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New submitter flashpoint31415 writes: Amazon is now giving managers leeway to effectively fire employees who fail to meet the company's three-times-a-week, return-to-office mandate.The guidelines tell managers to first hold a private conversation with employees who don't comply with the three-times-a-week requirement. Then, managers have to document the discussion in a follow-up email. If the employee continues to refuse to come in, the manager should hold another meeting, and if needed, take disciplinary action that includes a termination of employment.Giving managers the ability to fire employees for non-compliance is the strongest measure Amazon has taken over its return-to-office policy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Acting on information from Microsoft and Amazon, India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has raided alleged fake tech support operators and other tech-related crims across the country. From a report: The Bureau shared news of a Thursday operation that saw it conduct 76 searches in relation to five cases. The Bureau stated its effort "was conducted in collaboration with national and international agencies, alongside private sector giants," and described two of its targets as international tech support fraud scams that "impersonated a global IT major and a multinational corporation with an online technology-driven trading platform." The alleged scammers operated call centers in five regions of India and "systematically preyed on foreign nationals, masquerading as technical support representatives" for at least five years. The scammers sent users pop-up messages that appeared to come from multinational companies and advised of PC problems -- with a toll-free number at which assistance could be had. Victims who called the fakers had their PCs taken over, and were charged hundreds of dollars for a fix.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Buckeye, Arizona, is eyeing 'crazy' ideas to keep growing, including piping water hundreds of miles uphill from Mexico. From a report: Arizona, stressed by years of drought, has declared its housebuilding boom will have to be curbed due to a lack of water but one of its fastest-growing cities is refusing to give up its relentless march into the desert -- even if it requires constructing a pipeline that would bring water across the border from Mexico. The population of Buckeye, located 35 miles west of Phoenix, has doubled over the past decade to just under 120,000 and it is now priming itself to eventually become one of the largest cities in the US west. The city's boundaries are vast -- covering an area stretching out into the Sonoran Desert that would encompass two New York Cities -- and so are its ambitions. Buckeye expects to one day contain as many as 1.5 million people, rivaling or even surpassing Phoenix -- the sixth largest city in the US that uses roughly 2bn gallons of water a day -- by sprawling out the tendrils of suburbia, with its neat lawns, snaking roads and large homes, into the baking desert. Arizona's challenging water situation appears a major barrier to such hopes, however. In June, the state announced that new uses of its groundwater have essentially hit a limit, placing restrictions on house building, just a few months after the state lost a fifth of its water allocation from the ailing Colorado River. There isn't enough water beneath Buckeye to support homes not already being built, Arizona's water department has said. But the city is embarking upon an extraordinary scramble to find water from other sources -- by recycling it, purchasing it or importing it -- to maintain the sort of hurtling growth that continues to propel the US west even in an era of climate crisis. "Personally, my view is that we are still full steam ahead," said Eric Orsborn, Buckeye's ebullient mayor. Orsborn said he understands the state has to be "really careful" with water resources but that the city is exploring "options to keep us going and allow us to continue to grow at the rate that we want to grow."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission dropped claims against two Ripple Labs executives in its lawsuit alleging the blockchain company violated U.S. securities law, according to a court filing in New York on Thursday. The agency said in court papers it is dropping claims that Ripple Chief Executive Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Chris Larsen aided and abetted sales of the cryptocurrency XRP which a judge has found amounted to unregistered sales of securities. In its December 2020 lawsuit, the SEC accused Ripple of illegally raising more than $1.3 billion in an unregistered securities offering by selling XRP. U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres in Manhattan granted Ripple a partial win in the case in July, finding that sales of XRP on public exchanges were not unregistered securities offerings. Torres subsequently rejected a request by the SEC to appeal that ruling. She also ruled partly in the SEC's favor, saying the agency had shown the company's $728.9 million of XRP sales to hedge funds and other sophisticated buyers had violated the law. Garlinghouse and Larsen, who have harshly criticized the SEC throughout the case, issued lengthy statements accusing the agency of a political agenda to, in Larsen's words, "suffocate crypto in America." "Instead of looking for the criminals stealing customer funds on offshore exchanges that were courting political favor, the SEC went after the good guys," Garlinghouse said, an apparent reference to Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of crypto exchange FTX. The agency said in its papers that the next step in the case is for both sides to present to the judge on what the appropriate penalty is for Ripple.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Is Google laying the groundwork for a true challenger to language learning apps like Duolingo, Memrise and Babbel? In a blog post on Thursday, the search giant announced that it's rolling out a new Google Search feature designed to help people improve their English speaking skills. TechCrunch's Kyle Wiggers reports: Rolling out over the next few days for Search on Android devices in Argentina, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Mexico and Venezuela, with more countries and languages to come in the future, the new feature will provide interactive speaking practice for language learners translating to or from English, Google writes in a blog post. "Google Search is already a valuable tool for language learners, providing translations, definitions, and other resources to improve vocabulary," reads the the post, attributed to Google Research director Christian Plagemann and product manager Katya Cox. "Now, learners translating to or from English on their Android phones will find a new English speaking practice experience with personalized feedback." The new experience presents Search users with prompts and asks them to speak the answers using a provided vocabulary word. During each practice session, which last 3 to 5 minutes, Search gives personalized feedback -- and the option to sign up for daily reminders to keep practicing and advance to the next stage of difficulty. How personalized is it, exactly? Well, according to Google, the experience gives semantic feedback -- indicating whether a response was relevant to a given question and comprehensible to a theoretical conversation partner. It also recommends areas where grammar could be improved, and, to give concrete suggestions for alternative ways to respond, provides a set of example answers at varying levels of language complexity. During practice sessions, learners can tap on any word they don't understand to see a translation of that word that considers the word in context. "Designed to be used alongside other learning services and resources, like personal tutoring, mobile apps and classes, the new speaking practice feature on Google Search is another tool to assist learners on their journey," Plagemann and Cox write. [...] "We look forward to expanding to more countries and languages in the future, and to start offering partner practice content soon," Plagemann and Cox continued. "With these latest updates, which will roll out over the next few days, Google Search has become even more helpful."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tereza Pultarova reports via Space.com: Light pollution is a growing threat to astronomy, but a new streetlamp technology could restore clear views of the night sky. [...] A study published earlier this year found that stars are disappearing from the sky at an average rate of 10% per year. This trend affects even the world's most remote observatories. Germany-based startup StealthTransit recently tested a solution to this growing issue. "Unfortunately, this problem haunts almost all observatories today," Vlad Pashkovsky, StealthTransit's founder and CEO, told Space.com in an email. "Modern telescopes are highly sensitive and feel the impact of outdoor lighting of cities located at the distance of 50 or even 200 kilometers [30 to 120 miles]. This means that virtually every observatory on Earth either already needs, or will need in the future 10 years, protection from the light of large cities." StealthTransit's solution relies on three components: A simple device that makes LED lights flicker at a very high frequency that is imperceptible to the human eye, a GPS receiver, and a specially designed shutter on the telescope's camera that can blink in sync with the LED lights. The GPS technology guides the telescope's shutter to open only during the fleeting moments when the LED lights are switched off. The experiments, conducted at an observatory in the Caucasus Mountains in Russia, showed that the technology, dubbed the DarkSkyProtector, could reduce unwanted sky glow in astronomical images by 94%. "We can say that the telescope was seeing almost a dark sky at this time," Pashkovsky said. "The important thing about our technology is that it makes all kinds of lights astronomy-friendly, including outdoor advertising and indoor lighting in apartments, offices and stores." The technology could filter out lights from nearby towns and villages as well as those surrounding the observatory itself. It might sound impractical to refit an entire town with devices that allow lamps to blink, but Pashkovsky said that most existing LED lights can operate in the blinking mode and that new lamps designed specifically with sky protection in mind would be no costlier than existing LED technology. The most expensive element of the DarkSkyProtector system is the telescope shutter, which needs to be lightweight and agile enough to blink about 150 times per second. StealthTransit tested the prototype shutter on a 24-inch-wide (60 centimeters) telescope and hopes to make the technology available for larger telescopes. Although StealthTransit's technology is not yet ready for commercial use, Pashkovsky said, the firm hopes to have a product fit for the world's best telescopes in five to seven years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jessica Lyons Hardcastle reports via The Register: Japanese electronics giant Casio said miscreants broke into its ClassPad server and stole a database with personal information belonging to customers in 149 countries. ClassPad is Casio's education web app, and in a Wednesday statement on its website, the firm said an intruder breached a ClassPad server and swiped hundreds of thousands of "items" belonging to individuals and organizations around the globe. As of October 18, the crooks accessed 91,921 items belonging to Japanese customers, including individuals and 1,108 educational institution customers, as well as 35,049 items belonging to customers from 148 other countries. If Casio finds additional customers were compromised, it promises to update this count. The data included customers' names, email addresses, country of residence, purchasing info including order details, payment method and license code, and service usage info including log data and nicknames. Casio noted that it doesn't not retain customers' credit card information, so presumably people's banking info wasn't compromised in the hack. An employee discovered the incident on October 11 while attempting to work in the corporate dev environment and spotted the database failure. "At this time, it has been confirmed that some of the network security settings in the development environment were disabled due to an operational error of the system by the department in charge and insufficient operational management," the official notice said. "Casio believes these were the causes of the situation that allowed an external party to gain unauthorized access." The intruder didn't access the ClassPad.net app, according to Casio, so that is still available for use.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VICE News: Canada will legalize medically assisted dying for people who are addicted to drugs next spring, in a move some drug users and activists are calling "eugenics." The country's medical assistance in dying (MAID) law, which first came into effect in 2016, will be expanded next March to give access to people whose sole medical condition is mental illness, which can include substance use disorders. Before the changes take place, however, a special parliamentary committee on MAID will regroup to scrutinize the rollout of the new regulations, according to the Toronto Star. Currently, people are eligible for MAID if they have a "grievous and irremediable medical condition", such as a serious illness or disability, that has put them in an advanced state of irreversible decline and caused enduring physical or psychological suffering -- excluding mental illness. Anyone who receives MAID must also go through two assessments from independent health care providers, among meeting other criteria. [...] As Canada prepares to legalize MAID for people with mental disorders, each province will have to develop its own protocol for how to assess people. Dr. Simon Colgan, lead physician for the Community Allied Mobile Palliative Partnership which provides palliative care to homeless people, said MAID requests "must be understood within the context of a person's lived experience and this takes time and relationship." He said any MAID protocols for people with substance use disorders should be made with the input of people with lived experiences. "I don't think it's fair, and the government doesn't think it's fair, to exclude people from eligibility because their medical disorder or their suffering is related to a mental illness," said Dr. David Martell, physician lead for Addictions Medicine at Nova Scotia Health. "As a subset of that, it's not fair to exclude people from eligibility purely because their mental disorder might either partly or in full be a substance use disorder. It has to do with treating people equally." On the flip side, some drug users and harm reduction advocates say they're upset drug users are being given access to MAID, as they feel other public health measures are lacking. "I just think that MAID when it has entered the area around mental health and substance use is really rooted in eugenics. And there are people who are really struggling around substance use and people do not actually get the kind of support and help they need," said Zoe Dodd, a Toronto-based harm reduction advocate. Karen Ward, a drug user activist in Vancouver, said she considers the expansion of MAID to include people with substance use disorders a "statement in federal law that some people aren't really human." "The government has made death accessible while a better life remains impossible," she said. "Homes for all, guaranteed dignified incomes, access to healthcare, education and employment: these aren't radical demands."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes: In July, Seattle-based and tech-backed nonprofit Code.org announced its 10th policy recommendation for all states "to require all students to take computer science (CS) to earn a high school diploma." In August, Washington State Senator Lisa Wellman phoned-in her plans to introduce a bill to make computer science a Washington high school graduation requirement to the state's Board of Education, indicating that the ChatGPT-sparked AI craze and Code.org had helped convince her of the need. Wellman, a former teacher who worked as a Programmer/System Analyst in the 80's before becoming an Apple VP (Publishing) in the '90s, also indicated that exposure to CS given to students in fifth grade could be sufficient to satisfy a HS CS requirement. In 2019, Wellman sponsored Microsoft-supported SB 5088 (Bill details), which required all Washington state public high schools to offer a CS class. Wellman also sponsored SB 5299 in 2021, which allows high school students to take a computer science elective in place of a third year math or science course (that may be required for college admission) to count towards graduation requirements. And in October, Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi appeared before the Washington State Board of Education, driving home points Senator Wellman made in August with a deck containing slides calling for Washington to "require that all students take computer science to earn a high school diploma" and to "require computer science within all teacher certifications." Like Wellman, Partovi suggested the CS high school requirement might be satisfied by middle school work (he alternatively suggested one year of foreign language could be dropped to accommodate a HS CS course). Partovi noted that Washington contained some of the biggest promoters of K-12 CS in Microsoft Philanthropies' TEALS (TEALS founder Kevin Wang is a member of the Washington State Board of Education) and Code.org, as well some of the biggest funders of K-12 CS in Amazon and Microsoft -- both which are $3,000,000+ Platinum Supporters of Code.org and have top execs on Code.org's Board of Directors.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slash_Account_Dot shares a report from 404 Media: Hackers are targeting accounts on Kodex, a platform that connects law enforcement agencies and tech companies and which is designed to verify emergency requests for customer data, according to multiple online conversations between hackers viewed by 404 Media. Screenshots from one of the compromised accounts shows a panel where a law enforcement officer, or a hacker, can potentially 'create a new request.' The screenshots show a wide range of companies such as tech giants Meta and Microsoft's LinkedIn; cryptocurrency exchanges Binance and Coinbase; social media platforms Pinterest, Discord, and Snapchat; financial service Fidelity, and gaming platform Roblox. The compromised account appears to belong to a national police force, but the screenshots do not include the agency's full name. There is no evidence that hackers have successfully used compromised Kodex accounts to obtain data from a tech company, and Matt Donahue, the former FBI agent and now CEO of Kodex, said that multiple compromised accounts 404 Media found did not have authorization to make such requests, and that Kodex had shut down those accounts. But the repeated examples of criminal chatter show that Kodex is a target of interest for hackers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ty Roush reports via Forbes: Convoy, a Seattle-based digital freight booker with investors that include billionaires Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, announced Thursday it would be shutting down, according to Bloomberg, after the company failed to find a buyer amid a "massive freight recession." Convoy's founder and chief executive Dan Lewis notified employees in an internal memo Thursday that "today is your last day at the company," noting the company is "exploring and evaluating strategic options for what might come next," Bloomberg reported. Lewis said the company had evaluated potential suitors to acquire it, though "none of the options ultimately materialized into anything sufficient to keep the company going in its then current form." Convoy was in "the middle of a massive freight recession and a contraction in the capital markets," according to Lewis, who added "this combination ultimately crushed our progress" and likely swayed potential suitors away from acquiring the firm. "Following an exhaustive process, spanning many, many months during which we explored all viable strategic options for the business, the result is where we are today," Lewis wrote. Convoy was founded in 2015 in an effort to prevent trucks from driving "empty miles" without loads. The idea was to use technology to make freight more efficient by connecting truck drivers with freight companies -- reducing shippers' costs, increasing carriers' earnings, and eliminating carbon emissions in the process.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will become an honorary citizen of Rome by early next year following a vote this week by its local assembly, the city's former mayor Virginia Raggi said on Thursday. Reuters reports: Assange, 52, has been in London's high-security Belmarsh prison since 2019 and is wanted in the United States over the release of confidential U.S. military records and diplomatic cables in 2010. His supporters see his prosecution as a politically motivated assault on journalism and free speech. Washington says the release of secret documents put lives in danger. The motion to make him a citizen of the Eternal City was spearheaded by Raggi, from the left-leaning Five Star Movement, and won cross-party support. "Assange is a symbol of free speech which is essential for any genuine democracy," Raggi, who ran Rome's city hall between 2016 and 2021, told Reuters. "He has been deprived of his own liberty for years, in awful conditions, for doing his job as a journalist," she said. The motion was approved on Tuesday, kick-starting a process that Raggi said she hoped could be completed by Christmas but may take slightly longer. Other Italian cities have taken similar steps. The northern city of Reggio Emilia granted Assange citizenship last month, while Naples is set to follow shortly. Further reading: Australian MPs To Lobby US To Drop Julian Assange Prosecution or Risk 'Very Dangerous' Precedent for Russia and ChinaRead more of this story at Slashdot.

Chinese multinational Zotac has announced a mini-PC built around two solid-state active cooling chips called the AirJet Pro and AirJet Mini. They're designed by a company called Frore Systems. New Atlas reports: The AirJet tech is described as a self-contained active heat sink featuring membranes inside that vibrate at ultrasonic frequency, generating "a powerful flow of air" that's pushed through vents at the top of the unit. These "high-velocity pulsating jets" remove heat from the processor and push it out through an integrated spout. Back at Computex 2023 in May, Zotac's new Zbox mini-PC was announced as the first recipient of Frore's cooling technology, in the shape of two near-silent AirJet Minis. Now The Zbox PI430AJ has launched to "select regions." Zotac reckons that the active cooling modules can only be heard if the user places an ear against the Zbox's housing. The processor of choice for this "world's first" device is an Intel Core i3-N300 octacore chip that can clock up to 3.8 GHz. This features integrated UHD graphics, and is supported by 8 GB of LPDDR5 RAM. The Windows flavor comes with 512 GB of SSD storage, while users who opt for the barebones version will need to install their own. The 114.8 x 76 x 23.8-mm (4.52 x 2.99 x 0.95-in) mini-PC sports two USB 3.2 Type-A ports plus one USB-C, HDMI and DisplayPort, Ethernet LAN and a combo headphone/microphone jack. Bluetooth 5.2 and Wi-Fi 6 are cooked in for wireless needs.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday released a landmark proposal restricting how financial institutions handle consumer data. [...] The proposed rule -- which faces months of feedback and lobbying from industry and consumer groups before it's approved -- would bar financial firms from "hoarding" a consumer's data, the agency said. It would require companies to share information, at a customer's request, with other businesses offering competing products and prevent them from charging for it. Banks would be required to make personal financial data available to consumers free of charge, and companies that access a person's data would not be able to use it for targeted advertising. Access to a person's data would have to be reauthorized annually, and consumers would have the right to revoke access at any time. The proposal, which implements Section 1033 of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, also "seeks to move the market away from risky data collection practices" such as screen scraping, the CFPB said. "It is often really daunting for a consumer to switch banks, in part because it's difficult to take their financial transaction history data to a new bank," White House National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard said on a call with reporters. "Today's rule will help ensure financial companies compete based on service quality and pricing."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In 2015, researchers reported a surprising discovery that stoked industry-wide security concerns -- an attack called RowHammer that could corrupt, modify, or steal sensitive data when a simple user-level application repeatedly accessed certain regions of DDR memory chips. In the coming years, memory chipmakers scrambled to develop defenses that prevented the attack, mainly by limiting the number of times programs could open and close the targeted chip regions in a given time. Recently, researchers devised a new method for creating the same types of RowHammer-induced bitflips even on a newer generation of chips, known as DDR4, that have the RowHammer mitigations built into them. Known as RowPress, the new attack works not by "hammering" carefully selected regions repeatedly, but instead by leaving them open for longer periods than normal. Bitflips refer to the phenomenon of bits represented as ones change to zeros and vice versa. Further amplifying the vulnerability of DDR4 chips to read-disturbance attacks -- the generic term for inducing bitflips through abnormal accesses to memory chips -- RowPress bitflips can be enhanced by combining them with RowHammer accesses. Curiously, raising the temperature of the chip also intensifies the effect. "We demonstrate a proof of concept RowPress program that can cause bitflips in a real system that already employs protections against RowHammer," Onur Mutlu, a professor at ETH Zurich and a co-author of a recently published paper titled RowPress: Amplifying Read Disturbance in Modern DRAM Chips [PDF], wrote in an email. "Note that this is not in itself an attack. It simply shows that bitflips are possible and plenty, which can easily form the basis of an attack. As many prior works in security have shown, once you can induce a bitflip, you can use that bitflip for various attacks."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Discord is overhauling the way it moderates its platform with a new warning system and teen safety assist feature. From a report: The new Discord warning system has been totally revamped to be far more transparent, educating Discord users how they've broken rules and are restricted from parts of the service rather than permanently banning them. "The new system gives users more room to learn from their mistakes and correct misjudgments," explains Savannah Badalich, Discord's senior director of policy, in a briefing with The Verge. "We're moving away from permanent bans to one-year temporary bans for many violations, except for violations that are extremely harmful." In the coming weeks, Discord will start to limit features for rule breakers, instead of banning them outright. If a Discord user violates the rules, then they'll be met with a DM from Discord letting them know about the warning or violation and what action Discord is taking. So, if a Discord user uploads an image that breaks the rules, they might temporarily take away the ability to post images.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The FCC has unanimously approved plans by several tech companies to use the 6GHz band for wireless devices. From a report: FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel proposed the new rules, which would authorize very low power (VLP) operations -- meaning their signals won't be able to go very far -- in about 850MHz of the spectrum, on September 27th. The rules will also allow devices to "use higher power levels" so long as they're geofenced to keep from interfering with actual licensed 6GHz usage, and the FCC will be taking comments on other ways it can expand 6GHz spectrum usage by technology devices. A September Bloomberg report pointed to some of the kinds of devices the FCC's affirmative vote could open up, including in-car connections, mobile virtual or augmented reality devices, and more. The FCC originally opened up 1,200MHz of the 6GHz spectrum for unlicensed use by Wi-Fi routers and client devices (think smartphones or laptops), giving home networks far more wireless overhead than existing Wi-Fi standards already had. This new approval expands the spectrum for much more general use.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing three cryptocurrency companies -- Gemini, Genesis, and Digital Currency Group (DCG) -- over claims they misled investors, leading to the loss of over $1 billion. From a report: In a lawsuit filed on Thursday, James says their alleged fraudulent schemes affected over 230,000 investors. The lawsuit targets Gemini, the crypto exchange owned by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and its Earn program. The firm marketed Gemini Earn as a high-yield program that involved customers investing with Genesis Global Capital, which is owned by DCG. However, James alleges that Gemini knew investing with Genesis was risky and misled customers as a result.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has been caught hosting a malicious ad so convincing that there's a decent chance it has managed to trick some of the more security-savvy users who encountered it. From a report: Looking at the ad, which masquerades as a pitch for the open source password manager Keepass, there's no way to know that it's fake. It's on Google, after all, which claims to vet the ads it carries. Making the ruse all the more convincing, clicking on it leads to Aeepass[.]info, which, when viewed in an address bar, appears to be the genuine Keepass site. A closer look at the link, however, shows that the site is not the genuine one. In fact, Aeepass[.]info -- at least when it appears in the address bar -- is just an encoded way of denoting xn--eepass-vbb[.]info, which, it turns out, is pushing a malware family tracked as FakeBat. Combining the ad on Google with a website with an almost identical URL creates a near-perfect storm of deception. "Users are first deceived via the Google ad that looks entirely legitimate and then again via a lookalike domain," Jerome Segura, head of threat intelligence at security provider Malwarebytes, wrote in a post on Wednesday that revealed the scam. Information from Google's Ad Transparency Center shows that the ads have been running since Saturday and last appeared on Wednesday. The ads were paid for by an outfit called Digital Eagle, which the transparency page says is an advertiser whose identity has been verified by Google.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Netflix said its effort to limit password sharing led to a 10.8% rise in subscriptions in the third quarter, a better-than-expected result that comes as the company plans to increase some prices in the U.S. and other markets. From a report: The streaming giant added 8.8 million subscribers in the third quarter with customer growth in every region, its largest quarterly customer gain since the second quarter of 2020. The company plans to immediately raise prices for its basic plan in the U.S., which is no longer available to new customers, to $11.99 from $9.99 and up the cost of its premium plan to $22.99 from $19.99. It is also increasing some prices in the U.K. and France, though the cost of its ad-supported and standard ad-free plans are unchanged. The price increases are a sign of streamers' efforts to improve profitability and wean consumers off the low monthly subscription fees that drew users away from pricey cable bundles in the early days of streaming.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Universal Music has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic, as the world's largest music group battles against chatbots that churn out its artists' lyrics. From a report: Universal and two other music companies allege that Anthropic scrapes their songs without permission and uses them to generate "identical or nearly identical copies of those lyrics" via Claude, its rival to ChatGPT. When Claude is asked for lyrics to the song "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor, for example, it responds with "a nearly word-for-word copy of those lyrics," Universal, Concord, and ABKCO said in a filing with a US court in Nashville, Tennessee. "This copyrighted material is not free for the taking simply because it can be found on the Internet," the music companies said, while claiming that Anthropic had "never even attempted" to license their copyrighted work. The lawsuit comes as the music industry is grappling with the rise of AI technology that can produce "deepfake" songs that mimic the voices, lyrics, or sound of established musicians. The issue drew attention earlier this year after an AI-produced song that mimicked the voices of Drake and The Weeknd spread online.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. FCC voted Thursday to advance a proposal to reinstate landmark net neutrality rules and assume new regulatory oversight of broadband internet that was rescinded under former President Donald Trump. From a report: In a 3-2 party-line vote, the FCC approved Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), which seeks public comment on the broadband regulation plan. The comment period will officially open after the proposal is published in the Federal Register, but the docket is already active and can be found here. The proposal would reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service, a designation that allows the FCC to regulate ISPs under the common-carrier provisions in Title II of the Communications Act. The plan is essentially the same as what the FCC did in 2015 when it used Title II to prohibit fixed and mobile Internet providers from blocking or throttling traffic or giving priority to Web services in exchange for payment. The Obama-era net neutrality rules were eliminated during Trump's presidency when then-Chairman Ajit Pai led a repeal that reclassified broadband as an information service, returning it to the less strict regulatory regime of Title I. The current FCC likely would have acted much sooner but there was a 2-2 deadlock until last month when the Senate confirmed Biden nominee Anna Gomez to fill the empty spot. After the comment period, the FCC is likely to finalize the rulemaking and put the 2015 rules back in place. The broadband industry will likely then sue the FCC in an attempt to nullify the rulemaking.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In its antitrust confrontation with the government, the pillar of Google's defense has been that innovation -- not restrictive contracts, backed by billions in payments to industry partners -- explains its success as the giant of internet search. From a report: Its competitive advantage, it says, is brilliant people, working tirelessly to improve its products. Pandu Nayak, Google's first witness in the antitrust trial that began last month, is the face of that defense. Mr. Nayak, a vice president of search, was raised in India and graduated at the top of his class at one of that nation's elite technical schools. He came to America, earned his Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford University and then spent seven years as a research scientist on artificial intelligence projects at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. Nineteen years ago, Mr. Nayak joined Google and found a particularly welcoming workplace, filled with professional friends. "At the end of the day, Google is a technology company -- it really values the skills that I have," Mr. Nayak said in his testimony on Wednesday. The computer scientist's testimony is an attempt to rebut a central argument in the case filed by the Justice Department and 38 states and territories. Their suit claims that scale is essential to competition in search. That is, the more data from user queries a search engine collects, the more it learns to improve its service, which attracts still more users, advertisers and ad revenue. That flywheel, the suit says, is fueled by ever-increasing volumes of user data.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Finnish telecoms giant Nokia is to axe between 9,000 and 14,000 jobs by the end of 2026 to cut costs. From a report: The announcement was made as the company reported a 20% drop in sales between July and September. The company blamed slowing demand for 5G equipment in markets such as North America. It currently has 86,000 employees around the world, and has axed thousands of jobs since 2015. Nokia wants to cut costs by between $845m and $1.27bn by 2026, it said. Its customers have been cutting spending amid high inflation and interest rates, it said. Advances in cloud computing and AI will need "significant investments in networks that have vastly improved capabilities," said chief executive Pekka Lundmark. "However, given the uncertain timing of the market recovery, we are now taking decisive action," he said. It said it wanted to "act quickly" by cutting costs by $422m in 2024, and $317m in 2025.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google plans to begin assembling its Pixel smartphone lineup in India, a company executive said, becoming the latest tech giant to bet on the South Asian market for devices manufacturing. From a report: The company intends to start the local manufacturing with the current lineup -- both the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro -- in India and expects to ship the India-made batch starting next year, Rick Osterloh, Senior VP of Devices and Services at Google, shared at the company's annual India event Thursday. India is a key overseas market for Google, which identifies the world's most populous nation as its largest for many of its services including Android, Google Search, YouTube by user count. Thursday's announcement follows Google, which has committed to invest over $10 billion in country over the the next few years, recently partnering with HP to manufacture Chromebook laptops in India.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AMD's powerhouse Threadripper chips are back for desktop PCs. Despite declaring the end of consumer Threadripper chips last generation, AMD announced three new Ryzen Threadripper 7000-series chips on Thursday, with up to 64 cores and 128 threads -- and the option of installing a "Pro"-class Threadripper 700 WX series for a massive 96 cores and 192 threads, too. PCWorld: Take a deep breath, though. The underlying message is the same as when AMD released the Threadripper 3970X back in 2019: these chips are for those who live and breathe video editing and content creation, and are optimized for such. Nevertheless, they almost certainly represent the most powerful CPU you can buy on a desktop, for whatever purpose. The key differences between the older workstation-class Threadripper 5000 series and these new 7000-class processors are simple: AMD has brought forward its Zen 4 architecture into Threadripper alongside a higher core count, faster boost frequencies, and a generational leap ahead to PCI Express 5.0. Consumers will need new motherboards, though, as the new "TRX50" consumer Threadripper platform uses the new AMD TRX50 HEDT (high-end desktop) chipset and sTR5 socket. And did we mention they consume (gulp) 350W of power? In some ways, though, the new Threadripper 7980X, 7970X, and 7960X consumer Threadripper offerings are familiar. They stick with AMD's tried-and-true 64-core configuration, the same as the Threadripper 5000 series, moving down to 24 cores. The 12- and 16-core configurations have been trimmed off from the prior generation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PC Gamer: Whether you think Microsoft's recent acquisition of Activision Blizzard is a move toward a dry gaming monopoly or a financial windfall for Activision and Blizzard games both, it's definitely happened. The UK's CMA has given the thumbs up, Kotick's on his way out -- the deal's closed, and now we get to see the impact ripples spread. It looks like there's already some great news for fans of Activision Blizzard's older catalogue, as confirmed by Xbox boss Phil Spencer himself in an official interview on the Xbox channel. "I do think with Game Pass that we have the ability to pick a couple franchises every year and almost do like a 'revisited' [version] -- I just made up that term ... when you look across the franchises that are part of our teams, there's an opportunity to go back." "I wanna make sure that when we go back and visit something that we do it with our complete ability not just create something for financial gain (or a PR announcement), and not deliver." Ultimately, while he's got his own wishlist (the return of FPS classic Hexen is a running gag), Spencer says it's important for these fresh coats of paint to be a result of developer passion: "If teams wanna go back and revisit some of the things we have, and do a full focus on it, I'm gonna be all in. I think there's an amazing trove of [games] we can go and touch on again. I think about things like the Quake 2 remaster that just came out from [id Software], I thought that was awesome. They did a real good job revisiting a game, making it current, but not leaving its history behind. I'd love to see more things like that."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The government of India said on Tuesday that it plans to put an astronaut on the moon by 2040 and build an Earth-orbiting space station by 2035. Space.com reports: On Aug. 23, India became just the fourth nation ever to soft-land a spacecraft -- its Chandrayaan-3 lander-rover duo -- on the surface of the moon. In a recent meeting with the Indian government department that manages the country's space program, Prime Minister Narendra Modi "directed that India should now aim for new and ambitious goals," according to an official statement. India's future moon exploration efforts will include a series of additional robotic Chandrayaan missions, a new launch pad and a heavy-lift launch vehicle, the statement added. India's delayed Gaganyaan human spaceflight program, now aiming to fly three astronauts to low Earth orbit in 2025, will feature 20 major tests, including three uncrewed missions to test the launch vehicle over the course of the remainder of this year and all of next. [...] By the middle of the 2030s, India hopes to have a 20-ton space station in a fixed orbit 248 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth, with capabilities to host astronauts for 15 to 20 days at a time, K. Sivan, former chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), has previously said. Further down the pipeline of missions, ISRO is planning a Venus orbiter called Shukrayaan-1 to study the surface of that hellishly hot planet. The payloads for that mission are currently being developed, current ISRO chairman S. Somanath had said last month. A second orbiter mission to Mars is also on the books, according to the latest statement. The nation's first, the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), was launched in 2013 and studied the Red Planet's atmosphere for eight years before it lost contact with Earth in April 2022. The follow-up mission, Mars Orbiter Mission 2 or MOM 2, will likely include cameras to study the planet's crust and may also include a lander, although many of the mission plans are yet to be finalized.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. government is receiving dozens of reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) each month. "The office has received approximately 800 reports of unidentified objects to investigate as of this past April, up from 650 reports in August 2022, Sean Kirkpatrick, who heads the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office at the Pentagon told CNN." From the report: The vast majority are benign objects, such as balloons or drones, but some may be the result of America's adversaries trying to spy on the US, said Kirkpatrick. "There are some indicators that are concerning that may be attributed to foreign activity, and we are investigating those very hard," said Kirkpatrick, speaking exclusively to CNN ahead of the release of the annual report on unidentified aerial phenomena. A portion of the increase in reports comes from the Federal Aviation Administration, which monitors airspace around US airports starting to provide information to the Pentagon. About half of the reports contain enough data that they can be ruled out as "mundane things," such as errant balloons or floating trash, Kirkpatrick said, but 2-4% are truly anomalous and require further investigation. Asked if the Pentagon could definitively identify a sighting of an unidentified object as belonging to a foreign adversary, Kirkpatrick said that his office is "looking at some very interesting indicators of things, and that's about all I can tell you." But the office, which has more than 40 employees and is expected to grow, can't say that for sure yet. "There are ways to hide in our noise that always concern me," Kirkpatrick said, referring to the extraneous readings picked up by US radars and other sensors. "I am worried from a national security perspective." "The Pentagon is preparing for a flood of new reports as it readies two new portals for submissions: one for historical sightings from current or former government employees and contractors and a second for public submissions of new reports," notes CNN. "It is the opening of the public portal, still several months away, that Kirkpatrick says could flood the system with 'hundreds, if not thousands' of new reports to sort through."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes: Adobe has unveiled a sparkling, interactive dress -- and got the research scientist who created it to model the high-tech couture. Video of the dress debut shows researcher Christine Dierk wearing the slinky strapless number that, upon first glance, looks like the average sequined cocktail dress. With the click of a handheld remote, however, the dress began to shift patterns like something out of a fashion-forward science fiction film. Created under Adobe's "Project Primrose" initiative, this "digital dress," as Dierk described it for the audience at Adobe's MAX conference last week, "brings fabric to life." "Unlike traditional clothing, which is static, Primrose allows me to refresh my look in a moment," the Adobe scientist said, demonstrating the clothing's capabilities by having its colors go from light to dark in an instant. The digital dress patterns can also, as Dierks demonstrated, be animated, and will even respond to movement -- though that last feature appeared glitchy and didn't work at first. The researcher-turned-model also told the hosts of her portion of the convention that she not only designed the dress with the help of her team at Adobe, but also stitched it herself. While the specs of this particular smart garment haven't been published, the high-tech sequins used for smaller Project Primrose offerings, a handbag and a canvas, were described by Dierks and her co-researchers last year in an article presented at a tech conference. As the article explains, those "sequins" are actually "reflective light-diffuser modules" that use reflective-backed polymer-dispersed liquid crystals (PDLC), which are most often used in smart lighting. Technically, all those sequins are tiny screens.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is taking a different approach to social with its Vision Pro headset: making apps social right out of the box. This, according to Road to VR's Ben Lang, is what Meta should have done all along. Instead, it's pioneered a social experience on the Quest platform that involves "jumping through a fragmented landscape of different apps and different ways to actually get into the same space with your friends." From the report: Apple is taking a fundamentally different approach with Vision Pro by making social the expectation rather than the rule, and providing a common set of tools and guidelines for developers to build from in order to make social feel cohesive across the platform. Apple's vision isn't about creating a server full of a virtual strangers and user-generated experiences, but to make it easy to share the stuff you already like to do with the people you already know. This obviously leans into the company's rich ecosystem of existing apps -- and the social technologies the company has already battle-tested on its platforms. SharePlay is the feature that's already present on iOS and MacOS devices that lets people watch, listen, and experience apps together through FaceTime. And on Vision Pro, Apple intends to use its SharePlay tech to make many of its own first-party apps -- like Apple TV, Apple Music, and Photos -- social right out of the box, and it expects developers to do so too. In the company's developer documentation, the company says it expects "most visionOS apps to support SharePlay." [...] Perhaps most importantly, Apple is leaning on every user's existing personal friend graph (ie: the people you already text, call, or email), rather than trying to create a bespoke friends list that lives only inside Vision Pro. Rather than launching an app and then figuring out how to get your friends into it, with SharePlay Apple is focused on getting together with your friends first, then letting the group seamlessly move from one app to the next as you decide what you want to do. Even apps that don't explicitly have multi-user experience built-in can be 'social' by default, by allowing one user to screen-share the app with others. Only the host will be able to interact with the content, but everyone else will be able to see and talk about it in real-time. It's the emphasis on 'social by default', 'things you already do', and 'people you already know' that will make social on Vision Pro feel completely different than what Meta is building on Quest with Horizon Worlds and its ecosystem of fragmented social apps.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AlmaLinux is creating a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) without any Red Hat code. Instead, AlmaLinux OS will aim to be Application Binary Interface (ABI) compatible and use the CentOS Stream source code that Red Hat continues to offer. Additional code is pulled from Red Hat Universal Base Images, and upstream Linux code. Benny Vasquez, chairperson of the AlmaLinux OF Foundation, explained how all this works at the open-source community convention All Things Open. ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols reports: The hardest part is Red Hat's Linux kernel updates because, added Vasquez, "you can't get those kernel updates without violating Red Hat's licensing agreements." Therefore, she continued, "What we do is we pull the security patches from various other sources, and, if nothing else, we can find them when Oracle releases them." Vasquez did note one blessing from this change in production: "AlmaLinux, no longer bound to Red Hat's releases, has been able to release upstream security fixes faster than Red Hat. "For example, the AMD microcode exploits were patched before Red Hat because they took a little bit of extra time to get out the door. We then pulled in, tested, and out the door about a week ahead of them." The overall goal remains to maintain RHEL compatibility. "Any breaking changes between RHEL and AlmaLinux, any application that stops working, is a bug and must be fixed." That's not to say AlmaLinux will be simply an excellent RHEL clone going forward. It plans to add features of its own. For instance, Red Hat users who want programs not bundled in RHEL often turn to Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL). These typically are programs included in Fedora Linux. Besides supporting EPEL software, AlmaLinux has its own extra software package -- called Synergy -- which holds programs that the AlmaLinux community wants but are not available in either EPEL or RHEL. If one such program is subsequently added to EPEL or RHEL, AlmaLinux drops it from Synergy to prevent confusion and duplication of effort. This has not been an easy road for AlmaLinux. Even a 1% code difference is a lot to write and maintain. For example, when AlmaLinux tried to patch CentOS Stream code to fix a problem, Red Hat was downright grumpy about AlmaLinux's attempt to fix a security hole. Vasquez acknowledged it was tough sledding at first, but noted: "The good news is that they have been improving the process, and things will look a little bit smoother." AlmaLinux, she noted, is also not so much worried as aware that Red Hat may throw a monkey wrench into their efforts. Vasquez added: "Internally, we're working on stopgap things we'd need to do to anticipate Red Hat changing everything terribly." She doesn't think Red Hat will do it, but "we want to be as prepared as possible."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ron Amadeo reports via Ars Technica: To help combat the surge of sideloaded malware, Google Play can now pop up a malware scanner at install time if it decides the app you're trying to sideload is interesting. Google Play's malware system, called "Google Play Protect," has always been able to check sideloaded apps for malware, but it used faster techniques like a definition file, and this happened quietly in the background. This new technique will delay your app installation with a full-screen "scanning" interface while Google runs a deep scan of the app code. Google's blog post says this is "real-time scanning at the code-level to combat novel malicious apps" and that Google Play Protect can "recommend a real-time app scan when installing apps that have never been scanned before to help detect emerging threats." The scan will involve sending bits and pieces of the app to Google for analysis. Google says: "Scanning will extract important signals from the app and send them to the Play Protect backend infrastructure for a code-level evaluation. Once the real-time analysis is complete, users will get a result letting them know if the app looks safe to install or if the scan determined the app is potentially harmful. This enhancement will help better protect users against malicious polymorphic apps that leverage various methods, such as AI, to be altered to avoid detection." [...] Google is first rolling this feature out in India -- a country that topped the malware distribution charts in that 2018 report -- with the company saying the feature "will expand to all regions in the coming months."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Today, Tesla released (PDF) its Q3 2023 financial results and as expected, there was an update about Cybertruck in there. In the quarterly presentation, Tesla mentioned that "pilot production" of the Cybertruck has begun: "At Gigafactory Texas, we began pilot production of the Cybertruck, which remains on track for initial deliveries this year." While that doesn't include any new information, in the photo section of the presentation, Tesla added a comment confirming that "deliveries will begin in November 2023." The previous official comment from CEO Elon Musk was that Tesla was aiming for the end of Q3, which ended last month. Interestingly, Tesla also updated its "installed annual vehicle capacity" and added capacity for the Cybertruck for the first time. Surprisingly, Tesla already claims a capacity of "over 125,000 Cybertrucks" at Gigafactory Texas. In a company post on X, Tesla specifies that its first Cybertruck deliveries are scheduled for November 30th at Giga Texas. These are the highlights of Tesla's Q3 shareholder update, as mentioned in the company's X post: "Cybertruck production remains on track for later this year, with first deliveries scheduled for November 30th at Giga Texas. Production of our higher density 4680 cell is progressing as planned & we continue building capacity for cathode production & lithium refining in the US. In Europe, Model Y remains the best-selling vehicle of any kind (based on latest available data as of August) Thank you to our European owners! We have more than doubled the size of our AI training compute, accommodating for both our growing data set & Optimus, which is currently being trained for simple tasks through AI rather than hardcoded software, while its hardware continues to improve. All Hertz rentals in the US & Canada now allow Tesla app access, enabling renters to use keyless lock/unlock via phone key, remotely precondition the cabin & more. In addition, we redesigned the in-app service experience for owners, making scheduling & tracking service appointments & loaner access much simpler." Energy deployments increased 90% YoY to 4GWh -- our highest quarterly deployment ever!Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sandali Handagama reports via CoinDesk: Binance.US users can no longer withdraw dollars directly from the platform after the exchange updated its terms of use on Monday. "In the event that customers wish to withdraw U.S. dollar funds from their account, they may do so by converting U.S. dollar funds to stablecoin or other digital assets, which can subsequently be withdrawn," the email said. In early June, the firm suspended dollar deposits, saying the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) "extremely aggressive and intimidating tactics" against the crypto industry had left banking partners reluctant to engage with the sector. In the same message, Binance.US warned customers that its banking partners were preparing to pause dollar withdrawals as early as June 13.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon announced today that it plans to expand its Prime Air drone delivery program to Italy and United Kingdom, as well as one more yet-to-be-named U.S. city. "The new Prime Air locations will be announced in the coming months, with an anticipated launch date of late 2024," reports The Verge. From the report: Another step by Amazon today suggests it's ready to make drones a more serious part of its actual delivery network. The company said it plans to add Prime Air delivery to its existing fulfillment network -- specifically by adding delivery drones to some of its same-delivery sites. Prime Air drones currently only operate out of the two standalone sites in Texas and California, so expanding drones to other sites means a wider delivery range and closer integration with Amazon's delivery network. Amazon also gave us a sneak peek of its new Prime Air delivery drone that it claims flies twice as far as its current model. Even more critically, the drones will be able to operate in light rain and what Amazon calls more "diverse weather." The company released photos of the MK30 drone today, which it said will replace its existing delivery drones by late 2024. The MK30 is also smaller and quieter than the existing Prime Air model, Amazon claims. The new drone can deliver objects of up to five pounds, with a typical delivery time of "one hour or less." The new drone includes a "sense and avoid" feature that can help it avoid pets, people, and property. The new design will hopefully result in smoother flights. "Not only will this help boost the economy, offering consumers even more choice while helping keep the environment clean with zero emission technology, but it will also build our understanding how to best use the new technology safely and securely," said UK's Aviation Minister Baroness Vere in a statement in Amazon's announcement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The same hacker who leaked a trove of user data stolen from the genetic testing company 23andMe two weeks ago has now leaked millions of new user records. On Tuesday, a hacker who goes by Golem published a new dataset of 23andMe user information containing records of four million users on the known cybercrime forum BreachForums. TechCrunch has found that some of the newly leaked stolen data matches known and public 23andMe user and genetic information. Golem claimed the dataset contains information on people who come from Great Britain, including data from "the wealthiest people living in the U.S. and Western Europe on this list." On October 6, 23andMe announced that hackers had obtained some user data, claiming that to amass the stolen data the hackers used credential stuffing -- a common technique where hackers try combinations of usernames or emails and corresponding passwords that are already public from other data breaches. In response to the incident, 23andMe prompted users to change their passwords and encouraged switching on multi-factor authentication. On its official page addressing the incident, 23andMe said it has launched an investigation with help from "third-party forensic experts." 23andMe blamed the incident on its customers for reusing passwords, and an opt-in feature called DNA Relatives, which allows users to see the data of other opted-in users whose genetic data matches theirs. If a user had this feature turned on, in theory it would allow hackers to scrape data on more than one user by breaking into a single user's account.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon says it's testing two new technologies to increase automation in its warehouses, including a trial of a humanoid robot. From a report: The humanoid robot, called Digit, is bipedal and can squat, bend and grasp items using clasps that imitate hands, the company said in a blog post Wednesday. It's built by Agility Robotics and will initially be used to help employees consolidate totes that have been emptied of items. Amazon invested in Agility Robotics last year. [...] In addition to Digit, Amazon is testing a technology called Sequoia, which will identify and sort inventory into containers for employees, who will then pick the items customers have ordered, the company said. Remaining products are then consolidated in bins by a robotic arm called Sparrow, which the company revealed last year. The system is in use at an Amazon warehouse in Houston, the company said in a statement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The bar for taking a sick day is getting lower, and some bosses say that's a problem. From a report: U.S. workers have long viewed an unwillingness to take sick days as a badge of honor. That's a laurel workers care much less about these days. The number of sick days Americans take annually has soared since the pandemic, employee payroll data show. Covid-19 and a rise in illnesses such as RSV, which can require days away from work, are one reason. Managers and human-resources executives also attribute the jump to a bigger shift in the way many Americans relate to their jobs. For one, more workers are using up sick time often for reasons such as mental health. And unlike older workers, who might have been loath to call in sick for fear of seeming weak or unreliable, younger workers feel more entitled to take full advantage of the benefits they've been given, executives and recruiters say. That confidence has only grown as record low unemployment persists. So far this year, 30% of white-collar workers with access to paid leave have taken sick time, up from 21% in 2019, according to data from payroll and benefits software company Gusto. Employees between ages 25 and 34 are taking sick days most often, with their use rates jumping 45% from before the pandemic. [...] Younger workers used to follow the example of their older peers and come in even when under the weather, says Crystal Williams, chief human resources officer at global business payments company Fleetcor, which has around 5,000 U.S. employees. She suspects early-career employees aren't taking cues from older co-workers in the same way now that five days a week at the office is no longer the norm. Prepandemic, Fleetcor workers in their 20s and 30s took one or two sick days a year, she says. Now, ita(TM)s more like three to five.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is making a few changes to the way its search and address bar -- known as the omnibox -- works in the Chrome browser. The changes are individually pretty small, but there's an important and somewhat unexpected trend in them all: Google is making it easier for you to move around the web without having to do so many Google searches. From a report: If you're in Chrome on desktop or mobile, the browser will now try and correct your URL typos, so when you type thevrege.com or ninteendo.com, you'll get autocomplete suggestions based on the right site and not whatever is behind those misspelled domains. The omnibox's autocomplete will now be smarter in general, predicting the site you're looking for based on keywords rather than just guessing what URL you're typing. Chrome can also now search within your bookmarks for sites and files related to what you're typing. All those features are based on your own browsing history and bookmarks, so it's just Chrome becoming slightly more personalized. But the last change is web-wide and is pretty off-brand for Google: when you start to type in the name of a popular website, the omnibox will show that site's URL in the list of suggestions, and you can select it to go right to that site. (You might have seen this one already: it's been rolling out for a couple of weeks and should be live to everyone now.)Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Acceptable levels of "forever chemicals" in drinking water should be reduced tenfold and a new national chemicals agency created to protect public health, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) has told the UK government. From a report: The chartered body wants to see a reduction in the cap on levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in tap water. PFAS are a family of about 10,000 widely used chemicals that do not break down easily in the environment. Some have been linked to cancers, liver and thyroid disease, immune and fertility problems, and developmental defects in unborn children. The current limit in UK drinking water, which is a guideline and not a statutory cap, is 100 nanograms a litre for individual PFAS. The RSC wants this reduced to 10ng/l and a new overall limit introduced of 100ng/l for a wider range of PFAS in drinking water. "In the Drinking Water Inspectorate's (DWI) own words, levels above 10ng/l pose a medium or high risk to public health," said Stephanie Metzger, a policy adviser at the RSC. "We're seeing more studies that link PFAS to a range of very serious medical conditions, and so we urgently need a new approach for the sake of public health."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google security researchers say they have found evidence that government-backed hackers linked to Russia and China are exploiting a since-patched vulnerability in WinRAR, the popular shareware archiving tool for Windows. From a report: The WinRAR vulnerability, first discovered by cybersecurity company Group-IB earlier this year and tracked as CVE-2023-38831, allows attackers to hide malicious scripts in archive files that masquerade as seemingly innocuous images or text documents. Group-IB said the flaw was exploited as a zero-day -- since the developer had zero time to fix the bug before it was exploited -- as far back as April to compromise the devices of at least 130 traders. Rarlab, which makes the archiving tool, released an updated version of WinRAR (version 6.23) on August 2 to patch the vulnerability. Despite this, Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) said this week that its researchers have observed multiple government-backed hacking groups exploiting the security flaw, noting that "many users" who have not updated the app remain vulnerable. In research shared with TechCrunch ahead of its publication, TAG says it has observed multiple campaigns exploiting the WinRAR zero-day bug, which it has tied to state-backed hacking groups with links to Russia and China.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon has started delivering prescription medications by drone in a Texas city, broadening its still-experimental effort to deliver goods by air. From a report: The online retailer recently began listing drone delivery as an option for Amazon Pharmacy customers who are participating in a test program in College Station, one of two US cities where Amazon is delivering products using its unmanned, riding-lawnmower-sized vehicles. The company made the effort public on Wednesday ahead of a logistics press event held at a warehouse near Amazon's Seattle headquarters. Quick delivery of medical supplies has emerged as one of the leading candidates for a viable delivery-by-drone business. Alphabet's Wing, United Parcel Service and drone startup Zipline have all set out to deliver medical goods, sometimes in trial programs centered around hospital campuses or planned communities. In most places, drone use remains limited to narrowly prescribed tests as regulators hash out regulations to limit risk to other aircraft and people on the ground.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: On May 4, 2022, NASA's InSight lander detected the largest quake yet recorded on Mars, one with a 4.7 magnitude -- fairly modest by Earth standards but strong for our planetary neighbor. Given Mars lacks the geological process called plate tectonics that generates earthquakes on our planet, scientists suspected a meteorite impact had caused this marsquake. But a search for an impact crater came up empty, leading scientists to conclude that this quake was caused by tectonic activity -- rumbling in the planet's interior -- and giving them a deeper understanding about what makes Mars shake, rattle and roll. "We concluded that the largest marsquake seen by InSight was tectonic, not an impact. This is important as it shows the faults on Mars can host hefty marsquakes," said planetary scientist Ben Fernando of the University of Oxford in England, lead author of the research published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. "We really thought that this event might be an impact." "This represents a significant step forward in our understanding of Martian seismic activity and takes us one step closer to better unraveling the planet's tectonic processes," added Imperial College London planetary scientist and study co-author Constantinos Charalambous, co-chair of InSight's Geology Working Group. NASA retired InSight in 2022 after four years of operations. In all, InSight's seismometer instrument detected 1,319 marsquakes. Earth's crust - its outermost layer - is divided into immense plates that continually shift, triggering quakes. The Martian crust is a single solid plate. But that does not mean all is quiet on the Martian front. "There are still faults that are active on Mars. The planet is still slowly shrinking and cooling, and there is still motion within the crust even though there are no active plate tectonic processes going on anymore. These faults can trigger quakes," Fernando said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Five Eyes countries' intelligence chiefs came together on Tuesday to accuse China of intellectual property theft and using artificial intelligence for hacking and spying against the nations, in a rare joint statement by the allies. From a report: The officials from the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - known as the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network - made the comments following meetings with private companies in the U.S. innovation hub Silicon Valley. U.S. FBI Director Christopher Wray said the "unprecedented" joint call was meant to confront the "unprecedented threat" China poses to innovation across the world. From quantum technology and robotics to biotechnology and artificial intelligence, China was stealing secrets in various sectors, the officials said. "China has long targeted businesses with a web of techniques all at once: cyber intrusions, human intelligence operations, seemingly innocuous corporate investments and transactions," Wray said. "Every strand of that web had become more brazen, and more dangerous." In response, Chinese government spokesman Liu Pengyu said the country was committed to intellectual property protection.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI will likely lead to seismic changes to the workforce, eliminating many professions and requiring a societal rethink of how people spend their time, prominent tech leaders said Tuesday. From a report: Speaking at The Wall Street Journal's Tech Live conference on Tuesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that the changes could hit some people in the economy more seriously than others, even if society as a whole improves. This will likely be a hard sell for the most affected people, he said. "We are really going to have to do something about this transition," said Altman, who added that society will have to confront the speed at which the change happens. "People need to have agency, the ability to influence. We need to jointly be architects of the future." Artificial intelligence is expected to transform the global economy by driving gains in both productivity and growth. But economists and tech entrepreneurs are divided on how quickly this shift could -- and should -- happen. Earlier Tuesday, Vinod Khosla, a prominent venture capitalist whose firm was one of OpenAI's earliest backers, laid out a stark timeline for AI's transformation of work. Within 10 years AI will be able to "do 80% of 80% of all jobs that we know of today," said Khosla, a tech investor and entrepreneur for more than 40 years. He pointed to many types of physicians and accountants as examples of professions that AI could largely supplant because these systems can more easily access a broad array of knowledge. Khosla likened the extent of the workforce changes to the disappearance of agricultural jobs in the U.S. in the 20th Century -- a transition that took place over generations, not years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: When British naturalist Charles Darwin sketched out his theory of evolution in the 1859 book "On the Origin of Species" -- proposing that biological species change over time through the acquisition of traits that favor survival and reproduction -- it provoked a revolution in scientific thought. Now 164 years later, nine scientists and philosophers on Monday proposed a new law of nature that includes the biological evolution described by Darwin as a vibrant example of a much broader phenomenon, one that appears at the level of atoms, minerals, planetary atmospheres, planets, stars and more. It holds that complex natural systems evolve to states of greater patterning, diversity and complexity. Titled the "law of increasing functional information," it holds that evolving systems, biological and non-biological, always form from numerous interacting building blocks like atoms or cells, and that processes exist -- such as cellular mutation -- that generate many different configurations. Evolution occurs, it holds, when these various configurations are subject to selection for useful functions. [...] The authors proposed three universal concepts of selection: the basic ability to endure; the enduring nature of active processes that may enable evolution; and the emergence of novel characteristics as an adaptation to an environment. Some biological examples of this "novelty generation" include organisms developing the ability to swim, walk, fly and think. Our species emerged after the human evolutionary lineage diverged from the chimpanzee lineage and acquired an array of traits including upright walking and increased brain size. The research has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One of the world's largest private BitTorrent trackers, Filelist, has announced it will shut down soon. The site has been in operation for sixteen years and enjoys millions of monthly visits, mostly from Romania. Site admin EboLLa has chosen to devote time to other parts of life and without a trusted successor, it's best to close the doors. TorrentFreak reports: Many private trackers have come and gone over the years. The Romanian-based tracker FileList.io is one of the bigger ones to survive, although it came close to shutting down a few years ago when Romanian authorities seized its domain name. The enforcement action was a wake-up call for both staff and users of the members-only tracker, but it didn't mark the end of the road. FileList simply switched from the seized .ro domain to an .io version and with the database unscathed, it kept on going. According to recent traffic stats from SimilarWeb, the tracker hasn't lost its appeal. With an estimated average of roughly six million monthly visits, the site continues to draw a massive audience. That, however, is about to change. A few hours ago, FileList sysop "EboLLa" informed the site's members that the doors will permanently close in a few weeks. This isn't the result of legal pressure; it's a conscious and well-evaluated life choice. "Unfortunately, I no longer have the time to run the site. A site like this requires quite a lot of commitment and my priorities in everyday life have changed in recent years. Time is the most precious resource for all of us and I have invested enough time here," the operator writes. The decision was a difficult one. FileList's operator long considered handing the reigns to a successor, but that is easier said than done, especially after the dream candidate was no longer an option. "I don't have anyone to leave it to. ToXiC, the one who was going to take my place is no longer with us," EboLLa writes. [...] "It is quite difficult to find a person who is integrated here and shares the same values and has the same dedication that you have enjoyed for the last 16 years. I decided that the best thing to do is to close the site rather than risk something like this." "During this time you can still enjoy the site, download what you need from here and post your goodbye message in the thread. After ~3 months, sometime around January 2024, the site will be closed permanently," EboLLa concludes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Michael Kan reports via PCMag: Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin has announced a new spacecraft that promises to help humanity build and maintain projects in outer space. The company today debuted Blue Ring, a so-called "space platform" that can orbit Earth, but also travel around the Moon, with the goal of providing delivery and logistics support to other space projects. To do so, Blue Ring functions as a maneuverable platform that can host, transport, and refuel other spacecraft. In addition, it can relay data while also offering an "in-space" cloud computing capability, according to Blue Origin's announcement. Other rockets, particularly those from rival SpaceX, can already send satellites up into predictable orbits around Earth. In contrast, Blue Ring is designed to serve customers for more "dynamic" space projects at varying orbits, Blue Origin Lars Hoffman VP tells Aviation Week. "It has a lot of capability and a lot of energy. It is a platform that has versatility across multiple missions and multiple customers on any given launch," Hoffman says. The company adds that Blue Ring can travel with payloads of over 6,600 pounds. According to Aviation Week, Blue Origin is eyeing 2025 as a realistic launch date for the spacecraft, which has already received some interest from customers. Hoffman also says Blue Ring will be "launch-vehicle agnostic," allowing it to fly on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket or Blue Origin's own New Glenn, which is aiming to be used in its first mission next year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Fewer than 26% of US households still have someone working remotely at least one day a week, a sharp decline from the early-2021 peak of 37%, according to the two latest Census Bureau Household Pulse Surveys. Only seven states plus Washington, DC, have a remote-work rate above 33%, the data shows, down from 31 states and DC mid-pandemic. [...] At the state level, the data shows all 50 have seen work-from-home rates drop from their pandemic highs. But the unevenness in their rates of decline suggests the trend doesn't have one cohesive explanation, and is instead the result of a hodgepodge of migration, socio-economic, gender and race factors, and possibly even politics -- Democratic states tend to have higher remote-work rates than Republican ones. Illustrating the complexity: States whose remote-work rates have fallen by as much as half to around post-pandemic lows include Mississippi and Louisiana, which weren't able to widely embrace remote work due to a reliance on in-person industries like manufacturing and oil and gas, but also more white-collar states that did welcome it, like California and Connecticut. The latest Census data also underlines that employees' demand for remote jobs is outpacing the number of companies offering them. In 157 of the largest metro areas in the US, more than half of job applications were for fully remote or hybrid roles in August, according to LinkedIn data generated for Bloomberg, but postings for those jobs have been falling since early 2022, data from Indeed Inc. shows. In Colorado -- widely seen as a work-from-home haven and one of the few states that has maintained a rate above one third -- 76% of job applications in Colorado Springs were for fully remote or hybrid roles in August, the LinkedIn data showed. Some areas are capitalizing on that scarcity. Alabama, with a work-from-home rate of just 15% according to the Pulse data, offers $10,000 to remote workers who move to the state's northwest Shoals area. The program has attracted about the same number of applications so far this year as in all of 2021 and 2022 combined, about 3,400. All 50 states pale in comparison to their largest cities' metro areas. In Washington, DC, where government bureaucrats are loath to go back to their offices, the remote-work rate is above 50%, the data shows. Similarly, Seattle, Boston and San Francisco all had rates near or above 40%. Average office attendance across ten big US cities remains about 50% of pre-pandemic levels, according to security firm Kastle Systems International LLC, no higher than where it was early in 2023.Read more of this story at Slashdot.