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A public interest group has asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to look at whether the wireless industry's voluntary phone unlocking commitments are even effective, claiming the practice harms competition. From a report: The advocacy group, Public Knowledge, met with FCC staffers last week and filed the comment shortly afterwards, arguing the practice of locking phones to a network makes it "more difficult for consumers to change carriers," reduces the number of devices available on the secondary market, and hurts smaller players on the scene. The nonprofit filed the request as part of an ongoing investigation by the FCC into the State of Competition in the Communications Marketplace, conducted biennially by the agency. The group is hoping the agency will throw its weight behind policy efforts to change this. Americans can unlock their handsets from the services of the carrier that sold it to them, but the procedure can be a headache. The fact that consumers can unlock them free of charge came about in 2015, when carriers were told to give customers a "penalty-free" way to unlock them under the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act. The Act allows "circumvention (unlocking) to be initiated by the owner" but only "when such connection is authorized by the operator of such network" -- after their service contracts expire. Public Knowledge added that the practice of locking phones disadvantages low-income customers and places a "burden on smaller carriers, new entrants, and MVNOs in particular... due to a lack of handset availability," compounded "by the competitive disadvantages caused by agreements between the handset manufacturers and the larger service provides like AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, which smaller carriers may not be able to negotiate."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Federal antitrust enforcers are investigating Amazon proposal to buy Roomba maker iRobot, according to a securities filing. WSJ: The Federal Trade Commission this week formally requested documents from both companies explaining the proposed $1.7 billion deal's purpose and rationale, iRobot disclosed on Tuesday. The FTC's review is the latest investigation involving Amazon. The agency also is examining Amazon's $3.9 billion deal to buy 1Life Healthcare, which operates One Medical primary-care clinics in 25 U.S. markets. The filing by iRobot said both companies would cooperate with the FTC's investigation and expect to promptly reply to the FTC's request. After an investigation, which typically takes up to a year, the FTC can sue to block a merger, seek concessions such as divestitures or decline to take action, allowing a deal to close. The FTC under Chairwoman Lina Khan is taking a skeptical view of acquisitions by technology giants, saying the deals often hurt competition and give the incumbent firms control over valuable consumer data. The agency recently sued to block Meta Platforms from acquiring Within Unlimited and its virtual-reality dedicated fitness app, Supernatural. Amazon says it has been "very good stewards of peoples' data across all of our businesses" and that it isn't acquiring iRobot to gather intelligence from inside customers' homes. The Roomba is a consumer-oriented vacuum cleaner that collects data about its users' homes using cameras, sensors, artificial intelligence and machine learning.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple says it will increase App Store prices across Europe and in some Asian markets next month as currencies weaken against the strong US dollar. The price increases will effect both in-app purchases and regular apps on the App Store starting on October 5th. From a report: All countries using the Euro, Sweden, South Korea, Chile, Egypt, Malaysia, Pakistan, Vietnam, and Japan will be affected by the price hikes. All Euro markets, except Montenegro, will see the base $0.99 app pricing move to $1.19 next month, a 20 percent jump. In Japan the hikes are more than 30 percent, amid the yen dropping to a new 24-year low against the US dollar.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wintermute, a leading crypto market maker, has lost about $160 million in a hack, a top executive said Tuesday, becoming the latest firm in the industry to suffer a breach. From a report: Evgeny Gaevoy, the founder and chief executive of Wintermute, disclosed in a series of tweets that the firm's decentralized finance operations had been hacked, but centralized finance and over the counter verticals aren't affected. He said that Wintermute -- which counts Lightspeed Venture Partners, Pantera Capital and Fidelity's Avon among its backers -- remains solvent with "twice over that amount in equity left." He assured lenders that if they wish to recall their loans, Wintermute will honor that.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft on Tuesday said it's starting to release the first major update to Windows 11, the current version of its PC operating system. The company said the update is aimed at making PCs easier and safer to use and improve productivity. Some excerpts detailing new features from Windows blog: Windows 11 brought a sense of ease to the PC, with an intuitive design people love. We're building on that foundation with new features to ensure the content and information you need is always at your fingertips, including updates to the Start menu, faster and more accurate search, Quick Settings, improved local and current events coverage in your Widgets board, and the No. 1 ask from you, tabs in File Explorer. All of this helps Windows anticipate your needs and save you time. [...] The PC has always been where people come to get things done -- especially when it comes to tackling complex tasks. With enhancements to Snap layouts, the new Focus feature, and performance and battery optimizations, the new Windows 11 2022 update will help you be your most productive yet. Snap layouts on Windows 11 have been a game changer for multitasking, helping people optimize their view when they need to have multiple apps or documents in front of them at the same time. With the new update, we're making Snap layouts more versatile with better touch navigation and the ability to snap multiple browser tabs in Microsoft Edge. We're introducing Focus sessions and Do Not Disturb to help you minimize distractions that pull you away from the task at hand. [...] We also want to continue to make Windows the best place to play games. This update will deliver performance optimizations to improve latency and unlock features like Auto HDR and Variable Refresh Rate on windowed games. And with Game Pass built right into Windows 11 through the Xbox app, players can access hundreds of high-quality PC games. Having the right content fuels a great PC experience. A year ago, we redesigned the Microsoft Store on Windows to be more open and easier-to-use -- a one-stop shop for the apps, games and TV shows you love. Today, through our partnership with Amazon, we are expanding the Amazon Appstore Preview to international markets, bringing more than 20,000 Android apps and games to Windows 11 devices that meet the feature-specific hardware requirements. In addition to a growing catalog of apps and games, we are also excited to share that we are moving to the next stage of the Microsoft Store Ads pilot -- helping developers get content in front of the right customers. [...] Windows 11 provides layers of hardware and software integrated for powerful, out-of-the box protection from the moment you start your device -- and we're continuing to innovate. The new Microsoft Defender SmartScreen identifies when people are entering their Microsoft credentials into a malicious application or hacked website and alerts them.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: When ArsTechnica reviewed Windows 11 last fall, one of its biggest concerns was that it would need to wait until the fall of 2022 to see changes or improvements to its new -- and sometimes rough -- user interface. Nearly a year later, it's become abundantly clear that Microsoft isn't holding back changes and new apps for the operating system's yearly feature update. One notable smattering of additions was released back in February alongside a commitment to "continuous innovation." Other, smaller updates before and since (not to mention the continuously-updated Microsoft Edge browser) have also emphasized Microsoft's commitment to putting out new Windows features whenever they're ready. There's been speculation that Microsoft could be planning yet another major shake-up to Windows' update model, moving away from yearly updates that would be replaced by once-per-quarter feature drops, allegedly called "Moments" internally. These would be punctuated by larger Windows version updates every three years or so. As part of the PR around the Windows 11 2022 Update (aka Windows 11 22H2), the company has made clear that none of this is happening. "Windows 11 will continue to have an annual feature update cadence, released in the second half of the calendar year that marks the start of the support lifecycle," writes Microsoft VP John Cable, "with 24 months of support for Home and Pro editions and 36 months of support for Enterprise and Education editions." These updates will include their own new features and changes, as the 2022 Update does, but you'll also need to have the latest yearly update installed to continue to get additional feature updates via Windows Update and the Microsoft Store. As for the Windows 12 rumors, Microsoft simply told Ars it has "no plans to share today." This stance leaves the company plenty of room to change its plans tomorrow or any day after that. But we can safely say that a new numbered version of Windows won't happen in the near future. For smaller changes that aren't delivered as part of a yearly feature update or via a Microsoft Store update, Microsoft will use something called Controlled Feature Rollout (CFR) to test features with a subset of Windows users rather than delivering them to everyone all at once.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Shady scientists trying to publish bad research may want to think twice as academic publishers are increasingly using AI software to automatically spot signs of data tampering. The Register: Duplications of images, where the same picture of a cluster of cells, for example, is copied, flipped, rotated, shifted, or cropped is, unfortunately, quite common. In cases where the errors aren't accidental, the doctored images are created to look as if the researchers have more data and conducted more experiments then they really did. Image duplication was the top reason papers were retracted for the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) over 2016 to 2020, according to Daniel Evanko, the company's Director of Journal Operations and Systems. Having to retract a paper damages the authors and the publishers' reputation. It shows that the quality of work from the researchers was poor, and the editor's peer review process missed mistakes. To prevent embarrassment for both parties, academic publishers like AACR have turned to AI software to detect image duplication before a paper is published in a journal. The AACR started trialling Proofig, an image-checking programme developed by a startup going by the same name as their product based in Israel. Evanko presented results from the pilot study to show how Proofig impacted AACR's operations at the International Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publication conference held in Chicago this week. AACR publishes ten research journals and reviews over 13,000 submissions every year. From January 2021 to May 2022, officials used Proofig to screen 1,367 manuscripts that had been provisionally accepted for publication and contacted authors in 208 cases after reviewing image duplicates flagged by the software. In most cases, the duplication is a sloppy error that can be fixed easily. Scientists may have accidentally got their results mixed up and the issue is often resolved by resubmitting new data. On rare occasions, however, the dodgy images highlighted by the software are a sign of foul play.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nvidia is officially announcing its RTX 40-series GPUs today. After months of rumors and some recent teasing from Nvidia, the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 are now both official. The RTX 4090 arrives on October 12th priced at $1,599, with the RTX 4080 priced starting at $899 and available in November. Both are powered by Nvidia's next-gen Ada Lovelace architecture. From a report: The RTX 4090 is the top-end card for the Lovelace generation. It will ship with a massive 24GB of GDDR6X memory. Nvidia claims it's 2-4x faster than the RTX 3090 Ti, and it will consume the same amount of power as that previous generation card. Nvidia recommends a power supply of at least 850 watts based on a PC with a Ryzen 5900X processor. Inside the giant RTX 4090 there are 16,384 CUDA Cores, a base clock of 2.23GHz that boosts up to 2.52GHz, 1,321 Tensor-TFLOPs, 191 RT-TFLOPs, and 83 Shader-TFLOPs. Nvidia is actually offering the RTX 4080 in two models, one with 12GB of GDDR6X memory and another with 16GB of GDDR6X memory, and Nvidia claims it's 2-4x faster than the existing RTX 3080 Ti. The 12GB model will start at $899 and include 7,680 CUDA Cores, 7,680 CUDA Cores, a 2.31GHz base clock that boosts up to 2.61GHz, 639 Tensor-TFLOPs, 92 RT-TFLOPs, and 40 Shader-TFLOPs. The 16GB model of the RTX 4080 isn't just a bump to memory, though. Priced starting at $1,199 it's more powerful with 9,728 CUDA Cores, a base clock of 2.21GHz that boosts up to 2.51GHz, 780 Tensor-TFLOPs, 113 RT-TFLOPs, and 49 Shader-TFLOPs of power. The 12GB RTX 4080 model will require a 700 watt power supply, with the 16GB model needing at least 750 watts. Both RTX 4080 models will launch in November. Further reading: Nvidia Puts AI at Center of Latest GeForce Graphics Card Upgrade.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Saturn has quite the collection of moons, more than any other planet in the solar system. There's Enceladus, blanketed in ice, with a briny ocean beneath its surface. There's Iapetus, half of which is dusty and dark, and the other shiny and bright. There are Hyperion, a rocky oval that bears a striking resemblance to a sea sponge, and Pan, tiny and shaped just like a cheese ravioli. But one moon might be missing. From a report: According to a new study, Saturn once had yet another moon, about the same size as Iapetus, which is the third-largest satellite in Saturn's collection. The moon orbited the ringed planet for several billion years, minding its own business, doing moon things, until about 100 million to 200 million years ago, when other Saturnian moons started messing with it. The interactions between them pushed the unlucky moon closer to Saturn -- too close to remain intact. Gravity shredded it to bits. Something remarkable might have come out of all this. While most of the moon debris fell into Saturn's atmosphere, some of the pieces hung back, whirling around the planet until they splintered further and flattened into a thin, delicate disk. This lost moon, the authors of the study say, is responsible for Saturn's trademark feature: the rings. These astronomers didn't set out to find a missing moon. They were trying to better understand why Saturn is the way it is now -- specifically, why the planet is tilted just so. "Planetary tilts are an interesting indicator of a planet's history," Zeeve Rogoszinski, an astronomer at the University of Maryland who was not involved in this recent work but who studies orbital dynamics, told me. Most of the planets in our solar system spin at an angle relative to the plane in which they orbit the sun. Earth's tilt, for example, is a result of the collision that scientists believe might have created our moon. Mars's tilt is chaotic, thanks to the influence of next-door neighbor Jupiter. Uranus likely got its dramatic lean after the planet was whacked with a massive rocky object a few billion years ago.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has responded to user complaints regarding an annoying pop-up in iOS 16 that asks for user permission if an app wants to access the clipboard to paste text, images, and more. From a report: The new prompt was added to iOS 16 as a privacy measure for users, requiring that apps ask for permission to access the clipboard, which may have sensitive data. The prompt, however, has become an annoyance for users as they install iOS 16, as it constantly asks for permission whenever they wish to paste something into an app. As user annoyance with the behavior boils high, Apple has finally responded, saying the constant pop-up is not how the feature is intended to work. MacRumors reader Kieran sent an email to Craig Federighi and Tim Cook, complaining about the constant prompt and advocating for Apple to treat access to the clipboard the same way iOS treats third-party access to location, camera, microphone, and more. Ron Huang, a senior manager at Apple, joined the email thread saying the pop-up is not supposed to appear every time a user attempts to paste. "This is absolutely not expected behavior, and we will get to the bottom of it," Huang said. Huang added that this behavior is not something Apple has seen internally but that Kieran is "not the only one" experiencing it. Responding to the suggestion that clipboard access should be added within the Settings app on a per-app basis, Huang said it would make a "good improvement" and added that Apple "certainly need to fix and make apps like Mail just work even without this setting, but it's nonetheless helpful for apps which users want to share data with even if they didn't initiate it." "Stay tuned," he added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Indonesia's parliament passed into law on Tuesday a personal data protection bill that includes corporate fines and up to six years imprisonment for those found to have mishandled data in the world's fourth most populous country. From a report: The bill's passage comes after a series of data leaks and probes into alleged breaches at government firms and institutions in Indonesia, from a state insurer, telecoms company and public utility to a contact-tracing COVID-19 app that revealed President Joko Widodo's vaccine records. Lawmakers overwhelmingly approved the bill, which authorises the president to form an oversight body to fine data handlers for breaching rules on distributing or gathering personal data. The biggest fine is 2% of a corporation's annual revenue and could see their assets confiscated or auctioned off. The law includes a two-year "adjustment" period, but does not specify how violations would be addressed during that phase. The legislation stipulates individuals can be jailed for up to six years for falsifying personal data for personal gain or up to five years for gathering personal data illegally.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: After initially disabling the capability, OpenAI today announced that customers with access to DALL-E 2 can upload people's faces to edit them using the AI-powered image-generating system. Previously, OpenAI only allowed users to work with and share photorealistic faces and banned the uploading of any photo that might depict a real person, including photos of prominent celebrities and public figures. OpenAI claims that improvements to its safety system made the face-editing feature possible by "minimizing the potential of harm" from deepfakes as well as attempts to create sexual, political and violent content. In an email to customers, the company wrote: "Many of you have told us that you miss using DALL-E to dream up outfits and hairstyles on yourselves and edit the backgrounds of family photos. A reconstructive surgeon told us that he'd been using DALL-E to help his patients visualize results. And filmmakers have told us that they want to be able to edit images of scenes with people to help speed up their creative processes [We] built new detection and response techniques to stop misuse." The change in policy isn't opening the floodgates necessarily. OpenAI's terms of service will continue to prohibit uploading pictures of people without their consent or images that users don't have the rights to -- although it's not clear how consistent the company's historically been about enforcing those policies. In any case, it'll be a true test of OpenAI's filtering technology, which some customers in the past have complained about being overzealous and somewhat inaccurate. Deepfakes come in many flavors, from fake vacation photos to presidents of war-torn countries. Accounting for every emerging form of abuse will be a never-ending battle, in some cases with very high stakes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

joshuark writes: A Las Vegas surgeon reports tech workers are paying $70,000 to $150,000 to get surgery to increase their height by 3-inches. The doctor is paid to break their legs (both femurs) and then inserts adjustable metal nails that are slowly tweaked over time. "I joke that I could open a tech company," Dr. Kevin Debiparshad told GQ. "I got, like, 20 software engineers doing this procedure right now who are here in Vegas. There was a girl" -- because girls can be tech bros too. -- "yesterday from PayPal. I've got patients from Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft. I've had multiple patients from Microsoft." A new twist, borrow $70K to $150K from a loan shark in Las Vegas, and they'll break your legs later... "Since the onset of the pandemic's work-from-home era, the LimbplastX Institute (where Dr. D performs his procedures) has been seeing twice its normal number of patients, and sometimes as many as 50 new people a month," reports GQ. "That claim is backed up by a BBC report suggesting that hundreds of men in the U.S. are now undergoing the procedure every year." "According to a 2009 study of Australian men, short guys make less money than their taller peers (about $500 a year per inch); are less likely to climb the corporate ladder (according to one survey, the average height of a male Fortune 500 CEO is six feet); and, for the cis and straight among us, have fewer romantic opportunities with women (a 2013 study conducted in the Netherlands found that women were taller than their male partners in just 7.5 percent of cases)," adds the report. "The promise of Dr. D's institute is that, for a price, you too can increase your odds of becoming a Fortune 500 CEO. And people are willing to pay..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tom Persky, the founder of floppydisk.com who claims to be the "last man standing in the floppy disk business," said that the airline industry is one of his biggest customers. He talked about this in the new book "Floppy Disk Fever: The Curious Afterlives of a Flexible Medium" by Niek Hilkmann and Thomas Walskaar. Insider reports: "My biggest customers -- and the place where most of the money comes from -- are the industrial users," Persky said, in an interview from the book published online in Eye On Design last week. "These are people who use floppy disks as a way to get information in and out of a machine. Imagine it's 1990, and you're building a big industrial machine of one kind or another. You design it to last 50 years and you'd want to use the best technology available." Persky added: "Take the airline industry for example. Probably half of the air fleet in the world today is more than 20 years old and still uses floppy disks in some of the avionics. That's a huge consumer." He also said that the medical sector still uses floppy disks. And then there's "hobbyists," who want to "buy ten, 20, or maybe 50 floppy disks."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: A new estimate for the total number of ants burrowing and buzzing on Earth comes to a whopping total of nearly 20 quadrillion individuals. That staggering sum -- 20,000,000,000,000,000, or 20,000 trillion -- reveals ants' astonishing ubiquity even as scientists grow concerned a possible mass die off of insects could upend ecosystems. In a paper released Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a group of scientists from the University of Hong Kong analyzed 489 studies and concluded that the total mass of ants on Earth weighs in at about 12 megatons of dry carbon. Put another way: If all the ants were plucked from the ground and put on a scale, they would outweigh all the wild birds and mammals put together. "It's unimaginable," said Patrick Schultheiss, a lead author on the study who is now a researcher at the University of Wurzburg in Germany, in a Zoom interview. "We simply cannot imagine 20 quadrillion ants in one pile, for example. It just doesn't work." Counting all those insects -- or at least enough of them to come up with a sound estimate -- involved combining data from "thousands of authors in many different countries" over the span of a century, Schultheiss added. To tally insects as abundant as ants, there are two ways to do it: Get down on the ground to sample leaf litter -- or set tiny pitfall traps (often just a plastic cup) and wait for the ants to slip in. Researchers have gotten their boots dirty with surveys in nearly every corner of the world, though some spots in Africa and Asia lack data. "It's a truly global effort that goes into these numbers," Schultheiss said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: If someone showed you a photo of a crocodile and asked whether it was a bird, you might laugh -- and then, if you were patient and kind, help them identify the animal. Such real-world, and sometimes dumb, interactions may be key to helping artificial intelligence learn, according to a new study in which the strategy dramatically improved an AI's accuracy at interpreting novel images. The approach could help AI researchers more quickly design programs that do everything from diagnose disease to direct robots or other devices around homes on their own. It's important to think about how AI presents itself, says Kurt Gray, a social psychologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who has studied human-AI interaction but was not involved in the work. "In this case, you want it to be kind of like a kid, right?" he says. Otherwise, people might think you're a troll for asking seemingly ridiculous questions. The team "rewarded" its AI for writing intelligible questions: When people actually responded to a query, the system received feedback telling it to adjust its inner workings so as to behave similarly in the future. Over time, the AI implicitly picked up lessons in language and social norms, honing its ability to ask questions that were sensical and easily answerable. The new AI has several components, some of them neural networks, complex mathematical functions inspired by the brain's architecture. "There are many moving pieces [...] that all need to play together," Krishna says. One component selected an image on Instagram -- say a sunset -- and a second asked a question about that image -- for example, "Is this photo taken at night?" Additional components extracted facts from reader responses and learned about images from them. Across 8 months and more than 200,000 questions on Instagram, the system's accuracy at answering questions similar to those it had posed increased 118%, the team reports today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A comparison system that posted questions on Instagram but was not explicitly trained to maximize response rates improved its accuracy only 72%, in part because people more frequently ignored it. The main innovation, Jaques says, was rewarding the system for getting humans to respond, "which is not that crazy from a technical perspective, but very important from a research-direction perspective." She's also impressed by the large-scale, real-world deployment on Instagram.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Children under 12 may be losing the equivalent of one night's sleep every week due to excessive social media use, a new study suggests. Insider reports: Almost 70% of the 60 children under 12 surveyed by De Montfort University in Leicester, UK, said they used social media for four hours a day or more. Two thirds said they used social media apps in the two hours before going to bed. The study also found that 12.5% of the children surveyed were waking up in the night to check their notifications. Psychology lecturer John Shaw, who headed up the study, said children were supposed to sleep for between nine to 11 hours a night, per NHS guidelines, but those surveyed reported sleeping an average of 8.7 hours nightly. He said: "The fear of missing out, which is driven by social media, is directly affecting their sleep. They want to know what their friends are doing, and if you're not online when something is happening, it means you're not taking part in it. "And it can be a feedback loop. If you are anxious you are more likely to be on social media, you are more anxious as a result of that. And you're looking at something, that's stimulating and delaying sleep." "TikTok had the most engagement from the children, with 90% of those surveyed saying they used the app," notes Insider. "Snapchat was used by 84%, while just over half those surveyed said they used Instagram."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New York City is partnering with Charter and Altice to provide free high-speed internet and basic cable TV service to about 300,000 residents of public housing. Bloomberg reports: Called "Big Apple Connect," the program aims to bridge the digital divide between wealthier residents and lower-income people who lack the tools necessary for remote learning, access to health care and job opportunities, city officials said. An estimated 30% to 40% of people who live in buildings run by the New York City Housing Authority lack broadband, according to the cable providers. The city plans to have the service available in more than 200 NYCHA buildings by the end of 2023. The program differs from a previous short-term promotion by Altice's Optimum and Charter's Spectrum that gave New York City students free internet service after the pandemic hit. Some parents said they were duped into signing up for paid subscriptions after the promotion ended. Under a three-year agreement with the providers, New York will pick up the cost at about $30 per household. The city is in talks with a third major cable TV carrier in the city, Verizon, to join the program. NYCHA residents enrolled in Big Apple Connect will still be able to use the federal Affordable Connectivity Program benefit to save money on their cell phone bills and provide discount of up to $30 per month toward internet and cellular data service, city officials said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Recent research from the otto-js Research Team has uncovered that data that is being checked by both Microsoft Editor and the enhanced spellcheck setting within Google Chrome is being sent to Microsoft and Google respectively. This data can include usernames, emails, DOB, SSN, and basically anything that is typed into a text box that is checked by these features. Neowin reports: As an additional note, even passwords can be sent by these features, but only when a 'Show Password' button is pressed, which converts the password into visible text, which is then checked. The key issue resolves around sensitive user personally identifiable information (PII), and this is a key concern for enterprise credentials when accessing internal databases and cloud infrastructure. Some companies are already taking action to prevent this, with both AWS and LastPass security teams confirming that they have mitigated this with an update. The issue has already been dubbed 'spell-jacking'. What's most concerning is that these settings are so easy to enable by users, and could result in data exposure without anyone ever realising it. The team at otto-js ran a test of 30 websites, across a range of sectors, and found that 96.7% of them sent data with PII back to Google and Microsoft. At present, the otto-js Research Team recommends that these extensions and settings are not used until this issue is resolved.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios: Some users of Figma's design software reacted with dismay on Thursday when they found out the company was going to be acquired by Adobe, the unloved giant in the space. Other observers immediately concluded that the acquisition looks downright illegal under antitrust laws. Why it matters: The Biden administration is on the record as wanting to beef up antitrust enforcement. The Figma deal, at $20 billion, is certainly large enough to grab the attention of regulators. The big question is whether they'll conclude that suing to block it is a case they can win. Either the Department of Justice or the Federal Trade Commission could review the merger; both have taken a renewed interest in software and digital mergers. Between the lines: The Clayton Antitrust Act says any acquisition that would reduce competition in an industry is illegal. Figma was founded as an Adobe competitor and has grown impressively by doing exactly that -- implying there's a case to be made that this acquisition is anti-competitive. Insofar as Adobe is already the dominant player in the space, any acquisition, let alone a $20 billion one, will be looked at carefully. "The fact that Adobe is not typically identified as a Big Tech platform should provide [Adobe and Figma] with little if any comfort," Charles Rule, a partner at the Rule Garza Howley law firm and former DOJ antitrust official, tells Axios. "This deal appears to raise straightforward, traditional antitrust issues," he says. "There's enough here to get a close look, and maybe a complaint," adds a former FTC antitrust official. Another former FTC attorney tells Axios to expect a thorough initial investigation into possible overlaps.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

slack_justyb writes: As previously indicated on Slashdot, Rust was slated to be coming to the Linux Kernel sometime in the 6.x version. Well wonder no longer on which version of kernel 6.x will have the first bits of Rust officially in the kernel, as Linus has confirmed that 6.1 will be the first with the new NVMe kernel drivers being in Rust. The first version non-production ready code for the NVMe Rust based kernel drivers were already producing performance comparable to C code. So the final drivers to hit 6.1 are already looking promising. It also helped Rust's case that, thanks to the ground-breaking work of Linux kernel and Rust developer Miguel Ojeda, Rust on Linux has gotten much more mature. Kernel maintainers were convinced it is time to move forward with Rust in Linux. In short, they agreed that Rust on Linux was ready for work.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is launching a pilot program to keep emails from political campaigns from going to users' spam folders this week, the company told Axios. From the report: Google asked the Federal Election Commission in June if a program that would let campaigns emails bypass spam filters, instead giving users the option to move them to spam first, would be legal under campaign finance laws. Despite hundreds of negative comments submitted to the FEC arguing against it, the FEC approved the program in August. Eligible committees, abiding by security requirements and best practices as outlined by Google, can now register to participate. Google has come under fire that its algorithms unfairly target conservative content across its services, and that its Gmail service filters more Republican fundraising and campaign emails to spam. This is partly based on a study from North Carolina State University, though its authors say it has been misconstrued. "We expect to begin the pilot with a small number of campaigns from both parties and will test whether these changes improve the user experience, and provide more certainty for senders during this election period," Jose Castaneda, a Google spokesperson, told Axios. "We will continue to listen and respond to feedback as the pilot progresses." He added: "During the pilot, users will be in control through a more prominent unsubscribe button."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Mark Zuckerberg's pivot into the metaverse has cost him dearly in the real world. Even in a rough year for just about every US tech titan, the wealth erased from the chief executive officer of Meta stands out. His fortune has been cut in half and then some, dropping by $71 billion so far this year, the most among the ultra-rich tracked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. At $55.9 billion, his net worth ranks 20th among global billionaires, his lowest spot since 2014 and behind three Waltons and two members of the Koch family. It was less than two years ago when Zuckerberg, 38, was worth $106 billion and among an elite group of global billionaires, with only Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates commanding bigger fortunes. His wealth swelled to a peak of $142 billion in September 2021, when the company's shares reached as high as $382. The following month, Zuckerberg introduced Meta and changed the company's name from Facebook And it's been largely downhill from there as it struggles to find its footing in the tech universe. Its recent earnings reports have been dismal. It started in February, when the company revealed no growth in monthly Facebook users, triggering a historic collapse in its stock price and slashing Zuckerberg's fortune by $31 billion, among the biggest one-day declines in wealth ever. Other issues include Instagram's bet on Reels -- its answer to TikTok's short-form video platform -- even though it's worth less in advertising revenue, while the industry overall has been affected by lower marketing spending due to concerns over an economic slowdown. The stock is also being dragged down by the company's investments in the metaverse, said Laura Martin, senior internet analyst at Needham & Co. Zuckerberg has said he expects the project will lose "significant" amounts of money in the next three to five years. In the meantime, Meta "has to get these users back from TikTok," said Martin. It's also hampered by "excessive regulatory scrutiny and intervention," she said. Meta is "down about 57% this year, far more than the declines of 14% for Apple, 26% for Amazon and 29% for Google parent Alphabet," adds Bloomberg. "Meta is even narrowing the gap in 2022 losses with Netflix, which is down about 60%."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Maryland judge has overturned the murder conviction of Adnan Syed, in the latest twist to the case at the center of the hit podcast series Serial. From a report: Baltimore City Circuit Judge Melissa Phinn vacated the 41-year-old's conviction and granted him a new trial on Monday, ordering his release after more than 23 years behind bars. The move came after prosecutors made a request for his release on Wednesday saying that "the state no longer has confidence in the integrity of the conviction." Prosecutors said that an almost year-long investigation had cast doubts about the validity of cellphone tower data and uncovered new information about the possible involvement of two alternate unnamed suspects. Syed was convicted in 2000 of first-degree murder, robbery, kidnapping and imprisonment of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee. Lee, 18, vanished after leaving her high school on 13 January 1999. Her strangled body was found in a shallow grave in a Baltimore park around a month later. Syed has always maintained his innocence. In a tweet shortly after the ruling was made, Serial tweeted: "Sarah was at the courthouse when Adnan was released, a new episode is coming tomorrow morning."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a rematch today against 19-year-old Hans Niemann, World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen resigned his game in the second move and quickly went offline. Susan Polgar commented on Carlsen's resignation against Niemann saying it's: "Definitely a protest move!", while GM Jon Ludvig Hammer said Carlsen should be sanctioned during the live Norwegian TV program. The chess world has been in chaos ever since Carlsen dropped out from a prestigious tournament following a stunning loss, which ignited suspicions of foul play. Chessdom has included a "timetable of happenings" related to Niemann in their report.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Joe Biden has declared the pandemic over in the US, even as the number of Americans who have died from Covid continues to rise. From a report: Mr Biden said that while "we still have a problem", the situation is rapidly improving. Statistics show that over 400 Americans on average are dying from the virus each day. The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said last week that the end of the pandemic is "in sight". In an interview with 60 Minutes on CBS, Mr Biden said that the US is still doing "a lot of work" to control the virus. The interview - aired over the weekend - was partly filmed on the floor of the Detroit Auto Show, where the president gestured towards the crowds. "If you notice, no one's wearing masks," he said. "Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape...I think it's changing." In August, US officials extended the ongoing Covid-19 public health emergency, which has been in place since January 2020, through 13 October. To date, more than one million Americans have died from the pandemic. Data from Johns Hopkins University shows that the seven-day average of deaths currently stands at over 400, with more than 3,000 dead in the last week. In January 2021, by comparison, more than 23,000 people were reported dead from the virus over a single week-long span. About 65% of the total US population is considered fully vaccinated. Some federal vaccine mandates remain in place in the US - including on healthcare workers, military personnel and any non-US citizen entering the country by airplane.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Uber said on Monday a hacker affiliated with the Lapsus$ hacking group was responsible for a cyber attack that forced the ride-hailing company to shut several internal communications temporarily last week. From a report: Uber said the attacker had not accessed any user accounts and the databases that store sensitive user information such as credit card numbers, bank account or trip details. "The attacker accessed several internal systems, and our investigation has focused on determining whether there was any material impact," Uber said, adding that investigation was still ongoing. The company said it was in close coordination with the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice on the matter. Friday's cybersecurity incident had brought down Uber's internal communication system for a while and employees were restricted to use Salesforce-owned office messaging app Slack. Uber said the attacker logged in to a contractor's Uber account after they accepted a two-factor login approval request following multiple requests, giving the hacker access to several employee accounts and tools such as G-Suite and Slack.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ArsTechnica reports: The head of Kiwi Farms said the site experienced a breach that allowed hackers to access his administrator account and possibly the accounts of all other users. On the site, creator Joshua Moon wrote: "The forum was hacked. You should assume the following. Assume your password for the Kiwi Farms has been stolen. Assume your email has been leaked. Assume any IP you've used on your Kiwi Farms account in the last month has been leaked." Moon said that the unknown individual or individuals behind the hack gained access to his admin account by using a technique known as session hijacking, in which an attacker obtains the authentication cookies a site sets after an account holder enters valid credentials and successfully completes any two-factor authentication requirements. The session hijacking was made possible after uploading malicious content to XenForo, a site Kiwi Farms uses to power its user forums.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After a Florida man was accused of vehicular homicide, his lawyer used Clearview AI's facial recognition software to prove his innocence. But other defense lawyers say Clearview's offer rings hollow. From a report: It was the scariest night of Andrew Grantt Conlyn's life. He sat in the passenger seat of a two-door 1997 Ford Mustang, clutching his seatbelt, as his friend drove approximately 100 miles per hour down a palm tree-lined avenue in Fort Myers, Fla. His friend, inebriated and distraught, occasionally swerved onto the wrong side of the road to pass cars that were complying with the 35 mile-an-hour speed limit. "Someone is going to die tonight," Mr. Conlyn thought. And then his friend hit a curb and lost control of the car. The Mustang began spinning wildly, hitting a light pole and three palm trees before coming to a stop, the passenger's side against a tree. At some point, Mr. Conlyn blacked out. When he came to, his friend was gone, the car was on fire and his seatbelt buckle was jammed. Luckily, a good Samaritan intervened, prying open the driver's side door and pulling Mr. Conlyn out of the burning vehicle. Mr. Conlyn didn't learn his savior's name that Wednesday night in March 2017, nor did the police, who came to the scene and found the body of his friend, Colton Hassut, in the bushes near the crash; he'd been ejected from the car and had died. In the years that followed, the inability to track down that good Samaritan derailed Mr. Conlyn's life. If Clearview AI, which is based in New York, hadn't granted his lawyer special access to a facial recognition database of 20 billion faces, Mr. Conlyn might have spent up to 15 years in prison because the police believed he had been the one driving the car. For the last few years, Clearview AI's tool has been largely restricted to law enforcement, but the company now plans to offer access to public defenders. Hoan Ton-That, the chief executive, said this would help "balance the scales of justice," but critics of the company are skeptical given the legal and ethical concerns that swirl around Clearview AI's groundbreaking technology. The company scraped billions of faces from social media sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, and other parts of the web in order to build an app that seeks to unearth every public photo of a person that exists online.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The App Association brands itself as the leading voice for thousands of app developers around the world. In reality, the vast majority of its funding comes from Apple. From a report: The tech giant isn't a member of the association. But it plays a dominant behind-the-scenes role shaping the group's policy positions, according to four former App Association employees who asked not to be named discussing internal matters. In fact, critics note, the association's lobbying agenda tracks closely with Apple's -- even when it's at odds with app developers, the companies that make the individual games and programs that run on Apple's iPhone and other devices. The group, known as ACT, says it's not beholden to Apple, but confirmed that it derives more than half its funding from the company. The former employees say the actual percentage is much higher. The relationship between Apple and ACT illustrates how big companies quietly pour money into outside groups that promote their agenda in Washington. ACT representatives regularly testify in Congress, file court briefs in defense of Apple's positions and host annual "fly-in" meetings for developers with lawmakers. Rick VanMeter, a former congressional aide who is the head of rival developer group Coalition for App Fairness, said ACT's purported representation of app developers is deceptive, given its relationship with Apple.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China installed almost as many robots in its factories last year as the rest of the world, accelerating a rush to automate and consolidate its manufacturing dominance even as its working-age population shrinks. WSJ: Shipments of industrial robots to China in 2021 rose 45% compared with the previous year to more than 243,000, according to new data viewed by The Wall Street Journal from the International Federation of Robotics, a robotics industry trade group. China accounted for just under half of all installations of heavy-duty industrial robots last year, reinforcing the nation's status as the No. 1 market for robot manufacturers worldwide. The IFR data shows China installed nearly twice as many new robots as did factories throughout the Americas and Europe. Part of the explanation for China's rapid automation is that it is simply catching up with richer peers. The world's second-largest economy lags behind the U.S. and manufacturing powerhouses such as Japan, Germany and South Korea in the prevalence of robots on production lines. The rapid automation also reflects a growing recognition in China that its factories need to adapt as the country's supply of cheap labor dwindles and wages rise. The United Nations expects India to surpass China as the world's most-populous country as soon as next year. The population of those in China age 20 to 64 -- the bulk of the workforce -- might have already peaked, U.N. projections show, and is expected to fall steeply after 2030, as China's population ages and birthrates stay low.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

mspohr writes: A major bug in Apple's latest iPhone is causing the camera to physically fail when using apps such as TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram, some owners have reported. The bug in the company's iPhone 14 Pro Max, the most expensive model in the iPhone 14 range, appears to affect the optical image stabilisation (OIS) feature, which uses a motor to eliminate the effects of camera shake when taking pictures. Opening the camera in certain apps causes the OIS motor to go haywire, causing audible grinding sounds and physically vibrating the entire phone. The vibration does not occur when using the built-in camera app, suggesting the problem's roots are in a software fault. However, some have warned affected users to limit their usage of apps that trigger the bug, in case excess vibration causes permanent damage to the OIS system. The company has previously warned users about potential damage to the OIS motor, particularly in situations where their phones are experiencing significant vibration. In January this year, the company published a long warning note for users about the risk of mounting their iPhones near "high-power motorcycle engines."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Pentagon has ordered a sweeping audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare after major social media companies identified and took offline fake accounts suspected of being run by the U.S. military in violation of the platforms' rules. From a report: Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, last week instructed the military commands that engage in psychological operations online to provide a full accounting of their activities by next month after the White House and some federal agencies expressed mounting concerns over the Defense Department's attempted manipulation of audiences overseas, according to several defense and administration officials familiar with the matter. The takedowns in recent years by Twitter and Facebook of more than 150 bogus personas and media sites created in the United States was disclosed last month by internet researchers Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory. While the researchers did not attribute the sham accounts to the U.S. military, two officials familiar with the matter said that U.S. Central Command is among those whose activities are facing scrutiny. Like others interviewed for this report, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations. The researchers did not specify when the takedowns occurred, but those familiar with the matter said they were within the past two or three years. Some were recent, they said, and involved posts from the summer that advanced anti-Russia narratives citing the Kremlin's "imperialist" war in Ukraine and warning of the conflict's direct impact on Central Asian countries. Significantly, they found that the pretend personas -- employing tactics used by countries such as Russia and China -- did not gain much traction, and that overt accounts actually attracted more followers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

South Korean prosecutors have refuted Do Kwon's claim from over the weekend that he is not on the run and asked Interpol to issue a red notice against the Terraform Labs' co-founder, escalating the publicly playing out drama following the $40 billion wipeout on his cryptocurrency startup in May this year. From a report: The Seoul Southern District Prosecutor's Office said that Kwon was not cooperating with the investigation and had told them (through his lawyer last month) that he had no intention to appear for questioning, according to official statements cited by local media Yonhap. The prosecutors have asked Seoul's foreign ministry to revoke Kwon's passport and said they have "circumstantial evidence" that Kwon is attempting to escape. An Interpol red notice, which is a call to law enforcement worldwide, can prevent individuals from being issues visas, restrict their cross border travels, and "provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender or similar legal action." Over the weekend, Kwon claimed he was not on the run from any government agency that had "shown interest to communication." He added in a tweet: "We are in full cooperation and we don't have anything to hide."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A hacker published authentic, pre-release footage from development of Grand Theft Auto VI, the most anticipated video game from Take-Two Interactive Software. From a report: The cache of videos offers an extensive and unauthorized look at the making of one of biggest games in the industry. A leak of this scale is so rare that some people cast doubt on its authenticity when it emerged over the weekend, but people familiar with the game's development said the videos are real. The footage provides an early and unpolished view of plans for Grand Theft Auto VI, though the final version will look much more refined, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the details are private. Take-Two issued requests for YouTube and other websites to remove the videos, citing a copyright claim, but not before they were widely disseminated. Rockstar Games, the Take-Two studio that makes Grand Theft Auto, confirmed the hack in a statement posted to Twitter on Monday. It blamed a "network intrusion" that allowed the hacker to download the content. Take-Two shares were down as much as 3.3% on Monday. The hacker posted dozens of never-before-seen videos from Grand Theft Auto VI on an online message board over the weekend. On the forum, the person suggested they were the same hacker who infiltrated Uber Technologies in a high-profile incident last week. The claim is unverified. The hacker indicated in a follow-up message about the upcoming Grand Theft Auto game, "I am looking to negotiate a deal," and raised the prospect of publishing more internal information about the project.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Transportation is going to electrify much faster than people realize," says Rick Luebbe, chief executive officer of Group14 Technologies. So this weekend the Seattle Times paid a visit to their small manufacturing plant in rural Western Washington working on becoming one of the companies supplying a crucial component:Inside this building, carbon is infused with a silicon gas to produce a black powdery substance that high-profile investors hope will be a key component of the next generation of electric car batteries enabling them to travel farther between plug-ins, recharge faster and cost less. "It's transformational," said Rick Luebbe, chief executive officer of Group14 Technologies, which opened the Maltby plant in 2021 and has raised $441 million in funding. The company employs nearly 100 people, and the industrial workplace north of Woodinville has the excitement of a startup company. A research laboratory is under construction in one corner of the building as production is underway elsewhere. Group14 is one of more than 20 companies launched in a global quest to improve the lithium-ion battery — mainstay of the fledgling electric car industry — by including more silicon.... Within the next decade, two companies plan to make Washington a hub of this emerging technology. Group14, which has drawn Porsche AG as a lead investor, and Sila, an Alameda, California, company that is partnering with Mercedes-Benz, both have announced plans to open large-scale plants east of the Cascades in Moses Lake.... The silicon technology also has applications for many other battery-powered products ranging from cellphones that can last longer between charges to drones and aircraft that could stay aloft for more hours of flight... Company officials at Group14 and Sila say they have developed silicon products that can be blended with graphite — or replace it entirely — without unduly compromising battery life.... "Generally, every customer we're working with is getting the cycling they need for commercial deployment," Luebbe said. Gene Berdichevsky, Sila's chief executive, said Sila's technology, also proprietary, "achieves and exceeds" automotive industry specification even when silicon entirely replaces graphite. Some automotive companies are betting that silicon does have an important role to play in the next generation of batteries... Mercedes-Benz AG, which this year announced it's opening a new battery plant in Alabama, invested in Sila in 2019. Then, last May, the company announced it would use the Sila silicon technology for electric G-Class vehicles that will start production in the middle of this decade. Uwe Keller, directory of battery development at Mercedes-Benz AG, said his company is involved in extensive research with Sila's silicon product to determine how it best can be incorporated into a next generation of batteries. But he expects Sila's technology will boost electric car battery range by 15 to 20%.... Berdichevsky, Sila's chief executive, who worked at Tesla in its early years and co-founded Sila in 2011, said his company plans to start producing silicon product from Moses Lake to send to Mercedes-Benz in the second half of 2024.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Whirring as it powered up, a hoverbike lifted directly into the air in Michigan, video shows." That's the lead from one news report about a big debut at a U.S. auto show in Detroit: a gasoline-and-electric powered hoverbike (using a Kawasaki motor) created by Japanese manufacturing company AERWINS Technologies. They've already started selling them in Japan, and they're now also hoping to sell a smaller version in America in 2023. The hoverbike flies for 40 minutes, Reuters reports, and can reach speeds of up to 62 miles per hour (100 kph). (They added that the bike drew "perhaps inevitable comparisons to the speeder bikes of Star Wars.") From McClatchy news services:Video from WXYZ's Facebook shows the hoverbike's flight. The test rider checks the vehicle then signals with a fist pump. The engines power up, whirring louder and louder until the bike lifts off. The hoverbike flies back and forth, slightly faster as the ride goes on, then lands smoothly to the ground, video shows. "I feel like I'm literally 15 years old and I just got out of Star Wars," the test rider told Reuters. "It's awesome! Of course, you have a little apprehension, but I was just so amped. I literally had goosebumps and feel like a little kid...." The price of a hoverbike? Only $777,000 according to current estimates, though the company hopes to get the cost down to about $50,000, The Detroit News reported. The Detroit News adds this about the company's founder/CEO:As a boy, Shuhei Komatsu loved Star Wars movies, especially the lightning-fast land speeders. So when he grew up, he decided to make one of his own, he said. "I wanted to make something from the movie real," Komatsu said. "It's a land speeder for the Dark Side...." Komatsu said his company will make its public offering of stock on the NASDAQ exchange in November.... He said he's hoping the U.S. government classifies its XTURISMO as a non-aircraft.... He said he thinks consumers will buy the machine for recreation, and governments will buy it for law enforcement and for inspecting infrastructure. "I hope that in the future, people will use it for every day," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Some news Friday from the Associated Press. "The Biden administration is moving one step closer to developing a central bank digital currency, known as the digital dollar, saying it would help reinforce the U.S. role as a leader in the world financial system."The White House said on Friday that after President Joe Biden issued an executive order in March calling on a variety of agencies to look at ways to regulate digital assets, the agencies came up with nine reports, covering cryptocurrency impacts on financial markets, the environment, innovation and other elements of the economic system. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said one Treasury recommendation is that the U.S. "advance policy and technical work on a potential central bank digital currency, or CBDC, so that the United States is prepared if CBDC is determined to be in the national interest.... Right now, some aspects of our current payment system are too slow or too expensive," Yellen said on a Thursday call with reporters laying out some of the findings of the reports.... According to the Atlantic Council nonpartisan think tank, 105 countries representing more than 95% of global gross domestic product already are exploring or have created a central bank digital currency. The council found that the U.S. and the U.K. are far behind in creating a digital dollar or its equivalent.... Several [U.S. agency] reports will come out in the next weeks and months. Eswar Prasad, a trade professor at Cornell who studies the digitization of currencies, said Treasury's report "takes a positive view about how a digital dollar might play a useful role in increasing payment options for individuals and businesses" while acknowledging the risks of its development. He said the report sets the stage for the creation of agency regulations and legislation "that can improve the benefit-risk tradeoff associated with cryptocurrencies and related technologies." A statement from the U.S. White House cautions that the report does not make any decisions "regarding particular design choices for a potential U.S. CBDC system." Instead, the 58-page document analyzes 18 different choices for technical designs, and according to its introductory paragraph, "makes recommendations on how to prepare the U.S. Government for a U.S. CBDC system." But "it does no make an assessment or recommendation about whether a U.S. CBDC system should be pursued."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The poles are warming several times faster than the global average," Phys.org reminds us, "causing record smashing heatwaves that were reported earlier this year in both the Arctic and Antarctic. Melting ice and collapsing glaciers at high latitudes would accelerate sea level rise around the planet. "Fortunately, refreezing the poles by reducing incoming sunlight would be both feasible and remarkably cheap, according to new research published Friday in Environmental Research Communications."Scientists laid out a possible future program whereby high-flying jets would spray microscopic aerosol particles into the atmosphere at latitudes of 60 degrees north and south — roughly Anchorage and the southern tip of Patagonia. If injected at a height of 43,000 feet (above airliner cruising altitudes), these aerosols would slowly drift poleward, slightly shading the surface beneath. "There is widespread and sensible trepidation about deploying aerosols to cool the planet," notes lead author Wake Smith, "but if the risk/benefit equation were to pay off anywhere, it would be at the poles." Particle injections would be performed seasonally in the long days of the local spring and early summer. The same fleet of jets could service both hemispheres, ferrying to the opposite pole with the change of seasons. newly designed high-altitude tankers would prove much more efficient. A fleet of roughly 125 such tankers could loft a payload sufficient to cool the regions poleward of 60 degreesN/S by 2 degreesC per year, which would return them close to their pre-industrial average temperatures. Costs are estimated at $11 billion annually — less than one-third the cost of cooling the entire planet by the same 2 degreesC magnitude and a tiny fraction of the cost of reaching net zero emissions. Smith calls the idea "game-changing" (while also warning it's "not a substitute for decarbonization").Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The world's freight-carrying trucks and ships use GPS-based satellite tracking and navigation systems, reports ZDNet. But "Criminals are turning to cheap GPS jamming devices to ransack the cargo on roads and at sea, a problem that's getting worse...."Jammers work by overpowering GPS signals by emitting a signal at the same frequency, just a bit more powerful than the original. The typical jammers used for cargo hijackings are able to jam frequencies from up to 5 miles away rendering GPS tracking and security apparatuses, such as those used by trucking syndicates, totally useless. In Mexico, jammers are used in some 85% of cargo truck thefts. Statistics are harder to come by in the United States, but there can be little doubt the devices are prevalent and widely used. Russia is currently availing itself of the technology to jam commercial planes in Ukraine. As we've covered, the proliferating commercial drone sector is also prey to attack.... During a light show in Hong Kong in 2018, a jamming device caused 46 drones to fall out of the sky, raising public awareness of the issue. While the problem is getting worse, the article also notes that companies are developing anti-jamming solutions for drone receivers, "providing protection and increasing the resiliency of GPS devices against jamming attacks. "By identifying and preventing instances of jamming, fleet operators are able to prevent cargo theft."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The short answers are "yes" and "no." America's Constitution prohibits government intervention into public expression, reports the business-news radio show Marketplace, "protecting free speech and expression "through, for example.... writing, protesting and coding languages like JavaScript, HTML, Python and Perl." Specifically protecting code started with the 1995 case of cryptographer Daniel Bernstein, who challenged America's "export controls" on encryption (which regulated it like a weapon). But they also spoke to technology lawyer Kendra Albert, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School's Cyberlaw Clinic, about the specific parameters of how America protects code as a form of expression: Albert: I think that the reality was that the position that code was a form of expression is in fact supported by a long history of First Amendment law. And that it, you know, is very consistent with how we see the First Amendment interpreted across a variety of contexts.... [O]ne of the questions courts ask is whether a regulation or legislation or a government action is specifically targeting speech, or whether the restrictions on speech are incidental, but not the overall intention. And that's actually one of the places you see kind of a lot of these difficulties around code as speech. The nature of many kinds of regulation may mean that they restrict code because of the things that particular forms of software code do in the world. But they weren't specifically meant to restrict the expressive conduct. And courts end up then having to sort of go through a test that was originally developed in the context of someone burning a draft card to figure out — OK, is this regulation, is the burden that it has on this form of expressive speech so significant that we can't regulate in this way? Or is this just not the focus, and the fact that there are some restrictions on speech as a result of the government attempting to regulate something else should not be the focus of the analysis? Q: Congress and federal agencies as well as some states are looking to tighten regulations around cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. What role do you think the idea of code as speech will play in this environment moving forward? Albert: The reality is that the First Amendment is not a total bar to regulation of speech. It requires the government meet a higher standard for regulating certain kinds of speech. That runs, to some extent, in conflict with how people imagine what "code is speech" does as sort of a total restriction on the regulation of software, of code, because it has expressive content. It just means that we treat code similarly to how we treat other forms of expression, and that the government can regulate them under certain circumstances.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Mars rover Perseverance was the subject of a new NASA briefing Thursday. CNET describes it as a celebration of this year's discovery of organic matter — in June NASA for the first time measured the total amount of organic carbon in Martian rocks — and a celebration of rock samples. (Specifically, the two samples collected from mudstone rock on Wildcat Ridge in Jezero Crater.)The rover's Sherloc instrument investigated the rock. (Sherloc stands for Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals.) "In its analysis of Wildcat Ridge, the Sherloc instrument registered the most abundant organic detections on the mission to date," NASA said. Scientists are seeing familiar signs in the analysis of Wildcat Ridge. "In the distant past, the sand, mud and salts that now make up the Wildcat Ridge sample were deposited under conditions where life could potentially have thrived," said Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley in a statement. "The fact the organic matter was found in such a sedimentary rock — known for preserving fossils of ancient life here on Earth — is important." Perseverance isn't equipped to find definitive evidence of ancient microbial life on the red planet. "The reality is the burden of proof for establishing life on another planet is very, very high," said Farley during the press conference. For that, we need to examine Mars rocks up close and in person in Earth labs. Perseverance currently has 12 rock samples on board, including the Wildcat Ridge pieces and samples from another sedimentary delta rock called Skinner Ridge. It also collected igneous rock samples earlier in the mission that point to the impact of long-ago volcanic action in the crater. NASA is so happy with the diversity of samples collected that it's looking into dropping some of the filled tubes off on the surface soon in preparation for the future Mars Sample Return campaign.... The mission is under development. If all goes as planned, those rocks could be here by 2033. The hope is that in 2033, Perseverance will meet the lander "and personally deliver the samples," the article quips. But in the meantime, Perseverance "could wander up the crater rim." And there's one more update about the smaller exploration vehicle that Peseverance carried to Mars. "Its companion Ingenuity helicopter is in good health and expected to take to the air again."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Economist notes this business cycle is hurting ad revenue for Alphabet's Google and Meta's Facebook."Last quarter Meta reported its first-ever year-on-year decline in revenues. Snap, a smaller rival, is laying off a fifth of its workforce." But for both companies, "the cyclical problem may not be the worst of it," since they're finally facing some real competition. "They might once have hoped to offset the digital-ad pie's slower growth by grabbing a larger slice of it. No longer."Although the two are together expected to rake in around $300bn in revenues this year, sales of their four biggest rivals in the West will amount to almost a quarter as much... What is more, as digital advertising enters a period of transformation, the challengers look well-placed to increase their gains. The noisiest newcomer to the digital-ad scene is TikTok. In the five years since its launch the short-video app has sucked ad dollars away from Facebook and Instagram, Meta's two biggest properties. So much so that the two social networks are reinventing themselves in the image of their Chinese-owned rival.... But Meta and Google may have more to worry about closer to home, where a trio of American tech firms are loading ever more ads around their main businesses. Chief among them is Amazon, forecast to take nearly 7% of worldwide digital-ad revenue this year, up from less than 1% just six years ago. The company started reporting details of its ad business only in February, when it revealed sales in 2021 of $31bn. As Benedict Evans, a tech analyst, points out, that is roughly as much as the ad sales of the entire global newspaper industry. Amazon executives now talk of advertising as one of the company's three "engines", alongside retail and cloud computing. Next in line is Microsoft, expected to quietly take more than 2% of global sales this year — slightly more than TikTok. Its search engine, Bing, has only a small share of the search market, but that market is a gigantic one. Microsoft's social network, LinkedIn, is unglamorous but its business-to-business ads allow it to monetise the time users spend on it at a rate roughly four times that of Facebook, estimates Andrew Lipsman of eMarketer. It generates more revenue than some medium-sized networks including Snap's Snapchat and Twitter. The most surprising new adman is Apple. The iPhone-maker used to rail against intrusive digital advertising. Now it sells many ads of its own.... As digital ads work their way into more corners of the economy, "a new order is going to materialise", believes Mr Lipsman. He thinks Amazon will overtake Meta in total advertising revenue, possibly within five years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Randall Munroe does more than draw the online comic strip XKCD. He's also published a funny new speculative science book (following up on his previous New York Times best-seller), promising "short answers, new lists of weird and worrying questions, and some of my favorite answers from the What If site." From his blog:In What If 2, I answer new questions I've receieved in the years since What If? was released. People have asked about touching exotic materials, traveling across space and time, eating things they shouldn't, and smashing large objects into the Earth. There are questions about lasers, explosions, swingsets, candy, and soup. Several planets are destroyed — one of them by the soup. But besides launching a new book tour, he's also found some particularly geeky ways to promote the new book. On Thursday Munroe went on a language podcast to ask his own oddball questions — like how to spot an artificial language, and what does the word "it" refer to in the sentence "It's 3pm and hot." He's illustrated a a science-y animated video, and released several self-mocking cartoons. And of course — answered some more strange science questions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While there is a lot of noise about the hottest programming languages and the evolution of Web3, blockchain and the metaverse, none of this will matter if the industry doesn't have highly skilled software developers to build them," argues ZDNet. So they spoke to Ori Bendet, VP of product management at CheckMarx, a builder software that tests application security. His prediction? Automatic code generators (ACG) like Github CoPilot, AWS CodeWhisperer and Tab9 will eventually replace "traditional" coding. "Although ACG is not as good as developers may think," Bendet says, "over the next few years, every developer will have their code generated, leaving them more time to focus on their core business."As businesses turn to automation as a means of quickly building and deploying new apps and digital services, low code and no code tools will play a fundamental role in shaping the future of the internet. According to a 2021 Gartner forecast, by 2025, 70% of new applications developed by enterprises will be based on low-code or no-code tools, compared to less than 25% in 2020. A lot of this work will be done by 'citizen developers' — employees who build business apps for themselves and other users using low code tools, but who don't have formal training in computer programming. In order to build a proficient citizen developer workforce, companies will need an equally innovative approach to training. "Low code and no code tools are democratizing software development and providing opportunities for more people to build technology, prompting more innovation across industries," says Prashanth Chandrasekar, CEO of Stack Overflow.... The rise of low-code and no-code will also help to further democratize tech jobs, creating more opportunities for talented individuals from non-tech or non-academic backgrounds. A 2022 survey by developer recruitment platforms CoderPad and CodinGame found that 81% of tech recruiters now readily hire from 'no-degree' candidate profiles. CodinGame COO Aude Barral believes this trend will only grow as the demand for software professionals intensifies. Stack Overflow's CEO sees some limitations. "Without taking the time to learn the fundamentals of writing code or the context in which code is used, developers using low-code or code suggestion tools will hit a limit in the quality and functionality of their code." How is this playing out in the real world of professional IT? I'd like to invite Slashdot's readers to share their own experiences in the comments. Are you seeing low-code and no-code development replacing traditional coding?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Drive reports;Sir Jony Ive — the man designed the original iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad during his 22 years as Apple design chief — has claimed new-car buyers will drive demand for physical buttons to return in automotive entertainment systems. In recent years, car companies such as Tesla and Volkswagen have progressively moved to remove physical switches from their vehicle's interiors, replacing them with 'haptic' touch-sensitive buttons, or moving a majority of the controls into a central touchscreen. Speaking at a panel session at a conference in the US — alongside Apple CEO Tim Cook and Laurene Powell Jobs (widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs) — Ive said there are merits to the design of multi-touch screens, but car buyers will demand for physical controls to return. "I do think there are fabulous affordances with interfaces like, for example, multi-touch [the technology allowing for pinching and zooming on phone screens]," Ive said. "But we do remain physical beings. I think, potentially, the pendulum may swing a little to have interfaces and products that will take more time and are more engaged physically." When the panel's moderator — journalist Kara Swisher — asked if Ive was referring to cars, the former Apple design boss responded, "for example". The article also reports that "Apple's secretive autonomous car project is believed to be continuing behind closed doors, with the tech giant reportedly employing 5000 staff members to work on a new electric car."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader n3hat writes: The BBC reports that a thief has been emptying gym patrons' accounts by stealing their bank card and mobile phone, registering the account to the thief's own mobile, and emptying the victims' bank accounts. The thief works around 2-factor authentication by taking advantage of the victim's phone having been configured to show notifications on the lock screen, so the thief can view the 2FA credential even though they don't have the unlock code. The article gives instructions on how to disable notifications on the lock screen, for both iPhone and Android.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Chess engines have redefined creativity in chess," argues the Atlantic, "leading to a situation where the game's top players can no longer get away with simply playing the strongest chess they can, but must also engage in subterfuge, misdirection, and other psychological techniques." The article's title? "Chess is just poker now." And it starts by noting one inconvenient truth about still-unresolved allegations that Hans Niemann cheated to defeat world chess champion Magnus Carlsen:Whatever really happened here, everyone agrees that for Niemann, or anyone else, to cheat at chess in 2022 would be conceptually simple. In the past 15 years, widely available AI software packages, known as "chess engines," have been developed to the point where they can easily demolish the world's best chess players — so all a cheater has to do to win is figure out a way to channel a machine's advice.... What once seemed magical became calculable; where one could rely on intuition came to require rigorous memorization and training with a machine. Chess, once poetic and philosophical, was acquiring elements of a spelling bee: a battle of preparation, a measure of hours invested. "The thrill used to be about using your mind creatively and working out unique and difficult solutions to strategical problems," the grandmaster Wesley So, the fifth-ranked player in the world, told me via email. "Not testing each other to see who has the better memorization plan...." The advent of neural-net engines thrills many chess players and coaches... Carlsen said he was "inspired" the first time he saw AlphaZero play. Engines have made it easier for amateurs to improve, while unlocking new dimensions of the game for experts. In this view, chess engines have not eliminated creativity but instead redefined what it means to be creative. Yet if computers set the gold standard of play, and top players can only try to mimic them, then it's not clear what, exactly, humans are creating. "Due to the predominance of engine use today," the grandmaster So explained, "we are being encouraged to halt all creative thought and play like mechanical bots. It's so boring. So beneath us." And if elite players stand no chance against machines, instead settling for outsmarting their human opponents by playing subtle, unexpected, or suboptimal moves that weaponize "human frailty," then modern-era chess looks more and more like a game of psychological warfare: not so much a spelling bee as a round of poker.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Documents obtained by congressional investigators show that oil industry executives privately downplayed their companies' own public messages about efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," reports the New York Times, "and weakened industrywide commitments to push for climate policies...."At Royal Dutch Shell, an October 2020 email sent by an employee, discussing talking points for Shell's president for the United States, said that the company's announcement of a pathway to "net zero" emissions — the point at which the world would no longer be pumping planet-warming gases into the atmosphere — "has nothing to do with our business plans." These and other documents, reviewed by The New York Times, come from a cache of hundreds of thousands of pages of corporate emails, memos and other files obtained under subpoena as part of an examination by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform into the fossil fuel industry's efforts over the decades to mislead the public about its role in climate change, dismissing evidence that the burning of fossil fuels was driving an increase in global temperatures even as their own scientists warned of a clear link.... "It's well established that these companies actively misled the American public for decades about the risks of climate change," said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who spearheaded the investigation with Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., who leads the House committee. "The problem is that they continue to mislead," Khanna said. The article also points out that at a government hearing last year, oil industry executives "acknowledged that the burning of their products was driving climate change, although none pledged to end their financial support for efforts to block action on climate change, and they said that fossil fuels were here to stay."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"There's a new Joker movie coming out," writes the Verge, "but you might not get a chance to see it because copyright is broken."I'm not talking about Joker: Folie à Deux, the officially sanctioned sequel to the Todd Phillips film Joker. I'm talking about The People's Joker, a crowdfunded Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) selection that was pulled at the last minute, thanks to unspecified "rights issues." The People's Joker is (as far as I can tell) an extremely loose retelling of the Batman villain's origin story, reinterpreting the Joker as a trans woman trying to break into the mob-like world of Gotham's stand-up comedy scene. Its trailer describes it as "an illegal comic book movie," but its creators more seriously defend it as an unauthorized but legal parody of DC's original character, to the point of (apparently) giving their lawyer a full-screen credit. I have no idea if The People's Joker is a good movie — thanks to its cancelation, my colleague Andrew Webster couldn't catch it at TIFF. The piece is clearly a provocation designed to thumb its nose at DC's copyright, and DC parent company Warner Bros. hasn't said whether it actually ordered TIFF to cancel showings — it's possible the festival balked or even that Drew did it herself. But despite all that, one thing is very clear: outside a tiny number of corporate behemoths, virtually nobody benefits from shutting down The People's Joker — not the filmmakers, not the public, and not the people who created Gotham City in the first place. Writer-director Vera Drew says she made The People's Joker partly to test a contemporary truism: that beloved fictional universes are a shared modern mythology, and people draw meaning from them the way that artists once reinterpreted Greek myths or painted Biblical figures. As Drew has put it, "if the purpose of myth is to learn about the human experience and grow and also chart your progress — the hero's journey and all that stuff — let's actually do that earnestly with these characters." The essay delves into the argument that culture exists for the common good. "It's useful to have a temporary period where artists can maintain control over their work because it helps support them financially and encourages them to make more of it. But the ultimate goal is that art should pass into the public domain and that it should be part of a conversation, with people repurposing it to create their own work...." In an interview with Comic Book Resources, the filmmaker said the film was protected by both fair use and copyright law. "The only thing that makes it weird in both of those categories is nobody's ever taken characters and IP and really personalized it in this way. So I think that's the thing that really kind of makes it seem a lot more dangerous than I actually think it is. I mean, I get it, look, I put an 'illegal comic book movie' on the poster, but that was just to get your butts in the seats. Mission accomplished." A statement from the filmmaker on Twitter blames "a media conglomerate that shall remain nameless" for an angry letter pressuring them not to screen the film. (It was ultimately allowed to premiere, but then pulled from later screenings.) They added that they were disappointed since "I went to great lengths with legal counsel to have it fall under parody/fair use," but they made the choice to protect the film festival and the future prospects for a possible return of the movie itself. "The People's Joker will screen again very soon at several other festivals worldwide." The Verge's conclusion? "If a law meant to protect artists is leaving weird independent movies in limbo to protect a corporate brand, something has gone deeply wrong." Thanks to Slashdot reader DevNull127 for the articleRead more of this story at Slashdot.