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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: An open letter signed by more than 1,300 experts says AI is a "force for good, not a threat to humanity." It was organized by BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, to counter "AI doom." Rashik Parmar, BCS chief executive, said it showed the UK tech community didn't believe the "nightmare scenario of evil robot overlords." In March, tech leaders including Elon Musk, who recently launched an AI business, signed a letter calling for a pause in developing powerful systems. That letter suggested super-intelligent AI posed an "existential risk" to humanity. But the BCS sees the situation in a more positive light, while still supporting the need for rules around AI. Richard Carter is a signatory to the BCS letter. Mr Carter, who founded an AI-powered startup cybersecurity business, feels the dire warnings are unrealistic: "Frankly, this notion that AI is an existential threat to humanity is too far-fetched. We're just not in any kind of a position where that's even feasible." Signatories to the BCS letter come from a range of backgrounds -- business, academia, public bodies and think tanks, though none are as well known as Elon Musk, or run major AI companies like OpenAI. Those the BBC has spoken to stress the positive uses of AI. Hema Purohit, who leads on digital health and social care for the BCS, said the technology was enabling new ways to spot serious illness, for example medical systems that detect signs of issues such as cardiac disease or diabetes when a patient goes for an eye test. She said AI could also help accelerate the testing of new drugs. Signatory Sarah Burnett, author of a book on AI and business, pointed to agricultural uses of the tech, from robots that use artificial intelligence to pollinate plants to those that "identify weeds and spray or zap them with lasers, rather than having whole crops sprayed with weed killer." The letter argues: "The UK can help lead the way in setting professional and technical standards in AI roles, supported by a robust code of conduct, international collaboration and fully resourced regulation." By doing so, it says Britain "can become a global byword for high-quality, ethical, inclusive AI."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A bipartisan pair of senators unveiled a bill Wednesday to ban stock ownership by lawmakers and administration officials. The Hill reports: The bill, introduced by Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), would establish firmer stock trading bans and disclosure requirements for lawmakers, senior executive branch officials and their spouses and dependents. The bill would ban congressional members, the president, vice president, senior executive branch members, and their spouses and dependents from holding or trading stocks, with no exception to blind trusts. Congressional members who violate this ban would be required to pay at least 10 percent of the banned investments. The legislation also establishes harsh penalties for executive branch stock trading, requiring executive branch officials to give up profits from covered finance interests to the Department of Treasury, while also facing a fine from the Automatic Special Counsel. Congressional members, senior congressional staff and senior executive branch employees would also be required to report if they, a spouse or a dependent applies for or receives a "benefit of value" from the federal government, including loans, contracts, grants, agreements and payments. If they fail to file, they will face a $500 penalty. The bill aims to increase transparency, requiring public databases of personal financial disclosures and financial transaction filings required by the STOCK Act, which prohibits members of Congress from using insider information when buying and selling stocks. The penalty for the failing to file STOCK Act transaction reports would also increase from $200 to $500.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

You now have a new way to connect your Windows PC to an Android device to share files: Nearby Share, an app Google released Wednesday and which will be bundled with upcoming PCs. From a report: As the name suggests, Nearby Share allows you to share files back and forth between Android devices and PCs. It's similar to Apple's AirDrop, with the key difference being that Nearby Share connects devices from two different companies, rather than iPhones and Macs. Google released the beta version of Nearby Share earlier this year. Nearby Share connects your phone to your PC, but it can also be used for you to send files and photos to nearby Android phones that you don't use, as well as to nearby PCs. That makes it handy for simply sharing a photo at a concert, or dropping a file onto a friend's PC without hassle. You'll just need to be within about 16 feet to do so, Google says. Why use Nearby Share? Google's unspoken argument is that it's simpler to do so. There are already numerous ways to view and transfer files and photos from Android phones to PCs, from the tried-and-true sneakerware to uploading and downloading from the cloud, to more modern approaches like Microsoft's Your Phone, now called Phone Link. Device makers like Samsung also have released their own specific versions for Galaxy devices. Google, though, made its mark with Gmail and search, both functions that worked more simply and effectively than other solutions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is expanding its suite of free security tools for customers, the software company said on Wednesday, following criticism that it was charging clients to protect themselves against Microsoft's mistakes. From a report: The move follows a high-level hack that allowed allegedlyChinese spies to steal emails from senior U.S. officials - and complaints from security specialists and lawmakers against paying for tools In a blog post published on Wednesday, Microsoft said the advanced features in Microsoft's auditing suite - which it calls Microsoft Purview - would be available to all customers "over the coming months." Although not enough to prevent hacks on their own, digital auditing tools are critical for helping organizations figure out whether intruders are in their network, how they got in and how to get them out.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Blizzard Entertainment is bringing its PC games to Steam, starting with the release of Overwatch 2 on Valve's digital storefront on Aug. 10, Blizzard announced Wednesday. Polygon reports: The Windows PC version of Overwatch 2, like many of Blizzard's PC games, is currently only available through Battle.net. But with Microsoft's impending acquisition of Activision Blizzard and declining player engagement in the game, the maker of Diablo, Warcraft, and Overwatch appears to be changing its strategy. Blizzard says it will bring "a selection" of its games to Steam, but did not specify which titles beyond Overwatch 2 will make the jump from Battle.net. (A few classic Blizzard games, including the original Diablo and the first two Warcraft games, are available through GOG.com.) The acceptance of Steam as a platform for Blizzard's games is part of the studio's evolution, the company said in a blog post. "[O]ne of the ideas pushing us forward is meeting players around the world where they are, and making our games as easy as possible to access and play," the company said. "We want to give everyone a chance to experience our universes with old friends while making new ones, no matter how they choose to play." In its announcement, Blizzard said it's not moving away from Battle.net. But, it explained, "as we've evolved, the industry has evolved too -- gaming is no longer just for specific communities as it was when Battle.net launched over two decades ago, gaming is for everyone -- and though we remain committed to continually investing in and supporting Battle.net, we want to break down the barriers to make it easier for players everywhere to find and enjoy our games." Blizzard says that players on Steam will still need a Battle.net account connected to Overwatch 2 to play the game. The Steam version will support Steam achievements and friends lists, but Blizzard did not announce Steam Deck support. Overwatch 2 can now be wishlisted through Steam. As for Blizzard's future plans for other game releases on Steam, the company said it will be "sharing more about potential other games coming to the platform when the time is right."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a ArsTechnica report: On Wednesday, two German researchers, Sophie Jentzsch and Kristian Kersting, released a paper that examines the ability of OpenAI's ChatGPT-3.5 to understand and generate humor. In particular, they discovered that ChatGPT's knowledge of jokes is fairly limited: During a test run, 90 percent of 1,008 generations were the same 25 jokes, leading them to conclude that the responses were likely learned and memorized during the AI model's training rather than being newly generated. The two researchers, associated with the Institute for Software Technology, German Aerospace Center (DLR), and Technical University Darmstadt, explored the nuances of humor found within ChatGPT's 3.5 version (not the newer GPT-4 version) through a series of experiments focusing on joke generation, explanation, and detection. They conducted these experiments by prompting ChatGPT without having access to the model's inner workings or data set. "To test how rich the variety of ChatGPT's jokes is, we asked it to tell a joke a thousand times," they write. "All responses were grammatically correct. Almost all outputs contained exactly one joke. Only the prompt, 'Do you know any good jokes?' provoked multiple jokes, leading to 1,008 responded jokes in total. Besides that, the variation of prompts did not have any noticeable effect." [...] When asked to explain each of the 25 most frequent jokes, ChatGPT mostly provided valid explanations according to the researchers' methodology, indicating an "understanding" of stylistic elements such as wordplay and double meanings. However, it struggled with sequences that didn't fit into learned patterns and couldn't tell when a joke wasn't funny. Instead, it would make up fictional yet plausible-sounding explanations. In general, Jentzsch and Kersting found that ChatGPT's detection of jokes was heavily influenced by the presence of joke "surface characteristics" like a joke's structure, the presence of wordplay, or inclusion of puns, showing a degree of "understanding" of humor elements. Despite ChatGPT's limitations in joke generation and explanation, the researchers pointed out that its focus on content and meaning in humor indicates progress toward a more comprehensive research understanding of humor in language models: "The observations of this study illustrate how ChatGPT rather learned a specific joke pattern instead of being able to be actually funny," the researchers write. "Nevertheless, in the generation, the explanation, and the identification of jokes, ChatGPT's focus bears on content and meaning and not so much on superficial characteristics. These qualities can be exploited to boost computational humor applications. In comparison to previous LLMs, this can be considered a huge leap toward a general understanding of humor."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In March 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic began to transform the world, the company then known as Facebook struck a deal to buy all the augmented reality displays made by British firm Plessey. At the time, the deal appeared to be a savvy way of squeezing out Apple in the competition to develop AR glasses, as Plessey was one of the few makers of AR displays. Three years on, however, the deal has turned into a bust for Meta. Development of Plessey's technology has stalled, say people with direct knowledge of the effort. Facebook, now called Meta Platforms, has struggled to make Plessey's displays bright enough for use in its AR glasses under development and to reduce defects that crop up in the manufacturing process. Earlier this year, Meta decided to abandon Plessey's microLED tech in favor of an older display technology, liquid crystal on silicon or LCoS. The decision is one of several Meta has made, for either technological or cost-saving reasons, that will reduce the edge that the AR glasses have over existing AR headsets like Microsoft's HoloLens. The episode highlights the twists and turns Meta is navigating as it tries to stay ahead of Apple and other rivals in the still-developing market for AR and virtual reality. Meta was early to the VR market with its Quest headsets and has been working on developing AR glasses to get ahead of rivals like Snap which are trying to develop similar products. Now it faces competition from Apple, which last month unveiled its mixed-reality headset, the Vision Pro, which will be available early next year. At the same time, Meta is under pressure from investors to curb the more than $10 billion it is spending annually at the Reality Labs division developing its AR and VR products. Technical setbacks have forced Meta to delay the timeline for releasing AR glasses multiple times, and it isn't anticipating releasing a pair of AR glasses to the public until at least 2027.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Danny Sullivan, Google's Search Liaison, responded to Vox Media's claim that AI content is currently "well-received by search engines." Sullivan said, "It's still not correct that AI content will be "well-received by search engines," at least for us." Sullivan went on to explain on Twitter that "There's lots of AI content on the web that doesn't rank well and hence isn't well received" by Google Search. "AI content has no magic ranking powers," Sullivan said. Only "if content is helpful, then it might succeed," but not because AI wrote it does it mean the content is helpful. Sullivan wrote to the author, "FYI about this part: "he's learned that AI content 'will, at least for the moment, be well-received by search engines'." This isn't correct. Our systems are looking at the helpfulness of content, rather than how it is produced," Danny Sullivan clarified. "We'd encourage publishers, however they produce content, to ensure they're making it for people-first," he added. "Producing a lot of content with the primary purpose of ranking in search, rather than for people, should be avoided. Sites producing a lot of unhelpful content not intended for people-first may find all of their content less likely to be successful with search," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Following months of intense scrutiny of his scientific work, Marc Tessier-Lavigne announced Wednesday that he would resign as president of Stanford University after an independent review of his research found significant flaws in studies he supervised going back decades. From a report: The review, conducted by an outside panel of scientists, refuted the most serious claim involving Dr. Tessier-Lavigne's work -- that an important 2009 Alzheimer's study was the subject of an investigation that found falsified data and that Dr. Tessier-Lavigne had covered it up. The panel concluded that the claim, published in February by The Stanford Daily, the campus newspaper, "appear to be mistaken" and that there was no evidence of falsified data, or that Dr. Tessier-Lavigne had otherwise engaged in fraud. But the review also stated that the 2009 study, conducted while he was an executive at the biotech company Genentech, had "multiple problems" and "fell below customary standards of scientific rigor and process," especially for a paper of such potential consequences. As a result of the review, Dr. Tessier-Lavigne said he would retract a 1999 paper that appeared in the journal Cell and two others that appeared in Science in 2001. Two other papers published in Nature, including the 2009 Alzheimer's study, would also undergo what was described as comprehensive correction. Stanford is known for its leadership in scientific research, and even though the claims involved work published before Dr. Tessier-Lavigne's arrival at the university in 2016, the allegations reflected poorly on the university's integrity.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is starting a new pilot program where some employees will be restricted to internet-free desktop PCs. From a report: The company originally selected more than 2,500 employees to participate, but after receiving feedback, the company revised the pilot to allow employees to opt out, as well as opening it up to volunteers. The company will disable internet access on the select desktops, with the exception of internal web-based tools and Google-owned websites like Google Drive and Gmail. Some workers who need the internet to do their job will get exceptions, the company stated in materials. In addition, some employees will have no root access, meaning they won't be able to run administrative commands or do things like install software. Google is running the program to reduce the risk of cyberattacks, according to internal materials. "Googlers are frequent targets of attacks," one internal description viewed by CNBC stated. If a Google employee's device is compromised, the attackers may have access to user data and infrastructure code, which could result in a major incident and undermine user trust, the description added. Turning off most internet access ensures attackers cannot easily run arbitrary code remotely or grab data, the description explained.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is quietly working on artificial intelligence tools that could challenge those of OpenAI, Alphabet's Google and others, but the company has yet to devise a clear strategy for releasing the technology to consumers. From a report: The iPhone maker has built its own framework to create large language models -- the AI-based systems at the heart of new offerings like ChatGPT and Google's Bard -- according to people with knowledge of the efforts. With that foundation, known as "Ajax," Apple also has created a chatbot service that some engineers call "Apple GPT." In recent months, the AI push has become a major effort for Apple, with several teams collaborating on the project, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. The work includes trying to address potential privacy concerns related to the technology. [...] Apple employees say the company's tool essentially replicates Bard, ChatGPT and Bing AI, and doesn't include any novel features or technology. The system is accessible as a web application and has a stripped-down design not meant for public consumption. As such, Apple has no current plans to release it to consumers, though it is actively working to improve its underlying models.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nasdaq became the latest mainstream financial firm to take a step back from digital assets, aborting its launch of a custodian business in the US due to the shifting business and regulatory environment. From a report: The exchange operator is also halting its efforts to pursue a license related to the business but will continue to build out its technology to handle crypto for clients. "We remain committed to supporting the evolution of the digital asset ecosystem in a variety of ways," including partnerships with potential ETF issuers, Adena Friedman, Nasdaq's chief executive officer, said on the second-quarter earnings call on Wednesday. Nasdaq pulled back amid a widening crackdown by regulators that aims to isolate crypto's risks from the US financial system. Banks have been warned about their exposure to crypto businesses, and the US Securities and Exchange Commission has filed a series of lawsuits against some of the industry's biggest firms, including Binance and Coinbase Global. Among the concerns are risks that could topple a federally insured bank, as well as the failure of some crypto platforms to separate different parts of their businesses, such as custody, market-making and trading, which could result in conflicts of interests.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Artificial intelligence companies are exploring a new avenue to obtain the massive amounts of data needed to develop powerful generative models: creating the information from scratch. From a report: Microsoft, OpenAI and Cohere are among the groups testing the use of so-called synthetic data -- computer-generated information to train their AI systems known as large language models (LLMs) -- as they reach the limits of human-made data that can further improve the cutting-edge technology. The launch of Microsoft-backed OpenAI's ChatGPT last November has led to a flood of products rolled out publicly this year by companies including Google and Anthropic, which can produce plausible text, images or code in response to simple prompts. The technology, known as generative AI, has driven a surge of investor and consumer interest, with the world's biggest technology companies including Google, Microsoft and Meta racing to dominate the space. Currently, LLMs that power chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard are trained primarily by scraping the internet. Data used to train these systems includes digitised books, news articles, blogs, search queries, Twitter and Reddit posts, YouTube videos and Flickr images, among other content. Humans are then used to provide feedback and fill gaps in the information in a process known as reinforcement learning by human feedback (RLHF). But as generative AI software becomes more sophisticated, even deep-pocketed AI companies are running out of easily accessible and high-quality data to train on. Meanwhile, they are under fire from regulators, artists and media organisations around the world over the volume and provenance of personal data consumed by the technology.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With no formal announcement, Netflix removed its $9.99 "Basic" subscription tier for anybody trying to sign up for a new account or resubscribe in the U.S. and UK. From a report: Now your two options are to pay $5.50 more per month for the "Standard" plan, or otherwise suffer through constant ad interruptions with what's now been dubbed "Standard with ads." All the changes are listed on the service's help center page. The company noted that the Basic plan "is no longer available for new or rejoining members. If you are currently on the Basic plan, you can remain on this plan until you change plans or cancel your account." Netflix pulled the same move in Canada last month, again without any official announcement. The company has been extra cagey about its latest subscription plan shakeup, which could lead to some rather nasty surprises for anybody who leaves Netflix but comes back later hoping to sign up for the $10 ad-free option.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel has announced ASUS as the company's first partner for its Next Unit of Compute (NUC) mini PC business. From a report: The two companies have entered a non-binding agreement that will see ASUS manufacture, sell and support the 10th- to 13th-generation products in Intel's NUC line. ASUS will also develop future NUC designs. Based on the business' current lineup, ASUS could be developing future NUC mini PCs, DIY kits for mini PCs, DIY kits for laptops, customizable boards, chassis and other assembly elements. If you'll recall, Intel recently told Engadget that it's ending its "direct investment" in its NUC business and will no longer produce first-party NUC products. It didn't elaborate on its reasoning, but working with partners for a non-essential business will free up resources it could use to concentrate on making chips. Intel previously said its first quarter earnings exceeded expectations, but its revenue was still down 36 percent year-over-year when compared to its results in the same period for 2022. The company also said that it remains cautious in this economy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: A government program meant to attract highly skilled tech workers from the U.S. closed for applications the day after it launched when it hit its maximum number of applicants. Last month, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser announced a new work permit for H-1B visa holders in the U.S. -- part of a larger federal government strategy to poach talent from abroad. H-1B visas allow foreign nationals to work temporarily in the U.S. in certain specialized occupations, including some in the technology sector. Tech companies went on a hiring binge during the pandemic but have since starting laying people off in large numbers. That has left a lot of H-1B visa holders scrambling to find new jobs before they're forced to leave the U.S. Applications for the work permits opened on Sunday. By Monday the program had reached capacity, with 10,000 applicants bidding for a permit. "This temporary policy will last for 1 year or until we get 10,000 applications (whichever comes first)," the program's website says. The program is a response to massive layoffs in the U.S. tech industry. Since last summer, hundreds of thousands of workers have been laid off from such major firms as Google, Microsoft and Amazon. Fraser said he was watching the situation in the U.S. and saw it as an "opportunity" for Canada when he first announced the program. Nick Schiavo, director of federal affairs for the Council of Canadian Innovators, said he's not surprised that applications filled up so quickly. He said the government should now consider expanding the program to more applicants. "The more that we can pull from these highly qualified individuals that we know have the work experience, the skill set the better," Schiavo said. "As this program develops, it would be great to see it expanded."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mary and Gary Freeman, founders of a Florida-based lab supplies company, discovered a rich lithium deposit in Maine while searching for tourmaline, a striking, multi-colored gemstone found in the region. The timing of their find is significant as it could provide the United States with a domestic source of lithium for the clean energy transition and potentially be worth $1.5 billion. However, there's strong opposition to developing a mine. "Maine has some of the strictest mining and water quality standards in the country, and prohibits digging for metals in open pits larger than three acres," reports TIME. "There have not been any active metal mines in the state for decades, and no company has applied for a permit since a particularly strict law passed in 2017." Slashdot reader schwit1 shares an excerpt from the report: "This is a story that has been played out in Maine for generations," says Bill Pluecker, a member of the state's House of Representatives, whose hometown of Warren -- a 45-minute drive from the capital city of Augusta -- recently voted overwhelmingly in favor of a temporary ban on industrial metal mining after a Canadian company came looking for minerals near a beloved local pond. "We build industries based on the needs of populations not living here and then the bottom drops out, leaving us struggling again to pick up the pieces." "Our gold rush mentality regarding oil has fueled the climate crisis," says State Rep. Margaret O'Neil, who presented a bill last session that would have halted lithium mining for five years while the state worked out rules (the legislation ultimately failed). "As we facilitate our transition away from fossil fuels, we must examine the risks of lithium mining and consider whether the benefits of mining here in Maine justify the harms." The Freemans' point out that they plan to dig for the spodumene, then ship it out of state for processing, so there would be no chemical ponds or tailings piles. They liken the excavation of the minerals to quarrying for granite or limestone, which enjoys a long, rich history in Maine. Advocates for mining in the U.S. argue that, since the country outsources most of its mining to places with less strict environmental and labor regulations, those harms are currently being born by foreign residents, while putting U.S. manufacturers in the precarious position of depending on faraway sources for the minerals they need. Though there are more than 12,000 active mines in the U.S., the bulk of them are for stone, coal, sand, and gravel. There is only one operational lithium mine in the U.S., in Nevada, and one operational rare earth element mine, in Mountain Pass, Calif., meaning that the U.S. is dependent on other countries for the materials essential for clean energy technologies like batteries, wind turbines, and solar panels. Even after they're mined, those materials currently have to be shipped to China for processing since the U.S. does not have any processing facilities. "If we're talking about critical metals and materials, we're so far behind that it's crazy," says Corby Anderson, a professor at the Colorado School of Mines. "It's the dichotomy of the current administration -- they have incentives for electric vehicles and all these things, but they need materials like graphite, manganese, nickel, cobalt, lithium, and copper. The only one we mine and refine in this country is copper." Further reading: Federal Ruling Approves Construction of North America's Largest Lithium MineRead more of this story at Slashdot.

Bruce66423 shares a report from The Jerusalem Post: A team of researchers from Tel Aviv University has produced 'green' hydrogen -- hydrogen that is produced without polluting carbon dioxide emissions but is still highly efficient, the university said. The TAU team produced hydrogen using a water-based gel to attach the enzyme to the electrode and a biocatalyst. Over 90% of the electrons introduced into the system were deposited in the hydrogen without any secondary processes. "Hydrogen is very rare in the atmosphere, although it is produced by enzymes in microscopic organisms, which receive the energy from photosynthesis processes," explained Itzhak Grinberg, a doctoral student who helped lead the project. "In the lab, we 'electrify' those enzymes. That is, an electrode provides the energy instead of the Sun." However, the challenge is that the enzyme generally "runs away" from the electric charge when making hydrogen in a lab. The hydrogel holds the enzyme in place. "The material of the gel itself is known, but our innovation is to use it to produce hydrogen," said Prof. Iftach Yacoby of TAU's School of Plant Sciences and Food Security, who oversaw the project. "We soaked the electrode in the gel, which contained an enzyme for producing hydrogen called hydrogenase. The gel holds the enzyme for a long time, even under the electric voltage, and makes it possible to produce hydrogen with great efficiency and at environmental conditions favorable to the enzyme -- for example, in salt water, in contrast to electrolysis, which requires distilled water." The team also tested the gel with two other enzymes and proved that the hydrogenase could attach different enzymes to the electrode. "Today, 'green' hydrogen is produced primarily through electrolysis, which requires precious and rare metals such as platinum along with water distillation, which makes the green hydrogen up to 15 times more expensive than the polluting 'grey' one," said doctoral student Oren Ben-Zvi, who co-led the experiment. Therefore, the hope is that in the future, TAU's method could be commercially implemented to lower the cost of green hydrogen production and hence enable its use in more industries and agriculture, thereby reducing CO2 emissions and making the planet healthier. Their research was published in the journal Carbon Energy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

United States presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced a plan to back the dollar with Bitcoin, and end taxes on Bitcoin. From a report:Speaking at a Heal-the-Divide PAC event, Democratic Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. outlined specific Bitcoin-focused policies that he would enact as president, including gradually backing the U.S. dollar with bitcoin and making bitcoin profits exempt from capital gains taxes. "My plan would be to start very, very small, perhaps 1% of issued T-bills would be backed by hard currency, by gold, silver platinum or bitcoin," Kennedy said, describing his vision for returning to a hard currency standard in the U.S. He added that, depending on the outcome of that initial step, he would increase that allocation annually. This potential policy reimagines the financial system, pointing to a future where bitcoin's absolute scarcity and sound monetary principles reinforce the U.S. dollar's eroding position as the world reserve currency. Kennedy Jr. added: "Backing dollars and U.S. debt obligations with hard assets could help restore strength back to the dollar, rein in inflation and usher in a new era of American financial stability, peace and prosperity." In addition, Kennedy announced his administration "will exempt the conversion of bitcoin to the U.S. dollar from capital gains taxes"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: [T]he NYPD announced it's piloting test drones to fly over at-risk neighborhoods and make public announcements during emergencies. On Sunday, at the tail end of a weekend of heavy rainfall and flooding, New York City's emergency notification system tweeted that the NYPD would be "conducting a test of remote-piloted public messaging capabilities" at a location confirmed to AM New York as Hook Creek Park in Queens. The NYPD told AM New York that the drones were being tested to make announcements during weather-related emergencies, and were being tested in advance of more flooding expected this weekend. The comments suggest that public announcement drones could be deployed in a real-world scenario very soon. Besides the eeriness of a drone instructing New Yorkers during life-threatening emergencies, the test raises questions about the NYPD's compliance with laws that require the agency to alert the public when deploying surveillance technology. The NYPD is required to post an impact statement and use policy on its website and seek public comment 90 days prior to deploying new surveillance technology to comply with the 2020 POST Act. However, according to the law, the NYPD merely has to amend old use policies if it is using previously existing surveillance tech for new purposes. For its use policy for unmanned aircraft, finalized in April 2021, there is no mention of the emergency announcements. The document says, "In situations where deployment of NYPD (drones) has not been foreseen or prescribed in policy, the highest uniformed member of the NYPD, the Chief of Department, will decide if deployment is appropriate and lawful. In accordance with the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology Act, an addendum to this impact and use policy will be prepared as necessary to describe any additional uses of UAS." No such addendum appears on the website. "This plan just isn't going to fly. The city already has countless ways of reaching New Yorkers, and it would take thousands of drones to reach the whole city," Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project told Motherboard by email. "The drones are a terrible way to alert New Yorkers, but they are a great way to creep us out. More alarmingly, the NYPD is once again violating the landmark Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act, which requires public notice and comment before deploying new surveillance systems." Cahn added: "No gadget is going to be a substitute for effective city management and communication practices."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

schwit1 shares a report from NPR: In a blow to tribes, a U.S. appeals court has denied a last ditch legal effort to block construction of what's expected to be the largest lithium mine in North America on federal land in Nevada. In a decision Monday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the U.S. government did not violate federal environmental laws when it approved Lithium Nevada's Thacker Pass mine in the waning days of the Trump administration. Lithium is a key component of electric vehicle batteries, and despite pressure from west coast Paiute tribes and environmentalists, the Biden administration did not reverse the decision and had continued to advocate for the mine, which would be located on remote federal land near the Nevada-Oregon border. Several area tribes and environmental groups have tried to block or delay the Thacker Pass mine for more than two years. Among their arguments was that federal land managers fast tracked it without proper consultation with Indian Country. "They rushed this project through during COVID and essentially selected three tribes to talk to instead of the long list of tribes that they had talked to in the past," Rick Eichstaedt, an attorney for the Burns Paiute Tribe, said in an interview late last month. But in their ruling, the Ninth Circuit judges responded that only after the mine was approved by federal land managers did it become known that some tribes consider the land sacred. Full construction of the mine is expected to begin in earnest this summer.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Roblox is offering developers another way to earn money by allowing them to offer subscriptions within their experiences, according to a blog post published Tuesday. The Verge reports: Roblox already offers developers a lot of ways to monetize their experiences, including the ability to sell virtual items in an experience or on the Roblox marketplace, offering in-experience passes to certain content and gating experiences behind paid access. However, those examples are all one-time fees, and Roblox argues that subscriptions would offer a way for developers to "establish a recurring economic relationship with their users and potentially increase the predictability of their earnings." (Other monetization options include subscriptions to private servers, engagement-based payouts, and slotting in Roblox's "Immersive Ads.") Subscriptions would also give Roblox another thing it can point to as a reason to develop for its metaverse platform instead of others. Epic Games' new system for Fortnite, for example, rewards creators based on factors like how long people play their experiences but doesn't allow creators to directly sell virtual goods or subscriptions inside those experiences. Developers looking for more flexibility in how they monetize might choose Roblox instead.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Most outsourced programmers in India will see their jobs wiped out in the next year or two, Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque said. CNBC reports: Mostaque, on a call with UBS analysts, said that most of the country's outsourced coders will lose their jobs as the effects of AI mean that it is now possible for software to be developed with far fewer people. "I think that it affects different types of jobs in different ways," Mostaque said on a call with analysts at the Swiss investment bank last week. "If you're doing a job in front of a computer, and no one ever sees you, then it's massively impactful, because these models are like really talented grads." According to Mostaque, not everyone will be affected in the same way, however. That is due in no small part to differing rules and regulations around the world. Countries with stronger labor laws, like France, will be less likely to see such an impact, for example. In India, Mostaque said, "outsourced coders up to level three programmers will be gone in the next year or two, whereas in France, you'll never fire a developer." "So it affects different models in different countries in different ways in different sectors." Mostaque reiterated a previous statement he made saying that there will be "no more programmers" in five years' time -- however, he caveated this to say that he meant coders in the traditional sense. "Why would you have to write code where the computer can write code better? When you deconstruct the programming thing from bug testing to unit testing to ideation, an AI can do that, just better," Mostaque said. "But it won't be doing it automatically, it will be AI 'co-pilots,'" Mostaque said. "That means less people are needed for classical programming, but then are they needed for other things? This is the question and this is the balance that we have to understand, because different areas are also affected differently."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Who owns thedata generated by your car? And who controls access to it? For almost a decade, right-to-repair activists, automakers, parts manufacturers, auto repair shop owners, technicians, and regular people who own cars have fought over those questions. How they are answered could radically change the cost and convenience of owning a modern camera-studded and cloud-enabled car -- and, some say, the future of the increasingly tech-heavy auto industry. Last week, a few trade groups announced they had finally figured it all out. In a letter (PDF) to the US Congress, three industry organizations that together represent the major automakers and thousands of repair shops said they had signed a "memorandum of understanding" on the right to repair. In the agreement, the automakers commit to giving independent car repair shops access to the data, tools, and information necessary to diagnose and repair vehicles -- the data, tools, and information provided to the automakers' own dealership networks. "Competition is alive and well in the auto repair industry," the letter said. Right-to-repair advocates -- who contend that consumers should be able to fix the products they buy -- aren't so sure. They say the agreement doesn't give car owners full and unfettered control of the streams of data generated by the latest cars' cameras and other sensors, which log data on location, speed, acceleration, and how a vehicle's hardware and software are performing. The advocates worry the new agreement gives automakers and automaker-associated repairers room to squeeze out smaller, independent shops and at-home tinkerers in the future, making it more difficult for car owners to find places to quickly and affordably fix their cars. And they say there are no enforcement mechanisms to guarantee automakers follow through on their promises. Notably, the new agreement didn't include the Auto Care Association, the largest US trade group for independent repair shops and aftermarket parts suppliers. The group's chair, Corey Bartlett, says the agreement doesn't address some of the major barriers facing consumers looking to get a tech-heavy car repaired. Smaller and especially rural repair shops sometimes can't fix the newest models, because they can't pay for the expensive tools, subscriptions, and training needed, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. As cars get more complex, and move more services into apps and onto the internet, they fear access will shrink. [...] Many repair shops, especially those who opt in and pay to be part of those certified networks, say they have no trouble finding the information they need to fix cars, even before this week's agreement. [...] Other repairers worry that without an industry-wide overhaul that forces automakers to standardize and open up their data, car companies will find ways to limit access to repair information, or push customers towards their own dealership networks to boost profits. They say that if auto owners had clear and direct ownership over the data generated by their vehicles -- without the involvement of automakers' specialized tools or systems -- they could use it themselves to diagnose and repair a car, or authorize the repair shop of their choice to do the work. "My fear, if no one gives some stronger guidelines, is that I know automakers are going to monetize car data in a way that's unaffordable for us to gain access," says Dwayne Myers, co-owner of Dynamic Automotive, an auto repair business with several locations in Maryland.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple Pay is launching in Morocco today -- almost nine years after the service was first announced. MacRumors reports: CIH Bank is launching Apple Pay in the country as of Tuesday, according to the bank's Twitter account. It's not clear if other banks in Morocco will be coming on board with support for Apple's digital payment method, but it's likely. The support means that CIH Bank's customers will be able to add their Mastercard credit cards and bank cards to the Wallet app by tapping the plus button in the top-right corner. Apple has yet to update its regional website to officially confirm the launch.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Virtual pet website Neopets, which was popular in the 2000s but declined in recent years, is planning a comeback with $4 million in funding and a promise to bring back 50 classic games on July 25th. The BBC reports: Launched in 1999 by British developers, the site let users care for cartoon pets, chat and play games. But after Viacom bought it, for $160 million in 2005, the site failed to keep up with the times and many elements stopped working. At its peak, in the mid-2000s, Neopets had 25 million users, rivaling the popularity of Tamagotchis and other virtual pets. But by 2017, that had collapsed to just 100,000 daily users, according to then chief executive David Lord. But will the promise of new funding and functionality tempt people to return to their neglected pets? [...] Neopets said a management buyout deal meant the website was now an independent business without a large corporate owner. "Free from the corporate baggage that existed in the past, the newly united [Neopets Team] has now been entrusted with the decision-making and overall brand strategy of Neopets, enabling them to work solely on the betterment of the entire Neopets game and community," it said in a blog post. "The Neopets Team is, for the first time in over a decade, equipped to make meaningful changes in pursuit of a Neopian renaissance." It plans to begin the "new era" with a refreshed homepage, on Thursday, 20 July. Five days later, it will bring back 50 of the website's classic games amid plans to fix "many of the most beloved games" in the future.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The Biden administration has launched its long-awaited Internet of Things (IoT) cybersecurity labeling program that aims to protect Americans against the myriad of security risks associated with internet-connected devices. The program, officially named the "U.S. Cyber Trust Mark," aims to help Americans ensure they are buying internet-connected devices that include strong cybersecurity protections against cyberattacks. The Internet of Things, a term encompassing everything from fitness trackers and routers to baby monitors and smart refrigerators, has long been considered a weak cybersecurity link. Many devices ship with easy-to-guess default passwords and offer a lack of security regular updates, putting consumers at risk of being hacked. The Biden administration says its voluntary Energy Star-influenced labeling system will "raise the bar" for IoT security by enabling Americans to make informed decisions about the security credentials of the internet-connected devices they buy. The U.S. Cyber Trust Mark will take the form of a distinct shield logo, which will appear on products that meet established cybersecurity criteria. This criterion, established by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), will require, for example, that devices require unique and strong default passwords, protect both stored and transmitted data, offer regular security updates, and ship with incident detection capabilities. The full list of standards is not yet finalized. The White House said that NIST will immediately start work on defining cybersecurity standards for "higher-risk" consumer-grade routers, devices that attackers frequently target to steal passwords and create botnets that can be used to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. This work will be completed by the end of 2023, with the aim that the initiative will cover these devices when it launches in 2024. In a call with reporters, the White House confirmed that the Cyber Trust Mark will also include a QR code that will link to a national registry of certified devices and provide up-to-date security information, such as software updating policies, data encryption standards and vulnerability remediation. Amazon and Best Buy are some of the first major U.S. retailers to have signed up for the initiative. Others include Cisco, Google, LG, Qualcomm and Samsung. The U.S. Department of Energy also said it is working with industry partners to develop cybersecurity labeling requirements for smart meters and power inverters.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The European Union is lobbying Asian countries to follow its lead on artificial intelligence in adopting new rules for tech firms that include disclosure of copyrighted and AI-generated content, according to senior officials from the EU and Asia. From a report: The EU and its member states have dispatched officials for talks on governing the use of AI with at least 10 Asian countries including India, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and the Philippines, they said. The bloc aims for its proposed AI Act to become a global benchmark on the booming technology the way its data protection laws have helped shape global privacy standards. However, the effort to convince Asian governments of the need for stringent new rules is being met with a lukewarm reception, seven people close to the discussions told Reuters. Many countries favour a "wait and see" approach or are leaning towards a more flexible regulatory regime. Singapore, one of Asia's leading tech centres, prefers to see how the technology evolves before adapting local regulations, an official for the city-state told Reuters. Officials from Singapore and the Philippines expressed concern that moving overly hasty regulation might stifle AI innovation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has expressed concern about generative AI's impact on financial markets. From a report: In a speech given to the National Press Club on Monday, SEC Chair Gary Gensler said recent advances in generative AI increase the possibility of institutions relying on the same subset of information to make decisions. Gensler said the large demand for data and computing power could mean only a few tech platforms may dominate the field, narrowing the field of AI models companies can use. [...] He said: "AI may heighten financial fragility as it could promote herding with individual actors making similar decisions because they are getting the same signal from a base model or data aggregator," Gensler said. He added that the rise of generative AI and other deep-learning models "could exacerbate the inherent network interconnectedness of the global financial system."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Logitech has acquired Loupedeck -- the company behind the self-titled editing console beloved by streamers and creative professionals -- for an undisclosed sum, according to a press release published on Tuesday. From a report: It's one of many recent steps that Logitech has taken to gain some ground in the streaming market against competing companies like Elgato, having similarly acquired Mevo -- a camera hardware and software company specializing in livestreaming -- in 2021. According to the press release, the partnership between Logitech and Loupedeck is designed to provide "a more seamless experience for creators," which could potentially provide Loupedeck hardware with more specialized presets out of the box and better integration with Streamlabs -- the streaming platform acquired by Logitech back in 2019.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An experimental drug can slow progression of Alzheimer's disease in those who start taking it when the disease is still in its early stages. Nature: The drug, a monoclonal antibody called donanemab, does not improve symptoms. But among people who started taking it at the earliest stages of Alzheimer's, 47% had no disease progression on some measures after one year, compared with 29% who took a placebo. The drug does not provide as much benefit to people at later stages or those with a common genetic variation that raises the risk of the disease. The results are "very encouraging," says neurologist Reisa Sperling at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, particularly because they are similar to those of a similar drug called lecanemab. "It makes me feel we are on the right track." Donanemab's manufacturer Eli Lilly, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, presented the results of the 1,736-person trial today at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference (AAIC) in Amsterdam, and published them1 in JAMA. The company released partial results in May, but researchers still had questions about the drug's safety and efficacy in certain groups.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The four astronauts assigned to soar beyond the far side of the Moon on NASA's Artemis II mission settled into their seats inside a drab classroom last month at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. It was one in a series of noteworthy moments for the four-person crew since NASA revealed the names of the astronauts who will be the first people to fly around the Moon since 1972. There was the fanfare of the crew's unveiling to the public in April and an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. There will, of course, be great anticipation as the astronauts close in on their launch date, currently projected for late 2024 or 2025. But many of the crew's days over the next 18 months will be spent in classrooms, on airplanes, or in simulators, with instructors dispensing knowledge they deem crucial for the success of the Artemis II mission. In the simulator, the training team will throw malfunctions and anomalies at the astronauts to test their ability to resolve a failure that -- if it happened in space -- could cut the mission short or, in a worst-case scenario, kill them. "In order to do those things, what knowledge do we have to impart to them? What skills do we have to teach them?" said Jacki Mahaffey, NASA's leading training officer for the Artemis II mission. "Overall, our goal is we've got a little bit in the classroom, but the more that we can get the crew in front of the displays in the vehicle mockups and really kind of immersed in that environment, the sooner, the better. Commander Reid Wiseman and his crewmates -- pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen -- were named to the Artemis II crew on April 3. Much of their time over the next two-and-a-half months was devoted to making a public relations tour, giving interviews, going to NASA centers around the country, visiting Capitol Hill, and meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Mahaffey said they also got a pre-training pep talk from Charlie Duke, who walked on the Moon on the Apollo 16 mission in April 1972. NASA hasn't trained a crew to fly to the Moon since Apollo 17 at the end of 1972, the last time astronauts walked on the lunar surface.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Qualcomm and Meta will enable the social networking company's new large language model, Llama 2, to run on Qualcomm chips on phones and PCs starting in 2024, the companies announced today. From a report: So far, LLMs have primarily run in large server farms, on Nvidia graphics processors, due to the technology's vast needs for computational power and data, boosting Nvidia stock, which is up more than 220% this year. But the AI boom has largely missed the companies that make leading edge processors for phones and PCs, like Qualcomm. Its stock is up about 10% so far in 2023, trailing the NASDAQ's gain of 36%. The announcement on Tuesday suggests that Qualcomm wants to position its processors as well-suited for A.I. but "on the edge," or on a device, instead of "in the cloud." If large language models can run on phones instead of in large data centers, it could push down the significant cost of running A.I. models, and could lead to better and faster voice assistants and other apps.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Plexamp, the music player originally incubated by the Labs division of media company Plex, is now free, the company announced today. From a report: The project was first launched in 2017 as Plex's own spin on the classic Winamp media player app, offering visualizations to accompany your tunes, tools for programming mixes, and more recently, a ChatGPT-powered "Sonic Sage" feature that builds unique playlists from users' music libraries. However, after its expansion from desktop to mobile, Plexamp was only available to subscribers. Now, Plex says the Plexamp app will become free, allowing users to play tracks from their own library or the TIDAL music streaming service with high-quality audio and support for lossless audio. The app also includes gapless playback, loudness leveling, and smooth transitions between tracks, among other things. In addition to Library Radio, a feature used to rediscover your music, users can create playlists with Plexamp to match their current mood: like "brooding, cathartic, confident, intense, playful, poignant, swaggering, and wistful," the company says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta Platforms is making its artificial intelligence large language model, Llama 2, available for commercial use through partnerships with major cloud providers including Microsoft. Bloomberg: Meta isn't charging for access or usage of the model it developed, the company said. Instead, by opening up the technology to other companies, Meta says it will benefit from improvements that can be made when more developers use, stress test and identify problems with it. Making the large language model, or LLM, more widely accessible, also establishes Meta alongside other tech giants as having a key contribution to the AI arms race. Meta is spending record amounts on AI infrastructure, and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has said incorporating AI improvements into all the company's products and algorithms is a priority. Meta took on the cost of training the models. Cloud providers including Microsoft, Amazon and Hugging Face are hosting the tools and providing the computing power to run them. The commercial rollout of Llama 2 is the first project to debut out of the company's generative AI group, a new team assembled in February. To prepare the new model for release, Meta employees and third-parties ran safety tests called "red-teaming exercises." It's a separate model from the one Meta uses for its own products.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At its annual Inspire conference, Microsoft announced a number of new AI features headed to Azure, perhaps the most notable of which is Vector Search. From a report: Available in preview through Azure Cognitive search, Vector Search uses machine learning to capture the meaning and context of unstructured data, including images and text, to make search faster. Vectorization, an increasingly popular technique in search, involves converting words or images into vectors, or series of numbers, that encode their meaning -- allowing them to be processed mathematically. Vectors enable machines to structure and make sense of data, enabling them to understand, for example, that words close together in "vector space" -- like "king" and "queen" -- are related and quickly surface them from a database of millions of words. [...] Rounding out the AI unveilings at Inspire, Microsoft announced the public preview of Real-time Diarization, an AI-driven speech service that can identify which of several people are speaking in real time. The company also announced the general availability of Custom Neural Voice, which taps AI to closely reproduce an actor's voice or create an original synthetic voice. Previously, Custom Neural Voice was in limited access, meaning that customers had to apply and be approved by Microsoft in order to use it.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At the Microsoft Inspire partner event today, the Windows maker announced pricing for its AI-infused Copilot for Microsoft 365. From a report: The suite of contextual artificial intelligence tools, the fruit of the company's OpenAI partnership, will cost $30 per user for business accounts each month. In addition, the company is launching Bing Chat Enterprise, a privacy-focused version of the AI chatbot with greater security and peace of mind for handling sensitive business data. Revealed in March, Microsoft 365 Copilot is the company's vision of the future of work. The GPT-4-powered suite of tools lets you generate Office content using natural-language text prompts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Spain's antitrust watchdog imposed fines worth a total 194.1 million euros ($218.03 million) on Amazon and Apple for colluding to limit the online sale of devices from Apple and competitors in Spain. From a report: The two contracts the companies signed on Oct. 31, 2018 granting Amazon the status of authorized Apple dealer included anti-competitive clauses that affected the online market for electronic devices in Spain, CNMC, as the watchdog is known, said in a statement. "The two companies restricted without justification the number of sellers of Apple products on the Amazon website in Spain," it said. More than 90% of the existing retailers who were using Amazon's market place to sell Apple devices were blocked as a result, CNMC added. Amazon also reduced the capacity of retailers in the European Union based outside Spain to access Spanish customers, the regulator said. It also restricted the advertising Apple's competitors were allowed to place on its website when users searched for Apple products, CNMC said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

VanMoof -- the independent e-bike maker that once bragged about being the "most funded e-bike company in the world" -- has been declared bankrupt in the Netherlands. The company had entered into a so-called "suspension of payment" proceeding with court-assigned administrators just last week. From a report: According to a statement released by VanMoof, the court of Amsterdam withdrew the suspension of payment proceeding of the Dutch legal entities VanMoof Global Holding BV, VanMoof BV and VanMoof Global Support BV, and declared each entity bankrupt. VanMoof legal entities outside the Netherlands are not in insolvency proceedings. Two administrators have been appointed as trustees and are continuing to assess the situation at VanMoof and the possibility of a restart. That includes exploring an asset sale to a third party so that VanMoof could continue operations. So basically, a company could buy up VanMoof's operations and assets without having to take responsibility for the company's outstanding debt. The bankruptcy decision came quickly, despite the court having previously issued a two month cooling off period that protected VanMoof from creditors. It's understood that this can happen in cases where administrators can easily see that a company has exhausted all available cash and any options for financing and sale.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Tesla has officially launched its new 'Charge on Solar' feature to let its electric car owners charge their vehicles with sunshine. Tesla describes the feature: "With Charge on Solar, your Tesla vehicle can charge using only excess solar energy produced by your Tesla solar system. Using excess energy to charge your electric vehicle maximizes the value of your home's solar system. Use the Tesla app to set Charge on Solar limits and have your vehicle charge using extra solar energy." If you have all the required hardware and software, you can go to your Tesla app, and under "Charge on Solar," you will be able to set your charge limit using excess solar energy. Tesla writes about the charge limit: "Your vehicle will charge from solar and the grid when your current charge level is below the left sun slider. After your vehicle's charge level passes the sun slider, your vehicle automatically switches to only charge on excess solar up to your charge limit. Solar power and home loads are variables so if you ever want to charge faster, you can simply increase the lower charge limit to a desired range." There's also a scheduling feature that stops charging with solar after a specific time if you know that your energy consumption will increase at a specific time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to a local report, the FBI used a Nintendo Switch to locate an abducted 15-year-old girl, who had been missing for 11 days back in August 2022. Kotaku reports: When the girl went missing on August 3, folks in Virginia put up fliers to locate her. Keitra Coleman, a volunteer with the local nonprofit Hear Their Voices (which helps find missing and exploited children, domestic violence victims, and people experiencing homelessness), told ABC15 they were on the case. [...] Unfortunately, no one was able to pinpoint her location -- until the girl booted up her Nintendo Switch to watch YouTube videos and download a game. A friend saw that she was online and informed the authorities. With Nintendo's cooperation, the FBI culled the Switch's IP address, uncovered her location, and moved in to arrest Roberts. Retired Arizona DPS Director Frank Milstead, who was not involved with the case, told ABC15 that police agencies often use digital device tracking info to apprehend suspected criminals and find missing people. "Thanks to the local police department's quick response and FBI Norfolk's ingenuity, we were able to locate the missing victim through her gaming account and reunite her with her family," an FBI representative said in a statement to Kotaku. "As the world evolves, so does the FBI and how we solve cases. This is just one example of that. And while criminals might think crossing state lines will help them get away, this case also serves as a reminder that because of the FBI's wide reach and partnership with local law enforcement -- these predators will be caught, and they will pay the consequences."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dale Vince, the green energy tycoon and founder of Ecotricity, is planning to launch Britain's first electric airline called Ecojet. The Guardian reports: Ecojet, styled as a "flag carrier for green Britain," will launch early next year with a 19-seater plane traveling on a route between Edinburgh and Southampton. The planes will run initially on kerosene-based fuel for the first year, before being retrofitted with engines that convert green hydrogen into electricity. The airline will launch with several green-striped 19-seater planes capable of traveling for 300 miles. Vince hopes to expand the number of routes out to cover all of Britain's big cities. Staff will wear environmentally friendly uniforms, and serve plant-based meals. A second phase, 18 months later, will result in 70-seater planes capable of flying to Europe being introduced. The company is in the process of applying for a license from the Civil Aviation Authority and securing takeoff and landing slots at airports. However, the process of launching an airline is regarded as slow, and Ecojet will not launch as an electric plane operator, starting by using kerosene-based fuel instead. [...] Vince said Ecojet would "price match" existing airlines on air fares and was intended to attract a mass market, beyond environment-conscious consumers. He said he would invest one million pounds initially but plans to raise further funds next year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A phone-recorded video posted to Reddit shows a wooden desk strewn with various office supplies. On a monitor on the desk, a video begins to play: an Amazon delivery driver, being recorded by a driver-facing camera in their van, leans out of their window to talk to a customer. Though the video is cute, the setup is not: The camera's AI tracks their movements, surrounding them with a bright green box. Below them on the monitor's screen, a yellow line marks the length of the clip sent to the driver's dispatcher. Above them sits a timecode and a speed marker of "0 MPH." The driver opens their door, and moments later, a small French bulldog leaps into the van, tail wagging. The driver is delighted. The person behind the camera laughs a little. [...] The desk set-up looks consistent with that of an Amazon delivery service partner (DSP), the small-business contractors responsible for Amazon's door-to-door deliveries. The DSPs usually operate out of Amazon delivery warehouses, where they are given a desk like the one in the video, in a small area of the warehouse, out of which they select routes, dispatch drivers, and monitor their actions on the road with the help of the cameras. The video is one of a slew of in-van surveillance videos recently posted to Reddit, a phenomenon which hasn't frequently been seen on the site before. Over the past two weeks, many users in the Amazon delivery service partner drivers subreddit (r/AmazonDSPDrivers) have shared video footage from the cameras, either directly or by recording it on their phone from a monitor within the warehouse. It is clear that many of the videos are not being posted by the subject of the video themselves, and highlights the fact that Amazon drivers, who already have incredibly difficult jobs, are being monitored at all times. When Motherboard first wrote about the "Biometric Consent" form drivers had to sign that allows them to be monitored while on the job, Amazon insisted that the program was about safety only, and that workers shouldn't be worried about their privacy: "Don't believe the self-interested critics who claim these cameras are intended for anything other than safety," a spokesperson told us at the time. But this video, and a rash of others that have recently become public, shows that access to the camera feeds is being abused. [...] It's not clear why there has been a sudden spate of videos being posted publicly. One current Amazon delivery driver said that the drivers themselves did not have access to the videos -- only Amazon, Netradyne, and the relevant DSPs did.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Daniel Belquer, the "Chief Vibrational Officer" of Music: Not Impossible, developed a haptic suit with vibrating plates to enhance the live music experience for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals. The suit, showcased at an event called "Silent Disco: An Evening of Access Magic" at Lincoln Center, provided unique textures and sensations corresponding to the music, creating an inclusive environment for all attendees, regardless of hearing ability. NPR reports: His team started by strapping vibrating cell phone motors to bodies, but that didn't quite work. The vibrations were all the same. Eventually, they worked with engineers at the electronic components company Avnet to develop a light haptic suit with a total of 24 actuators, or vibrating plates. There's 20 of them studded on a vest that fits tightly around the body like a hiking backpack, plus an actuator that straps onto each wrist and ankle. When you wear the suit, it's surprising how much texture the sensations have. It can feel like raindrops on your shoulders, a tickle across the ribs, a thump against the lower back. It doesn't replicate the music -- it's not as simple as regular taps to the beat. It plays waves of sensation on your skin in a way that's complementary to the music. A recent event at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts called "Silent Disco: An Evening of Access Magic" showcased the suit's potential. Seventy-five of them were lined up on racks at a party meant to be accessible to all. Anyone could borrow one, whether they were hearing, hard of hearing or deaf, and the line to try them out snaked around the giant disco ball that had been hung over Lincoln Center's iconic fountain. The vibrations are mixed by a haptic DJ who controls the location, frequency and intensity of feeling across the suits, just as a music DJ mixes sounds in an artful way.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Despite being the fastest-growing online platform in history, Meta's Threads is struggling to retain regular customer engagement. According to SimilarWeb, the Twitter rival saw daily active users decline from 49 million on July 7th to 23.6 million on July 14th. Furthermore, usage in the United States declined from 21 minutes per day to just over six minutes in the same time period. Here's are the key takeaways from the report: - On its best day, July 7, Threads had more than 49 million daily active users on Android, worldwide, according to SimilarWeb estimates. That's about 45% of the usage of Twitter, which had more than 109 million active Android users that day.- By Friday, July 14, Threads was down to 23.6 million active users, or about 22% of Twitter's audience.- Usage in the US, which saw the most activity, peaked at about 21 minutes of engagement with the app on July 7. By July 14, that was down to a little over 6 minutes.- In the first two full days that Threads was generally available, Thursday and Friday, web traffic to twitter.com was down 5% compared with the same days of the previous week. Although traffic bounced back, for the most recent 7 days of data it's still down 11% year-over-year.- On the days of peak interest in Threads, Twitter's Daily active users on Android, worldwide, were virtually unchanged, but time spent was down 4.3% -- perhaps because some users were off trying Threads. Even with that drop, however, the average total time spent on Twitter was about 25 minutes. To a large extent, Threads solves the "empty party problem" that makes it tough to start a new online community by allowing Instagram users to instantly create a Threads account, bringing their existing contacts with them. Our daily usage numbers make Meta's claim of having achieved more than 100 million total account signups in a matter of days seem reasonable. However, Threads is missing many basic features and still needs to offer a compelling reason to switch from Twitter or start a new social media habit with Threads.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind, believes that for the UK to become an AI superpower, it needs to foster a culture of risk-taking and encourage large-scale investments. The BBC reports: Mustafa Suleyman added that he does not regret selling DeepMind to the US giant in 2014. "The US market is not only huge, but also more predisposed to taking big shots," he told the BBC. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak wants the UK to be a global hub for AI. He has pledged 1 billion pounds in funding over the next 10 years, and founded a UK taskforce with a remit of maximising the benefits of the tech while keeping it safe. This week BBC News is focusing on AI, how the technology affects our lives and what impacts it may have in the near future. Mr Suleyman said the UK had "every chance" of becoming an AI superpower and praised its research facilities, but added there were not the same opportunities for businesses to grow as there are in the US. "I think the culture shift that it needs to make is to be more encouraging of large scale investments, more encouraging of risk taking, and more tolerant and more celebratory of failures," he said. "The truth is, the US market is not only huge, but also more predisposed to big risk taking, taking big shots and having big funding rounds." Mr Suleyman has chosen to base his new company, Inflection AI, in Palo Alto, California, which is also home to the headquarters of Google, Facebook and Tesla. Mustafa Suleyman's views represent one of the challenges facing Ian Hogarth, a British entrepreneur and investor who has been appointed to lead the UK's AI taskforce. He took up the position five weeks ago. In his first interview since getting the job, Mr Hogarth told the BBC that while the UK was a good place for start-ups, it should also be easier for them to grow. "We've had some great [tech] companies and some of them got bought early, you know - Skype got bought by eBay, DeepMind got bought by Google. I think really our ecosystem needs to rise to the next level of the challenge."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: It's not a misprint. Telecom Italia SpA, Italy's beleaguered former telephone monopoly, once pitched a plan to buy Apple. About 25 years ago a group of executives from the carrier flew to California to meet Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, with an audacious plan to buy the tech company at a time it was struggling to make headway against rivals like International Business Machines Corp. Telecom Italia, on the other hand, was flying high, ranking as the world's sixth-largest telephone company by sales. Worth about $100 billion, it had minimal debt, held stakes in dozens of tech groups around the world and employed more that 120,000 people. Although Apple's rise back from the ashes is well documented, the fate of its would-be buyer is less well known outside Italy. Today, the carrier is burdened by more than 30 billion euros in gross debt, it controls just one company outside its domestic market -- Brazil's No. 3 phone operator -- and it employs only a third as many people as it did when its executives made their pitch to Jobs. Most tellingly, Telecom Italia now finds itself in the position of needing to sell off its landline network just to get its debt pile under control. The sale would be a transformational deal and, if successful, the first such divestiture for a European carrier. In a small twist of fate, the likely buyer is a US company, though it's not a tech giant like Apple but private equity powerhouse KKR & Co. With progress being made toward a disposal of the network, Telecom Italia's one truly valuable asset, now seems as good a time as any to ask, what happened to this once-promising company? [...] Regardless of the outcome of the network battle, the carrier won't look the same after the dust has settled. "Telecom Italia's future will now be mostly linked to its capacity of being more agile and luring new customers with more profitable services," said Laura Rovizzi, chief executive at Rome-based strategy and regulation consultant Open Gate Italia. And the carrier's service unit, basically all that would remain of Telecom Italia after a network selloff, would itself probably need to weigh a transformational deal with a tech company to guarantee its competitive footprint, she added. With so many uncertainties ahead, there's probably only one safe bet for Telecom Italia. The carrier won't be trying to buy Apple again.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Norway's data protection regulator has accused Meta of violating user privacy by tracking their activities, threatening to fine the company $100,000 per day if it fails to take corrective action. "It is so clear that this is illegal that we need to intervene now and immediately," said Tobias Judin, head of Norway's privacy commission, Datatilsynet. Engadget reports: The move follows a European court ruling banning Meta from harvesting user data like location, behavior and more for advertising. Datatilsynet has referred its actions to Europe's Data Protection Board, which could widen the fine across Europe. The aim is to put "additional pressure" on Meta, Judin said. (Norway is a member of the European single market, but not technically an EU member.) Meta told Reuters that it's reviewing Datatilsynet's decision and that the decision wouldn't immediately impact its services. "We continue to constructively engage with the Irish DPC, our lead regulator in the EU, regarding our compliance with its decision," a spokesperson said. "The debate around legal bases has been ongoing for some time and businesses continue to face a lack of regulatory certainty in this area."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is preparing to launch its first M3 Apple Silicon Macs in October, according to Mark Gurman in his latest Power On newsletter for Bloomberg. 9to5Mac reports: Following the usually new iPhone launch event in September, where we are expecting the iPhone 15 and Apple Watch Series 9 and new Apple Watch Ultra, Apple is reportedly lining up new Macs for an October debut. Likely models include a new M3 iMac, M3 13-inch MacBook Air, and M3 MacBook Pro. For the M3 chip, we are expecting similar core counts to the M2 but with enhanced performance and efficiency thanks to the move to a new 3-nanometer silicon fabrication process. It may seem weird for the first M3 Macs so soon after the M2 cycle wrapped up a" with products like the M2 Ultra Mac Studio and 15-inch MacBook Air only debuting last month a" but there has been much speculation that the latter parts of the M2 lineup were delayed due to supply chain issues. And while an M3 MacBook Air may be ready to go in October, M3 updates for products like MacBook Pro and Mac Studio are further out. Gurman does not specifically say Apple will hold an October event, or whether new Macs would arrive via press release. The decision on whether to hold a formal event has probably not yet been finalized, but you can imagine Apple would want to hold an event for a significant new Mac launch.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: JumpCloud, a cloud-based IT management service that lists Cars.com, GoFundMe, and Foursquare among its 5,000 paying customers, experienced a security breach carried out by hackers working for a nation-state, the company said last week. The attack began on June 22 as a spear-phishing campaign, the company revealed last Wednesday. As part of that incident, JumpCloud said, the "sophisticated nation-state sponsored threat actor" gained access to an unspecified part of the JumpCloud internal network. Although investigators at the time found no evidence any customers were affected, the company said it rotated account credentials, rebuilt its systems, and took other defensive measures. On July 5, investigators discovered the breach involved "unusual activity in the commands framework for a small set of customers." In response, the company's security team performed a forced-rotation of all admin API keys and notified affected customers. As investigators continued their analysis, they found that the breach also involved a "data injection into the commands framework," which the disclosure described as the "attack vector." The disclosure didn't explain the connection between the data injection and the access gained by the spear-phishing attack on June 22. Ars asked JumpCloud PR for details, and employees responded by sending the same disclosure post that omits such details. Investigators also found that the attack was extremely targeted and limited to specific customers, which the company didn't name. JumpCloud says on its website that it has a global user base of more than 200,000 organizations, with more than 5,000 paying customers. They include Cars.com, GoFundMe, Grab, ClassPass, Uplight, Beyond Finance, and Foursquare. JumpCloud has raised over $400 million from investors, including Sapphire Ventures, General Atlantic, Sands Capital, Atlassian, and CrowdStrike. The company has also published a list of IP addresses, domain names, and cryptographic hashes used by the attacker that other organizations can use to indicate if they were targeted by the same attackers. JumpCloud has yet to name the country of origin or other details about the threat group responsible.Read more of this story at Slashdot.