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Google wants to make it as easy to scrub an app account as it is to create one. The company has announced that Android apps on the Play Store will soon have to let you delete an account and its data both inside the app and on the web. Developers will also have to wipe data for an account when users ask to delete the account entirely. From a report: The move is meant to "better educate" users on the control they have over their data, and to foster trust in both apps and the Play Store at large. It also provides more flexibility. You can delete certain data (such as your uploaded content) without having to completely erase your account, Google says. The web requirement also ensures that you won't have to reinstall an app just to purge your info. The policy is taking effect in stages. Creators have until December 7th to answer questions about data deletion in their app's safety form. Store listings will start showing the changes in early 2024. Developers can file for an extension until May 31st of next year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A boom in artificial intelligence startup funding sparked by OpenAI has spilled over to China, the world's second-biggest venture capital market. Now American institutional investors are indirectly financing a rash of Chinese AI startups aspiring to be China's answer to OpenAI. From a report: The American investors, including U.S. endowments, back key Chinese VC firms such as Sequoia Capital China, Matrix Partners China, Qiming Venture Partners and Hillhouse Capital Management that are striking local AI startup deals, which haven't been previously reported. U.S. government officials have grown increasingly wary of such investments in Chinese AI as well as semiconductors because they could aid a geopolitical rival. For instance, Sequoia China, the Chinese affiliate of the Silicon Valley VC stalwart, recently made a U.S.-dollar investment in a brand-new AI venture created by Yang Zhilin, a young assistant professor at Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University, which is sometimes described as China's equivalent of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deal. Yang, who got his doctorate from the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, in 2019, is considered one of China's top AI researchers. He previously co-founded another startup Sequoia China backed, Recurrent AI, which develops tools for salespeople, according to the company's website. Matrix and Qiming, meanwhile, recently funded another Beijing-based AI startup, Frontis, which has compared its product to ChatGPT. It was founded in 2021 by Zhou Bowen, a Tsinghua professor who once led JD.com's AI research lab, according to the company's website. The deal gave the startup a paper valuation of hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars, the company said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

India does not plan to regulate the growth of AI within the South Asian market, identifying the sector as a "significant and strategic" area for the nation. This stance arrives at a time when numerous voices are calling for increased scrutiny of the rapidly advancing technology. From a report: The Ministry of Electronics and IT said in a long written response on Wednesday that it has assessed the ethical concerns and risks of bias and discrimination associated with AI. The ministry said it's implementing necessary policies and infrastructure measures to cultivate a robust AI sector in the country, but does not intend to introduce legislation to regulate its growth. The expansion of AI will have a "kinetic effect" on entrepreneurship and business development in India, the ministry asserted. "AI is a kinetic enabler of the digital economy and innovation ecosystem. Government is harnessing the potential of AI to provide personalized and interactive citizen-centric services through digital public platforms."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: On a recent Friday morning north of Johannesburg, the head of South Africa's largest telecoms company surveyed the arsenal of backup systems keeping just one of his 15,000 network towers online amid the worst power cuts on record. A diesel generator. Solar panels. A bank of expensive backup batteries, theft-proofed within a block of concrete. "Our costs have gone through the roof," lamented Sitho Mdlalose, managing director of Vodacom South Africa. As the national power grid crumbles, leaving Africa's most advanced economy in the dark for up to 10 hours a day, mobile operators including Vodacom, MTN and majority state-owned Telkom are scrambling to ensure their networks stay up and running. They're spending millions to install solar panels, batteries and are even trialling wind turbines, while targeting deals with independent power producers to supplement struggling state utility Eskom's increasingly unreliable output, three company executives told Reuters. At stake: essential voice and data services in a nation where landlines are rare but nearly 80% of residents have access to mobile internet. Overall, the power crisis and logistical constraints are expected to erase 2 percentage points from economic growth this year, according to the South African Reserve Bank governor. Mary-Jane Mphahlele, an attorney who also runs a small travel agency in the city of Polokwane, experiences that lost economic activity every time the power is cut. "New clients can't call me ... That means no money is going to come into my business," the 29-year-old said. "It's hell." As they battle to simply mitigate the worsening crisis, telecommunications companies have seen operating costs balloon. Vodacom and MTN executives told Reuters they're having to divert capital away from much needed network upgrades and 5G rollouts. Meanwhile, they said government regulations are blocking potential solutions, such as sharing backup power infrastructure with their competitors, and revealed they're lobbying authorities to help ease the pain.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Klaus Teuber, who 28 years ago created The Settlers of Catan, an enduringly popular board game that has spawned college intramural teams and international tournaments, been name-checked on "South Park" and "Parks and Recreation," inspired a novel and sold some 40 million copies worldwide, died on Saturday. He was 70. From a report: Catan GmbH, which publishes and licenses the game, now known simply as Catan, posted news of his death on its website. It said only that he died after a short illness and did not say where. Mr. Teuber was managing a dental lab, a job he found stressful, when he began designing games as a way to unwind. "In the beginning, these games were just for me," he told Forbes in 2016. "I always have stories in my head -- I would read a book, and if I liked it, I wanted to experience it as a game." That was the origin of his first big success, a game called Barbarossa, which grew out of his admiration for "The Riddle-Master" trilogy, fantasy books written in the 1970s by Patricia A. McKillip. "I was sorry to see it come to an end," he told The New Yorker in 2014, "so I tried to experience this novel in a game." In 1988 that game won the Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) award in Germany, considered the most prestigious award in the board game world, Germany being particularly enthusiastic about board games. He won that award twice more, in 1990 (for Hoity Toity) and in 1991 (for Wacky Wacky West), before scoring his biggest success with what was known in German as Die Siedler von Catan. In that game, players build settlements in a new land by collecting brick, lumber, wool, ore and grain. Trading with other players is part of the strategy, lending a social element to the game play. In 1995 the game won both the game of the year award and the Deutscher Spiele Preis, the German Games Award. It caught on, first in Germany and then, as editions in other languages became available, all over.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The UK's communications watchdog has called for a probe into Microsoft and Amazon's dominance of the country's cloud computing market in the latest challenge to the tech giants from global regulators. From a report: Ofcom said on Wednesday it was "particularly concerned" by the practices of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, which together control between 60 and 70 per cent of the UK cloud market. It has proposed referring the sector to the Competition and Markets Authority for further investigation. Cloud computing is dominated by Amazon and Microsoft, and has become a crucial driver of revenue at the tech giants. But growth in demand for these services has slowed this year and customers have sought to cut costs, with some complaining of rising prices and the difficulty of moving between cloud providers. Ofcom's move comes amid growing global scrutiny over the cloud market. Last year, Microsoft changed its cloud licensing policies in Europe in an effort to head off potential antitrust action from regulators in Brussels. The tech companies are already the targets of competition watchdogs in the US, UK and EU on multiple fronts, with investigations into Microsoft's $75bn acquisition of video games maker Activision and Amazon's deal to buy Roomba-maker iRobot. Ofcom said it was concerned that, if unchecked, the concentration of cloud computing supply in the hands of a small number of large US companies could lead to British customers paying more and smaller groups being squeezed out of the market.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bob Lee, the chief product officer at MobileCoin, was killed in a fatal stabbing in San Francisco. From a report: On Tuesday morning, at 2:35 a.m., the San Francisco Police Department responded to a report of a stabbing near the 300 block of Main Street in SoMa. He was taken to a hospital but succumbed to his injuries. Shortly after, NBC Bay Area reported that the victim of the stabbing was Bob Lee, 43. MobileCoin confirmed the information in a statement sent to Bloomberg and ABC7 News. Before joining MobileCoin, Bob Lee worked at Google for the first few years of Android, focusing on core library development. He then joined Square, the payment company that later became Block, to develop its Android app. He became the company's first CTO and also created Cash App. Bob Lee, also known as 'Crazy Bob,' was an investor in tech startups as well. According to his LinkedIn profile, he invested in SpaceX, Clubhouse, Tile, Figma, Faire, Orchid, Addressable, Nana, Ticket Fairy, Gowalla, Asha, SiPhox, Netswitch, Found and others.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook owner Meta intends to commercialize its proprietary generative artificial intelligence by December, joining Google in finding practical applications for the tech. From a report: The company, which began full-scale AI research in 2013, stands out along with Google in the number of studies published. "We've been investing in artificial intelligence for over a decade, and have one of the leading research institutes in the world," Andrew Bosworth, Meta's chief technology officer, told Nikkei in an exclusive interview on Wednesday in Tokyo. "We certainly have a large research organization, hundreds of people." Meta announced in February that it would establish a new organization to develop generative AI, but this is the first time it has indicated a timeline for commercialization. The technology, which can instantly create sentences and graphics, has already been commercialized by ChatGPT creator OpenAI of the U.S. But Bosworth insists Meta remains on the technology's cutting edge. "We feel very confident that ... we are at the very forefront," he said. "Quite a few of the techniques that are in large language model development were pioneered [by] our teams. "[I] expect we'll start seeing some of them [commercialization of the tech] this year. We just created a new team, the generative AI team, a couple of months ago; they are very busy. It's probably the area that I'm spending the most time [in], as well as Mark Zuckerberg and [Chief Product Officer] Chris Cox." Bosworth believes Meta's artificial intelligence can improve an ad's effectiveness partly by telling the advertiser what tools to use in making it. He said that instead of a company using a single image in an advertising campaign, it can "ask the AI, 'Make images for my company that work for different audiences.' And it can save a lot of time and money."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: For years, online alcohol recovery startups Monument and Tempest were sharing with advertisers the personal information and health data of their patients without their consent. Monument, which acquired Tempest in 2022, confirmed the extensive years-long leak of patients' information in a data breach notification filed with California's attorney general last week, blaming their use of third-party tracking systems developed by ad giants including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Pinterest. When reached for comment, Monument CEO Mike Russell confirmed more than 100,000 patients are affected. In its disclosure, the companies confirmed their use of website trackers, which are small snippets of code that share with tech giants information about visitors to their websites, and often used for analytics and advertising. The data shared with advertisers includes patient names, dates of birth, email and postal addresses, phone numbers and membership numbers associated with the companies and patients' insurance provider. The data also included the person's photo, unique digital ID, which services or plan the patient is using, appointment information and assessment and survey responses submitted by the patient, which includes detailed responses about a person's alcohol consumption and used to determine their course of treatment. Monument's own website says these survey answers are "protected" and "used only" by its care team. Monument confirmed that it shared patients' sensitive data with advertisers since January 2020, and Tempest since November 2017. Both companies say they have removed the tracking code from their websites. But the tech giants are not obligated to delete the data that Monument and Tempest shared with them.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes: Are you ready to rock it with #datascience?" asks a tweet from Club for the Future, the tax-exempt foundation founded and funded by Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, which is partnering with Microsoft's Hacking STEM to show how data science is used to determine a Go/No-Go launch of a Blue Origin New Shepard rocket. Interestingly, while Amazon founder Bezos and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella are big backers of nonprofit Code.org and joined other tech CEOs for CS last fall to get the nation's Governors to "update the K-12 curriculum, for every student in every school to have the opportunity to learn computer science," Microsoft and Blue Origin have opted to teach kids aged 11-15 good old-fashioned Excel skills in their Introduction to the Data Science Process mini-course, not Python or R. "Excel is a tool used around the world to work with data," Microsoft explains to teachers who have been living under a rock since 1985. "In these activities, students learn how to use Excel and complete all steps of a mission by engaging in the data science process. In this mission, students analyze key weather data in determining flight safety parameters for a New Shepard rocket and ultimately make a Go/No-Go decision for launch. Students learn how to use Excel while engaging in this dynamic Data Science Process activity [which is not unlike PLATO 'data science' activities of 50 years ago]." Blue Origin last September pledged to inspire youth to pursue space STEM careers as part of the Biden Administration's efforts to increase the space industry's capacity to meet the rising demand for the skilled technical workforce.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rhode Island representative Jennifer Boylan has submitted legislation that would mandate the inclusion of solar power in all newly constructed single-family dwellings, multi-family dwellings, large commercial buildings, and parking lots exceeding 16,000 sq. ft. From a report: The legislation, titled the Solar Neighborhoods Act (PDF), calls for the Rhode Island Building Code Commission to establish new code requirements for each of the aforementioned construction types. The document specifies that, at a minimum, the Code Commission must add code provisions to address: - Static load roof strength, requiring that roofs where solar equipment could be placed support a minimum of six pounds per square foot;- Placement of non-solar-related rooftop equipment, considering positioning that avoids shading solar equipment and maximizes continuous roof space;- Sizing and provision of extra electrical panels to accommodate the addition of an appropriately-sized future solar energy system; and- Provision of space for a solar energy system DC-AC inverter in the utility room or on an outside wall. The legislation also recommends that the Code Commission consider amending the building code to account for roof orientation and angle, roofing materials that minimize or require no roof penetrations, conduit for wiring from roof to electrical panels, and the inclusion of level 2 electric vehicle charging infrastructure. [...] The legislation further requires outdoor parking lots larger than 16,000 sq. ft to install raised solar-panel canopies covering at least 50% of the parking lot's surface, and that 5% of the parking spaces must feature electric vehicle charging stations. Moreover, 20% of parking spaces should be equipped with the infrastructure, such as underground wiring, to accommodate additional EV charging stations in the future. The report notes that California has already implemented a new construction solar mandate, and a similar measure is under consideration in Massachusetts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: When computer science students and faculty at Carnegie Mellon University's Institute for Software Research returned to campus in the summer of 2020, there was a lot to adjust to. Beyond the inevitable strangeness of being around colleagues again after months of social distancing, the department was also moving into a brand-new building: the 90,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art TCS Hall. The hall's futuristic features included carbon dioxide sensors that automatically pipe in fresh air, a rain garden, a yard for robots and drones, and experimental super-sensing devices called Mites. Mounted in more than 300 locations throughout the building, these light-switch-size devices can measure 12 types of data -- including motion and sound. Mites were embedded on the walls and ceilings of hallways, in conference rooms, and in private offices, all as part of a research project on smart buildings led by CMU professor Yuvraj Agarwal and PhD student Sudershan Boovaraghavan and including another professor, Chris Harrison. "The overall goal of this project," Agarwal explained at an April 2021 town hall meeting for students and faculty, is to "build a safe, secure, and easy-to-use IoT [Internet of Things] infrastructure," referring to a network of sensor-equipped physical objects like smart light bulbs, thermostats, and TVs that can connect to the internet and share information wirelessly. Not everyone was pleased to find the building full of Mites. Some in the department felt that the project violated their privacy rather than protected it. In particular, students and faculty whose research focused more on the social impacts of technology felt that the device's microphone, infrared sensor, thermometer, and six other sensors, which together could at least sense when a space was occupied, would subject them to experimental surveillance without their consent. "It's not okay to install these by default," says David Widder, a final-year PhD candidate in software engineering, who became one of the department's most vocal voices against Mites. "I don't want to live in a world where one's employer installing networked sensors in your office without asking you first is a model for other organizations to follow." All technology users face similar questions about how and where to draw a personal line when it comes to privacy. But outside of our own homes (and sometimes within them), we increasingly lack autonomy over these decisions. Instead, our privacy is determined by the choices of the people around us. Walking into a friend's house, a retail store, or just down a public street leaves us open to many different types of surveillance over which we have little control. Against a backdrop of skyrocketing workplace surveillance, prolific data collection, increasing cybersecurity risks, rising concerns about privacy and smart technologies, and fraught power dynamics around free speech in academic institutions, Mites became a lightning rod within the Institute for Software Research. Voices on both sides of the issue were aware that the Mites project could have an impact far beyond TCS Hall. After all, Carnegie Mellon is a top-tier research university in science, technology, and engineering, and how it handles this research may influence how sensors will be deployed elsewhere. "When we do something, companies [and] other universities listen," says Widder. Indeed, the Mites researchers hoped that the process they'd gone through "could actually be a blueprint for smaller universities" looking to do similar research, says Agarwal, an associate professor in computer science who has been developing and testing machine learning for IoT devices for a decade. But the crucial question is what happens if -- or when -- the super-sensors graduate from Carnegie Mellon, are commercialized, and make their way into smart buildings the world over. The conflict is, in essence, an attempt by one of the world's top computer science departments to litigate thorny questions around privacy, anonymity, and consent. But it has deteriorated from an academic discussion into a bitter dispute, complete with accusations of bullying, vandalism, misinformation, and workplace retaliation. As in so many conversations about privacy, the two sides have been talking past each other, with seemingly incompatible conceptions of what privacy means and when consent should be required. Ultimately, if the people whose research sets the agenda for technology choices are unable to come to a consensus on privacy, where does that leave the rest of us?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Several domain names tied to Genesis Market, a bustling cybercrime store that sold access to passwords and other data stolen from millions of computers infected with malicious software, were seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) today. KrebsOnSecurity reports: Sources tell KrebsOnsecurity the domain seizures coincided with "dozens" of arrests in the United States and abroad targeting those who allegedly operated the service, as well as suppliers who continuously fed Genesis Market with freshly-stolen data. Active since 2018, Genesis Market's slogan has long been, "Our store sells bots with logs, cookies, and their real fingerprints." Customers could search for infected systems with a variety of options, including by Internet address or by specific domain names associated with stolen credentials. But earlier today, multiple domains associated with Genesis had their homepages replaced with a seizure notice from the FBI, which said the domains were seized pursuant to a warrant issued by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. But sources close to the investigation tell KrebsOnSecurity that law enforcement agencies in the United States, Canada and across Europe are currently serving arrest warrants on dozens of individuals thought to support Genesis, either by maintaining the site or selling the service bot logs from infected systems. The seizure notice includes the seals of law enforcement entities from several countries, including Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. [...] One feature of Genesis that sets it apart from other bot shops is that customers can retain access to infected systems in real-time, so that if the rightful owner of an infected system creates a new account online, those new credentials will get stolen and displayed in the web-based panel of the Genesis customer who purchased that bot. "While some infostealers are designed to remove themselves after execution, others create persistent access," reads a March 2023 report from cybersecurity firm SpyCloud. "That means bad actors have access to the current data for as long as the device remains infected, even if the user changes passwords. SpyCloud says Genesis even advertises its commitment to keep the stolen data and the compromised systems' fingerprints up to date. "According to our research, Genesis Market had more than 430,000 stolen identities for sale as of early last year -- and there are many other marketplaces like this one," the SpyCloud report concludes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader Esther Schindler writes: When you learn a new tool/technology, you need to create a sample application, which cannot use real in-house data. Why not use something fun for the sample application's data, such as a Star Wars API or a data collection about World Cup contests? Esther Schindler, Slashdot user #16185, assembled a groovy collection of datasets that may be useful but also may be a source of fascinating internet rabbit holes. For those interested in datasets, Esther also recommends the Data is Plural newsletter and the website ResearchBuzz, which shares dataset descriptions as well as archive-related news and tools. "Google Research maintains a search site for test datasets, too, if you know what you're looking for," adds Esther. There's also, of course, Kaggle.com.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google today promoted the Chrome 112 web browser to their stable channel on all supported platforms. Phoronix reports: Starting as an origin trial with Chrome 112 is WebAssembly (WASM) Garbage Collection support. Yes, garbage collection to allow for efficient support for high-level managed languages with WebAssembly. This trial support allows for compilers targeting WASM to integrate with a garbage collector in the host VM. Also on the WebAssembly front with today's Chrome browser update is making WebAssembly tail call support available out of the box. This adds explicit tail call and indirect tail call opcodes. This support is useful for correct/efficient implementations of languages that require tail call elimination, compilation of control constructs that can be implemented with it, and other computations being expressed as WASM functions. Meanwhile by default in Chrome 112 is now CSS nesting support as the ability to nest CSS style rules inside other style rules for increasing modularity and maintainability of style sheets. Chrome 112 also adds support for the CSS animation-composition property. Behind a developer flag is also the background-blur feature that allows using a native platform's API for camera background segmentation. This is intended for use with web-based video conferencing applications running within the web browser to make use of native platform APIs. A full list of changes is available on the Chrome Releases blog.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Writing a report on the state of AI must feel a lot like building on shifting sands: by the time you hit publish, the whole industry has changed under your feet. But there are still important trends and takeaways in Stanford's 386-page bid to summarize this complex and fast-moving domain. The AI Index, from the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, worked with experts from academia and private industry to collect information and predictions on the matter. As a yearly effort (and by the size of it, you can bet they're already hard at work laying out the next one), this may not be the freshest take on AI, but these periodic broad surveys are important to keep one's finger on the pulse of industry. This year's report includes "new analysis on foundation models, including their geopolitics and training costs, the environmental impact of AI systems, K-12 AI education, and public opinion trends in AI," plus a look at policy in a hundred new countries. But the report goes into detail on many topics and sub-topics, and is quite readable and non-technical. Only the dedicated will read all 300-odd pages of analysis, but really, just about any motivated body could. For the highest-level takeaways, let us just bullet them here: - AI development has flipped over the last decade from academia-led to industry-led, by a large margin, and this shows no sign of changing. - It's becoming difficult to test models on traditional benchmarks and a new paradigm may be needed here. - The energy footprint of AI training and use is becoming considerable, but we have yet to see how it may add efficiencies elsewhere. - The number of "AI incidents and controversies" has increased by a factor of 26 since 2012, which actually seems a bit low. - AI-related skills and job postings are increasing, but not as fast as you'd think. - Policymakers, however, are falling over themselves trying to write a definitive AI bill, a fool's errand if there ever as one. - Investment has temporarily stalled, but that's after an astronomic increase over the last decade. - More than 70% of Chinese, Saudi, and Indian respondents felt AI had more benefits than drawbacks. Americans? 35%. The full report can be found here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

eFile.com, an IRS-authorized e-file software service provider used by many for filing their tax returns, has been caught serving JavaScript malware. BleepingComputer reports: eFile.com was caught serving malware, as spotted by multiple users and researchers. The malicious JavaScript file in question is called 'popper.js'. The development comes at a crucial time when U.S. taxpayers are wrapping up their IRS tax returns before the April 18th due date. BleepingComputer can confirm, the malicious JavaScript file 'popper.js' was being loaded by almost every page of eFile.com, at least up until April 1st. As of today, the file is no longer seen serving the malicious code. On March 17th, a Reddit thread surfaced where multiple eFile.com users suspected the website was "hijacked." At the time, the website showed an SSL error message that, some suspected, was fake and indicative of a hack. Turns out that's indeed the case. [...] The malicious JavaScript file 'update.js', further attempts to prompt users to download next stage payload, depending on whether they are using Chrome [update.exe - VirusTotal] or Firefox [installer.exe - VirusTotal]. Antivirus products have already started flagging these executables as trojans. BleepingComputer has independently confirmed these binaries establish a connection to a Tokyo-based IP address, 47.245.6.91, that appears to be hosted with Alibaba. The same IP also hosts the illicit domain, infoamanewonliag[.]online associated with this incident. Security research group, MalwareHunterTeam further analyzed these binaries, and stated that these contain Windows botnets written in PHP -- a fact that the research group mocked. Additionally, the group called out eFile.com for leaving the malicious code on its website for weeks: "So, the website of [efile.com]... got compromised at least around middle of March & still not cleaned," writes MalwareHunterTeam.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A German court has ordered hosting provider Uberspace to take the website of the open-source youtube-dl software offline. The ruling is the result of a copyright infringement lawsuit, filed by Sony, Warner and Universal last year. Uberspace will appeal the verdict and, meanwhile, youtube-dl's code remains available on GitHub. TorrentFreak reports: After hearing both sides, the district court of Hamburg ruled on the matter last week, handing a clear win to the music companies. The verdict wasn't immediately made available to the public but the music companies were quick to claim the win in a press release, stating that Uberspace must take youtube-dl's website offline. According to Frances Moore, CEO of the global music industry group IFPI, the court's decision once again confirms that stream-ripping software is illegal. "YouTube-DL's services have enabled users to stream rip and download copyrighted music without paying. The Hamburg Regional Court's decision builds on a precedent already set in Germany and underscores once again that hosting stream-ripping software of this type is illegal. "We continue to work globally to address the problem of stream ripping, which is draining revenue from those who invest in and create music," Moore adds. Interestingly, the open source youtube-dl code remains available on the Microsoft-owned developer platform GitHub. Whether the music companies have any plans to target the problem at this source is unknown. Uberspace's legal representative German Society for Civil Rights (GFF) informs TorrentFreak that the decision doesn't come as a total surprise since the court already declared YouTube's "rolling cipher" to be an effective technical protection measure in an earlier case. That said, the defense believes that the order, which effectively amounts to a blanket ban on youtube-dl, failed to take the software's potentially legitimate uses into account. In addition, GFF believes that the court's decision severely restricts the hosting provider's freedom to operate. "If web hosts have to delete an entire website on demand of the rightsholders even in complex situations with no legal precedent, this poses a threat to the business model of web hosts and ultimately to the free flow of information on the Internet." Uberspace says it will appeal the judgement and GFF is confident the hosting provider will ultimately prevail.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: Amazon has branded itself as a climate crusader, touting its commitment to renewable energy and sustainable practices. But in Oregon, it helped quietly quash a climate bill that would have regulated its data centers. The bill would have set a 100 percent carbon emissions reduction deadline of 2040 for high energy users. Its goal was to rein in industries with outsize carbon footprints, like cryptocurrency mines and data centers, of which Amazon is planning three more in the state that would be powered by fossil fuels. Though the bill would have matched the timeline of Amazon's own "Climate Pledge," which promises net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, the company helped kill it, said Oregon state Rep. Pam Marsh. "Amazon's representatives were in the Capitol lobbying against the bill from the very first moment of discussion," said Marsh, chair of the Oregon House climate committee and sponsor of the bill, HB2816. Though Amazon did not testify publicly, Marsh said the company's lobbyists helped organize the opposition and "successfully nurtured fear that our energy requirements would drive away the development of data centers." "No one wants that," Marsh continued, "but we do want them to use energy in a responsible, sustainable manner." In addition to the Climate Pledge, Amazon has set a goal of moving entirely to renewable energy by 2025; the company has spent millions on solar and wind energy projects and is the largest private purchaser of clean energy. From its $2 billion climate fund to the Climate Pledge, Amazon has invested heavily in creating the perception that it's an environmental leader. But its dealings in Oregon show that, behind the scenes, it wants to call the shots on how that transition happens. Amazon spokesperson David Ward said in a statement that "a number of organizations, including Amazon, oppose HB2816 because the bill does not address the build-out of electric infrastructure that is needed to bring more clean energy to the grid." "Building new renewable projects requires infrastructure investments in the grid and today there are hurdles in key areas like permitting and interconnection," he continued. "Accelerating energy infrastructure permitting and interconnections for renewables like solar and wind would have a greater impact on reducing emissions, bringing more clean energy to the grid, and helping achieve our goal of accessing more clean energy in Oregon." Oregon's biggest business organizations are all opposed to the bill, reports Government Technology. "That includes Oregon Business & Industry and the Technology Association of Oregon, and the national trade group TechNet." Aside from Amazon and its lobbying behind the scenes, no other major tech company has taken a position on the bill.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon laid off about 100 employees in its video-game divisions as part of its broader cutbacks, affecting workers at Prime Gaming, Game Growth and the company's San Diego studio. From a report: "Our resources will be aligned to support our focus on content," Games Vice President Christoph Hartmann wrote in a memo to employees Tuesday. "Going forward, we will continue to invest in our internal development efforts, and our teams will continue to grow as our projects progress." Amazon has struggled to capitalize on its resources in gaming, including through its Crown channel, an entertainment show on the Twitch streaming service. Twitch recently cut about 400 positions. The company has canceled and even removed titles from sale since the division kicked off in 2012. Amazon has only released one internally developed game -- the online role-playing title New World, which suffered a steep decline in its player base after the September 2021 launch. The Irvine, California-based New World team will continue to grow, Hartmann said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Virtual reality hasn't caught on with American teens, according to a new survey from Piper Sandler released on Tuesday. From a report: While 29% percent of teens polled owned a VR device -- versus 87% who own iPhones -- only 4% of headset owners used it daily, the investment firm found, and 14% used them weekly. In addition, teenagers didn't seem that interested in buying forthcoming VR headsets. Only 7% said they planned to purchase a headset, versus 52% of teens polled who were unsure or uninterested. The survey results suggest that virtual reality hardware and software has yet to catch on with the public despite billions of dollars in investment in the technology from Big Tech companies and a number of low-cost headsets on the market. Teenagers are often seen as early adopters of new technology and their preferences can provide a preview of where the industry is going.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Atlassian customers' eleven-year quest for custom domains continues, with the Australian upstart's proposed solution failing to satisfy. The Register: As The Register reported in 2022, Atlassian floated the idea of custom domains for its custom apps in 2011. Yes, 2011. The ticket for the change is called "CLOUD 6999" and has become infamous for the length of time it has remained unresolved. An unidentified wag has even made t-shirts bearing the CLOUD 6999 name. Atlassian promised last year to sort it out some time in 2023, and in February posted an update on its initial designs. It hasn't gone down well. Atlassian's proposed solution requires "a company-branded domain name, a list of options for the 1st-level subdomain keyword, and a 2nd-level subdomain at your own choice." Atlassian cloud admin experience chap Luke Liu explained that structure as delivering URLs such as internal.support.acme.com or people.knowledge.acme.org. One of Atlassian's stated company values is "Don't #@!% the customer." But plenty of Atlassian customers feel well and truly #@!%ed by the custom domain plan. "The cloud roadmap specifically uses an example of 1 level," wrote one commenter on the 1,445-item thread discussing CLOUD 6999. "The team managing this seems to be completely lost and disconnected from the user base."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Virgin Orbit, founded by Richard Branson, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Tuesday after the satellite launching business struggled to secure long-term funding following a failed launch in January. From a report: The filing comes less than two years after Virgin Orbit first went public at a valuation of roughly $3 billion. But the January mishap left the company scrambling for new funding and forced it to halt operations. "We believe that the Chapter 11 process represents the best path forward to identify and finalize an efficient and value-maximizing sale," Virgin Orbit Chief Executive Dan Hart said in a statement. The company, which was spun off from space tourism firm Virgin Galactic in 2017, sends satellites into orbit using rockets launched from a modified Boeing 747 plane. The Long Beach, California-based company lodged the filing seeking a sale of its assets in a Delaware court days after announcing the layoff of roughly 85% of its 750 employees. Virgin Orbit listed assets of about $243 million and total debt at $153.5 million as of Sept. 30. The company went public in December 2021 through a blank-check merger, raising $255 million less than expected.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One of mathematics' most intriguing visual mysteries has finally been solved -- thanks to a hobbyist in England. From a report: The conundrum: is there a shape that can be arranged in a tile formation, interlocking with itself ad infinitum, without the resulting pattern repeating over and over again? In nature and on our bathroom walls, we typically see tile patterns that repeat in "a very predictable, regular way," says Dr Craig Kaplan, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. What mathematicians were interested in were shapes that "guaranteed non-periodicity" -- in other words, there was no way to tile them so that the overall pattern created a repeating grid. Such a shape would be known as an aperiodic monotile, or "einstein" shape, meaning, in roughly translated German, "one shape" (and conveniently echoing the name of a certain theoretical physicist). "There's been a thread of beautiful mathematics over the last 60 years or so searching for ever smaller sets of shapes that do this," Kaplan says. "The first example of an aperiodic set of shapes had over 20,000 shapes in it. And of course, mathematicians worked to get that number down over time. And the furthest we got was in the 1970s," when the Nobel-prize winning physicist Roger Penrose found pairs of shapes that fit the bill. Now, mathematicians appear to have found what they were looking for: a 13-sided shape they call "the hat." The discovery was largely the work of David Smith of the East Riding of Yorkshire, who had a longstanding interest in the question and investigated the problem using an online geometry platform. Once he'd found an intriguing shape, he told the New York Times, he would cut it out of cardstock and see how he could fit the first 32 pieces together. "I am quite persistent but I suppose I did have a bit of luck," Smith told the Guardian in an email.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is backtracking on its decision to put a file creation cap on Google Drive. From a report: Around two months ago, the company decided to cap all Google Drive users to 5 million files, even if they were paying for extra storage. The company did this in the worst way possible, rolling out the limit as a complete surprise and with no prior communication. Some users logged in to find they were suddenly millions of files over the new limit and unable to upload new files until they deleted enough to get under the limit. Some of these users were businesses that had the sudden file cap bring down their systems, and because Google never communicated that the change was coming, many people initially thought the limitation was a bug. Apparently, sunshine really is the best disinfectant. The story made the tech news rounds on Friday, and Ars got Google on the record saying that the file cap was not a bug and was actually "a safeguard to prevent misuse of our system in a way that might impact the stability and safety of the system." After the weekend reaction to "Google Drive's Secret File Cap!" Google announced on Twitter Monday night that it was rolling back the limit. [...] Google told us it initially rolled the limitation out to stop what it called "misuse" of Drive, and with the tweet saying Google wants to "explore alternate approaches to ensure a great experience for all," it sounds like we might see more kinds of Drive limitations in the future.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The newest startup accelerator from Amazon aims to attract companies building generative AI technologies. From a report: The Amazon Web Services accelerator, revealed Tuesday, is a 10-week program aims to "empower companies applying generative AI to solutions from legal and marketing, to software engineering, green energy, and life sciences, including drug discovery." It also provides up to $300,000 in AWS credits. The hybrid program is open to all startups, with two week-long in-person events in San Francisco. AWS does not take equity from participating companies. The accelerator is a way for Amazon to draw early-stage startups into its cloud ecosystem.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The stress on the financial sector caused by two bank failures in the United States last month is still a threat and should be addressed by a reimagining of the regulatory process, according to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. From a report: "As I write this letter, the current crisis is not yet over, and even when it is behind us, there will be repercussions from it for years to come," the longtime CEO said in his annual letter to shareholders Tuesday. "But importantly, recent events are nothing like what occurred during the 2008 global financial crisis," he added. The recent banking issues in the U.S. began with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which was closed by regulators on March 10 as depositors pulled tens of billions of dollars from the bank. The smaller Signature Bank was closed two days later. And in Europe, Swiss regulators brokered a purchase of Credit Suisse by UBS. JPMorgan and other large banks stepped in to make $30 billion of deposits at First Republic, another regional lender that investors feared could become the next SVB. The stress on the regional banks has led investors and analysts to suggest that the too big to fail institutions would be a beneficiary of the crisis, but Dimon said JPMorgan wants to strengthen the smaller banks for the benefit of the whole financial system. "Any crisis that damages Americans' trust in their banks damages all banks -- a fact that was known even before this crisis. While it is true that this bank crisis 'benefited' larger banks due to the inflow of deposits they received from smaller institutions, the notion that this meltdown was good for them in any way is absurd," Dimon wrote. Dimon also cautioned against knee-jerk changes to the regulatory system. He wrote that most of the risks, including the potential losses from held-to-maturity bonds, were "hiding in plain sight." The interconnected network of SVB's deposit base was the unknown variable, he said. "The recent failures of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in the United States and Credit Suisse in Europe, and the related stress in the banking system, underscore that simply satisfying regulatory requirements is not sufficient. Risks are abundant, and managing those risks requires constant and vigilant scrutiny as the world evolves," Dimon wrote.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has just officially unveiled the Surface Thunderbolt 4 Dock hours after the device leaked. From a report: Priced at $299.99, the new Surface dock will connect over USB-C instead of the proprietary Surface Connect port. Microsoft is planning to keep selling its Surface Dock 2, complete with the Surface Connect port that's designed for Surface devices that don't have USB-C or Thunderbolt 4. This new Surface Thunderbolt 4 Dock will support devices other than Surface for the first time. You can connect to it via USB-C, and it supports data transfer speeds of up to 40Gbps and 96W charging thanks to Thunderbolt 4. At the front, there is a single USB-C port alongside a USB-A port but sadly no SD card slot. The rear of the Surface Thunderbolt 4 Dock has two USB-C ports, two USB-A ports, a 2.5-gigabit ethernet port, an audio jack, and a security lock slot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple said that some users are experiencing disruptions of its weather app on Tuesday, citing a data provider issue. From a report: The Cupertino, California-based company said on its website that issues for the app were reported at 11 p.m. New York time Monday and continued Tuesday. Apple said that precipitation forecasts for the next hour may be unavailable in Alaska "due to a data provider outage," but disruptions appear to be across various cities. All other services, such as the App Store, Apple TV and FaceTime, appear to be available and working without issue.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An annual report on AI progress has highlighted the increasing dominance of industry players over academia and government in deploying and safeguarding AI applications. From a report: The 2023 AI Index -- compiled by researchers from Stanford University as well as AI companies including Google, Anthropic, and Hugging Face -- suggests that the world of AI is entering a new phase of development. Over the past year, a large number of AI tools have gone mainstream, from chatbots like ChatGPT to image-generating software like Midjourney. But decisions about how to deploy this technology and how to balance risk and opportunity lie firmly in the hands of corporate players. The AI Index states that, for many years, academia led the way in developing state-of-the-art AI systems, but industry has now firmly taken over. "In 2022, there were 32 significant industry-produced machine learning models compared to just three produced by academia," it says. This is mostly due to the increasingly large resource demands -- in terms of data, staff, and computing power -- required to create such applications.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Frank founder Charlie Javice was charged with fraud in the $175 million sale of her college financial planning site to JPMorgan Chase. The charges include conspiracy, wire fraud, bank fraud and securities fraud. From a report: JPMorgan, which acquired Frank in 2021, sued Javice and another executive, Olivier Amar, in federal court in Delaware in December, alleging they used fake customer accounts to lead the bank into completing the deal by vastly inflating the number of people using her site.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Patients diagnosed with conditions like anxiety and sleep disorders have become caught in the crosshairs of America's opioid crisis, as secret policies mandated by a national opioid settlement have turned filling legitimate prescriptions into a major headache. Bloomberg reports: In July, limits went into effect that flag and sometimes block pharmacies' orders of controlled substances such as Adderall and Xanax when they exceed a certain threshold. The requirement stems from a 2021 settlement with the US's three largest drug distributors -- AmerisourceBergen Corp., Cardinal Health Inc. and McKesson Corp. But pharmacists said it curtails their ability to fill prescriptions for many different types of controlled substances -- not just opioids. Independent pharmacists said the rules force them come up with creative workarounds. Sometimes, they must send patients on frustrating journeys to find pharmacies that haven't yet exceeded their caps in order to buy prescribed medicines. It's unclear how the thresholds are impacting major chain pharmacies. The Drug Enforcement Administration regulates the manufacturing, distribution and sale of controlled substances, which can be dangerous when used improperly. Drugmakers and wholesalers were always supposed to keep an eye out for suspicious purchases and have long had systems to catch, report and halt these orders. The prescription opioid crisis, enabled by irresponsible drug company marketing and prescribing, led to a slew of lawsuits and tighter regulations on many parts of the health system, including monitoring of suspicious orders. One major settlement required the three largest distributors to set thresholds on orders of controlled substances starting last July. The "suspicious order" terminology is a bit of a misnomer, pharmacists said. The orders themselves aren't suspicious, it's just that the pharmacy has exceeded its limit for a specific drug over a certain time period. Any order that puts the pharmacy over its limit can be stopped. As a result, patients with legitimate prescriptions get caught up in the dragnet. Adding to the confusion, the limits themselves are secret. Drug wholesalers are barred by the settlement agreement from telling pharmacists what the thresholds are, how they're determined or when the pharmacy is getting close to hitting them. The exact limit for each pharmacy is kept secret in order to prevent pharmacists from gaming the system, according to Krista Tongring, leader of the DEA compliance practice at Guidepost Solutions and a former agency attorney. The purpose, she said, is to keep pharmacies from manipulating "their ordering patterns so as to get around the thresholds." According to a Cardinal Health document, limits are "calculated on a daily, monthly, and quarterly basis," reports Bloomberg. "But without more detailed information, it's impossible for pharmacists to predict when they are going to have to turn patients away." "Pharmacies can request increases to their thresholds, but those take time to adjudicate, leaving patients scrambling to find their daily medicines elsewhere in the meantime."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. National Institute on Aging (NIA) is funding a 6-year, up to $300 million project to build a massive Alzheimer's research database that can track the health of Americans for decades and enable researchers to gain new insights on the brain-wasting disease. Reuters reports: The NIA, part of the government's National Institutes of Health (NIH), aims to build a data platform capable of housing long-term health information on 70% to 90% of the U.S. population, officials told Reuters of the grant, which had not been previously reported. The platform will draw on data from medical records, insurance claims, pharmacies, mobile devices, sensors and various government agencies, they said. Tracking patients before and after they develop Alzheimer's symptoms is seen as integral to making advances against the disease, which can start some 20 years before memory issues develop. The database could help identify healthy people at risk for Alzheimer's, which affects about 6 million Americans, for future drug trials. It also aims to address chronic underrepresentation of people of color and different ethnicities in Alzheimer's clinical trials and could help increase enrollment from outside of urban academic medical centers. Once built, the platform could also track patients after they receive treatments such as Leqembi, which won accelerated U.S. approval in January, and is widely expected to receive traditional FDA approval by July 6. The U.S. Medicare health plan for older adults will likely require such tracking in a registry as a condition of reimbursement for Leqembi. [T]he data platform could also help researchers working in other disease areas understand which patients are most at risk and the impact of medications. The grant, which was posted on March 13, has been years in the making. The funding announcement sets its earliest start date at April 2024, with a goal to establish an Alzheimer's registry 21 months later.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Scientists have discovered "unexpected physics" by opening up "slits" in time, a new study reports, achieving a longstanding dream that can help to probe the behavior of light and pioneer advanced optical technologies. The mind-boggling approach is a time-based variation on the famous double-slit experiment, first performed by Thomas Young in 1801, which opened a window into the weird probabilistic world of quantum mechanics by revealing the dual nature of light as both a particle and a wave. The new temporal version of this test offered a glimpse of the mysterious physics that occur at ultrafast timescales, which may inform the development of quantum computing systems, among other next-generation applications. In the original version of the double-slit experiment, light passes through two slits that are spatially separated on an opaque screen. A detector on the other side of the screen records the pattern of the light waves that emerges from the slits. These experiments show that the light waves change direction and interfere with each other after going through the slits, demonstrating that light behaves as both a wave and particle. This insight is one of the most important milestones in our ongoing journey into the quantum world, and it has since been repeated with other entities, such as electrons, exposing the trippy phenomena that occurs at the small scales of atoms. Now, scientists led by Romain Tirole, a PhD student studying nanophotonics at Imperial College London, have created a "temporal analogue of Young's slit experiment" by firing a beam of light at a special metamaterial called Indium Tin Oxide, according to a study published on Monday in Nature Physics. Metamaterials are artificial creations endowed with superpowers that are not found in nature. For instance, the Indium Tin Oxide used in the new study can change its properties in mere femtoseconds, a unit equal to a millionth of a billionth of a second. This incredible variability allows light waves to interact with the metamaterial at key moments in ultrafast succession, called "time slits," which produces a time-based diffraction pattern that is analogous to the results returned in the spatial version of the experiment. [...] In other words, the super-speedy changeability of Indium Tin Oxide finally made a time slit experiment possible, after many years of eluding scientists. To bring this vision to reality, Tirole and his colleagues used lasers to switch the reflectance of the material on and off at high speeds.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Capita, the United Kingdom's largest outsourcing company, confirmed Monday that an IT outage which left staff locked out of their accounts on Friday was caused by "a cyber incident." The Record reports: Staff attempting to login were erroneously told their usual passwords were "incorrect" according to reports, fueling speculation that a cyberattack was to blame, although not all of Capita's 61,000 employees were affected. At the time, a Capita spokesperson said the company was investigating "a technical issue." In an update on Monday about the incident sent to the Regulatory News Service, the company confirmed it "experienced a cyber incident primarily impacting access to internal Microsoft Office 365 applications." The nature of the incident has not been disclosed. While financially motivated ransomware attacks remain a prevalent threat for organizations in Britain, Capita also provides services to the British government that may be of interest to state-sponsored espionage groups. Capita's numerous contracts include several with the Ministry of Defence. Last year, a consortium it leads took control over engineering and maintenance support of training simulators for the Royal Navy's nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines used as part of the U.K.'s nuclear deterrent. In its statement, Capita said: "Immediate steps were taken to successfully isolate and contain the issue," which was "limited to parts of the Capita network."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For flights, Google already showed you whether the flight price you were looking at was high, low, or typical compared to historical prices. Now it's going a step further by putting a guarantee on those predictions. Android Police reports: Now, whenever Google thinks a flight is priced as low as it's going to go, it will put a "Price Guarantee" badge beside the price indicating it doesn't think that price will drop any further. If you decide to book a flight with a price guarantee through Google and the price does go down, the company will reimburse you for the difference in price via Google Pay similar to the promotion it ran in 2019. The price guarantee was announced in a blog post today alongside new features for researching hotels. "Now when you search for a hotel on mobile, you'll be able to swipe through full-screen images of the hotel similar to how you might view a story on Instagram," reports Android Police. "From that photo page, you can also quickly tap into reviews to see if a property is as good as it looks and learn more about the area where a potential hotel is located. There's also a link to the hotel's website right on the page when you're ready to book."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple will expand ProMotion to the standard iPhone models in two years, according to Ross Young, CEO of Display Supply Chain Consultants. ProMotion was first introduced on the iPhone 13 Pro models in 2021 and remains exclusive to Pro models for now. MacRumors reports: In a tweet today, Young provided a roadmap outlining various display-related technologies coming to future iPhones. Notably, the roadmap indicates that low-power LTPO display technology will be expanded to the standard iPhones in 2025, which Young said will enable ProMotion on these devices, allowing the display to ramp up to a 120Hz refresh rate for smoother scrolling and video content when necessary. ProMotion would also allow the display to ramp down to a more power-efficient refresh rate. iPhone 13 Pro models can ramp down to 10Hz, while iPhone 14 Pro models can go as low as 1Hz, allowing for an always-on display that can show the Lock Screen's clock, widgets, notifications, and wallpaper even when the device is locked. All in all, the roadmap suggests that the so-called "iPhone 17" and "iPhone 17 Plus" will feature ProMotion, and likely an always-on display too. Young also claimed the "iPhone 17 Pro" will be the first iPhone to feature under-panel Face ID technology.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The federal government is considering a "roadmap" on how to restrict access to online pornography to those who can prove they are 18 or older, but there are warnings that any system could come at the cost of Australians' privacy online. On Friday, the eSafety commissioner provided a long-awaited roadmap to the government for how to verify users' ages online, which was commissioned by the former Morrison government nearly two years ago. The commissioner's office said the roadmap "explores if and how age verification and other measures could be used to prevent and mitigate harm to children from online pornography" but that any action taken will be a decision of government. There were a variety of options to verify people's ages considered during the consultation for the roadmap, such as the use of third-party companies, individual sites verifying ages using ID documents or credit card checks, and internet service providers or mobile phone operators being used to check users' ages. Digital rights groups have raised concerns about the potential for any verification system to create a honeypot of people's personal information. But the office said any technology-based solution would need to strike the right balance between safety, privacy and security, and must be coupled with education campaigns for children, parents and educators. [...] It comes as new industry codes aimed at tackling restricted-access content online, developed by groups representing digital platforms, and software, gaming and telecommunications companies were submitted to the eSafety commissioner for approval. The content covered includes child sexual abuse material, terrorism, extreme crime and violence, and drug-related content. The commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, will now decide whether the voluntary codes meet her expectations or whether she needs to enforce mandatory codes. [...] The second phase of the codes will set out how the platforms restrict access to pornography on their sites -- separate from the use of age verification systems.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers from Darktrace have seen a 135% increase in novel social engineering attack emails in the first two months of 2023. IT Pro reports: The cyber security firm said the email attacks targeted thousands of its customers in January and February 2023, an increase which it said matches the adoption rate of ChatGPT. The novel social engineering attacks make use of "sophisticated linguistic techniques," which Darktrace said include increasing text volume, sentence length, and punctuation in emails. Darktrace also found there's been a decrease in the number of malicious emails that are sent with an attachment or link. The firm said that this behavior could mean that generative AI, including ChatGPT, is being used by malicious actors to construct targeted attacks rapidly. Survey results indicated that 82% of employees are worried about hackers using generative AI to create scam emails which are indistinguishable from genuine communication. It also found that 30% of employees have fallen for a scam email or text in the past. Darktrace asked survey respondents what the top-three characteristics are that suggest an email is a phish and found: - 68% said it was being invited to click a link or open an attachment- 61% said it was due to an unknown sender or unexpected content- Poor use of spelling and grammar was chosen by 61% too In the last six months, 70% of employees reported an increase in the frequency of scam emails. Additionally, 79% said that their organization's spam filters prevent legitimate emails from entering their inbox. 87% of employees said they were worried about the amount of their personal information online which could be used in phishing or email scams.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tim Cook's vision for AR and VR hasn't changed. "For almost a decade, Apple's CEO has been banging the drum that AR is more important than VR and that AR is fundamentally about bringing people together," reports The Verge. "And he's still at it." From the report: "If you think about the technology itself with augmented reality, just to take one side of the AR/VR piece, the idea that you could overlay the physical world with things from the digital world could greatly enhance people's communication, people's connection," Cook told GQ's Zach Baron in a long and very interesting profile just published by the magazine. Cook told Baron that he's interested in collaboration; he said something about measuring glass walls; he said his thinking on glasses-as-gadget has changed over the years. None of this is a product announcement, of course, only the latest in a long string of hints about what Apple sees in this space. Cook's been on this particular line since at least 2016, when he said on Good Morning America that AR "gives the capability for both of us to sit and be very present, talking to each other, but also have other things -- visually -- for both of us to see." [...] At various times over the years, Cook has said AR is a powerful technology for education, that he thinks it'll be as common as "eating three meals a day," and that he thinks AR is as big an idea as the smartphone. But he keeps coming back to the idea that AR should be meant to bring people together in the real world, not keep them apart or transport them to another universe entirely. Cook also offered what sounds like an explanation for why the headset, which has been heavily rumored over the last couple of years, has taken so long to come out. "I'm not interested in putting together pieces of somebody else's stuff," he told GQ. "Because we want to control the primary technology. Because we know that's how you innovate." Maybe the most revealing thing in the story is the way Cook explains Apple -- or at least explains the way he hopes you'll see Apple. He talks frequently about Apple's environmental commitments, its loud fight against "the data-industrial complex," and the way Apple is trying to help people have better relationships with technology. (Conveniently ignoring that Apple is perhaps more responsible for our phone addictions than any other company, of course.) "Because my philosophy is, if you're looking at the phone more than you're looking in somebody's eyes, you're doing the wrong thing." Apple plans to unveil a mixed-reality headset on June 5th at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: MicroG is a free-as-in-freedom alternative to proprietary Google services, including the Play Store. Vanced, a popular app that provided an ad-free YouTube experience, relied on microG to operate, something also true for successor ReVanced. In a scheme to damage microG and Vanced-style apps, imposters masquerading as microG have targeted almost two dozen sites with DMCA notices. On March 30, 2023, someone claiming to be 'MicroG' sent a DMCA complaint to Google. "The following websites use our content, which is a significant loss for our company," it begins, listing the allegedly infringing URLs below. In the majority of cases, the URLs relate to microG's software when utilized in Vanced-related projects, with one notable exception seen at line 8 where the takedown notice targets microG's official website. [...] At the time of writing, Google has delisted 13% of the URLs in the complaint with 87% currently marked as pending. Other recent complaints, broadly along similar lines (but also completely bogus) were previously rejected in full. Others, including this one sent by 'copyright owner' YouTube Vanced, whoever that is, listed the official YouTube app on Google Play as the original content infringed, before attempting to take down links related to microG and/or Vanced-type software.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hong Kong's attempt to attract cryptocurrency companies is getting help from an intensifying crackdown by American regulators. From a report: The city was once home to a number of prominent companies, including Crypto.com, BitMEX and now-bankrupt FTX. But increasing competition from Singapore, concerns about China's tough approach to crypto and Hong Kong's prolonged and strict response to Covid-19 meant many companies in the sector left. Hong Kong is now determined to bring some of that action back, in contrast with the U.S. In the past few weeks alone, U.S. regulators have cut off access to crypto products and services, targeted crypto friendly banks, brought civil charges against celebrities said to have touted digital assets and sued exchanges including Binance, the operator of the world's largest crypto exchange. Prosecutors have also accused FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who was based in Hong Kong at one point, of conspiring to bribe Chinese government officials in their latest indictment. "The U.S. being more stringent these days than ever on crypto and Hong Kong regulating in a more favorable way...is going to clearly shift the center of gravity of crypto assets trading and investments more towards Hong Kong," said Ambre Soubiran, chief executive of Kaiko, a digital assets data provider based in Paris. "We want to be where our clients are," she said. Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission proposed a new licensing framework in February, focusing on investor protection. A senior official said at a briefing that the regulator wanted to prevent a recurrence of the problems that brought down FTX, as well as other fraudulent behavior. More than 20 crypto and blockchain companies from mainland China, Europe, Canada and Singapore have told the government they are planning to establish a presence in Hong Kong, while over 80 firms have expressed interest in doing so, according to official figures.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is bringing Android's "Nearby Share" feature to the desktop with a new Windows app. Google says the new program will make sharing between Windows and Android easier, letting you send files over in just a few clicks and taps. From a report: Google's Nearby Share has been built into Android for a few years now and allows you to locally transfer files over Wi-Fi, with the initial device-pairing happening over Bluetooth. Nearby share has been kind of tough to use in real life, since most people share files over the Internet. And for personal use, most people only have one Android device, their phone, so there has been nothing to share files with. A ton of Android users have Windows PCs, though, so for many this will be the first time Nearby Share has an actual use. Using the app is easy. Just download it from the Android website and click a few "next" buttons in the installer. You need a 64-bit Windows PC (not ARM, ironically) with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. From there you can easily share by dragging and dropping on Windows or by using the Android "share" button and hitting "Nearby Share." You have the option of signing in to the Windows app or not. If you don't you'll need to manually approve every transaction on both the phone and PC. If you sign in, you can set up auto-accept from yourself, anyone in your contacts, or the probably not advisable "everyone" option.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chemicals that were banned after they punched a hole in Earth's ozone layer are still building up at an alarming rate in our atmosphere, according to research published today in the journal Nature Geoscience. The chemicals were once widely used in air conditioning and refrigeration but were supposed to be phased out globally by 2010. From a report: Scientists were surprised to find that concentrations of several types of those chemicals have climbed since then, reaching a record high in 2020. The culprit could be alternative refrigerants that were meant to replace the ozone-depleting substances, the new research suggests. An even bigger problem? Researchers can't find where all the chemicals are leaking from. The ozone layer has managed to make a remarkable recovery over the past few decades. If emissions continue to climb, however, it could counteract some of that progress and exacerbate climate change.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Spring break is here, and summer vacations are just around the bend. But while increasingly stressed-out US workers say having paid time off is critical, many still don't even take all that they're allowed. From a report: Only 48% of US workers say they use all their vacation days, according to a new survey from Pew Research Center. Those who don't take all their time off say it's because they don't need it, or they worry about falling behind at work or feel badly about co-workers carrying their load. A few even think vacation time hurts their chances for promotions or could cost them their job. There is growing anxiety in the labor force with layoffs spreading, hiring slowing and organizations cutting perks and other costs. Last month, the job site Indeed said it was reducing headcount because it's "simply too big for what lies ahead" -- an excuse used by many companies to justify recent cutbacks. It's no wonder that workers are exhausted.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cruising at a depth of 8,336 meters (over 27,000 feet) just above the seabed, a young snailfish has become the deepest fish ever filmed by scientists during a probe into the abyss of the northern Pacific Ocean. From a report: Scientists from University of Western Australia and Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology released footage of the snailfish on Sunday filmed last September by sea robots in deep trenches off Japan. Along with the filming the deepest snailfish, the scientists physically caught two other specimens at 8,022 meters and set another record for the deepest catch. Previously, the deepest snailfish ever spotted was at 7,703 meters in 2008, while scientists had never been able to collect fish from anywhere below 8,000 meters. "What is significant is that it shows how far a particular type of fish will descend in the ocean," said marine biologist Alan Jamieson, founder of the Minderoo-UWA Deep Sea Research Centre, who led the expedition. Scientists are filming in the trenches off Japan as part of a 10-year study into the deepest fish populations in the world. Snailfish are members of Liparidae family, and while most snailfish live in shallow water, others survive at some of the greatest depths ever recorded, Jamieson said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dogecoin (DOGE) rose 12% after the Shiba Inu symbol representing the token replaced the familiar blue bird atop the Twitter homepage. From a report: Elon Musk in the past has suggested the meme coin may offer better payments functionality than bitcoin.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google's finance chief Ruth Porat recently said in a rare companywide email that the company is making cuts to employee services. From a report: "These are big, multi-year efforts," Porat said in a Friday email titled: "Our company-wide OKR on durable savings." Elements of the email were previously reported by the Wall Street Journal. In separate documents viewed by CNBC, Google said it's cutting back on fitness classes, staplers, tape, and the frequency of laptop replacements for employees. One of the company's important objectives for 2023 is to "deliver durable savings through improved velocity and efficiency." Porat said in the email. "All PAs and Functions are working toward this," she said, referring to product areas.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Australia will announce a ban on TikTok on government phones this week, following other countries in barring the Chinese-owned video app over security concerns, Australian newspapers reported late on Monday. From a report: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese agreed to a government-wide ban on the use of TikTok after the completion of a review by the Home Affairs department, The Australian newspaper reported. Victoria state will also ban the short video app from government phones, The Age newspaper reported, quoting a state government official as saying Victoria would follow the federal government's guidance. The United States, Britain, New Zealand, Canada, Belgium and the European Commission have already banned the app from official devices over security concerns./iRead more of this story at Slashdot.

A Canadian astronaut and three NASA veterans, including one of the world's most experienced female spacewalkers, will fly around the moon next year in the first piloted voyage beyond Earth orbit since the Apollo program ended 50 years ago, the space agency announced Monday. From a report: NASA's Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch and Victor Glover will join Canadian rookie Jeremy Hansen aboard an Orion crew capsule for the Artemis program's second fight, the first carrying a crew bound for the moon. The Artemis 2 mission is intended to pave the way toward the first moon landing -- Artemis 3 -- in the 2025-26 timeframe. Wiseman, Koch and Glover are all veterans of long-duration stays aboard the International Space Station while Hansen will be making his first space flight. Navy Capt. Wiseman, 47, a widowed father of two, is a veteran F/A-18F Super Hornet pilot who holds a master's in systems engineering. He launched aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2014 and spent 165 days aboard the space station, then served as chief astronaut after his return to Earth. Koch, 44, holds a master's in electrical engineering who has experience in Antarctic research. She also launched aboard a Soyuz and spent nearly a full year aboard the lab in 2019-20, venturing outside for six spacewalks, including three all-female excursions. With 42 hours and 15 minutes of EVA time, she ranks third on the list of most experienced female spacewalkers. Glover, 46, is a Navy captain, a father of four and one of only a half dozen African Americans in NASA's astronaut corps. He launched to the station aboard the first operational SpaceX Crew Dragon mission in 2021-22, logging 168 days in orbit. Glover is a veteran test pilot with more than 3,000 hours of flight time and more than 400 carrier landings. Hansen, a 47-year-old colonel in the Canadian armed forces and father of three, is a veteran F-18 fighter pilot. He will be the ninth Canadian to fly in space and the first to venture beyond Earth orbit.Read more of this story at Slashdot.