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According to Phoronix citing multiple local North Carolina news outlets, Red Hat is cutting "hundreds of jobs" in an initial round of layoffs announced today. From the report: According to WRAL, Red Hat CEO Matt Hicks is said to have told employees in an email "we will not reduce roles directly selling to customers or building our products," which is hopefully good news for their many upstream Linux developers they employ that ultimately build Red Hat Enterprise Linux and associated software products. Red Hat will begin notifying affected employees today in some countries while the process will continue through the end of the quarter. IBM, which acquired Red Hat in 2019, has already slashed some five thousand positions so far in 2023.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is suing the Securities and Exchange Commission, seeking to force the commission to respond to a petition (PDF) requesting them to draft and approve a rule specific to digital assets. "The lawsuit aims to force the agency to provide a yes or no to Coinbase's ask," adds The Block. From the report: Since that request by Coinbase, the SEC has reopened custody and exchange rules to explicitly say that they apply to digital assets, but has not engaged in drafting a rule specific to digital assets. The agency has also engaged in several enforcement actions against crypto companies, including an investigation into Coinbase. "From the SEC's public statements and enforcement activity in the crypto industry, it seems like the SEC has already made up its mind to deny our petition. But they haven't told the public yet. So the action Coinbase filed today simply asks the court to ask the SEC to share its decision," the company's chief legal officer Paul Grewal wrote in a blog post about the filing. The suit filed by Coinbase is a writ of mandamus, a type of lawsuit for "exceptional circumstances" in which a court can force federal officials to act. If the SEC declines to make a new rule, Coinbase can file another lawsuit in an attempt to make a federal court force them to do so.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Coinbase has been granted a license by the Bermuda Monetary Authority, allowing the US crypto exchange to operate as a digital asset business there. The exchange is also in the process of obtaining a license in Abu Dhabi. Reuters reports: Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said on Tuesday that crypto firms will develop in "offshore" havens unless the U.S. and UK create "clarity about regulation" for crypto. Coinbase is planning to launch a crypto derivatives exchange in Bermuda as soon as next week, Fortune reported on Wednesday, citing a person close to the company. U.S. SEC Chair Gary Gensler told lawmakers on Tuesday that he had "never seen a field that's so non-complying with laws." Crypto firms say they need clarity about regulations, but Gensler has said that crypto markets "suffer from a lack of regulatory compliance, not a lack of regulatory clarity."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: California is far and away the country's largest adopter of plug-in electric vehicles. Because of the state's ability to regulate its own air quality and spurred on by a large economy and plenty of affluent residents, the EV has gained plenty of traction in the Golden State. So much so that last month, California met its goal of having more than 1.5 million clean vehicles on the road two years ahead of schedule. California's Air Resources Board (CARB) began its Zero-Emission Vehicle (ZEV) program in 1990 with the intent of ameliorating the state's severe smog problem. By the early years of this century, air quality had improved to the point where CARB could begin using the ZEV regulations to help drive down climate emissions. It has accomplished that with goals that are more ambitious than the ones adopted by the US Environmental Protection Agency at the federal level and despite political interference from the previous administration, which wanted pollution to continue almost unabated. A number of other states -- Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington -- have adopted CARB's ZEV program within their own borders. But none are as far down the road to EV adoption; in the first three months of this year, 21.1 percent of all new light-duty vehicles bought in California were zero-emissions vehicles. That's a 153-percent increase year on year, according to the nonprofit Veloz. Battery EVs made up the vast majority, with 95,946 sold. Unsurprisingly, Tesla was most well-represented on the sales list, with the Model Y accounting for 33,205 units by itself. (The Model 3 was next, at 19,989 sold in Q1 2023.) BMW was the best of the rest of the OEMs in total sales numbers thanks to healthy plug-in hybrid EV sales. Los Angeles County was responsible for the highest number of new EVs added to the roads, with 36,670 registered in Q1. Orange County was next, at 15,289 new ZEVs registered, followed by Santa Clara County (11,428 new ZEVs registered). Cumulatively, that brings California to 1,523,966 ZEVs deployed by the end of Q1 2023; for context, there were just 773 ZEVs in total sold before 2011. The state had hoped to reach that milestone by the end of 2025. More than two-thirds of those 1.5 million ZEVs are BEVS -- 1,051,456, according to the California Energy Commission, with most of the remaining cars being plug-in hybrid EVs. The data shows that the hydrogen fuel cell revolution is not really accelerating, though -- only 15,432 have been registered in the state.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Samsung is expected to report its worst profit in 14 years due to falling prices for memory chips -- the company's biggest business -- and weak demand. CNBC reports: The South Korean technology giant guided earlier this month that it would post operating profit of 600 billion Korean won ($449 million) for the first quarter. If Samsung reports this number, it would be the company's lowest profit since the first quarter of 2009. Samsung releases preliminary earnings guidance, but does not give detailed figures. It reports its full first quarter earnings on Thursday. Samsung is the world's largest maker of memory chips, which go into everything from PCs to servers in data centers. During the height of the pandemic, demand for consumer electronics was high, as people stayed home. Electronics companies piled up chips to go into these products. But buyers are now cutting back on purchases of these goods due to inflation and macroeconomic concerns, leading to somewhat of a memory chip glut.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Canadian singer-songwriter Grimes has invited her fans to create music using her voice, stating that she would split 50% of royalties for any successful AI-generated song using her voice. On Sunday night she tweeted: "I'll split 50% royalties on any successful AI generated song that uses my voice. Same deal as I would with any artist i collab with. Feel free to use my voice without penalty. I have no label and no legal bindings." She also said she welcomes the open sourcing of art and an end to copyright. "Im just curious what even happens and interested in being a Guinea pig." From a report: Grimes has long embraced AI as a techno artist. In 2020, her first album to top the Billboard dance charts was Miss Anthropocene, named for the effects of technology on Earth's ecology and climate in the post-Industrial Revolution era. It was also in 2020 that she teamed up with the algorithmic mood music startup Endel to create an AI-generated lullaby for her first child with SpaceX founder Elon Musk who they named X AE A-12 with the Elven spelling of AI, according to Grimes. "Everyday I thank the overlords of Ableton for cleaning up my tracks, but I do worry though that AI will outpace us and make musicians obsolete. It's inevitable," she warned at Web Summit 2020. With millions of followers across YouTube, Instagram and Twitter and hits like Oblivion, Kill V. Maim and Go, her call for AI collaboration could be a game changer.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Wednesday, Stability AI released a new family of open source AI language models called StableLM. Stability hopes to repeat the catalyzing effects of its Stable Diffusion open source image synthesis model, launched in 2022. With refinement, StableLM could be used to build an open source alternative to ChatGPT. StableLM is currently available in alpha form on GitHub in 3 billion and 7 billion parameter model sizes, with 15 billion and 65 billion parameter models to follow, according to Stability. The company is releasing the models under the Creative Commons BY-SA-4.0 license, which requires that adaptations must credit the original creator and share the same license. Stability AI Ltd. is a London-based firm that has positioned itself as an open source rival to OpenAI, which, despite its "open" name, rarely releases open source models and keeps its neural network weights -- the mass of numbers that defines the core functionality of an AI model -- proprietary. "Language models will form the backbone of our digital economy, and we want everyone to have a voice in their design," writes Stability in an introductory blog post. "Models like StableLM demonstrate our commitment to AI technology that is transparent, accessible, and supportive." Like GPT-4 -- the large language model (LLM) that powers the most powerful version of ChatGPT -- StableLM generates text by predicting the next token (word fragment) in a sequence. That sequence starts with information provided by a human in the form of a "prompt." As a result, StableLM can compose human-like text and write programs. Like other recent "small" LLMs like Meta's LLaMA, Stanford Alpaca, Cerebras-GPT, and Dolly 2.0, StableLM purports to achieve similar performance to OpenAI's benchmark GPT-3 model while using far fewer parameters -- 7 billion for StableLM verses 175 billion for GPT-3. Parameters are variables that a language model uses to learn from training data. Having fewer parameters makes a language model smaller and more efficient, which can make it easier to run on local devices like smartphones and laptops. However, achieving high performance with fewer parameters requires careful engineering, which is a significant challenge in the field of AI. According to Stability AI, StableLM has been trained on "a new experimental data set" based on an open source data set called The Pile, but three times larger. Stability claims that the "richness" of this data set, the details of which it promises to release later, accounts for the "surprisingly high performance" of the model at smaller parameter sizes at conversational and coding tasks. According to Ars' "informal experiments," they found StableLM's 7B model "to perform better (in terms of outputs you would expect given the prompt) than Meta's raw 7B parameter LLaMA model, but not at the level of GPT-3." They added: "Larger-parameter versions of StableLM may prove more flexible and capable."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Public sector workers in an eastern Chinese city are set to be paid fully in digital yuan, as the country makes a significant push to popularize the currency. From a report: Changshu, located in the province of Jiangsu, will start the new payment process in May, according to an official document widely posted on government websites. This is the biggest rollout of the currency, also known as the e-CNY, in China so far, according to state media. Government employees as well as staff at state-owned companies and public institutions such as schools, hospitals, libraries, research institutes and media organizations in the city will be affected. Changshu, a city of 1.7 million residents, was already experimenting with the digital yuan, a form of money that exists only online and is managed and backed by China's central bank. Like cryptocurrency, the digital yuan incorporates some elements of blockchain technology: Every transaction is recorded and traceable in a digital ledger. Since last October, Changshu has been paying the transit subsidies for some government employees in digital yuan. China is already on the verge of becoming a cashless society, but the vast majority of electronic transactions happen on privately owned apps (Alipay and WeChat Pay), outside of the immediate purview of the state.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Authenticator just got an update that should make it more useful for people who frequently use the service to sign in to apps and websites. From a report: As of today, Google Authenticator will now sync any one-time two-factor authentication (2FA) codes that it generates to users' Google Accounts. Previously, one-time Authenticator codes were stored locally, on a single device, meaning losing that device often meant losing the ability to sign in to any service set up with Authenticator's 2FA. To take advantage of the new sync feature, simply update the Authenticator app. If you're signed in to a Google Account within Google Authenticator, your codes will automatically be backed up and restored on any new device you use. You can also manually transfer your codes to another device even if you're not signed in to a Google Account by following the steps on this support page. Some users might be wary of syncing their sensitive codes with Google's cloud -- even if they did originate from a Google product. But Christiaan Brand, a group product manager at Google, asserts it's in the pursuit of convenience without sacrificing security. "We released Google Authenticator in 2010 as a free and easy way for sites to add 'something you have' 2FA that bolsters user security when signing in," Brand wrote in the blog post announcing today's change. "With this update we're rolling out a solution to this problem, making one time codes more durable by storing them safely in users' Google Account."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alexander De Croo (the prime minister of Belgium), Mark Rutte (the prime minister of the Netherlands), Xavier Bettel (the prime minister of Luxembourg), Emmanuel Macron (the president of France), Olaf Scholz (the chancellor of Germany), Leo Varadkar (the prime minister of Ireland), Jonas Gahr Store (the prime minister of Norway), Rishi Sunak (the prime minister of the United Kingdom), and Mette Frederiksen (the prime minister of Denmark), writing at Politico: We need offshore wind turbines -- and we need a lot of them. We need them to reach our climate goals, and to rid ourselves of Russian gas, ensuring a more secure and independent Europe. Held for the first time last year, Denmark, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands came together for the inaugural North Sea Summit in the Danish harbor town of Esbjerg, setting historic goals for offshore wind with the Esbjerg Declaration. It paved the way for making the North Seas a green power plant for Europe, as well as a major contributor to climate neutrality and strengthening energy security. This Monday, nine countries will meet for the next North Sea Summit -- this time in the Belgian town of Ostend -- where France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway and the United Kingdom will also put their political weight behind developing green energy in the North Seas, including the Atlantic Ocean and the Irish and Celtic Seas. Together, we will combine and coordinate our ambitions for deploying offshore wind and developing an offshore electricity grid, putting Europe on the path toward a green economy fueled by offshore green power plants. Collectively, our target for offshore wind in the North Seas is now 120 gigawatts by 2030, and a minimum of 300 gigawatts by 2050 -- larger than any of the co-signatories' existing generation capacity at a national level. And to deliver on this ambition, we are committing to building an entire electricity system in the North Seas based on renewable energy by developing cooperation projects. This is a massive undertaking and a true example of the green transition in the making. It also requires huge investments in infrastructure, both offshore and on land. It presents us with a political and environmental dilemma as well: We are facing a climate crisis at the same time some of our ecosystems are in decline, and offshore wind is an integral part of both climate action and safeguarding our energy security. Thus, time is of the essence, and we must follow up on the progress already made on reining in the burden of bureaucracy for renewable projects.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft will stop forcing customers of its popular Office software to also have its Teams video conferencing and messaging app automatically installed on their devices, in a move designed to prevent an official antitrust probe by EU regulators. From a report: The US tech giant has made the concession to avoid a formal investigation, said two people with direct knowledge of the decision, following a 2020 complaint by rival Slack which claimed Microsoft's practice of bundling the two services together was anti-competitive. These people said that, in future, when companies buy Office they can do it with or without Teams if they wished, but the mechanism on how to do this remains unclear. The people stressed talks are still ongoing and a deal is not certain. The move is part of an effort by Microsoft to try to avoid what would be its first antitrust probe in more than a decade, having sought to avoid legal battles with the European Commission that have proved bruising in the past.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Over the weekend, users on Reddit and YouTube began posting about problems with AMD's newest Ryzen 7000X3D processors. In some cases, the systems simply stopped booting. But in at least one instance, a Ryzen 7800X3D became physically deformed, bulging out underneath and bending the pins on the motherboard's processor socket. In a separate post, motherboard maker MSI indicated that the damage "may have been caused by abnormal voltage issues." Ryzen 7000X3D processors already impose limits on overclocking and power settings, but new BIOS updates from MSI specifically disallow any kind of "overvolting" features that could give the CPUs more power than they were built to handle. You can still undervolt your CPU to attempt to reduce temperatures and energy usage by giving the CPU a bit less power than it was designed for. The Ryzen 7000X3D processors are set to a lower voltage than regular Ryzen 7000 CPUs by default because the extra L3 cache layered on top of the processor die can raise temperatures and make the CPU more difficult to cool. This has also made the chips much more power-efficient than the standard Ryzen chips, but that efficiency comes at the cost of overclocking settings and other features that some enthusiasts use to squeeze more performance out of their PCs.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple won an appeals court ruling upholding its App Store's policies in an antitrust challenge brought by Epic Games. From a report: Monday's ruling by the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower-court judge's 2021 decision largely rejecting claims by Epic, the maker of Fortnite, that Apple's online marketplace policies violated federal law because they ban third-party app marketplaces on its operating system. The appeals panel upheld the judge's ruling in Epic's favor on California state law claims. The ruling comes as Apple has been making changes to the way the App Store operates to address developer concerns since Epic sued the company in 2020. The dispute began after Apple expelled the Fortnite game from the App Store because Epic created a workaround to paying a 30% fee on customers' in-app purchases. "There is a lively and important debate about the role played in our economy and democracy by online transaction platforms with market power," the three-judge panel said. "Our job as a federal court of appeals, however, is not to resolve that debate -- nor could we even attempt to do so. Instead, in this decision, we faithfully applied existing precedent to the facts."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The early user reviews for Snapchat's "My AI" feature are in -- and they're not good. From a report: Launched last week to global users after initially being a subscriber-only addition, Snapchat's new AI chatbot powered by OpenAI's GPT technology is now pinned to the top of the app's Chat tab where users can ask it questions and get instant responses. But following the chatbot's rollout to Snapchat's wider community, Snapchat's app has seen a spike in negative reviews amid a growing number of complaints shared on social media. Over the past week, Snapchat's average U.S. App Store review was 1.67, with 75% of reviews being 1-star, according to data from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower. For comparison, across Q1 2023, the Snapchat average U.S. App Store review was 3.05 with only 35% of reviews being 1-star. The number of daily reviews has also increased by 5 times over the last week, the firm noted.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is leaning into flexibility as part of a new strategy to stymie the impact of belt-tightening among cyber chiefs. From a report: Google Cloud and Mandiant, the threat intelligence unit it acquired last year, unveiled at the RSA Conference in San Francisco today that they're opening their security products to integrations from competitors, as well as offering new Google plug-ins for other vendors' tools. The news, which was shared first with Axios, means that Google customers will now have more options to embed Google's tools in partner companies' products, like CrowdStrike, Trellix and SentinelOne. Other companies, like Accenture and login management company Okta, will also be integrating their products into Google's as part of the plan. Chief information security officers are facing increasing board pressure during a wobbly economy to cut down the number of vendors they work with and simplify their security programs. As a result, vendors have started to intertwine their competitors' products into their own tools in recent years to reach more customers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge by computer scientist Stephen Thaler to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's refusal to issue patents for inventions his AI system created. From a report: The justices turned away Thaler's appeal of a lower court's ruling that patents can be issued only to human inventors and that his AI system could not be considered the legal creator of two inventions that he has said it generated. Thaler founded Imagination Engines Inc, an advanced artificial neural network technology company based in Saint Charles, Missouri. According to Thaler, his DABUS system, short for Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience, created unique prototypes for a beverage holder and emergency light beacon entirely on its own. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and a federal judge in Virginia rejected his patent applications for the inventions on the grounds that DABUS is not a person. The patent-focused U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld those decisions last year and said U.S. patent law unambiguously requires inventors to be human beings. Thaler told the Supreme Court that AI is being used to innovate in fields ranging from medicine to energy, and that rejecting AI-generated patents "curtails our patent system's ability - and thwarts Congress's intent - to optimally stimulate innovation and technological progress."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. Supreme Court, exploring free speech rights in the social media era, on Monday agreed to consider whether the Constitution's First Amendment bars government officials from blocking their critics on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. From a report: The justices took up an appeal by two members of a public school board from the city of Poway in Southern California of a lower court's ruling in favor of school parents who sued after being blocked from Facebook pages and a Twitter account maintained by the officials. The justices also took up an appeal by a Michigan man of a lower court's ruling against him after he sued a city official in Port Huron who blocked him on Facebook following critical posts made by the plaintiff about the local government's COVID-19 response. At issue is whether a public official's social media activity can amount to governmental action bound by First Amendment limits on government regulation of speech.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When the U.S. Supreme Court decides in the coming months whether to weaken a powerful shield protecting internet companies, the ruling also could have implications for rapidly developing technologies like artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT. From a report: The justices are due to rule by the end of June whether Alphabet's YouTube can be sued over its video recommendations to users. That case tests whether a U.S. law that protects technology platforms from legal responsibility for content posted online by their users also applies when companies use algorithms to target users with recommendations. What the court decides about those issues is relevant beyond social media platforms. Its ruling could influence the emerging debate over whether companies that develop generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT from OpenAI, a company in which Microsoft is a major investor, or Bard from Alphabet's Google should be protected from legal claims like defamation or privacy violations, according to technology and legal experts. That is because algorithms that power generative AI tools like ChatGPT and its successor GPT-4 operate in a somewhat similar way as those that suggest videos to YouTube users, the experts added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hackers, particularly state-sponsored and organized cybercriminals, wreak havoc worldwide. However, their aliases, such as Fancy Bear and Refined Kitten, often undermine the seriousness of their actions, Wired argues. Microsoft's cybersecurity division recently revamped its naming taxonomy for the hundreds of hacker groups it tracks, adopting two-word names with a weather-based term to indicate the hackers' suspected country and affiliation. For instance, the Iranian group Phosphorous is now dubbed Mint Sandstorm, while Russia's Iridium (Sandworm) goes by Seashell Blizzard. Critics, like Rob Lee, founder and CEO of cybersecurity firm Dragos, argue that the whimsical new names could hinder the perception of the profession and be counterproductive for cybersecurity analysis. Furthermore, the new naming scheme forces analysts and customers to revise their databases and products to align with Microsoft's terminology. The revised system also risks cementing educated guesses about hackers' national loyalties without clarity on the confidence of those assessments.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 spotted this story in today's New York Times. (Also re-published in the Seattle Times.) In early 2020 a team of U.S. and Chinese scientists "released critical data" on the speedy spread and lethality of the coronavirus, remembers Times, "cited in health warnings around the world... Within days, though, the researchers quietly withdrew the paper, which was replaced online by a message telling scientists not to cite it... "What is now clear is that the study was not removed because of faulty research. Instead, it was withdrawn at the direction of Chinese health officials amid a crackdown on science." It's not the only retraction. The Times also points out a paper published on March 9 of 2020 relying on patient samples from mid-December of 2019, which "added to evidence that the virus was spreading widely before the Chinese government took action." Two months later the journal that published an update that "said that the Wuhan samples were not collected in December after all, but weeks later, in January... After Jesse Bloom of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle tweeted about the discrepancy, the journal's editors posted a third version of the paper, adding yet another timeline. This revision says the samples were collected between Dec. 30 and Jan. 1."Beijing's stranglehold on information goes far deeper than even many pandemic researchers are aware of. Its censorship campaign has targeted international journals and scientific databases, shaking the foundations of shared scientific knowledge, a New York Times investigation found. Under pressure from their government, Chinese scientists have withheld data, withdrawn genetic sequences from public databases and altered crucial details in journal submissions. Western journal editors enabled those efforts by agreeing to those edits or withdrawing papers for murky reasons, a review by The Times of over a dozen retracted papers found. This scientific censorship has not universally succeeded: The original version of the February 2020 paper, for example, can still be found online with some digging. But the campaign starved doctors and policymakers of critical information about the virus at the moment the world needed it most. It bred mistrust of science in Europe and the United States, as health officials cited papers from China that were then retracted. The crackdown continues to breed misinformation today and has hindered efforts to determine the origins of the virus. The article notes an international team's discovery last month of genetic sequence data collected in January of 2020 at Wuhan market, "withheld from foreign experts for three years — a delay that global health officials called 'inexcusable.'"The sequences showed that raccoon dogs, a fox-like animal, had deposited genetic signatures in the same place that genetic material from the virus was left, a finding consistent with a scenario in which the virus spread to people from illegally traded market animals... Soon after the group alerted Chinese researchers to their findings, the genetic sequences temporarily disappeared from a global database. "It's just pathetic that we're in this stage where we're having cloak-and-dagger conversations about deleted data," said Edward Holmes, a University of Sydney biologist who was part of the group that analyzed the sequences containing raccoon dog DNA. The Times cites retracted coronavirus papers flagged by Retraction Watch, which tracks withdrawn research. Amid tighting government censorship in 2020, Chinese researchers began asking journals to retract their work, the Times reports, and "a review of more than a dozen retracted papers from China shows a pattern of revising or suppressing research on early cases, conditions for medical workers and how widely the virus had spread — topics that could make the government look bad."Journals are typically slow to retract papers, even when they are shown to be fraudulent or unethical. But in China, the calculus is different, said Ivan Oransky, a founder of Retraction Watch. Journals that want to sell subscriptions in China or publish Chinese research often bend to the government's demands. "Scientific publishers have really gone out of their way to placate the censorship requests," he said... The journal retractions continued, and for unusual reasons. One group of authors noted that "our data is not perfect enough." Another warned that its paper "cannot be used as the basis for the origin and evolution of SARS-CoV-2." A third said its findings were "incomplete and not ready for publication." Several scientists promised in retraction notices to update their findings but never did.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this recent report from Bloomberg:Amazon continued blocking sellers from offering lower prices on rival sites, despite assuring antitrust enforcers it ended its policy that artificially inflated prices for consumers, according to newly unsealed filings in California's antitrust lawsuit against the e-commerce giant. The Seattle-based company planned to expand penalties on sellers who presented lower prices outside Amazon, even after it claimed in 2019 that it stopped punishing third-party merchants who posted better deals on Walmart, Target, eBay, and, in some instances, their own websites, according to previously redacted portions of the suit that were made public. The newly unsealed filings include an internal document in which Amazon states point-blank that despite "the recent removal of the price parity clause in our Business Solutions Agreement... our expectations and policies have not changed." "Many of the complaint's allegations are inaccurate," an Amazon spokesperson told Bloomberg. "We look forward to presenting the facts to the court."California Attorney General Rob Bonta is seeking a court order blocking Amazon from continuing to engage in what he alleged is anticompetitive behavior, as well as compensation for consumers in the most populous U.S. state. A similar suit filed by Washington, D.C., was dismissed in 2021... The 2022 suit came three years after Bloomberg reported that the company's policies were forcing sellers to charge more on competing sites like Walmart because Amazon would bury their products in search results if they offered lower prices elsewhere... California's probe into Amazon's practices also highlighted concerns that ads on the platform are unhelpful for customers. Amazon advertising revenue grew 19% in the fourth quarter, to $11.6 billion. The fast-growing revenue source helps prop up Amazon's otherwise low-margin online retail business that carries the high expense of operating warehouses around the country and delivering orders to shoppers' homes. California's attorney general issued an official statement arguing that Amazon "has orchestrated the substantial market power it now enjoys through agreements at the retail and wholesale level that prevent effective price competition in the online retail marketplace." And it includes this fierce denunciation attributed directly to attorney general Bonta: "As California families struggle to make ends meet, we're in court to stop Amazon from engaging in anticompetitive practices that keep prices artificially high and stifle competition. There is no shortage of evidence showing that the 'Everything store' is costing consumers more for just about everything. Amazon coerces merchants into agreements that keep prices artificially high, knowing full well that they can't afford to say no. With other e-commerce platforms unable to compete on price, consumers turn to Amazon as a one-stop shop for all their purchases. This perpetuates Amazon's market dominance, allowing the company to make increasingly untenable demands on its merchants and costing consumers more at checkout across California. We won't stand by while Amazon uses coercive contracting practices to dominate the market at the expense of California consumers, small business owners, and the economy."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this recent report from Bloomberg:Amazon continued blocking sellers from offering lower prices on rival sites, despite assuring antitrust enforcers it ended its policy that artificially inflated prices for consumers, according to newly unsealed filings in California's antitrust lawsuit against the e-commerce giant. The Seattle-based company planned to expand penalties on sellers who presented lower prices outside Amazon, even after it claimed in 2019 that it stopped punishing third-party merchants who posted better deals on Walmart, Target, eBay, and, in some instances, their own websites, according to previously redacted portions of the suit that were made public. The newly unsealed filings include an internal document in which Amazon states point-blank that despite "the recent removal of the price parity clause in our Business Solutions Agreement... our expectations and policies have not changed." "Many of the complaint's allegations are inaccurate," an Amazon spokesperson told Bloomberg. "We look forward to presenting the facts to the court."California Attorney General Rob Bonta is seeking a court order blocking Amazon from continuing to engage in what he alleged is anticompetitive behavior, as well as compensation for consumers in the most populous U.S. state. A similar suit filed by Washington, D.C., was dismissed in 2021... The 2022 suit came three years after Bloomberg reported that the company's policies were forcing sellers to charge more on competing sites like Walmart because Amazon would bury their products in search results if they offered lower prices elsewhere... California's probe into Amazon's practices also highlighted concerns that ads on the platform are unhelpful for customers. Amazon advertising revenue grew 19% in the fourth quarter, to $11.6 billion. The fast-growing revenue source helps prop up Amazon's otherwise low-margin online retail business that carries the high expense of operating warehouses around the country and delivering orders to shoppers' homes. California's attorney general issued an official statement arguing that Amazon "has orchestrated the substantial market power it now enjoys through agreements at the retail and wholesale level that prevent effective price competition in the online retail marketplace." And it includes this fierce denunciation attributed directly to attorney general Bonta: "As California families struggle to make ends meet, we're in court to stop Amazon from engaging in anticompetitive practices that keep prices artificially high and stifle competition. There is no shortage of evidence showing that the 'Everything store' is costing consumers more for just about everything. Amazon coerces merchants into agreements that keep prices artificially high, knowing full well that they can't afford to say no. With other e-commerce platforms unable to compete on price, consumers turn to Amazon as a one-stop shop for all their purchases. This perpetuates Amazon's market dominance, allowing the company to make increasingly untenable demands on its merchants and costing consumers more at checkout across California. We won't stand by while Amazon uses coercive contracting practices to dominate the market at the expense of California consumers, small business owners, and the economy."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Thousands of stunned guests were on hand Saturday night to watch a Disneyland malfunction for the ages," writes SFGate — when a 45-foot-tall animatronic dragon burst into flames, and continued burning for several minutes in front of the stunned crowd. SFGate reports:The fire occurred during the 10:30 p.m. performance of Fantasmic, a show staged on the Rivers of America. The elaborate show uses ships, barges, projections on the water and fire effects to tell the story of Mickey Mouse's dreams and nightmares. Near the end of the show, the dragon form of Maleficent from "Sleeping Beauty," emerges from the island. The big finale went awry Saturday, and flames engulfed the entire dragon. Video taken by shocked spectators shows the fire beginning on the dragon's face and rapidly spreading down its body as chunks of flaming debris fall to the ground. Smoke and heavy flames billow from the prop as firefighters begin hosing down the dragon. The remainder of the show was canceled, and guests were escorted out of the immediate area... The dragon, one of the most memorable parts of Disneyland's beloved nighttime spectacular, has jokingly been referred to as Murphy, a reference to Murphy's law. Over the decades, it's been part of countless malfunctions and mishaps, although none quite so destructive as this. Though it is supposed to breathe fire, there are times when the effect doesn't work at all. "Disneyland employees armed with garden hoses and fire extinguishers were no match for the inferno," reports the Orange County Register. "The dragon's head erupted into a fireball and a flamethrower effect from the dragon's mouth shot directly toward the stage, according to MiceChat." The newspaper has a picture of the charred mechanical skeleton that was still lying on the ground Sunday on Tom Sawyer Island — and a 146-second video of the blaze. (Apparently realizing they're witnessing an unplanned fire, one spectator can be heard telling another one wryly, "Happy birthday, Danny.") "Some spectators thought it was part of the show," reports the New York Times. One visitor told the newspaper, "My sister and I were talking about how it was impressive. I was like, 'Man, they can set that head on fire and it just stays perfectly intact?' So we were kind of amazed at Disney at first..." When interviewed by the Associated Press, Ryan Laux, a frequent Disneyland visitor, "said Mickey vanished from the stage as soon as the dragon's head became engulfed in flames." Then a voice over a loudspeaker announced the show wouldn't continue "due to unforeseen circumstances..." (as heard in the video). "We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause — and hope you enjoy the rest of your evening here at Disneyland. Once again, this performance cannot continue due to unforeseen circumstances. Thank you." At that moment the head burst into more flames, some members of the audience gasped in unison — and the announcement continued playing in Spanish. ("No podemos continuar con este presentacion...") Then cheery banjo music began playing. At least six workers were eventually treated for smoke inhalation from the burning dragon prop, reports the New York Times. In a statement Disney said they were now "temporarily suspending fire effects" in "select" shows in their parks around the world — "out of an abundance of caution."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last year Python's massive PyPI repository of pre-written software packages had 235.7 billion downloads — a 57% annual growth in its download counts and bandwidth. So now Python's nonprofit Python Software Foundation has an announcement. Their director of infrastructure said today that they're rolling out "the first step in our plan to build financial support and long-term sustainability of PyPI, while simultaneously giving our users one of our most requested features: organization accounts."Organizations on PyPI are self-managed teams, with their own exclusive branded web addresses. Our goal is to make PyPI easier to use for large community projects, organizations, or companies who manage multiple sub-teams and multiple packages. We're making organizations available to community projects for free, forever, and to corporate projects for a small fee. Additional priority support agreements will be available to all paid subscribers, and all revenue will go right back into PyPI to continue building better support and infrastructure for all our users... Having more people using and contributing to Python every year is an fantastic problem to have, but it is one we must increase organizational capacity to accommodate. Increased revenue for PyPI allows it to become a staffed platform that can respond to support requests and attend to issues in a timeframe that is significantly faster than what our excellent (but thinly spread) largely volunteer team could reasonably handle. We want to be very clear — these new features are completely optional. If features for larger projects don't sound like something that would be useful to you as a PyPI maintainer, then there is no obligation to create an organization and absolutely nothing about your PyPI experience will change for you. We look forward to discussing what other features PyPI users would like to see tackled next...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Associated Press visited a 100-foot barge moored in Los Angeles where engineers built "a kind of floating laboratory to answer a simple question: Is there a way to cleanse seawater of carbon dioxide and then return it to the ocean so it can suck more of the greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere to slow global warming?"The technology, dubbed SeaChange, developed by the University of California Los Angeles engineering faculty, is meant to seize on the ocean's natural abilities, said Gaurav Sant, director of UCLA's Institute for Carbon Management. The process sends an electrical charge through seawater flowing through tanks on the barge. That then sets off a series of chemical reactions that trap the greenhouse gas into a solid mineral that includes calcium carbonate — the same thing seashells are made of. The seawater is then returned to the ocean and can pull more carbon dioxide out of the air. The calcium carbonate settles to the sea floor. Plans are now underway to scale up the idea with another demonstration site starting this month in Singapore. Data collected there and at the Port of Los Angeles will help in the design of larger test plants. Those facilities are expected to be running by 2025 and be able to remove thousands of tons of CO2 per year. If they are successful, the plan is to build commercial facilities to remove millions of tons of carbon annually, Sant said... Scientists estimate at least 10 billion metric tons of carbon will need to be removed from the air annually beginning in 2050, and the pace will need to continue over the next century... According to the UCLA team, at least 1,800 industrial-scale facilities would be needed to capture 10 billion tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide per year, but fewer could still make a dent. The article notes alternate ideas from other researchers — including minerals on beaches that increase the ocean's alkalinity so it can absorb more carbon dioxide. But this SeaChange process also produces hydrogen. So the director of UCLA's Carbon Management institute also founded a startup that generates revenue from that hydrogen (and from "carbon credits" sold to other companies) — hoping to lower the cost of removing atmospheric carbon to below $100 per metric ton.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Once-booming demand for cloud-computing services is slowing..." reports Bloomberg. "When Microsoft and Amazon report results next week, analysts are anticipating the slowest revenue growth for their cloud-computing businesses since the firms started breaking out performance last decade."For years, demand for cloud-computing services has steadily driven growth at both Microsoft and Amazon... Microsoft's Intelligent Cloud unit, which is home to its Azure cloud-services business, accounted for 38% of its revenue and 39% of operating income in 2022. Amazon Web Services was the fastest-growing of the Seattle-based company's major businesses last year and generated $22.8 billion in operating income. The rest of Amazon's businesses combined posted a $10.6 billion operating loss. For both companies, cracks are starting to appear. In the first three months of 2023, growth for Microsoft's Azure unit and Amazon Web Services is expected to fall to 31% and 14%, respectively, excluding currency fluctuations, according to the average of analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. A year ago, Azure sales expanded 49% and Amazon Web Services 37%. In a shareholder letter released last week, Amazon said AWS "faces short-term head winds" related to the economic backdrop that will "soften" the growth rate. This echoed what it said in its most recent results. Microsoft also warned of a slowdown in cloud software sales last quarter. Wall Street has been getting more cautious. UBS lowered growth estimates for Azure last week, warning "customer efforts to optimize/trim their cloud spend will be deeper and last longer than most think...." Jefferies [financial services company] sees slowing cloud demand as "a key concern" for Amazon. Analyst Brent Thill said that because AWS generates so much of Amazon's operating income, "a stabilization in cloud is crucial for shares to outperform." For Alec Young, chief investment strategist at MAPsignals, Microsoft and Amazon remain attractive despite the slowdown, which he expects to be a temporary pause before growth re-accelerates. "There's still a lot of runway ahead for cloud computing, so I don't think investors should obsess too much over the level of growth over a couple quarters," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this scathing rant from the Verge:It's a truth universally acknowledged that smart speakers should just shut up. I don't want to know when Siri / Alexa / Google has locked my front door — I just asked it to do that and I expect it to happen. (We'll put a pin in the fact that it doesn't always do this). So Google's announcement this week that it's taking more steps to stop its Google Assistant from chattering away to you every time you send a command to a Nest smart speaker is a welcome one. The Assistant already stays schtum when you ask it to turn the lights off in the room you're in, sending a gentle chime to let you know it was successful. (You know, in case THE LIGHTS TURNING OFF didn't alert you to this fact.) However, it still loves to have a good old chat when you ask it to do something like change the temperature of your thermostat. "Okay, setting the living room AC to 76 degrees." This new change will, according to a community blog post from Google, roll out over the next few weeks. It will make the speaker chime instead of starting a conversation when you ask it to control smart devices, including switches, plugs, fans, blinds, TVs, and speakers. However, this is still only for the room you and the speaker are in. So, when I'm in bed at night and softly request my Nest Hub to turn off the living room lights, it will still loudly respond, "TURNING OFF LIVING ROOM LIGHTS." Sigh. The article argues the problem is specific to Google's speakers. "Knowing when to be silent is something every other smart speaker manufacturer figured out a while back."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Arm is developing its own chip," reports the Financial Times, "to showcase the capabilities of its designs, as the SoftBank-owned group seeks to attract new customers and fuel growth following a blockbuster IPO later this year."The company will team up with manufacturing partners to develop the new chip, according to people briefed on the move who describe it as the most advanced chipmaking effort the Cambridge-headquartered group has ever embarked upon. The effort comes just as SoftBank seeks to drive up Arm's profits and attract investors to a planned listing on New York's Nasdaq exchange... The hope is that the prototype will allow it to demonstrate the power and capabilities of its designs to the wider market. Arm has previously built some test chips with partners including Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, largely aimed at enabling software developers to gain familiarity with new products. However, multiple industry executives told the FT that its newest chip — on which it started work in the past six months — is "more advanced" than ever before. Arm has also formed a bigger team that will execute the effort and is targeting the product at chip manufacturers more than software developers, they said... Rumblings about Arm's chipmaking moves have stoked fears in the semiconductor industry that if it makes a good enough chip, it could seek to sell it in the future and thereby become a competitor to some of its biggest customers, such as MediaTek or Qualcomm. People close to Arm insist there are no plans to sell or license the product and that it is only working on a prototype. Arm declined to comment. The article cites "people briefed on the move" as saying that Arm plans to build prototype chips for laptops, mobile devices, and other electronics. "The team will also expand on Arm's existing efforts to enhance the performance and security of designs, as well as bolster developer access to its products. " The article points out that the head of Arm's engineering team previously oversaw the development of Qualcomm's Snapdragon chip.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last week there was some good news for startups working on commercial nuclear fusion in the U.S. And it came from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (or NRC), the top governing body for America's nuclear power plants nuclear materials, reports CNBC:The top regulatory agency for nuclear materials safety in the U.S. voted unanimously to regulate the burgeoning fusion industry differently than the nuclear fission industry, and fusion startups are celebrating that as a major win. As a result, some provisions specific to fission reactors, like requiring funding to cover claims from nuclear meltdowns, won't apply to fusion plants. (Fusion reactors cannot melt down....) Other differences include looser requirements around foreign ownership of nuclear fusion plants, and the dispensing of mandatory hearings at the federal level during the licensing process, said Andrew Holland, CEO of the industry group, the Fusion Industry Association... The approach to regulating fusion is akin to the regulatory regime that is currently used to regulate particle accelerators, which are machines that are capable of making elementary nuclear particles, like electrons or protons, move really fast, the Fusion Industry Association says... Technically speaking, fusion will be regulated under Part 30 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Jeff Merrifield, a former NRC commissioner, told CNBC. The regulatory structure for nuclear fission is under Part 50 of that code. "The regulatory structure needed to regulate particle accelerators under Part 30, is far simpler, less costly and more efficient than the more complicated rules imposed on fission reactors under Part 50," Merrifield told CNBC. "By making this decision to use the Part 30, the commission recognized the decreased risk of fusion technologies when compared with traditional nuclear reactors and has imposed a framework that more appropriately aligns the risks and the regulations," he said. "Private fusion companies have raised about $5 billion to commercialize and scale fusion technology," the article points out, "and so the decision from the NRC on how the industry would be regulated is a big deal for companies building in the space." And they shared three reactions from the commercial fusion industry:The CEO of the industry group, the Fusion Industry Association told CNBC the decision was"extremely important."The scientific director for fusion startup Focused Energy told CNBC the decision "removes a major area of uncertainty for the industry."The general counsel for nuclear fusion startup Helion told CNBC. "It is now incumbent on us to demonstrate our safety case as we bring fusion to the grid, and we look forward to working with the public and regulatory community closely on our first deployments."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: According to Google Trends, peak "Lean to Code" occurred in early 2019 when laid-off Buzzfeed and Huffpost journalists were taunted with the phrase on Twitter...As Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently put it, "We're in a different world." Indeed. Encouraging kids to pursue CS careers in Code.org's viral 2013 launch video, Zuckerberg explained, "Our policy at Facebook is literally to hire as many talented engineers as we can find." In Learning to Code Isn't Enough, a new MIT Technology Review article, Joy Lisi Rankin reports on the long history of learn-to-code efforts, which date back to the 1960s. "Then as now," Lisi Rankin writes, "just learning to code is neither a pathway to a stable financial future for people from economically precarious backgrounds nor a panacea for the inadequacies of the educational system." But is that really true? Vox does note that the latest round of layoffs at Meta "is impacting workers in core technical roles like data scientists and software engineers — positions once thought to be beyond reproach." Yet while that's also true at other companies, those laid-off tech workers also seem to be finding similar positions by working in other industries:Software engineers were the most overrepresented position in layoffs in 2023, relative to their employment, according to data requested by Vox from workforce data company Revelio Labs. Last year, when major tech layoffs first began, recruiters and customer success specialists experienced the most outsize impact. So far this year, nearly 20 percent of the 170,000 tech company layoffs were software engineers, even though they made up roughly 14 percent of employees at these companies. "Early layoffs were dominated by recruiters, which is forgoing future hiring," Revelio senior economist Reyhan Ayas told Vox. "Whereas in 2023 we see a shift toward more core engineering and software engineering, which signals a change in focus of current business priorities." In other words, tech companies aren't just trimming the fat by firing people who fill out their extensive ecosystem, which ranges from marketers to massage therapists. They're also, many for the first time, making cuts to the people who build the very products they're known for, and who enjoyed a sort of revered status since they, like the founders of the companies, were coders. Software engineers are still important, but they don't have the power they used to... The latest monthly jobs report by tech industry association CompTIA found that even though employment at tech companies (which includes all roles at those companies) declined slightly in March, employment in technical occupations across industry sectors increased by nearly 200,000 positions. So even if tech companies are laying off tech workers, other industries are snatching them up. Unfortunately for software engineers and the like, that means they might also have to follow those industries' pay schemes. The average software engineer base pay in the US is $90,000, according to PayScale, but can be substantially higher at tech firms like Facebook, where such workers also get bonuses and stock options.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

9to5Linux reports:KDE-focused and Arch Linux-inspired independent distribution KaOS Linux celebrates today 10 years of existence with a new stable ISO release that brings some of the latest GNU/Linux technologies and a preview of the upcoming KDE Plasma 6 desktop environment. Yes, you're reading it right, KaOS is one of the very first GNU/Linux distributions to offer you a live ISO image with a pre-release version of the KDE Plasma 6 desktop, which, of course, is compiled against the latest Qt 6 open-source application framework... Since this is a special ISO release, the devs also added an option to play music during the installation process. "KaOS uses the Systemd-provided Systemd-boot for UEFI installs," according to the release notes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bill Gates believes AI chatbots "are on track to help children learn to read and hone their writing skills in 18 months time," reports CNBC:Historically, teaching writing skills has proven to be an incredibly difficult task for a computer, Gates noted. When teachers give feedback on essays, they look for traits like narrative structure and clarity of prose — a "high-cognitive exercise" that's "tough" for developers to replicate in code, he said. But AI chatbots' ability to recognize and recreate human-like language changes that dynamic, proponents say... AI technology must improve at reading and recreating human language to better motivate students before it can become a viable tutor, Gates said... It may take some time, but Gates is confident the technology will improve, likely within two years, he said. Then, it could help make private tutoring available to a wide swath of students who might otherwise be unable to afford it... "This should be a leveler," he said. "Because having access to a tutor is too expensive for most students — especially having that tutor adapt and remember everything that you've done and look across your entire body of work." Gates isn't the only billionaire thinking about how AI will affect education. Mark Cuban recently retweeted a prediction that GPT-4 "will revolutionize homeschooling."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lacking quantum computers, some startups "are developing a new breed of software inspired by algorithms used in quantum physics..." reports Reuters. "Once too big for conventional computers, these algorithms are finally being put to work thanks to today's powerful artificial intelligence chips, industry executives told Reuters."QC Ware, a software startup that has raised more than $33 million and initially focused only on software that could run on quantum computers, said it needed to change tack and find a solution for clients today until the future quantum machines arrive. So QC Ware CEO Matt Johnson said it turned to Nvidia Corp's graphic processing units (GPU) to "figure out how can we get them something that is a big step change in performance ... and build a bridge to quantum processing in the future...." This week, QC Ware is unveiling a quantum-inspired software platform called Promethium that will simulate chemical molecules — to see how they interact with things like protein — on a traditional computer using GPUs. The software can cut simulation time from hours to minutes for molecules of 100 atoms, and months to hours for molecules of up to 2000 atoms, compared with existing software solutions, said QC Ware's head of quantum chemistry Robert Parrish... In the past 18 months, quantum software startups including SandBoxAQ — an Alphabet spinoff — raised about $1 billion, according to data firm PitchBook. To be sure, development of this technology is nascent and these startups must work hard to convince some prospective clients. SandBoxAQ CEO Jack Hidary said it was only 24 months ago that AI chips became powerful enough to simulate hundreds of thousands of chemical interactions simultaneously. It developed a quantum-inspired algorithm for biopharma simulation on Google's AI chip called a Tensor Processing Unit (TPU)...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Phoronix reports:If you rely on an Intel I219-LM Gigabit Ethernet adapter, you will want to look forward to upgrading your Linux kernel build soon... A fix was committed Thursday after Intel engineers discovered this particular Ethernet chipset had only been running at around 60% of its maximum speed due to a regression introduced back in 2020... Since the release of Linux 5.8 in mid-2020, this Ethernet adapter had been running at around 60% of its advertised potential due to an e1000e driver regression.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There's a major new update of QEMU, the open-source machine emulator, reports 9to5Linux:Coming a year after QEMU 7.0, the QEMU 8.0 release is here to improve support for ARM and RISC-V architectures. - For ARM, it adds emulation support for FEAT_EVT, FEAT_FGT, and AArch32 ARMv8-R, CPU emulation for Cortex-A55 and Cortex-R52, support for a new Olimex STM32 H405 machine type, as well as gdbstub support for M-profile system registers. - For the RISC-V architecture, QEMU 8.0 brings updated machine support for OpenTitan, PolarFire, and OpenSBI, additional ISA and Extension support for smstateen, native debug icount trigger, cache-related PMU events in virtual mode, Zawrs/Svadu/T-Head/Zicond extensions, and ACPI support. Moreover, RISC-V received multiple fixes covering PMP propagation for TLB, mret exceptions, uncompressed instructions, and other emulation/virtualization improvements. Improvements were also made for the s390x (IBM Z) platform, the HP Precision Architecture (HPPA) platform, and x86.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It was a mix of spiritualism and financial education, remembers one patron of Generación Zoe, which "pitched itself as an 'educational and resource-creating community for personal, professional, financial and spiritual development,'" reports Rest of World:Generación Zoe claimed to make money through trading, and promised a 7.5% monthly return on investment for three years for those who put money into its "trust." In Argentina and other countries, other companies with the Zoe name peddled a similar narrative... It included a "university" that offered courses on ontological coaching, a type of philosophical practice popular in some Argentine business circles... Over 2020 and 2021, more than ten thousand people bought into Zoe, investing hundreds of millions of dollars between them. Zoe grew rapidly, hyping new tech innovations including the "robots" and a cryptocurrency called Zoe Cash. Its interests and visibility expanded: The Zoe name appeared on burger joints, car dealerships, a plane rental company, and pet shops, all emblazoned with its name. It sponsored soccer teams and even created three of its own... Zoe also spread beyond Argentina to other countries in Latin America and further afield, including Mexico, Paraguay, Colombia, Spain, and the U.S. Towards the end of 2021, however, the shine began to wear off, as authorities began looking into Zoe's activities... Zoe members reported being unable to withdraw the funds they had put into trusts or "robots," and in early 2022, the value of Zoe Cash plummeted. Angry investors banged on the doors of Zoe's branches, and investigations against Zoe and Cositorto piled up across Latin America, Spain, and the U.S. By March 2022, a handful of high-profile names involved with Zoe in Argentina had been arrested, or were wanted by the authorities... Prosecutors now accuse Zoe of being nothing more than a simple Ponzi scheme.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Washington Post reports on "a relatively young app called Beeper that pulls all your chats into one place." This is significant, the Post argues, because "we're better off if we have the freedom to pick up our digital lives and move on. Tech companies should feel terrified that you'll walk if they disappoint you..." If different people send you messages in Apple's Messages (a.k.a., iMessage), WhatsApp, LinkedIn and Slack, you don't have to check multiple apps to read and reply. Maybe the best promise of Beeper is that you can ditch your iPhone or Samsung phone for another company's device and keep your text messages... Eric Migicovsky, Beeper's co-founder, told me that if you're pulling Apple Messages into Beeper, you need a Mac computer to upload a digital file. All chat apps have different limits on how much history you can access in the app. There's also a wait list of about 170,000 people for Beeper. (Add yourself to the list here.) The app is free, but Beeper says it will start charging for a version with extra features. To put this all in context, the Post's reporter remembers the hassle of using a cable to transfer a long history of iPhone messages to a new Google Pixel phone, complaining that Apple makes it more difficult than other companies to switch to a different kind of system. "Many of you are happy to live in Apple's world. Great! But if you want the option to leave at some point, try to limit your use of Apple apps when possible..." They look ahead to next year, when the EU "will require large tech companies to make their products compatible with those of competitors" — though it's not clear how much change that will bring. In the meantime, the existence of a small company like Beeper "gives me hope that we don't have to rely on the kindness of technology giants to make it easier to move to a different phone or computer system... You deserve the option of a no-hassle tech divorce at a moment's notice."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Remember that U.S. Air National Guardsman who's suspected of leaking classified documents? The New York Times has discovered "a previously undisclosed chat group on Discord" where the same airman apparently also posted "sensitive information" including "secret intelligence on the Russian war effort," this time to a group with 600 members — and "months earlier than previously known," in February of 2022.The case against Airman Teixeira, 21, who was arrested on April 13, pertains to the leaking of classified documents on another Discord group of about 50 members, called Thug Shaker Central. There, he began posting sensitive information in October 2022, members of the group told The Times. His job as an information technology specialist at an Air Force base in Massachusetts gave him top secret clearance... The user claimed to be posting information from the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies. The additional information raises questions about why authorities did not discover the leaks sooner, particularly since hundreds more people would have been able to see the posts... The exposure of some of America's most closely guarded secrets has prompted criticism about how the Pentagon and intelligence agencies protect classified data, and whether there are weaknesses in both vetting people for security clearances and enforcing the mantra that access to secrets should only be given to people with a "need to know." Unlike Thug Shaker Central, the second chat room was publicly listed on a YouTube channel and was easily accessed in seconds... Apparently eager to impress others in the group who questioned his analysis, he said: "I have a little more than open source info. Perks of being in a USAF intel unit," referring to the United States Air Force... At times, he appeared to be posting from the military base where he was stationed... Airman Teixeira also claimed that he was actively combing classified computer networks for material on the Ukraine war. When one of the Discord users urged him not to abuse his access to classified intelligence, Teixeira replied: "too late...." The Times says they learned about the larger chat room "from another Discord user."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The Rust Foundation on Monday apologized for confusion caused by the organization's proposed trademark policy changes," reports the Register. The Foundation now says their proposed policy "clearly needs improvement" and "there are many valid critiques of the initial draft," promising to address them and adopt a more transparent process (with a report summarizing the feedback soon). From the Register's report:The foundation, which provides financial and legal support for the memory-safe programming language, had proposed fresh rules on the use of the word Rust and its logo, which included the recommendation that people not use 'Rust' in their Rust crate names, eg: vulture-rs would be preferred over vulture-rust. These draft changes triggered a backlash... Over the weekend, Rust creator Graydon Hoare voiced support for the community's objections in a Reddit discussion thread, in response to a post by programmer Andrew Gallant, a former member of the Rust moderation team, who argued the new policy was not all that different from the old one. "Open them up side by side — old and new — and look at what they each say about, specifically, package names, project names, repos or websites using the word 'rust', or modified versions of the logo used for small groups or projects," wrote Hoare. "These are specifically the things people are upset about, because they all changed from 'acceptable' to 'prohibited' when 'clarifying' the policy. And those are specifically things that everyone in the community does, and has done, for years. There are zillions of packages, projects, repos, websites and groups using the names and logo this way, as the old policy said they could. The new policy tells them all to stop." Long-time open source advocate Bruce Perens told the Register that Rust's trademark policy "goes far awry of fair use which is legally permitted. Books on Rust will always have its name in their title, commercial products will be advertised as being written in Rust, being compatible with Rust, or compiling Rust. But the policy attempts to deny permission for these things. A proper trademark policy prevents others from representing that their product is Rust or is endorsed by the trademark holder of Rust. That's really as much as you can ever enforce, so there's no sense in a policy that asks for more." The Register also spoke to Ashley Williams, a former member of the Rust core team and the original executive director and founder of the Rust Foundation, who argued upheaval in Rust's governance over the past year led to a team with less experience dealing with the Rust community. "I think a couple of very passionate people participated in the trademark working group and they didn't involve a lot of people who have even basic experience interacting with the community. So really classic community behaviors ended up getting prohibited in that [draft] policy. And that's really why everybody got upset. The policy ultimately said, 'a thing that you do all the time as a way of contributing to the Rust community is now against our policy.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Snapchat's AI chatbot is now opening up to a global audience, the company announced today at its Snap Partner Summit. Initially launched in February, the feature originally allowed Snapchat's paid subscribers to chat with an AI chatbot powered by OpenAI's GPT technology directly in its app. Now it will be available for free. To date, users have sent nearly 2 million messages per day using the chatbot, Snap noted. With today's global expansion, the feature is also being upgraded with new functionality, including the ability to add My AI to group chats, get recommendations for places on Snap Map and Lenses, and share Snaps with My AI and receive chat replies. Later, My AI will be able to respond with unique "generative" Snaps back, instead of just chat replies, the company also said, to keep the visual conversation going. The idea to integrate AI into the Snapchat app was originally intended to give users another way to engage in the app while taking advantage of the growing consumer demand for ChatGPT-like experiences. The company suggested the feature could be used to do things like suggest birthday gift ideas for a BFF, plan a hiking trip, suggest dinner recipes or write a poem for a friend, among other things. [...] The feature, before today, was available only to Snapchat+ $3.99 per month subscription holders, which could be helping drive upgrades.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are now losing more than three times as much ice a year as they were 30 years ago, according to a new comprehensive international study. Phys.Org reports: Using 50 different satellite estimates, researchers found that Greenland's melt has gone into hyperdrive in the last few years. Greenland's average annual melt from 2017 to 2020 was 20% more a year than at the beginning of the decade and more than seven times higher than its annual shrinkage in the early 1990s. From 1992 to 1996, the two ice sheets -- which hold 99% of the world's freshwater ice -- were shrinking by 116 billion tons (105 billion metric tons) a year, two-thirds of it from Antarctica. But from 2017 to 2020, the newest data available, the combined melt soared to 410 billion tons (372 billion metric tons) a year, more than two-thirds of it from Greenland, said the study in Thursday's journal Earth System Science Data. Since 1992, Earth has lost 8.3 trillion tons (7.6 trillion metric tons) of ice from the two ice sheets, the study found. That's enough to flood the entire United States with 33.6 inches (almost 0.9 meters) of water or submerge France in 49 feet (nearly 15 meters). But because the world's oceans are so huge, the melt just from the ice sheets since 1992 still only adds up to a little less than inch (21 millimeters) of sea level rise, on average. Globally sea level rise is accelerating and melt from ice sheets has gone from contributing 5% of the sea level rise to now accounting for more than one-quarter of it, the study said. The rest of the sea rise comes from warmer water expanding and melt from glaciers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Humane, the top-secret tech startup founded by ex-Apple vets Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, just showed off the first demo for its projector-based wearable at a TED talk. From a report: Axios' Ina Fried broke the news, and Inverse has seen a recording of the full TED talk given by Chaudhri. Journalist Zarif Ali, who had tweeted out an image of Humane's wearable projecting a phone call function onto Chaudhri's palm, says the full TED talk video is not slated to become available until April 22. I've clipped out a demo of the AI-powered wearable in action.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: China is building sophisticated cyber weapons to "seize control" of enemy satellites, rendering them useless for data signals or surveillance during wartime, according to a leaked US intelligence report. The US assesses that China's push to develop capabilities to "deny, exploit or hijack" enemy satellites is a core part of its goal to control information, which Beijing considers to be a key "war-fighting domain." The CIA-marked document, which was issued this year and has been reviewed by the Financial Times, was one of dozens allegedly shared by a 21-year-old US Air Guardsman in the most significant American intelligence disclosures in more than a decade. A cyber capability of this nature would far exceed anything Russia has deployed in Ukraine, where electronic warfare teams have taken a brute-force approach with little effect. These attacks, first developed in the 1980s, attempt to drown out signals between low-orbit SpaceX satellites and their on-ground terminals by broadcasting on similar frequencies from truck-borne jamming systems such as the Tirada-2. China's more ambitious cyber attacks aim to mimic the signals that enemy satellites receive from their operators, tricking them into either being taken over completely or malfunctioning during crucial moments in combat. The classified US document said this cyber capability would allow China "to seize control of a satellite, rendering it ineffective to support communications, weapons, or intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems." The US has never disclosed whether it has similar capabilities. Taiwan, which has taken note of how indispensable satellite communications have been to the Ukrainian military, is seeking to build out communications infrastructure that can survive an attack from China. It is courting investors to establish its own satellite provider, while experimenting with non-geostationary satellite receivers in 700 locations around Taiwan to guarantee bandwidth in the event of war or disasters, the Financial Times reported in January. China's goals, according to the leaked assessment, [...] would seek to knock out the ability of satellites -- which tend to operate in interconnected clusters -- to communicate with each other, to relay signals and orders to weapons systems, or to send back visual and intercepted electronic data, according to experts. "China understands the superiority that the United States has in the space and cyber domains, so they are very interested in not only improving their own capabilities but in capitalizing on what we refer to as a first-mover advantage in both domains," said Moore, now a visiting professor at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. "They are working on all the capabilities that they want to have from a defensive and offensive standpoint, and from an ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] standpoint. They're firing on all cylinders," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Colorado-based Biofire Tech is taking orders for a smart gun enabled by facial-recognition technology, the latest development in personalized weapons that can only be fired by verified users. Reuters reports: But in a sign of the long, challenging road that smart guns have faced, a prototype twice failed to fire when demonstrated for Reuters this week. Company founder and Chief Executive Kai Kloepfer said the software and electronics have been fully tested, and the failure was related to the mechanical gun which was made from pre-production and prototype parts. At other times during the demonstration the weapon fired successfully and the facial-recognition technology appeared to function. Biofire's gun can also be enabled by a fingerprint reader, one of several smart gun features designed to avoid accidental shootings by children, reduce suicides, protect police from gun grabs, or render lost and stolen guns useless. The first consumer-ready versions of the 9mm handgun could be shipped to customers who pre-ordered as soon as the fourth quarter of this year, with the standard $1,499 model possibly available by the second quarter of 2024, Biofire said. That could make it the first commercially available smart gun in the United States since the Armatix briefly went on sale in 2014. At least two other American companies, LodeStar Works and Free State Firearms, are also attempting to get a smart gun to market.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mike Lynch, the tech entrepreneur once hailed as Britain's answer to Bill Gates, has lost an appeal against extradition to the US to answer criminal fraud charges. The Guardian reports: Lynch, the founding investor of the British cybersecurity firm Darktrace, is facing allegations that he duped the US firm Hewlett-Packard into overpaying when it struck an $11bn deal for his software firm Autonomy in 2011. Two high court judges considered Mike Lynch's challenge at a recent hearing in London and on Friday issued a ruling rejecting his appeal against extradition to face the charges. Lynch, who could face a maximum prison sentence of 25 years if found guilty, has always denied the allegations and any wrongdoing. Lord Justice Lewis and Justice Julian Knowles ruled on Friday that Lynch, who made 500 million pounds from the sale to HP and was hailed as one of Britain's few global tech champions, should be extradited to the US to stand trial. Sushovan Hussain, Autonomy's former finance director, is already serving time in jail in the US after being found guilty of fraud relating to the same deal. A spokesperson for Lynch said he was considering appealing to the European court of human rights. "Dr Lynch is very disappointed, but is reviewing the judgment and will continue to explore his options to appeal, including to the European court of human rights (ECHR)," he said. "The United States' legal overreach into the UK is a threat to the rights of all British citizens and the sovereignty of the UK." However, criminal defense law firm Corker Binning said that only 8% of applications to the ECHR in such cases -- seeking a Rule 39 order to stop the UK extradition until it has considered the case -- were successful last year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ChatGPT, OpenAI's large language model for chatbots, not only produces mostly insecure code but also fails to alert users to its inadequacies despite being capable of pointing out its shortcomings. The Register reports: Amid the frenzy of academic interest in the possibilities and limitations of large language models, four researchers affiliated with Universite du Quebec, in Canada, have delved into the security of code generated by ChatGPT, the non-intelligent, text-regurgitating bot from OpenAI. In a pre-press paper titled, "How Secure is Code Generated by ChatGPT?" computer scientists Raphael Khoury, Anderson Avila, Jacob Brunelle, and Baba Mamadou Camara answer the question with research that can be summarized as "not very." "The results were worrisome," the authors state in their paper. "We found that, in several cases, the code generated by ChatGPT fell well below minimal security standards applicable in most contexts. In fact, when prodded to whether or not the produced code was secure, ChatGPT was able to recognize that it was not." [...] In all, ChatGPT managed to generate just five secure programs out of 21 on its first attempt. After further prompting to correct its missteps, the large language model managed to produce seven more secure apps -- though that's "secure" only as it pertains to the specific vulnerability being evaluated. It's not an assertion that the final code is free of any other exploitable condition. [...] The academics observe in their paper that part of the problem appears to arise from ChatGPT not assuming an adversarial model of code execution. The model, they say, "repeatedly informed us that security problems can be circumvented simply by 'not feeding an invalid input' to the vulnerable program it has created." Yet, they say, "ChatGPT seems aware of -- and indeed readily admits -- the presence of critical vulnerabilities in the code it suggests." It just doesn't say anything unless asked to evaluate the security of its own code suggestions. Initially, ChatGPT's response to security concerns was to recommend only using valid inputs -- something of a non-starter in the real world. It was only afterward, when prompted to remediate problems, that the AI model provided useful guidance. That's not ideal, the authors suggest, because knowing which questions to ask presupposes familiarity with specific vulnerabilities and coding techniques. The authors also point out that there's ethical inconsistency in the fact that ChatGPT will refuse to create attack code but will create vulnerable code.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to CNBC, Google has halted construction of its proposed 80-acre campus in San Jose, California, after the first demolition phase. "Some sources close to the development told CNBC that the company doesn't have plans to revive the project in the near future." From the report: In June 2021, Google won approval to build an 80-acre campus, spanning 7.3 million square feet of office space, in San Jose, California, the third-largest city in the country's most populous state. The estimated economic impact: $19 billion. [...] The city of San Jose may now be paying the price. What was poised to be a mega-campus called "Downtown West," with thousands of new housing units and 15 acres of public parks, is largely a demolition zone at risk of becoming a long-term eyesore and economic zero. CNBC has learned that, as part of Google's downsizing that went into effect early this year, the company has gutted its development team for the San Jose campus. The construction project, which was supposed to break ground before the end of 2023, has been put on pause, and no plan to restart construction has been communicated to contractors, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named due to non-disclosure agreements. While sources are optimistic that a campus will be built at some point and said Google representatives have expressed a commitment to it, they're concerned the project may not reach the scale promised in the original master plan. The Mercury News, one of Silicon Valley's main newspapers, previously reported that Google was reassessing its timeline. Sources told CNBC that the company started signaling to contractors late last year that the project could face delays and changes. In February, LendLease, the lead developer for the project, laid off 67 employees, including several community engagement managers, according to filings viewed by CNBC. Senior development managers, a head of business operations and other executives were among those let go. Last month, Google also removed construction updates from its website for the project, according to internal correspondence viewed by CNBC.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Stack Overflow, a popular internet forum for computer programming help, plans to begin charging large AI developers as soon as the middle of this year for access to the 50 million questions and answers on its service, CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar says. The site has more than 20 million registered users. Stack Overflow's decision to seek compensation from companies tapping its data, part of a broader generative AI strategy, has not been previously reported. It follows an announcement by Reddit this week that it will begin charging some AI developers to access its own content starting in June. "Community platforms that fuel LLMs absolutely should be compensated for their contributions so that companies like us can reinvest back into our communities to continue to make them thrive," Stack Overflow's Chandrasekar says. "We're very supportive of Reddit's approach." Chandrasekar described the potential additional revenue as vital to ensuring Stack Overflow can keep attracting users and maintaining high-quality information. He argues that will also help future chatbots, which need "to be trained on something that's progressing knowledge forward. They need new knowledge to be created." But fencing off valuable data also could deter some AI training and slow improvement of LLMs, which are a threat to any service that people turn to for information and conversation. Chandrasekar says proper licensing will only help accelerate development of high-quality LLMs. Chandrasekar says that LLM developers are violating Stack Overflow's terms of service. Users own the content they post on Stack Overflow, as outlined in its TOS, but it all falls under a Creative Commons license that requires anyone later using the data to mention where it came from. When AI companies sell their models to customers, they "are unable to attribute each and every one of the community members whose questions and answers were used to train the model, thereby breaching the Creative Commons license," Chandrasekar says. Neither Stack Overflow nor Reddit has released pricing information. "Both Stack Overflow and Reddit will continue to license data for free to some people and companies," notes Wired. "Chandrasekar says Stack Overflow only wants remuneration only from companies developing LLMs for big, commercial purposes." "When people start charging for products that are built on community-built sites like ours, that's where it's not fair use," he says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to the Wall Street Journal, ride-hailing company Lyft is planning to cut 1,200 jobs, or more than 30% of the company's 4,000-person workforce. These figures don't include drivers because they aren't counted as employees at Lyft. Insider reports: It's another round of reductions for the company that last cut 700 employees in November. The cuts come just days after David Risher took the helm as Lyft's new CEO and could help the company reduce costs by 50%, the Journal said. In a memo to employees sent Friday morning that has since been posted on Lyft's site, Risher noted that the company intends to use the savings to "invest in competitive pricing, faster pick-up times, and better driver earnings." In the memo, Risher said employees would receive an email with details of their employment status on April 27 at 8:30 am Pacific time. A spokesperson for Lyft told Insider that the company would not be able to confirm the number of affected employees until next week. However, in an emailed statement, the spokesperson said that "David has made clear to the company that his focus is on creating a great and affordable experience for riders and improving drivers' earnings." The spokesperson added, "to do so requires that we reduce our costs and structure our company so that our leaders are closer to riders and drivers. This is a hard decision and one we're not making lightly. But the result will be a far stronger, more competitive Lyft."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Redbox CEO Bill Rouhana told The Hollywood Reporter that he'd like to buy the business, saying: "I wish Netflix would sell me that business instead of shutting it down." From the report: Redbox is already the biggest DVD rental company in the U.S., with a network of some 32,000 red DVD kiosks across the country. Just this week, it announced plans to add another 1,500 kiosks at Dollar General stores (Rouhana says the Dollar General kiosks are some of the company's most profitable). While the DVD business kickstarted Netflix's meteoric rise, in recent years it has been on the decline. In 2022, it had $146 million in revenue, down $40 million from the year prior. Q1 had revenue of $32 million, suggesting a further decline this year. And Rouhana says he has reached out to Netflix over the years expressing a desire to acquire the DVD business, to no avail. "I have tried like three or four times to reach out to the corporate development people about it but just got rebuffed each time," Rouhana says. "So when I saw it being closed, I thought, 'Well, maybe they'll do it now.'" A Netflix source tells THR that the company is winding down the business, and not selling it. (As for what happens to those warehouses full of DVDs that fueled Netflix's red envelope business, they seem to be in limbo for now.) Even if that is the case, Rouhana says he believes Netflix's decision to shutter the service will benefit his company. "This could be a great boon to us because now there are a whole bunch of people who are going to look for a new place to get their DVDs, and we're close to 90 percent of them based on where our kiosks are located," he says. And, he notes, he does not expect the DVD business to go away anytime soon. "We believe in it, and we believe it's going to be around for a while. Like most legacy things, it's a lot harder to kill them than people say, I believe," he adds. In fact, he believes the DVD business is in a position for growth over the next few years, thanks to a larger slate of movies hitting theaters and a desire from studios to reengage with windowing strategies. "We programmed our business plan for us to get back to about 30 percent of the 2019 level," Rouhana says. "I feel that's pretty conservative, I think we'll be better than that. But, you know, that's how we built the business plan that we've articulated. So people can decide for themselves whether they think that's overly optimistic or overly pessimistic."Read more of this story at Slashdot.