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Warnings over the safety of OceanGate's Titan submersible were repeatedly dismissed by the CEO of the company, email exchanges with a leading deep sea exploration specialist show. From a report: In messages seen by the BBC, Rob McCallum told OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush that he was potentially putting his clients at risk and urged him to stop using the sub until it had been classified by an independent body. Mr Rush responded that he was "tired of industry players who try to use a safety argument to stop innovation". The tense exchange ended after OceanGate's lawyers threatened legal action, Mr McCallum said. "I think you are potentially placing yourself and your clients in a dangerous dynamic," he wrote to the OceanGate boss in March 2018. "In your race to Titanic you are mirroring that famous catch cry: 'She is unsinkable'". In the messages, Mr Rush, who was among five passengers who died when the Titan experienced what officials believe was a "catastrophic implosion" on Sunday, expresses frustration with the criticism of Titan's safety measures. "We have heard the baseless cries of 'you are going to kill someone' way too often," he wrote. "I take this as a serious personal insult." Mr McCallum told the BBC that he repeatedly urged the company to seek certification for the Titan before using it for commercial tours. The vessel was never certified or classed. "Until a sub is classed, tested and proven it should not be used for commercial deep dive operations," he wrote in one email. "I implore you to take every care in your testing and sea trials and to be very, very conservative," he added. "As much as I appreciate entrepreneurship and innovation, you are potentially putting an entire industry at risk." In his response a few days later, Mr Rush defended his business and his credentials. He said OceanGate's "engineering focused, innovative approach... flies in the face of the submersible orthodoxy, but that is the nature of innovation".Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The EPA is assembling its first-ever National Environmental Youth Advisory Council, a group of young people to weigh in on issues that affect their communities. From a report: "We can't tackle the environmental challenges of our time without input from our younger communities, who've long been at the forefront of social movements," EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a press release yesterday. The worst effects of climate change are still ahead as greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels keep building up in Earth's atmosphere. The actions policymakers take today to curb that pollution will decide what kind of planet younger generations will inherit. So it makes sense for the EPA to create seats for them at the table.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A stark business reality faced Reddit before a user uprising engulfed its site this month: slowing sales growth. From a report: Reddit's revenue rose 38% in 2022 to about $670 million last year, two people familiar with the matter said, faster than many other internet ad firms but a steep slowdown from the more than doubling of revenue the company experienced in 2021 over 2020. The slowdown adds to uncertainty about Reddit's hopes of going public. It comes in the wake of a highly public battle between Reddit and third-party apps that connect to Reddit and are popular with users and moderators. The battle has highlighted the challenges for many internet firms that rely on content from users but are trying to build profit-making businesses. And the 2022 sales figure, which hasn't been previously reported, suggests Reddit would face a significant valuation haircut from its last private round if public investors valued it similarly to peer companies. The 2022 revenue multiple at which Snap and Meta Platforms are trading suggests Reddit is worth just over $3.3 billion. That's about one-third the value private investors put on the company less than two years ago, when Reddit last raised money.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cyberattacks on US hospitals are on the rise, adding a layer of financial pressure onto an industry still struggling to recover from the pandemic. From a report: Health facilities have been hit with 226 digital incursions affecting 36 million people this year, on track to be more widespread than 2022 attacks, according to John Riggi, the national advisor for cybersecurity and risk at the American Hospital Association. Cyber raids on hospitals more than tripled in the past five years and have become more sophisticated, just when hospitals are coping with higher costs for labor and supplies and grappling with staff shortages. The industry in 2022 had what Moody's Investors Service analyst Matthew Cahill called "arguably the worst year in health-care history" for financial performance. "There's really no wiggle room for hospitals to deal with this," Cahill said in an interview. He said cyber risk has contributed to downgrades, including one at Missouri's Capital Region Medical Center last year following a breach. Health-care facilities are attractive targets for cybercriminals because they hold ample personal data on patients, Matt Fabian and Lisa Washburn of Municipal Market Analytics wrote in a research note. Staffing shortages and wide use of third-party technology make the sector particularly vulnerable. The problem is particularly dire at smaller and rural hospitals, which have more financial distress and tend to use older technology. In an April note, Moody's cited an IBM survey that showed hospitals for 12 years have had the highest average cyberattack cost per industry, with $10.1 million in 2022. The AHA's Riggi said that while most hospitals have insurance, the cost to recover from attacks could be up to 10 times what insurance pays out.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta plans to end access to news on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada once a parliament-approved legislation requiring internet giants to pay news publishers comes into effect, the company said on Thursday. From a report: The legislation, known as the Online News Act, was approved by the Senate upper chamber earlier on Thursday and will become law after receiving royal assent from the governor general, a formality. The legislation was proposed after complaints from Canada's media industry, which wants tighter regulation of tech companies to prevent them from elbowing news businesses out of the online advertising market. "Today, we are confirming that news availability will be ended on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada prior to the Online News Act taking effect," Meta said in a statement. Facebook had telegraphed such a move for weeks, saying news has no economic value to the company and that its users do not use the platform for news. The act outlines rules to force platforms such as Facebook and Alphabet's Google to negotiate commercial deals and pay news publishers for their content, a step similar to a groundbreaking law passed in Australia in 2021.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The US Supreme Court sided with a Coinbase unit in a ruling that reinforces the ability of companies to channel customer and employee disputes into arbitration. From a report: The justices, voting 5-4, ruled that lawsuits filed in federal court must be put on hold while a defendant presses an appeal that would send the case to arbitration. Writing for the court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said allowing district courts to move forward as the appeal is ongoing would reduce the benefits of arbitration. "If the district court could move forward with pre-trial and trial proceedings while the appeal on arbitrability was ongoing, then many of the asserted benefits of arbitration (efficiency, less expense, less intrusive discovery, and the like) would be irretrievably lost," Kavanaugh wrote. Business groups rallied behind Coinbase in the case, saying that letting litigation go forward would impose unnecessary costs. Consumer advocates said judges should have the discretion to decide which claims should proceed during appeal, as courts do with other areas of the law. Coinbase is battling claims by Abraham Bielski, who said the crypto company should compensate him for $31,000 he lost after he gave a scammer remote access to his account. In a second suit that was before the high court, Coinbase is accused of holding a $1.2 million Dogecoin sweepstakes without adequately disclosing that entrants didn't have to buy or sell the cryptocurrency.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Sony's PlayStation chief, Jim Ryan, believed that Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard wasn't about locking games as Xbox exclusives, according to a newly unsealed email. Microsoft counsel revealed the exchange between Ryan and Chris Deering, former CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, discussing the announcement of the deal last year. "It is not an exclusivity play at all," said Ryan. "They're thinking bigger than that and they have the cash to make moves like this. I've spent a fair amount of time with both Phil [Spencer] Bobby [Kotick] over the past day and I'm pretty sure we will continue to see Call of Duty on PlayStation for many years to come." The surprise revelation runs counter to Sony's arguments against Microsoft's Activision Blizzard deal and its filings with regulators. Sony has maintained it fears Microsoft could make Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox or even sabotage the PlayStation versions of the game. Ryan went on to say, "We have some good stuff cooking," referring to Sony's Bungie acquisition which Sony announced just days after the email exchange. "I'm not complacent, and I'd rather this hadn't happened, but we'll be OK, we'll be more than OK." Microsoft initially offered Call of Duty on PlayStation for three years after the current agreement between Activision and Sony ends. Ryan called that offer "inadequate on many levels." Microsoft eventually offered Sony a 10-year deal for Call of Duty on PlayStation, but the company has refused to sign this so far.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: The United Parcel Service (UPS) says fraudsters have been harvesting phone numbers and other information from its online shipment tracking tool in Canada to send highly targeted SMS phishing (a.k.a. "smishing") messages that spoofed UPS and other top brands. The missives addressed recipients by name, included details about recent orders, and warned that those orders wouldn't be shipped unless the customer paid an added delivery fee. In a snail mail letter sent this month to Canadian customers, UPS Canada Ltd. said it is aware that some package recipients have received fraudulent text messages demanding payment before a package can be delivered, and that it has been working with partners in its delivery chain to try to understand how the fraud was occurring. "During that review, UPS discovered a method by which a person who searched for a particular package or misused a package look-up tool could obtain more information about the delivery, potentially including a recipient's phone number," the letter reads. "Because this information could be misused by third parties, including potentially in a smishing scheme, UPS has taken steps to limit access to that information." The written notice goes on to say UPS believes the data exposure "affected packages for a small group of shippers and some of their customers from February 1, 2022 to April 24, 2023." [...] In a statement provided to KrebsOnSecurity, Sandy Springs, Ga. based UPS [NYSE:UPS] said the company has been working with partners in the delivery chain to understand how that fraud was being perpetrated, as well as with law enforcement and third-party experts to identify the cause of this scheme and to put a stop to it. "Law enforcement has indicated that there has been an increase in smishing impacting a number of shippers and many different industries," reads an email from Brian Hughes, director of financial and strategy communications at UPS. "Out of an abundance of caution, UPS is sending privacy incident notification letters to individuals in Canada whose information may have been impacted," Hughes said. "We encourage our customers and general consumers to learn about the ways they can stay protected against attempts like this by visiting the UPS Fight Fraud website."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Quality of new vehicles sold in the United States is declining as factors such as growing use of technology and lower build quality of certain parts are making the models more "problematic", according to automotive consultant J.D. Power. Reuters reports: Build quality of certain parts such as audio systems and cup-holders have resulted in quality issues, the report said, which collected data from 93,380 purchasers and lessees of 2023 model-year vehicles. Automakers have been leaning on software and technology as they rush to roll out innovative models amid easing supply constraints and labor shortages. Problems per 100 vehicles (PP100) rose 30 PP100 during the past two years, the report said. A lower score reflects higher vehicle quality. Quality ratings of Tesla, which is not officially ranked among other brands in the study as it did not meet ranking criteria, increased by 31 PP100 year-over-year to 257 PP100 in 2023. Electronic touch-point designed door handles offered on new vehicles have also become an issue, with seven of the 10 most problematic models seen in battery electric vehicles, the report said. Dodge ranked the highest overall in terms of initial quality, while Chrysler and Volvo were jointly ranked lowest, according to J.D. Power. The wide range of quality problems in the automotive industry is "a phenomenon not seen in the 37-year history of the Initial Quality Study," said J.D Power's senior director of auto benchmarking Frank Hanley. "Today's new vehicles are more complex -- offering new and exciting technology -- but not always satisfying owners," Hanley added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to a report (PDF) from the Los Angeles City Tourism Commission, E3 has been canceled in LA in 2024 and 2025. The Verge reports: Apparently, the city does not expect E3 to return in 2024 or 2025. This news seems at odds with the messaging from E3's organizers, ReedPop and the ESA. Earlier this year, the ESA -- the trade organization that runs E3 -- announced it was partnering with ReedPop, the entertainment company that runs large fan conventions like New York Comic-Con and Penny Arcade Expo, to run E3 2023. After the covid-19 pandemic shuttered in-person events between 2020 and 2022, 2023 was meant to mark the in-person return of the video game industry's biggest event of the year. However, E3 2023 was canceled, with ReedPop global vice president of gaming Kyle Marsden-Kish stating the reason why was out of consideration that publishers wouldn't have game demos or reels available in time. But if E3 2024 and 2025 are also canceled, it suggests there is something else preventing E3's return or that its organizers are considering moving it out of Los Angeles. [...] The press release announcing E3 2023's cancellation hinted that ESA and ReedPop would work on future E3 events. In an email to The Verge, the ESA wrote, "ESA is currently having conversations about E3 2024 (and beyond), and no final decisions about the event have been made at this time."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: A significant proportion of people paid to train AI models may be themselves outsourcing that work to AI, a new study has found. It takes an incredible amount of data to train AI systems to perform specific tasks accurately and reliably. Many companies pay gig workers on platforms like Mechanical Turk to complete tasks that are typically hard to automate, such as solving CAPTCHAs, labeling data and annotating text. This data is then fed into AI models to train them. The workers are poorly paid and are often expected to complete lots of tasks very quickly. No wonder some of them may be turning to tools like ChatGPT to maximize their earning potential. But how many? To find out, a team of researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) hired 44 people on the gig work platform Amazon Mechanical Turk to summarize 16 extracts from medical research papers. Then they analyzed their responses using an AI model they'd trained themselves that looks for telltale signals of ChatGPT output, such as lack of variety in choice of words. They also extracted the workers' keystrokes in a bid to work out whether they'd copied and pasted their answers, an indicator that they'd generated their responses elsewhere. They estimated that somewhere between 33% and 46% of the workers had used AI models like OpenAI's ChatGPT. It's a percentage that's likely to grow even higher as ChatGPT and other AI systems become more powerful and easily accessible, according to the authors of the study, which has been shared on arXiv (PDF) and is yet to be peer-reviewed. Using AI-generated data to train AI could introduce further errors into already error-prone models. Large language models regularly present false information as fact. If they generate incorrect output that is itself used to train other AI models, the errors can be absorbed by those models and amplified over time, making it more and more difficult to work out their origins, says Ilia Shumailov, a junior research fellow in computer science at Oxford University, who was not involved in the project. Even worse, there's no simple fix. "The problem is, when you're using artificial data, you acquire the errors from the misunderstandings of the models and statistical errors," he says. "You need to make sure that your errors are not biasing the output of other models, and there's no simple way to do that."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The US government is providing a conditional $9.2 billion loan to Ford for the construction of three battery factories, the largest government backing for a US automaker since the 2009 financial crisis. "The enormous loan [...] marks a watershed moment for President Joe Biden's aggressive industrial policy meant to help American manufacturers catch up to China in green technologies," reports Bloomberg. From the report: The new factories that will eventually supply Ford's expansion into electric vehicles are already under construction in Kentucky and Tennessee through a joint venture called BlueOval SK, owned by the Michigan automaker and South Korean battery giant SK On Co. Ford plans to make as many as 2 million EVs by 2026, a huge increase from the roughly 132,000 it produced last year. The three-factory buildout by BlueOval plus an adjacent Ford EV assembly unit have an estimated price tag of $11.4 billion. BlueOval was previously awarded subsidies by both state governments. That means taxpayers would be providing low-interest financing for almost all of the cost. Ford's cars and SUVs made with domestic batteries will also be eligible for billions of dollars in incentives embedded in the Inflation Reduction Act's $370 billion in clean-energy funding, part of the historic climate measure narrowly passed into law about a year ago. The US government will subsidize manufacturing of batteries, and buyers could qualify for additional tax rebates of up to $7,500 per vehicle. The rush of incentives, government lending and private-sector investment has led to a manufacturing boom in the wake of the IRA. More than 100 battery and electric-vehicle production projects are announced or already under construction in the US, representing about $200 billion in total investments. "Not since the advent of the auto industry 100 years ago have we seen an investment like that," says Gary Silberg, KPMG's global automotive sector leader.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Earlier this week, Twitch introduced Content Classification Labels to help streamers label their content when they're doing something "mature." Streamers are supposed to use Content Classification Labels when their content contains the following: Mature-Rated Games; Sexual Themes; Drugs, Intoxication or Excessive Tobacco Use; Violent and Graphic Depictions; Significant Profanity or Vulgarity; and/or Gambling. Interestingly, kissing or licking a microphone falls under "Sexual Themes." From a report: According to Twitch's FAQ, "Examples of sexual themes include prolonged or repeated kissing of another individual or object, detailed non-educational discussions of sexual topics or experiences, and content or behavior that is very likely to elicit a mature chat conversation." Those who love ASMR will know that repeating kisses on a mic is a classic ASMR move. The FAQ addresses this, saying: "To be more direct -- many ASMR practices are focused on mindfulness and are not sexual, but we consider kissing or licking a microphone to fall within Sexual Themes." Additionally, hot tub streams and pole dancing will fall under Sexual Themes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Starting this fall, students enrolled in Computer Science 50: Introduction to Computer Science (CS50) will be encouraged to use AI to help them debug code, give feedback on their designs, and answer individual questions about error messages and unfamiliar lines of code. PCMag reports: "Our own hope is that, through AI, we can eventually approximate a 1:1 teacher [to] student ratio for every student in CS50, as by providing them with software-based tools that, 24/7, can support their learning at a pace and in a style that works best for them individually," says CS50 professor David J. Malan, as reported by The Harvard Crimson. It's a swift turnaround from the last school year: Harvard did not have an AI policy at the end of the fall 2022 semester. The new approach will not use ChatGPT or GitHub Copilot, both of which are popular among programmers. Malan says the tools are "currently too helpful." Instead, Harvard has developed its own large language model, a "CS50 bot" that will be "similar in spirit," but will focus on "leading students toward an answer rather than handing it to them," he says. CS50 is also available for non-Harvard students to take on the online platform edX. The new AI policy will extend to the edX version. "Even if you are not a student at Harvard, you are welcome to "take" this course for free by working your way through the course's eleven weeks of material," says the site. Teachers at other institutions can also license the material for their own courses. "Providing support that's tailored to students' specific questions has long been a challenge at scale via edX and OpenCourseWare more generally, with so many students online, so these features will benefit students both on campus and off," Malan says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: The legal research and public records data broker LexisNexis is providing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement with tools to target people who may potentially commit a crime -- before any actual crime takes place, according to a contract document obtained by The Intercept. LexisNexis then allows ICE to track the purported pre-criminals' movements. The unredacted contract overview provides a rare look at the controversial $16.8 million agreement between LexisNexis and ICE, a federal law enforcement agency whose surveillance of and raids against migrant communities are widely criticized as brutal, unconstitutional, and inhumane. "The purpose of this program is mass surveillance at its core," said Julie Mao, an attorney and co-founder of Just Futures Law, which is suing LexisNexis over allegations it illegally buys and sells personal data. Mao told The Intercept the ICE contract document, which she reviewed for The Intercept, is "an admission and indication that ICE aims to surveil individuals where no crime has been committed and no criminal warrant or evidence of probable cause." While the company has previously refused to answer any questions about precisely what data it's selling to ICE or to what end, the contract overview describes LexisNexis software as not simply a giant bucket of personal data, but also a sophisticated analytical machine that purports to detect suspicious activity and scrutinize migrants -- including their locations. The document, a "performance of work statement" made by LexisNexis as part of its contract with ICE, was obtained by journalist Asher Stockler through a public records request and shared with The Intercept. LexisNexis Risk Solutions, a subsidiary of LexisNexis's parent company, inked the contract with ICE, a part of the Department of Homeland Security, in 2021. The document reveals that over 11,000 ICE officials, including within the explicitly deportation-oriented Enforcement and Removal Operations branch, were using LexisNexis as of 2021. "This includes supporting all aspects of ICE screening and vetting, lead development, and criminal analysis activities," the document says. In practice, this means ICE is using software to "automate" the hunt for suspicious-looking blips in the data, or links between people, places, and property. It is unclear how such blips in the data can be linked to immigration infractions or criminal activity, but the contract's use of the term "automate" indicates that ICE is to some extent letting computers make consequential conclusions about human activity. The contract further notes that the LexisNexis analysis includes "identifying potentially criminal and fraudulent behavior before crime and fraud can materialize." (ICE did not respond to a request for comment.) "LexisNexis Risk Solutions prides itself on the responsible use of data, and the contract with the Department of Homeland Security encompasses only data allowed for such uses," said LexisNexis spokesperson Jennifer Richman. She says the company's work with ICE doesn't violate the law or federal policy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has proposed new rules to crack down on hidden fees charged by cable and satellite video providers. "My administration's top priority is lowering the cost of living for the middle class, and that includes cracking down on companies' use of junk fees to hide true costs from families, who end up paying more as a result," Biden said in a statement on Tuesday. Ars Technica reports: As Biden noted, the FCC "proposed a new rule that would require cable and satellite TV providers to give consumers the all-in price for the service they're offering up front." The proposed rule would force companies like Comcast, Charter Spectrum, and DirecTV to publish more accurate prices. Biden continued: "Too often, these companies hide additional junk fees on customer bills disguised as "broadcast TV" or "regional sports" fees that in reality pay for no additional services. These fees really add up: according to one report, they increase customer bills by nearly 25 percent of the price of base service." FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel first floated pricing transparency rules for the TV services offered by cable and satellite companies in March. That effort took a step forward on Tuesday when the commission approved a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that seeks public comment on rules that would force video providers to offer accurate prices in advertising. "Consumers who choose a video service based on an advertised monthly price may be surprised by unexpected fees related to the cost of video programming that raise the amount of the bill significantly," the NPRM said. The cable and satellite TV companies' practice of listing "Broadcast TV" and "Regional Sports Network" fees separately from the advertised price "can be potentially misleading and interpreted as a government-imposed tax or fee, instead of a company-imposed service fee increase," and make it hard for customers to compare prices across providers, the FCC said. The docket is available here, and comments will be accepted for 60 days after the NPRM is published in the Federal Register. The FCC said its proposal "would require cable operators and DBS [direct broadcast satellite] providers to clearly and prominently display the total cost of video programming service." The FCC is also seeking comment on whether it has the authority to impose similar requirements on other types of video providers. But Rosenworcel reportedly said in a congressional hearing that the FCC's authority under US law doesn't extend to streaming services.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The courtroom showdown between the FTC and Microsoft over the tech company's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard kicked off this morning. First announced in early 2022, the pending transaction has been scrutinized by various global regulatory bodies. Xbox has frantically worked to appease their concerns. While addressing its potentially dominant position, Microsoft lamented its third-place position and admitted defeat in the ongoing "console wars." Part of Microsoft's current legal strategy is demonstrating the domineering lead PlayStation and Nintendo have established in the gaming industry. Xbox entered the market in 2001, and according to Microsoft's own documentation, their consoles have been outperformed by Nintendo and Sony by a "significant margin." Despite hard-fought success in the Xbox 360 generation and notable financial gain in recent quarters, Xbox claims it's never stopped "losing the console wars." As it stands, Xbox is confidently one of "big three" players in the console market, alongside PlayStation and Nintendo. However, Microsoft states its market share is trailing notably behind the most prominent competition.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: With tens of millions of regular monthly visitors, South Korean piracy site Noonoo TV made powerful enemies. The stand-off reached the boiling point in March when broadcasters formed a new anti-piracy coalition and warned of punishing legal action. Noonoo TV responded by throwing in the towel but after clone site 'Noonoo TV Season 2' appeared online, the government says it will develop an AI anti-piracy system that will stop any 'Season 3' variants in their tracks. Alongside a promise to work closely with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the Korea Communications Commission, and the National Security Agency to protect 'K' content from unlawful distribution, the Ministry of Science says the time is right to enhance manual work carried out by humans with automated systems better suited to the job. "Since the detection and response to illegal sites is currently centered on manual work based on human resources, to overcome this limitation, we plan to develop technology that can automatically detect and verify new versions and substitute sites," the Ministry said. "Online video service (OTT) content is a precious asset created with the blood and sweat of many people. It's a growth engine that will be responsible for the future of our country, so it is very important for mature citizens to refrain from using these illegal sites."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta has confirmed that it will remove all news content from Facebook and Instagram for users in Canada, following the passing of the Online News Act by the Canadian Parliament. Engadget reports: "Today, we are confirming that news availability will be ended on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada prior to the Online News Act (Bill C-18) taking effect," the company posted. "We have repeatedly shared that in order to comply with Bill C-18, passed today in Parliament, content from news outlets, including news publishers and broadcasters, will no longer be available to people accessing our platforms in Canada." The Online News Act is designed to address the precipitous drop in advertising revenue Canadian news organizations have experienced over the past two decades. It does so by requiring big tech companies like Google and Meta to negotiate reimbursement plans with those outlets for running said stories on their respective platforms. Earlier in June, Meta announced that it was working to develop a software-based solution to its C-18 issue. As of Thursday, those efforts remain ongoing "and currently impact a small percentage of users in Canada." Aside from the loss of news functionality, Meta assures its users that no other aspects of the Facebook experience will be impacted.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Canada is set for massive growth in wind power generation as it moves toward net zero emissions by 2050, a new report by the country's energy regulator suggested. From a report: The report models how energy consumption is expected to change under various scenarios as the world reduces its carbon emissions, and it projects electricity use will more than double in Canada from now until mid-century. "Among all technologies, wind contributes the greatest amount of new generation by 2050, increasing ninefold from current levels," the Canada Energy Regulator said, using a scenario it calls "global net zero" that assumes the world acts quickly enough to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050. The regulator's model sees the greatest amount of new wind power being built in the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Ontario. Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said he wasn't surprised to see the emphasis on wind generation, given how much it's come down in cost. Building it out quickly will be a challenge, he acknowledged, but he sees it as achievable -- despite the controversy that large-scale wind projects often prompt in neighboring communities. "Some of this will also come from offshore wind, which perhaps in terms of public acceptance is easier, because it's a long way offshore," he said by phone Tuesday. "Those are often very large facilities, and Canada has been a little bit slower on the offshore than our European counterparts." Solar power will grow at a much slower pace than wind power, the report projects, eventually making up 5 per cent of generation by 2050.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Biden administration will make it easier for Indians to live and work in the United States, using this week's state visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to help some skilled workers enter or remain in the country, Reuters reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: The State Department could announce as soon as Thursday that a small number of Indians and other foreign workers on H-1B visas will be able to renew those visas in the U.S., without having to travel abroad, one of the sources said, part of a pilot program that could be expanded in coming years. Indian citizens are by far the most active users of the U.S. H-1B program and made up 73% of the nearly 442,000 H-1B workers in fiscal year 2022. [...] Each year, the U.S. government makes 65,000 H-1B visas available to companies seeking skilled foreign workers, along with an additional 20,000 visas for workers with advanced degrees. The visas last for three years and can be renewed for another three years. The companies using the most H-1B workers in recent years include the Indian-based Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services as well as Amazon, Alphabet and Meta in the U.S., according to U.S. government data. The ability for some of the temporary foreign workers to renew visas in the U.S. would free up resources for visa interviews in consulates abroad, the spokesperson said. The pilot program would also include some workers with L-1 visas, which are available to people transferring within a company to a position in the U.S., one of the sources said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OceanGate now says that all five passengers "have been lost," according to a statement. From a report: "These men were true explorers who shared distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring protecting our world's oceans," the statement reads. "Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time." The U.S. Coast Guard has confirmed that a "debris field" has been found in the search area for the missing Titan submersible. A press conference is scheduled for 3 p.m. to provide more details. There is no confirmation directly from the Coast Guard on what the debris appears to be, and there is no word whether human remains were also found. However, a dive expert connected to the search and rescue efforts told the BBC that the debris included a "landing frame and a rear cover from the submersible."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Heatwaves are pushing power grids to their brink around the world -- a risk that can make an already dangerous situation deadly. From a report: When temperatures spike, people tend to need air conditioning the most. But that can put a lot of pressure on a power grid, potentially triggering a blackout if there isn't enough electricity on hand. That's the worst-case scenario grid operators across the world are scrambling to prevent. Close to 28.8 million people are under heat alerts today in the US. Texas grid operator ERCOT broke its June record for electricity demand on Monday after issuing a "weather watch" for June 15th through 21st and asking residents to voluntarily conserve energy. In Texas and across the border in Mexico, temperatures soared above 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius). A state of emergency was briefly declared Tuesday by Mexico's National Center for Energy Control as electricity supplies dipped to their lowest levels since a 2021 cold snap. India and China have been suffering through extreme heatwaves since April. Power outages in India this week have also robbed people of air conditioning and running water. Recently, the heat has killed scores of people in northern India, flooding hospitals and morgues. Beijing shattered a June temperature record today of around 106 degrees Fahrenheit (41 degrees Celsius). Cities that are industrial powerhouses in southern China urged residents and businesses to save energy, and the country's National Energy Administration staged an emergency drill last Thursday to prepare for possible outages this summer.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Thursday argued in federal court for a preliminary injunction to temporarily block Microsoft's acquisition of videogame maker Activision Blizzard, which would stop the deal from closing before the government's case against it is heard by an administrative judge. From a report: "If this deal is completed, the combined company ... is likely to have the ability, an incentive, to harm competition in various markets related to consoles, subscription services and the cloud (for gaming)," FTC lawyer James Weingarten said in the government's opening arguments in what is expected to be a five-day evidentiary hearing. The FTC argues it needs a judge to block Microsoft and Activision Blizzard from closing their $69 billion merger until the agency's in-house court gets to rule on whether the combination hurts competition in the videogame industry. The FTC says the combination would give Microsoft's Xbox videogame console exclusive access to Activision games, leaving Nintendo consoles and Sony Group's PlayStation out in the cold. "I think you will see that every piece of evidence shows that it only makes sense for Xbox to make these Activision games to as many people on as many platforms as possible," Microsoft lawyer Beth Wilkinson said in opening arguments, adding that if an injunction is granted it could result in a three-year administrative proceeding that would kill the deal.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sony is still beavering away on its own phones and it plans to keep doing so for the foreseeable future. From a report: Sony has struck a multi-year deal with Qualcomm to use Snapdragon platforms to power its handsets. This is an extension of an existing agreement between the two sides. Qualcomm chipsets will be used in Sony's upcoming premium devices, along with high- and mid-tier smartphones. Sony revealed the awkwardly named Xperia 1 V just last month.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Accenture fanned concerns about dwindling IT spending on Thursday with a quarterly revenue forecast that was below Wall Street estimates, sending its shares down more than 5%. From a report: CEO Julie Sweet said clients were "holding back on small deals" in the face of an uncertain economic outlook, mirroring remarks from Cognizant Technology Solutions last month. Accenture forecast current-quarter revenue in the range of $15.75 billion to $16.35 billion.Analysts on average expect revenue of $16.35 billion, according to Refinitiv data. The company blamed the weakness on its business catering to the tech, media and communications industries, which have sharply dialed back spending in recent months to cope with slowing growth. Revenue for that group fell 8% in the third quarter. North America - Accenture's biggest market - also performed poorly in the March to May period, with revenue growth slowing there to a near three-year low of about 2%.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Generative AI-related job postings in the United States jumped about 20% last month as companies look to harness a technology that has been widely touted as the next big growth driver, according to data from job portal Indeed. From a report: The May figure, at 204 per million job postings, was also more than double the 2021 level and underscored the buzz around AI, sparked by the runaway success of OpenAI's ChatGPT. Data scientist roles made up 5% of the AI job postings on Indeed's U.S. platform, while roles such as software engineer, machine learning engineer and data engineer were also in demand. "There has been a notable increase in job seeker interest in AI-related jobs, especially since the introduction of ChatGPT," said Nick Bunker, director of economic research at Indeed. The jump comes at a time when the broader tech job market is under pressure from mass layoffs at companies such as Meta Platforms and Amazon.com, which are tightening their belts to cope with an uncertain economy. Overall, tech jobs are down 43.6% in the United States from June last year, Indeed said, adding the number of available AI jobs was not keeping up with the interest from job seekers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Privacy-focused firm DuckDuckGo has released a public beta of its browser for Windows, offering more default privacy protections and an assortment of Duck-made browsing tools. From a report: Like its Mac browser, DuckDuckGo (DDG) uses "the underlying operating system rendering API" rather than its own forked browser code. That's "a Windows WebView2 call that utilizes the Blink rendering engine underneath," according to DuckDuckGo's blog post. Fittingly, the browser reports itself as Microsoft Edge at most header-scanning sites. Inside the DuckDuckGo browser, you'll find: 1. Duck Player, which shows (most) YouTube videos "without privacy-invading ads" and doesn't feed your recommendations2. Tracker blocking that DDG cites as "above and beyond" other browsers, including third-party tracker loading3. Enforced encryption4. The "fire button" that instantly closes all tabs and clears website data5. Cookie pop-up management, automatically selecting a private option and hiding "I accept" pop-ups6. Email protection, making it easier to use an auto-forwarding duck.com address on web formsRead more of this story at Slashdot.

Figma is expanding its partnership with Google for Education in a bid to introduce more school-age students to its product design and collaboration platforms. From a report: Announced during the Config event on Wednesday, June 21st, all K-12 students across the US can now access Figma for free on education Chromebooks. Figma is also expanding its educational partnership with Chromebooks outside of the US, starting with Google schools in Japan. Today's announcement effectively opens up the beta program that Figma released last year, which was initially limited to select US high schools. As with the beta, students will have access to both Figma (the company's flagship product design platform) and FigJam, Figma's collaborative whiteboarding app. Figma's Google program is only available on Chromebooks, though the company said that schools using non-Google systems can apply for access on an individual class basis.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel says its manufacturing business will work like a separate unit and will begin to generate a margin, but gave no clear timeline on when it will start scaling up, sending the chipmaker's shares down about 5%. From a report: The company also did not name a new external customer for the business as part of its foundry services, a key element of Intel's turnaround plans wherein it will offer its manufacturing services to other companies including its competitors. Intel's internal business units will now have a customer-supplier relationship with the manufacturing business, Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner said on an investor call. Based on that model, Intel will be the second largest foundry next year with manufacturing revenue of more than $20 billion, he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Amazon's warehouse working conditions, which have come under increased scrutiny in recent years, are now at the heart of a congressional probe being led by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. In a letter (PDF) to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Sanders, who chairs the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, said the e-retailer's "quest for profits at all costs" has caused warehouse employees to experience unsafe working environments without access to adequate medical attention. "Amazon is well aware of these dangerous conditions, the life-altering consequences for workers injured on the job, and the steps the company could take to reduce the significant risks of injury," wrote Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democratic party. "Yet the company has made a calculated decision not to implement adequate worker protections because Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder, and you, his successor as Chief Executive Officer, have created a corporate culture that treats workers as disposable." Sanders called on Jassy to turn over more information related to Amazon's injury and turnover rates, as well as data on its on-site medical clinic, called AMCARE, dating back to 2019. He also asked Jassy to say whether Amazon has, internally or through a third party, examined "the connection between the pace of work of its warehouse workers and the prevalence or cost of injuries at its warehouses." Sanders said Jassy has until July 5 to respond to the inquiry. The HELP committee posted a form on its website seeking testimonials from current and former Amazon employees about their experiences at the company. An Amazon spokesperson said the company strongly disagrees with Sanders' claims in the letter. "There will always be ways for our critics to splice data to suit their narrative, but the fact is, we've made progress and our numbers clearly show it," said the spokesperson.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is increasing its Xbox Series X prices in most countries in August apart from the US, Japan, Chile, Brazil, and Colombia. From a report: The Xbox maker is also increasing the monthly prices of its Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscriptions for the first time next month, which will see the base Game Pass subscription for console move up to $10.99 a month from $9.99. "We've held on our prices for consoles for many years and have adjusted the prices to reflect the competitive conditions in each market," says Kari Perez, head of communications for Xbox, in a statement to The Verge. Xbox Series X console pricing will largely match the price hike Sony announced for the PS5 last year, with the Xbox Series X moving to $612 in the UK, $604 across most European markets, CAD $649.99 in Canada, and AUD $799.99 in Australia starting August 1st. The Xbox Series S pricing will not be adjusted in any markets, remaining at $299.99.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Discord is introducing new ways to generate revenue, including server subscriptions, tiered subscriptions, and the ability for server owners to sell digital products. This move has raised concerns among some users who feel that Discord is becoming less welcoming and more like the paywalled internet it was once an escape from. PC Gamer reports: "To date, we've paid out millions of dollars to thousands of creators and communities, and we're seeing more creators and communities earning on their Discord servers every day," wrote product manager Derek Yang in a blog post published today. "...Today, we're excited to share new tools that help you get started earning money faster." The nickel-and-dime-ification of Discord servers begins this week with "media channels," a new type of channel (currently in beta) designed to host subscriber-only content, including, for instance, "exclusive memes and wallpapers." You could see an art creator using this Discord feature to post subscriber-only illustrations, as many comic creators and other illustrators already use Patreon to do. Not a bad deal for creators, but that's only the start of the new revenue streams Discord, who currently takes a 10% cut of server subscriptions, plans to implement. Here's a full list of what the free (now with three asterisks) chat app has in the works: - Tier Templates: Formalized subscription tiers with prices set by Discord ($3.99, $4.99, $7.99, and $9.99)- Downloadables: One-time purchasable digital products or subscriptions sold by server owners, which will be accessed via ...- Server Shops: "A single home for server owners to sell Server Subscriptions, Downloadables and Premium Roles"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google could be about to launch a new branding initiative for Chromebooks dubbed "Chromebook X," according to a new report from 9to5Google. From a report: The publication has pulled together several code commits referencing the new name, which suggests that the branding could be used for laptops that meet certain spec requirements and allow them to offer exclusive features. One source tells 9to5Google that the first Chromebook X laptops could launch before the end of the year. Although the ChromeOS operating system is best known for running on affordable laptops used in places like schools, over the years, it's picked up some higher-end features like support for productivity apps like LumaFusion and the ability to run Linux programs. 9to5Google speculates that the Chromebook X branding could be Google's way of helping buyers distinguish between a baseline laptop that's best suited to basic web browsing and office work and a device with a bit more oomph, like HP's recent Dragonfly Pro Chromebook.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Scientist: Microsoft researchers have made a controversial claim that they have seen evidence of an elusive particle that could solve some of the biggest headaches in quantum computing, but some experts are questioning the discovery. Quantum computers process information using quantum bits, or qubits, but current iterations can be prone to error. "What the field needs is a new kind of qubit," says Chetan Nayak at Microsoft Quantum. He and his colleagues say they have taken a significant step towards building qubits from quasiparticles, which are not true particles but collective vibrations that can emerge when particles like electrons act together. The quasiparticles in question are called Majorana zero modes, which act as their own antiparticle and have a charge and energy that equate to zero. That makes them resilient to disturbances -- so they could make unprecedentedly reliable qubits -- but also makes them notoriously hard to find. The Microsoft researchers say devices they built exhibited behaviors consistent with Majorana zero modes. The main components of each device were an extremely thin semiconducting wire and a piece of superconducting aluminum. This isn't the first time Microsoft has claimed to have found Majorana zero modes. A 2018 paper by a different group of researchers at the company was retracted from the scientific journal Nature in 2021 after it didn't hold up to scrutiny. At the time, Sergey Frolovat the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania and his colleagues found that imperfections in the semiconductor wire could produce quantum effects easily mistaken for Majorana zero modes. "To see Majorana zero modes, the wire must be like a very long, very even road with no bumps. If there is any disorder in the wire, electrons can get stuck on these imperfections and assume quantum states that mimic Majorana zero modes," says Frolov. In the new experiment, the team used a more complex test called the topological gap protocol. To pass the test, a device must simultaneously show signatures of Majorana zero modes at each end of the wire, and also show that the electrons are in an energy range where a special kind of superconductivity emerges. "Rather than look for one particular simple signature of Majorana zero modes, we looked for a mosaic of signatures," says Nayak. The researchers tested this protocol on hundreds of computer simulations of devices, which considered any impurities in the wires, before using it on experimental data. Nayak says they calculated that for any device that passed the topological gap protocol, the probability of there not actually being a Majorana zero mode within it was less than 8 per cent. Not all researchers in the field are convinced.Henry Leggat the University of Basel in Switzerland and his colleagues recently published a set of calculations showing that this test can be fooled by impurities in the wires. "The topological gap protocol as currently implemented is certainly not loophole free," he says. Frolov says that a few details imply that what seem to be Majorana zero modes would be revealed as an effect of disorder if the experiment were repeated with even more sensitive measurements. These include small differences between measurements for the left and right edges of the wire, as well as the measurements of electrons' energies -- the same energies can be indicative of emerging Majorana zero modes or of dirt trapping the electrons. Anton Akhmerovat the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands says that for him, the new experiment is not viable evidence that Majorana zero modes have been detected until another team of researchers reproduces it. But this may be difficult as some details of how Microsoft's devices were manufactured have not been published on account of being trade secrets, he says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Elissaveta M. Brandon writes via Fast Company: There's a new font in town -- and it's already causing rifts on Reddit. The font is called Intel One Mono, and as its name implies, it was designed by tech giant Intel, together with New York-based type design practice Frere-Jones Type and marketing agency VMLY&R. It joins a group of monospaced fonts designed primarily for developers -- think JetBrains Mono, Fira Code, and Consolas. By definition, monospaced fonts consist of characters that have the same width and occupy the same horizontal space, making it easy for coders and programmers to tell the difference between long strings of characters. But here's where Intel One Mono stands out: it was designed with and for low-vision developers. (It's free to download on GitHub and will soon be available on Google Fonts, too.) To ensure the font was legible and readable to its target audience, the team ran more than a dozen "live testing sessions" with visually impaired developers who were asked to write code using Intel One Mono. [...] Some of the feedback the designers received was particularly surprising. For example, some people were struggling to tell apart a capital "M" from a capital "N," most likely because both letters have two vertical stems and some diagonals in between, which can be confusing. To make the letters more legible, the designers sloped the vertical stems on the "M" so it looks close to an inverted W. "The point at which the two diagonals meet in the middle gets shifted up to make it clearly a V shape in the middle, and then the two verticals get flared out a little bit to give it slightly more differentiable shape from the capital N," says Fred Shallcrass, a type designer at Frere-Jones Type. Similar challenges kept coming back with the "x" and the "y" which people struggled to distinguish, and the "e" and the "c." In every instance, the designers meticulously tweaked the letters to make them highly distinctive, resulting in a fairly idiosyncratic font where every glyph is as different as possible from the other -- all the way down to the curly brackets, which can best be described as extra curly. This brings us to that Reddit rift. "This font would be great were it not for those curly braces," one person wrote. "For someone that hates fonts sometimes because of curly brackets not being clear and evident, I'm officially switching to this font set because of the curly brackets," wrote another. The developers were equally torn, but the designers stand by them. "Part of our thinking in negotiating those responses is that reinforcing the identity of any shape is not just amplifying what is unique about that letter, but also making it clearly not some other letter, so foreclosing any confusion," says Tobias Frere-Jones, the founder and lead designer at his eponymous studio. "If there's a thing the curly braces do, which is that extra back and forth movement, the parentheses don't do that, the brackets don't do that, therefore these ought to do a lot of that."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is launching the "Chromebook X" program, aiming to differentiate high-quality laptops and tablets from standard Chromebooks by improving hardware specifications and adding exclusive features such as enhanced video conferencing capabilities and unique wallpapers. Chromebook X devices, expected to be priced between $350 and $500, will provide users with an elevated experience beyond the basic functionality of traditional Chromebooks. The devices are anticipated to be available in stores by the end of the year, coinciding with the release of ChromeOS version 115 or newer. 9to5Google reports: For the past few months, Google has been preparing new branding for above average devices from various Chromebook makers. Notably, we haven't yet seen any signs of Google making a Chromebook X device of its own, which is honestly a shame considering how long it's been since a Pixelbook has been released. The Chromebook X brand, which could change before launch, will appear somewhere on a laptop/tablet's chassis, with a mark that could be as simple as an "X" next to the usual "Chromebook" logo. There should also be a special boot screen instead of the standard "chromeOS" logo that's shown on all machines today. Aside from the added "X," what actually sets a Chromebook X apart from other devices is the hardware inside. Specifically, Google appears to require a certain amount of RAM, a good-quality camera for video conferencing, and a (presumably) higher-end display. Beyond that, Google has so far made specific preparations for Chromebook X models to be built on four types of processors from Intel and AMD (though newer generations will likely also be included): AMD Zen 2+ (Skyrim), AMD Zen 3 (Guybrush), and Intel Core 12th Gen (Brya & Nissa). To further differentiate Chromebook X models from low-end Chromebooks, Google is also preparing an exclusive set of features. As mentioned, one of the key focuses of Chromebook X is video conferencing, with Google requiring an up-to-spec camera. Complementing that hardware, Google is bringing unique features like Live Caption (adding generated captions to video calls), a built-in portrait blur effect, and "voice isolation." Earlier this year, we reported that ChromeOS was readying a set of "Time Of Day" wallpapers and screen savers that would change in appearance throughout the day, particularly to match the sunrise and sunset. We now know that these are going to be exclusive to Chromebook X devices. To ensure that those wallpapers only appear on Chromebook X and can't be forcibly enabled, Google is preparing a system it calls "feature management." At the moment, feature management is only used to check whether to enable Chromebook X exclusives. Based on that, some other exclusive features of Chromebook X include: Support for up to 16 virtual desks; "Pinned" (available offline) files from Google Drive; and A revamped retail demo mode.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to AST SpaceMobile, the company managed to successfully transmit a 4G LTE signal from space that was picked up by "everyday, off-the-shelf smartphones." Next, AST will try and transmit a 5G connection via its BlueWalker 3 (BW3) satellite. The Verge reports: Testing was conducted in Hawaii on AT&T's spectrum using Nokia RAN technology, and the signal, which was beamed from AST's satellite in low Earth orbit, reached speeds of up to 10.3Mbps. That's fast enough for some video streaming, general internet use, and more ordinary cell phone usage. AST's testing followed a recent April test by the same company, where it was able to route an audio call between a Samsung Galaxy S22 in Texas to an iPhone in Japan via satellite. The BW3 is a massive commercial communication array at 693 square feet -- about the size of a two- or three-car garage -- and the largest ever deployed in low Earth orbit, says AST's release. It operates using the same 3GPP standard found in ground-based cell networks. The achievement is "an important step toward AST SpaceMobile's goal of bringing broadband services to parts of the world where cellular coverage is either unreliable or simply does not exist today," according to AST's chairman and CEO, Abel Avellan, who said this would allow users to text and call, browse the internet, download files, and even stream video using a signal beamed from space.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After threatening to do so last week, Reddit has now removed the moderators of some of the subreddits that were protesting Reddit's new API pricing scheme. Some of these subreddits have new mods in the protesters' place, while other affected subreddits have been left unmoderated. Still others, oddly, saw their moderators reinstated. Reddit claims the moves are a response to mods breaking its Moderator Code of Conduct by allowing "not safe for work" (NSFW) content in previously "safe for work" subreddits. However, moderators who spoke to Ars Technica believe Reddit's actions are designed to silence their protests over the new fees. Various Reddit moderators reached out to Ars Technica this week, informing us that mods for r/Celebrities, r/InterestInGasFuck_, r/mildlyinteresting, r/self, r/ShittyLifeProTips, and r/TIHI have been removed. Other subreddits are reportedly affected, too, including r/toyota, r/garmin, and r/IllegalLifeProTips. All of the communities recently started allowing NSFW content as a form of API pricing protest. Reddit can't sell ads on NSFW content, and Redditors have accused the company of covertly switching some subreddits back to SFW. As of this writing, some of the subreddits whose mods were removed remain unmoderated. Other subreddits have new mods. One example, r/Celebrities, has already seen resistance from community members, claiming the new mods "don't represent" them and that these mods weren't active in the community before the protests. Meanwhile, the feeling around the general mod community is one of disgust, while some are seriously considering abandoning their volunteer posts or have already done so. "We put up with a lot as Reddit mods-death threats, doxing, sorting through lewd and even illegal material (that Reddit continually ignores)-and deserve to be treated with basic respect," a Reddit moderator, who asked to be referred to only as Jess for privacy reasons, said regarding the removal of some mods. The mod has started erasing their account and has resigned as a moderator. "I have no desire to be associated with a company that conducts itself in such a manner," Jess said. Confusingly, the moderators of some of the subreddits, including r/mildlyinteresting, were restored. Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt said in a statement: "It's not OK to show people NSFW content when they don't want to see it. In line with our Moderator Code of Conduct, we'll remove moderators and restrict communities where moderators are engaging in malicious conduct, like allowing rule-violating behavior or encouraging the submission of sexually explicit content in previously safe-for-work spaces." He added that mods "incorrectly marking a community as NSFW is a violation of both our Content Policy and Moderator Code of Conduct." Ars notes that replacing Reddit moderators isn't so simple. "The free work Reddit moderators do has been valued at $3.4 million annually, and as detailed on the r/hentai subreddit, the work mods do is both complex and extensive," reports Ars. "Reddit itself calculated that manual mod removals represented 30.9 percent of content removed in 2022. Reddit would be a different website, one perhaps incapable of functioning, without the tens of thousands of volunteers it uses to keep content safe, enjoyable, relevant, and valuable. Relying on volunteers saves the unprofitable company plenty of money."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The average test scores for 13-year-old students in the U.S. have decreased in reading and math since 2020, reaching the lowest levels in decades, with more significant declines in math. NPR reports: The average scores, from tests given last fall, declined 4 points in reading and 9 points in math, compared with tests given in the 2019-2020 school year, and are the lowest in decades. The declines in reading were more pronounced for lower performing students, but dropped across all percentiles. The math scores were even more disappointing. On a scale of 500 points, the declines ranged from 6 to 8 points for middle and high performing students, to 12 to 14 points for low performing students. The math results also showed widening gaps based on gender and race. Scores decreased by 11 points for female students over 2020 results, compared with a 7-point decrease for male students. Among Black students, math scores declined 13 points, while white students had a 6-point drop. Compared with the 35-point gap between Black and white students in 2020, the disparity widened to 42 points. While the scores show a drop from the pre-pandemic years, the results also show that there are other factors at work. The decline is even more substantial when compared with scores of a decade ago: The average scores declined 7 points in reading and 14 points in mathematics. The Education Department says plans are underway to address the learning loss. [...] The latest results are from the NAEP Long-Term Trend Assessment, traditionally administered every four years by the National Center for Education Statistics.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dropbox is introducing two new AI-powered services into its platform. One is a tool for summarizing and querying documents, while the other is a universal search engine that can access your files in Dropbox but also across the entire web. "It's called Dash and comes from Dropbox's 2021 acquisition of a company called Command E," reports The Verge. From the report: The idea behind Dash, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston tells me, is that your stuff isn't all files and folders anymore, and so Dropbox can't be, either. "What used to be 100 files or icons on your desktop," he says, "is now 100 tabs in your browser, with your Google Docs and your Airtables and Figmas and everything else." All the tools are better, but they resist useful organization. "So you're just like, okay, I think someone sent that to me. Was it in an email? Was it Slack? Was it a text? Maybe it was pasted in the Zoom chat during the meeting." Dash aims to be the "Google for your personal stuff" app that so many others have tried and failed to pull off. The Dash app comes in two parts. There's a desktop app, which you can invoke from anywhere with the CMD-E keyboard shortcut, that acts as a universal search for everything on your device and in all your connected apps. (If you've ever used an app like Raycast or Alfred as a launcher, Dash will look very familiar.) There's also a browser extension, which offers the same search but also turns your new tab page into a curated list of your stuff. One section of the Dash start page might include the docs Dropbox thinks you'll need for the meeting starting in five minutes; another might pull together a bunch of similar documents you've been working on recently into what Dropbox calls a "Stack." You can also create your own stacks, and as you create files and even browse the internet, Dash will suggest files and links you might add. [...] As of today, Dropbox AI available to all Pro customers and a few teams, and there's a waitlist to get into the Dash beta as well. The next phase for Dropbox, Houston says, is to learn what people want and how they use the products. He says he's happy to be somewhat conservative at first in the name of not making huge mistakes -- you really can't have an AI hallucinating information out of your most sensitive work docs -- but he sees this stuff getting better fast.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Associated Press: For the first time, U.S. regulators on Wednesday approved the sale of chicken made from animal cells, allowing two California companies to offer "lab-grown" meat to the nation's restaurant tables and eventually, supermarket shelves. The Agriculture Department gave the green light to Upside Foods and Good Meat, firms that had been racing to be the first in the U.S. to sell meat that doesn't come from slaughtered animals -- what's now being referred to as "cell-cultivated" or "cultured" meat as it emerges from the laboratory and arrives on dinner plates. The companies received approvals for federal inspections required to sell meat and poultry in the U.S. The action came months after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration deemed that products from both companies are safe to eat. A manufacturing company called Joinn Biologics, which works with Good Meat, was also cleared to make the products. Cultivated meat is grown in steel tanks, using cells that come from a living animal, a fertilized egg or a special bank of stored cells. In Upside's case, it comes out in large sheets that are then formed into shapes like chicken cutlets and sausages. Good Meat, which already sells cultivated meat in Singapore, the first country to allow it, turns masses of chicken cells into cutlets, nuggets, shredded meat and satays. But don't look for this novel meat in U.S. grocery stores anytime soon. Cultivated chicken is much more expensive than meat from whole, farmed birds and cannot yet be produced on the scale of traditional meat, said Ricardo San Martin, director of the Alt:Meat Lab at University of California Berkeley. The companies plan to serve the new food first in exclusive restaurants: Upside has partnered with a San Francisco restaurant called Bar Crenn, while Good Meat dishes will be served at a Washington, D.C., restaurant run by chef and owner Jose Andres.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After years of publicly alleging that Microsoft used its dominant position in enterprise software to push customers toward Microsoft's cloud services, Google on Tuesday formally filed a complaint to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which has been examining such issues, according to a copy of the document reviewed by The Information. From the report: Microsoft used the licensing terms in its Office 365 productivity software to lock customers into separate contracts with its Azure cloud server business, Google's complaint said. Microsoft is the second largest cloud provider after Amazon, and Google is a distant third. Google previously complained about Microsoft's cloud licensing practices to European regulators. Under pressure, last year Microsoft agreed to change its licensing practices in the region to make it more affordable for Azure customers to use additional cloud providers, but the changes didn't apply to U.S. customers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ArsTechnica says: Back in March, the editor-in-chief of the 25-year-old, Amazon-owned camera review site DPReview.com announced that the site was shutting down. The site was the casualty of a round of layoffs at Amazon that will affect a total of about 27,000 employees this year; DPReview was meant to stop publishing new pieces on April 10 and to be available in read-only mode for an undetermined period of time after that. But then, something odd happened: The site simply kept publishing at a fairly regular clip throughout the entire month of April and continuing until now. A no-update update from EIC Scott Everett published in mid-May merely acknowledged that pieces were still going up and that there was "nothing to share," which wasn't much to go on but also didn't make it sound as though the site were in imminent danger of disappearing. Yesterday, Everett finally had something to share: DPReview.com and its "current core editorial, tech, and business team[s]" were being acquired by Gear Patrol, an independently owned consumer technology site founded by Eric Yang in 2007. The deal had already closed as of yesterday, June 20.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday sued Amazon for illegally inducing consumers to sign up for its Prime service and then hindering them from canceling the subscription, the most aggressive action against the company to date by the agency's chair, Lina Khan. From a report: The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, argues that Amazon had used design tactics on its website known as "dark patterns" to nudge people into subscribing to Prime, the F.T.C. said in a release. And when consumers wanted to cancel, they had to go through a byzantine process to do so. "Amazon tricked and trapped people into recurring subscriptions without their consent, not only frustrating users but also costing them significant money," Ms. Khan said in a statement. The lawsuit was the first time that the F.T.C. has taken Amazon to court under Ms. Khan, who rose to fame with a viral critique of the company and who is ramping up scrutiny of the e-commerce giant. Ms. Khan has said the power that big tech companies have over online commerce requires regulators to be far more aggressive and has begun taking actions against them./i.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The world of Secret Invasion is decidedly sketchy. With thousands of shapeshifting Skrulls on Earth, you can't trust what you think you're seeing. One second, you're looking at Nick Fury or an esteemed world leader; the next, you see their face morph into something (or someone) else entirely. This is a description of the plot of the new Marvel Cinematic Universe show on Disney Plus (as well as its comic book counterpart), which follows Nick Fury as he uncovers -- what else? -- a secret invasion by the Skrull population on Earth. But the concept of shape-shifting is also seen in the series' very different approach to its opening credits, which look like a sort of watercolor rendering of the key players and themes of Secret Invasion. As we see a sort of jittery and ominous sequence of the Skrull green taking over more and more of the world, it looks a lot like if an AI was prompted with the concept of "Skrull cubism" -- which, actually, isn't that far off of what it is. As director and executive producer Ali Selim tells Polygon, the intro sequence was designed by Method Studios using artificial intelligence, something he thinks plays with the very themes of the show. "When we reached out to the AI vendors, that was part of it -- it just came right out of the shape-shifting, Skrull world identity, you know? Who did this? Who is this?" Selim says. Like many people, Selim says he doesn't "really understand" how the artificial intelligence works, but was fascinated with the ways in which the AI could translate the sense of foreboding he wanted for the series. "We would talk to them about ideas and themes and words, and then the computer would go off and do something. And then we could change it a little bit by using words, and it would change."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jack Ma-backed Ant Group is developing large-language model technology that will power ChatGPT-style services, joining a list of Chinese companies seeking to win an edge in next-generation artificial intelligence. From a report: The project known as "Zhen Yi" is being created by a dedicated unit and will deploy in-house research. An Ant spokesperson confirmed the news which was first reported by Chinastarmarket.cn Ant is racing against companies including its affiliate Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Baidu and SenseTime. Their efforts mirror developments in US where Alphabet's Google and Microsoft are exploring generative AI, which can create original content from poetry to art just with simple user prompts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk says the firm is looking to invest in India and bring the electric carmaker to the country "as soon as humanly possible." From a report: Musk said he had a "very good" conversation with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday and is hopeful that they will be able to "announce something in the not too distant future." The dialog comes at a time when Tesla and New Delhi have revived talks about incentives to bring the carmaker to the South Asian market. SpaceX representatives have also revived conversations with the telecom ministry in India in recent weeks for setting up satellite internet service Starlink in the country, according to a person familiar with the matter.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Electronic Arts is undergoing a major internal shakeup, announcing today in a message from CEO Andrew Wilson that it is realigning its major studios and its leadership structure in an effort to "empower our creative teams." From a report: The reorganization includes splitting EA Games and EA Sports, with the former being renamed "EA Entertainment" in a signal that EA intends to expand beyond games where possible. "We're building the future of interactive entertainment on a foundation of legendary franchises and innovative new experiences, which represents massive opportunities for growth," Wilson wrote in a message announcing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Internet service providers in both the US and Europe are clamoring for new payments from Big Tech firms. European broadband providers are much closer to realizing the long-held goal of payments from tech companies, as the European Union government is holding an official consultation on the proposal. As the EU process unfolds, the telco lobby group USTelecom is hoping to push the US down a similar but not quite identical path. In a blog post on Friday, USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter argued that the biggest technology companies should contribute toward a fund that subsidizes the building of broadband networks. Spalter wrote that Amazon and similar Internet companies should fill what he called a "conspicuously empty seat at the collective table of global high-speed connectivity." Given that "six companies account for half of all Internet traffic worldwide... Does it still make sense that the government and broadband providers alone fund this critical infrastructure? Is there no shared obligation from the primary financial beneficiaries of these networks -- the world's most powerful Internet companies?" Spalter wrote. "We need a modern reset that more equitably shares these financial obligations among those who benefit the most from these connections," he argued. USTelecom members include AT&T, Verizon, Lumen (formerly CenturyLink), Windstream, and other telcos. It's one of the biggest trade groups that lobbies for US-based Internet service providers. [...] USTelecom pointed to the Biden administration's comments in its pitch to make Big Tech firms pay into a central fund like the existing Universal Service Fund (USF) managed by the Federal Communications Commission. "We concur with the US government's position that rather than the payments to broadband providers proposed in the EU, such 'publicly accountable funding mechanisms can better ensure that resources are devoted to key policy objectives, such as improving access and strengthening network security, while avoiding discriminatory measures that distort competition,'" Spalter wrote. The Biden administration's comments didn't call for tech companies to pay into a government-run fund, though. The document noted that the US "approach to financing improvements to broadband infrastructure involves private investments, a national Universal Service Fund, and significant public funding made from general appropriations," but didn't argue for any changes to who pays into the fund.Read more of this story at Slashdot.