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The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to block on free speech grounds a provision of Texas law aimed at preventing minors from accessing pornographic content online. From a report: The justices turned away a request made by the Free Speech Coalition, a pornography industry trade group, as well as several companies. The challengers said the 2023 law violates the Constitution's First Amendment by requiring anyone using the platforms in question, including adults, to submit personal information. One provision of the law, known as H.B. 1181, mandates that platforms verify users' ages by requiring them to submit information about their identities. Although the law is aimed at limiting children's access to sexually explicit content, the lawsuit focuses on how those measures also affect adults. "Specifically, the act requires adults to comply with intrusive age verification measures that mandate the submission of personally identifying information over the internet in order to access websites containing sensitive and intimate content," the challengers wrote in court papers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Maciej Pocwierz, a senior software engineer Semantive, writing on Medium: A few weeks ago, I began working on the PoC of a document indexing system for my client. I created a single S3 bucket in the eu-west-1 region and uploaded some files there for testing. Two days later, I checked my AWS billing page, primarily to make sure that what I was doing was well within the free-tier limits. Apparently, it wasn't. My bill was over $1,300, with the billing console showing nearly 100,000,000 S3 PUT requests executed within just one day! By default, AWS doesn't log requests executed against your S3 buckets. However, such logs can be enabled using AWS CloudTrail or S3 Server Access Logging. After enabling CloudTrail logs, I immediately observed thousands of write requests originating from multiple accounts or entirely outside of AWS. Was it some kind of DDoS-like attack against my account? Against AWS? As it turns out, one of the popular open-source tools had a default configuration to store their backups in S3. And, as a placeholder for a bucket name, they used... the same name that I used for my bucket. This meant that every deployment of this tool with default configuration values attempted to store its backups in my S3 bucket! So, a horde of misconfigured systems is attempting to store their data in my private S3 bucket. But why should I be the one paying for this mistake? Here's why: S3 charges you for unauthorized incoming requests. This was confirmed in my exchange with AWS support. As they wrote: "Yes, S3 charges for unauthorized requests (4xx) as well[1]. That's expected behavior." So, if I were to open my terminal now and type: aws s3 cp ./file.txt s3://your-bucket-name/random_key. I would receive an AccessDenied error, but you would be the one to pay for that request. And I don't even need an AWS account to do so. Another question was bugging me: why was over half of my bill coming from the us-east-1 region? I didn't have a single bucket there! The answer to that is that the S3 requests without a specified region default to us-east-1 and are redirected as needed. And the bucket's owner pays extra for that redirected request. The security aspect: We now understand why my S3 bucket was bombarded with millions of requests and why I ended up with a huge S3 bill. At that point, I had one more idea I wanted to explore. If all those misconfigured systems were attempting to back up their data into my S3 bucket, why not just let them do so? I opened my bucket for public writes and collected over 10GB of data within less than 30 seconds. Of course, I can't disclose whose data it was. But it left me amazed at how an innocent configuration oversight could lead to a dangerous data leak! Lesson 1: Anyone who knows the name of any of your S3 buckets can ramp up your AWS bill as they like. Other than deleting the bucket, there's nothing you can do to prevent it. You can't protect your bucket with services like CloudFront or WAF when it's being accessed directly through the S3 API. Standard S3 PUT requests are priced at just $0.005 per 1,000 requests, but a single machine can easily execute thousands of such requests per second.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Biden administration on Tuesday released rules designed to speed up permits for clean energy while requiring federal agencies to more heavily weigh damaging effects on the climate and on low-income communities before approving projects like highways and oil wells. From a report: As part of a deal to raise the country's debt limit last year, Congress required changes to the National Environmental Policy Act, a 54-year-old bedrock law that requires the government to consider environmental effects and to seek public input before approving any project that necessitates federal permits. That bipartisan debt ceiling legislation included reforms to the environmental law designed to streamline the approval process for major construction projects, such as oil pipelines, highways and power lines for wind- and solar-generated electricity. The rules released Tuesday, by the White House Council on Environmental Quality, are intended to guide federal agencies in putting the reforms in place. But they also lay out additional requirements created to prioritize projects with strong environmental benefits, while adding layers of review for projects that could harm the climate or their surrounding communities. "These reforms will deliver smarter decisions, quicker permitting, and projects that are built better and faster," said Brenda Mallory, chair of the council. "As we accelerate our clean energy future, we are also protecting communities from pollution and environmental harms that can result from poor planning and decision making while making sure we build projects in the right places."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Walmart isn't making enough money off its new health centers, so it decided to close up shop. From a report: The retail giant announced today that it'll shutter all 51 health centers it opened up across five states since 2019. Walmart is also getting rid of its virtual care program after acquiring telehealth provider MeMD in 2021. "We determined there is not a sustainable business model for us to continue," Walmart said in an announcement today. "This is a difficult decision, and like others, the challenging reimbursement environment and escalating operating costs create a lack of profitability that make the care business unsustainable for us at this time," Walmart said today. It's an about-face from last year when Walmart said it planned to double its number of health clinics and expand into two new states in 2024.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One of Europe's most wanted cyber criminals has been jailed for attempting to blackmail 33,000 people whose confidential therapy notes he stole. From a report: Julius Kivimaki obtained them after breaking into the databases of Finland's largest psychotherapy company, Vastaamo. After his attempt to extort the company failed, he emailed patients directly, threatening to reveal what they had told their therapists. At least one suicide has been linked to the case, which has shocked the country. Kivimaki has been sentenced to six years and three months in prison. In terms of the number of victims, his trial was the biggest criminal case in Finnish history. One of them gave their reaction to the BBC. "The main thing is that this absolutely empathy-lacking, ruthless criminal gets a prison sentence," said Tiina Parrika. "After this there rise thoughts about how short the conviction is, when reflected against the number of victims," she added. "But, that's the Finnish law and I must accept that."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes: Reports of the death of Bill Gates' influence at Microsoft have been greatly exaggerated: "Publicly, [Bill] Gates has been almost entirely out of the picture at Microsoft since 2021, following allegations that he had behaved inappropriately toward female employees. In fact, Business Insider has learned, Gates has been quietly orchestrating much of Microsoft's AI revolution from behind the scenes. Current and former executives say Gates remains intimately involved in the company's operations -- advising on strategy, reviewing products, recruiting high-level executives, and nurturing Microsoft's crucial relationship with Sam Altman, the cofounder and CEO of OpenAI. In early 2023, when Microsoft debuted a version of its search engine Bing turbocharged by the same technology as ChatGPT, throwing down the gauntlet against competitors like Google, Gates, executives said, was pivotal in setting the plan in motion. While Nadella might be the public face of the company's AI success [...] Gates has been the man behind the curtain."[...] "Today, Gates remains close with Altman, who visits his home a few times a year, and OpenAI seeks his counsel on developments. There's a 'tight coupling' between Gates and OpenAI, a person familiar with the relationship said. 'Sam and Bill are good friends. OpenAI takes his opinion and consult overall seriously.' OpenAI spokesperson Kayla Wood confirmed OpenAI continues to meet with Gates."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Eight prominent U.S. newspapers owned by investment giant Alden Global Capital are suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, in a complaint filed Tuesday in the Southern District of New York. From a report: Until now, the Times was the only major newspaper to take legal action against AI firms for copyright infringement. Many other news publishers, including the Financial Times, the Associated Press and Axel Springer, have instead opted to strike paid deals with AI companies for millions of dollars annually, undermining the Times' argument that it should be compensated billions of dollars in damages. The lawsuit is being filed on behalf of some of the most prominent regional daily newspapers in the Alden portfolio, including the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, South Florida Sun Sentinel, San Jose Mercury News, Denver Post, Orange County Register and St. Paul Pioneer Press.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has confirmed reports [video link] of a software glitch causing some iPhone alarms to fail to play a sound.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has poached dozens of AI experts from Google and has created a secretive European laboratory in Zurich, as the tech giant builds a team to battle rivals in developing new AI models and products. From a report: According to a Financial Times analysis of hundreds of LinkedIn profiles as well as public job postings and research papers, the $2.7tn company has undertaken a hiring spree over recent years to expand its global AI and machine learning team. The iPhone maker has particularly targeted workers from Google, attracting at least 36 specialists from its rival since it poached John Giannandrea to be its top AI executive in 2018. While the majority of Apple's AI team work from offices in California and Seattle, the tech group has also expanded a significant outpost in Zurich. Professor Luc Van Gool from Swiss university ETH Zurich said Apple's acquisitions of two local AI start-ups -- virtual reality group FaceShift and image recognition company Fashwell -- led Apple to build a research laboratory, known as its "Vision Lab," in the city.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Ahead of its annual GitHub Universe conference in San Francisco early this fall, GitHub announced Copilot Workspace, a dev environment that taps what GitHub describes as "Copilot-powered agents" to help developers brainstorm, plan, build, test and run code in natural language. Jonathan Carter, head of GitHub Next, GitHub's software R&D team, pitches Workspace as somewhat of an evolution of GitHub's AI-powered coding assistant Copilot into a more general tool, building on recently introduced capabilities like Copilot Chat, which lets developers ask questions about code in natural language. "Through research, we found that, for many tasks, the biggest point of friction for developers was in getting started, and in particular knowing how to approach a [coding] problem, knowing which files to edit and knowing how to consider multiple solutions and their trade-offs," Carter said. "So we wanted to build an AI assistant that could meet developers at the inception of an idea or task, reduce the activation energy needed to begin and then collaborate with them on making the necessary edits across the entire corebase." Given a GitHub repo or a specific bug within a repo, Workspace -- underpinned by OpenAI's GPT-4 Turbo model -- can build a plan to (attempt to) squash the bug or implement a new feature, drawing on an understanding of the repo's comments, issue replies and larger codebase. Developers get suggested code for the bug fix or new feature, along with a list of the things they need to validate and test that code, plus controls to edit, save, refactor or undo it. The suggested code can be run directly in Workspace and shared among team members via an external link. Those team members, once in Workspace, can refine and tinker with the code as they see fit. Perhaps the most obvious way to launch Workspace is from the new "Open in Workspace" button to the left of issues and pull requests in GitHub repos. Clicking on it opens a field to describe the software engineering task to be completed in natural language, like, "Add documentation for the changes in this pull request," which, once submitted, gets added to a list of "sessions" within the new dedicated Workspace view. Workspace executes requests systematically step by step, creating a specification, generating a plan and then implementing that plan. Developers can dive into any of these steps to get a granular view of the suggested code and changes and delete, re-run or re-order the steps as necessary. "Since developers spend a lot of their time working on [coding issues], we believe we can help empower developers every day through a 'thought partnership' with AI," Carter said. "You can think of Copilot Workspace as a companion experience and dev environment that complements existing tools and workflows and enables simplifying a class of developer tasks ... We believe there's a lot of value that can be delivered in an AI-native developer environment that isn't constrained by existing workflows."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Richard Speed reports via The Register: NASA's optical communications demonstration has hit 25 Mbps in a test transmitting engineering data back to Earth from 140 million miles (226 million kilometers) away. The payload is riding aboard the Psyche probe, which is headed for an asteroid of the same name. On December 11, when the spacecraft was 19 million miles (30 million kilometers) away, it reached 267 Mbps, which NASA described as "comparable to broadband internet download speeds." However, as Psyche has continued on its trajectory, the distances have become greater, and the rate at which data can be transmitted and received has tumbled. At 140 million miles, the project's goal was to reach a lofty 1 Mbps. Instead, engineers managed to get 25 Mbps out of the demonstration. Earlier demonstrations tested the technology using preloaded data, such as a cat video. The latest experiment used a copy of engineering data also sent via Psyche's radio transmitter. "We downlinked about 10 minutes of duplicated spacecraft data during a pass on April 8," said Meera Srinivasan, the project's operations lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California. "Until then, we'd been sending test and diagnostic data in our downlinks from Psyche. This represents a significant milestone for the project by showing how optical communications can interface with a spacecraft's radio frequency comms system." The demonstrator is only along for the ride -- Psyche uses conventional radio technology for its mission. However, the demonstration does point to the potential for higher-bandwidth communications in future projects.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jules Roscoe reports via 404 Media: Russia has replaced Wikipedia with a state-sponsored encyclopedia that is a clone of the original Russian Wikipedia but which conveniently has been edited to omit things that could cast the Russian government in poor light. Real Russian Wikipedia editors used to refer to the real Wikipedia as Ruwiki; the new one is called Ruviki, has "ruwiki" in its url, and has copied all Russian-language Wikipedia articles and strictly edited them to comply with Russian laws. The new articles exclude mentions of "foreign agents," the Russian government's designation for any person or entity which expresses opinions about the government and is supported, financially or otherwise, by an outside nation. [...] Wikimedia RU, the Russian-language chapter of the non-profit that runs Wikipedia, was forced to shut down in late 2023 amid political pressure due to the Ukraine war. Vladimir Medeyko, the former head of the chapter who now runs Ruviki, told Novaya Gazeta Europe in July that he believed Wikipedia had problems with "reliability and neutrality." Medeyko first announced the project to copy and censor the 1.9 million Russian-language Wikipedia articles in June. The goal, he said at the time, was to edit them so that the information would be "trustworthy" as a source for all Russian users. Independent outlet Bumaga reported in August that around 110 articles about the war in Ukraine were missing in full, while others were severely edited. Ruviki also excludes articles about reports of torture in prisons and scandals of Russian government representatives. [...] Graphic designer Constantine Konovalov calculated the number of characters changed between Wikipedia RU and Ruviki articles on the same topics, and found that there were 205,000 changes in articles about freedom of speech; 158,000 changes in articles about human rights; 96,000 changes in articles about political prisoners; and 71,000 changes in articles about censorship in Russia. He wrote in a post on X that the censorship was "straight out of a 1984 novel." Interestingly, the Ruviki article about George Orwell's 1984 entirely omits the Ministry of Truth, which is the novel's main propaganda outlet concerned with governing "truth" in the country.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Energy ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) major democracies reached a deal to shut down their coal-fired power plants in the first half of the 2030s, in a significant step towards the transition away from fossil fuels. "There is a technical agreement, we will seal the final political deal on Tuesday," said Italian energy minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, who is chairing the G7 ministerial meeting in Turin. On Tuesday the ministers will issue a final communique detailing the G7 commitments to decarbonize their economies. Pichetto said the ministers were also pondering potential restrictions to Russian imports of liquefied natural gas to Europe which the European Commission is due to propose in the short-term. The agreement on coal marks a significant step in the direction indicated last year by the COP28 United Nations climate summit to phase out fossil fuels, of which coal is the most polluting. Italy last year produced 4.7% of its total electricity through a handful of coal-fired stations. Rome currently plans to turn off its plants by 2025, except on the island of Sardinia where the deadline is 2028. In Germany and Japan coal has a bigger role, with the share of electricity produced by the fuel higher than 25% of total last year. "This is another nail in the coffin for coal," said Dave Jones, Ember's Global Insights program director. "The journey to phase out coal power has been long: it's been over seven years since the UK, France, Italy, and Canada committed to phase out coal power, so it's good to see the United States and especially Japan at last be more explicit on their intentions." "The problem is that whilst coal power has already been falling, gas power has not. G7 nations already promised to 'fully or predominantly' decarbonize their power sectors by 2035, and that would mean phasing out not only coal by 2035 but also gas. Coal might be the dirtiest, but all fossil fuels need to be ultimately phased out." Further reading: Countries Consider Pact To Reduce Plastic Production By 40% in 15 YearsRead more of this story at Slashdot.

Crypto company Tether announced Monday that it has invested $200 million to acquire a majority stake in brain-computer interface company Blackrock Neurotech via its venture capital division Tether Evo. [The firm is not related to the asset management giant BlackRock.] CoinDesk reports: Blackrock Neurotech develops medical devices that are powered by brain signals and aims to help people impacted by paralysis and neurological disorders. The investment will fund the roll-out and commercialization of the medical devices and also for research and development purposes, the press release said. Tether is the company behind USDT, the largest stablecoin with a market cap of $110 billion. Recently, Tether established four divisions to expand beyond stablecoin issuance. "Tether has long believed in nurturing emerging technologies that have transformative capabilities, and the Brain-Computer-Interfaces of Blackrock Neurotech have the potential to open new realms of communication, rehabilitation, and cognitive enhancement," Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, said in a statement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ReneR writes: A major T2 Linux milestone has been released, shipping with full support for 25 CPU architectures and several C libraries, as well as restored support for Intel IA-64 Itanium. Additionally, many vintage X.org DDX drivers were fixed and tested to work again, as well as complete support for the latest KDE 6 and GNOME 46. T2 is known for its sophisticated cross compile support and support for nearly all existing CPU architectures: Alpha, Arc, ARM(64), Avr32, HPPA(64), IA64, M68k, MIPS(64), Nios2, PowerPC(64)(le), RISCV(64), s390x, SPARC(64), and SuperH x86(64). T2 is an increasingly popular choice for embedded systems and virtualization. It also still supports the Sony PS3, Sgi, Sun and HP workstations, as well as the latest ARM64 and RISCV64 architectures. The release contains a total of 5,140 changesets, including approximately 5,314 package updates, 564 issues fixed, 317 packages or features added and 163 removed, and around 53 improvements. Usually most packages are up-to-date, including Linux 6.8, GCC 13, LLVM/Clang 18, as well as the latest version of X.org, Mesa, Firefox, Rust, KDE 6 and GNOME 46! More information, source and binary distribution are open source and free at T2 SDE.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As reported by Bloomberg (paywalled), Apple's iPadOS will need to abide by EU's DMA rules, as it is now designated as a gatekeeper alongside the Safari web browser, iOS operating system and the App Store. "Apple now has six months to ensure full compliance of iPadOS with the DMA obligations," reads the EU's blog post about the change. Engadget reports: What does Apple have to do to ensure iPadOS compliance? According to the DMA, gatekeepers are prohibited from favoring their own services over rivals and from locking users into the ecosystem. The software must also allow third parties to interoperate with internal services, which is why third-party app stores are becoming a thing on iPhones in Europe. The iPad, presumably, will soon follow suit. In other words, the DMA is lobbing some serious stink bombs into Apple's walled garden. In a statement published by Forbes, Apple said it "will continue to constructively engage with the European Commission" to ensure its designated services comply with the DMA, including iPadOS. "iPadOS constitutes an important gateway on which many companies rely to reach their customers," wrote Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President in charge of competition policy at the European Commission. "Today's decision will ensure that fairness and contestability are preserved also on this platform."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: WeWork has a new plan to get out of bankruptcy -- and it doesn't involve Adam Neumann, who wants to acquire the flexible office provider he created. WeWork announced Monday that it has raised $450 million in equity funding, which it could use to emerge from Chapter 11. The company also said it has a plan in place to "eliminate all of its $4 billion of outstanding, prepetition debt obligations." A vote on the plan -- which has support from the owners of most of WeWork's debt -- is scheduled for May 30, according to Bloomberg. The majority of the funding -- $337 million, to be exact -- would come from Cupar Grimmond, and SoftBank would still own a stake in the company, according to the outlet. But Neumann, who has recently expressed interest in purchasing WeWork for more than $500 million, doesn't plan to go down without a fight. "After misleading the court for weeks, WeWork finally admitted it is trying to sell the company to a group led by Yardi for far less than we are continuing to propose," Susheel Kirpalani, an attorney for Neumann's new real estate startup Flow Global, told Business Insider in a statement, adding, "so we anticipate there will be robust objections to confirming this plan."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader ArchieBunker shares a report from The Mirror: The city court in Syktyvkar, the largest city in Russia's northwestern Komi region, announced it had arrested [former world chess champion Garry Kasparov] in absentia alongside former Russian parliament member Gennady Gudkov, Ivan Tyutrin co-founder of the Free Russia Forum -- which has been designated as an "undesirable organization in the country -- as well as former environmental activist Yevgenia Chirikova. All were charged with setting up a terrorist society, according to the court's press service. As all were charged in their absence, none were physically held in custody. "The court has selected a measure of restraint for Garry Kasparov, Gennady Gudkov, Yevgenia Chirikova and Ivan Tyutrin, charged with establishing and heading a terrorist society, funding terrorist activity and justifying it publicly," the court said according to Kremlin-backed outlet TASS. "The court granted the investigative bodies' motions to remand Kasparov, Gudkov, Chirikova and Tyutrin in custody as a measure of restraint." Kasparov responded to the court's bizarre arrest statement in an April 24 post shared on X, formerly Twitter. "In absentia is definitely the best way I've ever been arrested," he said. "Good company, as well. I'm sure we're all equally honored that Putin's terror state is spending time on this that would otherwise go persecuting and murdering."The report notes that Kasparov "found himself in Russian President Vladimir Putin's firing line after he voiced his opposition to the country's leader." The report continues: "He has also pursued pro-democracy initiatives in Russia. But he felt unable to continue living in Russia after he was jailed and allegedly beaten by police in 2012, according to the Guardian. He was granted Croatian citizenship in 2014 following repeated difficulties in Russia."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ahead of its annual I/O developer conference in May, Google has decided to lay off staff across key teams like Flutter, Dart, Python and others. "As we've said, we're responsibly investing in our company's biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead," said a Google spokesperson. "To best position us for these opportunities, throughout the second half of 2023 and into 2024, a number of our teams made changes to become more efficient and work better, remove layers, and align their resources to their biggest product priorities. Through this, we're simplifying our structures to give employees more opportunity to work on our most innovative and important advances and our biggest company priorities, while reducing bureaucracy and layers." TechCrunch reports: The company clarified that the layoffs were not company-wide but were reorgs that are part of the normal course of business. Affected employees will be able to apply for other open roles at Google, we're told. [...] Though Google didn't detail headcount, some of the layoffs at Google may have been confirmed in a WARN notice filed on April 24. WARN, or the California Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, requires employers with more than 100 employees to provide 60-day notice in advance of layoffs. In the filing, Google said it was laying off a total of 50 employees across three locations in Sunnyvale. On social media, commenters raised concerns with the Python layoffs in particular, given the role that Python tooling plays in AI. But others pointed out that Google didn't eliminate its Python team; it replaced that team with another group based in Munich -- at least according to Python Steering Council member Thomas Wouters in a post on Mastodon last Thursday.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Streamable: Roku wants to take the term "ad-supported" to another level. The company held its quarterly earnings conference call on Thursday, and revealed that 81.6 million households used a Roku device or smart TV to stream video in the first three months of the year. As part of the report, company CEO Anthony Wood laid out ideas for how the company would increase revenues in 2024. Unsurprisingly, advertising will be an important centerpiece of that strategy, and Wood provided some details on what Roku users can expect from their ad experience going forward. The idea of bringing more ads to the Roku home screen is nothing new, but that's what Wood focused on in his discussion with analysts about how to boost revenue on the Roku platform. The company has already begun putting more static ads on the screen, but now it appears that Roku is considering how to get video ads embedded into the home page as well. Wood said that he believes that a video-enabled ad unit on the Roku home screen will be "very popular with advertisers," considering that Roku devices have the reach to put ads in front of 120 million pairs of eyes every day. He also said that the company is "testing other types of video ad units, looking at other experiences" that it can bring to the Roku home screen. As another way to boost ad revenues, Wood suggested that the company's home screen experiences could be leveraged to deliver more ads. He pointed to the NBA Zone, which Roku launched at the beginning of April as an example. Roku can use these themed content hubs to deliver ads more tailored to fans of that particular content, harnessing the power of popular sports to pull more ad revenue. Customers concerned that Roku will just gunk up their home screen with ads are likely wondering if the company has made any moves toward actually making the user experience on the platform better. The good news is that Roku has also introduced a recommended content row, that will compile picks from across various streaming services and use AI to point customers toward new shows and movies they might like. "There's lots of ways we're working on enhancing the home screen to make it more valuable to viewers but also increase the monetization," Wood said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If 2023 was the tech industry's year of the A.I. chatbot, 2024 is turning out to be the year of A.I. plumbing. From a report: It may not sound as exciting, but tens of billions of dollars are quickly being spent on behind-the-scenes technology for the industry's A.I. boom. Companies from Amazon to Meta are revamping their data centers to support artificial intelligence. They are investing in huge new facilities, while even places like Saudi Arabia are racing to build supercomputers to handle A.I. Nearly everyone with a foot in tech or giant piles of money, it seems, is jumping into a spending frenzy that some believe could last for years. Microsoft, Meta, and Google's parent company, Alphabet, disclosed this week that they had spent more than $32 billion combined on data centers and other capital expenses in just the first three months of the year. The companies all said in calls with investors that they had no plans to slow down their A.I. spending. In the clearest sign of how A.I. has become a story about building a massive technology infrastructure, Meta said on Wednesday that it needed to spend billions more on the chips and data centers for A.I. than it had previously signaled. "I think it makes sense to go for it, and we're going to," Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's chief executive, said in a call with investors. The eye-popping spending reflects an old parable in Silicon Valley: The people who made the biggest fortunes in California's gold rush weren't the miners -- they were the people selling the shovels. No doubt Nvidia, whose chip sales have more than tripled over the last year, is the most obvious A.I. winner. The money being thrown at technology to support artificial intelligence is also a reminder of spending patterns of the dot-com boom of the 1990s. For all of the excitement around web browsers and newfangled e-commerce websites, the companies making the real money were software giants like Microsoft and Oracle, the chipmaker Intel, and Cisco Systems, which made the gear that connected those new computer networks together. But cloud computing has added a new wrinkle: Since most start-ups and even big companies from other industries contract with cloud computing providers to host their networks, the tech industry's biggest companies are spending big now in hopes of luring customers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Millions of Americans pay for Netflix, doling out anywhere from $6.99 to $22.99 a month. It's a common belief that you can get out of recurring charges like this by canceling your credit card. Netflix won't be able to find you, and your account will just go away, right? You wouldn't be crazy for believing it, but it's a myth that canceling a credit card will definitely stop your recurring charges. From a report: Nearly 46% of Americans opened a new credit card last year, according to Forbes, which means millions of Americans also canceled old ones. When you switch cards, Netflix doesn't just stop your service -- they just start charging your new card. Granted, it might be easier to just cancel your Netflix subscription directly. There's a largely hidden service that enables Netflix and most other subscription services to keep throwing charges at you indefinitely. "Banks may automatically update credit or debit card numbers when a new card is issued. This update allows your card to continue to be charged, even if it's expired," Netflix says in its help center. Most major card providers offer a feature that enables this, including Visa. In 2003, Visa U.S.A. started offering a new software product to merchants called Visa Account Updater (VAU), according to a 2003 American Banker article. The service works with a network of banks to create a virtual tracking service of Americans' financial profiles. Whenever someone renews, or switches a credit card within their bank, the institution automatically update the VAU. This system lets Netflix and countless other corporations charge whatever card you have on file.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Communications Commission has fined the nation's largest wireless carriers for illegally sharing access to customers' location information without consent and without taking reasonable measures to protect that information against unauthorized disclosure. From a report: Sprint and T-Mobile -- which have merged since the investigation began -- face fines of more than $12 million and $80 million, respectively. AT&T is fined more than $57 million, and Verizon is fined almost $47 million. "Our communications providers have access to some of the most sensitive information about us. These carriers failed to protect the information entrusted to them. Here, we are talking about some of the most sensitive data in their possession: customers' real-time location information, revealing where they go and who they are," said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. "As we resolve these cases" which were first proposed by the last Administration -- the Commission remains committed to holding all carriers accountable and making sure they fulfill their obligations to their customers as stewards of this most private data."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The latest figures from IDC shows that Samsung's share in China's foldable smartphone market was 5.9% in Q1 2024. At one point, Samsung was pulling in a quarterly foldable market share of nearly 30% in China. From a report: It essentially came in dead last, as Samsung finds itself comprehensively beaten by the handful of companies that make foldable phones. This is also a significant decline over the previous year when Samsung's share was at 11%.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As of today, Walmart is able to sell physical goods directly to users inside Roblox. Digiday adds: The introduction of real-life e-commerce could be a watershed moment for the company's ambitions to become an all-encompassing destination for virtual life. Walmart's Roblox e-commerce experience launches later today, with users inside the pre-existing Walmart Discovered able to have real-life items shipped directly to their doorsteps. Users entering the experience will be greeted with a new storefront showcasing virtual twins of select physical items sold at real-life Walmart stores. After trying out the virtual items on their avatars, players will be able to load an e-commerce experience that takes the form of a browser window inside Roblox imitating the experience of shopping on Walmart's website -- essentially a virtual laptop set up inside Roblox to access Walmart.com. The commerce feature within Walmart Discovered will be gated specifically to users aged 13 or older in the United States only. "There is a traditional sort of checkout flow where you put your name, your address and your credit card information, and that's all powered by a Walmart API that handles all of the information super securely -- it's very safe," said Walmart director of brand experiences and strategic partnerships Justin Breton. "And once you hit checkout, you'll get your confirmation email from Walmart. All of that is handled by us on the back end, the user will then get their item in the mail, but the virtual twin is granted immediately back on Roblox."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: I paid a lot of money for the privilege of getting an Apple Vision Pro brand-new in February. All-in, with optical inserts and taxes, I financed a little over $3,900 for the 256GB version of the headset. A day or so ago, I made a mistake that I'm sure many early adopters are familiar with: I looked up how much it's been selling for on eBay. On Wednesday, a 1TB Vision Pro, complete with all the included gear, Apple's fluffy $200 travel case, $500 AppleCare Plus, and claimed to have been "worn maybe about an hour" sold for $3,200 after 21 bids. The listed shipping estimate was $20.30. Brand new, that combination is $5,007.03 on Apple's site for me. Another eBay listing, this one with my headset's configuration (but sans optical inserts) went for just $2,600 -- again with most, if not all, of the included accessories. Several other 256GB and 512GB models sold for around that amount this week. The story is no different over on Swappa, a popular reselling site among Apple users. Bloomberg News, over the weekend: In related news, employees at some Apple retail stores are now being asked to fill out surveys after giving Vision Pro demonstrations to potential buyers. Apple wants to know if they were able to close a sale and get any feedback from the would-be buyer. Apple also wants to ensure employees are following the 20-minute demo script. As I wrote last week, Vision Pro demand has dropped considerably at many Apple stores. One retail employee says they haven't seen one Vision Pro purchase in weeks and that the number of returns equaled the device's sales in the first month that it was available.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Earlier this month, we wrote that some of Intel's recent high-end Core i9 and Core i7 processors had been crashing and exhibiting other weird issues in some games and that Intel was investigating the cause. An Intel statement obtained by Igor's Lab suggests that Intel's investigation is wrapping up, and the company is pointing squarely in the direction of enthusiast motherboard makers that are turning up power limits and disabling safeguards to try to wring a little more performance out of the processors. "While the root cause has not yet been identified, Intel has observed the majority of reports of this issue are from users with unlocked/overclock capable motherboards," the statement reads. "Intel has observed 600/700 Series chipset boards often set BIOS defaults to disable thermal and power delivery safeguards designed to limit processor exposure to sustained periods of high voltage and frequency." These are the specific settings that Intel believes are causing problems:Disabling Current Excursion Protection (CEP)Enabling the IccMax Unlimited bitDisabling Thermal Velocity Boost (TVB) and/or Enhanced Thermal Velocity Boost (eTVB) Additional settings which may increase the risk of system instability:Disabling C-statesUsing Windows Ultimate Performance modeIncreasing PL1 and PL2 beyond Intel recommended limits.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Razer will have to fork over $1.1 million in refunds to customers who purchased its RGB-clad Zephyr face mask, according to a proposed settlement announced by the Federal Trade Commission on Monday. From a report: The company claimed the face mask used N95-grade filters, but the FTC alleges Razer never submitted them for testing and only "stopped the false advertising following negative press coverage and consumer outrage at the deceptive claims." Razer first released its Zephyr face mask in 2021 as a nifty, cyberpunk-esque alternative to traditional face masks worn during the covid-19 pandemic. Although Razer initially marketed the $100 mask as having N95-grade filters, it scrubbed any mention of the grade after YouTuber Naomi Wu tore down the mask and found that it wasn't N95 certified after all. N95 masks are supposed to filter out at least 95 percent of airborne particles, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Razer also planned on launching a $150 Zephyr Pro with a voice amplification feature, but that never panned out. At the time, Razer addressed claims about its Zephyr masks, saying in a post on X that "the Razer Zephyr and Zephyr Pro are not medical devices, respirators, surgical masks, or personal protective equipment (PPE) and are not meant to be used in medical or clinical settings."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Countries are for the first time considering restrictions on the global production of plastic -- to reduce it by 40% in 15 years -- in an attempt to protect human health and the environment. From a report: As the world attempts to make a treaty to cut plastic waste at UN talks in Ottawa, Canada, two countries have put forward the first concrete proposal to limit production to reduce its harmful effects including the huge carbon emissions from producing it. The motion submitted by Rwanda and Peru sets out a global reduction target, ambitiously termed a "north star," to cut the production of primary plastic polymers across the world by 40% by 2040, from a 2025 baseline. It says: "The effectiveness of both supply and demand-side measures will be assessed, in whole or in part, on their success in reducing the production of primary plastic polymers to sustainable levels." The proposal calls for the consideration of mandatory reporting by countries of statistical data on production, imports and exports of primary plastic polymers. A global plastic reduction target would be similar to the legally binding Paris agreement to pursue efforts to limit global temperature increase to 1.5C above preindustrial levels, Rwanda and Peru said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon says its deliveries are getting even faster, announcing that it delivered over 2 billion items the same or next day to Prime members during the first three months of 2024, breaking its record for 2023. From a report: The company says it delivered almost 60 percent of Prime orders the same or next day in 60 of the biggest metropolitan areas in the US.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Austria called on Monday for fresh efforts to regulate the use of AI in weapons systems that could create so-called 'killer robots', as it hosted a conference aimed at reviving largely stalled discussions on the issue. From a report: With AI technology advancing rapidly, weapons systems that could kill without human intervention are coming ever closer, posing ethical and legal challenges that most countries say need addressing soon. "We cannot let this moment pass without taking action. Now is the time to agree on international rules and norms to ensure human control," Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg told the meeting of non-governmental and international organisations as well as envoys from 143 countries. "At least let us make sure that the most profound and far-reaching decision, who lives and who dies, remains in the hands of humans and not of machines," he said in an opening speech to the conference entitled "Humanity at the Crossroads: Autonomous Weapons Systems and the Challenge of Regulation." Years of discussions at the United Nations have produced few tangible results and many participants at the two-day conference in Vienna said the window for action was closing rapidly.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The United Kingdom has become the first country in the world to ban default guessable usernames and passwords from these IoT devices. Unique passwords installed by default are still permitted. From a report: The Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act 2022 (PSTI) introduces new minimum-security standards for manufacturers, and demands that these companies are open with consumers about how long their products will receive security updates for. Manufacturing and design practices mean many IoT products introduce additional risks to the home and business networks they're connected to. In one often-cited case described by cybersecurity company Darktrace, hackers were allegedly able to steal data from a casino's otherwise well-protected computer network after breaking in through an internet-connected temperature sensor in a fish tank. Under the PSTI, weak or easily guessable default passwords such as "admin" or "12345" are explicitly banned, and manufacturers are also required to publish contact details so users can report bugs.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Oakland, California is now home to "the first commercial hydrogen fuel station for big-rig trucks in the United States," according to the Los Angeles Times - serving 30 hydrogen fuel-cell trucks. The newspaper says the facility "could mark the start of a nationwide network for fuel-cell truck refueling. It could also flop."Hydrogen fuel is expensive - as much as four times more expensive than gasoline or diesel fuel. The fuel cells, which drive electric motors to drive the truck, are enormously expensive as well.... The vehicles themselves are expensive too. Both battery electric and hydrogen fuel-cell trucks can cost three times as much or more than a $120,000 diesel truck. Those buying the trucks can qualify for state and federal subsidies to make up most of the upfront costs. But government regulations may spark some demand:New diesel truck sales will be outlawed in California by 2036. Only zero-tailpipe-emission new trucks will be allowed. Already, zero-emission requirements are in place for trucks that enter ocean ports. And only two technologies are available to achieve that goal: battery electric trucks and hydrogen fuel-cell trucks. "We believe a good portion of those will be hydrogen vehicles," said Matt Miyasato, chief of public policy for hydrogen fuel distributor FirstElement Fuel. FirstElement, through its True Zero brand fueling stations, is the largest hydrogen vehicle fuel distributor in the U.S... Battery electric is gaining a strong foothold in the medium-sized delivery truck market, but hydrogen could have a leg up for long-haul trucking. While a fuel cell is comparable in size to a diesel engine, a battery big enough for long-haul trucks adds weight and size and cuts down on the total freight load the truck can deliver. And while an electric truck battery can take hours to recharge, the refill time for hydrogen is more comparable to filling up with diesel fuel.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

RockDoctor (Slashdot reader #15,477) wants to tell you about a "new" star that will be visible to the naked eye - without a telescope - sometime before September:By "star", I do not mean "comet", "meteorite" or "firefly", but genuine [star] photons arriving here after about 3000 years in flight, causing your eyes to see a bright point on the nighttime sky. When it happens, the star will go from needing-a- telescope-or-good-binoculars-to-see, to being the 50th (or even 30th) brightest star in the sky. For a week or so. Of course, it could just go full-on supernova, and be visible in daylight for a few weeks, and dominate the night sky for months. But that's unlikely. Named "T Corona Borealis" (because it's the 20th variable star studied in the constellation "Corona Borealis") it's now visible all night, all year, for about 60% of the world's population (although normally you need binoculars to see it). But RockDoctor writes that in 2016, "T CrB" (as it is known) has started showing "a similar pattern of changes" to what happened in the late 1930s when it became one of only 10 "recurring nova" known to science:In 2023, the pattern continued and the match of details got better. The star is expected to undergo another "eruption" - becoming one of the brightest few stars in the sky, within the next couple of months. Maybe the next couple of weeks. Maybe the next couple of hours.... Last week, astrophysicist Dr Becky Smethurst posted on the expected event in her monthly "Night Sky News" video blog. If you prefer your information in text not video, the AAVSO (variable star observers) posted a news alert for it's observers a while ago. They also hosted a seminar on the star, and why it's eruption is expected Real Soon Now, which is also on YouTube. A small selection of recent papers on the subject are posted here, which also includes information on how to get the most up-to-date brightness readings (unless you're a HST / JWST / Palomar / Hawai`i / Chile telescope operator). Yes, the "big guns" of astronomy have prepared their "TOO - Target Of Opportunity" plans, and will be dropping normal observations really quickly when the news breaks and slewing TOO the target. You won't need your eclipse glasses for this. (Dr Becky's video covers where you can send them for re-use.) But you might want to photograph the appropriate part of the sky so you'll notice when the bomb goes off. Bomb? Did I say that the best model for what is happening is a thermonuclear explosion like a H-bomb the size of the Earth detonating? Well, that's the best analogue. This CNN article includes a nice animation from NASA illustrating the multi-star interaction that's causing the event: The stars in the orbiting pair are close enough to each other that they interact violently. The red giant becomes increasingly unstable over time as it heats up, casting off its outer layers that land as matter on the white dwarf star. The exchange of matter causes the atmosphere of the white dwarf to gradually heat until it experiences a "runaway thermonuclear reaction," resulting in a nova [according to NASA]... The NASAUniverse account on X, formerly known as Twitter, will provide updates about the outburst and its appearance. The BBC reiterates the key data points - that "The rare cosmic event is expected to take place sometime before September 2024. When it occurs it will likely be visible to the naked eye. No expensive telescope will be needed to witness this cosmic performance, says NASA."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Though it's long past Y2K, another date-related bug is still with us, writes Slashdot reader Bruce66423, sharing this report from the BBC. "A 101-year-old woman keeps getting mistaken for a baby, because of an error with an airline's booking system."The problem occurs because American Airlines' systems apparently cannot compute that Patricia, who did not want to share her surname, was born in 1922, rather than 2022.... [O]n one occasion, airport staff did not have transport ready for her inside the terminal as they were expecting a baby who could be carried... [I]t appears the airport computer system is unable to process a birth date so far in the past - so it defaulted to one 100 years later instead... But she is adamant the IT problems will not put her off flying, and says she is looking forward to her next flight in the autumn. By then she will be 102 - and perhaps by then the airline computers will have caught on to her real age.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN:Five times the size of Paris. Visible from space. The world's biggest energy plant. Enough electricity to power Switzerland. The scale of the project transforming swathes of barren salt desert on the edge of western India into one of the most important sources of clean energy anywhere on the planet is so overwhelming that the man in charge can't keep up. "I don't even do the math any more," Sagar Adani told CNN in an interview last week. Adani is executive director of Adani Green Energy Limited (AGEL). He's also the nephew of Gautam Adani, Asia's second richest man, whose $100 billion fortune stems from the Adani Group, India's biggest coal importer and a leading miner of the dirty fuel. Founded in 1988, the conglomerate has businesses in fields ranging from ports and thermal power plants to media and cements. Its clean energy unit AGEL is building the sprawling solar and wind power plant in the western Indian state of Gujarat at a cost of about $20 billion. It will be the world's biggest renewable park when it is finished in about five years, and should generate enough clean electricity to power 16 million Indian homes... [T]he park will cover more than 200 square miles and be the planet's largest power plant regardless of the energy source, AGEL said. CNN adds that the company "plans to invest $100 billion into energy transition over the next decade, with 70% of the investments ear-marked for clean energy."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared a report this week from Reuters:The U.S. Department of Commerce is reviewing the national security implications of China's work in open-source RISC-V chip technology, according to a letter sent to U.S. lawmakers... The technology is being used by major Chinese tech firms such as Alibaba Group Holding and has become a new front in the strategic competition over advanced chip technology between the U.S. and China. In November, 18 U.S. lawmakers from both houses of Congress pressed the Biden administration for its plans to prevent China "from achieving dominance in ... RISC-V technology and leveraging that dominance at the expense of U.S. national and economic security." In a letter last week to the lawmakers that was seen by Reuters on Tuesday, the Commerce Department said it is "working to review potential risks and assess whether there are appropriate actions under Commerce authorities that could effectively address any potential concerns." But the Commerce Department also noted that it would need to tread carefully to avoid harming U.S. companies that are part of international groups working on RISC-V technology.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pursuing an unfair business practices case against Amazon, America's Federal Trade Commission has now "accused" Amazon of using Signal, reports the Seattle Times: The newspaper notes that the app "can be set to automatically delete messages, to hide information related to the FTC's ongoing antitrust investigation into the company."In a court filing this week, the FTC moved to "compel" Amazon to share more information about its policies and instructions related to using the Signal app... The FTC accused Amazon executives of manually turning on the feature to delete messages in Signal even after the company learned that the FTC was investigating and had told Amazon to keep documents, emails and other messages. Many of Amazon's senior leaders used Signal, according to the FTC, including former CEO and current chair Jeff Bezos, CEO Andy Jassy, and general counsel David Zapolsky, as well as Jeff Wilke, former head of Amazon's worldwide consumer business, and Dave Clark, former worldwide operations chief. "Amazon is a company that tightly controls what its employees put into writing," FTC attorneys said in a court filing Thursday. "But Amazon's senior leadership also used another channel for internal communications and avoided the need to talk carefully by destroying the records of their messages...." In the court filing Thursday, the FTC asked Amazon to provide two troves of documents related to its use of Signal: Amazon's document preservation notices and its instructions about the use of "ephemeral messaging applications, including Signal." The FTC said Amazon waited for more than a year after it learned of the investigation to instruct its employees to preserve Signal messages. "It is highly likely that relevant information has been destroyed as a result of Amazon's actions and inactions," the FTC wrote in court records.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader lee1 shares "an interesting essay on the history of orthodoxy in quantum mechanics," published this week in Nature. Its title? "'Shut up and calculate': how Einstein lost the battle to explain quantum reality."[T]he views of Danish physicist Niels Bohr came to dominate. Albert Einstein famously disagreed with him and, in the 1920s and 1930s, the two locked horns in debate. A persistent myth was created that suggests Bohr won the argument by browbeating the stubborn and increasingly isolated Einstein into submission. Acting like some fanatical priesthood, physicists of Bohr's 'church' sought to shut down further debate. They established the 'Copenhagen interpretation', named after the location of Bohr's institute, as a dogmatic orthodoxy. My latest book Quantum Drama, co-written with science historian John Heilbron, explores the origins of this myth and its role in motivating the singular personalities that would go on to challenge it. Their persistence in the face of widespread indifference paid off, because they helped to lay the foundations for a quantum-computing industry expected to be worth tens of billions by 2040... The Einstein-Bohr dispute raised larger issues, according to the article. "What is the purpose of physics? Is its main goal to gain ever-more-detailed descriptions and control of phenomena, regardless of whether physicists can understand these descriptions? Or, rather, is it a continuing search for deeper and deeper insights into the nature of physical reality? "Einstein preferred the second answer," the articcle notes - and concluded that quantum mechanics was incomplete:Unlike Bohr, Einstein had established no school of his own. He had rather retreated into his own mind, in vain pursuit of a theory that would unify electromagnetism and gravity, and so eliminate the need for quantum mechanics altogether. He referred to himself as a "lone traveler". In 1948, U.S. theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer remarked to a reporter at Time magazine that the older Einstein had become "a landmark, but not a beacon". Subsequent readings of this period in quantum history promoted a persistent and widespread suggestion that the Copenhagen interpretation had been established as the orthodox view... When learning quantum mechanics as a graduate student at Harvard University in the 1950s, US physicist N. David Mermin recalled vivid memories of the responses that his conceptual enquiries elicited from his professors, whom he viewed as 'agents of Copenhagen'. "You'll never get a PhD if you allow yourself to be distracted by such frivolities," they advised him, "so get back to serious business and produce some results. Shut up, in other words, and calculate." The book argues that actually the physics world suffered from "a subtly different kind of orthodoxy" - an indifference to "foundational questions" outside the mainstream - but that the "myth" motivated projects and experiments. "Although the wider physics community still considered testing quantum mechanics to be a fringe science and mostly a waste of time, exposing a hitherto unsuspected phenomenon - quantum entanglement and non-locality - was not..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"In less than 15 years, battery costs have fallen by more than 90%," according to a new report from the International Energy Agency, "one of the fastest declines ever seen in clean energy technologies." And it's expected to get even cheaper, reports Reuters:An expected sharp fall in battery costs for energy storage in coming years will accelerate the shift to renewable energy from fossil fuels, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Thursday... The total capital costs of battery storage are due to tumble by up to 40% by 2030, the Paris-based watchdog said in its Batteries and Secure Energy Transitions report. "The combination of solar PV (photovoltaic) and batteries is today competitive with new coal plants in India," said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. "And just in the next few years, it will be cheaper than new coal in China and gas-fired power in the United States. Batteries are changing the game before our eyes." [...] The global market for energy storage doubled last year to over 90 gigawatt-hours (GWh), the report said... The slide in battery costs will also help provide electricity to millions of people without access, cutting by nearly half the average electricity costs of mini-grids with solar PV coupled with batteries by 2030, the IEA said. The Los Angeles Times notes one place adopting the tech is California:Standing in the middle of a solar farm in Yolo County, [California governor] Newsom announced the state now had battery storage systems with the capacity of more than 10,000 megawatts - about 20% of the 52,000 megawatts the state says is needed to meet its climate goals. Although Newsom acknowledged it isn't yet enough to eliminate blackouts...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This year Dell moved to soldered RAM for its XPS 14 and 16, writes Digital Trends, which "makes it impossible to upgrade, or even repair." "This was a big change from the past, where the XPS 15 and 17 were both celebrated for their upgradability."Of course, Dell isn't the first to make the transition. In fact, they're one of the last, which is what makes the decision so much tougher to swallow. Where soldered RAM was previously limited to just MacBooks and ultrabooks, it's now affecting most high-performance laptops for gaming as well. Even the fantastic ROG Zephyrus G14 moved to soldered memory this year. After two months of research, the article's author acknowledges "there are tangible benefits to companies using soldered RAM, and all the people I spoke to while writing this agree that they outweigh the downsides, but how that applies to the end-user is a bit more complicated."If there's one thing and one thing only that soldered RAM is indisputably good for, it's saving space. [Haval Othman, a senior director of experience engineering at HP] explained the benefits, saying: "If battery life, mobility, form factor (thin and light), and power efficiency are my priority among other design choices, then my mind immediately goes to soldered RAM; because that's where soldered RAM can be beneficial and power-efficient, which will lead to longer battery life. Plus, it's going to give me more space on the motherboard, so I can design the product thinner and lighter. [...] If we want a thin product, the trade-off is soldering more of the devices onto the board." This tracks. In a laptop, there's only so much space that can be used for components, and that free space grows smaller by the year to make ultrabooks possible. They're an industrywide trend that was first popularized by Apple, and the rest of the laptop manufacturing world quickly caught on. Each year, laptops are released thinner and lighter, and that means having to squeeze the components together in new, innovative ways... Soldering the memory down onto the motherboard means that it can be attached almost anywhere within the laptop instead of being slotted into a specific part of it. It effectively makes the laptop thinner by cutting back on the space that the RAM module takes up. The space saved by soldering memory can be used for other things, such as a bigger battery.... All three companies that I spoke to stress the form factor much more than any tangible cost benefits... Stuart Gill, director of global media relations, campaigns, and corporate content [said] "Both soldered and socketed RAM designs are now quite mature. As a result, we see no impact on the manufacturing process and, therefore, the cost to the consumer." SO-DIMM chips also have "relatively limited bandwidth," according to HP's Othman, "while when you solder the memory chips onto the board, you can build it for a much wider bandwidth." But the article ends by looking to the future. "The good news is that SO-DIMM memory might eventually be replaced by the CAMM2 standard."Recently approved by JEDEC, CAMM2 is said to be significantly thinner, and it'll be available both in soldered and non-soldered variants. Using CAMM2 will allow laptops to stack up to 128GB of RAM, and the frequencies are said to be going up, too. CAMM2 can also activate dual-channel memory with just a single module.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In September NASA's James Webb Space Telescope investigated an exoplanet 8.6 times as massive as Earth, and "revealed the presence of carbon-bearing molecules including methane and carbon dioxide." Webb's discovery adds to recent studies suggesting that [planet] K2-18 b could be a Hycean exoplanet, one which has the potential to possess a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and a water ocean-covered surface... The planet's large size - with a radius 2.6 times the radius of Earth - means that the planet's interior likely contains a large mantle of high-pressure ice, like Neptune, but with a thinner hydrogen-rich atmosphere and an ocean surface. Hycean worlds are predicted to have oceans of water. However, it is also possible that the ocean is too hot to be habitable or be liquid. NASA's announcement included some additional context:K2-18 b orbits the cool dwarf star K2-18 in the habitable zone and lies 120 light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo. Exoplanets such as K2-18 b, which have sizes between those of Earth and Neptune, are unlike anything in our solar system. This lack of equivalent nearby planets means that these 'sub-Neptunes' are poorly understood, and the nature of their atmospheres is a matter of active debate among astronomers. The suggestion that the sub-Neptune K2-18 b could be a Hycean exoplanet is intriguing, as some astronomers believe that these worlds are promising environments to search for evidence for life on exoplanets... The abundance of methane and carbon dioxide, and shortage of ammonia, support the hypothesis that there may be a water ocean underneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere in K2-18 b. Long-time Slashdot reader Baron_Yam noticed some sites resurfacing the news from September this week with more spectacular headlines, like "NASA discovered a planet twice as big as Earth with a gas that is 'only produced by life'" and "Discovery... sparks huge excitement among astronomers. NASA's announcement? It's early Webb observations "provided a possible detection of a molecule called dimethyl sulfide. On Earth, this is only produced by life."The bulk of the dimethyl sulfide in Earth's atmosphere is emitted from phytoplankton in marine environments. The inference of dimethyl sulfide is less robust and requires further validation. "Upcoming Webb observations should be able to confirm if dimethyl sulfide is indeed present in the atmosphere of K2-18 b at significant levels," explained Nikku Madhusudhan, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge and lead author of the paper announcing these results. While K2-18 b lies in the habitable zone, and is now known to harbor carbon-bearing molecules, this does not necessarily mean that the planet can support life. But it's all a validation of the new discoveries being made possible by space telescopes - new and old. "The first insight into the atmospheric properties of this habitable-zone exoplanet came from observations with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, which prompted further studies...""This result was only possible because of the extended wavelength range and unprecedented sensitivity of Webb, which enabled robust detection of spectral features with just two transits," said Madhusudhan... "These results are the product of just two observations of K2-18 b, with many more on the way," explained team member Savvas Constantinou of the University of Cambridge. "This means our work here is but an early demonstration of what Webb can observe in habitable-zone exoplanets." [...] The team now intends to conduct follow-up research with the telescope's MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) spectrograph that they hope will further validate their findings and provide new insights into the environmental conditions on K2-18 b. "Our ultimate goal is the identification of life on a habitable exoplanet, which would transform our understanding of our place in the universe," concluded Madhusudhan. "Our findings are a promising step towards a deeper understanding of Hycean worlds in this quest."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press:Poland's prosecutor general told the parliament on Wednesday that powerful Pegasus spyware was used against hundreds of people during the former government in Poland, among them elected officials. Adam Bodnar told lawmakers that he found the scale of the surveillance "shocking and depressing...."The data showed that Pegasus was used in the cases of 578 people from 2017 to 2022, and that it was used by three separate government agencies: the Central Anticorruption Bureau, the Military Counterintelligence Service and the Internal Security Agency. The data show that it was used against six people in 2017; 100 in 2018; 140 in 2019; 161 in 2020; 162 in 2021; and then nine in 2022, when it stopped....Bodnar said that the software generated "enormous knowledge" about the "private and professional lives" of those put under surveillance. He also stressed that the Polish state doesn't have full control over the data that is gathered because the system operates on the basis of a license that was granted by an Israeli company. "Pegasus gives its operators complete access to a mobile device, allowing them to extract passwords, photos, messages, contacts and browsing history and activate the microphone and camera for real-time eavesdropping."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

They're calling it "the world's largest 3D printer," but also "the factory of the future" - not just a 3D printer, but a manufacturing system.It's the succcessor to a 3D printer that could create an entire house, cutting construction time and labor, according to the Associated Press. And this one "may one day create entire neighborhoods."It has a voracious appetite, consuming as much as 500 pounds (227 kilograms) of material per hour... The university wants to show how homes can be constructed nearly entirely by a printer with a lower carbon footprint. The buildings and construction sector accounts for roughly 37% of global greenhouse gas emissions, largely due to the production and use of materials such as cement, steel and aluminum that have a significant carbon footprint, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. Such printed buildings can be recycled, which is unique compared to current construction. "You can basically deconstruct it, you can grind it up if you wish, the 3D printed parts, and reprint with them, do it again," Dagher said before the event... But it can be used for a variety of other creations and already has been used for a range of things, from boats to defense department structures. The project is partly funded by the U.S. military, according to the BBC. "Maine University says it hopes the printer can be used to make affordable housing, as well as bridges, boats and wind turbines."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"South Korea is considering prohibiting the use of iPhones and smart wearable devices inside military buildings," reports the Defense Post, "due to increasing security concerns." But the blog Apple Insider argues the move "has less to do with security and more to do with a poorly crafted mobile device management suite coupled with nationalism..."A report on Tuesday morning claims that the ban is on all devices capable of voice recording and do not allow third-party apps to lock this down - with iPhone specifically named... According to sources familiar with the matter cited by Tuesday's report, the iPhone is explicitly banned. Android-based devices, like Samsung's, are exempt from the ban... The issue appears to be that the South Korean National Defense Mobile Security mobile device management app doesn't seem to be able to block the use of the microphone. This particular MDM was rolled out in 2013, with use enforced across all military members in 2021. The report talks about user complaints about the software, and inconsistent limitations depending on make, model, and operating system. A military official speaking to the publication says that deficiencies on Android would be addressed in a software update. Discussions are apparently underway to extend the total ban downwards to the entire military. The Army is said to have tried the ban as well... Seven in 10 South Korean military members are Samsung users. So, the ban appears to be mostly symbolic. Thanks to Slashdot reader Kitkoan for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's another speech-recognizing, AI-powered handheld device "about half the size of a phone," writes CNET. (Though the $199 device comes with a keyboard and a tiny 2.8-inch screen.) "The Rabbit R1 can identify items in its environment. Point it at a plant, and it can tell you what kind it is. Aim it at your lunch, and it can tell you what's in it. "it also feels a bit like a novelty so far...."It can call an Uber, order dinner from Doordash, translate conversations, record voice memos, play songs from Spotify and more. Your phone can already do all of those things, but [CEO and founder Jesse] Lyu is promoting the Rabbit R1 as a faster and more natural way to do so... So far, the Rabbit R1 feels fun, fresh and interesting, but also frustrating at times. It intrigues me, but it also hasn't convinced me yet that there's room for another gadget in my life.... Many of the things it can do today feel smartphone-esque, like asking for the weather or playing songs on Spotify... Visual search is the most interesting feature so far... It's pretty accurate for the most part so far. When I pointed it at my salad during lunch, it was able to tell me most of the ingredients. That's not what I asked. After all, who orders a dish without knowing what's in it? I asked the Rabbit R1 to tell me how many calories were in my lunch. While it couldn't provide the answer I wanted, I was impressed with its response... Overall, Rabbit R1's visual analysis worked pretty well for identifying things like plants and characters from pop culture. When describing my colleague's sneakers, the Rabbit R1 got the brand wrong... So far, I've used the Rabbit R1 to take voice memos, translate speech from Spanish to English, and answer basic questions about things like weather forecasts. These features work as expected for the most part. The article points out that Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses "also have multimodal AI, meaning the eyewear can 'see' what you see and tell you about it," and "you can already do something like this on your phone through Google's Gemini assistant on Android phones (or the Gemini section of the Google app for the iPhone). "It's also very reminiscent of Google Lens, which has been around for years..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Japan's moon lander "has woken up again," reports the Register, "having survived three lunar nights."A post on social media from the lander's X account confirmed that once more, Japan's Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) had defied the odds and snapped a picture of the lunar surface using its navigation camera.SLIM was revived a few weeks ago, after a second lunar night. However, with telemetry showing that some of the electronics (temperature sensors) and battery cells were malfunctioning, the chances of the lander making it through a third lunar night seemed remote. Yet against all odds, SLIM has stirred once more on the lunar surface despite lacking heaters to keep its electronics warm.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Japan's moon lander "has woken up again," reports the Register, "having survived three lunar nights."A post on social media from the lander's X account confirmed that once more, Japan's Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) had defied the odds and snapped a picture of the lunar surface using its navigation camera.SLIM was revived a few weeks ago, after a second lunar night. However, with telemetry showing that some of the electronics (temperature sensors) and battery cells were malfunctioning, the chances of the lander making it through a third lunar night seemed remote. Yet against all odds, SLIM has stirred once more on the lunar surface despite lacking heaters to keep its electronics warm.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What happened after India banned TikTok? The move "mostly drew widespread support" notes the Associated Press, in a country "where protesters had been calling for a boycott of Chinese goods since the deadly confrontation in the remote Karakoram mountain border region.""There was a clamour leading up to this, and the popular narrative was how can we allow Chinese companies to do business in India when we're in the middle of a military standoff," said Nikhil Pahwa, a digital policy expert and founder of tech website MediaNama. Just months before the ban, India had also restricted investment from Chinese companies, Pahwa added. "TikTok wasn't a one-off case. Today, India has banned over 500 Chinese apps to date." At the time, India had about 200 million TikTok users. And the company also employed thousands of Indians. TikTok users and content creators, however, needed a place to go - and the ban provided a multi-billion dollar opportunity to snatch up a big market. Within months, Google rolled out YouTube Shorts and Instagram pushed out its Reels feature. Both mimicked the short-form video creation that TikTok had excelled at. "And they ended up capturing most of the market that TikTok had vacated," said Pahwa. TikTok is also banned in Nepal and Somalia, according to Mashable, and the Associaterd Press adds that it's now also banned in Pakistan, Nepal and Afghanistan "and restricted in many countries in Europe." Their article concludes that "for the most part, content creators and users in the four years since the ban have moved on to other platforms." They quote one frequent TikTok user as saying they just switched to Instagram after the ban, and "It wasn't really a big deal."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press:Tech giant Cisco Systems on Wednesday joined Microsoft and IBM in signing onto a Vatican-sponsored pledge to ensure artificial intelligence is developed and used ethically and to benefit the common good... The pledge outlines key pillars of ethical and responsible use of AI. It emphasizes that AI systems must be designed, used and regulated to serve and protect the dignity of all human beings, without discrimination, and their environments. It highlights principles of transparency, inclusion, responsibility, impartiality and security as necessary to guide all AI developments. The document was unveiled and signed at a Vatican conference on Feb. 28, 2020... Pope Francis has called for an international treaty to ensure AI is developed and used ethically, devoting his annual peace message this year to the topic.Read more of this story at Slashdot.