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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.

Longtime Slashdot reader Dotnaught writes: "Google's Chromium developers have begun work on an experimental web browser for Apple's iOS using the search giant's Blink engine," reports The Register. "That's unexpected because the current version of Chrome for iOS uses Apple's WebKit rendering engine under the hood. Apple requires every iOS browser to use WebKit and its iOS App Store Review Guidelines state, 'Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript.'" Google insists this is an experiment and isn't intended for release. But the stripped-down, Blink-based browser could be preparation for European competition rules that look like they will require Apple to stop requiring that other browser makers use its WebKit engine. "This is an experimental prototype that we are developing as part of an open source project with the goal to understand certain aspects of performance on iOS," said a Google spokesperson. "It will not be available to users and we'll continue to abide by Apple's policies."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Blobs of human brain tissue have been transplanted into the brains of rats in work that could pave the way for new treatments for devastating brain injuries. The Guardian reports: The groundbreaking study showed that the "human brain organoids" -- sesame seed-sized balls of neurons -- were able to integrate into the rat brain, linking up with their blood supplies and communicating with the rat neurons. The team behind the work suggest that eventually doctors might be able to grow blobs of brain tissue from a patient's own cells in the lab and use them to repair brain injuries caused by stroke or trauma. Chen and colleagues grew human brain organoids in a dish until they were about 1.5mm in diameter. The balls of tissue were then transplanted into the brains of adult rats that had sustained injuries to their visual cortex. Within three months, the grafted organoids had integrated with their host's brain, hooking up with the blood supply, expanding to several times the initial volume and sending out projections that linked up with the rat's neurons, according to the study published in Cell Stem Cell. The scientists did not assess whether the implants improved how well the rats were able to function, but tests showed that the human neurons fired off electrical signals when the rats were exposed to flashing lights.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: After decades of "demonization", psychiatrists will be able to prescribe MDMA and psilocybin in Australia from July this year. The Therapeutic Goods Administration made the surprise announcement on Friday afternoon. The drugs will only be allowed to be used in a very limited way, and remain otherwise prohibited, but the move was described as a "very welcome step away from what has been decades of demonization" by Dr David Caldicott, a clinical senior lecturer in emergency medicine at Australian National University. 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA) is commonly known as ecstasy, while psilocybin is a psychedelic commonly found in so-called magic mushrooms. Both drugs were used experimentally and therapeutically decades ago, before being criminalized. Specifically authorized psychiatrists will be able to prescribe MDMA for post-traumatic stress disorder, and psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression. Caldicott said it had become "abundantly clear" that a controlled supply of both MDMA and psilocybin "can have dramatic effects on conditions often considered refractory to contemporary treatment" and would particularly benefit returned service men and women from the Australian defense force. "The safe 're-medicalization' of certain historically illicit drugs is a very welcome step away from what has been decades of demonization," he said. "In addition to a clear and evolving therapeutic benefit, it also offers the chance to catch up on the decades of lost opportunity [of] delving into the inner workings of the human mind, abandoned for so long as part of an ill-conceived, ideological "war on drugs.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A California startup using rocks to soak up carbon dioxide from the air has teamed up with a Canadian company to mineralize the gas in concrete, a technological tie-up that is a first and they say could provide a model for fighting climate change globally. Reuters reports: Heirloom Carbon Technologies delivered about 30 kg (66 lb) of CO2 collected from the air around its San Francisco Bay Area headquarters to neighboring Central Concrete, a Vulcan Materials' (VMC.N) subsidiary that on Wednesday incorporated the gas into new concrete. That's equivalent to tailpipe emissions of driving about 75 miles (120 km) in a car. The joint effort was the first time that carbon dioxide absorbed from the atmosphere using such Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology had been secured in concrete, where the CO2 will stay put for centuries, several scientists said. Heirloom heats crushed limestone to release naturally absorbed CO2, then puts the CO2-starved rock on columns of huge trays, where they act like sponges, soaking up close to half their weight in the gas over three days. The rock is then heated to release the collected ambient carbon dioxide, and the cycle repeats. Canada's CarbonCure, the concrete technology company, mixes CO2 with concrete ingredients, turning it into a mineral that strengthens the concrete, cutting the need for cement -- the part of concrete with the biggest carbon footprint.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Password management company Dashlane has made its mobile app code available on GitHub for public perusal, a first step it says in a broader push to make its platform more transparent. TechCrunch reports: The Dashlane Android app code is available now alongside the iOS incarnation, though it also appears to include the codebase for its Apple Watch and Mac apps even though Dashlane hasn't specifically announced that. The company said that it eventually plans to make the code for its web extension available on GitHub too. Initially, Dashlane said that it was planning to make its codebase "fully open source," but in response to a handful of questions posed by TechCrunch, it appears that won't in fact be the case. At first, the code will be open for auditing purposes only, but in the future it may start accepting contributions too --" however, there is no suggestion that it will go all-in and allow the public to fork or otherwise re-use the code in their own applications. Dashlane has released the code under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 license, which technically means that users are allowed to copy, share and build upon the codebase so long as it's for non-commercial purposes. However, the company said that it has stripped out some key elements from its release, effectively hamstringing what third-party developers are able to do with the code. [...] "The main benefit of making this code public is that anyone can audit the code and understand how we build the Dashlane mobile application," the company wrote. "Customers and the curious can also explore the algorithms and logic behind password management software in general. In addition, business customers, or those who may be interested, can better meet compliance requirements by being able to review our code." On top of that, the company says that a benefit of releasing its code is to perhaps draw-in technical talent, who can inspect the code prior to an interview and perhaps share some ideas on how things could be improved. Moreover, so-called "white-hat hackers" will now be better equipped to earn bug bounties. "Transparency and trust are part of our company values, and we strive to reflect those values in everything we do," Dashlane continued. "We hope that being transparent about our code base will increase the trust customers have in our product."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Searching Google for downloads of popular software has always come with risks, but over the past few months, it has been downright dangerous, according to researchers and a pseudorandom collection of queries. Ars Technica reports: "Threat researchers are used to seeing a moderate flow of malvertising via Google Ads," volunteers at Spamhaus wrote on Thursday. "However, over the past few days, researchers have witnessed a massive spike affecting numerous famous brands, with multiple malware being utilized. This is not "the norm.'" The surge is coming from numerous malware families, including AuroraStealer, IcedID, Meta Stealer, RedLine Stealer, Vidar, Formbook, and XLoader. In the past, these families typically relied on phishing and malicious spam that attached Microsoft Word documents with booby-trapped macros. Over the past month, Google Ads has become the go-to place for criminals to spread their malicious wares that are disguised as legitimate downloads by impersonating brands such as Adobe Reader, Gimp, Microsoft Teams, OBS, Slack, Tor, and Thunderbird. On the same day that Spamhaus published its report, researchers from security firm Sentinel One documented an advanced Google malvertising campaign pushing multiple malicious loaders implemented in .NET. Sentinel One has dubbed these loaders MalVirt. At the moment, the MalVirt loaders are being used to distribute malware most commonly known as XLoader, available for both Windows and macOS. XLoader is a successor to malware also known as Formbook. Threat actors use XLoader to steal contacts' data and other sensitive information from infected devices. The MalVirt loaders use obfuscated virtualization to evade end-point protection and analysis. To disguise real C2 traffic and evade network detections, MalVirt beacons to decoy command and control servers hosted at providers including Azure, Tucows, Choopa, and Namecheap. "Until Google devises new defenses, the decoy domains and other obfuscation techniques remain an effective way to conceal the true control servers used in the rampant MalVirt and other malvertising campaigns," concludes Ars. "It's clear at the moment that malvertisers have gained the upper hand over Google's considerable might."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke says that open source developers should be made exempt from the European Union's (EU) proposed new artificial intelligence (AI) regulations, saying that the opportunity is still there for Europe to lead on AI. "Open source is forming the foundation of AI in Europe," Dohmke said onstage at the EU Open Source Policy Summit in Brussels. "The U.S. and China don't have to win it all." The regulations in question come via The Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act), first proposed back in April 2021 to address the growing reach of AI into our every day lives. The rules would govern AI applications based on their perceived risks, and would effectively be the first AI-centric laws introduced by any major regulatory body. The European Parliament is set to vote on a draft version of the AI Act in the coming months, and depending on what discussions and debates follow, it could be adopted by the end of 2023. As many will know, open source and AI are intrinsically linked, given that collaboration and shared data are pivotal to developing AI systems. As well-meaning as the AI Act might be, critics argue that it could have significant unintended consequences for the open source community, which in turn could hamper the progress of AI. The crux of the problem is that the Act would likely create legal liability for general purpose AI systems (GPAI), and bestow more power and control to the big tech firms given that independent open source developers don't have the resources to contend with legal wrangles. [...] "The AI act is so crucial," Dohmke said onstage. "This policy could well set the precedent for how the world regulates AI. It is foundationally important. It is important for European technological leadership, and for the future of the European economy itself. It must be fair and balanced to the open source community." Dohmke said that the AI Act can bring "the benefits of AI according to the European values and fundamental rights," adding that lawmakers have a big part to play in achieving this. "This is why I believe that the open source developers should be exempt from the AI act," he said. "Because ultimately this comes down to people. The open source community is not a community of entities. It's a community of people and the compliance burden should fall on entities, it should fall on companies that are shipping products. OSS developers are often just volunteers, many of them are working two jobs. They are hobbyists and scientists, academics and doctors, professors and university students all alike, and they don't usually stand to profit from their contributions. They certainly don't have big budgets, or their own compliance department."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta's stock surged on Thursday after the company reported better-than-expected earnings, said it would buy back billions of dollars in its stock, and overcame a court challenge to its ambitions in the so-called metaverse. The New York Times reports: Shares of the tech giant, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, climbed more than 23 percent, its biggest daily gain in nearly 10 years. And it was a huge move for a company its size, adding nearly $100 billion in market value in a single day, or about as much as Citigroup's entire market capitalization. After ending last year with a loss of more than 60 percent, Meta's stock is up more than 50 percent this year, as the mood among tech investors has brightened. The Nasdaq Composite, an index that includes many tech companies, including Meta, has risen nearly 20 percent this year. The report notes that plenty of challenges remain for the company. "Meta faces setbacks in digital advertising as clients rein in spending because of higher interest rates and inflation," reports The New York Times. "The company is also fighting to retain users drawn to newer apps like TikTok, the short-form video app that Mr. Zuckerberg considers one of his most formidable rivals. The billions that Meta is spending pursuing its founder's vision of the metaverse may not pay off." In November, Meta laid off more than 11,000 employees in what was the most significant job cuts since its founding in 2004.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A judge in Colombia used ChatGPT to make a court ruling, in what is apparently the first time a legal decision has been made with the help of an AI text generator -- or at least, the first time we know about it. Judge Juan Manuel Padilla Garcia, who presides over the First Circuit Court in the city of Cartagena, said he used the AI tool to pose legal questions about the case and included its responses in his decision, according to a court document (PDF) dated January 30, 2023. "The arguments for this decision will be determined in line with the use of artificial intelligence (AI)," Garcia wrote in the decision, which was translated from Spanish. "Accordingly, we entered parts of the legal questions posed in these proceedings." "The purpose of including these AI-produced texts is in no way to replace the judge's decision," he added. "What we are really looking for is to optimize the time spent drafting judgments after corroborating the information provided by AI." The case involved a dispute with a health insurance company over whether an autistic child should receive coverage for medical treatment. According to the court document, the legal questions entered into the AI tool included "Is an autistic minor exonerated from paying fees for their therapies?" and "Has the jurisprudence of the constitutional court made favorable decisions in similar cases?" Garcia included the chatbot's full responses in the decision, apparently marking the first time a judge has admitted to doing so. The judge also included his own insights into applicable legal precedents, and said the AI was used to "extend the arguments of the adopted decision." After detailing the exchanges with the AI, the judge then adopts its responses and his own legal arguments as grounds for its decision.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A group of YouTube contractors in Texas are currently on strike today "in protest of rules requiring such workers -- even those who have always worked remotely -- to report to the office," reports Axios. From the report: All of the 43-person team of contractors for YouTube Music voted to strike, following an edict that they report to an office in Austin starting on Monday. The workers, who are technically employed by Cognizant, were notified of the Feb. 6 return to office date in November. That came after workers had filed the prior month for union recognition, leading some to conclude the move was being made in retaliation. The workers are also seeking to have Google and Cognizant recognized as joint employers. The vast majority of the contractors were hired during the pandemic -- and have always worked remotely. Nearly a quarter of them live somewhere other than Austin. Workers say their pay, which starts at around $19 per hour, isn't enough to cover the costs of relocating to -- and living in -- Austin. Some also care for a child, spouse or parent, which complicates a shift to the office. Cognizant says that the workers' contracts have always stated that the jobs were in-office jobs and that it communicated to workers since Dec. 2021 that it would provide 90 days notice when employees were expected back in the office. "Cognizant respects the right of our associates to disagree with our policies, and to protest them lawfully," the company said in a statement to Axios. "However, it is disappointing that some of our associates have chosen to strike over a return to office policy that has been communicated to them repeatedly since December 2021." "My goal is to keep my friends employed," said Katie Marschher, who has worked at Cognizant on YouTube Music for nearly two years. Like many on her team, Marschher said she works more than one job to make ends meet. Although she lives in Austin, one of her other jobs is helping bands on tour, which requires her to travel. That works well remotely but she would have to scale back if required to be in office. "Our hope is we can actually have a dialogue where we are listened to," said Neil Gossell, who joined the YouTube/Cognizant team last year. He took the job specifically because it allowed him to work from home close to his spouse, who has post-traumatic stress disorder. The YouTube Music STRIKE press conference has been shared on Facebook and Twitter.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: San Francisco-based AI chatbot maker, Replika -- which operates a freemium 'virtual friendship' service based on customizable digital avatars whose "personalized" responses are powered by artificial intelligence (and designed, per its pitch, to make human users feel better) -- has been ordered by Italy's privacy watchdog to stop processing local users' data. The Garante said it's concerned Replika's chatbot technology poses risks to minors -- and also that the company lacks a proper legal basis for processing children's data under the EU's data protection rules. Additionally, the regulator is worried about the risk the AI chatbots could pose to emotionally vulnerable people. It's also accusing Luka, the developer behind the Replika app, of failing to fulfil regional legal requirements to clearly convey how it's using people's data. The order to stop processing Italians' data is effective immediately. In a press release announcing its intervention, the watchdog said: "The AI-powered chatbot, which generates a 'virtual friend' using text and video interfaces, will not be able to process [the] personal data of Italian users for the time being. A provisional limitation on data processing was imposed by the Italian Garante on the U.S.-based company that has developed and operates the app; the limitation will take effect immediately."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pakistan has blocked Wikipedia services in the South Asian nation after the platform failed to remove "sacrilegious" content. From a report: The action was taken because some of the content is still available on Wikipedia after the expiry of a 48-hour deadline, Malahat Obaid, spokesperson for Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, said by phone.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If your main problem with the Microsoft Store is that you get too many relevant results when you search for apps, good news: Microsoft is officially launching Microsoft Store Ads, a way for developers to pay to get their apps in front of your eyes when you go to the store to look for something else. From a report: Microsoft's landing page for the feature says the apps will appear during searches and in the Apps and Gaming tabs within the app. Developers will be able to track whether and where users see the ads and whether they're downloading and opening the apps once they see the ads. Microsoft also provided an update on the health of the Microsoft Store, pointing to 2022 as "a record year," with more than 900 million unique users worldwide and "a 122% year-over-year increase in developer submissions of new apps and games." The company launched a "pilot program" of the Microsoft Store Ads back in September of 2022, and the look of the ads doesn't appear to have changed much since then. Ads will be served to Microsoft Store users on Windows 10 and Windows 11 and are only available to developers who have already published their apps to the store.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A former employee of network technology provider Ubiquiti pleaded guilty to multiple felony charges after posing as an anonymous hacker in an attempt to extort almost $2 million worth of cryptocurrency while employed at the company. From a report: Nickolas Sharp, 37, worked as a senior developer for Ubiquiti between 2018 and 2021 and took advantage of his authorized access to Ubiquiti's network to steal gigabytes worth of files from the company during an orchestrated security breach in December 2020. Prosecutors said that Sharp used the Surfshark VPN service to hide his home IP address and intentionally damaged Ubiquiti's computer systems during the attack in an attempt to conceal his unauthorized activity. Sharp later posed as an anonymous hacker who claimed to be behind the incident while working on an internal team that was investigating the security breach. While concealing his identity, Sharp attempted to extort Ubiquiti, sending a ransom note to the company demanding 50 Bitcoin (worth around $1.9 million at that time) in exchange for returning the stolen data and disclosing the security vulnerabilities used to acquire it. When Ubiquiti refused the ransom demands, Sharp leaked some of the stolen data to the public. The FBI was prompted to investigate Sharp's home around March 24th, 2021, after it was discovered that a temporary internet outage had exposed Sharp's IP address during the security breach. Further reading:Ubiquiti Files Case Against Security Blogger Krebs Over 'False Accusations';Former Ubiquiti Dev Charged For Trying To Extort His Employer.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As global demand for Covid-19 vaccines dries up, the program responsible for vaccinating the world's poor has been urgently negotiating to try to get out of its deals with pharmaceutical companies for shots it no longer needs. From a report: Drug companies have so far declined to refund $1.4 billion in advance payments for now-canceled doses, according to confidential documents obtained by The New York Times. Gavi, the international immunization organization that bought the shots on behalf of the global Covid vaccination program, Covax, has said little publicly about the costs of canceling the orders. But Gavi financial documents show the organization has been trying to stanch the financial damage. If it cannot strike a more favorable agreement with another company, Johnson & Johnson, it could have to pay still more. Gavi is a Geneva-based nongovernmental organization that uses funds from donors including the U.S. government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to provide childhood immunizations to lower-income nations. Early in the pandemic, it was charged with buying Covid vaccinations for the developing world -- armed with one of the largest-ever mobilizations of humanitarian funding -- and began negotiations with the vaccine makers. Those negotiations went badly at the outset. The companies initially shut the organization out of the market, prioritizing high-income countries that were able to pay more to lock up the first doses. [...] The vaccine makers have brought in more than $13 billion from the shots that have been distributed through Covax. Under the contracts, the companies are not obligated to return the prepayments Gavi gave them to reserve vaccines that were ultimately canceled.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chess experts make more mistakes when air pollution is high, a study has found. From a report: Experts used computer models to analyse the quality of games played and found that with a modest increase in fine particulate matter, the probability that chess players would make an error increased by 2.1 percentage points, and the magnitude of those errors increased by 10.8%. The paper, published in the journal Management Science, studied the performance of 121 chess players in three seven-round tournaments in Germany in 2017, 2018, and 2019, comprising more than 30,000 chess moves. The researchers compared the actual moves the players made against the optimal moves determined by the powerful chess engine Stockfish. In the tournament venues, the researchers attached three web-connected air quality sensors to measure carbon dioxide, PM2.5 concentrations, and temperature. Each tournament lasted eight weeks, meaning players faced a variety of air conditions. Fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, refers to tiny particles 2.5 microns or less in diameter, which are often expelled by burning matter such as that from car engines, coal plants, forest fires, and wood burners. Further reading: Study Reveals Links Between UK Air Pollution and Mental Ill-Health.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Next week Google is hosting what can only be described as an "emergency" event. From a report: According to an invite sent to The Verge, the event will revolve around "using the power of AI to reimagine how people search for, explore and interact with information, making it more natural and intuitive than ever before to find what you need" -- in other words, Google's going to fire up its photocopier and stick OpenAI's ChatGPT onto the platen. The 40 minute event will, of course, be live on YouTube on February 8. Google's parent company, Alphabet, had its earnings call yesterday, and Google/Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai promised that "very soon people will be able to interact directly with our newest, most powerful language models as a companion to Search in experimental and innovative ways." Earlier this year the company declared a "code red" over the meteoric rise of ChatGPT and even dragged co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin out of retirement to help.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New Netflix rules that would have enforced a limitation on users' sharing passwords are reportedly a mistake and don't apply in the US -- for now. From a report: Netflix has long been planning to cut down on password sharing, or letting friends share one paid account. The company appeared to go further, however, with the inclusion in its help pages of a new set of rules. Broadly, anyone at a subscriber's physical address could continue using the service. But the paying subscriber would have to confirm every 31 days that a user away from their residence -- such as at college -- was part of the household. According to The Streamable, Netflix says it was all a mistake -- for the United States. "For a brief time yesterday, a help center article containing information that is only applicable to Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru, went live in other countries," a Netflix spokesperson told the publication. "We have since updated it."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Russian antiwar activists placed their faith in Telegram, a supposedly secure messaging app. How does Putin's regime seem to know their every move? From a report: Matsapulina's case [anecdote in the story] is hardly an isolated one, though it is especially unsettling. Over the past year, numerous dissidents across Russia have found their Telegram accounts seemingly monitored or compromised. Hundreds have had their Telegram activity wielded against them in criminal cases. Perhaps most disturbingly, some activists have found their "secret chats" -- Telegram's purportedly ironclad, end-to-end encrypted feature -- behaving strangely, in ways that suggest an unwelcome third party might be eavesdropping. These cases have set off a swirl of conspiracy theories, paranoia, and speculation among dissidents, whose trust in Telegram has plummeted. In many cases, it's impossible to tell what's really happening to people's accounts -- whether spyware or Kremlin informants have been used to break in, through no particular fault of the company; whether Telegram really is cooperating with Moscow; or whether it's such an inherently unsafe platform that the latter is merely what appears to be going on.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Trade Commission is preparing a potential antitrust lawsuit against Amazon that in the coming months could challenge an array of the tech giant's business practices as anticompetitive, WSJ reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: The timing of any case remains in flux, some of the people said. The commission also could opt not to proceed, and doesn't always bring cases even when it is making preparations to do so. Amazon officials haven't had individual late-stage meetings with each of the FTC commissioners to make their arguments against a legal challenge, those people said. The commission in recent years has been examining Amazon practices including whether it favors its own products over competitors' on its platforms and how it treats outside sellers on Amazon.com, according to some of the people familiar with the matter. The FTC also has been scrutinizing the company's Amazon Prime subscription service's bundling practices, some of the people said. Exactly which aspects of the business the FTC would target in a potential Amazon lawsuit couldn't be learned. Amazon and the FTC declined to comment.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has invested about $300mn in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, making it the latest tech giant to throw its money and computing power behind a new generation of companies trying to claim a place in the booming field of "generative AI." From the report: The terms of the deal, through which Google will take a stake of around 10 per cent, requires Anthropic to use the money to buy computing resources from the search company's cloud computing division, according to three people familiar with the arrangement. Google's move highlights the influence that a small number of Big Tech companies have assumed over other companies working on AI, which need access to cloud computing platforms to handle the giant AI models developed by groups such as Anthropic. The search company's investment also echoes the $1bn cash-for-computing investment that Microsoft made in OpenAI three years ago.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ryan Grewell, who runs a small wireless Internet service provider in Ohio, last month received an email that confirmed some of his worst suspicions about cable companies. From a report: Grewell, founder and general manager of Smart Way Communications, had heard from some of his customers that the Federal Communications Commission's new broadband map falsely claimed fiber Internet service was available at their homes from another company called Jefferson County Cable. Those customer reports spurred Grewell to submit a number of challenges to the FCC in an attempt to correct errors in Smart Way's service area. One of Grewell's challenges elicited a response from Jefferson County Cable executive Bob Loveridge, who apparently thought Grewell was a resident at the challenged address rather than a competitor. "You challenged that we do not have service at your residence and indeed we don't today," Loveridge wrote in a January 9 email that Grewell shared with Ars. "With our huge investment in upgrading our service to provide xgpon we reported to the BDC [Broadband Data Collection] that we have service at your residence so that they would not allocate addition [sic] broadband expansion money over [the] top of our private investment in our plant." The email is reminiscent of our November 2022 article about a cable company accidentally telling a rival about its plan to block government grants to competitors.Speaking to Ars in a phone interview, Grewell said, "This cable company happened to just say the quiet part out loud." He called it "a blatant attempt at blocking anyone else from getting funding in an area they intend to serve." It's not clear when Jefferson County Cable plans to serve the area. Program rules do not allow ISPs to claim future coverage in their map submissions. Jefferson County Cable ultimately admitted to the FCC that it filed incorrect data and was required to submit a correction. The challenge that the ISP conceded was for an address on State Route 43 in Bergholz, Ohio. The town is not one of the coverage areas listed on Jefferson County Cable's website.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A billionaire cryptocurrency evangelist may have gotten a tougher reception than he expected when proposing widespread adoption of Bitcoin to a bankrupt country. From a report: Silicon Valley investor Tim Draper was in Sri Lanka to shoot an episode of his "Meet the Drapers" TV show with local entrepreneurs, and met President Ranil Wickremesinghe on Tuesday to proselytize the adoption of cryptocurrency. He journeyed to the central bank the next day with the same pitch -- but embattled Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe, who's still working to calm financial mayhem, was having none of it. "I come to the Central Bank with decentralized currency," proclaimed Draper, dressed in a Bitcoin tie for the meeting that took place in a teak-paneled room overlooking the sea. "We don't accept," Weerasinghe said, taking another sip of fizzy ginger beer. During the meeting, Draper several times referred to what he described as Sri Lanka's reputation for corruption and argued cryptocurrency was one solution. Colombo could avert graft by keeping perfect records after adopting Bitcoin, he argued. "Have you seen Sri Lanka in the news? It's known as the corruption capital," Draper said. "A country known for corruption will be able to keep perfect records with the adoption of Bitcoin." Sri Lanka's topmost monetary official countered: "Adoption of 100% Bitcoin won't be a Sri Lanka reality ever." [...] He kept trying with Weerasinghe. "Does the administration have the guts to do it?" he asked. "What's the advantage of having your own currency?" Weerasinghe said other technologies could efficiently distribute financial services to foster inclusion and disburse electronic welfare payments, and noted that a country without its own currency couldn't have monetary-policy independence. "We don't want to make the crisis worse by introducing Bitcoin," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: BMW i4 owner was rightfully puzzled when their car flashed a strange alert on the screen, saying its parking spot was "too steep" to perform an over-the-air software upgrade. How does that happen? And why is it a problem in the first place? As Clare Eliza found out, it simply isn't possible to remotely update any of the i4's software if the car isn't parked on flat ground. And instead of allowing the operator to override this, it will wait until you physically move it somewhere more level to continue. As it turns out, BMW doesn't have one singular reason why the vehicle can't perform this task on an incline. Rather, the limitation is there as a safety blanket. "The vehicle has all sorts of sensors (pitch, yaw, lateral and longitudinal acceleration and deceleration, etc.) that allow it to understand its orientation, so it knows when it's on an incline," a BMW spokesperson told The Drive. "It's likely a catchall, every-worst-case-no-matter-how-unlikely scenario safety precaution to try to prevent any chance of the vehicle moving should the programming be interrupted or go wrong." Essentially, it's there just in case something unexpected happens; it's better to plan for the worst, after all.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Red Hat is perhaps best known as a Linux operating system vendor, but it is the company's OpenShift platform that represents its fastest growing segment. Today, Red Hat announced the general availability of OpenShift 4.12, bringing a series of new capabilities to the company's hybrid cloud application delivery platform. OpenShift is based on the open source Kubernetes container orchestration system, originally developed by Google, that has been run as the flagship project of the Linux Foundation's Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) since 2014. [...] With the new release, Red Hat is integrating new capabilities to help improve security and compliance for OpenShift, as well as new deployment options on ARM-based architectures. The OpenShift 4.12 release comes as Red Hat continues to expand its footprint, announcing partnerships with Oracle and SAP this week. The financial importance of OpenShift to Red Hat and its parent company IBM has also been revealed, with IBM reporting in its earnings that OpenShift is a $1 billion business. "Open-source solutions solve major business problems every day, and OpenShift is just another example of how Red Hat brings business and open source together for the benefit of all involved," Mike Barrett, VP of product management at Red Hat, told VentureBeat. "We're very proud of what we have accomplished thus far, but we're not resting at $1B." [...] OpenShift, like many applications developed in the last several decades, originally was built just for the x86 architecture that runs on CPUs from Intel and AMD. That situation is increasingly changing as OpenShift is gaining more support to run on the ARM processor with the OpenShift 4.12 update. Barrett noted that Red Hat OpenShift announced support for the AWS Graviton ARM architecture in 2022. He added that OpenShift 4.12 expands that offering to Microsoft Azure ARM instances. "We find customers with a significant core consumption rate for a singular computational deliverable are gravitating toward ARM first," Barrett said. Overall, Red Hat is looking to expand the footprint of where its technologies are able to run, which also new cloud providers. On Jan. 31, Red Hat announced that for the first time, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) would be available as a supported platform on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). While RHEL is now coming to OCI, OpenShift isn't -- at least not yet. "Right now, it's just RHEL available on OCI," Mike Evans, vice president, technical business development at Red Hat, told VentureBeat. "We're evaluating what other Red Hat technologies, including OpenShift, may come to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure but this will ultimately be driven by what our joint customers want."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Planting more trees could mean fewer people die from increasingly high summer temperatures in cities, a study suggests. The Guardian reports: Increasing the level of tree cover from the European average of 14.9% to 30% can lower the temperature in cities by 0.4C, which could reduce heat-related deaths by 39.5%, according to first-of-its-kind modeling of 93 European cities by an international team of researchers. [...] The researchers used mortality data to estimate the potential reduction in deaths from lower temperatures as a result of increased tree coverage. Using data from 2015 they estimated that out of the 6,700 premature deaths that year attributed to higher urban temperatures, 2,644 could have been prevented had tree cover been increased. The cities most likely to benefit from the increase in tree coverage are in south and eastern Europe, where summer temperatures are highest and tree coverage tends to be lower. In Cluj-Napoca in Romania -- which had the highest number of premature deaths due to heat in 2015, at 32 per 100,000 people -- tree coverage is just 7%. In Lisbon, Portugal it is as low as 3.6% and in Barcelona its 8.4%. That compares with 15.5% in London and 34% in Oslo. Study co-author Mark Nieuwenhuijsen, a researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, said the team picked 30% as that is a target that many cities are currently working towards. He said there was no need for buildings to be razed and replaced with parks, since there is enough space to plant more trees in all the cities the team looked at. He praised initiatives such as the EU's 3 billion trees plan, and the UK government's proposal to ensure every home is within a 15-minute walk from green space, though he noted that policymakers must ensure trees are evenly distributed between richer and poor neighborhoods. He added that cities which are "too car-dominated" should consider replacing asphalt roads, which absorb heat, with trees. Planting more trees in cities should be prioritized because it brings a huge range of health benefits beyond reducing heat-related deaths, he added, including reducing cardiovascular disease, dementia and poor mental health. The study has been published in the journal The Lancet.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Your gut has an obvious job: It processes the food you eat. But it has another important function: It protects you from the bacteria, viruses, or allergens you ingest along with that food. "The largest part of the immune system in humans is the GI tract, and our biggest exposure to the world is what we put in our mouth," says Michael Helmrath, a pediatric surgeon at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center who treats patients with intestinal diseases. Sometimes this system malfunctions or doesn't develop properly, which can lead to gastrointestinal conditions like ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, and celiac -- all of which are on the rise worldwide. Studying these conditions in animals can only tell us so much, since their diets and immune systems are very different from ours. In search of a better method, last week Helmrath and his colleagues announced in the journal Nature Biotechnology that they had transplanted tiny, three-dimensional balls of human intestinal tissue into mice. After several weeks, these spheres -- known as organoids -- developed key features of the human immune system. The model could be used to mimic the human intestinal system without having to experiment on sick patients. The experiment is a dramatic follow-up from 2010, when researchers at Cincinnati Children's became the first in the world to create a working intestine organoid -- but their initial model was a simpler version in a lab dish. A few years later, Helmrath says, they realized "we needed it to become more like human tissue." [...] Matthew Grisham, a gastroenterologist at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center who wasn't involved in the new study, says the findings are exciting because these structures have a "human immune cell composition very similar to that of the developing human gut." He says the organoid model will help researchers investigate the mechanisms responsible for intestinal infection, inflammation, and food allergies. The Cincinnati researchers also hope their organoids could one day be used to treat people born with genetic defects that affect their digestive systems, or those who have lost intestinal function to cancer or inflammatory bowel diseases. That these organoids can flourish in a mouse is an encouraging sign that they might be able to grow on their own if transplanted into a person. Using induced pluripotent stem cells taken from patients, scientists could perhaps one day make customized tissue patches to help heal damaged organs. In the near-term, Helmrath says his team plans on making organoids from patients' own cells to test out possible individualized therapies. "This is right around the corner," he says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"A Chinese spy balloon is floating over the continental United States," writes Slashdot reader q4Fry. "As it headed over Montana, 'civilian flights in the area were halted and U.S. military aircraft, including advanced F-22 fighter jets, were put in the air.'" The Washington Post reports: The balloon's flight path takes it over "a number of sensitive sites," the senior [Pentagon] official said, but it appears it does not have the ability collect information that is "over and above" other tools at China's disposal, like low-orbit satellites. Nevertheless, the Pentagon is taking undisclosed "mitigation steps" to prevent Beijing from gathering additional intelligence. "We put some things on station in the event that a decision was made to bring this down," the official said. "So we wanted to make sure we were coordinating with civil authorities to empty out the airspace around that potential area. But even with those protective measures taken, it was the judgment of our military commanders that we didn't drive the risk down low enough. So we didn't take the shot." "The US believes Chinese spy satellites in low Earth orbit are capable of offering similar or better intelligence, limiting the value of whatever Beijing can glean from the high-altitude balloon, which is the size of three buses," reports CNN, citing a defense official. "It does not create significant value added over and above what the PRC is likely able to collect through things like satellites in low Earth orbit," the senior defense official said. Nevertheless, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy called for a briefing of the "Gang of Eight" -- the group of lawmakers charged with reviewing the nation's most sensitive intelligence information.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In its quarterly earnings report today, Apple said the company passed the 2 billion device milestone while Services have hit a new revenue record. 9to5Mac reports: Apple saw a dip for its Q1 2023 fiscal quarter with just over $117 billion in revenue. That's down 5% YoY -- with the compare being its all-time record for fiscal Q1 in 2022 which saw $123.95 billion in revenue. However, the company pointed out two bright spots with 2 billion of its devices now in use and a fresh revenue record for its Services. Last year at this time Apple shared it hit 1.8 billion active devices. That means it added more than 200 million Apple devices in the last 12 months to surpass the 2 billion mark. That's impressive since its installed base was growing by around 100-150 million new devices per year since 2019. And active devices doubled from 1 to 2 billion in just seven years. As for the Services, it saw a record $20.8 billion in revenue for the quarter, slightly beating the $19.5 billion estimate.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nostr, a startup decentralized social network, got its Twitter-like Damus application listed on Apple's App Store. CoinDesk reports: Nostr is an open protocol that aims to create a censorship-resistant global social network. Media commentators have described it as a possible alternative to Elon Musk's Twitter. According to an article in Protos, Nostr is popular with bitcoiners partly because most implementations of it support payments over Bitcoin's Lightning Network. Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who last year donated roughly 14 BTC (worth $245,000 at the time) to fund Nostr's development, hailed the debut of Damus on Apple's App Store as a "milestone for open protocols," in a tweet posted late Tuesday. As of press time, the tweet had been viewed 2.1 million times. According to the Nostr website, Damus is one of several Nostr projects, including Anigma, a Telegram-like chat; Nostros, a mobile client; and Jester, a chess application. You can download the iOS app here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Meta has routinely fought data scrapers, but it also participated in that practice itself -- if not necessarily for the same reasons. Bloomberg has obtained legal documents from a Meta lawsuit against a former contractor, Bright Data, indicating that the Facebook owner paid its partner to scrape other websites. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed the relationship in a discussion with Bloomberg, but said his company used Bright Data to build brand profiles, spot "harmful" sites and catch phishing campaigns, not to target competitors. Stone added that data scraping could serve "legitimate integrity and commercial purposes" so long as it was done legally and honored sites' terms of service. Meta terminated its arrangement with Bright Data after the contractor allegedly violated company terms when gathering and selling data from Facebook and Instagram. Neither Bright Data nor Meta is saying which sites they scraped. Bright Data is countersuing Meta in a bid to keep scraping Facebook and Instagram, arguing that it only collects publicly available information and respects both European Union and US regulations.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Four men owned 86% of Tether as of 2018, according to investigatory documents viewed by the Wall Street Journal. CoinDesk reports: The documents from 2021 probes of Tether by the New York Attorney General and the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission reveal the previously unknown ownership structure of the secretive issuer of the world's largest stablecoin. Tether's USDT stablecoin is a key piece of infrastructure in the crypto world, easing the movement of money in the industry. Yet, the people behind it have not always been forthcoming about how they operate. Tether began from separate companies led by ex-plastic surgeon Giancarlo Devasini and former child actor Brock Pierce. Devasini, who helped develop crypto exchange Bitfinex and is now its chief financial officer, owned about 43% of Tether in 2018, according to the documents seen by the Journal. Two other executives of both Bitfinex and Tether, CEO Jean-Louis van Der Velde and Chief Counsel Stuart Hoegner, each owned roughly 15% of Tether in 2018, the documents revealed. The fourth major owner as of 2018 was a businessman with British and Thai citizenship known as Christopher Harborne in the U.K. and Chakrit Sakunkrit in Thailand. He controlled about 13% of Tether. Together, the four men owned approximately 86% of Tether through their own holdings and another related company.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon is reporting its first unprofitable year since 2014. NPR reports: Amazon lost $2.7 billion last year, the company said on Thursday. This was despite holiday-season sales growing 9%. Amazon's shares fell in after hours trading. By far, the biggest culprit for Amazon's losses over the year was the company's hefty investment in the electric automaker Rivian whose value plummeted last year and ate into Amazon's bottom line. Amazon had taken a 20% stake in Rivian and has begun rolling out the carmaker's electric delivery vans. Rivian wanted to replicate Tesla's success and held one of the largest initial public offerings in U.S. history. But last year, the exuberance faded, the carmaker made pricing missteps and it fell short of growth targets. Its stock price dropped 82%. For Amazon, the loss on its investment comes right when it contends with the need to recalibrate after a pandemic-era upsurge. During the pandemic, the appetite for online shopping seemed to promise exponential growth, and many believed the habit changes could be permanent. Amazon couldn't hire and built warehouses fast enough; its profits doubled and kept growing. But then people returned to physical stores, switched from cocooning to travel and outings, and eventually got more hesitant to spend as inflation rose. Last month, Amazon announced it expected to cut 18,000 jobs, or about 5% of the corporate workforce. CEO Andy Jassy, in a blog post, referenced "the uncertain economy" and the company's pandemic-era hiring spree. At the peak, in late 2021-early 2022, Amazon employed more than 1.6 million part-time and full-time workers globally. Thursday's financial report shows that number is now down to 1.5 million.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After years of day-to-day absence, Google cofounder Sergey Brin filed a request for access to code related to the company's natural language chatbot, LaMDA. Forbes reports: Two sources said the request was related to LaMDA, Google's natural language chatbot -- a project initially announced in 2021, but which has recently garnered increased attention as Google tries to fend off rival OpenAI, which released the popular ChatGPT bot in November. Brin filed a "CL," short for "changelist," to gain access to the data that trains LaMDA, one person who saw the request said. It was a two line change to a configuration file to add his username to the code, that person said. Several dozen engineers gave the request LGTM approval, short for "looks good to me." Some of the approvals came from workers outside of that team, seemingly just eager to be able to say they gave code review approval to the company cofounder, that person added. The move was a small technical change, but underscores how seriously the company is taking the looming threat from OpenAI and other competitors. Brin and cofounder Larry Page have been largely absent from the company since 2019, when Page handed the reins over to Sundar Pichai to become CEO of Google parent Alphabet. But Pichai has recently called in the company founders to review the company's AI strategy and help form a response to ChatGPT, according to the New York Times. Brin's tinkering highlights the level of involvement the cofounders have taken.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: First, Anker told us it was impossible. Then, it covered its tracks. It repeatedly deflected while utterly ignoring our emails. So shortly before Christmas, we gave the company an ultimatum: if Anker wouldn't answer why its supposedly always-encrypted Eufy cameras were producing unencrypted streams -- among other questions -- we would publish a story about the company's lack of answers. It worked. In a series of emails to The Verge, Anker has finally admitted its Eufy security cameras are not natively end-to-end encrypted -- they can and did produce unencrypted video streams for Eufy's web portal, like the ones we accessed from across the United States using an ordinary media player. But Anker says that's now largely fixed. Every video stream request originating from Eufy's web portal will now be end-to-end encrypted -- like they are with Eufy's app -- and the company says it's updating every single Eufy camera to use WebRTC, which is encrypted by default. Reading between the lines, though, it seems that these cameras could still produce unencrypted footage upon request. That's not all Anker is disclosing today. The company has apologized for the lack of communication and promised to do better, confirming it's bringing in outside security and penetration testing companies to audit Eufy's practices, is in talks with a "leading and well-known security expert" to produce an independent report, is promising to create an official bug bounty program, and will launch a microsite in February to explain how its security works in more detail. Those independent audits and reports may be critical for Eufy to regain trust because of how the company has handled the findings of security researchers and journalists. It's a little hard to take the company at its word! But we also think Anker Eufy customers, security researchers and journalists deserve to read and weigh those words, particularly after so little initial communication from the company. That's why we're publishing Anker's full responses [here]. As highlighted by Ars Technica, some of the notable statements include: - Its web portal now prohibits users from entering "debug mode."- Video stream content is encrypted and inaccessible outside the portal.- While "only 0.1 percent" of current daily users access the portal, it "had some issues," which have been resolved.- Eufy is pushing WebRTC to all of its security devices as the end-to-end encrypted stream protocol.- Facial recognition images were uploaded to the cloud to aid in replacing/resetting/adding doorbells with existing image sets, but has been discontinued. No recognition data was included with images sent to the cloud.- Outside of the "recent issue with the web portal," all other video uses end-to-end encryption.- A "leading and well-known security expert" will produce a report about Eufy's systems.- "Several new security consulting, certification, and penetration testing" firms will be brought in for risk assessment.- A "Eufy Security bounty program" will be established.- The company promises to "provide more timely updates in our community (and to the media!)."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Shell has misleadingly overstated how much it is spending on renewable energy and should be investigated and potentially fined by the US financial regulator, according to a non-profit group which has lodged a complaint against the oil giant. From a report: The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been urged to act over Shell's most recent annual report in which it stated 12% of its capital expenditure was funneled into a division called Renewables and Energy Solutions in 2021. The division's webpage, which is adorned with pictures of wind turbines and solar panels, says it is working to invest in "wind, solar, electric vehicle charging, hydrogen, and more." However, Global Witness, the activist group that has lodged the new complaint with the SEC, argues that just 1.5% of Shell's capital expenditure has been used to develop genuine renewables, such as wind and solar, with much of the rest of the division's resources devoted to gas, which is a fossil fuel.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Razer announced its lightest gaming mouse today, the Viper Mini Signature Edition. From a report: It only weighs 49g, making it 16 percent lighter than the company's Viper V2 Pro and one of the most lightweight mice we've seen from a large company. The mouse uses a magnesium alloy exoskeleton with a semi-hollow interior (bearing a slight resemblance to the SteelSeries Aerox 3 Wireless). "We wanted to push beyond the traditional honeycomb design, and this required a material with an outstanding strength-to-weight ratio," said Razer's Head of Industrial Design, Charlie Bolton. "After evaluating plastics, carbon fiber and even titanium, we ultimately chose magnesium alloy for its exceptional properties." Razer says the mouse uses its fastest wireless tech and will be among its best-performing wireless mice. Price: $280.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A decommissioned aircraft carrier, packed with an undetermined amount of asbestos, is being towed in circles off the coast of Brazil after it was refused permission to dock in Turkey for recycling. The problem? No government wants anything to do with it. From a report: Now, the Brazilian Navy says it plans to just sink the ship, the Sao Paulo, a Clemenceau-class carrier purchased from France in 2000 for $12 million, planes and helicopters not included. Environmentalists say doing so would cause irreparable environmental damage and could be a violation of international law. It would be "completely unexplainable and irrational" to sink the ship, said Jim Puckett, director of the Basel Action Network, an environmental nonprofit group based in Seattle that focuses on the global trade in toxic substances. The story of Sao Paulo's demise started when a Turkish company called Sok Denizcilik bought the ship for just over $1.8 million in an auction in 2021. Its goal was to recycle the vessel, disposing of any waste responsibly while making a profit salvaging and selling the tons of nontoxic metals it contained. But the Turkish company's plans were met with protests from environmental groups that said the ship was carrying a lot more dangerous material than the company had disclosed. The 873-foot vessel, which served in the French Navy under the name Foch from 1963 until it was sold in 2000, hadn't been in service for roughly a decade. Some of its compartments have accumulated so much dangerous gas that it is now unsafe to enter them, inspectors said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: 'Astroturfing' and other non-transparent lobbying tactics used to target digital policymakers in the European Union in recent years -- including during a blitz of spending aimed at influencing major new pan-EU rules like the Digital Services Act (DSA) -- have inspired a group of MEPs and NGOs to fight back by launching a hotline for reporting attempts at indirectly influencing the bloc's tech policy agenda. The new tips line, which was first reported by the Guardian, is being called LobbyLeaks. The office of one of the MEPs co-leading the effort, Paul Tang of the S&D Group, said the idea is to gather data on underhand lobbying efforts that may be targeting the EU's digital policymaking -- such as the use of third party 'industry associations' or consultancies without clear disclosures, or even academics being quietly funded to author favorable research -- in order that they can be studied and called out. They also want to ensure EU lawmakers are better informed about the myriad ways tech giants may be seeking to influence them as they work on shaping the rules platform giants will have to play by.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One of the most precise surveys of the structure of the universe has suggested it is "less clumpy" than expected, in findings that could indicate the existence of mysterious forces at work. From a report: The observations by the Dark Energy Survey and the South Pole Telescope chart the distribution of matter with the aim of understanding the competing forces that shaped the evolution of the universe and govern its ultimate fate. The extraordinarily detailed analysis adds to a body of evidence that suggests there may be a crucial component missing from the so-called standard model of physics. "It seems like there is slightly less [clumpiness] in the current universe than we would predict assuming our standard cosmological model anchored to the early universe," said Eric Baxter, an astrophysicist at the University of Hawaii and co-author of the study. The results did not pass the statistical threshold that scientists consider to be ironclad enough to claim a discovery, but they do come after similar findings from previous surveys that hint a crack could be opening up between theoretical predictions and what is actually going on in the universe. "If the finding stands up it's very exciting," said Dr Chihway Chang, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago and a lead author. "The whole point of physics is to test models and break them. The best scenario is it helps us understand more about the nature of dark matter and dark energy."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Computer classes for Gen Z aren't cutting it anymore. From a report: More than a third (37%) of Gen Zers feel their school education didn't prepare them with the digital skills they need to propel their career, according to Dell Technologies' international survey of more than 15,000 adults ages 18 to 26 across 15 countries. A majority (56%) of this generation added that they had very basic to no digital skills education. It's all led to some warranted skepticism regarding the future of work: Many Gen Zers are unsure what the digital economy will look like, and 33% have little to no confidence that the government's investments in a digital future will be successful in 10 years. Forty-four percent think that schools and businesses should work together to address the digital skills gap. The findings back up past research that found nearly half of the Class of 2022 felt the top skill they were underprepared for was technical skills.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Most electric vehicles get upgrades to boost performance or range, but Antarctica's one and only EV has received a tune-up due to the realities of climate change. From a report: Venturi has revealed that it upgraded its Venturi Antarctica electric explorer early last year due to warmer conditions on the continent. The original machine was designed to operate in winter temperatures of -58F, but the southern polar region is now comparatively balmy at 14F -- and that affected both crews and performance. The company has added a ventilation system and air intakes to the front of the Antarctica to prevent overheating in the cockpit, while additional intakes keep the power electronics from cooking. Redesigned wheel sprockets were also necessary to maximize the tracked EV's capabilities. The warmer snow was sticking to the sprockets, creating vibrations as it compacted and hardened. Future upgrades will help restore range lost to changing snow consistency. The Antarctica is built to cover 31 miles, but scientists have been limiting that to 25 miles.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has expanded OSS-Fuzz Reward Program to offer rewards of up to $30,000 for researchers who find security flaws in open source programs. From a report: The expanded scope of the program now means the total rewards possible per project integration rise from $20,000 to $30,000. The purpose of OSS-Fuzz is to support open source projects adopt fuzz testing and the new categories of rewards support those who create more ways of integrating new projects. Google created two new reward categories that reward wider improvements across all OSS-Fuzz projects. It offers up to $11,337 available per category. It's also offering rewards for notable FuzzBench fuzzer integrations, and for integrating new sanitizers or 'bug detectors' that help find vulnerabilities. "We hope to accelerate the integration of critical open source projects into OSS-Fuzz by providing stronger incentives to security researchers and open source maintainers," explains Oliver Chang of Google's OSS-Fuzz team.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is adding artificial intelligence capabilities from ChatGPT maker OpenAI to another of its products -- this time a customer-relationship app that's meant to help win revenue from Salesforce. From a report: Viva Sales, which connects Microsoft's Office and video conferencing programs with customer relations management software, will be able to generate email replies to clients using OpenAI's product for creating text. The AI tools, which include OpenAI's GPT 3.5 -- the system that is the basis for the ChatGPT chatbot -- will cull data from customer records and Office email software. That information will then be used to generate emails containing personalized text, pricing details and promotions. The Viva Sales app was initially released in October and works with Microsoft's Dynamics customer management program and that of rival Salesforce. It's free for users who sign up for the premium versions of Dynamics and $40 per user per month for Salesforce customers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) wrote to Google and Apple on Thursday, urging both companies to remove TikTok from their app stores. From a report: In a letter addressed to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Bennet urges both leaders to boot TikTok immediately, calling the popular video-sharing app "an unacceptable threat to the national security of the United States." Bennet's letter marks the first time a member of Congress has suggested TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, should not be available for download via the Google Play or Apple App store. "No company subject to [Chinese Communist Party] dictates should have the power to accumulate such extensive data on the American people or curate content to nearly a third of our population," Bennet wrote in the letter.Read more of this story at Slashdot.