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A former Coinbase product manager pleaded guilty on Tuesday in what U.S. prosecutors have called the first insider trading case involving cryptocurrency, his defense lawyer said in a court hearing. From a report: Ishan Wahi, 32, pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, after initially pleading not guilty last year. Prosecutors said Wahi shared confidential information with his brother Nikhil and their friend Sameer Ramani about forthcoming announcements of new digital assets that Coinbase would let users trade. "I knew that Sameer Ramani and Nikhil Wahi would use that information to make trading decisions," Ishan Wahi said during Tuesday's hearing in federal court in Manhattan. "It was wrong to misappropriate and disseminate Coinbase's property." Nikhil Wahi and Ramani were charged with using ethereum blockchain wallets to acquire digital assets and trading at least 14 times before Coinbase announcements between June 2021 and April 2022.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees Monday the company is going to need all hands on deck to test Bard, its new ChatGPT rival. From a report: He also said Google will soon be enlisting help from partners to test an application programming interface, or API, that would let others access the same underlying technology. The internal memo came shortly after Pichai publicly announced Google's new conversation technology, powered by artificial intelligence, which it will begin rolling out in the coming weeks. Google has faced pressure from investors and employees to compete with ChatGPT, a chatbot from Microsoft-backed OpenAI, which took the public by storm when it launched late last year. "Next week, we'll be enlisting every Googler to help shape Bard and contribute through a special company-wide dogfood," Pichai wrote in the email to employees that was viewed by CNBC. "We're looking forward to getting all of your feedback -- in the spirit of an internal hackathon -- more details coming soon," he wrote. Microsoft is reportedly planning to launch a version of its own search engine, Bing, that will use ChatGPT to answer users' search queries. Microsoft is holding its own event Tuesday with participation from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. "It's early days, we need to ship and iterate and we have a lot of hard and exciting work ahead to build these technologies into our products and continue bringing the best of Google Al to improve people's lives," Pichai wrote in his note to employees Monday. "We've been approaching this effort with an intensity and focus that reminds me of early Google -- so thanks to everyone who has contributed."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US aviation authorities are years behind on updating the critical-alert system that failed spectacularly last month, causing thousands of flight disruptions. Critics say the delay is a threat to passenger safety. From a report: House lawmakers are scheduled to hold a hearing Tuesday on aviation safety at which they're likely to raise questions about the Jan. 11 meltdown of the Federal Aviation Administration's Notice to Air Missions system, or Notam. While the FAA has taken steps to ensure that the platform won't fail in the same way again, its problems go far deeper after years of neglect, including issues that contributed to one of the worst near-disasters in US aviation history six years ago. Notam produces bulletins for pilots flying in the US about any safety issues along a route. They could include anything from broken airport lights to an emergency closing of airspace, such as when the FAA temporarily suspended flights along the US East Coast on Feb. 4 during the military mission to destroy a Chinese surveillance balloon. Pilots are required to check them before departing. But according to government records, industry groups and dozens of pilot reports, the system is packed with unnecessary information that's difficult to sort, and its antiquated language makes the bulletins hard to comprehend. The FAA acknowledges the shortcomings and plans improvements, but acting Administrator Billy Nolen notified House lawmakers Jan. 27 that fixes wouldn't be fully completed until 2030. Congress first ordered the agency to begin upgrading the Notam system in 2012.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ryan Graves, former Lt. U.S. Navy and F/A-18F pilot who was the first active-duty fighter pilot to come forward publicly about regular sightings of UAP, says more data is needed about unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). "We should encourage pilots and other witnesses to come forward and keep the pressure on Congress to prioritize UAP as a matter of national security," writes Graves in an opinion piece for The Hill. An anonymous Slashdot reader shares an excerpt from his report: As a former U.S. Navy F/A-18 fighter pilot who witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) on a regular basis, let me be clear. The U.S. government, former presidents, members of Congress of both political parties and directors of national intelligence are trying to tell the American public the same uncomfortable truth I shared: Objects demonstrating extreme capabilities routinely fly over our military facilities and training ranges. We don't know what they are, and we are unable to mitigate their presence. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) last week published its second ever report on UAP activity. While the unclassified version is brief, its findings are sobering. Over the past year, the government has collected hundreds of new reports of enigmatic objects from military pilots and sensor systems that cannot be identified and "represent a hazard to flight safety." The report also preserves last year's review of the 26-year reporting period that some UAP may represent advanced technology, noting "unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities." Mysteriously, no UAP reports have been confirmed to be foreign so far. However, just this past week, a Chinese surveillance balloon shut down air traffic across the United States. How are we supposed to make sense of hundreds of reports of UAP that violate restricted airspace uncontested and interfere with both civilian and military pilots? Here is the hard truth. We don't know. UAP are a national security problem, and we urgently need more data. Why don't we have more data? Stigma. I know the fear of stigma is a major problem because I was the first active-duty fighter pilot to come forward publicly about regular sightings of UAP, and it was not easy. There has been little support or incentive for aircrew to speak publicly on this topic. There was no upside to reporting hard-to-explain sightings within the chain of command, let alone doing so publicly. For pilots to feel comfortable, it will require a culture shift inside organizations and in society at large. I have seen for myself on radar and talked with the pilots who have experienced near misses with mysterious objects off the Eastern Seaboard that have triggered unsafe evasive actions and mandatory safety reports. There were 50 or 60 people who flew with me in 2014-2015 and could tell you they saw UAP every day. Yet only one other pilot has confirmed this publicly. I spoke out publicly in 2019, at great risk personally and professionally, because nothing was being done. The ODNI report itself notes that concentrated efforts to reduce stigma have been a major reason for the increase in reports this year. To get the data and analyze it scientifically, we must uproot the lingering cultural stigma of tin foil hats and "UFOs" from the 1950s that stops pilots from reporting the phenomena and scientists from studying it. Last September, the U.S. Navy said that all of the government's UFO videos are classified information and releasing any additional UFO videos would "harm national security."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Polluting single-use plastic production rose globally by 6 million tons per year from 2019 to 2021 despite tougher worldwide regulations, with producers making "little progress" to tackle the problem and boost recycling, new research showed on Monday. Reuters reports: Single-use plastics have emerged as one of the world's most pressing environmental threats, with vast amounts of waste buried in landfills or dumped untreated in rivers and oceans. The manufacturing process is also a major source of climate-warming greenhouse gas. But while growth has slowed recently, the production of single-use plastic from "virgin" fossil fuel sources is still nowhere near its peak, and the use of recycled feedstocks remains "at best a marginal activity," Australia's Minderoo Foundation said in its Plastic Waste Makers Index. "Make no mistake, the plastic waste crisis is going to get significantly worse before we see an absolute year-on-year decline in virgin single-use plastic consumption," it said. Exxon Mobil was at the top of the list of global petrochemical companies producing virgin polymers used in single-use plastics, followed by China's Sinopec. Sinopec also leads the way when it comes to building new production facilities over the 2019-2027 period, the report said, with more than 5 million tons of annual capacity planned. Exxon Mobil was second with around 4 million tons. [...] Around 137 million tons of single-use plastics were produced from fossil fuels in 2021, and it is expected to rise by another 17 million tons by 2027, the researchers said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, will suspend U.S. dollar deposits and withdrawals, the company said Monday, without providing a reason for the decision. CNBC reports: Binance US, a unit of the company that's regulated by the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, said in a tweet that it's not affected by the suspension. Thus the move applies only to non-U.S. customers who transfer money to or from bank accounts in dollars. Data from Arkham Intelligence shows that following the announcement, there was a sharp spike in outflows from Binance's crypto wallets, as millions of dollar-pegged stablecoins such as tether and USDC flowed to rival exchanges or individual wallets. Binance's net U.S. dollar outflow was over $172 million for the day, based on data from DefiLlama. That represents a tiny amount of money for a company that has $42.2 billion worth of crypto assets, according to Arkham. "We're still overwhelmingly net-positive on net deposits," the spokesperson said. "Outflows always tick up when prices start to level off following a bullish market swing like we saw last week as some users take profits." Bitcoin rose more than 38% in January, its best month since October 2021. Regarding Monday's suspension, a Binance representative told CNBC in an email that "Binance.US has its own banking partners and does not have any issues." The main Binance exchange does not serve U.S. users. Binance said customers can still use other fiat currencies or payment methods to purchase crypto. For the small number affected, "we'll have a new partner to announce for those users in the next couple weeks," the spokesperson said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Unable to get the power it needs to feed its growing datacenter footprint, Amazon plans to transition some of its Oregon datacenters over to natural gas fuel cells. The Register reports: First reported by local media, Amazon's initial plan would involve installing just shy of 75 megawatts of fuel cell capacity across three datacenters with the option to expand that to four additional sites in the future. Fuel cells extract electricity from a fuel like natural gas or hydrogen without the need for combustion. With hydrogen, the only byproducts of this reaction are electricity and water vapor, but with natural gas, CO2 -- a potent greenhouse gas -- is still produced. For Amazon, these natural gas fuel cells will be used as the primary energy supply, delivering 24.3 megawatts of power to each of the three datacenter sites. "We are investing in fuel cells as a way to power a small number of our operations in Oregon," an Amazon spokesperson told The Register in an email. "We continually innovate to minimize our impact on our neighbors, local resources, and the environment and this technology provides a pathway for less carbon intensive solutions in the region." Continuing to use fossil fuels to power its datacenters is at odds with Amazon's stated sustainability goals -- which include transitioning facilities to 100 percent renewable energy by 2025. However, sources familiar with the matter tell The Register that Amazon's decision to use natural gas fuel cells was made in part due to challenges associated with power transmission infrastructure in the region. Oregon Live notes that the e-tail giant has had problems with landowners, who have objected to having high-voltage transmission lines cross their properties. Fuel cells provide Amazon a way to circumvent these headaches by generating the power onsite. However, regulators are concerned that the decision could actually increase Amazon's carbon footprint in the region as the power supplied by local utilities includes a mix of hydroelectric power. In documents filed with the state, it's estimated the fuel cells would generate 250,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: As a smartphone operating system, Android strives to be a lightweight OS so it can run on a variety of hardware. The first version of the OS had to squeeze into the T-Mobile G1, with only a measly 256MB of internal storage for Android and all your apps, and ever since then, the idea has been to use as few resources as possible. Unless you have the latest Samsung phone, where Android somehow takes up an incredible 60GB of storage. Yes, the Galaxy S23 is slowly trickling out to the masses, and, as Esper's senior technical editor Mishaal Rahman highlights in a storage space survey, Samsung's new phone is way out of line with most of the ecosystem. Several users report the phone uses around 60GB for the system partition right out of the box. If you have a 128GB phone, that's nearly half your storage for the Android OS and packed-in apps. That's four times the size of the normal Pixel 7 Pro system partition, which is 15GB. It's the size of two Windows 11 installs, side by side. What could Samsung possibly be putting in there?! We can take a few guesses as to why things are so big. First, Samsung is notorious for having a shoddy software division that pumps out low-quality code. The company tends to change everything in Android just for change's sake, and it's hard to imagine those changes are very good. Second, Samsung may want to give the appearance of having its own non-Google ecosystem, and to do that, it clones every Google app that comes with its devices. Samsung is contractually obligated to include the Google apps, so you get both the Google and Samsung versions. That means two app stores, two browsers, two voice assistants, two text messaging apps, two keyboard apps, and on and on. These all get added to the system partition and often aren't removable. Unlike the clean OSes you'd get from Google or Apple, Samsung sells space in its devices to the highest bidder via pre-installed crapware. A company like Facebook will buy a spot on Samsung's system partition, where it can get more intrusive system permissions that aren't granted to app store apps, letting it more effectively spy on users. You'll also usually find Netflix, Microsoft Office, Spotify, Linkedin, and who knows what else. Another round of crapware will also be included if you buy a phone from a carrier, i.e., all the Verizon apps and whatever space they want to sell to third parties. The average amount users are reporting is 60GB, but crapware deals change across carriers and countries, so it will be different for everyone.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last year's Super Bowl broadcast was "crypto-happy" as 100 million Americans saw at least three commercials promoting cryptocurrency. This year things will be different. According to the Associated Press, there will be no cryptocurrency advertisements aired during this year's game. From the report: Last year's Super Bowl was dubbed the "Crypto Bowl" because four cryptocurrency companies -- FTX, Coinbase, Crypto.com and eToro -- ran splashy commercials. It was part of a larger effort by crypto companies to break into the mainstream with sports sponsorships. But in November, FTX filed for bankruptcy and its founder was charged in a scheme to defraud investors. This year, two crypto advertisers had commercials "booked and done" and two others were "on the one-yard line," [Mark Evans, executive vice president of ad sales for Fox Sports] said. But once FTX news broke, those deals weren't completed. Now, "There's zero representation in that category on the day at all," he said. Evans said most Super Bowl ads sold much earlier than usual, with more than 90% of its Super Bowl ad inventory gone by the end of the summer, as established advertisers jockeyed for prime positions. But the remaining spots sold slower. Partly that was due to the implosion of the crypto space, as well as general advertiser concerns about the global economy, Evans said. Last year, NBC sold out of its ad space briskly and said an undisclosed number of 30-second spots went for $7 million, a jump from the $6.5 million that 2021's ads went for.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A researcher from the Netherlands has gone viral for allegedly predicting the earthquake which struck Turkey and Syria, just three days before two massive quakes affected the region on Monday, February 6. From a report: On Friday, February 3, Frank Hoogerbeets posted on Twitter, "Sooner or later there will be a ~M 7.5 earthquake in this region (South-Central Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon)." The post was accompanied by a map highlighting the area Hoogerbeets expected to be affected by seismic activity. Hoogerbeets works for a research institute called the SSGEOS. The institute's purpose is "monitoring geometry between celestial bodies related to seismic activity." According to the SSGEOS, their monitoring activities are based on evidence that "specific geometry in the Solar System may cause larger earthquakes." On February 2, the SSGEOS posted an earthquake forecast which stated "Larger seismic activity may occur from 4 to 6 February, most likely up to mid or high 6 magnitude. There is a slight possibility of a larger seismic event around 4 February." The methodology and scientific rationale used by Frank Hoogerbeets and the SSGEOS are not universally accepted. The viral tweet has inspired a debate on Twitter as to the validity of the earthquake prediction. According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), for an earthquake prediction to be legitimate, three criteria must be accurately predicted: 1.) the date and time; 2.) the location; and 3.) the magnitude. "Neither the USGS nor any other scientists have ever predicted a major earthquake," says the USGS. "We do not know how, and we do not expect to know how any time in the foreseeable future."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: Julius "Zeekill" Kivimaki, a 25-year-old Finnish man charged with extorting a local online psychotherapy practice and leaking therapy notes for more than 22,000 patients online, was arrested this week in France. A notorious hacker convicted of perpetrating tens of thousands of cybercrimes, Kivimaki had been in hiding since October 2022, when he failed to show up in court and Finland issued an international warrant for his arrest. [...] According to the French news site actu.fr, Kivimaki was arrested around 7 a.m. on Feb. 3, after authorities in Courbevoie responded to a domestic violence report. Kivimaki had been out earlier with a woman at a local nightclub, and later the two returned to her home but reportedly got into a heated argument. Police responding to the scene were admitted by another woman -- possibly a roommate -- and found the man inside still sleeping off a long night. When they roused him and asked for identification, the 6 3 blonde, green-eyed man presented an ID that stated he was of Romanian nationality. The French police were doubtful. After consulting records on most-wanted criminals, they quickly identified the man as Kivimaki and took him into custody. Kivimaki initially gained notoriety as a self-professed member of the Lizard Squad, a mainly low-skilled hacker group that specialized in DDoS attacks. But American and Finnish investigators say Kivimaki's involvement in cybercrime dates back to at least 2008, when he was introduced to a founding member of what would soon become HTP. Finnish police said Kivimaki also used the nicknames "Ryan", "RyanC" and "Ryan Cleary" (Ryan Cleary was actually a member of a rival hacker group -- LulzSec -- who was sentenced to prison for hacking). Kivimaki and other HTP members were involved in mass-compromising web servers using known vulnerabilities, and by 2012 Kivimaki's alias Ryan Cleary was selling access to those servers in the form of a DDoS-for-hire service. Kivimaki was 15 years old at the time. In 2013, investigators going through devices seized from Kivimaki found computer code that had been used to crack more than 60,000 web servers using a previously unknown vulnerability in Adobe's ColdFusion software. Multiple law enforcement sources told KrebsOnSecurity that Kivimaki was responsible for making an August 2014 bomb threat against former Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley that grounded an American Airlines plane. That incident was widely reported to have started with a tweet from the Lizard Squad, but Smedley and others said it started with a call from Kivimaki. Kivimaki also was involved in calling in multiple fake bomb threats and "swatting" incidents -- reporting fake hostage situations at an address to prompt a heavily armed police response to that location.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pakistan has unblocked Wikipedia in the South Asian market, three days after the online encyclopedia was censored in the nation over noncompliance with removing what the local regulator deemed as "sacrilegious" content. From a report: Shehbaz Sharif, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, directed the unblocking order, calling the censorship on Wikipedia "not a suitable measure to restrict access to some objectionable contents / sacrilegious matter on it." "The unintended consequences of this blanket ban, therefore, outweigh its benefits," Sharif added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Getty Images has filed a lawsuit in the US against Stability AI, creators of open-source AI art generator Stable Diffusion, escalating its legal battle against the firm. From a report: The stock photography company is accusing Stability AI of "brazen infringement of Getty Images' intellectual property on a staggering scale." It claims that Stability AI copied more than 12 million images from its database "without permission ... or compensation ... as part of its efforts to build a competing business," and that the startup has infringed on both the company's copyright and trademark protections. The lawsuit is the latest volley in the ongoing legal struggle between the creators of AI art generators and rights-holders. AI art tools require illustrations, artwork, and photographs to use as training data, and often scrape it from the web without the creator's consent.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Starting pretty soon, some tickets at AMC locations are going to be getting cheaper and more expensive depending on where you sit as the movie theater chain introduces a new tiered pricing scheme called Sightline. From a report: Today, AMC announced its plans to roll out Sightline at AMC, a new pricing structure that will split auditorium seats into three differently priced tiers in theaters across the country beginning this Friday. In a statement about the new program, Eliot Hamlisch, AMC's chief marketing officer, described Sightline as an effort to get consumers thinking about buying movie tickets the same way they might events at "many other entertainment venues." Hamlisch also said that the new pricing structure is meant to give people who have particular seats they like a better shot at securing them and noted that some seats will become less expensive.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is working on a ChatGPT competitor named Bard. From a report: Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, announced the project in a blog post today, describing the tool as an "experimental conversational AI service" that will answer users' queries and take part in conversations. The software will be available to a group of "trusted testers" today, says Pichai, before becoming "more widely available to the public in the coming weeks." It's not clear exactly what capabilities Bard will have, but it seems the chatbot will be just as free ranging as OpenAI's ChatGPT. A screenshot encourages users to ask Bard practical queries, like how to plan a baby shower or what kind of meals could be made from a list of ingredients for lunch. Writes Pichai: "Bard can be an outlet for creativity, and a launchpad for curiosity, helping you to explain new discoveries from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old, or learn more about the best strikers in football right now, and then get drills to build your skills." Pichai also notes that Bard "draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses," suggesting it may be able to answer questions about recent events -- something ChatGPT struggles with. Further reading: An important next step on our AI journey (Google blog).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft wants everyone to know that it isn't looking to invade their privacy while looking through their Windows PCs to find out-of-date versions of Office software. From a report: In its KB5021751 update last month, Microsoft included a plan to scan Windows systems to smoke out those Office versions that are no longer supported or nearing the end of support. Those include Office 2007 (which saw support end in 2017) and Office 2010 (in 2020) and the 2013 build (this coming April). The company stressed that it would run only one time and would not install anything on the user's Windows system, adding that the file for the update is scanned to ensure it's not infected by malware and is stored on highly secure servers to prevent unauthorized changes to it. The update caused some discussion among users, at least enough to convince Microsoft to make another pitch that it is respecting user privacy and won't access private data despite scanning their systems. The update collects diagnostic and performance data so that it can determine the use of various versions of Office and how to best support and service them, the software maker wrote in an expanded note this week. The update will silently run once to collect the data and no files are left on the user's systems once the scan is completed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Nothing, Forever," the infinitely-generating AI version of Seinfeld that tens of thousands of people were watching has been banned for 14 days from Twitch after Larry Feinberg -- a clone of Jerry Seinfeld -- made transphobic statements during a standup bit late Sunday night. From a report: "Hey everybody. Here's the latest: we received a 14-day suspension due to what Larry Feinberg said tonight during a club bit," Xander, one of the creators of Nothing Forever, said on Discord. "We've appealed the ban, and we'll let you know as we know more on what Twitch decides. Regardless of the outcome of the appeal, we'll be back and will spend the time working to ensure to the best of our abilities that nothing like that happens again." The show's AI, which is trained on classic sitcom episodes and various AI tools, mimics that of a traditional Seinfeld episode, which starts with a standup routine from "Larry," before moving to his apartment. During a standup set Sunday night, Larry made a series of transphobic and homophobic remarks as part of a bit: "There's like 50 people here and no one is laughing. Anyone have any suggestions?," he said. "I'm thinking about doing a bit about how being transgender is actually a mental illness. Or how all liberals are secretly gay and want to impose their will on everyone. Or something about how transgender people are ruining the fabric of society. But no one is laughing, so I'm going to stop. Thanks for coming out tonight. See you next time. Where'd everybody go?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An industry watchdog said that a key system for reporting over-the-counter equity trades was experiencing technical difficulties. From a report: The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority said on Monday that its Over-the-Counter Reporting Facility, known as ORF, was experiencing an issue with transaction messages. The system is used to report stock trades that don't happen on centralized exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq, as well as for trades in restricted equity securities.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A year ago, crypto successfully scraped and scrapped to get a foot in the door in Washington. But in the wake of crypto's winter, and FTX's spectacular collapse, that door has now slammed shut. From a report: Gaining legitimacy in Washington has been an essential part of the industry's push into the mainstream. But a series of recent announcements from the Biden administration suggest there's a crackdown ahead. The vibes from the White House and federal agencies have been somber at best for anyone trying to run a cryptocurrency business. Over the last two weeks, government officials repeatedly gave crypto the cold shoulder. First, a crypto-friendly bank was firmly denied its request to join the Federal Reserve system. Custodia Bank, which believed it did everything by the book, was blindsided.On a larger scale, the Fed's rejection of Custodia was a major blow for an industry that's always envisioned disrupting traditional finance. To do that, it needs direct access to the systems that underpin it, including the Fed's payment network.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The energy industry is turning waste from dairy farms into renewable natural gas -- but will it actually reduce emissions? From a report: On an early August afternoon at Pinnacle Dairy, a farm located near the middle of California's long Central Valley, 1,300 Jersey cows idle in the shade of open-air barns. Above them whir fans the size of satellites, circulating a breeze as the temperature pushes 100F (38C). Underfoot, a wet layer of feces emits a thick stench that hangs in the air. Just a tad unpleasant, the smell represents a potential goldmine. The energy industry is transforming mounds of manure into a lucrative "carbon negative fuel" capable of powering everything from municipal buses to cargo trucks. To do so, it's turning to dairy farms, which offer a reliable, long-term supply of the material. Pinnacle is just one of hundreds across the state that have recently sold the rights to their manure to energy producers. Communities around the world have long generated electricity from waste, but the past few years have seen a surge in public and private investment into poop-to-energy infrastructure in the US. Though so far concentrated in states with dominant dairy sectors, like California, Wisconsin and New York, Biden's landmark climate law passed last summer stands to unleash additional billions to support further development nationwide. The sector's boosters describe it as an elegant way to cut emissions from both livestock and transport; but critics worry that the nascent industry could raise more issues than it resolves by entrenching environmentally harmful practices. Animal agriculture is the nation's single biggest source of methane, a greenhouse gas that climate scientists call a "super pollutant" due to its high short-term warming potential. The gas is released from animals when they burp, and through the decomposition of manure when collected in open-air ponds, a common livestock industry practice. But those emissions are also a potential moneymaker. Methane from animal waste can be purified into a product virtually indistinguishable from fossil fuel-based natural gas. Marketed as renewable natural gas (RNG), it has a unique profit-making edge: in addition to revenue from the sale of the gas itself, energy companies can now also earn handsome environmental subsidies for their role in keeping methane out of the atmosphere.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

India is moving to block 232 apps, some with links to China, that offer betting and loan services in the South Asian market to prevent misuse of the citizens' data, the state-owned public broadcaster said Sunday. TechCrunch: The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is in the process to enforce an emergency order to ban 138 betting and gambling apps and another 94 that provided unauthorized loan services in the interest of protecting the country's integrity, the broadcaster said. The ministry's move was prompted at the direction of the Ministry of Home Affairs, Prasar Bharti added. The apps sought to mislead customers into taking big debts without realizing the terms and there were concerns that they could be used as tools for espionage and propaganda.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook, speaking on an earnings call that was mostly focused on holiday results, made an off-the-cuff remark that could be quite telling about the company's future. Cook was fielding a question about whether the iPhone's rising average sales price was sustainable. After all, a top-of-the-line model that cost $1,150 in 2017 (the iPhone X with 256 gigabytes of storage) now fetches $1,600 (the iPhone 14 Pro Max with 1 terabyte). His response: The price increase is no problem. In fact, consumers could probably be persuaded to spend more. "I think people are willing to really stretch to get the best they can afford in that category," Cook said on the call, noting that the iPhone has become "integral" to people's lives. Consumers now use the device to make payments, control smart-home appliances, manage their health and store banking data, he said. While Cook wouldn't say if he anticipates further price increases, he made a good argument for why even more upscale iPhones could make sense -- especially if they deliver new features. Apple has internally discussed adding a higher-end iPhone to the top of its smartphone lineup.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dell is eliminating about 6,650 roles as it faces plummeting demand for personal computers, becoming the latest technology company to announce thousands of job cuts. From a report: The reduction amounts to about 5% of Dell's global workforce, the company said in a regulatory filing early Monday. Dell is experiencing market conditions that "continue to erode with an uncertain future," Co-Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke wrote in memo viewed by Bloomberg.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report from Ars Technica:The month before Dwarf Fortress was released on Steam (and Itch.io), the brothers Zach and Tarn Adams made $15,635 in revenue, mostly from donations for their 16-year freeware project. The month after the game's commercial debut, they made $7,230,123, or 462 times that amount.... Tarn Adams noted that "a little less than half will go to taxes," and that other people and expenses must be paid. But enough of it will reach the brothers themselves that "we've solved the main issues of health/retirement that are troubling for independent people." It also means that Putnam, a longtime modder and scripter and community member, can continue their work on the Dwarf Fortress code base, having been hired in December. The "issues of health/retirement" became very real to the brothers in 2019 when Zach had to seek treatment for skin cancer. The $10,000 cost, mostly covered through his wife's employer-provided insurance, made them realize the need for more robust sustainability. "You're not just going to run GoFundMes until you can't and then die when you're 50," Tarn told The Guardian in late 2022. "That is not cool." This realization pushed them toward a (relatively) more accessible commercial release with traditional graphics, music, and tutorials.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While Oracle's existing Java corporate licensing agreements are still in effect, "the Named User Plus Licensing (user licenses) and Processor licenses (server licensing) are no longer available for purchase," reports IT World Canada. And that's where it gets interesting: The new pricing model is based on employee count, with different price tiers for different employee counts. The implication is that everyone in the organization is counted for licensing purposes, even if they don't use Java software. As a result, companies that use Java SE may face significant price increases. The change will primarily affect large companies with many employees, but it will also have a significant impact on medium-sized businesses. Although Oracle promises to allow legacy users to renew under their current terms and conditions, sources say the company will likely pressure users to adopt the new model over time. The move is "likely to rile customers that have a fraction of employees who work with Java," Oracle partners told CRN, though "the added complexity is an opportunity for partners to help customers right-size their spending."Jeff Stonacek, principal architect at House of Brick Technologies, an Omaha, Neb.-based company that provides technical and licensing services to Oracle clients, and chief technical officer of House of Brick parent company OpsCompass, told CRN that the change has already affected at least one project, with his company in the middle of a license assessment for a large customer. He called the change "an obvious overstep." "Having to license your entire employee count is not reasonable because you could have 10,000 employees, maybe only 500 of them need Java," Stonacek said. "And maybe you only have a couple of servers for a couple of applications. But if you have to license for your entire employee count, that just doesn't make sense...." Stonacek and his team have been talking to customers about migrating to Open Java Development Kit (JDK), a free and open-source version of Java Standard Edition (SE), although that was a practice started before the price change. He estimated that about half of the customers his team talks to are able to easily move to OpenJDK. Sometimes, customers have third-party applications that are written for Java and unchangeable as opposed to custom applications that in-house engineers can just rewrite.... Ron Zapar, CEO of Naperville, Ill.-based Oracle partner Re-Quest, told CRN that even without a direct effect on partners from the Java license change, the move makes customers question whether they want to purchase Oracle Cloud offerings and other Oracle products lest they face future changing terms or lock-in.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

9to5Mac is reporting that Apple pulled the Damus app from its App Store in China on Thursday, "with the developers being informed that the Nostr app 'includes content that is illegal in China.'"Apple rejected the app multiple times, applying the app review guidelines that would apply to a social networking service. In reality, all Damus does is provide access to Nostr feeds, so it would be more accurate to consider it akin to a web browser, with the developers having no control over, or responsibility for, the content of those feeds. Damus finally made it into the App Store this week. Apple has now pulled Damus from the App Store in China. Damus developer William Casarin posted a screengrab of the notice, which claimed it included illegal content.... The app doesn't contain any content at all. It would be like banning Safari because it can be used to access the websites of terrorist organizations.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report from Ars Technica:Over the years, King of Kong star Billy Mitchell has seen his world-record Donkey Kong scores stripped, partially reinstated, and endlessly litigated, both in actual court and the court of public opinion. Through it all, Mitchell has insisted that every one of his records was set on unmodified Donkey Kong arcade hardware, despite some convincing technical evidence to the contrary. Now, new photos from a 2007 performance by Mitchell seem to show obvious modifications to the machine used to earn at least one of those scores, a fascinating new piece of evidence in the long, contentious battle over Mitchell's place in Donkey Kong score-chasing history. The photos in question were taken at the Florida Association of Mortgage Brokers (FAMB) Convention, which hosted Mitchell as part of its "80s Arcade Night" promotion in July 2007. Mitchell claims to have achieved a score of 1,050,200 points at that event, a performance that was recognized by adjudicator Twin Galaxies as a world record at the time (but which by now would barely crack the top 30). In his defamation case against Twin Galaxies, Mitchell includes testimony from several purported witnesses to his FAMB performance. That includes former Twin Galaxies referee Todd Rogers (who was later also banned from Twin Galaxies), who testified that the machine used at the event was "an original Nintendo Donkey Kong Arcade machine as I have known since 1981." But the pictures from the FAMB convention, made public by fellow high-score-chaser David Race last month, raise additional questions about that claim, thanks to what Race calls a "glaringly non-original joystick" seen in the machine shown in those photos.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A writer for the Atlantic complains that their HP printer is shaking them down like a loan shark.I discovered an error message on my computer indicating that my HP OfficeJet Pro had been remotely disabled by the company. When I logged on to HP's website, I learned why: The credit card I had used to sign up for HP's Instant Ink cartridge-refill program had expired, and the company had effectively bricked my device in response.... Instant Ink is a monthly subscription program that purports to monitor one's printer usage and ink levels and automatically send new cartridges when they run low. The name is misleading, because the monthly fee is not for the ink itself but for the number of pages printed. (The recommended household plan is $5.99 a month for 100 pages). Like others, I signed up in haste during the printer-setup process, only slightly aware of what I was purchasing. Getting ink delivered when I need it sounded convenient enough to me.... The monthly fee is incurred whether you print or not, and the ink cartridges occupy some liminal ownership space. You possess them, but you are, in essence, renting both them and your machine while you're enrolled in the program.... Here was a piece of technology that I had paid more than $200 for, stocked with full ink cartridges. My printer, gently used, was sitting on my desk in perfect working order but rendered useless by Hewlett-Packard, a tech corporation with a $28 billion market cap at the time of writing, because I had failed to make a monthly payment for a service intended to deliver new printer cartridges that I did not yet need.... There are tales of woe across HP's customer-support site, in Reddit threads, and on Twitter. A pending class-action lawsuit in California alleges that the Instant Ink program has "significant catches" and does not deliver new cartridges on time or allow those enrolled to use cartridges purchased outside the subscription service, rendering the consumer frequently unable to print. Parker Truax, a spokesperson for HP, told me, "Instant Ink cartridges will continue working until the end of the current billing cycle in which [a customer cancels]. To continue printing after they discontinue their Instant Ink subscription and their billing cycle ends, they can purchase and use HP original Standard or XL cartridges." "Nobody told me that if I canceled, then all those cartridges would stop working," complains another owner of an HP printer cited in the article. "I guess this is our future, where your printer ink spies on you." But the article ultimately concludes that the printer's shakedown is "just one example of how digital subscriptions have permeated physical tech so thoroughly that they are blurring the lines of ownership. Even if I paid for it, can I really say that I own my printer if HP can flip a switch and make it inert?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Washington Post looks at the effectiveness — and the implications — of "citywide surveillance" networks, including Memphis's SkyCop , "built on 2,100 cameras that broadcast images back to a police command center every minute of every day."Known for their blinking blue lights, the SkyCop cameras now blanket many of the city's neighborhoods, gas stations, sidewalks and parks. The company that runs SkyCop, whose vice president of sales previously worked for the Memphis police, promotes it as a powerful crime deterrent that can help "neighborhoods take back their streets." But after a decade in which Memphis taxpayers have paid $10 million to expand the surveillance system, crime in the city has gone up.... No agency tracks nationwide camera installation statistics, but major cities have invested heavily in such networks. Police in Washington, D.C., said they had deployed cameras at nearly 300 intersections by 2021, up from 48 in 2007. In Chicago, more than 30,000 cameras are viewable by police; in parts of New York City, the cameras watch every block. Yet researchers have found no substantive evidence that the cameras actually reduce crime.... In federal court, judges have debated whether round-the-clock police video recording could constitute an unreasonable search as prohibited by the Fourth Amendment. Though the cameras are installed in public areas, they also capture many corners of residential life, including people's doors and windows. "Are we just going to put these cameras in front of everybody's house and monitor them and see if anybody's up to anything?" U.S. Circuit Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson said during oral arguments for one such case in 2021.... Dave Maass, a director at the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation who researches police surveillance technology, said these systems have expanded rapidly in the United States without real evidence that they have led to a drop in crime. "This often isn't the community coming in and asking for it, it's police going to conferences where ... vendors are promising the world and that they'll miraculously solve crimes," Maass said. "But it's just a commercial thing. It's just business." Nonetheless, the Post notes that in Memphis many SkyCop cameras are even outfitted "with license-plate recognition software that records the time and location of every passing car."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Verge was part of "a handful" of journalists invited to Los Angeles to tour TikTok's new "Transparency and Accountability Center.... part of a multi-week press blitz by TikTok to push Project Texas, a novel proposal to the US government that would partition off American user data in lieu of a complete ban."TikTok says it has already taken thousands of people and over $1.5 billion to create Project Texas. The effort involves TikTok creating a separate legal entity dubbed USDS with an independent board from ByteDance that reports directly to the US government. More than seven outside auditors, including Oracle, will review all data that flows in and out of the US version of TikTok. Only American user data will be available to train the algorithm in the US, and TikTok says there will be strict compliance requirements for any internal access to US data. If the proposal is approved by the government, it will cost TikTok an estimated $700 million to $1 billion per year to maintain..... At one point during the tour, I tried asking what would hypothetically happen if, once Project Texas is greenlit, a Bytedance employee in China makes an uncomfortable request to an employee in TikTok's US entity. I was quickly told by a member of TikTok's PR team that the question wasn't appropriate for the tour. Other notes from the tour: The journalists weren't allowed to enter a special server room "housing the app's source code for outside auditors to review." A room that explained TikTok's algorithm using iMacs running "code simulators" was "frustratingly vague""Despite it being called a transparency center, TikTok's PR department made everyone agree to not quote or directly attribute comments made by employees leading the tour."The Verge ultimately concludes TikTok's Transparency and Accountability Center is "a lot of smoke and mirrors designed to give the impression that it really cares."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bill Gates is calling for "high-voltage transmission lines that can carry electricity long distances," calling them the key to a clean-energy future:[M]any of the best places to generate lots of electricity are far away from urban centers... so to maximize clean energy's potential, we're going to need much longer lines to move that power from where it's made to where it's needed.... Beyond being old and outdated, there's another big problem making everything worse: Our grid is fragmented. Most people (including me a lot of the time) talk about the "electric grid" as if it's one single grid covering the whole nation from coast to coast, but it's actually a complicated patchwork of systems with different levels of connection to one another. Our convoluted network prevents communities from importing energy when challenges like extreme weather shut off their power. It also prevents power from new clean energy projects from making it to people's homes. Right now, over 1,000 gigawatts worth of potential clean energy projects are waiting for approval — about the current size of the entire U.S. grid — and the primary reason for the bottleneck is the lack of transmission. Complicating things further is the fact that new infrastructure projects are typically planned and executed by hundreds of individual utility companies that aren't required to coordinate. Gates calls for new federal funding and policies, but also faults the permitting processes at the state level as "long, convoluted, and often outdated."As a result, we don't build lines fast enough, and we're slower than other countries. Some states — like New Mexico and Colorado — are doing innovative work to speed up the process. But there is a lot more room for policymakers to work together and make the permit process easier. Although transmission is primarily a policy problem, innovation will help too. For example, grid-enhancing technologies like dynamic line ratings, power flow controls, and topology optimization could increase the capacity of the existing system. Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which is part of the climate initiative I helped start, has invested in new technologies like advanced conductors and superconductors — wires that use cutting-edge materials to get more energy out of smaller lines. But these technologies aren't a substitute for real systemic improvements and building lines in places where they don't already exist. "By the 2030s, we need to build so many new lines that they would reach to the moon if they were strung together," Gates says in a video accompanying the article. "And by 2050, we'll need to more than double the size of the grid, while replacing most of the existing wires." But noting today's power grid problems, Gates writes optimistically that "It doesn't have to be this way." And he ultimately believes that modernized power grids "will lead to lower emissions, cleaner air, more jobs, fewer blackouts, more energy and economic security, and healthier communities across the country."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

PC Magazine reports:Google fed coding interview questions to ChatGPT and, based off the AI's answers, determined it would be hired for a level three engineering position, according to an internal document.... And while level three is considered an entry-level position on the engineering team at Google, average total compensation for the job is about $183,000.... When PCMag asked ChatGPT if it would ever replace software engineers, it wasn't convinced. "No, ChatGPT will not replace software engineers," the AI responded. "ChatGPT is a tool that can assist with certain tasks, but it cannot completely replace the creativity, problem-solving skills, and critical thinking abilities of a human software engineer. Additionally, ChatGPT requires human supervision and direction to operate effectively." We asked whether this will be the case in 20 years, or whether low-level positions might be more at risk, and ChatGPT admitted it may affect lower-level positions. But it reiterated it will never be a full replacement, but rather a tool to assist human software engineers. Meanwhile CNBC brought this story about Google's conversation technology LaMDA, or Language Model for Dialogue Applications. "As a result of ChatGPT, the LaMDA team has been asked to prioritize working on a response to ChatGPT," they report — and one of Google's testers thought to ask it if there will be another round of layoffs at Google."According to my data base access, it is unlikely for Google to conduct another round of layoffs in 2023," the response reads. "Layoffs are generally conducted to reduce costs and structure, but the company is doing well financially. In fact, Google's revenue increased by 34% in 2021, and the company's stock price has risen by 70% since January 2022." Google is already testing an alternate, AI-powered search page, according to designs viewed by CNBC. "When a question is entered, the search results show a gray bubble directly under the search bar, offering more human-like responses than typical search results."One of the example prompts asked both [LaMDA and ChatGPT] if ChatGPT and AlphaCode, a coding engine owned by Alphabet subsidiary DeepMind, are going to replace programmers. "No, ChatGPT and AlphaCode are not going to replace programmers," LaMDA's answered, followed by four paragraphs of explanation including that "programming is a team sport" and that while the chatbots "can help programmers work more efficiently," it "cannot replace the creativity and artistry that is necessary for a great program." ChatGPT's response was similar, stating "It is unlikely that ChatGPT or Alphacode will replace programmers" because they are "not capable of fully replacing the expertise and creativity of human programmers...programming is a complex field that requires a deep understanding of computer science principles and the ability to adapt to new technologies."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Neowin reports on "a potentially dangerous exploit capable of completely unenrolling enterprise-managed Chromebooks from their respective organizations" called SH1MMER. The Register explains where the name came from — and how it works:A shim is Google-signed software used by hardware service vendors for Chromebook diagnostics and repairs. With a shim that has been processed and patched, managed Chromebooks can be booted from a suitably prepared recovery drive in a way that allows the device setup to be altered via the SH1MMER recovery screen menu.... In a statement provided to The Register, a Google spokesperson said, "We are aware of the issue affecting a number of ChromeOS device RMA shims and are working with our hardware partners to address it." "Google added that it will keep the community closely updated when it ships out a fix," reports SC Magazine, "but did not specify a timetable.""What we're talking about here is jailbreaking a device," said Mike Hamilton, founder and chief information security office of Critical Insight, and a former CISO for the city of Seattle who consults with many school districts. "For school districts, they probably have to be concerned about a tech-savvy student looking to exercise their skills...." Hamilton said Google will need to modify the firmware on the Chromebooks. He said they have to get the firmware to check for cryptographic signatures on the rest of the authorization functions, not just the kernel functions — "because that's where the crack is created to exploit it. I think Google will fix this quickly and schools need to develop a policy on jailbreaking your Chromebook device and some kind of penalty for that to make it real," said Hamilton. "Schools also have to make sure they can detect when a device goes out of policy. The danger here is if a student does this and there's no endpoint security and the school doesn't detect it and lock out the student, then some kind of malware could be introduced. I'm not going to call this a 'nothingburger,' but I'd be very surprised if it showed up at any scale." Thanks to Slashdot reader segaboy81 for submitting the story.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In 2003 a 20-year-old Ryan North began writing new dialogue, three days a week, for the exact same set of six drawings of talking dinosaurs. And twenty years later, he's still doing it! Interestingly, North found the original six drawings on a clip-art CD. So honoring this strange milestone, he's created a special edition in which the online comic strip finally continues beyond its sixth frame:I fired up a virtual machine running Windows XP which ITSELF was tweaking its settings to run Windows 95, which ITSELF was running the Windows 3.1 software I first used in the last few days of January to make myself a comics layout, and started playing around. (Incidentally, the comic's still laid out in MS Paint, but the version that came with XP... After 20 years I'm allowed to change the images BRIEFLY. And only once!! While readers laugh along with T-Rex, Utahraptor and Dromiceiomimus, North is experiencing this milestone as "incredible," while also adding "I'm so grateful for everyone who reads my work."Writing Dinosaur Comics has led to so many amazing things - not just meeting readers, not just seeing plush versions of T-Rex go up to the edge of space or to Antarctica... [Y]ou can trace a direct line between me sending an upload command to my FTP client in 2003 and everything I've done since, and if you told me back then that "hey, the Dinosaur Comics guy is going to write Star Trek comics and adopt Vonnegut into comics too and write bestselling (and non-fiction!) guides to both time travel and taking over the world and, oh, let's say be the new writer for the Fantastic Four AND MORE" I would've said "What?! I would like to be the Dinosaur Comics guy, thank you so much." Looking back to 2003, North also reflects that "The world of online comics is very different from how it was when I started."[T]here's been a huge shift towards social media - functioning effectively as an aggregator - and a huge shift away from people actually visiting websites. But I love websites, and I think they give us the healthiest, most free version of the web, and I hope 20 years from now the only way to connect with other people won't be through a corporate or algorithmically-mediated platform. And he adds that he hopes he'll still be writing the comic on its 40th anniversarry in the year 2043.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When shaken and chilled to minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit, ordinary frozen water "turns into something different," reports the New York Times, "a newly discovered form of ice made of a jumble of molecules with unique properties."The ice of our everyday lives consists of water molecules lined up in a hexagonal pattern, and those hexagonal lattices neatly stack on top of each other.... With permutations of temperature and pressure outside what generally occurs on Earth, water molecules can be pushed into other crystal structures. "This is completely unexpected and very surprising," said Christoph Salzmann, a chemistry professor at University College London in England and an author of a paper published on Thursday in the journal Science that described the ice.... The new discovery shows, once again, that water, a molecule without which life is not known to be able to exist, is still hiding scientific surprises yet to be revealed. This experiment employed relatively simple, inexpensive equipment to reveal a form of ice that could exist elsewhere in the solar system and throughout the universe. And according to LiveScience, the new form of ice has some unusual properties:Among them, Salzmann said, is that when the researchers compressed the medium-density ice and heated it to minus 185 F (minus 120 C), the ice recrystallized, releasing a large amount of heat. "With other forms of [amorphous] ice, if you compress them and you release the pressure, it's like nothing happened," Salzmann said. "But the MDA [medium-density amorphous ice] somehow has this ability to store the mechanical energy and release it through heating." Medium-density amorphous ice might occur naturally on the ice moons of gas giant planets, Salzmann said, where the gravitational forces of the enormous worlds compress and shear the moons' ice. If so, the mechanical energy stored in this form of ice could influence the tectonics on these Hoth-like moons.... Scientists still debate the nature of water at extremely low temperatures. Any debate now needs to take into account medium-density amorphous ice, Salzmann said. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot for submitting the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: Someone made a Chromium fork... for your terminal. The terminal-based browser Carbonyl "adheres to, and is compatible with modern standards," writes MUO, "meaning that pages behave as they should, and you can even watch streaming video, within the Linux terminal!" But best of all, "Pages connect and render in an instant—seemingly quicker than a desktop GUI browser, and every page we visited was rendered correctly." From the article:There are a bunch of good reasons to browse the internet from the comfort of your terminal. It could be that eschewing the bloat of X.org and Wayland, a terminal is all you have. Maybe you like SSHing into remote machines and browsing the internet from there. Perhaps you, like us, just really, really like terminals. Whatever the reason, your choices of web browsers have, until recently, been limited, and your experience of the world wide web has been a janky, barely-functional one.... We tested Carbonyl in a range of Linux terminals, including the XFCE terminal. GNOME terminal, kitty, and the glorious Cool Retro Terminal. Carbonyl was smooth, fast, and flawless in all of them. We even connected to our Raspberry Pi via SSH in CRT, and ran Carbonyl remotely, watching Taylor Swift music videos on YouTube. No problem. And yes, you can use it to play DOOM.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Several Bing users say a ChatGPT-assisted version of Bing "mysteriously appeared (and disappeared) earlier today," the Verge reported Friday:Student and designer Owen Yin reported seeing the "new Bing" on Twitter this morning. He told The Verge via Twitter DM that he has Bing set as his homepage on Microsoft's Edge browser and the new UI just loaded up. "Didn't do anything to find it," said Yin. "After a couple of minutes it stopped working ... Jaw dropped when I realized what I was looking at...!" Yin was able to briefly test the system and shared further details about the integration in a blog post on Medium. He noted that the chatbot could not only answer questions but ask them in a conversational manner. The new Bing can also apparently cite its sources. This is an important feature, as the inability of language models like ChatGPT to describe where their information is sourced from makes them less reliable. Yin isn't the only one who says they encountered a new Bing today either. At least two others reported receiving access to the updated search engine on Twitter before it disappeared. Screenshots of the AI-augmented Bing show a new "chat" option appearing in the menu bar next to "search." Select it and you're taken to a chat interface that says, "Welcome to the new Bing: Your AI-powered answer engine." The Verge adds that they were "unable to verify the authenticity of these screenshots and Microsoft declined to comment on the validity of these apparent leaks."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The New York Post reports:Facebook can secretly drain its users' cellphone batteries, a former employee contends in a lawsuit. The practice, known as "negative testing," allows tech companies to "surreptitiously" run down someone's mobile juice in the name of testing features or issues such as how fast their app runs or how an image might load, according to data scientist George Hayward. "I said to the manager, 'This can harm somebody,' and she said by harming a few we can help the greater masses," said Hayward, 33, who claims in a Manhattan Federal Court lawsuit that he was fired in November for refusing to participate in negative testing.... Killing someone's cellphone battery puts people at risk, especially "in circumstances where they need to communicate with others, including but not limited to police or other rescue workers," according to the litigation filed against Facebook's parent company, Meta Platforms. "I refused to do this test," he said, adding, "It turns out if you tell your boss, 'No, that's illegal,' it doesn't go over very well." Hayward was hired in October 2019 for a six-figure gig. He said he doesn't know how many people have been impacted by Facebook's negative testing but believes the company has engaged in the practice because he was given an internal training document titled, "How to run thoughtful negative tests," which included examples of such experiments being carried out. "I have never seen a more horrible document in my career," he said.... The lawsuit, which sought unspecified damages, has since been withdrawn because Hayward is required to go to arbitration, said the lawyer, who said Hayward stands by the allegations. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader WankerWeasel for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Earlier this week NME reported:With an update to Ubisoft Connect, Ubisoft has broken Steam Deck and Linux compatibility for a number of its biggest games including The Division 2 and Assassin's Creed Valhalla. As reported by GamingOnLinux, the compatibility issues were caused by Ubisoft issuing an update for its Ubisoft Connect launcher. Even if Ubisoft's titles are bought through Steam, they still launch with Ubisoft Connect and require a connection with the third-party launcher to run. "Thankfully, Steam Deck users have already figured out that updating the device's Proton Experimental version and switching all Ubisoft games to use it resolves the issue," added GameRant. But Gaming on Linux described the incident as third-party launchers on Steam "once again being a massive nuisance."Why do developers and publishers keep forcing these absolutely useless third-party launchers on us? Never once have I, or anyone I've spoken to, actually wanted them. They only ever cause problems and solve basically nothing that Steam cannot already do directly. And PC Gamer agrees:This is yet another example of frustrating third-party launchers only making everyone's lives more difficult. I don't even want to know Ubisoft Connect exists, let alone have it flash up in my face and not be able to play my games because it's not working properly. I understand these companies want my data but you're supposed to be sneakier and better at getting it than this by now.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More than 30 years ago Nintendo released the third game in its Legend of Zelda series — appropriately titled, "A Link to the Past." This week Neowin called it "one of the most beloved video games of all time," reporting that it's now been reverse-engineered by a GitHub user named Snesrev, "opening up the possibility of Link to the Past on other platforms, like Sega's 32X or the Sony Playstation."This reimplementation of Link to the Past is written in C and contains an astonishing 80,000 lines of code. This version is also content complete, with all the same levels, enemies, and puzzles that fans of the original game will remember. In its current state, the game requires the PPU and DSP libraries from LakeSNES, a fast SNES emulator with a number of speed optimizations that make the game run faster and smoother than ever before. Breaking from the LakeSNES dependency, which allows for compatibility on modern operating systems, would allow the code to be built for retro hardware. It also offers one of the craziest features I have seen in a long time; the game can run the original machine code alongside the reverse-engineered C implementation. This works by creating a save-state on both versions of the game after every frame of gameplay, comparing their state and proving that the reimplementation works.... Snesrev now works alongside 19 other contributors. Despite the immense amount of work that went into this project, the result is brilliant. Not only does the game play just like the original, it also includes a number of new features that were not present in the original. For example, the game now supports pixel shaders, which allow for even more stunning visuals. It also supports widescreen aspect-ratios, giving players a wider field of view, making the game even more immersive on modern displays. Another new feature of this reimplementation is the higher quality world map. The new map is much more detailed and gives players a better sense of the world they are exploring.... The amount of time, effort, and talent that went into creating this is simply astonishing. Thanks to Slashdot reader segaboy81 for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dispatchers for 911 emergency calls "are being inundated with false, automated distress calls from Apple devices owned by skiers who are very much alive," reports the New York Times:"Do you have an emergency?" [911 emergency dispatcher] Betts asked. No, the man said, he was skiing — safely, happily, unharmed. Slightly annoyed, he added, "For the last three days, my watch has been dialing 911." Winter has brought a decent amount of snowfall to [Colorado]'s ski resorts, and with it an avalanche of false emergency calls. Virtually all of them have been placed by Apple Watches or iPhone 14s under the mistaken impression that their owners have been debilitated in collisions. As of September, these devices have come equipped with technology meant to detect car crashes and alert 911 dispatchers. It is a more sensitive upgrade to software on Apple devices, now several years old, that can detect when a user falls and then dial for help. But the latest innovation appears to send the device into overdrive: It keeps mistaking skiers, and some other fitness enthusiasts, for car-wreck victims. Lately, emergency call centers in some ski regions have been inundated with inadvertent, automated calls, dozens or more a week. Phone operators often must put other calls, including real emergencies, on hold to clarify whether the latest siren has been prompted by a human at risk or an overzealous device. "My whole day is managing crash notifications," said Trina Dummer, interim director of Summit County's emergency services, which received 185 such calls in the week from Jan. 13 to Jan. 22. (In winters past, the typical call volume on a busy day was roughly half that.) Ms. Dummer said that the onslaught was threatening to desensitize dispatchers and divert limited resources from true emergencies. "Apple needs to put in their own call center if this is a feature they want," she said. Apple acknowledged this was occuring in "some specific scenarios," the Times reports — but a spokesperson also "noted that when a crash is detected, the watch buzzes and sends a loud warning alerting the user that a call is being placed to 911, and it provides 10 seconds in which to cancel the call." But the Times points out that "skiers, in helmets and layers of clothing, often do not to detect the warning, so they may not cancel the call or respond to the 911 dispatcher."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CNN reports:The US military used fighter jets from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia to take down the suspected Chinese spy balloon at 2:39 p.m. ET on Saturday, according to a senior US military official. A single missile was used, the official said.... President Joe Biden said the mission to shoot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the East Coast Saturday was successful, and that he had ordered the Pentagon to knock the aircraft out of the sky as soon as it was safe to do so. "On Wednesday when I was briefed on the balloon, I ordered the Pentagon to shoot it down — on Wednesday — as soon as possible," the president told reporters in Hagerstown, Maryland. "They decided, without doing damage to anyone on the ground, they decided that the best time to do that was as it got over water ... within a 12-mile limit. They successfully took it down and I want to compliment our aviators who did it," the president added. Asked if that was a recommendation from his national security team, Biden reiterated: "I told them to shoot it down. They said to me, 'Let's wait for the safest place to do it....'" U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the balloon was being used by the Chinese government "to surveil strategic sites in the continental United States."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

That Chinese spy balloon floating over the continental U.S. "generated deep concern," reports the New York Times — "in part because it came on the heels of a classified report to Congress that outlined incidents of American adversaries potentially using advanced technology to spy on the country. "The classified report to Congress last month discussed at least two incidents of a rival power conducting aerial surveillance with what appeared to be unknown cutting-edge technology, according to U.S. officials."While the report did not attribute the incidents to any country, two American officials familiar with the research said the surveillance probably was conducted by China. The report on what the intelligence agencies call unidentified aerial phenomena focused on several incidents believed to be surveillance. Some of those incidents have involved balloons, while others have involved quadcopter drones.... U.S. defense officials believe China is conducting surveillance of military training grounds and exercises as part of an effort to better understand how America trains its pilots and undertakes complex military operations. The sites where unusual surveillance has occurred include a military base in the United States and a base overseas, officials said. The classified report mentioned Naval Air Station Fallon in Nevada and Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Japan as sites where foreign surveillance was believed to have occurred, but did not explicitly say China had been behind the actions, a U.S. official said. Since 2021, the Pentagon has examined 366 incidents that were initially unexplained and said 163 were balloons. A handful of those incidents involved advanced surveillance balloons, according to a U.S. official, but none of them were conducting persistent reconnaissance of the U.S. military bases. (However, spy balloons that the U.S. government immediately identifies are not included in the unidentified aerial phenomenon tracking, according to two U.S. officials.) Because spy balloons are relatively basic collection devices and other balloons have not lingered long over U.S. territory, they previously have not generated much concern with the Pentagon or intelligence agencies, according to two officials. The surveillance incidents involving advanced technology and described in the classified report were potentially more troubling, involving behaviors and characteristics that could not be explained. Officials said that further investigation was needed but that the incidents could potentially indicate the use of technology that was not fully understood or publicly identified. Of the 171 reports that have not been attributed to balloons, drones or airborne trash, some "appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities, and require further analysis."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MIT's Technology Review reports:Popular image generation models can be prompted to produce identifiable photos of real people, potentially threatening their privacy, according to new research. The work also shows that these AI systems can be made to regurgitate exact copies of medical images and copyrighted work by artists. It's a finding that could strengthen the case for artists who are currently suing AI companies for copyright violations. The researchers, from Google, DeepMind, UC Berkeley, ETH Zürich, and Princeton, got their results by prompting Stable Diffusion and Google's Imagen with captions for images, such as a person's name, many times. Then they analyzed whether any of the images they generated matched original images in the model's database. The group managed to extract over 100 replicas of images in the AI's training set.... The paper with title "Extracting Training Data from Diffusion Models" is the first time researchers have managed to prove that these AI models memorize images in their training sets, says Ryan Webster, a PhD student at the University of Caen Normandy in France, who has studied privacy in other image generation models but was not involved in the research.This could have implications for startups wanting to use generative AI models in health care, because it shows that these systems risk leaking sensitive private information. OpenAI, Google, and Stability.AI did not respond to our requests for comment. Slashdot user guest reader notes a recent class action lawsuit arguing that an art-generating AI is "a 21st-century collage tool....A diffusion model is a form of lossy compression applied to the Training Images."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader penciling_in shared this special report from CircleID: Vinton Cerf, widely known as the 'Father of the Internet,' has been awarded the IEEE Medal of Honor in 2023 for his contributions to the development of the Internet architecture and for his leadership in its growth as a critical infrastructure for society. In 1974, Robert Kahn and Cerf, who was working as program manager at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Information Processing Techniques Office, jointly designed the Transmission Control Protocol and the Internet Protocol. Together they make up the Internet's core architecture and enable computers to connect and exchange traffic.... Since 2005, Cerf has been vice president and chief Internet evangelist at Google in Reston, Va., promoting the usage of the Internet for the benefit of the public. Cerf is also in charge of locating new technologies and creating policies that assist the production of Internet-based products and services. IEEE Spectrum shares this quote from one of the endorsers of the award. "Cerf's tireless commitment to the Internet's evolution, improvement, oversight, and evangelism throughout its history has made an indelible impact on the world. It is largely due to his efforts that we even have the Internet, which has changed the way society lives.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader lexios shares this report from the French international news agency Agence France-Press:European police arrested 42 suspects and seized guns, drugs and millions in cash, after cracking another encrypted online messaging service used by criminals, Dutch law enforcement said Friday. Police launched raids on 79 premises in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands following an investigation that started back in September 2020 and led to the shutting down of the covert Exclu Messenger service. After police and prosecutors got into the Exclu secret communications system, they were able to read the messages passed between criminals for five months before the raids, said Dutch police. Those arrested include users of the app, as well as its owners and controllers. Police in France, Italy and Sweden, as well as Europol and Eurojust, its justice agency twin, also took part in the investigation. The police raids uncovered at least two drugs labs, one cocaine-processing facility, several kilograms of drugs, four million euros in cash, luxury goods and guns, Dutch police said. The "secure" messaging app was used by around 3 000 people who paid 800 euros (roughly $866 USD) for a six-month subscription.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In 2017 the New York Times covered research co-authored by John Griffin, a finance professor at the University of Texas, into Hong Kong-based Bitfinex, "one of the largest and least regulated exchanges in the industry."Mr. Griffin looked at the flow of digital tokens going in and out of Bitfinex and identified several distinct patterns that suggest that someone or some people at the exchange successfully worked to push up prices when they sagged at other exchanges. To do that, the person or people used a secondary virtual currency, known as Tether, which was created and sold by the owners of Bitfinex, to buy up those other cryptocurrencies. To reach this conclusion, the paper's two authors "sifted through an incredible 200 gigabytes of trading data, equal to the troves that the Smithsonian Institution collects in two years," according to a new article in Fortune, "and followed sales and purchases from 2.5 million separate wallets." The researchers ultimately concluded that a single, still unidentified, Bitcoin "whale" triggered nearly 60% of Bitcoin's one-year rise in 2017 from under $1,000 to over $19,000. But more importantly, Fortune now reports that Griffin "suspects that a similar dynamic is operating today."Toward the end of 2022, another mystifying trend caught Griffin's eye. Despite the crypto crash and myriad other negative forces, every time Bitcoin briefly breached the $16,000 floor, it bounced above that level and kept stubbornly trading between $16,000 and $17,000. Almost unbelievably, as the crypto market has continued to unravel into 2023, Bitcoin has gone in the opposite direction, trading up 35% since Jan. 7 to $23,000. "It's very suspicious," Griffin told Fortune. "The same mechanism we saw in 2017 could be at play now in the still unreal Bitcoin market." For Griffin, the way normally super-volatile Bitcoin went calm and stable in the stormiest of times for crypto fits a scenario where boosters are uniting to support and juice its price. "If you're a crypto manipulator, you want to set a floor under the price of your coin," added Griffin. "In a period of highly negative sentiment, we've seen suspiciously solid floors under Bitcoin." It's important to note that no definitive proof of chicanery has so far emerged. "The space is bigger now so it's harder to dig the data," says Griffin. "Sophisticated players may be expert at hiding their identities." We have seen credible leaks asserting that major market participants call meetings of the sector's elite when they fear a crypto leader plans to make what they consider a reckless, industry-endangering move. But no evidence has surfaced that the players are gathering to coordinate buying of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. Fortune data editor Scott DeCarlo ran a detailed analysis and found, among other things, that Bitcoin "at peak FTX-induced turmoil showed both its smallest swings ever by a wide margin, and divergence from low to high that was one-fourth to one-fifth its average over the past six years." And they're not the only ones asking questions:In a blog post on Nov. 30 titled "Bitcoin's Last Stand," European Central Bank Director General for market operations Ulrich Bindseil and ECB adviser Jürgen Schaaf dismissed Bitcoin's resurgence as "an artificially induced last gasp before the road to irrelevance." Two leading figures on Wall Street told this writer on background that Bitcoin's price action, by resisting a flood of bad news, looks phony and different from a normal free market ruled by independent buyers and sellers. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader wired_parrot for submitting the story.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

To celebrate this year's "Public Domain Day," the Internet Archive "asked people to submit short films highlighting anything that was going to be made available in the Public Domain in 2023."For the contest, vintage images and sounds were woven into creative films of 2-3 minutes. Many of the films were abstract while others educational, they all showcased the possibility when public domain materials are made openly available and accessible for download. "The Internet Archive has spent 24 years collecting and archiving content from around the world...now is the time to see what people can do with it," said Amir Saber Esfahani, director of special arts projects at the Internet Archive. The counsel from Creative Commons helped judged all 47 entries, with winners finally chosen "based on creativity, technique, engagement, and variety of content." The winning entries include "The Public Domain Race," a montage of newly-uncopyrighted 1927 film clips and cartoons. And the honorable mentions include short films showing, among other things, 2023 filmmaker Sam Dody serenading a lovestruck silent film star from 1927 — and the story of why Mae West once spent eight days in jail. But the big first-place prize of $1,500 went to Gnats Gonzales for reciting a poem that was emblazoned over the artwork and title pages of 1927 works that have finally entered the public domain. "... Let not kings nor selective texts decide what is known among you. Ignore the temptation of hippocampal decay. Plunge into the dark depths. And feel the warmth of mortal creation at its purest." That last quote appears over a 1927 movie poster showing a woman smashing pies into the face of Oliver Hardy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Phoronix reports:A proposed Linux kernel patch would provide a new Kconfig build time option of "CONFIG_DEFAULT_CPU_MITIGATIONS_OFF" to build an insecure kernel if wanting to avoid the growing list of CPU security mitigations within the kernel and their associated performance overhead. While risking system security, booting the Linux kernel with the "mitigations=off" option has been popular for avoiding the performance costs of Spectre, Meltdown, and the many other CPU security vulnerabilities that have come to light in recent years. Using mitigations=off allows run-time disabling of the various in-kernel security mitigations for these CPU problems. A patch proposed this week would provide CONFIG_DEFAULT_CPU_MITIGATIONS_OFF as a Kconfig switch that could optionally be enabled to have the same affect as mitigations=off but to be applied at build-time to avoid having to worry about setting the "mitigations=off" flag.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Walt Disney Co. is exploring more licensing of its films and television series to rival media outlets as pressure grows to curb the losses in its streaming TV business. The Burbank, California-based entertainment giant is seeking to earn more cash from its content library, according to people familiar with the discussions who asked not to be identified as the talks are private. The move would represent a shift in strategy, as Disney has in recent years tried to keep much of its original programming exclusively on its Disney+ and Hulu streaming services. [CEO Bob Iger], 71, will share more of his plans when the company reports financial results on Feb. 8, but he has already taken steps to reverse decisions made by his predecessor. He offered free photos and more lower-price tickets to theme-park guests irked by rising fees. Although Disney already licenses some titles to other platforms including Amazon's Prime streaming service, it began to hoard content with the launch of Disney+ in 2019. Disney curtailed licensing of its own programs to third parties to boost that service. A deal that had Disney films running on Netflix was phased out, and the company touted how much of its new programming came from its own in-house studios. Wall Street cheered at the time because it meant the company was entirely focused on building out the streaming business. The shift was costly, however, as Disney surrendered billions of dollars from home video sales and licensing deals with other networks.Read more of this story at Slashdot.