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Earlier today, more than 1,100 artificial intelligence experts, industry leaders and researchers signed a petition calling on AI developers to stop training models more powerful than OpenAI's ChatGPT-4 for at least six months. Among those who refrained from signing it was Eliezer Yudkowsky, a decision theorist from the U.S. and lead researcher at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. He's been working on aligning Artificial General Intelligence since 2001 and is widely regarded as a founder of the field. "This 6-month moratorium would be better than no moratorium," writes Yudkowsky in an opinion piece for Time Magazine. "I refrained from signing because I think the letter is understating the seriousness of the situation and asking for too little to solve it." Yudkowsky cranks up the rhetoric to 100, writing: "If somebody builds a too-powerful AI, under present conditions, I expect that every single member of the human species and all biological life on Earth dies shortly thereafter." Here's an excerpt from his piece: The key issue is not "human-competitive" intelligence (as the open letter puts it); it's what happens after AI gets to smarter-than-human intelligence. Key thresholds there may not be obvious, we definitely can't calculate in advance what happens when, and it currently seems imaginable that a research lab would cross critical lines without noticing. [...] It's not that you can't, in principle, survive creating something much smarter than you; it's that it would require precision and preparation and new scientific insights, and probably not having AI systems composed of giant inscrutable arrays of fractional numbers. [...] It took more than 60 years between when the notion of Artificial Intelligence was first proposed and studied, and for us to reach today's capabilities. Solving safety of superhuman intelligence -- not perfect safety, safety in the sense of "not killing literally everyone" -- could very reasonably take at least half that long. And the thing about trying this with superhuman intelligence is that if you get that wrong on the first try, you do not get to learn from your mistakes, because you are dead. Humanity does not learn from the mistake and dust itself off and try again, as in other challenges we've overcome in our history, because we are all gone. Trying to get anything right on the first really critical try is an extraordinary ask, in science and in engineering. We are not coming in with anything like the approach that would be required to do it successfully. If we held anything in the nascent field of Artificial General Intelligence to the lesser standards of engineering rigor that apply to a bridge meant to carry a couple of thousand cars, the entire field would be shut down tomorrow. We are not prepared. We are not on course to be prepared in any reasonable time window. There is no plan. Progress in AI capabilities is running vastly, vastly ahead of progress in AI alignment or even progress in understanding what the hell is going on inside those systems. If we actually do this, we are all going to die. You can read the full letter signed by AI leaders here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After launching My Ad Center last fall, Google is now introducing the Ads Transparency Center as a "searchable hub of all ads served from verified advertisers." 9to5Google reports: The Ads Transparency Center will let you view all the advertisements a company has run using Google's networks. Each ad includes the date it last ran, format (text, video, etc.), and what region (country) it was shown in: "For example, imagine you're seeing an ad for a skincare product you're interested in, but you don't recognize the brand, or you're curious to understand if you recognize other ads from this brand. With the Ads Transparency Center, you can look up the advertiser and learn more about them before purchasing or visiting their site." You can search by advertiser (with approximate ad quantity noted) or website, with filters for topics, time, and country. Once an advertiser is selected, Google will show the feed of ads with the ability to select for more details. You'll be able to access it directly here or from the My Ad Center, which lets you customize advertising that appears in Search, Discover, Shopping, and YouTube.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao and other senior executives have been for years concealing the crypto exchange ties with China, according to documents obtained by the Financial Times. CoinTelegraph reports: In a report on March 29, FT claims that Binance had substantial ties to China for several years, contrary to the company's claims that it left the country after a 2017 ban on crypto, including an office still in use by the end of 2019 and a Chinese bank used to pay employees. "We no longer publish our office addresses ... people in China can directly say that our office is not in China," Zhao reportedly said in a company message group in November 2017. Employees were told in 2018 that wages would be paid through a Shanghai-based bank. A year later, personnel on payroll in China were required to attend tax sessions in an office based in the country, according to FT. Based on the messages, Binance employees discussed a media report that claimed the company would open an office in Beijing in 2019. "Reminder: publicly, we have offices in Malta, Singapore, and Uganda. [...] Please do not confirm any offices anywhere else, including China." The report backs up accusations made in a lawsuit filed on March 27 by the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) against the exchange, claiming that Binance obscured the location of its executive offices, as well as the "identities and locations of the entities operating the trading platform." According to the lawsuit, Zhao stated in an internal Binance memo that the policy was intended to "keep countries clean [of violations of law]" by "not landing .com anywhere. This is the main reason .com does not land anywhere."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: As U.S. lawmakers move forward with their plans for a TikTok ban or forced sale, the app's Chinese parent company ByteDance is driving another of its social platforms into the Top Charts of the U.S. App Store. ByteDance-owned app Lemon8, an Instagram rival that describes itself as a "lifestyle community," jumped into the U.S. App Store's Top Charts on Monday, becoming the No. 10 Overall app, across both apps and games. Today, it's ranked No. 9 on the App Store's Top Apps chart, excluding games. This is a dramatic move for the little-known app and one that points to paid user acquisition efforts powering this surge. Prior to yesterday, the Lemon8 app had never before ranked in the Top 200 Overall Charts in the U.S., according to app store intelligence provided to TechCrunch by data.ai. The firm confirms that such a fast move from being an unranked app to being No. 9 among the top free apps in the U.S. -- ahead of YouTube, WhatsApp, Gmail and Facebook -- implies a "significant" and "recent" user acquisition push on the app publisher's part. Unfortunately, because the app is so new to the App Store's Top Charts, third-party app analytics firms don't yet have precise data on Lemon8's U.S. installs, or how those installs have recently changed over the past few days. [...] According to app intelligence provider Apptopia's data, Lemon8 debuted on both iOS and Android in March 2020 and has since gained 16 million global downloads, with Japan as its top market, accounting for 38% of its total installs. While the firm also doesn't have a figure for its U.S. installs, it was able to estimate the app currently has 4.25 million monthly active users. TechCrunch believes ByteDance may be leveraging TikTok to drive app installs of Lemon8. "Over on TikTok, we noticed a number of creators recently began posting about Lemon8, with many new videos appearing in just the past 24 hours," reports TechCrunch. "Concerningly, many of their reviews are extremely positive but are not marked as sponsored content. [...] In fact, some creators even said they're getting the app in case TikTok gets banned."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Electronic Arts (EA) is cutting about 800 jobs, or 6% of its workforce, and reducing office space, the video game company said Wednesday. CNBC reports: The company expects to take impairment charges ranging from $170 to $200 million, according to an SEC filing. "As we drive greater focus across our portfolio, we are moving away from projects that do not contribute to our strategy, reviewing our real estate footprint, and restructuring some of our teams," CEO Andrew Wilson wrote in a note to employees. Layoffs are "the most difficult part, and we are working through the process with the utmost care and respect," he wrote. EA had just under 13,000 employees, according to a quarterly filing in March 2022.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alphabet's Google LLC intentionally destroyed employee "chat" evidence in antitrust litigation in California and must pay sanctions and face a possible penalty at trial, a U.S. judge ruled on Tuesday. Reuters reports: U.S. District Judge James Donato in San Francisco said in his order (PDF) that Google "fell strikingly short" in its duties to preserve records. The ruling is part of a multidistrict litigation that includes a consumer class action with as many as 21 million residents; 38 states and the District of Columbia; and companies including Epic Games Inc and Match Group LLC. The consumers and other plaintiffs are challenging Google's alleged monopoly for distributing Android mobile applications, allegations that Google has denied. Plaintiffs have claimed aggregate damages of $4.7 billion. The judge asked the plaintiffs' lawyers by April 21 to provide an amount in legal fees they are seeking as a sanction. Separately, the plaintiffs will have a chance to urge Donato to tell jurors that Google destroyed information that was unfavorable to it. He said he wants to see "the state of play" at a later stage in the case. "Google has tried to downplay the problem and displayed a dismissive attitude ill tuned to the gravity of its conduct," the judge said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: It has been two years and four months since the first Apple Silicon Mac hit the market, and now Autodesk has finally updated some of its massively popular professional applications (AutoCAD and Maya) to run natively on M1 and M2 chips. The availability of AutoCAD for Mac 2024 was announced in a blog post on Autodesk's website on March 28. Like other major AutoCAD updates, it adds new features like expanded automation tools and easier workflows, but the announcement that "for the first time, AutoCAD for Mac 2024 and AutoCAD LT for Mac 2024 now run natively on both Intel and Apple Silicon architectures, including M1 and M2 chips in the M-series chips" is clearly the headlining feature. Autodesk claims that Apple Silicon support "can increase overall performance by up to two times" compared to the 2023 version of AutoCAD. A day later, on March 29, Autodesk revealed the 2024 update for Maya, its 3D modeling software chiefly used in game development, film production, and visual effects. Maya 2024 brings native Apple Silicon support in addition to a slew of new features, including the LookDevX material editor, Hydra support, and so on. But in contrast to many other makers of widespread professional software in similar industries, such as Adobe and Unity, Autodesk's efforts to support Apple Silicon -- which were announced two years ago -- have been ongoing for an interminably long time. Even open source Maya competitor Blender beat Autodesk to the punch.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft patched a dangerous security issue in Bing last month just days before it launched a new artificial intelligence-powered version of the search engine. From a report: The problem was discovered by outside researchers at the security firm Wiz. It was created by a mistake in the way that Microsoft configured applications on Azure, its cloud-computing platform, and could be used to gain access to emails and other documents of people who used Bing, the researchers said. Microsoft fixed the problem on Feb. 2, according to Ami Luttwak, Wiz's chief technology officer. Five days later Satya Nadella introduced the new generative AI capabilities to Bing, bringing a renewed interest in Microsoft's 14-year-old search engine. Usage of Bing has jumped, rising to more than 100 million daily active users in the month since the upgrade.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Companies rushing to adopt hot new types of artificial intelligence should exercise caution when using open-source versions of the technology, some of which may not work as advertised or include flaws that hackers can exploit, security researchers say. From a report: There are few ways to know in advance if a particular AI model -- a program made up of algorithms that can do such things as generate text, images and predictions -- is safe, said Hyrum Anderson, distinguished engineer at Robust Intelligence, a machine learning security company that lists the US Defense Department as a client. Anderson said he found that half the publicly available models for classifying images failed 40% of his tests. The goal was to determine whether a malicious actor could alter the outputs of AI programs in a manner that could constitute a security risk or provide incorrect information. Often, models use file types that are particularly prone to security flaws, Anderson said. It's an issue because so many companies are grabbing models from publicly available sources without fully understanding the underlying technology, rather than creating their own. Ninety percent of the companies Robust Intelligence works with download models from Hugging Face, a repository of AI models, he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While still CEO of now-collapsed FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried transferred millions of dollars to his father. Some of those funds have since been used to pay for his mounting legal fees, Forbes os reporting, citing two sources close to the company. From a report: Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of fallen cryptocurrency exchange FTX who claimed to have just $100,000 in his bank account last November, is preparing for trial in October backed by a roster of powerful attorneys. But it has remained unclear, until now, how the former billionaire would afford his pricey defense. Forbes has learned that Bankman-Fried has been paying legal fees from a multi-million dollar gift he gave his father with money borrowed from FTX's sister company. In 2021, while CEO of FTX, Bankman-Fried made a large monetary gift to his father, Stanford Law professor Joseph Bankman, two sources with operational knowledge of both companies told Forbes. It was funded by a loan from the exchange's trading firm, Alameda Research, they said. Bankman-Fried -- who has pleaded not guilty to 12 criminal charges including wire fraud, money laundering and securities fraud, and faces an additional bribery charge -- is accused of misappropriating FTX customer funds through Alameda dating back to the exchange's founding in 2019. A source close to Bankman-Fried told Forbes that his defense costs are likely in the single-digit-millions range. "I didn't steal funds, and I certainly didn't stash billions away," he wrote on Substack earlier this year. Two additional sources familiar with the family told Forbes that Bankman once begged his son to put away savings, but Bankman-Fried reportedly declined.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In the midst of perpetrating what federal prosecutors say was a massive corporate hacking campaign, Israeli private detective Aviram Azari in 2017 received welcome news. A group of hackers in India wrote him to say they had successfully infiltrated the email and social-media accounts of a group of environmental activists campaigning against Exxon. "On a happy note I would like to report some success below: Project Name Rainbow," the hackers wrote in electronic messages that were viewed by The Wall Street Journal. The messages included evidence of the successful intrusions, including screenshots of compromised email inboxes. The messages along with court records reveal new details about the hacking campaign, including that thousands of individuals and companies were targeted and at least some of the attacks resulted in the hackers successfully gaining access to the private accounts of the victims and obtaining their passwords. Among the targets was the Rockefeller Family Fund, a charity created by some of the heirs of John D. Rockefeller, who founded Exxon's forebear Standard Oil. The fund has for years been involved in campaigns arguing that Exxon hid from the public the full extent of what it knew internally about climate change and the role fossil fuels played in causing it.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Republican Senator Rand Paul on Wednesday opposed efforts in Congress to ban popular Chinese-owned social media app TikTok, which is used by more than 150 million Americans. From a report: A small but growing number of Democrats and Republicans have raised concerns, citing free speech and other issues and have objected to legislation targeting TikTok as overly broad. Republican Senator Josh Hawley said this week he hoped to get unanimous consent for a TikTok ban bill. "Congressional Republicans have come up with a national strategy to permanently lose elections for a generation: Ban a social media app called TikTok that 94 million, primarily young Americans, use," Paul said in an opinion piece published Wednesday in Louisville, Kentucky's Courier-Journal. "Before banning TikTok, these censors might want to discover that China's government already bans TikTok. Hmmm ... do we really want to emulate China's speech bans?" Paul added: "If you don't like TikTok or Facebook or YouTube, don't use them. But don't think any interpretation of the Constitution gives you the right to ban them."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

U.S. chip giant Intel said on Wednesday its first semiconductor for data center customers focused on power efficiency, Sierra Forest, would be delivered in the first half of next year, as it outlined a chip release schedule after prior delays. From a report: "It's been a challenging few years as we had introduced a lot of innovation but also a lot of complexity and our product release dates had pushed out," Intel Data Center and AI Group head Sandra Rivera told Reuters ahead of an investor event. Intel still dominates the markets for PC and server processing chips, with a market share greater than 70%, tech research firm IDC has calculated. But that is down from more than 90% in 2017. Intel's most powerful fourth-generation Xeon processor for data centers, Sapphire Rapids, had faced delays that gave competitor Advanced Micro Devices time to catch up. But Rivera said Intel's "roadmap is on track" and was "hitting all of our key engineering milestones."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple set a June 5 date for the event where it plans to unveil a mixed-reality headset, the first major new product since its smartwatch debuted eight years ago. From a report: The company scheduled its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, better known as WWDC, to kick off on that Monday and run through Friday, June 9. It typically uses the first day of the conference to discuss its next-generation platforms and operating systems. This year's conference will be held as an "all-day experience" at headquarters in Cupertino, California. Central to the agenda this time around will be the headset, likely to be dubbed the Reality One or Reality Pro, Bloomberg News has reported. Apple will also showcase the accompanying xrOS operating system and a way for developers to write apps for the device.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In a recent video, YouTuber EposVox reports that YouTube is finally rolling out AV1 live-streaming support to the platform, with the tech currently in a beta. AV1 will provide YouTube live streams with a substantial increase in video quality, and allow users to stream at up to 4K 60FPS with Twitch-limited bitrates. EposVox was able to get early access to a development build of OBS 29.1 to check out YouTube's live streaming AV1 capabilities. The newest addition to the AV1 rollout is YouTube live streaming support with AV1. YouTube just rolled out beta support for a new video live-streaming standard known as Enhanced RTMP, which will allow streamers to utilize several of the latest video codecs, including AV1, VP9, and HEVC (H.265) to live stream videos to YouTube. EposVox was able to test drive Enhanced RTMP, with a development build of OBS 21.9 to stream AV1 gaming content to YouTube directly. According to EposVox, the quality difference is night and day compared to H.264. The quality jump with AV1, allowed him to drive higher quality video to his live stream, and remove pixelation altogether. Just for perspective on how powerful AV1 is, EposVox was able to run an AV1 1440P 60FPS live stream of Halo Infinite at 500kbps - a bitrate 15x lower than the Twitch limit, and the stream was still perfectly watchable. For normal use cases, EposVox found that 8mbps was the sweet spot for 1440P 60FPS, and around 15mbps for 1440P 60FPS. For a perfectly good-looking live stream with none or close to no pixelization. For users that still want to stream 1080P video, all you'll need is a 4MBps bitrate to achieve the same result. This is a night and day difference to H.264 where 8Mbps was about the minimum you want for a high-quality 1080P 60FPS video stream, and even in this situation, pixelation is still very likely to occur with a lot of streams.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Threat actors are exploiting a critical vulnerability in an IBM file-exchange application in hacks that install ransomware on servers, security researchers have warned. From a report: The IBM Aspera Faspex is a centralized file-exchange application that large organizations use to transfer large files or large volumes of files at very high speeds. Rather than relying on TCP-based technologies such as FTP to move files, Aspera uses IBM's proprietary FASP -- short for Fast, Adaptive, and Secure Protocol -- to better utilize available network bandwidth. The product also provides fine-grained management that makes it easy for users to send files to a list of recipients in distribution lists or shared inboxes or workgroups, giving transfers a workflow that's similar to email. In late January, IBM warned of a critical vulnerability in Aspera versions 4.4.2 Patch Level 1 and earlier and urged users to install an update to patch the flaw. Tracked as CVE-2022-47986, the vulnerability makes it possible for unauthenticated threat actors to remotely execute malicious code by sending specially crafted calls to an outdated programming interface. The ease of exploiting the vulnerability and the damage that could result earned CVE-2022-47986 a severity rating of 9.8 out of a possible 10. On Tuesday, researchers from security firm Rapid7 said they recently responded to an incident in which a customer was breached using the vulnerability.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The foodstuff feeds more than half the world -- but also fuels diabetes and climate change. From a report: According to Indonesian legend, rice was bestowed upon the island of Java by the goddess Dewi Sri. Pitying its inhabitants the blandness of their existing staple, cassava, she taught them how to nurture rice seedlings in lush green paddy fields. In India, the Hindu goddess Annapurna is said to have played a similar role; in Japan, Inari. Across Asia, rice is conferred with a divine, and usually feminine, origin story. Such mythologising is understandable. For thousands of years the starchy seeds of the grass plant Oryza sativa (often called Asian rice) have been the continent's main foodstuff. Asia accounts for 90% of the world's rice production and almost as much of its consumption. Asians get more than a quarter of their daily calories from rice. The UN estimates that the average Asian consumes 77kg of rice a year -- more than the average African, European and American combined (see chart). Hundreds of millions of Asian farmers depend on growing the crop, many with only tiny patches of land. Yet the world's rice bowl is cracking. Global rice demand -- in Africa as well as Asia -- is soaring. Yet yields are stagnating. The land, water and labour that rice production requires are becoming scarcer. Climate change is a graver threat. Rising temperatures are withering crops; more frequent floods are destroying them. No mere victim of global warming, rice cultivation is also a major cause of it, because paddy fields emit a lot of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The crop that fuelled the rise of 60% of the world's population is becoming a source of insecurity and threat. Rising demand exacerbates the problem. By 2050 there will be 5.3bn people in Asia, up from 4.7bn today, and 2.5bn in Africa, up from 1.4bn. That growth is projected to drive a 30% rise in rice demand, according to a study published in the journal Nature Food. And only in the richest Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea, are bread and pasta eating into rice's monopoly as the continental staple. Yet Asia's rice productivity growth is falling. Yields increased by an annual average of only 0.9% over the past decade, down from around 1.3% in the decade before that, according to data from the UN. The drop was sharpest in South-East Asia, where the rate of increase fell from 1.4% to 0.4%.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.K. government on Wednesday published recommendations for the artificial intelligence industry, outlining an all-encompassing approach for regulating the technology at a time when it has reached frenzied levels of hype. From a report: In a white paper to be put forward to Parliament, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) will outline five principles it wants companies to follow. They are: safety, security and robustness; transparency and explainability; fairness; accountability and governance; and contestability and redress. Rather than establishing new regulations, the government is calling on regulators to apply existing regulations and inform companies about their obligations under the white paper. It has tasked the Health and Safety Executive, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the Competition and Markets Authority with coming up with "tailored, context-specific approaches that suit the way AI is actually being used in their sectors. Over the next twelve months, regulators will issue practical guidance to organisations, as well as other tools and resources like risk assessment templates, to set out how to implement these principles in their sectors," the government said. "When parliamentary time allows, legislation could be introduced to ensure regulators consider the principles consistently."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Artificial intelligence experts, industry leaders and researchers are calling on AI developers to hit the pause button on training any models more powerful than the latest iteration behind OpenAI's ChatGPT. From a report: More than 1,100 people in the industry signed a petition calling for labs to stop training powerful AI systems for at least six months to allow for the development of shared safety protocols. Prominent figures in the tech community, including Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, were listed among the signatories, although their participation could not be immediately verified. "Recent months have seen AI labs locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one -- not even their creators -- can understand, predict, or reliably control," said an open letter published on the Future of Life Institute website. "Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: A mammoth meatball has been created by a cultivated meat company, resurrecting the flesh of the long-extinct animals. The project aims to demonstrate the potential of meat grown from cells, without the slaughter of animals, and to highlight the link between large-scale livestock production and the destruction of wildlife and the climate crisis. The mammoth meatball was produced by Vow, an Australian company, which is taking a different approach to cultured meat. There are scores of companies working on replacements for conventional meat, such as chicken, pork and beef. But Vow is aiming to mix and match cells from unconventional species to create new kinds of meat. The company has already investigated the potential of more than 50 species, including alpaca, buffalo, crocodile, kangaroo, peacocks and different types of fish. The first cultivated meat to be sold to diners will be Japanese quail, which the company expects will be in restaurants in Singapore this year. [...] Vow worked with Prof Ernst Wolvetang, at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering at the University of Queensland, to create the mammoth muscle protein. His team took the DNA sequence for mammoth myoglobin, a key muscle protein in giving meat its flavor, and filled in the few gaps using elephant DNA. This sequence was placed in myoblast stem cells from a sheep, which replicated to grow to the 20 billion cells subsequently used by the company to grow the mammoth meat. "It was ridiculously easy and fast," said Wolvetang. "We did this in a couple of weeks." Initially, the idea was to produce dodo meat, he said, but the DNA sequences needed do not exist. Tim Noakesmith, cofounder of Vow, said: "We chose the woolly mammoth because it's a symbol of diversity loss and a symbol of climate change." Bas Korsten at creative agency Wunderman Thompson added: "Our aim is to start a conversation about how we eat, and what the future alternatives can look and taste like. Cultured meat is meat, but not as we know it." No one has yet to taste the mammoth meatball, notes the report. "We haven't seen this protein for thousands of years," said Wolvetang. "So we have no idea how our immune system would react when we eat it. But if we did it again, we could certainly do it in a way that would make it more palatable to regulatory bodies."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lockheed Martin has created a spinoff devoted to lunar infrastructure, Crescent Space, whose first project is a Moon-to-Earth satellite network. Engadget reports: Parsec, as it's called, uses a constellation of small lunar satellites to provide a non-stop connection between astronauts, their equipment and the people back home. The system will also provide navigation help. The technology should help explorers keep in touch, and assist with spacecraft course changes. As Lockheed Martin explains, though, it could prove vital to those on lunar soil. Parsec's nodes create a lunar equivalent to GPS, giving astronauts their exact positions and directions back to base. A rover crew might know how to return home without driving into a dangerous crater, for instance. Crescent's first Parsec nodes should be operational by 2025, with Lockheed Martin providing the satellites. And before you ask: yes, the company is clearly hoping for some big customers. CEO Joe Landon (formerly a Lockheed Martin Space VP) claims Crescent is "well positioned" to support NASA's Artemis Moon landings and other exploratory missions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Clancy William James writes via The Conversation: We have just published evidence in Nature Astronomy for what might be producing mysterious bursts of radio waves coming from distant galaxies, known as fast radio bursts or FRBs. Two colliding neutron stars -- each the super-dense core of an exploded star -- produced a burst of gravitational waves when they merged into a "supramassive" neutron star. We found that two and a half hours later they produced an FRB when the neutron star collapsed into a black hole. Or so we think. The key piece of evidence that would confirm or refute our theory -- an optical or gamma-ray flash coming from the direction of the fast radio burst -- vanished almost four years ago. In a few months, we might get another chance to find out if we are correct. [...] The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) has found two binary neutron star mergers. Crucially, the second, known as GW190425, occurred when a new FRB-hunting telescope called CHIME was also operational. However, being new, it took CHIME two years to release its first batch of data. When it did so, [Alexandra Moroianu, a masters student at the University of Western Australia and lead author of the study] quickly identified a fast radio burst called FRB 20190425A which occurred only two and a half hours after GW190425. Exciting as this was, there was a problem -- only one of LIGO's two detectors was working at the time, making it very uncertain where exactly GW190425 had come from. In fact, there was a 5% chance this could just be a coincidence. Worse, the Fermi satellite, which could have detected gamma rays from the merger -- the "smoking gun" confirming the origin of GW190425 -- was blocked by Earth at the time. [...] LIGO and two other gravitational wave detectors, Virgo and KAGRA, will turn back on in May this year, and be more sensitive than ever, while CHIME and other radio telescopes are ready to immediately detect any FRBs from neutron star mergers. In a few months, we may find out if we've made a key breakthrough -- or if it was just a flash in the pan.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: The United Kingdom's National Crime Agency (NCA) has been busy setting up phony DDoS-for-hire websites that seek to collect information on users, remind them that launching DDoS attacks is illegal, and generally increase the level of paranoia for people looking to hire such services. The NCA says all of its fake so-called "booter" or "stresser" sites -- which have so far been accessed by several thousand people -- have been created to look like they offer the tools and services that enable cyber criminals to execute these attacks. "However, after users register, rather than being given access to cyber crime tools, their data is collated by investigators," reads an NCA advisory on the program. "Users based in the UK will be contacted by the National Crime Agency or police and warned about engaging in cyber crime. Information relating to those based overseas is being passed to international law enforcement." The NCA declined to say how many phony booter sites it had set up, or for how long they have been running. The NCA says hiring or launching attacks designed to knock websites or users offline is punishable in the UK under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. "Going forward, people who wish to use these services can't be sure who is actually behind them, so why take the risk?" the NCA announcement continues.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

quonset writes: In what has to be one of the most inconceivable confluences ever, the Norwegian company Nammo says it is unable to expand its production of artillery shells to support Ukraine because of "cat videos" on TikTok. To placate European scrutiny, TikTok is opening two data centers in Europe to house European user data locally. One of those data centers is in the Hamar region of Norway. Because of this expansion, there is no excess capacity for the factory to ramp up production of artillery shells. "The chief executive of Nammo, which is co-owned by the Norwegian government, said a planned expansion of its largest factory in central Norway hit a roadblock due to a lack of surplus energy, with the construction of TikTok's new data centre using up electricity in the local area," reports the Guardian. "Elvia, the local energy provider, confirmed to the Financial Times that the electricity network had no spare capacity after allocating it to the data center on a first-come, first-served basis. Additional capacity would take time to become available." "We are concerned because we see our future growth is challenged by the storage of cat videos," Morten Brandtzaeg told the Financial Times.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Disney has eliminated a small business unit focused on exploring the metaverse, part of its initial efforts to reduce its workforce by about 7,000 employees. Deadline reports: About 50 workers were part of the group dedicated to "next-generation storytelling and consumer experiences." Mike White, a former consumer products exec who had been leading the unit, will remain at the company in a yet-to-be-determined role, the source said. On Monday, Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed in a staff memo that the first of three rounds of layoffs is starting this week as the company pushes toward a stated goal of $5.5 billion in cost savings. Word emerged Monday evening of a number of exec departures across the company's general entertainment operations.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Valve announced today that Steam will require Windows 10 or later on January 1, 2024. The reason? Google Chrome. PC Gamer reports: "The newest features in Steam rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which no longer functions on older versions of Windows," Valve's typically curt announcement reads. "In addition, future versions of Steam will require Windows feature and security updates only present in Windows 10 and above." January 1, 2024 is the day of doom for Steam on the old Windows versions. "After that date, the Steam Client will no longer run on those versions of Windows. In order to continue running Steam and any games or other products purchased through Steam, users will need to update to a more recent version of Windows."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: European Union countries gave final approval on Tuesday to a landmark law to end sales of new CO2-emitting cars in 2035, after Germany won an exemption for cars running on e-fuels. The approval from EU countries' energy ministers means Europe's main climate policy for cars can now enter into force -- after weeks of delay caused by last-minute opposition from Germany. The EU law will require all new cars sold to have zero CO2 emissions from 2035, and 55% lower CO2 emissions from 2030, versus 2021 levels. The targets are designed to drive the rapid decarbonization of new car fleets in Europe. "The direction of travel is clear: in 2035, new cars and vans must have zero emissions," EU climate policy chief Frans Timmermans said. E-fuels are considered carbon neutral because they are made using captured CO2 emissions -- which proponents say balances out the CO2 released when the fuel is combusted in an engine. The Commission will, in autumn 2023, propose how sales of e-fuel-only cars can continue after 2035. Such cars will have to use technology to prevent them from starting when filled with petrol or diesel.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was charged with directing $40 million in bribes to one or more Chinese officials to unfreeze assets relating to his cryptocurrency business in a rewritten indictment unsealed Tuesday. CBS News reports: The charge of conspiracy to violate the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act means Bankman-Fried faces now faces a total of 13 charges after being arrested in the Bahamas last December and brought to the United States soon thereafter. [...] The indictment said Chinese law enforcement authorities in early 2021 froze certain Alameda crypto-trading accounts on two of China's largest cryptocurrency exchanges. The accounts, it said, contained about $1 billion worth of crypto. Bankman-Fried understood that the accounts had been frozen by Chinese authoritIes as part of an ongoing probe of a particular Alameda trading counterparty, the indictment said. After Bankman-Fried failed several attempts to unfreeze the accounts through the use of lawyers and lobbying, the 31-year-old ultimately agreed to direct a multimillion dollar bribe to try to unfreeze the accounts, the indictment said. "Bankman-Fried and others sought to regain access to the assets to fund additional Alameda trading activity, in order to assist Bankman-Fried and Alameda in obtaining and retaining business," court documents state. The bribe payment of cryptocurrency -- then worth about $40 million -- was moved from Alameda's main trading account to a private cryptocurrency wallet in November 2021 and the frozen accounts were unfrozen at about the same time, the indictment said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

prisoninmate shares a report from 9to5Linux: The Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix distribution has become an official Ubuntu flavor and will join the rest of the flavors starting with the upcoming Ubuntu 23.04 (Lunar Lobster) release. Created and maintained by members of the Linux community, Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix is an Ubuntu derivative that features the modern Cinnamon desktop environment developed by the Linux Mint team. Cinnamon Remix aims to offer a traditional approach to the modern Linux desktop. Until now, the maintainers of Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix did a very good job keeping up with all upstream Ubuntu releases, even offering a custom version of the official wallpaper of each new Ubuntu release to match the Cinnamon desktop environment's style. Ubuntu Cinnamon will not be the only new official Ubuntu flavor this Spring when Ubuntu 23.04 will be released as the maintainers of Ubuntu Unity have also managed to obtain official Ubuntu flavor status last year in September. As with Ubuntu Unity, the next step now for the Ubuntu Cinnamon maintainers is to bake daily ISO images in preparation for the upcoming Lunar Lobster release and maybe even take part in the Ubuntu 23.04 beta release later this week on March 30th. The latest Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix release and can be downloaded here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a Substack post, Norm Sohl describes how he built a highly configurable machine out of open source hardware plans and the thermal guts of an Espresso Gaggia. An anonymous reader shares a summary from Ars Technica: Like many home espresso enthusiasts, Sohl had seen that his preferred machine, the Gaggia Classic Pro, could be modified in several ways, including adding a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller and other modifications to better control temperature, pressure, and shot volumes. Most intriguing to Sohl was Gaggiuino, a project that adds those things with the help of an Arduino Nano or STM32 Blackpill, a good deal of electrical work, and open software. Sohl ended up creating a loose guide to making your own highly configurable machine out of common espresso machine parts and the Gaggiuino software. From his own machine, he salvaged a pump with a pressure sensor, a boiler with a temperature sensor, an overpressure valve, and brew head. Sohl made a chassis for his new machine out of extrusion rails and stiffening plates. The high-voltage boards and components were assembled breadboard style onto acrylic panels, held up by poster-tack adhesive. A 120-volt power connector was salvaged from a PC power supply, then mounted with a 3D-printed bracket. The low-voltage wires and parts were also tacked onto acrylic, individually crimped, and heat shrink-wrapped. And the control panel was 3D-printed, allowing for toggle switches and a touch-panel screen. There's more work to be done on Sohl's unit; the exposed boiler and 120-volt wiring need to be hidden, and a drip tray would be nice. But it works. The first shot was fast and under-extracted, suggesting a finer grind and settings changes. Then again, that describes almost every first-time home espresso setup. Sohl writes that he hopes future versions of his project will make use of the Gaggiuino project's own circuit board design and that he'll have his 3D project files posted for sharing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon is starting to warn consumers when products sold on its platform are regularly shipped back for returns. The Verge: As reported by The Information, Amazon is rolling out a warning label on "frequently returned" products that will encourage consumers to check the item details and reviews before making their purchase, helping customers avoid misleading or low-quality products and reducing unnecessary returns. Currently, Amazon's return policy allows customers to return new and unused items up to 30 days after purchase, usually for free, unless the item is deemed nonreturnable. But returning a product is still a hassle and a bad experience for customers -- and Amazon's platform is rife with counterfeits and cheaply produced, low-quality, and sometimes deceptively marketed products bolstered with fake reviews. Having a visible warning that such items are usually returned not only deters consumers from buying them but also could encourage retailers to be honest about their listings or at least improve on issues that lead to higher product returns in the first place. The returns warning has already appeared on a few third-party listings fulfilled by Amazon, such as the Pro-Ject Automat A1 record player and two dresses spotted by The Information. You may need to be logged in to an Amazon account to see the returns notifications. These three items have a reasonably high star rating, which may initially reassure prospective consumers, but glancing at the customer reviews indicates that the products are not true to size or have previously arrived damaged.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft, extending a frenzy of artificial intelligence software releases, is introducing new chat tools that can help cybersecurity teams ward off hacks and clean up after an attack. From a report: The latest of Microsoft's AI assistant tools -- the software giant likes to call them Copilots -- uses OpenAI's new GPT-4 language system and data specific to the security field, the company said Tuesday. The idea is to help security workers more quickly see connections between various parts of a hack, such as a suspicious email, malicious software file or the parts of the system that were compromised. Microsoft and other security software companies have been using machine-learning techniques to root out suspicious behavior and spot vulnerabilities for several years. But the newest AI technologies allow for faster analysis and add the ability to use plain English questions, making it easier for employees who may not be experts in security or AI. That's important because there's a shortage of workers with these skills, said Vasu Jakkal, Microsoft's vice president for security, compliance, identity and privacy. Hackers, meanwhile, have only gotten faster.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Russia is helping Iran gain advanced digital-surveillance capabilities as Tehran seeks deeper cooperation on cyberwarfare, WSJ reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter said, adding another layer to a burgeoning military alliance that the U.S. sees as a threat. From the report: The potential for cyberwarfare collaboration comes after Iran has, according to U.S. and Iranian officials, sold Russia drones for use in Ukraine, agreed to provide short-range missiles to Moscow and shipped tank and artillery rounds to the battlefield. Tehran is seeking the cyber help along with what U.S. and Iranian officials have said are requests for dozens of elite Russian attack helicopters and jet fighters and aid with its long-range missile program. Russia and Iran both have sophisticated cyber capabilities and have long collaborated with each other, signing a cyber-cooperation agreement two years ago that analysts said focused mostly on cyber-defense networks. Moscow has long resisted sharing digital-offensive capabilities with Iran in the past, for fear they will end up being sold later on the dark web, the people said. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Russia has provided Iran with communication-surveillance capabilities as well as eavesdropping devices, advanced photography devices and lie detectors, people familiar with the matter said. Moscow has likely already shared with Iran more advanced software that would allow it to hack the phones and systems of dissidents and adversaries, the people said. Russian authorities have determined that the benefits of advancing the military relationship with Iran outweigh any downsides, the people said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alphabet's Google is striking a partnership to combine its artificial intelligence language models with software from startup Replit that helps computer programmers write code, a bid to compete with a similar product from Microsoft's GitHub and OpenAI. From a report: Replit's Ghostwriter, which has 20 million users, will rely on Google's language-generation AI to improve its ability to suggest blocks of code, complete programs and answer developer questions. Google Cloud Vice President June Yang declined to specify which language AI products Replit will use, noting that it's a customized combination of systems that address different tasks like chat and code-generation. Previously, Replit built the product with its own AI. Google "has much better technology than most people know," Replit Chief Executive Officer Amjad Masad said in an interview. The startup will also expand its use of Google's cloud services and hopes the relationship with the tech giant will help it win over larger corporate customers -- right now Replit's clients are largely individual developers and startups. Google also will distribute Replit's software as part of the partnership. GitHub, which is wholly owned by Microsoft, last year released a product called Copilot, which suggests blocks of code as a software developer types, speeding up the process and automating rote or finicky coding tasks.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence could lead to the automation of a quarter of the work done in the US and eurozone, according to research by Goldman Sachs. From a report: The investment bank said on Monday that "generative" AI systems such as ChatGPT, which can create content that is indistinguishable from human output, could spark a productivity boom that would eventually raise annual global gross domestic product by 7 percent over a 10-year period. But if the technology lived up to its promise, it would also bring "significant disruption" to the labor market, exposing the equivalent of 300 million full-time workers across big economies to automation, according to Joseph Briggs and Devesh Kodnani, the paper's authors. Lawyers and administrative staff would be among those at greatest risk of becoming redundant. They calculate that roughly two-thirds of jobs in the US and Europe are exposed to some degree of AI automation, based on data on the tasks typically performed in thousands of occupations. Most people would see less than half of their workload automated and would probably continue in their jobs, with some of their time freed up for more productive activities. In the US, this should apply to 63 percent of the workforce, they calculated. A further 30 percent working in physical or outdoor jobs would be unaffected, although their work might be susceptible to other forms of automation. But about 7 percent of US workers are in jobs where at least half of their tasks could be done by generative AI and are vulnerable to replacement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Windows Central reports: According to my sources who are familiar with Microsoft's plans, the company is once again hard at work on a new project internally that's designed to modernize the Windows platform with many of the same innovations it was working on for Windows Core OS, but with a focus on native compatibility for legacy Win32 applications on devices where it makes sense. The project is codenamed CorePC and is designed to be a modular and customizable variant of Windows for Microsoft to leverage different form factors with. Not all Windows PCs need the full breadth of legacy Win32 app support, and CorePC will allow Microsoft to configure "editions" of Windows with varying levels of feature and app compatibility. The big change with CorePC versus the current shipping version of Windows is that CorePC is state separated, just like Windows Core OS. State separation enables faster updates and a more secure platform via read-only partitions that are inaccessible to the user and third-party apps, just like on iPadOS or Android. [...] CorePC splits up the OS into multiple partitions, which is key to enabling faster OS updates. State separation also enables faster and more reliable system reset functionality, which is important for Chromebook compete devices in the education sector. [...] My sources tell me CorePC will allow Microsoft to finally deliver a version of Windows that truly competes with Chromebooks in OS footprint, performance, and capabilities. [...] Microsoft is also working on a version of CorePC that meet the current feature set and capabilities of Windows desktop, but with state separation enabled for those faster OS updates and improved security benefits. The company is working on a compatibility layer codenamed Neon for legacy apps that require a shared state OS to function, too. Lastly, I hear that Microsoft is experimenting with a version of CorePC that's "silicon-optimized," designed to reduce legacy overhead, focus on AI capabilities, and vertically optimize hardware and software experiences in a way similar to that of Apple Silicon. Unsurprisingly, AI experiences are a key focus for Windows going into 2024.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

GitHub, the popular developer platform, has laid off virtually its entire engineering team in India as the Microsoft-owned firm cuts its expenses amid weakening global market conditions. From a report: The developer firm has eliminated over 100 jobs in the South Asian market, a person familiar with the matter said. GitHub informed the employees about the job cut on Tuesday.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Belgium's intelligence service is scrutinizing the operations of technology giant Huawei as fears of Chinese espionage grow around the EU and NATO headquarters in Brussels, according to confidential documents seen by POLITICO and three people familiar with the matter. From the report: In recent months, Belgium's State Security Service (VSSE) has requested interviews with former employees of the company's lobbying operation in the heart of Brussels' European district. The intelligence gathering is part of security officials' activities to scrutinize how China may be using non-state actors -- including senior lobbyists in Huawei's Brussels office -- to advance the interests of the Chinese state and its Communist party in Europe, said the people, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. The scrutiny of Huawei's EU activities comes as Western security agencies are sounding the alarm over companies with links to China. British, Dutch, Belgian, Czech and Nordic officials -- as well as EU functionaries -- have all been told to stay off TikTok on work phones over concerns similar to those surrounding Huawei, namely that Chinese security legislation forces Chinese tech firms to hand over data. The scrutiny also comes amid growing evidence of foreign states' influence on EU decision-making -- a phenomenon starkly exposed by the recent Qatargate scandal, where the Gulf state sought to influence Brussels through bribes and gifts via intermediary organizations. The Belgian security services are tasked with overseeing operations led by foreign actors around the EU institutions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple: Apple today introduced Apple Pay Later in the U.S. Designed with users' financial health in mind, Apple Pay Later allows users to split purchases into four payments, spread over six weeks with no interest and no fees. Users can easily track, manage, and repay their Apple Pay Later loans in one convenient location in Apple Wallet. Users can apply for Apple Pay Later loans of $50 to $1,000, which can be used for online and in-app purchases made on iPhone and iPad with merchants that accept Apple Pay. Starting today, Apple will begin inviting select users to access a prerelease version of Apple Pay Later, with plans to offer it to all eligible users in the coming months. Apple Pay Later is built right into Wallet, so users can seamlessly view, track, and manage all of their loans in one place. With Apple Pay Later in Wallet, users can easily see the total amount due for all of their existing loans, as well as the total amount due in the next 30 days. Apple Pay Later is offered by Apple Financing, a subsidiary of Apple, which is responsible for credit assessment and lending. Apple Financing plans to report Apple Pay Later loans to U.S. credit bureaus starting this fall, so they are reflected in users' overall financial profiles and can help promote responsible lending for both the lender and the borrower.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter Ironsights shares a report: U.S. President Joe Biden has invoked the Defense Production Act to spend $50 million on domestic and Canadian production of printed circuit boards, citing the technology's importance to national defense. Printed circuit boards are incorporated into missiles and radars, as well as electronics used for energy and healthcare. Without presidential action under the act, "United States industry cannot reasonably be expected to provide the capability for the needed industrial resource, material, or critical technology item in a timely manner," Biden wrote in the memo. "I find that action to expand the domestic production capability for printed circuit boards and advanced packaging is necessary to avert an industrial resource or critical technology item shortfall that would severely impair national defense capability," Biden said. The move would speed up contracts, said Franklin Turner, a government contracts lawyer at McCarter & English, "by streamlining and prioritizing the procurement processes for these critical technologies, which are used in a variety of defense theaters around the world, including the current conflict in Ukraine."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Back in 2019, Amazon announced Sidewalk, its low-bandwidth, long-range wireless network that uses the 900 MHz spectrum to connect Internet of Things (IoT) devices. It does this by creating a mesh network between Amazon's own Echo and Ring devices and sharing a small part of their owner's bandwidth. Ideally, this means Sidewalk will be able to connect devices that sit beyond the reach of a Bluetooth or Wi-Fi signal. Until now, though, only a select number of developers were able to build applications for the network. But that's changing today. The company is now shipping software and hardware development kits, as well as an easy-to-use test kit to test the available Sidewalk connectivity in your neighborhood. Using the new test kit, developers will be able to check their local signal strength on a map to get a better sense of whether their devices will be able to connect to the network before they start working on a product. Amazon sent me one of these Ring-branded devices to try. Getting started with it involves little more than powering it up (it does have a battery for mobile usage) and logging into Amazon's web-based Sidewalk coverage service. From there, you can quickly see all of the raw data from the GPS-enabled test kit and get access to Amazon's U.S.-wide coverage map. To ensure user privacy, the coverage maps only show coverage within a 900m-by-900m square area. You will be able to see the exact location of your own device, but not other devices that report into the coverage map.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chinese e-commerce group Alibaba Group Holding will reorganize into six business groups and pursue public listings for five of them, in the most significant governance overhaul since the company was established 24 years ago. From a report: The company announced the move on Tuesday, a day after founder Jack Ma's surprise return to China following a lengthy stint abroad. The six business groups will focus on sectors such as cloud computing, e-commerce and logistics. "This transformation will empower all our businesses to become more agile, enhance decision-making, and enable faster responses to market changes," chief executive Daniel Zhang said in a letter to employees. The six new groups will be: Cloud Intelligence Group, Taobao Tmall Commerce Group, Local Service Group, Cainiao Smart Logistics, Global Digital Commerce Group and Digital Media and Entertainment Group. Each of the groups will be run by its own CEO and board of directors, with the CEOs assuming full responsibility for company performance. Zhang will remain chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group, which will follow a holding company management model. He will also serve as the CEO of the Cloud Intelligence Group, which will be responsible for the company's cloud and artificial intelligence businesses. Zhang became acting president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence after its cloud service suffered what the company described as "the longest large-scale outage in more than a decade" in Hong Kong in late December.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Facial recognition firm Clearview has run nearly a million searches for US police, its founder has told the BBC CEO Hoan Ton-That also revealed Clearview now has 30 billion images scraped from platforms such as Facebook, taken without users' permissions. [...] The company is banned from selling its services to most US companies, after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) took Clearview AI to court in Illinois for breaking privacy law. But there is an exemption for police, and Mr Ton-That says his software is used by hundreds of police forces across the US. Police in the US do not routinely reveal whether they use the software, and it is banned in several US cities including Portland, San Francisco and Seattle. The use of facial recognition by the police is often sold to the public as only being used for serious or violent crimes. In a rare interview with law enforcement about the effectiveness of Clearview, Miami Police said they used the software for every type of crime, from murders to shoplifting. Assistant Chief of Police Armando Aguilar said his team used the system about 450 times a year, and that it had helped solve several murders. However, critics say there are almost no laws around the use of facial recognition by police.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For the first time, scientists may have discovered indirect evidence that large amounts of invisible dark matter surround black holes. The discovery, if confirmed, could represent a major breakthrough in dark matter research. Space.com reports: Dark matter makes up around 85% of all matter in the universe, but it is almost completely invisible to astronomers. This is because, unlike the matter that comprises stars, planets and everything else around us, dark matter doesn't interact with light and can't be seen. Fortunately, dark matter does interact gravitationally, enabling researchers to infer the presence of dark matter by looking at its gravitational effects on ordinary matter "proxies." In the new research, a team of scientists from The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) used stars orbiting black holes in binary systems as these proxies. The team watched as the orbits of two stars decayed, or slightly slowed, by about 1 millisecond per year while moving around their companion black holes, designated A0620-00 and XTE J1118+480. The team concluded that the slow-down was the result of dark matter surrounding the black holes which generated significant friction and a drag on the stars as they whipped around their high-mass partners. Using computer simulations of the black hole systems, the team applied a widely held model in cosmology called the dark matter dynamical friction model, which predicts a specific loss of momentum on objects interacting gravitationally with dark matter. The simulations revealed that the observed rates of orbital decay matched the predictions of the friction model. The observed rate of orbital decay is around 50 times greater than the theoretical estimation of about 0.02 milliseconds of orbital decay per year for binary systems lacking dark matter. The study has been published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: For the first time ever, renewable power generation -- that's wind, solar, hydro, biomass, and geothermal -- exceeded coal-fired generation in the US electric power sector in 2022, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). Overall, the US electric power sector produced 4,090 million megawatt-hours (MWh) of power in 2022. Wind and solar's combined total generation increased from 12% in 2021 to 14% in 2022. Hydropower stayed the same last year at 6%, and biomass and geothermal also remained unchanged, at less than 1%. So that's a total of 21%. Utility-scale solar capacity in the US electric power sector -- the EIA doesn't include rooftop solar -- increased from 61 gigawatts (GW) in 2021 to 71 GW in 2022, according to EIA data. Wind capacity grew from 133 GW in 2021 to 141 GW in 2022. Coal-fired generation, on the other hand, dropped from 23% in 2021 to 20% in 2022 because a number of coal-fired power plants retired, and the plants still online were used less. Renewables surpassed nuclear generation for the first time in 2021, and that trend continued last year. Nuclear dropped from 20% in 2021 to 19% in 2022 because Michigan's Palisades nuclear power plant was retired in May 2022. However, Palisades' new owner, Holtec, wants to restart it, and this idea is not proving particularly popular, with one environmental group saying that would risk a "Chernobyl-scale catastrophe." The Biden administration pledged $6 billion on March 2 to help extend the operating life of aging nuclear power plants in order to help the US combat climate change. However, natural gas is still the largest source of US electricity generation, and it grew from 37% in 2021 to 39% in 2022. This month, the EIA forecast that both wind and solar will each grow by 1% in 2023. Natural gas is forecast to remain unchanged, and coal is forecast to decline by 3% to 17% next year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Google-led research paper published in Nature, claiming machine-learning software can design better chips faster than humans, has been called into question after a new study disputed its results. The Register reports: In June 2021, Google made headlines for developing a reinforcement-learning-based system capable of automatically generating optimized microchip floorplans. These plans determine the arrangement of blocks of electronic circuitry within the chip: where things such as the CPU and GPU cores, and memory and peripheral controllers, actually sit on the physical silicon die. Google said it was using this AI software to design its homegrown TPU chips that accelerate AI workloads: it was employing machine learning to make its other machine-learning systems run faster. The research got the attention of the electronic design automation community, which was already moving toward incorporating machine-learning algorithms into their software suites. Now Google's claims of its better-than-humans model has been challenged by a team at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Led by Andrew Kahng, a professor of computer science and engineering, that group spent months reverse engineering the floorplanning pipeline Google described in Nature. The web giant withheld some details of its model's inner workings, citing commercial sensitivity, so the UCSD had to figure out how to make their own complete version to verify the Googlers' findings. Prof Kahng, we note, served as a reviewer for Nature during the peer-review process of Google's paper. The university academics ultimately found their own recreation of the original Google code, referred to as circuit training (CT) in their study, actually performed worse than humans using traditional industry methods and tools. What could have caused this discrepancy? One might say the recreation was incomplete, though there may be another explanation. Over time, the UCSD team learned Google had used commercial software developed by Synopsys, a major maker of electronic design automation (EDA) suites, to create a starting arrangement of the chip's logic gates that the web giant's reinforcement learning system then optimized. The Google paper did mention that industry-standard software tools and manual tweaking were used after the model had generated a layout, primarily to ensure the processor would work as intended and finalize it for fabrication. The Googlers argued this was a necessary step whether the floorplan was created by a machine-learning algorithm or by humans with standard tools, and thus its model deserved credit for the optimized end product. However, the UCSD team said there was no mention in the Nature paper of EDA tools being used beforehand to prepare a layout for the model to iterate over. It's argued these Synopsys tools may have given the model a decent enough head start that the AI system's true capabilities should be called into question. The lead authors of Google's paper, Azalia Mirhoseini and Anna Goldie, said the UCSD team's work isn't an accurate implementation of their method. They pointed out (PDF) that Prof Kahng's group obtained worse results since they didn't pre-train their model on any data at all. Prof Kahng's team also did not train their system using the same amount of computing power as Google used, and suggested this step may not have been carried out properly, crippling the model's performance. Mirhoseini and Goldie also said the pre-processing step using EDA applications that was not explicitly described in their Nature paper wasn't important enough to mention. The UCSD group, however, said they didn't pre-train their model because they didn't have access to the Google proprietary data. They claimed, however, their software had been verified by two other engineers at the internet giant, who were also listed as co-authors of the Nature paper. Separately, a fired Google AI researcher claims the internet goliath's research paper was "done in context of a large potential Cloud deal" worth $120 million at the time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Zoom is partnering with OpenAI to bring AI-generated summaries, message drafts, and more to the video conferencing app through its Zoom IQ AI-powered assistant. The Verge reports: While Zoom IQ can already do things like create chapters and highlights for recorded meetings, Zoom's giving the assistant even more features, including a way to catch up on meetings that you may have been late to. That means you'll be able to ask the tool to summarize what you've missed as well as "ask further questions." Additionally, Zoom IQ can do several other things, like generate whiteboards based on text prompts and provide recaps of meetings as well as summarize threads in Zoom Team Chat. Similar to the ChatGPT bot coming to Slack, Zoom IQ also lets you generate responses to your colleagues using AI. The company says it's planning to roll out AI-powered message and email drafts on an invitation-only basis in April but will introduce "select" Zoom IQ meeting summary features "more broadly."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lebanon's government has reversed a decision to delay the shift to daylight savings time by a month, which had sparked both anger and confusion. The BBC reports: Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati announced that clocks would now go forward on Wednesday night. He had agreed to a delay last week so Muslims could break their fasts earlier during the holy month of Ramadan. But Christian authorities defied the order and changed their clocks as usual on Sunday, which was the last in March. Many businesses, media outlets and educational institutions followed suit, leaving people living in one of the smallest countries in the Middle East struggling to deal with two different time zones. Mr Mikati, who is a Sunni Muslim, insisted on Monday that his initial decision to delay the time change until 20 April to "relieve" those fasting during Ramadan had not been for "sectarian reasons", adding: "A decision like this should not have triggered such sectarian responses." He blamed the deep political and religious divisions that have resulted in parliament being unable to agree on a new president since October and a caretaker cabinet with limited powers being left to run the country. "The problem is not summer time or winter time... The problem is the presidential vacuum."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Record: A national association of current and former military digital security leaders is calling on Congress to establish a separate cyber service, arguing that the lack of one creates an "unnecessary risk" to U.S. national security. In a March 26 memorandum, the Military Cyber Professional Association urged lawmakers to establish a U.S. Cyber Force in this year's annual defense policy bill. "For over a decade, each service has taken their own approach to providing United States Cyber Command forces to employ and the predictable results remain inconsistent readiness and effectiveness," according to the group, which boasts around 3,700 members. "Only a service, with all its trappings, can provide the level of focus needed to achieve optimal results in their given domain," the memo states. "Cyberspace, being highly contested and increasingly so, is the only domain of conflict without an aligned service. How much longer will our citizenry endure this unnecessary risk?" The creation of a Cyber Force would follow the arrival of the Space Force in 2019. It was the first new branch of the U.S. military in 72 years, bringing the total to six. The association's missive is likely to spark fresh debate on Capitol Hill, where an increasing number of policymakers see a cyber-specific military service as an inevitability. [..] In its memo, the association says that while "steps should be taken to establish such a service, with urgency, pursuing it in a hasty manner would likely prove to be a source of great disruption and risk to our own forces and operations." Therefore, any legislative approval of a Cyber Force should be accompanied by a "thorough study to determine what this military service should look like, how it be implemented, and the applicable timeline," according to the group.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Plans for a government backed non-fungible token (NFT) produced by the Royal Mint have been dropped, the Treasury has announced. The BBC reports: Rishi Sunak ordered the creation of a "NFT for Britain" that could be traded online, while chancellor in April 2022. The Treasury announced it was "not proceeding with the launch" following a consultation with the Royal Mint. But economic secretary Andrew Griffiths said the department would keep the proposal "under review." Responding to the announcement, Harriet Baldwin, chair of the Treasury Select Committee, said: "We have not yet seen a lot of evidence that our constituents should be putting their money in these speculative tokens unless they are prepared to lose all their money. "So perhaps that is why the Royal Mint has made this decision in conjunction with the Treasury." The Treasury is working to regulate some cryptocurrencies and had planned to enter the NFT market as part of a wider bid to make the UK a hub for digital payment companies. In April 2022, the then-chancellor Mr Sunak said: "We want to see the [cryptocurrency] businesses of tomorrow - and the jobs they create - here in the UK, and by regulating effectively we can give them the confidence they need to think and invest long-term."Read more of this story at Slashdot.