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According to The Digital Bits, Best Buy will exit the physical media business as soon as the end of the first quarter of 2024. From a report: Best Buy has been phasing out DVDs from its stores, but The Digital Bits reports that Best Buy would even stop offering it on its site as well, signaling a complete break from physical media. The report noted that some studios have shifted their inventory of Blu-Ray and 4K Steelbook titles toward Amazon. The move is another hint at the possible end of physical media as consumers gravitate towards streaming services and their extensive libraries, or digital downloads. This comes as one of the largest distributors of DVDs and Blu-Rays, Ingram Entertainment, said it was exiting the business just as Walmart is looking to take over management of Studio Distribution Services (SDS), which handles the distribution of physical media. Disney ceased selling physical media in Australia.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Science: One e-toy for every person on Earth -- that's the staggering amount of electric trains, drones, talking dolls, R/C cars, and other children's gadgets tossed into landfills every year. Some of what most consumers consider to be e-waste -- like electronics such as computers, smartphones, TVs, and speaker systems -- are usual suspects. Others, like power tools, vapes, LED accessories, USB cables, anything involving rechargeable lithium batteries and countless other similar, "nontraditional" e-waste materials, are less obviously in need of special disposal. In all, people across the world throw out roughly 9 billion kilograms (19.8 billion pounds) of e-waste commonly not recognized as such by consumers. This "invisible e-waste" is the focal point of the sixth annual International E-Waste Day on October 14, organized by Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Forum. In anticipation of the event, the organization recently commissioned the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) to delve into just how much unconventional e-waste is discarded every year -- and global population numbers are just some of the ways to visualize the issue. According to UNITAR's findings, for example, the total weight of all e-cig vapes thrown away every year roughly equals 6 Eiffel Towers. Meanwhile, the total weight of all invisible e-waste tallies up to "almost half a million 40 [metric ton] trucks," enough to create a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam stretching approximately 3,504 miles -- the distance between Rome and Nairobi. From a purely economic standpoint, nearly $10 billion in essential raw materials is literally thrown into the garbage every year. Further reading: Half a Billion Cheap Electrical Items Go To UK Landfills in a Year, Research FindsRead more of this story at Slashdot.

Emilia David reports via The Verge: A bipartisan bill seeks to create a federal law to protect actors, musicians, and other performers from unauthorized digital replicas of their faces or voices. The Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe Act of 2023 -- or the No Fakes Act -- standardizes rules around using a person's faces, names, and voices. Sens. Chris Coons (D-DE), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Thom Tillis (R-NC) sponsored the bill. It prevents the "production of a digital replica without consent of the applicable individual or rights holder" unless part of a news, public affairs, sports broadcast, documentary, or biographical work. The rights would apply throughout a person's lifetime and, for their estate, 70 years after their death. The bill includes an exception for using digital duplicates for parodies, satire, and criticism. It also excludes commercial activities like commercials as long as the advertisement is for news, a documentary, or a parody. Individuals, as well as entities like a deceased person's estate or a record label, can file for civil action based on the proposed rules. The bill also explicitly states that a disclaimer stating the digital replica was unauthorized won't be considered an effective defense.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ashley Belanger reports via Ars Technica: This month, more than three dozen victims allegedly terrorized by stalkers using Apple AirTags have joined a class-action lawsuit filed in a California court last December against Apple. They alleged in an amended complaint (PDF) that, partly due to Apple's negligence, AirTags have become "one of the most dangerous and frightening technologies employed by stalkers" because they can be easily, cheaply, and covertly used to determine "real-time location information to track victims." Since the lawsuit was initially filed in 2022, plaintiffs have alleged that there has been an "explosion of reporting" showing that AirTags are frequently being used for stalking, including a spike in international AirTags stalking cases and more than 150 police reports in the US as of April 2022. More recently, there were 19 AirTags stalking cases in one US metropolitan area -- Tulsa, Oklahoma -- alone, the complaint said. This seeming escalation is concerning, plaintiffs say, because Apple allegedly has not done enough to mitigate harms, and AirTags stalking can lead to financial ruin, as victims bear significant costs like hiring mechanics to strip their cars to locate AirTags or repeatedly relocating their homes. AirTags stalking can also end in violence, including murder, plaintiffs alleged, and the problem is likely bigger than anyone knows, because stalking is historically underreported. [...] Many plaintiffs said they had no clue what AirTags were when they first discovered hidden AirTags were being used to monitor their moves. At the very least, plaintiffs want Apple to be responsible for raising awareness of how AirTags are used by stalkers -- not just to inform people who are at risk of stalking but also to ensure law enforcement is aware. Plaintiffs have alleged that Apple did not provide information to police that prevented them from accessing protective orders and pressing criminal charges. The complaint also suggested other remedies Apple could provide, like improving the consistency of AirTag alerts, which plaintiffs claimed only sometimes appeared on iPhones, so that users are always aware when an AirTag is nearby. "Apple continues to find itself in the position of reacting to the harms its product has unleashed, as opposed to prophylactically preventing those harms," the complaint said. A technology specialist for the National Network to End Domestic Violence, Corbin Streett, is also quoted in the complaint, pointing out that Apple's threat model seemed to only consider risks of strangers using AirTags for unwanted stalking, not abusive partners. That's a problem since advocacy groups like the federally funded Stalking Prevention, Awareness, & Resource Center report (PDF) that the "vast majority of stalking victims are stalked by someone they know" and "intimate partner stalkers are the most likely stalkers to approach, threaten, and harm their victims." "I hope Apple keeps their learning hat on and works to figure out that piece of the puzzle," Streett said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jessica Lyons Hardcastle reports via The Register: The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) may open source the proprietary encryption algorithms used to secure emergency radio communications after a public backlash over security flaws found this summer. "The ETSI Technical Committee in charge of TETRA algorithms is discussing whether to make them public," Claire Boyer, a spokesperson for the European standards body, told The Register. The committee will discuss the issue at its next meeting on October 26, she said, adding: "If the consensus is not reached, it will go to a vote." TETRA is the Terrestrial Trunked Radio protocol, which is used in Europe, the UK, and other countries to secure radio communications used by government agencies, law enforcement, military and emergency services organizations. In July, a Netherlands security biz uncovered five vulnerabilities in TETRA, two deemed critical, that could allow criminals to decrypt communications, including in real-time, to inject messages, deanonymize users, or set the session key to zero for uplink interception. At the time ETSI downplayed the flaws, which it said had been fixed last October, and noted that "it's not aware of any active exploitation of operational networks." At the time ETSI downplayed the flaws, which it said had been fixed last October, and noted that "it's not aware of any active exploitation of operational networks." It did, however, face criticism from the security community over its response to the vulnerabilities -- and the proprietary nature of the encryption algorithms, which makes it more difficult for proper pentesting of the emergency network system. "This whole idea of secret encryption algorithms is crazy, old-fashioned stuff," said security author Kim Zetter who first reported the story. "It's very 1960s and 1970s and quaint. If you're not publishing [intentionally] weak algorithms, I don't know why you would keep the algorithms secret."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: High school students' scores on the ACT college admissions test have dropped to their lowest in more than three decades, showing a lack of student preparedness for college-level coursework, according to the nonprofit organization that administers the test. Scores have been falling for six consecutive years, but the trend accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Students in the class of 2023 whose scores were reported Wednesday were in their first year of high school when the virus reached the U.S. The average ACT composite score for U.S. students was 19.5 out of 36. Last year, the average score was 19.8. The average scores in reading, science and math all were below benchmarks the ACT says students must reach to have a high probability of success in first-year college courses. The average score in English was just above the benchmark but still declined compared to last year. About 1.4 million students in the U.S. took the ACT this year, an increase from last year. However, the numbers have not returned to pre-pandemic levels. [Janet Godwin, chief executive officer for the nonprofit ACT] said she doesn't believe those numbers will ever fully recover, partly because of test-optional admission policies. Of students who were tested, only 21% met benchmarks for success in college-level classes in all subjects. Research from the nonprofit shows students who meet those benchmarks have a 50% chance of earning a B or better and nearly a 75% chance of earning a C or better in corresponding courses. Further reading: Accounting Graduates Drop By Highest Percentage in YearsRead more of this story at Slashdot.

Since 2012, Google Pixel phones have had a Photo Sphere Mode, allowing users to capture 360-degree images. Now, according to Android Authority, Google has dropped the feature from the Pixel 8 series with no explanation given. From the report: Photo Sphere Mode allowed you to capture panoramic 360-degree pictures by stitching multiple images together. The feature was first introduced back in 2012 on the Nexus 4 and persisted well into the Pixel era, with the likes of the Pixel Fold and Pixel 7a still offering it. The act of capturing a Photo Sphere wasn't exactly seamless owing to the sheer number of images required, although it had an admittedly intuitive UI. Significant stitching issues and exposure/white balance differences were also very common. We're therefore not surprised Google has decided to drop the feature. Even without taking the aforementioned issues into account, the mode's utility seemed limited beyond some scenarios like mapping purposes (e.g. viewing environments in Google Maps) and VR. In saying so, we hope the company rebounds with a more polished take on 360-degree photos in the future.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Michael Larabel reports via Phoronix: For those making use of GPU-accelerated AV1 video encoding with the latest AMD Radeon graphics hardware on Linux, the upcoming Mesa 23.3 release will support the high-quality AV1 preset for offering higher quality encodes. Merged this week to Mesa 23.3 are the RadeonSI Video Core Next (VCN) changes for supporting the high quality AV1 encoding mode preset. Mesa 23.3 will be out as stable later this quarter for those after slightly higher quality AV1 encode support for Radeon graphics on this open-source driver stack alongside many other recent Mesa driver improvements especially on the Vulkan side with Radeon RADV and Intel ANV.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: New York State officials on Wednesday unveiled a bill to protect young people from potential mental health risks by prohibiting minors from accessing algorithm-based social media feeds unless they have permission from their parents. Gov. Kathy Hochul and Letitia James, the state attorney general, announced their support of new legislation to crack down on the often inscrutable algorithms, which they argue are used to keep young users on social media platforms for extended periods of time -- sometimes to their detriment. If the bill is passed and signed into law, anyone under 18 in New York would need parental consent to access those feeds on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X and other social media platforms that use algorithms to display personalized content. While other states have sought far-reaching bans and measures on social media apps, New York is among a few seeking to target the algorithms more narrowly. The legislation, for example, would target TikTok's central feature, its ubiquitous "For You" feed, which displays boundless reams of short-form videos based on user interests or past interactions. But it would not affect a minor's access to the chronological feeds that show posts published by the accounts that a user has decided to follow. The bill would also allow parents to limit the number of hours their children can spend on a platform and block their child's access to social media apps overnight, from midnight until 6 a.m., as well as pause notifications during that time. The bill in New York, which could be considered as soon as January when the 2024 legislative session begins, is likely to confront resistance from tech industry groups. The bill's sponsors, State Senator Andrew Gounardes and Assemblywoman Nily Rozic, said they were readying for a fight. But Ms. Hochul's enthusiastic support of the bill -- she rarely joins lawmakers to introduce bills -- is a sign that it could succeed in the State Capitol, which Democrats control. A second bill unveiled on Wednesday is meant to protect children's privacy by prohibiting websites from "collecting, using, sharing, or selling personal data" from anyone under 18 for the purpose of advertising, unless they receive consent, according to a news release. Both bills would empower the state attorney general to go after platforms found in violation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The pool of U.S. students who completed accounting degrees dropped sharply in the latest available academic year as more workers in the profession retire without an adequate pipeline of entrants to fill the gap. From a report: Roughly 47,070 students earned a bachelor's degree in accounting in the 2021 to 2022 academic year, down 7.8% from the prior year, according to an annual report released Thursday by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, a professional organization. About 18,240 students received a master's degree in that academic year, down 6.4% from the prior year. That is compared with drops of 2.8% and 4.7% for graduates with bachelor's and master's degrees in accountants in the prior-year period, respectively. Overall, the number of U.S. accounting graduates with either degree dropped 7.4% to 65,305 in the 2021 to 2022 year, the largest drop in a single year since at least the 1994 to 1995 year, when 51,622 students graduated in accounting, a review of AICPA data showed. Fewer people are selecting accounting as their career, citing low salaries compared with industries such as tech and banking. Young workers are wary of the requirement of 150 college credit hours for getting a certified public accountant license, posing additional costs and time commitment.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Schools for children of military members achieve results rarely seen in public education. From a report: Amy Dilmar, a middle-school principal in Georgia, is well aware of the many crises threatening American education. The lost learning that piled up during the coronavirus pandemic. The gaping inequalities by race and family income that have only gotten worse. A widening achievement gap between the highest- and lowest-performing students. But she sees little of that at her school in Fort Moore, Ga. The students who solve algebra equations and hone essays at Faith Middle School attend one of the highest-performing school systems in the country. It is run not by a local school board or charter network, but by the Defense Department. With about 66,000 students -- more than the public school enrollment in Boston or Seattle -- the Pentagon's schools for children of military members and civilian employees quietly achieve results most educators can only dream of. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal exam that is considered the gold standard for comparing states and large districts, the Defense Department's schools outscored every jurisdiction in math and reading last year and managed to avoid widespread pandemic losses. Their schools had the highest outcomes in the country for Black and Hispanic students, whose eighth-grade reading scores outpaced national averages for white students. Eighth graders whose parents only graduated from high school -- suggesting lower family incomes, on average -- performed as well in reading as students nationally whose parents were college graduates. The schools reopened relatively quickly during the pandemic, but last year's results were no fluke. While the achievement of U.S. students overall has stagnated over the last decade, the military's schools have made gains on the national test since 2013. And even as the country's lowest-performing students -- in the bottom 25th percentile -- have slipped further behind, the Defense Department's lowest-performing students have improved in fourth-grade math and eighth-grade reading.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

French technology company Shadow has confirmed a data breach involving customers' personal information. TechCrunch: The Paris-headquartered startup, which offers gaming through its cloud-based PC service, said in an email to customers this week that hackers had accessed their personal information after a successful social engineering attack targeted the company. "At the end of September, we were the victim of a social engineering attack targeting one of our employees," Shadow CEO Eric Sele said in the email, seen by TechCrunch. "This highly sophisticated attack began on the Discord platform with the downloading of malware under cover of a game on the Steam platform, proposed by an acquaintance of our employee, himself a victim of the same attack." Shadow said that though its security team took unspecified "immediate action," the hackers were able to connect to the management interface of one of the company's software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers to obtain customers' private data. That data includes full names, email addresses, dates of birth, billing addresses and credit card expiry dates. Shadow says no passwords or sensitive banking data were compromised.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ChatGPT creator OpenAI quietly revised all of the "Core values" listed on its website in recent weeks, putting a greater emphasis on the development of AGI -- artificial general intelligence. From a report: CEO Sam Altman has described AGI as "the equivalent of a median human that you could hire as a co-worker." OpenAI's careers page previously listed six core values for its employees, according to a September 25 screenshot from the Internet Archive. They were Audacious, Thoughtful, Unpretentious, Impact-driven, Collaborative, and Growth-oriented. The same page now lists five values, with "AGI focus" being the first. "Anything that doesn't help with that is out of scope," the website reads. The others are Intense and scrappy, Scale, Make something people love, and Team spirit.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft could use board games to revisit dormant franchises owned by Xbox Game Studios, with Zoo Tycoon: The Board Game potentially being the first of many. From a report: Zoo Tycoon was developed by Elite: Dangerous studio Frontier Developments and published by Microsoft Studios (the previous name for Xbox Game Studios), on November 22, 2013 for Xbox One and Xbox 360. Speaking to Xbox Wire, Xbox Game Studios executive producer Robert Jerauld said this board game adaptation is a "prime illustration" of how Microsoft could expand its franchises that don't have video games in active development. "It's crucial to recognize that even if certain franchises aren't currently undergoing active development, they can still be actively appreciated by their fans," Jerauld said. "Zoo Tycoon serves as a prime illustration of this. It presents a valuable chance for Microsoft to extend gratitude to the dedicated and ardent Zoo Tycoon fans who have worked tirelessly to sustain the game's enchantment. We acknowledge your dedication and deeply appreciate you." While Jerauld didn't say if he had any other dormant franchises in mind, Xbox certainly has a wealth to choose from. These could include Banjo-Kazooie, Viva Pinata, Blinx: The Time Sweeper, Project Gotham Racing, MechAssault and plenty more. There are some bigger names that haven't seen a release in a long time, of course, but many of these currently have sequels in development at Xbox.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google said on Thursday that it will defend users of generative AI systems in its Google Cloud and Workspace platforms if they are accused of intellectual property violations, joining Microsoft, Adobe and other companies that have made similar pledges. From a report: Major technology companies like Google have been investing heavily in generative AI and racing to incorporate it into their products. Prominent writers, illustrators and other copyright owners have said in several lawsuits that both the use of their work to train the AI systems and the content the systems create violate their rights. "To our knowledge, Google is the first in the industry to offer a comprehensive, two-pronged approach to indemnity" that specifically covers both types of claims, a company spokesperson said. Google said its new policy applies to software, including its Vertex AI development platform and Duet AI system, which generates text and images in Google Workspace and Cloud programs.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google announced Thursday that users who have opted-in for its Search Generative Experience (SGE) will be able to create AI images directly from the standard Search bar. From a report: SGE is Google's vision for our web searching future. Rather than picking websites from a returned list, the system will synthesize a (reasonably) coherent response to the user's natural language prompt using the same data that the list's links led to. Thursday's updates are a natural expansion of that experience, simply returning generated images (using the company's Imagen text-to-picture AI) instead of generated text. Users type in a description of what they're looking for (a Capybara cooking breakfast, in Google's example) and, within moments, the engine will create four alternatives to pick from and refine further. Users will also be able to export their generated images to Drive or share them via email.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Almost half a billion small, cheap electrical everyday items from headphones to handheld fans ended up in landfill in the UK in the past year, according to research. The Guardian: The not-for-profit organisation Material Focus, which conducted the research, said the scale of the issue was huge and they wanted to encourage more recycling. More than half a billion cheaply priced electronic goods were bought in the UK in the past year alone -- 16 per second. Material Focus findings showed that of these items, 471m were thrown away. This included 260m disposable vapes, 26m cables, 29m LED, solar and decorative lights, 9.8m USB sticks, and 4.8m miniature fans. Scott Butler, executive director at Material Focus, described it as "fast tech." He said: "People should think carefully about buying some of the more frivolous ... items in the first place." He said the items people bought were often "cheap and small," and that consumers may not realise they contain valuable materials that could be salvaged if recycled. Small electricals can contain precious materials including copper, lithium and stainless steel. These components can be recycled and used in wind turbines, medical devices and electric vehicles. Material Focus said that while people were used to the idea of recycling larger electrical items such as fridges, lots of smaller devices were left unused in houses.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After Microsoft recently imposed storage limits for photos in a user's OneDrive account, Microsoft has now reversed course after receiving a barrage of backlash. From a report: In August, Microsoft announced that photos in a user's OneDrive Gallery and in each of their saved photo albums would count separately toward the company's cloud-based limit of five gigabytes, according to Neowin. The update was expected to roll out on October 16, which would force some users to encounter storage ceilings as the extra data was added to their OneDrive, preventing additional files from syncing. Customers were surprised by the abrupt policy change, so surprised in fact that the company caved to user backlash and recently announced that the change was no longer on the table. "On August 31, 2023, we began to communicate an upcoming update to our cloud storage infrastructure that would result in a change in how OneDrive photos and photo albums data is counted against your overall cloud storage quota," Microsoft said in an email to customers, which has also been posted to the company's Support page. "This change was scheduled to start rolling out on October 16, 2023. Based on the feedback we received, we have adjusted our approach, we will no longer roll out this update."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has agreed to stop advertising YouTube TV as "$600 less than cable" after losing an appeal of a previous ruling that went against the company. Google said it will "modify or cease the disputed advertising claim." From a report: The case was handled in the advertising industry's self-regulatory system, not in a court of law. The National Advertising Review Board (NARB) announced today that it rejected Google's appeal and recommended that the company discontinue the YouTube TV claim. YouTube TV launched in 2017 for $35 a month, but the base package is $72.99 after the latest price hike in March 2023. Google's "$600 less than cable" claim was challenged by Charter, which uses the brand name Spectrum and is the second-biggest cable company after Comcast. The National Advertising Division (NAD) previously ruled in Charter's favor but Google appealed the decision to the NARB in August. "Charter contended the $600 figure was inaccurate, arguing that its Spectrum TV Select service in Los Angeles only cost around $219 a year more than Google's YouTube TV service," according to a MediaPost article in August. A Google ad claimed that YouTube TV provided $600 in "annual average savings" compared to cable as of January 2023. A disclosure on the ad said the price was for "new users only" and that the $600 annual savings was "based on a study by SmithGeiger of the published cost of comparable standalone cable in the top 50 Nielsen DMAs, including all fees, taxes, promotion pricing, DVR box rental and service fees, and a 2nd cable box."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft received Notices of Proposed Adjustment from the Internal Revenue Service for an additional tax payment of $28.9 billion, the company said in an 8-K filing Wednesday. From a report: Microsoft said the dispute concerns the company's allocated profits between countries and jurisdictions between 2004 and 2013. It said up to $10 billion in taxes that the company has already paid are not reflected in the proposed adjustments made by the IRS. Microsoft plans to contest the notices through the IRS' administrative appeal and is willing to go to judicial proceedings, if necessary.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Atlassian said on Thursday it had agreed to acquire privately held video messaging platform Loom for about $975 million, beefing up its team collaboration tools to tap into resilient demand fueled by the adoption of hybrid work. From a report: Integration of Loom's technology into Atlassian software such as collaboration tools Jira and Confluence will help users use video in their workflows. The acquisition of Loom, which has more than 25 million users globally, will enable customers communicate and collaborate more effectively, Atlassian said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new survey from investment bank Piper Sandler found that teens in the U.S. consume more videos on YouTube than Netflix. CNBC reports: Teens polled by the bank said they spent 29.1% of their daily video consumption time on Google-owned YouTube, beating out Netflix for the first time at 28.7%. Time on YouTube rose since the spring, adding nearly a percentage point, while Netflix fell more than two percentage points. The data point shows that the streaming business is getting more competitive, and highlights YouTube's strong position as a free provider of online video, especially among young people. "We wonder if this is a push or a pull in regards to the changing consumption habits, as content on YouTube appears to be improving over time and the streaming industry becomes more and more competitive," Piper Sandler analysts wrote.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Croatian energy company has discovered an underwater lake of superheated water that meets all the requirements for the construction of a 16MW geothermal power plant. The Next Web reports: The find was the result of a two-year study by state-run power company Bukotermal that sought to find suitable sites for the exploitation of the energy source, generated by heat from the Earth's core. The research verified the presence of a geothermal water source at Lunjkovec -- Kutnjak field, located in the Varazdin County, close to the border with Hungary. The underground lake, located at a depth of 2.4 kilometers, has an average temperature of 142.03 degrees Celsius. To date, over 2.5 million euros has been invested in the project. However, according to Alen Pozgaj, CEO of Bukotermal, the total cost to build the plant would be around 50 million euros. The news comes just days after the Croatian Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development awarded five licenses for the exploration of geothermal waters to firms from Croatia, the United Kingdom, and Turkey. [...] For now, Bukotermal has a six-month timeframe to propose how it will exploit the newly discovered geothermal pool. The company plans to construct one or more geothermal power plants and heat utilization facilities at the site, with construction expected to start within two years time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Times: A world-first trial of a gene therapy to cure a form of deafness has begun, potentially heralding a revolution in the treatment of hearing loss. Up to 18 children from the UK, Spain and the US are being recruited to the study, which aims to transform treatment of auditory neuropathy, a condition caused by the disruption of nerve impulses traveling from the inner ear to the brain. Participants will be monitored for five years to gauge whether their hearing improves, with initial results expected to be published next February. Auditory neuropathy can be due to a variation in a single gene -- known as the OTOF gene -- which produces a protein called otoferlin. This protein typically allows the inner hair cells in the ear to communicate with the hearing nerve. Mutations in the OTOF gene can be identified by genetic testing. However, [Professor Manohar Bance, an ear surgeon at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust who is leading the trial in the UK] said it was a condition often missed when newborn babies were screened for potential hearing problems. "This is one of the few conditions where everything works except the transmission between the hair cells and the nerve. So everything else looks fine when you test it, but they can't hear anything. So these poor kids' [difficulties] end up being missed," Bance added. The new gene therapy aims to deliver a working copy of the faulty OTOF gene using a modified, non-pathogenic virus. It will be delivered via an injection into the cochlea under general anaesthetic. Bance estimates that about 20,000 people across the US and five European countries -- the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy -- have auditory neuropathy due to OTOF mutations, underlining the potential significance of a successful treatment.[...] "If it works, it's 'one and done'" but the cost to health systems "is something that worries me," he added, noting that gene therapies could be priced in "the million dollar range" per patient. However, he hoped that "economies of scale" as the technology developed further would ultimately allow them to be provided more cheaply.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger shares a report from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC): CBC and Radio-Canada have announced they'll no longer carry the National Research Council (NRC) time signal. Monday marked the last time it was broadcast, ending the longest running segment on CBC Radio. In a statement, spokesperson Emma Iannetta described the signal as a "wonderful partnership," but confirmed it's being dropped. Given the range of CBC platforms from traditional over-the-air radio, to satellite and the internet, the long dash undergoes a range of delays by the time it's heard, leading to accuracy concerns from the NRC, she wrote. Iannetta added that nowadays most people use their phones to get the time, though many CBC listeners have a "fondness" for the signal. For many, the relationship with the time signal goes far beyond fondness. It's allowed sailors to set their instruments for navigation, kept railway companies running on time and helped Canadians stay punctual. In a 2019 interview with Day 6 on the occasion of the signal's 80th birthday, Laurence Wall, one of its current voices, reflected on its origin and importance. His memories include taxi drivers recognizing his voice from daily announcements and hearing from a young man living in Hong Kong who would stay up past midnight just to hear the time signal because it reminded him of home. Beyond emotional connections, the signal has a practical history too. Wall said when it started out, timekeeping was relatively primitive, with watches and clocks that needed to be regularly set in order to stay accurate.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Emilia David reports via The Verge: Adobe and other companies have established a symbol that can be attached to content alongside metadata, establishing its provenance, including whether it was made with AI tools. The symbol, which Adobe calls an "icon of transparency," can be added via Adobe's photo and video editing platforms like Photoshop or Premiere and eventually Microsoft's Bing Image Generator. It will be added to the metadata of images, videos, and PDFs to announce who owns and created the data. When viewers look at a photo online, they can hover over the mark, and it will open a dropdown that includes information about its ownership, the AI tool used to make it, and other details about the media's production. Adobe developed the symbol with other companies as part of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), a group that looks to create technical standards to certify the source and provenance of content. (It uses the initials "CR," which confusingly stands for content CRedentials, to avoid being confused with the icon for Creative Commons.) Other members of the C2PA include Arm, Intel, Microsoft, and Truepic. C2PA owns the trademark for the symbol. Andy Parsons, senior director of Adobe's Content Authenticity Initiative, tells The Verge that the symbol acts as a "nutrition label" of sorts, telling people the provenance of the media. The presence of the symbol is meant to encourage the tagging of AI-generated data, as Parsons said it creates more transparency into how content was created. While the small symbol is visible in the image, the information and the symbol are also embedded in the metadata, so it will not be Photoshopped out.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tom Mitchelhill reports via CoinTelegraph: Crypto exchange FTX used hidden Python code to misrepresent the value of its insurance fund -- a pool of funds meant to prevent user losses during huge liquidation events -- according to testimony from FTX co-founder Gary Wang. In a damning testimony on Oct. 6, FTX's former chief technology officer, Gary Wang, said that FTX's so-called $100 million insurance fund in 2021 was fabricated and never contained any of the exchanges' FTX tokens (FTT) as claimed. Instead, the figure shown to the public was calculated by multiplying the daily trading volume of the FTX Token by a random number close to 7,500. When the prosecution surfaced the above tweet -- among other public statements of its value -- and asked Wang whether this amount was accurate, he replied with a single word: "No." "For one, there is no FTT in the insurance fund. It's just the USD number. And, two, the number listed here does not match what was in the database." An exhibit in the Oct. 6 trial shows the alleged code used to generate the size of the so-called "Backstop Fund" or public insurance fund. FTX's insurance fund was designed to protect user losses in case of huge, sudden market movements and its value was often touted on its website and social media. According to Wang's testimony, however, the amount contained within the fund was often insufficient to cover these losses. [...] In addition to revealing the allegedly fraudulent nature of FTX's insurance fund, Wang claimed that Bankman-Fried prompted him and Nishad Singh to implement an "allow_negative" balance feature in the code at FTX, which allowed Alameda Research to trade with near-unlimited liquidity on the crypto exchange.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: As part of its MAX conference, Adobe traditionally shows off some of its more forward-looking tech, which may or may not end up in its Creative Cloud apps at some point in the future. The idea here is to show what its engineers are working on; right now, as you can imagine, that's a lot of generative AI. With Firefly now being part of Photoshop and now also Illustrator, the next frontier here is video and unsurprisingly, that's where Adobe's most interesting "sneak" of this year comes in. Project Fast Fill is, at its core, the generative fill the company introduced in Photoshop, but for video. Project Fast Fill simply lets editors remove objects from a video or change backgrounds as if they were working with a still image, all with a simple text prompt. Users only have to do this once and the edit will then propagate to the rest of the scene. Adobe says this even works in very complex scenes with changing lighting conditions. Over the course of the last few months, we've seen an increase in AI-powered tools across video editors, including Adobe Premiere Pro competitors like Davinci Resolve. These typically start with voice recognition for captions and object recognition for masking, but generative fill may just be the kind of feature where Adobe has a major advantage, thanks to its work on building its own Firefly models.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SpaceX quietly published a new "Starlink Direct to Cell" webpage highlighting the company's forthcoming cell service for mobile phones. MobileSyrup reports: The new 'Starlink Direct to Cell' page boasts "seamless access to text, voice, and data for LTE phones across the globe" and notes that the company is targeting text capabilities in 2024, followed by voice and data capabilities in 2025. Internet of Things (IoT) support may also arrive in 2025. Starlink also advertises that the direct-to-cell system would work with "existing LTE phones wherever you can see the sky" and wouldn't require any changes to hardware, firmware, or special apps. The page also explains that Starlink Direct to Cell would use "an advanced eNodeB modem" that "acts like a cellphone tower in space." The system would allow network integration "similar to a standard roaming partner." Last year, SpaceX announced a partnership with T-Mobile, allowing users' mobile phones to connect directly with Starlink satellites in orbit. SpaceX said it was hoping to launch the service later this year but the company has been mum on the progress.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader Shakrai writes: T-Mobile, formerly known as the "Un-carrier", confirmed plans today to force customers on older/cheaper plans onto newer/more expensive ones. Astute observers of the cellular industry will surely recall the former CEO, John Legere, assuring customers that they would always be able to keep their existing plans and prices would never rise without their consent. They will also observe that this comes nearly three years to the day after T-Mobile merged with Sprint, with one of the conditions for that merger being they would not raise prices for three years. It's also worth noting that T-Mobile continues to buyback its shares, recently announced thousands of layoffs, and is now paying a dividend. T-Mobile tells CNET that users on its older plans will see "an increase of approximately $10 per line with the migration," starting with their November bill. Those who sign up for AutoPay can save $5 per line (on up to eight lines per account), the spokesperson noted. "The company adds that those who don't want to have their plan changed will be able to reverse the move, but they'll need to call T-Mobile's Customer Care support line to make that happen," reports CNET. "The carrier is giving users a period of time to call in and reverse the forced switch, but how long that period will be is unknown at this point. It's also unknown whether customers who go back will be able to stay on their older plans for good or if a reversal simply buys a little more time before they're again compelled to switch."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed SB 244, or the Right to Repair Act, into law, making it easier for owners to repair devices themselves or to take them to independent repair shops. Because California is one of the world's largest economies, this iFixit-cosponsored bill may make it easier for people all over the US to repair their devices. The law, which joins similar efforts in New York, Colorado, and Minnesota, is tougher than some of its predecessors. Manufacturers must make available appropriate tools, parts, software, and documentation for seven years after production for devices priced above $100. (Less expensive devices only have to have these materials available for three years.) [...] The bill is effective on electronics made and sold after July 1st, 2021. Though the bill is fairly sweeping, there are carve-outs for game consoles and alarm systems. Further reading: Cory Doctorow: Apple Sabotages Right-to-Repair Using 'Parts-Pairing' and the DMCARead more of this story at Slashdot.

Scientists have used the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR to create chickens that have some resistance to avian influenza, according to a new study that was published in the journal Nature Communications on Tuesday. From a report: The study suggests that genetic engineering could potentially be one tool for reducing the toll of bird flu, a group of viruses that pose grave dangers to both animals and humans. But the study also highlights the limitations and potential risks of the approach, scientists said. Some breakthrough infections still occurred, especially when gene-edited chickens were exposed to very high doses of the virus, the researchers found. And when the scientists edited just one chicken gene, the virus quickly adapted. The findings suggest that creating flu-resistant chickens will require editing multiple genes and that scientists will need to proceed carefully to avoid driving further evolution of the virus, the study's authors said. The research is "proof of concept that we can move toward making chickens resistant to the virus," Wendy Barclay, a virologist at Imperial College London and an author of the study, said at a news briefing. "But we're not there yet." Some scientists who were not involved in the research had a different takeaway. "It's an excellent study," said Dr. Carol Cardona, an expert on bird flu and avian health at the University of Minnesota. But to Dr. Cardona, the results illustrate how difficult it will be to engineer a chicken that can stay a step ahead of the flu, a virus known for its ability to evolve swiftly. "There's no such thing as an easy button for influenza," Dr. Cardona said. "It replicates quickly, and it adapts quickly."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft says Chinese state-backed hackers are exploiting a "critical"-rated zero-day vulnerability in Atlassian software to break into customer systems. From a report: The technology giant's threat intelligence team said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that it has observed a nation-state threat actor it calls Storm-0062 exploiting a recently disclosed critical flaw in Atlassian Confluence Data Center and Server. Microsoft has previously identified Storm-0062 as a China-based state-sponsored hacker. Microsoft said it observed in-the-wild abuse of the maximum rated 10.0 vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-22515, since September 14, some three weeks before Atlassian's public disclosure on October 4. A bug is considered a zero-day when the vendor -- in this case Atlassian -- has zero time to fix the bug before it is exploited. Atlassian updated its advisory this week to confirm it has "evidence to suggest that a known nation-state actor" is exploiting the bug, which the company says could allow a remote attacker to create unauthorized administrator accounts to access Confluence servers. Atlassian's Confluence is a widely popular collaborative wiki system used by corporations around the world to organize and share work.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Qualcomm's annual "Snapdragon Summit" is coming up later this month, and the company appears ready to share more about its long-planned next-generation Arm processor for PCs. ArsTechnica: The company hasn't shared many specifics yet, but yesterday we finally got a name: "Snapdragon X," which is coming in 2024, and it may finally do for Arm-powered Windows PCs what Apple Silicon chips did for Macs a few years ago (though it's coming a bit later than Qualcomm had initially hoped). Qualcomm has been making chips for PCs for years, most recently the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 (you might also know it as the Microsoft SQ3, which is what the chip is called in Surface devices). But those chips have never quite been fast enough to challenge Intel's Core or AMD's Ryzen CPUs in mainstream laptops. Any performance deficit is especially noticeable because many people will run at least a few apps designed for the x86 version of Windows, code that needs to be translated on the fly for Arm processors. So why will Snapdragon X be any different? It's because these will be the first chips born of Qualcomm's acquisition of Nuvia in 2021. Nuvia was founded and staffed by quite a few key personnel from Apple's chipmaking operation, the team that had already upended a small corner of the x86 PC market by designing the Apple M1 and its offshoots. Apple had sued Nuvia co-founder and current Qualcomm engineering SVP Gerard Williams for poaching Apple employees, though the company dropped the suit without comment earlier this year. The most significant change from current Qualcomm chips will be a CPU architecture called Oryon, Qualcomm's first fully custom Arm CPU design since the original Kryo cores back in 2015. All subsequent versions of Kryo, from 2016 to now, have been tweaked versions of off-the-shelf Arm Cortex processors rather than fully custom designs. As we've seen in the M1 and M2, using a custom design with the same Arm instruction set gives chip designers the opportunity to boost performance for everyday workloads while still maintaining impressive power usage and battery life.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sony Interactive Entertainment has announced plans to launch cloud streaming for PlayStation 5 this month. From a report: The feature, which will be available to PlayStation Plus Premium members, will receive a staggered rollout. Sony is targeting an October 17 launch for Japan, October 23 for Europe and October 30 for North America. "Select PS5 games will be available for streaming, and we're planning to have hundreds of PS5 titles to support this new benefit," said Hideaki Nishino, SIE's senior VP of platform experience. Supported titles will include Game Catalogue offerings like Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Horizon Forbidden West, Ghost of Tsushima, Mortal Kombat 11 and Saints Row IV. Some PS5 digital titles that players own will be available for streaming too including Resident Evil 4, Dead Island 2, Genshin Impact, Fall Guys and Fortnite. Game Trials for PS5 titles like Hogwarts Legacy, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and The Calisto Protocol will also be available. Sony said DLC and in-game purchases will be available for PS5 game streaming too.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: You could be entitled to a small chunk of a $16 million class action settlement against anime streaming service Crunchyroll. The Sony-owned company settled a data privacy lawsuit this week that will result in about $30 settlements for individuals impacted, according to firm behind the class action. The complaint, filed in September 2022, claims that Sony shared individual Crunchyroll viewing information with third-party sites without user's permission. That means Google or Facebook might have seen your anime watch history without your knowledge. It's a violation of the Video Privacy Protection Act, which makes it illegal to video streaming services to disclose personally identifiable information without the individual's consent. Crunchyroll denies wrongdoing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The jackpot from a seven-year mission to bring back bits of an asteroid was unveiled on Wednesday. From a report: NASA officials in Houston displayed images of salt-and-pepper chunks of rock and particles of dark space dust that were brought back to Earth from the asteroid, Bennu, and described initial scientific observations about the material. The mission, Osiris-Rex, concluded in September when a capsule full of asteroid was jettisoned through Earth's atmosphere and recovered in the Utah desert. The first pieces of materials that leaked outside the container were analyzed using a variety of laboratory techniques, revealing just the earliest findings. Scientists found water molecules trapped in clay minerals -- water from asteroids similar to Bennu could have filled Earth's oceans. "The reason that Earth is a habitable world, that we have oceans and lakes and rivers and rain, is because these clay minerals, like minerals, like the ones we're seeing from Bennu, landed on Earth four billion years ago," Dante Lauretta, the mission's principal investigator, said during a NASA event on Wednesday. The materials also contained sulfur, key for many geological transformations in rocks. "It determines how quickly things melt and it is also critical for biology," said Dr. Lauretta, who displayed microscopic images and 3-D visualizations of the material. The scientists also found magnetite, an iron oxide mineral that can play an important role as a catalyst in organic chemical reactions. "We're looking at the kinds of minerals that may have played a central role in the origin of life on Earth," Dr. Lauretta said. The samples are also chock-full of carbon, the element that is the building block for life.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The US Federal Trade Commission is proposing a new rule that it hopes will put an end to hidden junk fees that some businesses often add as a surprise when consumers are checking out. From a report: The agency is currently seeking public comment on the rule, known as the Trade Regulation Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, after having already collected 12,000 comments last year from individuals, businesses, law enforcement groups, and others on how deceptive fees affect them. FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement that "by hiding the total price, these junk fees make it harder for consumers to shop for the best product or service and punish businesses who are honest upfront." FTC adds that tackling junk fees through its nearly 100-year-old legal mandate that covers "unfair and deceptive acts or practices" is not enough. A new rule with more precise language can do a better job with specifics, the agency argues: "It is an unfair and deceptive practice and a violation of this part for any Business to offer, display, or advertise an amount a consumer may pay without Clearly and Conspicuously disclosing the Total Price."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US Space Force has temporarily banned the use of web-based generative AI tools and so-called large language models that power them, citing data security and other concerns, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday, citing a memo. From the report: The Sept. 29 memorandum, addressed to the Guardian Workforce, the term for Space Force members, pauses the use of any government data on web-based generative AI tools, which can create text, images or other media from simple prompts. The memo says they "are not authorized" for use on government systems unless specifically approved. Chatbots and tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT have exploded in popularity. They make use of language models that are trained on vast amounts of data to predict and generate new text. Such LLMs have given birth to an entire generation of AI tools that can, for example, search through troves of documents, pull out key details and present them as coherent reports in a variety of linguistic styles. Generative AI "will undoubtedly revolutionize our workforce and enhance Guardian's ability to operate at speed," Lisa Costa, Space Force's chief technology and innovation officer, said in the memo. But Costa also cited concerns over cybersecurity, data handling and procurement requirements, saying that the adoption of AI and LLMs needs to be "responsible."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Utah became the latest state Tuesday to file a lawsuit against TikTok, alleging the company is "baiting" children into addictive and unhealthy social media habits. From a report: TikTok lures children into hours of social media use, misrepresents the app's safety and deceptively portrays itself as independent of its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, Utah claims in the lawsuit. "We will not stand by while these companies fail to take adequate, meaningful action to protect our children. We will prevail in holding social media companies accountable by any means necessary," Republican Gov. Spencer Cox said at a news conference announcing the lawsuit, which was filed in state court in Salt Lake City. Arkansas and Indiana have filed similar lawsuits while the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to decide whether state attempts to regulate social media platforms such as Facebook, X and TikTok violate the Constitution.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hell freezes over and pigs fly south to their winter feeding grounds. Microsoft has published guidance on how to download and install Linux. From a report: The Seattle-area proprietary OS vendor has published a helpful guide entitled "How to download and install Linux," inspiring reactions from incredulity to amusement. In the humble opinion of The Reg FOSS Desk, it really isn't bad at all. Microsoft suggests four alternative installation methods: using Windows Subsystem for Linux 2, using a local VM, using a cloud VM, or on bare metal. It almost feels cruel to criticize it, but it seems that this really amounts to two methods. WSL version 2 is a VM. It's right there in the screenshots, where it says: Installing: Virtual Machine PlatformVirtual Machine Platform has been installed. So the choices boil down to either on the metal, or in a VM. That leaves only the question of what kind of VM: the built-in one, an add-on VM, or a cloud VM. Perhaps the subtext of the article is something more subtle. Could it be a tacit admission that you might need a free-of-charge OS for your PC? The Windows 10 upgrade program that began back in 2015 was meant to end a year later. In fact, it didn't. We described a documented workaround in 2016, but the free upgrades continued to work, even in 2020. Which? magazine reported it was still working in July 2023.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For months, Alphabet's Google and Discord have run an invitation-only chat for heavy users of Bard, Google's artificial intelligence-powered chatbot. Google product managers, designers and engineers are using the forum to openly debate the AI tool's effectiveness and utility, with some questioning whether the enormous resources going into development are worth it. From a report: "My rule of thumb is not to trust LLM output unless I can independently verify it," Dominik Rabiej, a senior product manager for Bard, wrote in the Discord chat in July, referring to large language models -- the AI systems trained on massive amounts of text that form the building blocks of chatbots like Bard and OpenAI's ChatGPT. "Would love to get it to a point that you can, but it isn't there yet." "The biggest challenge I'm still thinking of: what are LLMs truly useful for, in terms of helpfulness?" said Googler Cathy Pearl, a user experience lead for Bard, in August. "Like really making a difference. TBD!" [...] Two participants on Google's Bard community on chat platform Discord shared details of discussions in the server with Bloomberg from July to October. Dozens of messages reviewed by Bloomberg provide a unique window into how Bard is being used and critiqued by those who know it best, and show that even the company leaders tasked with developing the chatbot feel conflicted about the tool's potential. Expounding on his answer about "not trusting" responses generated by large language models, Rabiej suggested limiting people's use of Bard to "creative / brainstorming applications." Using Bard for coding was a good option too, Rabiej said, "since you inevitably verify if the code works!"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Adobe has developed an experimental AI-powered upscaling tool that greatly improves the quality of low-resolution GIFs and video footage. From a report: This isn't a fully-fledged app or feature yet, and it's not yet available for beta testing, but if the demonstrations seen by The Verge are anything to go by then it has some serious potential. Adobe's "Project Res-Up" uses diffusion-based upsampling technology (a class of generative AI that generates new data based on the data it's trained on) to increase video resolution while simultaneously improving sharpness and detail. In a side-by-side comparison that shows how the tool can upscale video resolution, Adobe took a clip from The Red House (1947) and upscaled it from 480 x 360 to 1280 x 960, increasing the total pixel count by 675 percent. The resulting footage was much sharper, with the AI removing most of the blurriness and even adding in new details like hair strands and highlights. The results still carried a slightly unnatural look (as many AI video and images do) but given the low initial video quality, it's still an impressive leap compared to the upscaling on Nvidia's TV Shield or Microsoft's Video Super Resolution.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A California judge has thrown out a $32.5 million verdict win for Sonos against Google after two of Sonos' patents were deemed unenforceable and invalid. As a result, Google has started to re-introduce software features it had removed due to Sonos' lawsuit. In a decision dated October 6, U.S. District Judge William Alsup said that Sonos had wrongfully linked its patent applications for multi-room audio technology to a 2006 application in order to make them appear older and claim that its inventions came before Google's products, as first reported by Reuters. "Sonos filed the provisional application from which the patents in suit claim priority in 2006, but it did not file the applications for these patents and present the asserted claims for examination until 2019," the decision (PDF) reads. "By the time these patents issued in 2019 and 2020, the industry had already marched on and put the claimed invention into practice. In fact, in 2014, five years before Sonos filed the applications and presented the claims, accused infringer Google LLC shared with Sonos a plan for a product that would practice what would become the claimed invention." The decision states that the two companies were exploring a potential collaboration, but that it never materialized. Alsup goes on to note that Google began introducing its own products that featured multi-room audio technology in 2015, and also that Sonos waited until 2019 to pursue claims on the invention. "This was not a case of an inventor leading the industry to something new," Alsup wrote. "This was a case of the industry leading with something new and, only then, an inventor coming out of the woodwork to say that he had come up with the idea first - wringing fresh claims to read on a competitor's products from an ancient application." "We recently made a change to speaker groups for Nest speakers, displays, and Chromecast where certain devices can only belong to one speaker group at a time in the Google Home app," the company wrote in a blog post. "A federal judge has found that two patents that Sonos accused our devices of infringing are invalid. In light of this legal decision we're happy to share that we will be rolling back this change."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tom Singleton reports via the BBC: A man got so fed up with foxes and badgers fouling in his garden that he adapted cameras to help repel them. James Milward linked the Ring cameras at his Surrey home to a device that emits high frequency sounds. He then trained the system using hundreds of images of the nocturnal nuisances so it learned to trigger the noise when it spotted them. Mr Milward said it "sounds crazy" but the gadget he called the Furbinator 3000 has kept his garden clean. Getting the camera system to understand what it was looking at was not straightforward though. "At first it recognised the badger as an umbrella," he said. "I did some fine tuning and it came out as a sink, or a bear if I was lucky. Pretty much a spectacular failure." He fed in pictures of the animals through an artificial intelligence process called machine learning and finally, the device worked. The camera spotted a badger, and the high frequency sound went off to send the unwanted night-time visitor on its way and leave the garden clean for Mr Milward's children to play in. The code for the Furbinator 3000 is open source, with detailed instructions available in Milward's Medium post.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amanda Hoover reports via Wired: As few as 2 percent of New York City's previous 22,000 short-term rentals on Airbnb have been registered with the city since a new law banning most listings came into effect in early September. But many illegal short-term rental listings are now being advertised on social media and lesser known platforms, with some still seemingly being listed on Airbnb itself. The number of short-term listings on Airbnb has fallen by more than 80 percent, from 22,434 in August to just 3,227 by October 1, according to Inside Airbnb, a watchdog group that tracks the booking platform. But just 417 properties have been registered with the city, suggesting that very few of the city's short-term rentals have been able to get permission to continue operating. The crackdown in New York has created a "black market" for short-term rentals in the city, claims Lisa Grossman, a spokesperson for Restore Homeowner Autonomy and Rights (RHOAR), a local group that opposed the law. Grossman says she's seen the short-term rental market pick up steam on places like Facebook since the ban. "People are going underground," she says. New York's crackdown on short-term rentals has dramatically reshaped the vacation rental market in the city. People are using sites like Craigslist, Facebook, Houfy, and others, where they can search for guests or places to book without the checks and balances of booking platforms like Airbnb. Hotel prices are expected to rise with more demand. After the rule change, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said the company would be shifting attention away from New York, which was once its biggest market. "I was always hopeful that New York City would lead the way -- that we would find a solution in New York, and people would say, 'If they can make it in New York, they can make it anywhere,'" Chesky said during an event in September. "I think, unfortunately, New York is no longer leading the way -- it's probably a cautionary tale."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Major corporations like Apple and Disney will be forced to disclose their carbon emissions under a new Californian law approved on Monday. Governor Gavin Newsom signed the bill -- passed by the state legislature -- requiring companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenue to report greenhouse gas emissions. Similar efforts are moving slowly at the federal level. Mr Newsom praised the law's aims, but questioned how it will be carried out. "This important policy, once again, demonstrates California's continued leadership with bold responses to the climate crisis," Mr Newsom wrote in a signing statement. "However, the implementation deadlines in this bill are likely infeasible." He added that he is "concerned about the overall financial impact of this bill on businesses." The California Air Resources Board must put a system in place for reporting emissions by January 1, 2025, a little more than a year from now, under the law.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thomas Claburn reports via The Register: Microsoft has stopped developing VBScript after a 27-year relationship and plans to remove the scripting language entirely in a future Windows release. The Windows biz said on Monday that VBScript, short for Visual Basic Scripting Edition, has been deprecated in an update to its list of "Deprecated features for Windows client." "VBScript is being deprecated," Microsoft said. "In future releases of Windows, VBScript will be available as a feature on demand before its removal from the operating system." VBScript debuted in 1996 and its most recent release, version 5.8, dates back to 2010. It is a scripting language, and was for a while widely used among system administrators to automate tasks until it was eclipsed by PowerShell, which debuted in 2006. "Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition brings active scripting to a wide variety of environments, including Web client scripting in Microsoft Internet Explorer and Web server scripting in Microsoft Internet Information Service," Redmond explains in its help documentation. Unfortunately, Microsoft never managed to get other browser makers to support VBScript, so outside of Microsoft-exclusive environments, web developers tended to favor JavaScript for client-side tasks.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Andrew Tarantola reports vai Engadget: Just seven months after its beta debut, Adobe's Firefly generative AI is set to receive a trio of new models as well as more than 100 new features and capabilities, company executives announced at the Adobe Max 2023 event on Tuesday. The Firefly Image 2 model promises higher fidelity generated images and more granular controls for users and the Vector model will allow graphic designers to rapidly generate vector images, a first for the industry. The Design model for generating print and online advertising layouts offers another first: text-to-template generation. Firefly Image 2 is the updated version of the existing text-to-image system. Like its predecessor, this one is trained exclusively on licensed and public domain content to ensure that its output images are safe for commercial use. It also accommodates text prompts in any of 100 languages. Adobe's AI already works across modalities, from still images, video and audio to design elements and font effects. As of Tuesday, it also generates vector art thanks to the new Firefly Vector model. Currently available in beta, this new model will also offer Generative Match, which will recreate a given artistic style in its output images. This will enable users to stay within bounds of the brand's guidelines, quickly spin up new designs using existing images and their aesthetics, as well as seamless, tileable fill patterns and vector gradients. The final, Design model, is geared heavily towards advertising and marketing professionals for use in generating print and online copy templates using Adobe Express. Users will be able to generate images in Firefly then port them to express for use in a layout generated from the user's natural language prompt. Those templates can be generated in any of the popular aspect ratios and are fully editable through conventional digital methods. The Firefly web application will also receive three new features: Generative Match, as above, for maintaining consistent design aesthetics across images and assets. Photo Settings will generate more photorealistic images (think: visible, defined pores) as well as enable users to tweak images using photography metrics like depth of field, blur and field of view. The system's depictions of plant foliage will reportedly also improve under this setting. Prompt Guidance will even rewrite whatever hackneyed prose you came up with into something it can actually work from, reducing the need for the wholesale re-generation of prompted images.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"A set of merge requests were opened to drop X.ORG (X11) from GNOME desktop," writes Slashdot reader motang. Phoronix reports: This merge request would remove the X11 session targets within gnome-session: "This is the first step towards deprecating the x11 session, the systemd targets are removed, but the x11 functionality is still there in so you can restore the x11 session by installing the targets in the appropriate place on your own. X11 has been receiving less and less testing. We have been defaulting to the wayland session since 2016 and it's about time we drop the x11 session completely. Let's remove the targets this cycle and maybe carry on with removing rest of the x11 session code next cycle." That was followed by this merge request that would land later on -- more than likely, one cycle later -- for actually removing the X11 session code. Dropping that code would lighten up gnome-session by 3.6k lines of code directly.Read more of this story at Slashdot.