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Long-time Slashdot reader theodp notes Microsoft's friendly relationship with North Dakota, pointing out that in 2017 Microsoft's president Brad Smith said the company would provide the state "cash grants, technology, curriculum and resources to nonprofits" and also "partner with schools to strengthen their ability to offer digital skills and computer science education to the youth they serve.""We just have such a good relationship with the community. We were also excited about Doug Burgum's election as governor. We had confidence that Doug, as governor, would bring a real focus on innovation that would focus on both changes in government and changes in technology." Before being elected Governor in 2016 (with the endorsement of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and financial backing from Bill Gates), former Microsoft exec Burgum sold his Fargo-based Great Plains Software business to Microsoft in 2002 for $1.1 billion and joined the software giant, where he reported directly to Steve Ballmer (a college friend) and managed Nadella (who became chief of Microsoft Business Solutions after Burgum's 2007 departure). "We need a national movement for coding and computer science in our public schools [...] We need to influence, we need to support, we need to reform public policy as we're seeing here in North Dakota," Microsoft's Smith exhorted to TEDxFargo attendees in his return to North Dakota. "We need to make sure that computer science counts towards high school graduation." Mission accomplished. On Friday, North Dakota's governor Doug Burgum and School Superintendent Kirsten Baesler celebrated the governor's signing of HB1398, the Microsoft-supported bill which requires the teaching of computer science and cybersecurity and the integration of these content standards into school coursework from kindergarten through 12th grade. (Two of the ten members of North Dakota's K-12 CS and Cybersecurity Standards Review Committee were from Microsoft). The superintendent said North Dakota is the first state in the nation to approve legislation requiring cybersecurity education. "Today is the culmination of years of work by stakeholders from all sectors to recognize and promote the importance of cybersecurity and computer science education in our elementary, middle and high schools," superintendent Baesler said at Friday's bill signing ceremony. Baesler said EduTech, a division of bill supporter North Dakota Information Technology that provides IT support and professional development for K-12 educators, will be developing examples of cybersecurity and computer science education integration plans that may be used to assist local schools develop their own plans. EduTech is a Regional Partner of tech-backed nonprofit Code.org, which also voiced its support for HB1398. Code.org's Board of Directors include Microsoft President Brad Smith and CTO Kevin Scott. Burgum, who joined Code.org's Governors Partnership for K-12 Computer Science in 2017, was also among 45 of the nation's State Governors who last July signed a Compact To Expand K-12 Computer Science Education in their states in response to a public letter from the CEOs for CS (including Microsoft's Nadella and Smith), part of a campaign organized by Code.org that called for state governments and education leaders to bring more CS to K-12 students to meet the future demands of the American workforce. Code.org has set a goal to make CS a high school graduation requirement for every student in all 50 states by the end of the decade.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: Is there a dark side to online dating apps like Tinder? "According to the FTC, reports of fraud losses from romance scams topped $1.3 billion in 2022," reports the Verge. The head of the FBI's Portland field office tells them that "Technology gives you this false sense of trust." But the co-founder of the nonprofit Advocating Against Romance Scammers argues it's more than that — that technology "gives criminals a crucial tool to find new victims, and they are definitely getting more brazen overall." And then the Verge tells the story of a 32-year-old technology entrepreneur and self-proclaimed multimillionaire who didn't see the red flags when a mysterious date on Tinder asked him what kind of car he owned — and told him that when he paid for their hotel room, bring cash... Yes, he ends up being carjacked at gunpoint in a Tinder car-theft scheme by a largely transient con artist. But then he posts to his 245,000 followers on Instagram — hiring a marketing company to manage a car-recovery campaign. He hears from fences who offer to sell back his car for $30,000 — along with an alleged police informant. There's good luck and bad luck in this wild tale of car chases, police scanners, a neighborhood they call "Methville," and an attempt to bring accountability to a 21-year-old catfisher and her two 18-year-old acomplices. But the story ends with the 32-year-old self-proclaimed multimillionaire back on Tinder, looking for another date.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"With an 8-core Rockchip RK3588S SoC, the Orange Pi 5 is leaps and bounds faster than the aging Raspberry Pi 4," writes Phoronix:With up to 32GB of RAM, the Orange Pi 5 is also capable of serving for a more diverse user-base and even has enough potential for assembling a budget Arm Linux developer desktop. I've been testing out the Orange Pi 5 the past few weeks and it's quite fast and nice for its low price point. The Orange Pi 5 single board computer was announced last year and went up for pre-ordering at the end of 2022.... When it comes to the software support, among the officially available options for the Orange Pi 5 are Orange Pi OS, Ubuntu, Debian, Android, and Armbian. Other ARM Linux distributions will surely see varying levels of support while even the readily available ISO selection offered by Orange Pi is off to a great start.... Granted, the Orange Pi developer community isn't as large as that of the Raspberry Pi community or the current range of accessories and documentation, but for those more concerned about features and performance, the Orange Pi 5 is extremely interesting. The article includes Orange Pi 5 specs:A 26-pin headerHDMI 2.1, Gigabit LAN, M.2 PCIe 2.0, and USB3 connectivityA Mali G510 MP4 graphics processor, "which has open-source driver hope via the Panfrost driver stack."Four different versions with 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB of RAM using LPDDR4 or LPDDR4X. "The Orange Pi 4GB retails for ~$88, the Orange Pi 5 8GB version retails for $108, and the Orange Pi 5 16GB version retails for $138, while as of writing the 32GB version wasn't in stock."In 169 performance benchmarks (compared to Raspberry Pi 4 boards), "this single board computer came out to delivering 2.85x the performance of the Raspberry Pi 400 overall." And through all this the average SoC temperature was 71 degrees with a peak of 85 degrees — without any extra heatsink or cooling.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"A shrinking number of kids are reading widely and voraciously for fun," writes a New York-based children's book author in the Atlantic. But why?The ubiquity and allure of screens surely play a large part in this — most American children have smartphones by the age of 11 — as does learning loss during the pandemic. But this isn't the whole story. A survey just before the pandemic by the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that the percentages of 9- and 13-year-olds who said they read daily for fun had dropped by double digits since 1984. I recently spoke with educators and librarians about this trend, and they gave many explanations, but one of the most compelling — and depressing — is rooted in how our education system teaches kids to relate to books.... In New York, where I was in public elementary school in the early '80s, we did have state assessments that tested reading level and comprehension, but the focus was on reading as many books as possible and engaging emotionally with them as a way to develop the requisite skills. Now the focus on reading analytically seems to be squashing that organic enjoyment. Critical reading is an important skill, especially for a generation bombarded with information, much of it unreliable or deceptive. But this hyperfocus on analysis comes at a steep price: The love of books and storytelling is being lost. This disregard for story starts as early as elementary school. Take this requirement from the third-grade English-language-arts Common Core standard, used widely across the U.S.: "Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, distinguishing literal from nonliteral language...." [A]s several educators explained to me, the advent of accountability laws and policies, starting with No Child Left Behind in 2001, and accompanying high-stakes assessments based on standards, be they Common Core or similar state alternatives, has put enormous pressure on instructors to teach to these tests at the expense of best practices.... [W]e need to get to the root of the problem, which is not about book lengths but the larger educational system. We can't let tests control how teachers teach: Close reading may be easy to measure, but it's not the way to get kids to fall in love with storytelling. Teachers need to be given the freedom to teach in developmentally appropriate ways, using books they know will excite and challenge kids. "There's a whole generation of kids who associate reading with assessment now," librarian/public school teacher Jennifer LaGarde tells the Atlantic. And their article notes the problem doesn't end after grade school. "By middle school, not only is there even less time for activities such as class read-alouds, but instruction also continues to center heavily on passage analysis, said LaGarde, who taught that age group."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anyone have career advice for this anonymous Slashdot reader?I've had a great career from 1992 to today. I've been a front line coder for most of that, but also a team lead, a supervisor, a project manager, a scrum master, etc.. My career has been marked by expediency — I did whatever needed doing at the time, in whatever tools necessary. However, now I'm 52, and I'm getting tired of leadership and project management, and I would like to return to that front line again. The legacy skills I have are no longer in demand. (They aren't Cobol.) Here's the rub: I am happy to do the work nobody else wants to do. Dead languages, abandoned codebases with little documentation, precariously built systems with rickety infrastructure... I've worked in them before, and I would be fine doing it again. I'm afraid of nothing, but I don't want to keep climbing the bleeding edge of the technical mountain. I'd be happy to be silently, competently keeping things moving. By 55 I would like to make that move. It's either that or retire, which is an option... but I love the technical work. They're soliciting suggestions from other Slashdot readers. ("Where to focus? How to prep?") So share your own best advice in the comments. How can an aging project manager return to coding on unpopular legacy codebases?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader quonset writes:In an effort to more personalize a customer's experience, the U.S. restaurant chain Panera Bread is rolling out palm-scanning technology which will link the palm print with the customer's loyalty program. According to Panera Bread CEO Niren Chaudhary, the move will allow a "frictionless, personalized, and convenient" evolution of Panera's loyalty program, which boasts 52 million members. The claim is this will allow the company to offer menu choices based on a customer's order history, allow staff to personally greet the customer, and offer further suggestions. Privacy advocates are not so sure. From the story: Panera says the technology will securely store its customers' biometric data. However, digital rights activists worry that information could be tapped by federal agencies or accessed by hackers. "Federal agencies like Customs and Border Protection have experienced devastating hacks where large databases of biometric information have been stolen," Fight for the Future told CBS MoneyWatch in an email. "Do we really expect Amazon, or Panera, to have better cybersecurity practices?" The scanners are already installed at locations in St. Louis, Panera announced Wednesday, and scanners will "expand to additional locations in the coming months." (Panera has 2,113 locations in 48 states.) "After a simple scan of the palm, Panera associates will be able to greet guests by name, communicate their available rewards, reorder their favorite menu items, or take another order of their choice," the announcement gushes, "extending the guest experience into a true and meaningful relationship. "When they are done ordering, guests can simply scan their palm again to pay."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's one of America's best hospitals — a nonprofit "academic medical center" called the Cleveland Clinic. And this week it installed an IBM-managed quantum computer to accelerate healthcare research (according to an announcement from IBM). IBM is calling it "the first quantum computer in the world to be uniquely dedicated to healthcare research." The clinic's CEO said the technology "holds tremendous promise in revolutionizing healthcare and expediting progress toward new cares, cures and solutions for patients." IBM's CEO added that "By combining the power of quantum computing, artificial intelligence and other next-generation technologies with Cleveland Clinic's world-renowned leadership in healthcare and life sciences, we hope to ignite a new era of accelerated discovery." em>Inside HPC points out that "IBM Quantum System One" is part of a larger biomedical research program applying high-performance computing, AI, and quantum computing, with IBM and the Cleveland Clinic "collaborating closely on a robust portfolio of projects with these advanced technologies to generate and analyze massive amounts of data to enhance research."The Cleveland Clinic-IBM Discovery Accelerator has generated multiple projects that leverage the latest in quantum computing, AI and hybrid cloud to help expedite discoveries in biomedical research. These include: - Development of quantum computing pipelines to screen and optimize drugs targeted to specific proteins; - Improvement of a quantum-enhanced prediction model for cardiovascular risk following non-cardiac surgery; - Application of artificial intelligence to search genome sequencing findings and large drug-target databases to find effective, existing drugs that could help patients with Alzheimer's and other diseases. The Discovery Accelerator also serves as the technology foundation for Cleveland Clinic's Global Center for Pathogen & Human Health Research, part of the Cleveland Innovation District. The center, supported by a $500 million investment from the State of Ohio, Jobs Ohio and Cleveland Clinic, brings together a team focused on studying, preparing and protecting against emerging pathogens and virus-related diseases. Through the Discovery Accelerator, researchers are leveraging advanced computational technology to expedite critical research into treatments and vaccines.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

400 undersea cables carry 95% of the world's international internet traffic, reports Reuters (citing figures from Washington-based telecommunications research firm TeleGeography). But now there's "a growing proxy war between the United States and China over technologies that could determine who achieves economic and military dominance for decades to come."In February, American subsea cable company SubCom LLC began laying a $600-million cable to transport data from Asia to Europe, via Africa and the Middle East, at super-fast speeds over 12,000 miles of fiber running along the seafloor. That cable is known as South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 6, or SeaMeWe-6 for short. It will connect a dozen countries as it snakes its way from Singapore to France, crossing three seas and the Indian Ocean on the way. It is slated to be finished in 2025. It was a project that slipped through China's fingers.... The Singapore-to-France cable would have been HMN Tech's biggest such project to date, cementing it as the world's fastest-rising subsea cable builder, and extending the global reach of the three Chinese telecom firms that had intended to invest in it. But the U.S. government, concerned about the potential for Chinese spying on these sensitive communications cables, ran a successful campaign to flip the contract to SubCom through incentives and pressure on consortium members.... It's one of at least six private undersea cable deals in the Asia-Pacific region over the past four years where the U.S. government either intervened to keep HMN Tech from winning that business, or forced the rerouting or abandonment of cables that would have directly linked U.S. and Chinese territories.... Justin Sherman, a fellow at the Cyber Statecraft Initiative of the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, told Reuters that undersea cables were "a surveillance gold mine" for the world's intelligence agencies. "When we talk about U.S.-China tech competition, when we talk about espionage and the capture of data, submarine cables are involved in every aspect of those rising geopolitical tensions," Sherman said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes Neowin:Google Project Zero is a security team responsible for discovering security flaws in Google's own products as well as software developed by other vendors. Following discovery, the issues are privately reported to vendors and they are given 90 days to fix the reported problems before they are disclosed publicly.... Now, the security team has reported several flaws in CentOS' kernel. As detailed in the technical document here, Google Project Zero's security researcher Jann Horn learned that kernel fixes made to stable trees are not backported to many enterprise versions of Linux. To validate this hypothesis, Horn compared the CentOS Stream 9 kernel to the stable linux-5.15.y stable tree.... As expected, it turned out that several kernel fixes have not been made deployed in older, but supported versions of CentOS Stream/RHEL. Horn further noted that for this case, Project Zero is giving a 90-day deadline to release a fix, but in the future, it may allot even stricter deadlines for missing backports.... Red Hat accepted all three bugs reported by Horn and assigned them CVE numbers. However, the company failed to fix these issues in the allotted 90-day timeline, and as such, these vulnerabilities are being made public by Google Project Zero. Horn is urging better patch scheduling so "an attacker who wants to quickly find a nice memory corruption bug in CentOS/RHEL can't just find such bugs in the delta between upstream stable and your kernel."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares this report from the New York Post:Disgruntled Amazon corporate employees are reportedly devastated after a top human resources executive shot down an internal petition that asked the tech giant's leaders to nix its return-to-office plan. Approximately 30,000 workers had signed a petition begging CEO Andy Jassy to cancel his directive that most employees work on site at least three days per week. The return-to-office plan is slated to take effect on May 1. Beth Galetti, Amazon's HR chief, shot down the petition in a message to organizers obtained by Insider and signaled that the return-to-office plan will move forward as scheduled. "Given the large size of our workforce and our wide range of businesses and customers, we recognize this transition may take time, but we are confident it will result in long-term benefits to increasing our ability to deliver for our customers, bolstering our culture, and growing and developing employees," Galetti said in the memo.... In the petition, which first surfaced last month, Amazon workers argued they are more productive and enjoy a better work-life balance in a remote work environment. The workers also asserted that the three-day-per-week requirement runs contrary to Amazon's stances on issues such as affordable housing, diversity and climate change.... Meanwhile, Jassy has argued that working more days on site will help build effective collaboration and "deliver for customers and the business."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hackaday recently shared some thoughts on "purpose-built" distros:Some examples are Kali for security testing, DragonOS for software-defined radio, or Hannah Montana Linux for certain music fans. Anyone can roll their own Linux distribution with the right tools, including [Shadly], who recently created one which only loads enough software to launch the 1993 classic DOOM.... It loads the Linux kernel and the standard utilities via BusyBox, then runs fbDOOM, which is a port of the game specifically designed to run on the Linux framebuffer with minimal dependencies. Their report includes video of the distro booting up and playing Doom. "The entire distribution is placed into a bootable ISO file that can be placed on any bootable drive."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Free Software Foundation held their annual LibrePlanet conference last week — and announced that Eli Zaretskii, co-maintainer of GNU Emacs, won their "Advancement of Free Software" award. "He has been a contributor to Emacs for more than thirty years," notes the FSF announcement, "and as co-maintainer, coordinates the work of more than two hundred active contributors. During Zaretskii's tenure as co-maintainer, the Emacs development community has implemented several important new features, including native compilation of the editor's Emacs Lisp backbone into machine code." Zaretskii was honored with a recorded message from the original author/principal maintainer of GNU Emacs back in 1985, Richard Stallman:"For many years, I was the principal maintainer of GNU Emacs, but then others came along to do the work, and I haven't been heavily involved in Emacs development for many, many years. Nowadays, our principal maintainer of Emacs is extremely diligent and conscientious and has brought about a renaissance in new features and new packages added to Emacs, and the result is very impressive. So I'm happy to give the Free Software Award to Eli Zaretskii, principal maintainer of GNU Emacs. Thank you for your work." In his recorded acceptance of the award, Zaretskii said, "The truth is my contribution to free software in general and to Emacs development in particular is quite modest, certainly compared to those who won this award before me.... And even my modest achievement as the Emacs developer and lately the co-maintainer would have been impossible without all the other contributors and the Emacs community as a whole. No significant free software project can be developed, maintained, and led forward without participation and support of its members. And Emacs is no exception." Their award for Outstanding New Free Software Contributor went to Tad (SkewedZeppelin), the chief developer of DivestOS, a fork of Android which removes many proprietary binaries "and which puts freedom, security, and device longevity as its main concerns," according to the FSF's announcement. "Tad has also contributed to the Replicant distribution of Android, a project fiscally sponsored by the FSF." And their award for Project of Social Benefit went to GNU Jami, a free software videoconferencing tool "that is fully decentralized and encrypted, allowing thousands around the world to communicate in both freedom and security. In contrast to proprietary conferencing programs like Zoom, which are nonfree software, Jami is an official GNU package licensed under the GNU GPLv3+."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Toronto-based Feroot Security "found that so-called tracking pixels from the TikTok parent company were present in 30 U.S. state-government websites across 27 states," reports the Wall Street Journal, "including some where the app has been banned from state networks and devices." The review was performed in January and February.The presence of that code means that U.S. state governments around the country are inadvertently participating in a data-collection effort for a foreign-owned company, one that senior Biden administration officials and lawmakers of both parties have said could be harmful to U.S. national security and the privacy of Americans. Administrators who manage government websites use such pixels to help measure the effectiveness of advertising they have purchased on TikTok.... The presence of the TikTok tracking code on government websites underlines the challenge for those who deem the China-owned app a potential data-security threat. Lawmakers in both parties are considering a nationwide ban, but simply uprooting the app from U.S. smartphones wouldn't stop all data-tracking activities.... Feroot found that the average website it studied had more than 13 embedded pixels. Google's were far and away the most common, with 92% of websites examined having some sort of Google tracking pixel embedded. About 50% of the websites the firm examined had Microsoft Corp. or Facebook pixels. TikTok had a presence in less than 10% of sites examined.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Verge reports:A federal judge has ruled against the Internet Archive in Hachette v. Internet Archive, a lawsuit brought against it by four book publishers, deciding that the website does not have the right to scan books and lend them out like a library. Judge John G. Koeltl decided that the Internet Archive had done nothing more than create "derivative works," and so would have needed authorization from the books' copyright holders — the publishers — before lending them out through its National Emergency Library program.The Internet Archive says it will appeal. The decision was "a blow to all libraries and the communities we serve," argued Chris Freeland, the director of Open Libraries at the Internet Archive. In a blog post he argued the decision "impacts libraries across the U.S. who rely on controlled digital lending to connect their patrons with books online.It hurts authors by saying that unfair licensing models are the only way their books can be read online. And it holds back access to information in the digital age, harming all readers, everywhere. The Verge adds that the judge rejected "fair use" arguments which had previously protected a 2014 digital book preservation project by Google Books and HathiTrust:Koetl wrote that any "alleged benefits" from the Internet Archive's library "cannot outweigh the market harm to the publishers," declaring that "there is nothing transformative about [Internet Archive's] copying and unauthorized lending," and that copying these books doesn't provide "criticism, commentary, or information about them." He notes that the Google Books use was found "transformative" because it created a searchable database instead of simply publishing copies of books on the internet. Koetl also dismissed arguments that the Internet Archive might theoretically have helped publishers sell more copies of their books, saying there was no direct evidence, and that it was "irrelevant" that the Internet Archive had purchased its own copies of the books before making copies for its online audience. According to data obtained during the trial, the Internet Archive currently hosts around 70,000 e-book "borrows" a day. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader esme for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI took ChatGPT offline earlier this week "due to a bug in an open-source library which allowed some users to see titles from another active user's chat history," according to an OpenAI blog post. "It's also possible that the first message of a newly-created conversation was visible in someone else's chat history if both users were active around the same time.... "Upon deeper investigation, we also discovered that the same bug may have caused the unintentional visibility of payment-related information of 1.2% of the ChatGPT Plus subscribers who were active during a specific nine-hour window."In the hours before we took ChatGPT offline on Monday, it was possible for some users to see another active user's first and last name, email address, payment address, the last four digits (only) of a credit card number, and credit card expiration date. Full credit card numbers were not exposed at any time. We believe the number of users whose data was actually revealed to someone else is extremely low. To access this information, a ChatGPT Plus subscriber would have needed to do one of the following: - Open a subscription confirmation email sent on Monday, March 20, between 1 a.m. and 10 a.m. Pacific time. Due to the bug, some subscription confirmation emails generated during that window were sent to the wrong users. These emails contained the last four digits of another user's credit card number, but full credit card numbers did not appear. It's possible that a small number of subscription confirmation emails might have been incorrectly addressed prior to March 20, although we have not confirmed any instances of this. - In ChatGPT, click on "My account," then "Manage my subscription" between 1 a.m. and 10 a.m. Pacific time on Monday, March 20. During this window, another active ChatGPT Plus user's first and last name, email address, payment address, the last four digits (only) of a credit card number, and credit card expiration date might have been visible. It's possible that this also could have occurred prior to March 20, although we have not confirmed any instances of this. We have reached out to notify affected users that their payment information may have been exposed. We are confident that there is no ongoing risk to users' data. Everyone at OpenAI is committed to protecting our users' privacy and keeping their data safe. It's a responsibility we take incredibly seriously. Unfortunately, this week we fell short of that commitment, and of our users' expectations. We apologize again to our users and to the entire ChatGPT community and will work diligently to rebuild trust. The bug was discovered in the Redis client open-source library, redis-py. As soon as we identified the bug, we reached out to the Redis maintainers with a patch to resolve the issue. "The bug is now patched. We were able to restore both the ChatGPT service and, later, its chat history feature, with the exception of a few hours of history."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

IHTFISP shares a report from Phys.Org: A quartet of mathematicians from Yorkshire University, the University of Cambridge, the University of Waterloo and the University of Arkansas has discovered a 2D geometric shape that does not repeat itself when tiled. David Smith, Joseph Samuel Myers, Craig Kaplan and Chaim Goodman-Strauss have written a paper describing how they discovered the unique shape and possible uses for it. Their full paper is available on the arXiv preprint server. [...] The shape has 13 sides and the team refers to it simply as "the hat." They found it by first paring down possibilities using a computer and then by studying the resulting smaller sets by hand. Once they had what they believed was a good possibility, they tested it using a combinatorial software program -- and followed that up by proving the shape was aperiodic using a geometric incommensurability argument. The researchers close by suggesting that the most likely application of the hat is in the arts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Magazine: In an unusual move, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has quietly begun a new competition for the contract to run the United States's sole dedicated particle physics laboratory. Announced in January, the rebid comes 1 year after Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), which is managed in part by the University of Chicago (UChicago), failed an annual DOE performance review and 9 months after it named a new director. DOE would not comment, but observers say its frustrations include cost increases and delays in a gargantuan new neutrino experiment. "I don't think it's surprising at all given the department's evaluation of [Fermilab's] performance," says James Decker, a physicist and consultant with Decker, Garman, Sullivan & Associates, LLC, who served as principal deputy director of DOE's Office of Science from 1973 to 2007. Although Fermilab passed its 2022 performance evaluation, the one for fiscal year 2021 was "one of the most scathing I have seen," Decker says. DOE has already solicited letters of interest and will issue a request for formal proposals this summer. It intends to award the new contract by the end of the next fiscal year, 30 September 2024, and transfer control of the lab, which employs 2100 staff and has an annual budget of $614 million, on January 1, 2025. UChicago hopes to win the contract again, says Paul Alivisatos, president of the university, who is also chair of FRA's board of directors and a former director of DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "We absolutely will be bidding to continue." [...] How many parties will bid on the contract remains unclear. Managing the lab requires very specific technical expertise but pays $5 million per year, at most. "I don't think that there are too many organizations that could really compete for this contract," Decker says. If just UChicago or URA bid on the new contract, they'll need a new partner, multiple observers say, perhaps one with expertise in huge construction projects. DOE is sure to insist that something changes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dozens of the world's largest natural history museums revealed on Thursday a survey of everything in their collections. The global inventory is made up of 1.1 billion objects that range from dinosaur skulls to pollen grains to mosquitoes. The New York Times reports: The survey's organizers, who described the effort in the journal Science, said they hoped the survey would help museums join forces to answer pressing questions, such as how quickly species are becoming extinct and how climate change is altering the natural world. "It gives us intelligence now to start thinking about things that museums can do together that we wouldn't have conceived of before," said Kirk Johnson, the director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington and one of the leaders of the project. "It's the argument for networking the global museum." Scientists had created smaller inventory databases before. But the new effort, which included 73 museums in 28 countries, was unparalleled, experts said. The survey revealed important gaps in the world's collections. Relatively few objects come from the regions around the earth's poles, which are especially vulnerable to the impact of global warming, for example. Insects, the most diverse group of animal species, were also underrepresented. "The analysis is at a global scale that no one else has managed," said Emily Meineke, an entomologist at the University of California, Davis, who was not involved in the survey. Dr. Meineke said that this survey of large institutions also laid the groundwork for surveys of smaller ones, which might hold even more surprises. "Once these methods are applied down the line to smaller collections, the results are likely to give us a truer picture of biodiversity globally," she said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

British satellite company OneWeb is gearing up for the launch of its final batch of internet satellites, completing a constellation in low Earth orbit despite some hiccups along the way. Gizmodo reports: India's heaviest launch vehicle LVM-3 will carry 36 OneWeb satellites, with liftoff slated for Sunday at 11:30 p.m. ET, according to OneWeb. The launch will take place at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India, marking OneWeb's second deployment from India. You can watch the launch at the livestream [here]. OneWeb has been building an internet constellation in low Earth orbit since 2020, and it currently consists of 579 functioning satellites, according to statistics kept by Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell. The addition of 36 new units will raise the population of the constellation to 615, completing the first orbital shell. The company had originally planned on building a 648-unit constellation, but it says this final launch will cap it off and allow for global coverage.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In 2025, United Airlines will fly an air taxi service between the downtown Vertiport Chicago and O'Hare International Airport, using electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft it is purchasing from Archer Aviation. The Archer Midnight eVTOL aircraft will complete the route in about 10 minutes; according to local resident and Ars Managing Editor Eric Bangeman, that journey by car can take over an hour due to road construction. "Both Archer and United are committed to decarbonizing air travel and leveraging innovative technologies to deliver on the promise of the electrification of the aviation industry," said Michael Leskinen, president of United Airlines Ventures. "Once operational, we're excited to offer our customers a more sustainable, convenient, and cost-effective mode of transportation during their commutes to the airport." If Chicago works out, United plans to add other airport-to-city "trunk routes," with "branch" routes between different communities coming later. The Archer Midnight has a range of 100 miles (160 km) and a top speed of 150 mph (241 km/h). If approved by the FAA, the Chicago air shuttle would be the first commercial eVTOL service to begin operating in North America. Asked about the cost, an Archer spokesperson told the Chicago Sun-Times that the company hopes to make the service competitive with Uber Black, so it will be roughly $100 for the trip.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel announced Friday that Gordon Moore, Intel's co-founder, has died at the age of 94:Moore and his longtime colleague Robert Noyce founded Intel in July 1968. Moore initially served as executive vice president until 1975, when he became president. In 1979, Moore was named chairman of the board and chief executive officer, posts he held until 1987, when he gave up the CEO position and continued as chairman. In 1997, Moore became chairman emeritus, stepping down in 2006. During his lifetime, Moore also dedicated his focus and energy to philanthropy, particularly environmental conservation, science and patient care improvements. Along with his wife of 72 years, he established the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which has donated more than $5.1 billion to charitable causes since its founding in 2000.... "Though he never aspired to be a household name, Gordon's vision and his life's work enabled the phenomenal innovation and technological developments that shape our everyday lives," said foundation president Harvey Fineberg. "Yet those historic achievements are only part of his legacy. His and Betty's generosity as philanthropists will shape the world for generations to come." Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO, said, "Gordon Moore defined the technology industry through his insight and vision. He was instrumental in revealing the power of transistors, and inspired technologists and entrepreneurs across the decades. We at Intel remain inspired by Moore's Law and intend to pursue it until the periodic table is exhausted...." Prior to establishing Intel, Moore and Noyce participated in the founding of Fairchild Semiconductor, where they played central roles in the first commercial production of diffused silicon transistors and later the world's first commercially viable integrated circuits. The two had previously worked together under William Shockley, the co-inventor of the transistor and founder of Shockley Semiconductor, which was the first semiconductor company established in what would become Silicon Valley.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Huawei has reportedly completed work on electronic design automation (EDA) tools for laying out and making chips down to 14nm process nodes. The Register reports: Chinese media said the platform is one of 78 being developed by the telecoms equipment giant to replace American and European chip design toolkits that have become subject to export controls by the US and others. Huawei's EDA platform was reportedly revealed by rotating Chairman Xu Zhijun during a meeting in February, and later confirmed by media in China. [...] Huawei's focus on EDA software for 14nm and larger chips reflects the current state of China's semiconductor industry. State-backed foundry operator SMIC currently possesses the ability to produce 14nm chips at scale, although there have been some reports the company has had success developing a 7nm process node. Today, the EDA market is largely controlled by three companies: California-based Synopsys and Cadence, as well as Germany's Siemens. According to the industry watchers at TrendForce, these three companies account for roughly 75 percent of the EDA market. And this poses a problem for Chinese chipmakers and foundries, which have steadily found themselves cut off from these tools. Synopsys and Cadence's EDA tech is already subject to several of these export controls, which were stiffened by the US Commerce Department last summer to include state-of-the-art gate-all-around (GAA) transistors. This January, the White House also reportedly stopped issuing export licenses to companies supplying the likes of Huawei. This is particularly troublesome for Huawei, foundry operator SMIC, and memory vendor YMTC to name a few on the US Entity List, a roster of companies Uncle Sam would prefer you not to do business with. It leaves them unable to access recent and latest technologies, at the very least. So the development of a homegrown EDA platform for 14nm chips serves as insurance in case broader access to Western production platforms is cut off entirely.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

France announced Friday it is banning the "recreational" use of TikTok, Twitter, Instagram and other apps on government employees' phones because of concern about insufficient data security measures. Reuters reports: The French Minister for Transformation and Public Administration, Stanislas Guerini, said in a statement that ''recreational" apps aren't secure enough to be used in state administrative services and "could present a risk for the protection of data." The ban will be monitored by France's cybersecurity agency. The statement did not specify which apps are banned but noted that the decision came after other governments took measures targeting TikTok. Guerini's office said in a message to The Associated Press that the ban also will include Twitter, Instagram, Netflix, gaming apps like Candy Crush and dating apps. Exceptions will be allowed. If an official wants to use a banned app for professional purposes, like public communication, they can request permission to do so. Case in point: Guerini posted the announcement of the ban on Twitter.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Domino's Pizza's franchise in Italy has entered into liquidation, after a short-lived struggle to win over customers in the birthplace of pizza. From a report: A Milan-based judge opened liquidation proceedings for Domino's franchise partner, ePizza, last week, according to a filing with the local chamber of commerce seen by Bloomberg News. A court-ordered liquidation could result in a recovery for creditors of 5% of their exposure, according to a draft restructuring plan seen by Bloomberg News that was submitted last year by the Milan-based firm and its financial advisers. The last of Domino's 29 Italian branches closed last summer, ending a foray that began in 2015 with the U.S. brand touting pizza toppings that included pineapple and barbecue chicken, an unusual take in a country more accustomed to thin-crust margheritas. Over the years, the Ann Arbor-based fast-food chain's partner borrowed heavily for ambitious plans to open 880 stores.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mass layoffs across the US technology industry have now claimed well over 300,000 jobs. And yet, companies are still hiring in areas they see as mission-critical. Contract positions are still commanding $120-an-hour wages. From a report:The industry hasn't seen cuts this deep since the dot-com bubble burst, but Linda Lutton, who has been recruiting for tech firms since 1987, says it doesn't feel like a bust. For one, she said, firms are still taking her calls. "I'm in constant contact with my tech clients, and they keep telling us, 'We will come back,'" said Lutton, who recalls how clients suddenly stopped answering their phones during the dot-com crash of the early 2000s because they had folded overnight. "I haven't had a single message from a single client saying, 'We have to cut everything down.'" Whatever happens to the tech industry in the coming months and years will ripple across the entire US economy. The sector now claims the biggest share of market value in the S&P 500, accounting for about one-quarter of the index. That's up from 18% a decade ago. Tech accounts for about 6% of US gross domestic product, and a similar share of jobs across the country. The average pay in tech is nearly twice that of the typical US worker.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

France's AI-powered array of surveillance cameras for the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics cleared a final legislative hurdle on Thursday. From a report: The French government wants to experiment with large-scale, real-time camera systems supported by an algorithm to spot suspicious behavior, including unsupervised luggage and triggering alarms to warn of crowd movements like stampedes, for the mega-sports event next year. In a sparsely-attended chamber, French members of parliament approved the controversial bill after more than seven hours of heated debate. The text can still be challenged before the country's top constitutional court. Last week, a group of about 40 European lawmakers -- mainly left-wing -- asked their French counterparts to vote against the text. They warned in a letter that "France would set a surveillance precedent of the kind never before seen in Europe, using the pretext of the [2024 Paris Summer] Olympic games." In the past few months, the plan was also met with intense pushback from digital rights NGOs, including France's La Quadrature du Net, as well as international groups such as Amnesty International and Access Now. Besides privacy concerns, they pointed out a potential conflict with the EU's Artificial Intelligence Act, which is currently under discussion in Brussels and could limit biometric surveillance. The government argues that algorithmic surveillance cameras are necessary to ensure the safety of the millions of tourists expected to visit Paris next year. During the debates Wednesday evening, lawmakers from President Emmanuel Macron's party claimed AI-powered cameras could have prevented the 2016 Nice terror attack by spotting the truck before it could drive into the crowd. They also said it could have helped avoid the security fiasco at the football Champions League final last summer.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele said on Thursday he will send to the country's Congress next week a bill to eliminate all taxes on technology innovations as well as computing and communications hardware manufacturing. "Next week, I'll be sending a bill to congress to eliminate all taxes (income, property, capital gains and import tariffs) on technology innovations, such as software programming, coding, apps and AI development," he said on Twitter. The tax cut would also encompass computing and communications hardware manufacturing, Bukele added. In 2021, the Salvadoran leader introduced legislation to make El Salvador the world's first sovereign nation to adopt bitcoin as legal tender. He also unveiled plans to build a "Bitcoin City" at the base of a volcano.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scientists have come up with a simple explanation for the strange movements of our solar system's first known visitor from another star. NPR reports: Now, though, in the journal Nature, two researchers say the answer might be the release of hydrogen from trapped reserves inside water-rich ice. That was the notion of Jennifer Bergner, an astrochemist with the University of California, Berkeley, who recalls that she initially didn't spend much time thinking about 'Oumuamua when it was first discovered. "It's not that closely related to my field. So I was like, this is a really intriguing object, but sort of moved on with my life," she says. Then she happened to attend a seminar that featured Cornell University's Darryl Seligman, who described the object's weirdness and what might account for it. One possibility he'd considered was that it was composed entirely of hydrogen ice. Others have suggested it might instead be composed of nitrogen ice. Bergner wondered if it could just be a water-rich comet that got exposed to a lot of cosmic radiation. That radiation would release the hydrogen from the water. Then, if that hydrogen got trapped inside the ice, it could be released when the object approached the sun and began to warm up. Astronomers who observed 'Oumuamua weren't looking for that kind of hydrogen outgassing and, even if they had been, the amounts involved could have been undetectable from Earth. She teamed up with Seligman to start investigating what happens when water ice gets hit with radiation. They also did calculations to see if the object was large enough to store enough trapped hydrogen to account for the observed acceleration. And they looked to see how the structure of water ice would react to getting warmed, to see if small shifts could allow trapped gas to escape. It turns out, this actually could account for the observed acceleration, says Bergner, who notes that the kind of "amorphous" water ice found in space has a kind of "fluffy" structure that contains empty pockets where gas can collect. As this water ice warms up, its structure begins to rearrange, she says, and "you lose your pockets for hiding hydrogen. You can form channels or cracks within the water ice as parts of it are sort of compacting." As the pockets collapse and these cracks form, the trapped hydrogen would leak out into space, giving the object a push, she says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader destinyland shares a report from Space.com: The Relativity Space rocket, called Terran 1, lifted off from Launch Complex 16 at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 8:25 p.m. EST (0025 GMT on March 23), kicking off a test flight called "Good Luck, Have Fun" (GLHF). Terran 1 performed well initially. For example, it survived Max-Q -- the part of flight during which the structural loads are highest on a rocket -- and its first and second stages separated successfully. But something went wrong shortly thereafter, at around three minutes into the flight, when the rocket failed to reach orbit. "No one's ever attempted to launch a 3D-printed rocket into orbit, and, while we didn't make it all the way today, we gathered enough data to show that flying 3D-printed rockets is viable," Relativity Space's Arwa Tizani Kelly said during the company's launch webcast on Wednesday night. "We just completed a major step in proving to the world that 3D-printed rockets are structurally viable," she added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: The Food and Drug Administration on Monday cleared cultured "cultured chicken cell material" made by GOOD Meat as safe for use as human food. While the FDA said the lab-grown chicken was safe to eat, GOOD Meat still needs approval from the Agriculture Department before i can sell the product in the U.S. If approved, acclaimed chef Jose Andres plans to serve GOOD Meat's chicken to customers at his Washington, D.C. restaurant. He's on GOOD Meat's board of directors. The FDA previously gave the green light to lab-grown chicken made by Upside Foods in November. Upside Foods and GOOD Meat both use cells from chickens to create the cultured chicken products. Once cells are extracted, GOOD Meat picks the cells most likely to produce healthy, sustainable and tasty meat, the company explained. The cells are immersed in nutrients inside a tank. They grow and divide, creating the cultured chicken, which can be harvested after four to six weeks. GOOD Meat's chicken is already sold in Singapore. "Today's news is more than just another regulatory decision -- it's food system transformation in action," says Bruce Friedrich, president and founder of the Good Food Institute, a non-profit think tank that focuses on alternatives to traditional meat production. "Consumers and future generations deserve the foods they love made more sustainably and in ways that benefit the public good -- ways that preserve our land and water, ways that protect our climate and global health," Friedrich says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Land reclamation is nothing new, but during this century there has been a significant rise in the creation of artificial land by humans, with a recent study showing that developers have added more than 2,500 sq km -- an area equivalent to the size of Luxembourg -- to coastlines since 2000. The Guardian reports: Using satellite imagery, Dhritiraj Sengupta, from the University of Southampton, and his colleagues analysed land changes in 135 large cities. Their results, published in the journal Earth's Future, show that much of the recent land reclamation has occurred in the global south, with China, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates leading the way. Shanghai alone has added about 350 sq km of land. Most of the projects were driven by port expansion, a need for urban space and industrialization, while a small handful were "prestige" projects such as the palm tree-shaped islands of Dubai.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Writers Guild of America has proposed allowing artificial intelligence to write scripts, as long as it does not affect writers' credits or residuals. Variety reports: The guild had previously indicated that it would propose regulating the use of AI in the writing process, which has recently surfaced as a concern for writers who fear losing out on jobs. But contrary to some expectations, the guild is not proposing an outright ban on the use of AI technology. Instead, the proposal would allow a writer to use ChatGPT to help write a script without having to share writing credit or divide residuals. Or, a studio executive could hand the writer an AI-generated script to rewrite or polish and the writer would still be considered the first writer on the project. In effect, the proposal would treat AI as a tool -- like Final Draft or a pencil -- rather than as a writer. It appears to be intended to allow writers to benefit from the technology without getting dragged into credit arbitrations with software manufacturers. The proposal does not address the scenario in which an AI program writes a script entirely on its own, without help from a person. The guild's proposal was discussed in the first bargaining session on Monday with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Three sources confirmed the proposal. It's not yet clear whether the AMPTP, which represents the studios, will be receptive to the idea. The WGA proposal states simply that AI-generated material will not be considered "literary material" or "source material." Those terms are key for assigning writing credits, which in turn have a big impact on residual compensation. "Literary material" is a fundamental term in the WGA's minimum basic agreement -- it is what a "writer" produces (including stories, treatments, screenplays, dialogue, sketches, etc.). If an AI program cannot produce "literary material," then it cannot be considered a "writer" on a project. "Source material" refers to things like novels, plays and magazine articles, on which a screenplay may be based. If a screenplay is based on source material, then it is not considered an "original screenplay." The writer may also get only a "screenplay by" credit, rather than a "written by" credit. A "written by" credit entitles the writer to the full residual for the project, while a "screenplay by" credit gets 75%. By declaring that ChatGPT cannot write "source material," the guild would be saying that a writer could adapt an AI-written short story and still get full "written by" credit.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Utah's governor has signed two bills that could upend how teens in the state are able to use social media apps. Engadget reports: Under the new laws, companies like Meta, Snap and TikTok would be required to get parents permission before teens could create accounts on their platforms. The laws also require curfew, parental controls and age verification features. The laws could dramatically change how social platforms handle the accounts of their youngest users. In addition to the parental consent and age verification features, the laws also bar companies "from using a design or feature that causes a minor to have an addiction to the company's social media platform." For now, it's not clear how Utah officials intend to enforce the laws or how they will apply to teenagers' existing social media accounts. Both laws are scheduled to take effect next March.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: At a city council meeting in June 2021, Mayor Thomas Kilgore, of Lakeway, Texas, made an announcement that confused his community. "I believe it is my duty to inform you that a surveillance system has been installed in the city of Lakeway," he told the perplexed crowd. Kilgore was referring to a system consisting of eight license plate readers, installed by the private company Flock Safety, that was tracking cars on both private and public roads. Despite being in place for six months, no one had told residents that they were being watched. Kilgore himself had just recently learned of the cameras. "We find ourselves with a surveillance system," he said, "with no information and no policies, procedures, or protections." The deal to install the cameras had not been approved by the city government's executive branch. Instead, the Rough Hollow Homeowners Association, a nongovernment entity, and the Lakeway police chief had signed off on the deal in January 2021, giving police access to residents' footage. By the time of the June city council meeting, the surveillance system had notified the police department over a dozen times. "We thought we were just being a partner with the city," Bill Hayes, the chief operating officer of Legend Communities, which oversees the Rough Hollow Homeowners Association, said at the meeting. "We didn't go out there thinking we were being Big Brother." Lakeway is just one example of a community that has faced Flock's surveillance without many homeowners' knowledge or approval. Neighbors in Atlanta, Georgia, remained in the dark for a year after cameras were put up. In Lake County, Florida, nearly 100 cameras went up "overnight like mushrooms," according to one county commissioner -- without a single permit. In a statement, Flock Safety brushed off the Lake County incident as an "an honest misunderstanding," but the increasing surveillance of community members' movements across the country is no accident. It's a deliberate marketing strategy. Flock Safety, which began as a startup in 2017 in Atlanta and is now valued at approximately $3.5 billion, has targeted homeowners associations, or HOAs, in partnership with police departments, to become one of the largest surveillance vendors in the nation. There are key strategic reasons that make homeowners associations the ideal customer. HOAs have large budgets -- they collect over $100 billion a year from homeowners -- and it's an opportunity for law enforcement to gain access into gated, private areas, normally out of their reach.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ford's electric vehicle business has lost $3 billion before taxes during the past two years and will lose a similar amount this year as the company invests heavily in the new technology. The Associated Press reports: The figures were released Thursday as Ford rolled out a new way of reporting financial results. The new business structure separates electric vehicles, the profitable internal combustion and commercial vehicle operations into three operating units. Company officials said the electric vehicle unit, called "Ford Model e," will be profitable before taxes by late 2026 with an 8% pretax profit margin. But they wouldn't say exactly when it's expected to start making money. Chief Financial Officer John Lawler said Model e should be viewed as a startup company within Ford. "As everyone knows, EV startups lose money while they invest in capability, develop knowledge, build (sales) volume and gain (market) share," he said. Model e, he said, is working on second- and even third-generation electric vehicles. It currently offers three EVs for sale in the U.S.: the Mustang Mach E SUV, the F-150 Lightning pickup and an electric Transit commercial van. The new corporate reporting system, Lawler said, is designed to give investors more transparency than the old system of reporting results by geographic regions. The automaker calculated earnings for each of the three units during the past two calendar years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The founder of Terraform Labs, Do Kwon, appears to have been arrested in Montenegro, according to a tweet by the country's minister of interior, Filip Adzic. CoinDesk reports: "Montenegrin police have detained a person suspected of being one of the most wanted fugitives, South Korean citizen Do Kwon, co-founder and CEO of Singapore-based Terraform Labs," Adzic tweeted. Kwon has been the target of several investigations and was even on Interpol's red notice after stablecoin terraUSD (UST) and its $40 billion ecosystem imploded last year, sending shockwaves across the crypto markets. The suspect was detained at the Podgorica airport with falsified documents, Adzic added, saying he was still waiting for official confirmation of identity. The Korean National Police Agency said that it had confirmed the suspect appeared to be Kwon based on checking age, name, and nationality of his ID card, according to a report by the Yonhap news agency. The unverified account of Adzic is followed by the official account of the prime minister of Montenegro, Dritan Abazovic. The tweet announcing Kwon's arrest was also retweeted by Abazovic's account. Adzic's account has previously been cited in official tweets.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Framework has delivered on the promise of its original 13-inch laptop. Three product generations in, the company has made a respectable competitor for the Dell XPS 13 or MacBook Air that can be repaired, modified, and upgraded, and owners of the original laptop can easily give themselves a significant performance boost by upgrading to the new 13th-generation Intel or AMD Ryzen-based boards the company announced today. Framework is now looking to build on that track record with an all-new Framework Laptop 16. It's a larger-screened model that can fit more powerful processors, dedicated GPUs, and a range of different keyboard modules, all with the same commitment to repairability and upgradeability seen in the original Framework Laptop (now retroactively dubbed the Framework Laptop 13). Framework isn't discussing many details yet; preorders won't open until "this spring," and shipments won't begin until "late 2023." Today, the company provided a preview of the laptop's features, along with developer documentation to encourage the creation of new Input Modules -- components that allow for keyboard customization much like the current Expansion Card system allows for port customization.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thirteen million diesel cars producing "extreme" levels of toxic air pollution are still on the roads in Europe and the UK, according to a report, seven years after the Dieselgate scandal first exploded. From a report: The non-profit research group, the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), revealed in 2015 that many diesel cars were highly polluting, emitting far more nitrogen oxides on the road than in official testing. The scandal led to a more rigorous test being introduced in the EU in 2019. However, based on extensive testing evidence, the ICCT has now revealed that about 13m highly polluting diesel vehicles sold from 2009 to 2019 remain on the roads. A further 6m diesels have "suspicious" levels of emissions, the ICCT said. The cars span 200 different models produced by all the major manufacturers. The ICCT said the bestselling models from 2009-2019 in the EU27 and UK with "extreme" emissions are Euro 5 versions of the VW Passat and Tiguan, Renault Clio, Ford Focus and Nissan Qashqai.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel and other semiconductor companies have joined together with industrial materials businesses to fight US clampdowns on "forever chemicals," substances used in myriad products that are slow to break down in the environment. From a report: The lobbying push from chipmakers broadens the opposition to new rules and bans for the chemicals known as PFAS. The substances have been found in the blood of 97 per cent of Americans, according to the US government. More than 30 US states this year are considering legislation to address PFAS, according to Safer States, an environmental advocacy group. Bills in California and Maine passed in 2022 and 2021, respectively. "I think clean drinking water and for farmers to be able to irrigate their fields is far more important than a microchip," said Stacy Brenner, a Maine state senator who backed the state's bipartisan legislation. In Minnesota, bills would ban by 2025 certain products that contain added PFAS -- which is short for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances -- in legislation considered to be some of the toughest in the country. The Semiconductor Industry Association -- whose members include Intel, IBM and Nvidia -- has cosigned letters opposing the Minnesota legislation, arguing its measures are overly broad and could prohibit thousands of products, including electronics. Chipmakers also opposed the California and Maine laws.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Canceling a subscription should be just as easy as signing up for the service, the Federal Trade Commission said in a proposed "click-to-cancel" rule announced today. If approved, the plan "would put an end to companies requiring you to call customer service to cancel an account that you opened on their website," FTC commissioners said. From a report: The FTC said the click-to-cancel rule would require sellers "to make it as easy for consumers to cancel their enrollment as it was to sign up," and "go a long way to rescuing consumers from seemingly never-ending struggles to cancel unwanted subscription payment plans for everything from cosmetics to newspapers to gym memberships." The FTC said the proposed rule would be enforced with civil penalties and let the commission return money to harmed consumers. "The proposal states that if consumers can sign up for subscriptions online, they should be able to cancel online, with the same number of steps. If consumers can open an account over the phone, they should be able to cancel it over the phone, without endless delays," FTC Chair Lina Khan wrote. The FTC is seeking public comment on the proposal, which also includes other changes to the commission's 1973 Negative Option Rule. "Some businesses too often trick consumers into paying for subscriptions they no longer want or didn't sign up for in the first place," Khan said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter Kitkoan writes: Hackers had gained control of Linus Tech Tips' YouTube channel to promote a cryptocurrency scam. Earlier on Thursday, hackers had gained control of the Linus Tech Tips YouTube channel and used it to promote a fake crypto giveaway that falsely used the name of Elon Musk and the Tesla brand (obviously without the permission of either party). Thankfully, the Linus Tech Tips crew quickly worked to re-establish control of the channel, but not before the channel had started two live streams to promote AI, chat GPT, Bitcoin, and their aforementioned (fake) crypto giveaway.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI is adding support for plug-ins to ChatGPT -- an upgrade that massively expands the chatbot's capabilities and gives it access for the first time to live data from the web. From a report: Up until now, ChatGPT has been limited by the fact it can only pull information from its training data, which ends in 2021. OpenAI says plug-ins will not only allow the bot to browse the web but also interact with specific websites, potentially turning the system into a wide-ranging interface for all sorts of services and sites. In an announcement post, the company says it's almost like letting other services be ChatGPT's "eyes and ears." In one demo video, someone uses ChatGPT to find a recipe and then order the necessary ingredients from Instacart. ChatGPT automatically loads the ingredient list into the shopping service and redirects the user to the site to complete the order. OpenAI says it's rolling out plug-in access to "a small set of users." Initially, there are 11 plug-ins for external sites, including Expedia, OpenTable, Kayak, Klarna Shopping, and Zapier. OpenAI is also providing some plug-ins of its own, one for interpreting code and one called "Browsing," which lets ChatGPT get information from the internet.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China pushed back against the U.S. government's proposal to force a sale of TikTok on Thursday, rejecting the possible solution to ongoing national security concerns around the app. From a report: TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew appeared before Congress on Thursday morning, facing questions from U.S. lawmakers that centered around concerns that the Chinese government could leverage the app's data to surveil American citizens or otherwise undermine national interests. In a press conference hours before the hearing began, China's Commerce Ministry spokesperson Shu Jueting weighed in with Beijing's opposition to the Biden administration's proposal. "...Forcing a sale of TikTok will seriously damage the confidence of investors from all over the world, including China, to invest in the United States," she said. "If the news is true, China will firmly oppose it." The idea to force the company to divest itself of Chinese ownership first surfaced during the Trump administration, culminating in a deal for TikTok to sell its U.S. operations to Oracle in late 2020. At the time, TikTok also rejected an acquisition offer from Microsoft, though ultimately neither company succeeded and the strange arrangement fizzled after a series of successful legal challenges. The deal was shelved indefinitely when the Biden took office the following year, but in recent days the administration has picked up the languishing mission to force a sale. In rejecting the U.S. proposal, which the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) would spearhead, China is reiterated a point it made during the Trump administration. Further reading: TikTok CEO says China-based ByteDance employees still have access to some U.S. data.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Arm is seeking to raise prices for its chip designs as the SoftBank-owned group aims to boost revenues ahead of a hotly anticipated initial public offering in New York this year. From a report: The UK-based group, which designs blueprints for semiconductors found in more than 95 per cent of all smartphones, has recently informed several of its biggest customers of a radical shift to its business model, according to several industry executives and former employees. These people said Arm planned to stop charging chipmakers royalties for using its designs based on a chip's value and instead charge device makers based on the value of the device. This should mean the company earns several times more for each design it sells, as the average smartphone is vastly more expensive than a chip.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tech consultancy giant Accenture plans to cut 19,000 jobs, or 2.5% of its workforce, and has lowered its annual revenue and profit forecasts, becoming the latest behemoth to trim expenses in the wake of dwindling global economic conditions. From a report: The reduction in jobs, over half of which affects individuals in non-billable corporate functions, will be undertaken in the next 18 months, Accenture said in an SEC filing Thursday. The company had increased its workforce by 38,000 in the year that ended in February 2023 to serve the increased demand in its services and solutions, it said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: There's a colossal shift going on in artificial intelligence -- but it's not the one some may think. While advanced language-generating systems and chatbots have dominated news headlines, private AI companies have quietly entrenched their power. Recent developments mean that a handful of individuals and corporations now control much of the resources and knowledge in the sector -- and will ultimately shape its impact on our collective future. The phenomenon, which AI experts refer to as "industrial capture," was quantified in a paper published by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the journal Science earlier this month, calling on policymakers to pay closer attention. Its data is increasingly crucial. [...] The MIT research found that almost 70 per cent of AI PhDs went to work for companies in 2020, compared to 21 per cent in 2004. Similarly, there was an eightfold increase in faculty being hired into AI companies since 2006, far faster than the overall increase in computer science research faculty. "Many of the researchers we spoke to had abandoned certain research trajectories because they feel they cannot compete with industry -- they simply don't have the compute or the engineering talent," said Nur Ahmed, author of the Science paper. In particular, he said that academics were unable to build large language models like GPT-4, a type of AI software that generates plausible and detailed text by predicting the next word in a sentence with high accuracy. The technique requires enormous amounts of data and computing power that primarily only large technology companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon have access to. Ahmed found that companies' share of the biggest AI models has gone from 11 per cent in 2010 to 96 per cent in 2021. A lack of access means researchers cannot replicate the models built in corporate labs, and can therefore neither probe nor audit them for potential harms and biases very easily. The paper's data also showed a significant disparity between public and private investment into AI technology.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

JPMorgan Chase is planning to test new technology that would let consumers pay with their palms or faces at certain US merchants. From a report: The bank, home to one of the world's biggest payment-processing businesses, plans to roll out the service to its broader base of US merchant clients if the pilot program goes well, according to a statement Thursday. The pilot may include a Formula 1 race in Miami as well as some brick-and-mortar stores. "The evolution of consumer technology has created new expectations for shoppers," Jean-Marc Thienpont, head of omnichannel solutions for JPMorgan's payments business, said in the statement. "Merchants need to be ready to adapt to these new expectations." JPMorgan is seizing on the rising popularity of biometrics technology, which uses unique body measurements to authenticate a person's identity. The technology is expected to account for roughly $5.8 trillion in transactions and 3 billion users by 2026, JPMorgan said, citing Goode Intelligence. Here's how it works: Customers enroll their palm or face through an in-store process. Then, at checkout, they scan their biometric to complete the transaction and get a receipt.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple plans to spend $1 billion a year to produce movies that will be released in theaters, Bloomberg News reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the company's plans, part of an ambitious effort to raise its profile in Hollywood and lure subscribers to its streaming service. From the report: Apple has approached movie studios about partnering to release a few titles in theaters this year and a slate of more films in the future, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans are private. The list of potential releases includes Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio; the spy thriller Argylle, from director Matthew Vaughn; and Napoleon, Ridley Scott's drama about the French conqueror. The investment is a significant increase from years past. Most of Apple's previous original movies have either been exclusive to the streaming service or released in a limited number of theaters. The company has pledged to put movies in thousands of theaters for at least a month, said the people, though it hasn't finalized any plans.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Short seller Hindenburg Research, on Block: Block, formerly known as Square, is a $44 billion market cap company that claims to have developed a "frictionless" and "magical" financial technology with a mission to empower the "unbanked" and the "underbanked." Our 2-year investigation has concluded that Block has systematically taken advantage of the demographics it claims to be helping. The "magic" behind Block's business has not been disruptive innovation, but rather the company's willingness to facilitate fraud against consumers and the government, avoid regulation, dress up predatory loans and fees as revolutionary technology, and mislead investors with inflated metrics. Our research involved dozens of interviews with former employees, partners, and industry experts, extensive review of regulatory and litigation records, and FOIA and public records requests. Most analysts are excited about the post-pandemic surge of Block's Cash App platform, with expectations that its 51 million monthly transacting active users and low customer acquisition costs will drive high margin growth and serve as a future platform to offer new products. Our research indicates, however, that Block has wildly overstated its genuine user counts and has understated its customer acquisition costs. Former employees estimated that 40%-75% of accounts they reviewed were fake, involved in fraud, or were additional accounts tied to a single individual. Core to the issue is that Block has embraced one traditionally very "underbanked" segment of the population: criminals. The company's "Wild West" approach to compliance made it easy for bad actors to mass-create accounts for identity fraud and other scams, then extract stolen funds quickly. Even when users were caught engaging in fraud or other prohibited activity, Block blacklisted the account without banning the user. A former customer service rep shared screenshots showing how blacklisted accounts were regularly associated with dozens or hundreds of other active accounts suspected of fraud. This phenomenon of allowing blacklisted users was so common that rappers bragged about it in hip hop songs. Block obfuscates how many individuals are on the Cash App platform by reporting misleading "transacting active" metrics filled with fake and duplicate accounts. Block can and should clarify to investors an estimate on how many unique people actually use Cash App.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: Google says it has suspended the app for the Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo after malware was found in versions of the app. The move comes just weeks after Chinese security researchers published an analysis suggesting the popular e-commerce app sought to seize total control over affected devices by exploiting multiple security vulnerabilities in a variety of Android-based smartphones. In November 2022, researchers at Google's Project Zero warned about active attacks on Samsung mobile phones which chained together three security vulnerabilities that Samsung patched in March 2021, and which would have allowed an app to add or read any files on the device. Google said it believes the exploit chain for Samsung devices belonged to a "commercial surveillance vendor," without elaborating further. The highly technical writeup also did not name the malicious app in question. On Feb. 28, 2023, researchers at the Chinese security firm DarkNavy published a blog post purporting to show evidence that a major Chinese ecommerce company's app was using this same three-exploit chain to read user data stored by other apps on the affected device, and to make its app nearly impossible to remove. DarkNavy likewise did not name the app they said was responsible for the attacks. In fact, the researchers took care to redact the name of the app from multiple code screenshots published in their writeup. DarkNavy did not respond to requests for clarification. "At present, a large number of end users have complained on multiple social platforms," reads a translated version of the DarkNavy blog post. "The app has problems such as inexplicable installation, privacy leakage, and inability to uninstall." On March 3, 2023, a denizen of the now-defunct cybercrime community BreachForums posted a thread which noted that a unique component of the malicious app code highlighted by DarkNavy also was found in the ecommerce application whose name was apparently redacted from the DarkNavy analysis: Pinduoduo. A Mar. 3, 2023 post on BreachForums, comparing the redacted code from the DarkNavy analysis with the same function in the Pinduoduo app available for download at the time. On March 4, 2023, e-commerce expert Liu Huafang posted on the Chinese social media network Weibo that Pinduoduo's app was using security vulnerabilities to gain market share by stealing user data from its competitors. That Weibo post has since been deleted. On March 7, the newly created Github account Davinci1010 published a technical analysis claiming that until recently Pinduoduo's source code included a "backdoor," a hacking term used to describe code that allows an adversary to remotely and secretly connect to a compromised system at will. That analysis includes links to archived versions of Pinduoduo's app released before March 5 (version 6.50 and lower), which is when Davinci1010 says a new version of the app removed the malicious code. Pinduoduo boasts approximately 900 million monthly active users in China. In August of last year, the Guardian published an article covering the company's plans to expand to the U.S. and take on Amazon.Read more of this story at Slashdot.