than a year to bring "a great semiconductor idea to reality", but they had mutually decided to end the joint venture and it will remove its name from an entity that is now fully owned by Vedanta. Modi has made chipmaking a top priority for India's economic strategy in pursuit of a "new era" in electronics manufacturing and Foxconn's move represents a blow to his ambitions of luring foreign investors to make chips locally for the first time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As an "ambassador" for FTX, football quarterback Tom Brady appeared at the company's conference in the Bahamas, and in TV commercials promoting the exchange as "the most trusted" institution in crypto, remembers the New York Times. And it was all about to go very bad... "His money was also at stake. As part of an endorsement agreement Brady signed in 2021, FTX had paid him $30 million, a deal that consisted almost entirely of FTX stock, three people with knowledge of the contract said. Brady's wife at the time, supermodel Gisele Bundchen, was paid $18 million in FTX stock, one of the people said."Now FTX is bankrupt, and Bankman-Fried is facing criminal fraud charges. Brady, 45, and Bundchen, 42, have been sued by a group of FTX customers seeking compensation from the celebrities who endorsed the exchange. On top of it all, the terms of the deal would have required the former couple, who divorced last year, to pay taxes on at least some of their now worthless FTX stock, two people familiar with the endorsement deal said. Their situation is the highest-profile example of a humiliating reckoning facing the actors, athletes, and other celebrities who rushed to embrace the easy money and online hype of cryptocurrencies... But last year's crash ended the celebrity crypto bonanza. In October, the Securities and Exchange Commission ordered Kim Kardashian to pay $1.26 million for failing to make adequate disclosures when she endorsed the EthereumMax crypto token. In December, a lawyer in California sued two crypto companies, MoonPay and Yuga Labs, accusing them of using a "vast network of A-list musicians, athletes and celebrity clients" to mislead investors about digital assets. In March, the S.E.C. charged the actress Lindsay Lohan, the online influencer Jake Paul and musicians including Soulja Boy and Lil Yachty with illegally promoting crypto assets. And in late May, after months of failed attempts, a process server delivered court papers to Shaquille O'Neal, the retired basketball star, who was sued for promoting FTX, according to legal filings. Mr. O'Neal was served while broadcasting from a National Basketball Association playoff game... Brady has also faced legal trouble. In December, Adam Moskowitz and the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner filed a lawsuit in federal court in Florida accusing him and Bundchen of misleading investors. Among the other defendants are comedian Larry David, NBA star Steph Curry and tennis player Naomi Osaka, all of whom endorsed FTX. "None of these defendants performed any due diligence prior to marketing these FTX products to the public," the lawsuit said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 73% of businesses reported that their workers rarely or never engaged in remote work in 2022 - closing in on pre-pandemic levels," writes a Seattle Times business columnist. "But this minority of the civilian workforce working remotely casts a large shadow over our economy, especially central business districts." The column's headline argues that Seattle "is still facing the reckoning from remote work" - which may also be true in other big tech cities.Kastle Systems, which tracks back-to-the-office moves, estimated 49.8% occupancy as of late June. Kastle uses a 10-city average ranging from New York to Los Angeles but doesn't include Seattle. In the latest report, Houston led at nearly 61% occupancy. San Jose, Calif., in the heart of Silicon Valley, where remote work flourishes, was the lowest at 38%. As of May, 48% of workers in Seattle's central core have returned to the office compared with 2019, according to the Downtown Seattle Association. The most significant boost has come from Amazon, which mandated employees must work in the office at least three days a week. So, you can be an offices-half-full or an offices-half-empty kind of person. Still, Capital Economics, an independent research firm, estimated this past month that remote work will shave 35% from the value of the U.S. office sector. In addition, it predicted many office buildings won't return to their previous peak values until 2040 or later... As loans come due for commercial real estate properties, many cities face a reckoning. Refinancing is difficult with high interest rates. In some cases, buildings are worth less than the land they occupy. Foreclosures and defaults are rising. This is already spilling over to hurt sectors that are dependent on offices, such as architects, cleaning services, construction and others. The Wall Street Journal estimates this accounts for a "multibillion-dollar ecosystem." As a result, many American cities are struggling to convert office buildings unlikely to see workers again into other uses, especially apartments. Rigid zoning and building codes, the footprint of the structures, and resistance from nearby homeowners to increased density all make this difficult. Seattle is facing some of the same challenges. Mayor Bruce Harrell announced a "call for ideas" to alter some of the city's office space to residential or other uses... Several trend lines are moving in the right direction - return of workers, number of residents, visitors and hotel occupancy are all going up, and crime is going down, with violent crime and property crime down the first five months of the year compared with 2022. Downtown has seen a 13.8% decrease in violent crime and a 35.1% drop in property crime over the same period... To be sure, we're in undiscovered territory. But giving up on downtown Seattle is not an option. It accounts for the majority of the city's business taxes and majority of its workers... Whether remote or hybrid work remains for much of the local workforce or a gradual return to the office continues, the heart of the city must be healthy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.