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"I write all novel client-side code as JavaScript instead of TypeScript, and it's a delight," says the creator of Ruby on Rails. Posting on Twitter, David Heinemeier Hansson opined that TypeScript "sucked out much of the joy I had writing JavaScript. I'm forever grateful that Yukihiro 'Matz' Matsumoto didn't succumb to the pressure of adding similar type hints to Ruby." When it comes to static vs dynamic typing, "I've heard a million arguments from both sides throughout my entire career," Hansson wrote on his blog today, "but seen very few of them ever convinced anyone of anything." But wait — he thinks we can all get along:Personally, I'm unashamedly a dynamic typing kind of guy. That's why I love Ruby so very much. It takes full advantage of dynamic typing to allow the poetic syntax that results in such beautiful code. To me, Ruby with explicit, static typing would be like a salad with a scoop of ice cream. They just don't go together. I'll also confess to having embraced the evangelical position for dynamic typing in the past. To the point of suffering from a One True Proposition affliction. Seeing the lack of enthusiasm for dynamic typing as a reflection of missing education, experience, or perhaps even competence. Oh what folly. Like trying to convince an introvert that they'd really like parties if they'd just loosen up a bit... These days, I've come to appreciate the magnificence of multiplicity. Programming would be an awful endeavor if we were all confined to the same paradigm. Human nature is much too varied to accept such constraint on its creativity...But it took a while for me to come to these conclusions. I'm a recovering solutionist. So when I see folks cross their heart in disbelief that anyone, anywhere might fancy JavaScript over TypeScript, I smile, and I remember the days when I'd recognize their zeal in the mirror. Hansson also sees the "magnificence of multiplicity" in positions about functional vs object-oriented programming. "Poles on both these axes have shown to deliver excellent software over the decades (and awful stuff too!)."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"An alarming new study has found that even when plastic makes it to a recycling center, it can still end up splintering into smaller bits that contaminate the air and water," reports Wired:This pilot study focused on a single new facility where plastics are sorted, shredded, and melted down into pellets. Along the way, the plastic is washed several times, sloughing off microplastic particles — fragments smaller than 5 millimeters — into the plant's wastewater. Because there were multiple washes, the researchers could sample the water at four separate points along the production line. (They are not disclosing the identity of the facility's operator, who cooperated with their project.) This plant was actually in the process of installing filters that could snag particles larger than 50 microns (a micron is a millionth of a meter), so the team was able to calculate the microplastic concentrations in raw versus filtered discharge water — basically a before-and-after snapshot of how effective filtration is. Their microplastics tally was astronomical. Even with filtering, they calculate that the total discharge from the different washes could produce up to 75 billion particles per cubic meter of wastewater. Depending on the recycling facility, that liquid would ultimately get flushed into city water systems or the environment. In other words, recyclers trying to solve the plastics crisis may in fact be accidentally exacerbating the microplastics crisis, which is coating every corner of the environment with synthetic particles. "It seems a bit backward, almost, that we do plastic recycling in order to protect the environment, and then end up increasing a different and potentially more harmful problem," says plastics scientist Erina Brown, who led the research while at the University of Strathclyde. "It raises some very serious concerns," agrees Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics and a former US Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator, who wasn't involved in the paper. "And I also think this points to the fact that plastics are fundamentally not sustainable." Wired ponts out that more than half the microplastics can be captured with a filtration system. "Without it, the researchers calculated that this single recycling facility could emit up to 6.5 million pounds of microplastic per year. Filtration got it down to an estimated 3 million pounds." But one of the paper's co-authors shared their discouraging conclusion. "The recycling centers are potentially making things worse by actually creating microplastics faster and discharging them into both water and air. I'm not sure we can technologically engineer our way out of that problem."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CoinDesk reports that Binance "temporarily paused bitcoin withdrawals Sunday morning U.S. time as the Bitcoin blockchain became overwhelmed with pending transactions and sky-high fees."The company resumed withdrawals within two hours of its initial Twitter posting about the withdrawals. On-chain data shows that there are nearly 400,000 unconfirmed Bitcoin transactions, which is higher than anything seen during the bull runs of 2018 and 2021. The average transaction fee has also doubled since March, pushing it to a two-year high. The current transaction fee is just over $8, a 309% change from a year ago. In an earlier CoinDesk article, an executive at Luxor Technologies, a full-stack Bitcoin mining pool, blamed the rising fees on the adoption of the new BRC-20 token standard, a new way to "inscribe" additional data during transactions.But meanwhile, an anonymous reader shared another report from Mashable about Binance:Bloomberg reported that the crypto exchange (currently the world's largest) is facing a U.S. Department of Justice probe over possibly allowing Russians to move money in a way that would violate U.S. sanctions... It's worth noting that no formal accusation has been made against Binance, as this is just a probe. It may be some time before accusations manifest — if they manifest at all. In 2021, Binance was under a similar investigation related to possible money laundering. But another Reuters article adds that Bloomberg's sources "also said that Binance is discussing the possibility of settling with the Department of Justice regarding previous allegations that the exchange was also used to move money to circumvent U.S. sanctions against Iran." And elsewhere, Reuters reports: Israel has seized around 190 crypto accounts at crypto exchange Binance since 2021, including two it said were linked to Islamic State and dozens of others it said were owned by Palestinian firms connected to the Islamist Hamas group, documents released by the country's counter-terror authorities show... In a blog post after its publication, Binance said that Reuters was "deliberately leaving out critical facts." The exchange has been "working closely with international counter-terrorism authorities" on the seizures, Binance said. "With regard to the specific organizations mentioned in the article, it's important to clarify that bad actors don't register accounts under the names of their criminal enterprises," it said... Under Israeli law, the country's defense minister can order the seizure and confiscation of assets that the ministry deems related to terrorism... The seizures by Israel's National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing highlight how governments are targeting crypto companies in their efforts to prevent illegal activity. Binance, founded in 2017 by CEO Changpeng Zhao, says on its website it reviews information requests from governments and law enforcement agencies on a case-by-case basis, disclosing information as legally required. Binance has also said it checks users for connections to terrorism and has "continued to invest tremendous resources to enhance its compliance program," it told U.S. senators in March in response to their requests for information on Binance's regulatory compliance and finances.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

America's consumer-protecting federal agency has a division overseeing advertising practices. Its web site includes a "business guidance" section with "advice on complying with FTC law," and this week one of the agency's attorney's warned that the FTC "is focusing intensely on how companies may choose to use AI technology, including new generative AI tools, in ways that can have actual and substantial impact on consumers." The warning came in a blog post titled "The Luring Test: AI and the engineering of consumer trust."In the 2014 movie Ex Machina, a robot manipulates someone into freeing it from its confines, resulting in the person being confined instead. The robot was designed to manipulate that person's emotions, and, oops, that's what it did. While the scenario is pure speculative fiction, companies are always looking for new ways — such as the use of generative AI tools — to better persuade people and change their behavior. When that conduct is commercial in nature, we're in FTC territory, a canny valley where businesses should know to avoid practices that harm consumers... As for the new wave of generative AI tools, firms are starting to use them in ways that can influence people's beliefs, emotions, and behavior. Such uses are expanding rapidly and include chatbots designed to provide information, advice, support, and companionship. Many of these chatbots are effectively built to persuade and are designed to answer queries in confident language even when those answers are fictional. A tendency to trust the output of these tools also comes in part from "automation bias," whereby people may be unduly trusting of answers from machines which may seem neutral or impartial. It also comes from the effect of anthropomorphism, which may lead people to trust chatbots more when designed, say, to use personal pronouns and emojis. People could easily be led to think that they're conversing with something that understands them and is on their side. Many commercial actors are interested in these generative AI tools and their built-in advantage of tapping into unearned human trust. Concern about their malicious use goes well beyond FTC jurisdiction. But a key FTC concern is firms using them in ways that, deliberately or not, steer people unfairly or deceptively into harmful decisions in areas such as finances, health, education, housing, and employment. Companies thinking about novel uses of generative AI, such as customizing ads to specific people or groups, should know that design elements that trick people into making harmful choices are a common element in FTC cases, such as recent actions relating to financial offers , in-game purchases , and attempts to cancel services . Manipulation can be a deceptive or unfair practice when it causes people to take actions contrary to their intended goals. Under the FTC Act, practices can be unlawful even if not all customers are harmed and even if those harmed don't comprise a class of people protected by anti-discrimination laws. The FTC attorney also warns against paid placement within the output of a generative AI chatbot. ("Any generative AI output should distinguish clearly between what is organic and what is paid.") And in addition, "People should know if an AI product's response is steering them to a particular website, service provider, or product because of a commercial relationship. And, certainly, people should know if they're communicating with a real person or a machine..." "Given these many concerns about the use of new AI tools, it's perhaps not the best time for firms building or deploying them to remove or fire personnel devoted to ethics and responsibility for AI and engineering. If the FTC comes calling and you want to convince us that you adequately assessed risks and mitigated harms, these reductions might not be a good look. " Thanks to Slashdot reader gluskabe for sharing the post.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Norwegian company named ENRX "wants to inductively charge electric vehicles with 200 kW while driving on a section of highway in Florida," according to the "electric mobility industry" news site electrive.com. "A one-mile section of a four-lane highway near Orlando is to be electrified."ENRX has teamed up with the Central Florida Expressway Authority and the Aspire Engineering Research Center for an initiative to build a one-mile (1.6-kilometre) section on a four-lane highway near Orlando that will inductively charge the batteries of moving electric vehicles at 200 kW. The principle is clear: the electric vehicle batteries are fitted with a special receiver pad and charged as they drive over the coils embedded in the road. In the process, the energy is transferred from these coils to the receiver pad mounted on the vehicle floor, which according to ENRX should provide "a safe, wireless power supply" even at motorway speeds. Advantages of the 'Next Generation Electric Roadway system' mentioned include interoperability, different output power levels for different vehicle and battery types, or user-defined distance between the ground and the vehicle. In addition, the system (on the infrastructure side) is supposed to be maintenance-free after installation... "When you can charge while driving, range anxiety and frequent charging stops will be a thing of the past," says ENRX CEO Bjørn Eldar Petersen... "Dynamic charging can reduce the need for large battery capacities, allowing cars to be equipped with lighter and more affordable battery packs." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader aduxorth for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This year's Kentucky Derby was won by a 15-to-1 longshot named Mage, reports sports magazine the Athletic. It was only the horse's third race — but the story gets even stranger:Mage is owned by a collective of horse racing fans that doesn't follow your standard ownership structure. Fans can purchase shares of a horse for as little as $50. It's a publicly owned racehorse. Mage has 391 owners on the Commonwealth app. Many were at the 2023 Kentucky Derby wearing Mage hats and they were shown on NBC's lead up to the Kentucky Derby. The Commonwealth app even tried to arrange watch parties for the horse race across the country. Shareholders own 25% of the racehorse, reports Sporting News:Although horses are the most common commodity, there are golfers on the app as well, specifically Joey Vrzich and Cooper Dossey, whom it says are "coming Spring 2023." Commonwealth has a partnership with WinStar Farm, a premiere breeder of thoroughbreds... "Together we are going to revolutionize the ownership experience and give the world access to horses that were once unavailable to the public," Brian Doxtator, CEO of Commonwealth said, per the collective's website. According to Action Network's Darren Rovell, Commonwealth owners will be paid out $94.52 per share (prior to taxes) for the win. Before the race the Athletic sports magazine asked seven experts for their picks — and only one of them had even mentioned Mage. (The Athletic's senior sports betting editor correctly picked Mage and "Angel of Empire" to finish somewhere in the top three positions.) But just for fun, the Athletic also asked three AI chatbots — and none of them picked the winner: Bing AI: That's a tough question. I don't have a personal preference, but based on the odds and the past performances, I think Forte has a good chance of winning. He has been very consistent and impressive in his races, and he has a top trainer and jockey. He also has a favorable post position at No. 14, which gives him some room to maneuver and avoid traffic. But as I said, anything can happen in the Kentucky Derby, and there are many other talented horses in the field. It will be an exciting race to watch. Google Bard: I like the chances of Tapit Trice to win the 2023 Kentucky Derby. He is the second-lowest odds horse at 5-1, and has won twice and finished second twice in six career races. He has one of the best pedigrees a horse could ask for, being sired by Justify, the 2018 Triple Crown winner. He is also coming off an impressive showing in the 2023 Blue Grass Stakes, where he finished second just barely behind Verifying. Here are some other horses that I like to finish in the money... The Kentucky Derby is always a tough race to predict, but I think these horses have a good chance of winning or finishing in the money. [Bard then listed five more of the 18 horses — one of which ultimately finished third.] Chat GPT: As an artificial intelligence language model, I don't have personal opinions or preferences. However, based on the current information I have, I cannot accurately predict the winner of the Kentucky Derby. Horse racing involves many variables, including the skill of the jockey, the health and performance of the horse, and even the weather conditions on race day. The outcome of any given race is always uncertain and subject to chance. It's important to note that gambling can be risky, and I don't encourage it.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Friday Bill Gates visited Kemmerer, Wyoming (population: 2,656) — where a coal plant was shutting down after 50 years. But Gates was there "to celebrate the latest step in a project that's been more than 15 years in the making: designing and building a next-generation nuclear power plant..." The new plant will employ "between 200 and 250 people," Gates writes in a blog post, "and those with experience in the coal plant will be able to do many of the jobs — such as operating a turbine and maintaining connections to the power grid — without much retraining."It's called the Natrium plant, and it was designed by TerraPower, a company I started in 2008. When it opens (potentially in 2030), it will be the most advanced nuclear facility in the world, and it will be much safer and produce far less waste than conventional reactors. All of this matters because the world needs to make a big bet on nuclear. As I wrote in my book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster , we need nuclear power if we're going to meet the world's growing need for energy while also eliminating carbon emissions. None of the other clean sources are as reliable, and none of the other reliable sources are as clean... Another thing that sets TerraPower apart is its digital design process. Using supercomputers, they've digitally tested the Natrium design countless times, simulating every imaginable disaster, and it keeps holding up. TerraPower's sophisticated work has drawn interest from around the globe, including an agreement to collaborate on nuclear power technology in Japan and investments from the South Korean conglomerate SK and the multinational steel company ArcelorMittal... I'm excited about this project because of what it means for the future. It's the kind of effort that will help America maintain its energy independence. And it will help our country remain a leader in energy innovation worldwide. The people of Kemmerer are at the forefront of the equitable transition to a clean, safe energy future, and it's great to be partnering with them. Gates writes that for safety the plant uses liquid sodium (instead of water) to absorb excess heat, and it even has an energy storage system "to control how much electricity it produces at any given time..." "I'm convinced that the facility will be a win for the local economy, America's energy independence, and the fight against climate change.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Fortune:For eight years now, as millennials have entered their thirties and forties, also known as "homebuying age," Bank of America has surveyed over 1,000 members of the generation once a year for its Home Work series. And for 2023's edition... older millennials (age 31-41) are almost three times as likely to move into a house than an apartment, the survey found... Migration patterns during the pandemic have clearly established that most homebuyers have wanted to flee big cities, with some "zoomtowns" such as Boise benefiting in particular. But the survey reveals something even more drastic. In a section called "suburban nation," BofA reveals that 43% to 45% of millennials — of every age — expect to buy a house in the suburbs. "We expect the ability to work from home to remain an incentive for young families to seek out more remote suburban and rural markets where housing may be more affordable," wrote the BofA team led by research analyst Elizabeth Suzuki. And remote work is still robust, they added. Millennials are also looking toward the suburbs for wealth-building. A majority (two-thirds) of them believe that they'll buy a home in the next two years, citing a return on investment as the number one reason for purchasing. The interest is pervasive across the generation, and maybe means that the suburb is in for a new and better revival. And a 2021 study from Pew Research Center found that one in five adults preferred city life, compared to one quarter of adults in 2018... Millennials reported to BoA that the pandemic increased their likelihood of buying a home...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader indominabledemon shared this article from TechSpot:Games today use highly-detailed textures that can quickly fill the frame buffer on many graphics cards, leading to stuttering and game crashes in recent AAA titles for many gamers... [T]he most promising development in this direction so far comes from Nvidia — neural texture compression could reduce system requirements for future AAA titles, at least when it comes to VRAM and storage.... In a research paper published this week, the company details a new algorithm for texture compression that is supposedly better than both traditional block compression (BC) methods as well as other advanced compression techniques such as AVIF and JPEG-XL. The new algorithm is simply called neural texture compression (NTC), and as the name suggests it uses a neural network designed specifically for material textures. To make this fast enough for practical use, Nvidia researchers built several small neural networks optimized for each material... [T]extures compressed with NTC preserve a lot more detail while also being significantly smaller than even these same textures compressed with BC techniques to a quarter of the original resolution... Researchers explain the idea behind their approach is to compress all these maps along with their mipmap chain into a single file, and then have them be decompressed in real time with the same random access as traditional block texture compression... However, NTC does have some limitations that may limit its appeal. First, as with any lossy compression, it can introduce visual degradation at low bitrates. Researchers observed mild blurring, the removal of fine details, color banding, color shifts, and features leaking between texture channels. Furthermore, game artists won't be able to optimize textures in all the same ways they do today, for instance, by lowering the resolution of certain texture maps for less important objects or NPCs. Nvidia says all maps need to be the same size before compression, which is bound to complicate workflows. This sounds even worse when you consider that the benefits of NTC don't apply at larger camera distances. Perhaps the biggest disadvantages of NTC have to do with texture filtering. As we've seen with technologies like DLSS, there is potential for image flickering and other visual artifacts when using textures compressed through NTC. And while games can utilize anisotropic filtering to improve the appearance of textures in the distance at a minimal performance cost, the same isn't possible with Nvidia's NTC at this point.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from BGR:Last year, Microsoft Edge surpassed Safari as the second most popular desktop browser. Now, new data from Statcounter shows that Apple's browser has finally regained second place. The full ranking shows that Google Chrome remains the most used browser... It's also interesting to note that after Firefox almost surpassed Safari in February of 2022, the browser is still losing its base to Microsoft Edge and Safari... Even the all-mighty Google Chrome has lost a bit of userbase, as it had 66.64% of users last April and now has 66.13%. The final rankings (with data from April 2023):Google Chrome: 66.13%Safari: 11.87%Microsoft Edge: 11%Firefox: 5.65%Opera 3.09%Internet Explorer: 0.55%Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN:Ocean surface heat is at record-breaking levels. Temperatures began climbing in mid-March and skyrocketed over the course of several weeks, leaving scientists scrambling to figure out exactly why. Temperatures have fallen since their peak in April — as they naturally do in the spring — but they are still higher than they have ever been on record for this time of year.... The record may not seem huge — it's nearly two-tenths of a degree higher than the previous record in 2016 — but given how much heat is needed to warm up this huge body of water, "it's a massive amount of energy," Matthew England, professor of ocean and climate dynamics at the University of New South Wales, Australia, told CNN... Some scientists are concerned the scale of these new records could mark the start of an alarming trend. Others say record-breaking temperatures like these are always concerning but to be expected given the human-caused climate crisis. All agree the consequences are likely to be significant. Warmer oceans bleach coral, kill marine life, increase sea level rise and make the ocean less efficient at absorbing planet-warming pollution — the warmer oceans get, the more the planet will heat. The science leader at the British Antarctic Survey told CNN that "it's probably too early" to blame El Niño." In fact, the world just emerged from a 3-year La Niña cooling event in March. So instead, CNN gets a different explanation fro Gregory C. Johnson, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:"It's a little bit like we've had the freezer door open for a while and it's helped to cool the planet," Johnson said. But even while that freezer has been open, background temperatures have continued to rise. Now the freezer is closed, everything is hotter than before. Later CNN adds that some scientists are concerned "climate change might be progressing in ways climate models have not predicted."One surprising reason could be the reduction of aerosols in the atmosphere. In 2020, regulations were introduced to limit the amount of sulfur in the fuel ships used — a policy aimed at addressing air pollution. Though air pollution has a significant impact on human health, it also acts as an artificial sunscreen and reflects sunlight away from the Earth. One theory is the absence of aerosols may have turned up the heat, said Karina von Schuckmann [an oceanographer at Mercator Ocean International in France].Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Washington Post reports:TurboTax will begin sending checks next week to nearly 4.4 million low-income Americans whom the company deceived into paying for tax services that should have been free, New York Attorney General Letitia James said. The checks, part of a $141 million settlement reached in May 2022 between TurboTax owner Intuit and all 50 states and the District of Columbia, are for people who were eligible to file taxes for free through an IRS partner program but were "tricked" into paying TurboTax between 2016 and 2018, James (D) said in a statement Thursday. The company was also accused of knowingly misleading customers and blocking its landing page for its IRS Free File Program, a public-private partnership with the IRS, from showing up on search engines such as Google. Because Intuit and other companies agreed to participate in that program, the IRS agreed not to offer its own free electronic tax services. Intuit admitted no wrongdoing in the settlement. Customers who qualify will receive between $29 and $85, depending on the number of years they paid for the services... Consumers who are eligible for the payments do not need to file a claim and will be notified by email, James's office said Thursday. Checks will be sent automatically and will be mailed throughout May. "TurboTax's predatory and deceptive marketing cheated millions of low-income Americans who were trying to fulfill their legal duties to file their taxes," said Attorney General James. "Today we are righting that wrong and putting money back into the pockets of hardworking taxpayers who should have never paid to file their taxes." James described it as an effort "to stand up for ordinary Americans and hold companies who cheat consumers accountable," specifically calling out Intuit "for deceiving millions of low-income Americans into paying for tax services that should have been free."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this report from Futurism:We'd need an astronomical amount of resources to construct a Dyson sphere, a giant theoretical shell that would harvest all of a given star's energy, around the Sun. In fact, as science journalist Jaime Green explores in her new book "The Possibility of Life," we'd have to go as far as to demolish a Jupiter-sized planet to build such a megastructure, a concept first devised by physicist Freeman Dyson in 1960... Not everybody agrees that constructing a Dyson sphere would end up being such a huge undertaking. In an interview with Green, astrophysicist Jason Wright compared such an effort to [the city of] Manhattan, a human and interconnected "megastructure," which was constructed over a long period of time, bit by bit... "It's just every generation made it a little bigger...." "If the energy is out there to take and it's just gonna fly away to space anyway, then why wouldn't someone take it?" Wright told Green.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Phoronix shares some overlooked news from AMD's openSIL presentation at the OCP Regional Summit in April. Specifically, that AMD openSIL — their open-source x86 silicon initialization library — "is planned to eventually replace AMD's well known AGESA [BIOS utility]" around 2026, and "it will be supported across AMD's entire processor stack — just not limited to EPYC server processors as some were initially concerned..."Raj Kapoor, AMD Fellow and AMD's Chief Firmware Architect, in fact began the AMD openSIL presentation by talking about the challenges they've had with AGESA in adapting it to Coreboot for Chromebook purposes with Ryzen SoCs... With AMD openSIL not expected to be production ready until around 2026, this puts it roughly inline for an AMD Zen 6 or Zen 7 introduction. The proof of concept code for AMD Genoa is expected to come soon... The presentation also noted that beyond AMD openSIL code being open-source, the openSIL specification will also be open. AMD "invites every silicon vendor" to participate in this open-source system firmware endeavor.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

All across North America today, over 2,000 comic book stores are celebrating Free Comic Book Day. As it enters its third decade — the event started in 2001, according to Wikipedia — there'll be over two dozen free comic books to choose from this, and enthusiastic stores trying to dial up the fun even more. 16 stores are also giving away Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania in special "ant-sized" boxes — the size of penny — with tiny versions of the cover art from the full-sized Blu-Ray disc boxes (along with a code for a digital version of the movie). The Bleeding Cool site has a running list of stores doing additional special "cool stuff," including cookie giveaways, discounts on paperbacks and comic books, and personal appearances by comic book writers and artists. Geek-friendly free comic books this year:Dark Horse Comics' Star Wars/ Avatar: The Last Airbender D.C. Comics is offering Dawn of DC — Knight Terrors Marvel is offering several multi-character books, including Spider-Man/Venom, the Avengers/X-Men, and a sampler of the upcoming graphic novel biography of Stan Lee IDW's free comics include the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles There's also the official prequel to the new Street Fighter 6 video gameAlso available: Runescape: Untold Tales/God Wars Fantagraphics even has a preview of its upcoming Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers book. Archie Horror Presents: The Cursed Library Bleeding Cool also has previews the artwork from Star Trek: Prelude to Day of Blood, a teaser for a coming "comic book crossover event between IDW's main Star Trek comic and the Star Trek: Defiant series" (that's also accompanied by a Lower Decks comic book story). Just remember, in 2017 NPR had this advice for visiting comics fans. "While you're there, buy something... The comics shops still have to pay for the 'free' FCBD books they stock, and they're counting on the increased foot traffic to lift sales."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Supported by conversations with nearly a dozen former employees, 9to5Mac details the downfall of Brydge -- "a once thriving startup making popular keyboard accessories for iPad, Mac, and Microsoft Surface products." An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: According to nearly a dozen former Brydge employees who spoke to 9to5Mac, Brydge has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs within the past year after at least two failed acquisitions. As it stands today, Brydge employees have not been paid salaries since January. Customers who pre-ordered the company's most recent product have been left in the dark since then as well. Its website went completely offline earlier this year, and its social media accounts have been silent since then as well. Those former Brydge employees largely attribute the company's failure to mismanagement during growth, misleading statements from its two co-CEOs, and an overall hostile working environment that led to a high turnover rate.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For the first time, astronomers have observed a star swallowing a planet. The findings have been published in the journal Nature. MIT News reports: The planetary demise appears to have taken place in our own galaxy, some 12,000 light-years away, near the eagle-like constellation Aquila. There, astronomers spotted an outburst from a star that became more than 100 times brighter over just 10 days, before quickly fading away. Curiously, this white-hot flash was followed by a colder, longer-lasting signal. This combination, the scientists deduced, could only have been produced by one event: a star engulfing a nearby planet. What of the planet that perished? The scientists estimate that it was likely a hot, Jupiter-sized world that spiraled close, then was pulled into the dying star's atmosphere, and, finally, into its core. A similar fate will befall the Earth, though not for another 5 billion years, when the sun is expected to burn out, and burn up the solar system's inner planets. "For decades, we've been able to see the before and after," says lead author Kishalay De, a postdoc in MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. "Before, when the planets are still orbiting very close to their star, and after, when a planet has already been engulfed, and the star is giant. What we were missing was catching the star in the act, where you have a planet undergoing this fate in real-time. That's what makes this discovery really exciting."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Magazine: The creamy fruit and nectar-rich flowers of the milk fruit tree are irresistible to Xenohyla truncata, a tree frog native to Brazil. On warm nights, the dusky-colored frogs take to the trees en masse, jostling one another for a chance to nibble the fruit and slurp the nectar. In the process, the frogs become covered in sticky pollen grains -- and might inadvertently pollinate the plants, too. It's the first time a frog -- or any amphibian -- has been observed pollinating a plant, researchers reported last month in Food Webs. Scientists long thought only insects and birds served as pollinators, but research has revealed that some reptiles and mammals are more than up to the task. Now, scientists must consider whether amphibians are also capable of getting the job done. It's likely that the nectar-loving frogs, also known as Izecksohn's Brazilian tree frogs, are transferring pollen as they move from flower to flower, the authors say. But more research is needed, they add, to confirm that frogs have joined the planet's pantheon of pollinators.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last year, BMW announced plans to charge a $18 per month subscription for heated seats. Now, Mercedes is considering making better EV engine performance an added subscription surcharge. "Mercedes-Benz electric vehicle owners in North America who want a little more power and speed can now buy 60 horsepower for just $60 a month or, on other models, 80 horsepower for $90 a month," reports CNN. "They won't have to visit a Mercedes dealer to get the upgrade either, or even leave their own driveway. The added power, which will provide a nearly one second decrease in zero-to-60 acceleration, will be available through an over-the-air software patch." Techdirt reports: If you don't want to pay monthly, Mercedes will also let you pay a one time flat fee (usually several thousand dollars) to remove the artificial restrictions they've imposed on your engine. That's, of course, creating additional upward pricing funnel efforts on top of the industry's existing efforts to upsell you on a rotating crop of trims, tiers, and options you probably didn't want. It's not really clear that regulators have any interest in cracking down on charging dumb people extra for something they already owned and paid for. After all, ripping off gullible consumers is effectively now considered little more than creative marketing by a notable segment of government "leaders" (see: regulatory apathy over misleading hidden fees in everything from hotels to cable TV).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader Dave Knott shares the four class of 2023 inductees into the Video Game Hall Of Fame. They were announced today at The Strong National Museum of Play. From the press release: Barbie Fashion Designer : "The 1996 hit Barbie Fashion Designer emerged at a time when many games were marketed to male players. Published by Digital Domain/Mattel Media, it proved that a computer game targeted to girls could succeed, selling more than 500,000 copies in two months. The game helped greatly expanded the market for video games and in the process opened important -- and ongoing -- discussions about gender and stereotypes in gaming. Barbie Fashion Designer was also innovative in bridging the gap between the digital and the physical, allowing players to design clothes for their Barbie dolls and print them on special fabric." Computer Space : "Nutting Associate's Computer Space appeared in 1971 and was the first commercial video game. Inspired by the early minicomputer and previous World Video Game Hall of Fame inductee -- Spacewar! (1962) -- the coin-operated Computer Space proved that video games could reach an audience outside of computer labs. While not a best-seller, it was a trailblazer in the video game world and inspired its creators to go on to establish Atari Inc., a video game giant in the 1970s and 1980s." The Last of Us : "Released by Naughty Dog and Sony Interactive Entertainment in 2013, The Last of Us jumped into an oversaturated field of post-apocalyptic zombie games and quickly stood out among the rest with its in-depth storytelling, intimate exploration of humanity, thrilling game jumps and cutscenes, and its memorable characters. More than 200 publications named it the game of the year in 2013. Its story has since made the jump to Hollywood, inspiring an HBO adaptation in 2023 watched weekly by millions." Wii Sports : "Wii Sports launched with the Nintendo Wii home video game system in 2006 and introduced motion-based technology to living rooms across the world. With a simple swipe of the controller, players could serve a tennis ball, hurl a bowling bowl, throw a left hook, or drive a golf ball. The simple mechanics made the game accessible to almost anyone -- allowing it to be played by young children and seniors alike -- and helped to redefine the idea of who is a "gamer." Ultimately, the game helped Nintendo to sell more than 100 million Wii consoles worldwide." These titles managed to beat out several other incredibly popular titles, including Angry Birds, Age of Empires, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, GoldenEye 007, NBA 2K, FIFA International Soccer, Quake, and Wizardry.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Internet users are turning to VPN services as a means to circumvent Utah's new law requiring porn sites to verify users' ages. The spike in VPN searches appears to be directly related to Pornhub's decision on Tuesday to completely disable its websites for people living in the state. TechRadar reports: Google searches for virtual private networks (VPNs) have been skyrocketing since, with a peak registered on May 3, the day the new law came into force. By downloading a VPN service, pornography fans will be able to keep accessing Pornhub and similar sites with ease. That's because a virtual private network is security software able to spoof users' IP address (digital location and device identifier). Hence a surge of interest in VPNs across Utah as people will simply need to connect to a server located in a US state or foreign country where the restriction isn't yet enforced. "Utah's age-verification law shows a worrying trend to further restrict digital freedoms and disregard data privacy across the US," said a spokesperson of secure VPN provider Private Internet Access (PIA). "Private Internet Access is a long-time advocate of greater digital privacy, and we urge lawmakers to consider other ways of protecting children online, including education, guidance from parents, and open conversations about safe internet usage, rather than relying on increasingly intrusive digital regulations which disregard people's privacy and online freedom." You can see the spike in "virtual private network" searches via Google Trends. "Search queries for VPN were at peak popularity in Utah just before 4 a.m. EST Tuesday, according to the trends data," notes Newsweek. "Other related queries in the past week include searches for VPN extensions like Hola and Fox Speed."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Following the announcement of the bill in March, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele signed a law today eliminating income, property, capital gains, and other tariffs on technology innovations. Watcher Guru reports: The announcement reinforces El Salvador's perspective as a haven for technology development. Additionally, Bukele stated that the new act protects "technology innovations, software and app programming, AI, computer, and communications hardware manufacturing." The Innovations and Technology Manufacturing Incentives Act will likely attract tech developments to the country. Moreover, the elimination of taxes presents an economic benefit to a host of companies. Conversely, El Salvador continues to maintain its commitment to a variety of tech innovations that are being developed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Waymo is doubling its commercial robotaxi service area in the Phoenix metro area to include Scottsdale, nearly all of Tempe and larger sections of Chandler and Mesa. The updated service area is 180 square miles, or about one-third of the 517-square-mile Phoenix metro area. "Importantly, it connects downtown to Arizona State University in Tempe and other East Valley suburbs," adds TechCrunch. From the report: The former Google self-driving project under Alphabet is also adding a second location that accesses the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Riders can already get to the airport by taking a Waymo robotaxi to the 44th Street Phoenix SkyTrain Station, which has frequent round-the-clock trains to the main terminals. Waymo robotaxis will now pick up and drop off passengers at the new 24th Street PHX SkyTrain Station. A larger service area, particularly one that allows for riders to take driverless Waymo vehicles from one suburb to downtown or to the airport, is critical for the company to grow its business and generate more revenue. The expansion will also help the company scale beyond the 10,000 autonomous trips that public riders take each week in Phoenix and San Francisco combined, Waymo Chief Product Officer Saswat Panigrahi said in a media briefing. Panigrahi did not disclose what percentage of those rides were in Phoenix, where it can charge. "We're clearly excited about the trajectory we're going to be on and we believe we can hit 10x of that scale by next summer, roughly," Panigrahi said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to Bloomberg (paywalled), Microsoft is helping finance AMD's expansion into AI chips. Meanwhile, AMD is working with Microsoft to create an in-house chipset, codenamed Athena, for the software giant's data centers. Paul Thurrott reports: Athena is designed as a cost-effective replacement for AI chipsets from Nvidia, which currently dominates this market. And it comes with newfound urgency as Microsoft's ChatGPT-powered Bing chatbot workloads are incredibly expensive using third-party chips. With Microsoft planning to expand its use of AI dramatically this year, it needs a cheaper alternative. Microsoft's secretive hardware efforts also come amid a period of Big Tech layoffs. But the firm's new Microsoft Silicon business, led by former Intel executive Rani Borkar, is growing and now has almost 1,000 employees, several hundred of which are working on Athena. The software giant has invested about $2 billion on this effort so far, Bloomberg says. (And that's above the $11 billion it's invested in ChatGPT maker OpenAI.) Bloomberg also says that Microsoft intends to keep partnering with Nvidia too, and that it will continue buying Nvidia chipsets as needed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple reported stronger-than-anticipated iPhones sales in its second-fiscal quarter earnings report today. "The highlight of Apple's report was iPhone sales, which grew from the year-ago quarter even as the broader smartphone industry contracted nearly 15% during the same time," reports CNBC, citing an IDC estimate. "IPhone revenue grew 2% during the quarter, suggesting that parts shortages and supply chain issues that had hampered the product for the last few years, including an iPhone factory shutdown late last year, had finally abated." From the report: Here's how the company did versus Wall Street expectations per Refinitiv consensus expectations: EPS: $1.52 vs. $1.43 expected Revenue: $94.84 billion vs. $92.96 billion expected Gross margin: 44.3% vs. 44.1% expected Apple reported $24.16 billion in net income during the quarter versus $25.01 billion last year. Overall revenue was down 3% from last year's $97.28 billion in sales. Here's how Apple's individual product lines did versus StreetAccount consensus expectations: iPhone revenue: $51.33 billion vs. $48.84 billion expected Mac revenue: $7.17 billion vs. $7.80 billion expected iPad revenue: $6.67 billion vs. $6.69 billion expected Other Products revenue: $8.76 billion vs. $8.43 billion expected Services revenue: $20.91 billion vs. $20.97 billion expectedRead more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The City of Dallas in Texas has confirmed a ransomware attack has downed key services, including 911 dispatch systems. City officials confirmed on Wednesday that a number of the city's servers had "been compromised with ransomware," causing widespread service outages. The Dallas Police Department (DPD) website is currently offline. The City of Dallas website displays a message stating that "the City is experiencing a service outage and is working to restore services," and the city wrote on a page that contains updates about the incident that all courts were closed on Wednesday and would be closed again on Thursday. DPD spokesperson Melinda Gutierrez confirmed to TechCrunch that the outage has also impacted Computer Aided Dispatch, or "CAD" systems, which are used by dispatchers and 911 operators to prioritize and record incident calls. Local media reported that this has forced 911 call takers to manually write down instructions for responding officers. "There is no effect to 911 calls at this time, and they continue to be dispatched for service," Gutierrez added. "The outage is not affecting police response." Printers on the City of Dallas network reportedly began printing out ransom notes on Wednesday morning. As per a copy the note, the Royal ransomware gang has claimed responsibility for the attack, and a URL included on the note directed to a contact form on Royal's dark web victims site. The note said critical data was encrypted, and threatened to publish it online if a ransom demand is not met. The City of Dallas has not yet been listed on Royal's dark web leak site and it's not yet known what types of data has been stolen. City officials have not responded to TechCrunch's questions. The full impact of the ransomware attack remains unknown. In a statement, the city said it was "actively working to isolate the ransomware to prevent its spread, to remove the ransomware from infected servers, and to restore any services currently impacted. The City is currently working to assess the complete impact, but at this time, the impact on the delivery of City services to its residents is limited."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The EU has been warned that it risks handing control of artificial intelligence to US tech firms if it does not act to protect grassroots research in its forthcoming AI bill. From a report: In an open letter coordinated by the German research group Laion, or Large-scale AI Open Network, the European parliament was told that "one-size-fits-all" rules risked eliminating open research and development. "Rules that require a researcher or developer to monitor or control downstream use could make it impossible to release open-source AI in Europe," which would "entrench large firms" and "hamper efforts to improve transparency, reduce competition, limit academic freedom, and drive investment in AI overseas," the letter says. It adds: "Europe cannot afford to lose AI sovereignty. Eliminating open-source R&D will leave the European scientific community and economy critically dependent on a handful of foreign and proprietary firms for essential AI infrastructure." The largest AI efforts, by companies such as OpenAI and Google, are heavily controlled by their creators. It is impossible to download the model behind ChatGPT, for instance, and the paid-for access that OpenAI provides to customers comes with a number of restrictions, legal and technical, on how it can be used. By contrast, open-source AI efforts involve creating an AI model and then releasing it for anyone to use, improve or adapt as they see fit.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While the systemic brutality used by Colombian police to quell national protests in 2021 was real and is well documented, photos recently used by Amnesty International to highlight the issue were not. The international human rights advocacy group has come under fire for posting images generated by artificial intelligence in order to promote their reports on social media -- and has since removed them. From a report: The images, including one of a woman being dragged away by police officers, depict the scenes during protests that swept across Colombia in 2021. But any more than a momentary glance at the images reveals that something is off. The faces of the protesters and police are smoothed-off and warped, giving the image a dystopian aura. The tricolour carried by the protester has the right colours -- red, yellow and blue -- but in the wrong order, and the police uniform is outdated. Amnesty and other observers have documented hundreds of cases of human rights abuses committed by Colombian police during the wave of unrest in 2021, among them violence, sexual harassment and torture. Their research has raised awareness of the heavy-handedness of Colombian police and contributed to the growing acceptance of the need for reform. But photojournalists and media scholars warned that the use of AI-generated images could undermine Amnesty's own work and feed conspiracy theories.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: We recently covered a study by Secure Data Recovery, an HDD, SSD, and RAID data recovery company, of 2,007 defective hard disk drives it received. It found the average time before failure among those drives to be 2 years and 10 months. That seemed like a short life span, but considering the limited sample size and analysis in Secure Data Recovery's report, there was room for skepticism. Today, Backblaze, a backup and cloud storage company with a reputation for detailed HDD and SSD failure analysis, followed up Secure Data Recovery's report with its own research using a much larger data set. Among the 17,155 failed HDDs Backblaze examined, the average age at which the drives failed was 2 years and 6 months. Backblaze arrived at this age by examining all of its failed drives and their respective power-on hours. The company recorded each drive's failure date, model, serial number, capacity, failure, and SMART raw value. The 17,155 drives examined include 72 different models and does not include failed boot drives, drives that had no SMART raw attribute data, or drives with out-of-bounds data. If Backblaze only looked at drives that it didn't use in its data centers anymore, there would be 3,379 drives across 35 models, and the average age of failure would be a bit longer at 2 years and 7 months. Backblaze said its results thus far "are consistent" with Secure Data Recovery's March findings. This is despite Backblaze currently using HDDs that are older than 2 years and 7 months.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While claiming that "the console is the core of the Xbox brand," Microsoft's head of gaming has reiterated the company needs to focus on the wider gaming market if it's to be successful. From a report: During the Kinda Funny Games Xcast podcast, Spencer was asked if Xbox has taken its eye off the console market by focusing too much on PC. In response, Spencer said Microsoft would be wrong to think that just building great console titles could help it overtake Sony and Nintendo in terms of hardware sales. Instead, it has chosen to pursue a different strategy to the Japanese companies, one focused on fulfilling developers' vision of enabling customers to play their games on any screen. "We're not in the business of out-consoling Sony or out-consoling Nintendo," Spencer said. "There isn't really a great solution or win for us. And I know that will upset a ton of people, but it's just the truth of the matter that when you're third place in the console marketplace and the top two players are as strong as they are, and have in certain cases a very, very discrete focus on doing deals and other things that kind of make being Xbox hard for us as a team, [and] that's on us, not on anybody else." He added: "I see commentary that if you just built great games everything would turn around. It's just not true that if we go off and build great games then all of a sudden you're going to see console share shift in some dramatic way. We lost the worst generation to lose in the Xbox One generation where everybody built their digital library of games. So, when you go and you're building on Xbox, we want our Xbox community to feel awesome, but this idea that if we just focused more on great games on our console that somehow we're going to win the console race, I think doesn't really lay into the reality of most people." Spencer claimed that 90% of the people who buy a console every year already own a PlayStation, Nintendo or Xbox console, and their digital game library lives on that ecosystem.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has offered to charge different prices for its Office product with and without its Teams app to stave off a possible EU antitrust investigation and fine, two people familiar with the matter said. From a report: Microsoft has been seeking to address the EU competition enforcer's concerns since last year after Salesforce-owned workspace messaging app Slack complained to the European Commission, other people familiar with the matter told Reuters in December. Slack in 2020 alleged that Microsoft has unfairly integrated its workplace chat and video app Teams into its Office product. The U.S. tech giant introduced Teams in 2017 targeting the fast-growing and lucrative workplace collaboration market. The European Commission on Thursday said there were other complainants besides Slack.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For years Google published scientific research that helped jump-start its competitors. But now it's lurched into defensive mode. From a report: In February, Jeff Dean, Google's longtime head of artificial intelligence, announced a stunning policy shift to his staff: They had to hold off sharing their work with the outside world. For years Dean had run his department like a university, encouraging researchers to publish academic papers prolifically; they pushed out nearly 500 studies since 2019, according to Google Research's website. But the launch of OpenAI's groundbreaking ChatGPT three months earlier had changed things. The San Francisco start-up kept up with Google by reading the team's scientific papers, Dean said at the quarterly meeting for the company's research division. Indeed, transformers -- a foundational part of the latest AI tech and the T in ChatGPT -- originated in a Google study. Things had to change. Google would take advantage of its own AI discoveries, sharing papers only after the lab work had been turned into products, Dean said, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private information. The policy change is part of a larger shift inside Google. Long considered the leader in AI, the tech giant has lurched into defensive mode -- first to fend off a fleet of nimble AI competitors, and now to protect its core search business, stock price, and, potentially, its future, which executives have said is intertwined with AI. In op-eds, podcasts and TV appearances, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has urged caution on AI. "On a societal scale, it can cause a lot of harm," he warned on "60 Minutes" in April, describing how the technology could supercharge the creation of fake images and videos. But in recent months, Google has overhauled its AI operations with the goal of launching products quickly, according to interviews with 11 current and former Google employees, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private information.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The rumors are true: next week, Google will introduce its first foldable phone, the Pixel Fold, during the Google I/O 2023 event. From a report: Google hasn't revealed any specs for the device, but a brief teaser video shows off a full-size outer display on a phone that opens up similarly to Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold devices. The camera bar on the back is similar to other Pixel devices but doesn't stick out as prominently, reflecting what we've seen in leaked marketing materials and even a hands-on video. CNBC reported in April that the Pixel Fold would be a 5.8-inch phone that folds out into a 7.6-inch tablet, with a Google Tensor G2 processor, weigh 10oz, and have "the most durable hinge on a foldable," along with a price that's over $1,700. Samsung's latest foldable, the Z Fold 4, launched with a price of $1,799. We had expected to see it last year, but the Fold didn't make the cut for I/O in 2022. Rumors about its launch -- and how it fits in with Google's XL plans for Android apps that work across screens of various sizes -- haven't slowed down in the year since.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Shopify said on Thursday it would lay off 20% of employees and would sell its logistics business to Flexport, as the e-commerce company pushes to cut costs further and refocus on its core business. From a report: Shopify's first quarter revenue increased 25% from the same period last year to $1.5 billion, topping the company's own guidance for revenue growth in the high-teen percentages. Executives said on Thursday they expected revenue for the second quarter to grow at a similar rate to the first quarter. It reported free cash flow of $86 million, after burning cash in the year-earlier period, and projected free cash flow profitability for the rest of the year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dallas is experiencing IT and police communication outages following a ransomware attack on municipal systems. From a report: City officials said in a statement Wednesday that hackers had compromised "a number of servers" and that they were working with vendors to try to control the spread of malware. With a ransomware attack, hackers lock up victims' data or knock services offline, then demand an extortion payment. "We have been having a system shutdown for the past two days now," a Dallas 311 operator told Bloomberg News. "We are very limited in what we are able to access internally right now." The Dallas police department's website was inaccessible when Bloomberg News tried to visit the page Thursday. The hack also affected the police dispatch system and resulted in the closure of local courts on Wednesday, TechCrunch reported. "We appreciate your patience during this time," the city website stated. The "Royal" ransomware gang claimed responsibility for the attack. The group sent city officials a note that included a link to communicate with the hackers and discuss a payment, however the size of the ransom demand was not immediately clear.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sal Khan, founder and CEO of online learning nonprofit Khan Academy, wants to turn GPT into a tutor. From a report: Khan Academy is testing a carefully managed version of OpenAI's GPT that can help guide students in their studies, not enable them to cheat. A pilot is currently running with a handful of schools and districts to test the software, and Khan hopes to open a wider beta this summer. "I strive to be at the cutting edge of how AI, especially large language models, can be integrated to actually solve real problems in education," Khan says. Many students are already using ChatGPT and other generative AI tools to assist with their homework -- sometimes against their teachers' wishes. Khan Academy's approach stands out because it's designed to answer students' questions without giving away the answers, and to integrate with the organization's existing videos and exercises. In a demonstration for Fast Company, Khan showed how the chatbot, dubbed Khanmigo, can guide students through math problems, help debug code, serve as a debate partner, and even engage in conversation in the voices of literary characters like Hamlet and Jay Gatsby. The project began last June, when Khan received an introductory email from Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, OpenAI's CEO and president, respectively. The two offered a private demo of the AI software, and Khan was impressed with the program's ability to answer questions intelligently about various academic materials.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Discord is making "big changes" to how identities work on the platform, a move that will force you to change your username. From a report: Up until now, the company has appended four-digit tags to identities as a way to distinguish people with the same username. However, the new system will give everyone a unique username, much like Twitter, Instagram and other services. "The whole point of these changes is that we want to make it a lot easier for you and all the new users coming to Discord to connect and hang out with friends," co-founder Stanislav Vishnevskiy wrote in a blog post. "We know that your username and identity are important, and we understand that some of you may not like this change and disagree with it." The original aim with the four-digit tags was to allow you to choose any username you wanted, but it has now become "technical debt," according to Discord. The company said that the usernames are "too complicated or obscure" for people to remember.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is making its Bing GPT-4 chatbot available to everyone today, no more waitlist necessary. From a report: All you need to do is sign in to the new Bing or Edge with your Microsoft account, and you'll now access the open preview version that's powered by GPT-4. Microsoft is also massively upgrading Bing Chat with lots of new features and even plug-in support. Microsoft is now adding more smart features to Bing Chat, including image and video results, new Bing and Edge Actions feature, persistent chat and history, and plug-in support. The plug-in support will be the key addition for developers and for the future of Bing Chat.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The White House on Thursday announced its first new initiatives aimed at taming the risks of artificial intelligence since a boom in A.I.-powered chatbots has prompted growing calls to regulate the technology. From a report: The National Science Foundation plans to spend $140 million on new research centers devoted to A.I., White House officials said. The administration also pledged to release draft guidelines for government agencies to ensure that their use of A.I. safeguards "the American people's rights and safety," adding that several A.I. companies had agreed to make their products available for scrutiny in August at a cybersecurity conference. The announcements came hours before Vice President Kamala Harris and other administration officials were scheduled to meet with the chief executives of Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, the maker of the popular ChatGPT chatbot, and Anthropic, an A.I. start-up, to discuss the technology. A senior administration official said on Wednesday that the White House planned to impress upon the companies that they had a responsibility to address the risks of new A.I. developments.The White House has been under growing pressure to police A.I. that is capable of crafting sophisticated prose and lifelike images. The explosion of interest in the technology began last year when OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public and people immediately began using it to search for information, do schoolwork and assist them with their job. Since then, some of the biggest tech companies have rushed to incorporate chatbots into their products and accelerated A.I. research, while venture capitalists have poured money into A.I. start-ups.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Back in 2017, Brynjolfsson published a paper (PDF) in one of the top academic journals, Science, which outlined the kind of work that he believed AI was capable of doing. It was called "What Can Machine Learning Do? Workforce Implications." Now, Brynjolfsson says, "I have to update that paper dramatically given what's happened in the past year or two." Sure, the current pace of change can feel dizzying and kinda scary. But Brynjolfsson is not catastrophizing. In fact, quite the opposite. He's earned a reputation as a "techno-optimist." And, recently at least, he has a real reason to be optimistic about what AI could mean for the economy. Last week, Brynjolfsson, together with MIT economists Danielle Li and Lindsey R. Raymond, released what is, to the best of our knowledge, the first empirical study of the real-world economic effects of new AI systems. They looked at what happened to a company and its workers after it incorporated a version of ChatGPT, a popular interactive AI chatbot, into workflows. What the economists found offers potentially great news for the economy, at least in one dimension that is crucial to improving our living standards: AI caused a group of workers to become much more productive. Backed by AI, these workers were able to accomplish much more in less time, with greater customer satisfaction to boot. At the same time, however, the study also shines a spotlight on just how powerful AI is, how disruptive it might be, and suggests that this new, astonishing technology could have economic effects that change the shape of income inequality going forward. Brynjolfsson and his colleagues described how an undisclosed Fortune 500 company implemented an earlier version of OpenAI's ChatGPT to assist its customer support agents in troubleshooting technical issues through online chat windows. The AI chatbot, trained on previous conversations between agents and customers, improved the performance of less experienced agents, making them as effective as those with more experience. The use of AI led to an, on average, 14% increase in productivity, higher customer satisfaction ratings, and reduced turnover rates. However, the study also revealed that more experienced agents did not experience significant benefits from using AI. The findings suggest that AI has the potential to improve productivity and reduce inequality by benefiting workers who were previously left behind in the technological era. Nonetheless, it raises questions about how the benefits of AI should be distributed and whether it may devalue specialized skills in certain occupations. While the impact of AI is still being studied, its ability to handle non-routine tasks and learn on the fly indicates that it could have different effects on the job market compared to previous technologies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said he's not forcing any of the company's remote workers to come into the office just yet, but warns those who don't "would be hard-pressed to get promoted, especially into managerial roles," reports Bloomberg. From the report: "Being a people manager when you're remote is just tough because if you're managing people, you need to be able to see them once in a while," he said in an interview Monday in New York. "It doesn't need to be every minute. You don't need to function under those old 'Everybody's under my eye' kind of rules, but at least sometimes." "It seems to me that we work better when we are together in person," said Krishna, who described the company's return-to-office policy as "we encourage you to come in, we expect you to come in, we want you to come in." Three days a week is the number they encourage, he said. While about 80% of IBM's employees work from home at least some of the time, Krishna said remote arrangements are best suited for specific "individual contributor" roles like customer service or software programmers. "In the short term you probably can be equally productive, but your career does suffer," he said. "Moving from there to another role is probably less likely because nobody's observing them in another context. It will be tougher. Not impossible, but probably a lot tougher." Krishna, who became CEO right after the pandemic hit in April 2020, said people make a choice to work remotely, but it need not be "a forever choice -- it could be a choice based on convenience or circumstance." Remote workers, he said, don't learn how to do things like deal with a difficult client, or how to make trade-offs when designing a new product. "I don't understand how to do all that remotely," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a policy reversal, Starlink no longer plans to charge data overage fees to standard residential users who exceed 1TB of monthly usage. Ars Technica reports: When SpaceX's Starlink division first announced the data cap in November 2022, it said that residential customers would get 1TB of "priority access data" each month. After using 1TB, customers could keep accessing the Internet at slower (but unspecified) speeds or pay $0.25 per gigabyte for "additional priority access." This was originally supposed to take effect in December, but Starlink delayed the change to February and then to April. But now, Starlink's list of support FAQs no longer mentions the residential data cap and the current version of the fair use policy says that standard service plan users have unlimited data. The previous version of the Starlink fair use policy described the 1TB residential cap and optional $0.25-per-gigabyte overage fees. Starlink sent an email to users that said, "Good news! Your Starlink subscription will remain unlimited and will no longer be deprioritized after 1TB of data use." Nathan Owens, a Netflix engineer who frequently tweets about Starlink, posted a screenshot of the email yesterday.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Fast-rising fungal attacks on the world's most important crops threaten the planet's future food supply, scientists have said, warning that failing to tackle fungal pathogens could lead to a "global health catastrophe." Fungi are already by far the biggest destroyer of crops. They are highly resilient, travel long distances on the wind and can feast on large fields of a single crop. They are also extremely adaptable and many have developed resistance to common fungicides. The impact of fungal disease is expected to worsen, the researchers say, as the climate crisis results in temperatures rising and fungal infections moving steadily polewards. Since the 1990s, fungal pathogens have been moving to higher latitudes at a rate of about 7km a year. Wheat stem rust infections, normally found in the tropics, have already been reported in England and Ireland. Higher temperatures also drive the emergence of new variants of the fungal pathogens, while more extreme storms can spread their spores further afield, the scientists say. The scientists said there was also a risk that global heating would increase the heat tolerance of fungi, raising the possibility of them hopping hosts to infect warm-blooded animals and humans. The warning, issued in an article in the scientific journal Nature, said growers already lost between 10% and 23% of their crops to fungal disease. Across the five most important crops -- rice, wheat, maize, soya beans and potatoes -- infections cause annual losses that could feed hundreds of millions of people. Fungi made up the top six in a recent list of pests and pathogens with the biggest impact. Fungi are incredibly resilient, the researchers say, remaining viable in soil for up to 40 years, and their airborne spores can travel between continents. Fungicides are widely used but the pathogens are well equipped to rapidly evolve resistance to treatments that target only a single cellular process. Existing fungicides and conventional breeding for disease resistance are no longer enough, the researchers say. One solution is planting seed mixtures that carry a range of genes that are resistant to fungal infection, rather than monocultures of a single strain. In 2022, about a quarter of wheat in Denmark was grown in this way. Technology may also help, the scientists say, with drones and artificial intelligence allowing earlier detection and control of outbreaks. New pesticides are being developed, with a team at the University of Exeter recently discovering compounds that could lead to chemicals that target several biological processes within the fungi, making resistance much harder to develop. The approach has already been shown to be useful against fungi infecting wheat, rice, corn and bananas. "While that storyline is science fiction, we are warning that we could see a global health catastrophe caused by the rapid global spread of fungal infections," said Sarah Gurr, professor at the University of Exeter and co-author of the report. "The imminent threat here is not about zombies, but about global starvation."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Montana Governor Greg Gianforte has returned an "amendatory veto" to the legislature regarding the state's unconstitutional "ban TikTok" bill, proposing alternative draft language that inadvertently could ban all social media platforms in the state due to poor drafting. The revised language targets any social media application that collects personal information and provides it to a foreign adversary, but since most social media networks collect such information and share it with entities in foreign countries, it would effectively ban all social media in Montana. Techdirt reports: As [1st Amendment lawyer Ari Cohn] points out, the new draft targets any "social media application" that allows for "the collection of personal information or data" and allows for "the personal information or data to be provided to a foreign adversary or a person or entity located within a country designated as a foreign adversary." Now, some might think that sounds reasonable, but the details here matter. And the details reveal that EVERY social media network collects such information and provides it to people located in countries designated as a foreign adversary. And that's because "personal information" is a very broad term, as is "provided." [Ari writes:] "'Surely,' you might think, 'that just covers the data platforms amass by monitoring and tracking us, right?' Perhaps not. The bill doesn't define the term, so who knows what it means in their heads. But we have an idea of what it means out in the real (online) world, by way of the regulations implementing the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Those regulations include in the definition of 'personal information' things like: First and last name; Online contact information; A screen or user name where it functions in the same manner as online contact information. In other words, the types of information that accompany virtually every piece of content posted on social media. If a platform allows that kind of information to be provided to any foreign adversary or a person or entity located within a foreign adversary, it is banned from Montana. Do you know who might be persons located within a country designated as a foreign adversary? Users. Users who are provided the kinds of 'personal information' that are inherent in the very concept of social media. So, effectively, the bill would ban any social media company that allows any user in China, Russia, Iran, or Cuba to see content from a Montana user (and this is a generous reading, nothing in the bill seems to require that the data/information shared be from a Montana resident). On top of it, each time a user from one of those countries accesses content, platforms would be subject to a $10,000 fine. Do you know which platforms allow people in those countries to access content posted in the United States? All of them. Congratulations, Montana Governor Greg Gianforte. You just managed to accidentally ban all social media for Montanans. Good work."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Export controls imposed by the U.S. on microchips, aiming to hinder China's technological advancements, have had minimal effects on the country's tech sector. While the restrictions have slowed down variants of Nvidia's chips for the Chinese market, it has not halted China's progress in areas like AI, as the reduced performance is still an improvement for Chinese firms, and researchers are finding ways to overcome the limitations. Reuters reports: Nvidia has created variants of its chips for the Chinese market that are slowed down to meet U.S. rules. Industry experts told Reuters the newest one - the Nvidia H800, announced in March - will likely take 10% to 30% longer to carry out some AI tasks and could double some costs compared with Nvidia's fastest U.S. chips. Even the slowed Nvidia chips represent an improvement for Chinese firms. Tencent Holdings, one of China's largest tech companies, in April estimated that systems using Nvidia's H800 will cut the time it takes to train its largest AI system by more than half, from 11 days to four days. "The AI companies that we talk to seem to see the handicap as relatively small and manageable," said Charlie Chai, a Shanghai-based analyst with 86Research. Part of the U.S. strategy in setting the rules was to avoid such a shock that the Chinese would ditch U.S. chips altogether and redouble their own chip-development efforts. "They had to draw the line somewhere, and wherever they drew it, they were going to run into the challenge of how to not be immediately disruptive, but how to also over time degrade China's capability," said one chip industry executive who requested anonymity to talk about private discussions with regulators. The export restrictions have two parts. The first puts a ceiling on a chip's ability to calculate extremely precise numbers, a measure designed to limit supercomputers that can be used in military research. Chip industry sources said that was an effective action. But calculating extremely precise numbers is less relevant in AI work like large language models where the amount of data the chip can chew through is more important. [...] The second U.S. limit is on chip-to-chip transfer speeds, which does affect AI. The models behind technologies such as ChatGPT are too large to fit onto a single chip. Instead, they must be spread over many chips - often thousands at a time -- which all need to communicate with one another. Nvidia has not disclosed the China-only H800 chip's performance details, but a specification sheet seen by Reuters shows a chip-to-chip speed of 400 gigabytes per second, less than half the peak speed of 900 gigabytes per second for Nvidia's flagship H100 chip available outside China. Some in the AI industry believe that is still plenty of speed. Naveen Rao, chief executive of a startup called MosaicML that specializes in helping AI models to run better on limited hardware, estimated a 10-30% system slowdown. "There are ways to get around all this algorithmically," he said. "I don't see this being a boundary for a very long time -- like 10 years." Moreover, AI researchers are trying to slim down the massive systems they have built to cut the cost of training products similar to ChatGPT and other processes. Those will require fewer chips, reducing chip-to-chip communications and lessening the impact of the U.S. speed limits.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to DigiTimes, TSMC will charge an extra 30% more for chips made in American than for chips made in Taiwan. Tom's Hardware reports: TSMC has started discussions with customers about orders and pricing for both overseas plants, which are set to begin commercial production in late 2024. Industry insiders believe that prices of chips produced on TSMC's N4 and N5 process technologies in the U.S. will be 20% -- 30% higher than those in Taiwan, while older process chips produced in Japan's Kumamoto facility on N28/N22 as well as N16/N12 nodes may cost 10% - 15% more than similar chips fabbed in Taiwan. While American chip designers certainly won't appreciate higher costs on chip production in the U.S., it is likely that they will make chips aimed at government and less price-sensitive applications in Arizona. Therefore, they should be able to pass those extra costs on to their customers without risking their competitive positions. Given the high construction and operational costs of fabs in Japan and the U.S., TSMC is going to pass those extra expenses on to customers to maintain its gross margin target of 53%.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Growth at $50 billion fintech Stripe has been slowing this year, but one of its key strategies to reverse that course got a decent push today: Stripe is announcing that it has inked a "strategic payments partnership" with Uber. The pair will work together initially on selected services in eight of Uber's biggest markets, including the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Mexico, Australia and Japan. Some context on this deal: Uber's big U.S. rival Lyft has been a longtime marquee customer of Stripe's for payments, and whether or not it was true, that was one reason some assumed Uber and Stripe would not work together. Uber is, however, a much bigger beast, at close to $100 billion transacted annually (Stripe processed $817 billion last year). And Uber is not just a force globally but in the U.S. specifically, where one estimate from YipIt (via WSJ) puts Uber's rideshare market share currently at a whopping 74%. Lyft will remain a customer of Stripe's, Stripe president Will Gaybrick confirmed to TechCrunch. Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but as with the rest of Stripe's payments business, a big component will come from commissions that Stripe will make from each transaction that it powers on Uber's platform. The Uber partnership, expected to be announced formally later today at Stripe's user conference, comes on the heels of recent enterprise deals Stripe has inked with Amazon, Microsoft and BMW. But this partnership -- for now at least -- is not a global adoption of all that Stripe has to offer. Uber will be using Stripe to break into a specific, new payments frontier. Specifically, it will integrate Stripe Financial Connections and Link to let users import banking details to pay for services like Uber Rides and Eats directly from bank accounts, giving users a payments alternative to credit or debit cards.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is giving verified senders a blue check mark to more clearly "help users identify messages from legitimate senders versus impersonators." 9to5Google reports: The existing system is based on the Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) standard, where brand logos appear in the "avatar slot" next to the sender's name and address. For example, instead of a generic "B" against a plain background, Bank of America can show its official flag logo. It's based on strong authentication with DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) and logo verification "with a VMC, issued by a Certification Authority such as Entrust or DigiCert." Google is now making the feature much more explicit by adding a "checkmark icon for senders that have adopted BIMI" to more clearly "help users identify messages from legitimate senders versus impersonators." The company has shared what this will look like on desktop web. The timing of this launch is somewhat amusing, given the rest of the tech landscape. The icon is a blue seal with a white checkmark in the middle, with users able to hover over it on the web. For example, Google's will say: "This sender of this email has verified that they own google.com and the logo in the profile image. Learn more." The feature is rolling out today and will be available over the coming days and weeks. It'll be available to all Google Workspace customers, legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers, and users with personal Google Accounts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The FTC is proposing to prevent Meta from monetizing children's data due to alleged violations of a 2020 privacy order. CNBC reports: According to the FTC, an independent assessor found "several gaps and weaknesses in Facebook's privacy program" that posed "substantial risks to the public." The company had agreed to independent assessments of its updated privacy program as part of the 2020 settlement, under which Facebook paid a $5 billion civil penalty following an FTC investigation around the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. The FTC alleges Facebook also violated an earlier 2012 order by continuing to allow app developers access to private user information. Facebook allowed third-party apps to access user data until mid-2020 in some cases, the FTC alleges. The FTC is also accusing Meta of violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule by misrepresenting parental controls on its Messenger Kids app. The COPPA Rule requires parental consent for websites to collect personal information from kids under 13. The FTC alleged that while the company marketed that the app would only allow kids to talk with contacts their parents approved, children were able to communicate with additional contacts in group chats or group video calls in some circumstances. As a result, the FTC is proposing to strengthen the terms of the 2020 agreement to put additional restrictions on the company, which would apply to all of Meta's services including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus. The proposed terms include a blanket ban on monetizing data from users under 18. That means any data collected from these users could only be used for security reasons and any data collected while users are under age could not be later monetized once they turn 18. The FTC also seeks to impose a pause on the company's ability to launch new or modified products or services until the independent assessor confirms in writing that Meta's privacy program is in full compliance with the terms of the agreement. Compliance with the 2020 order would also extend to any companies Meta acquires or merges with. The proposal would also require Meta to get affirmative consent from users for future use of facial recognition technology. Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone called the FTC's move a "political stunt." He said in a statement: "Despite three years of continual engagement with the FTC around our agreement, they provided no opportunity to discuss this new, totally unprecedented theory. We have spent vast resources building and implementing an industry-leading privacy program under the terms of our FTC agreement. We will vigorously fight this action and expect to prevail."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A Finnish newspaper is circumventing Russian media restrictions by hiding news reports about the war in Ukraine in an online game popular among Russian gamers. "While Helsingin Sanomat and other foreign independent media are blocked in Russia, online games have not been banned so far," said Antero Mukka, the editor-in-chief of Helsingin Sanomat. The newspaper was bypassing Russia's censorship through the first-person shooter game Counter-Strike, where gamers battle against each other as terrorists and counter-terrorists in timed matches. While the majority of matches are played on about a dozen official levels or maps released by the publisher Valve, players can also create custom maps that anyone can download and use. The newspaper's initiative was unveiled on World Press Freedom Day on Wednesday. "To underline press freedom, [in the game] we have now built a Slavic city, called Voyna, meaning war in Russian," Mukka said. In the basement of one of the apartment buildings that make up the Soviet-inspired cityscape, Helsingin Sanomat hid a room where players can find Russian-language reporting by the newspaper's war correspondents in Ukraine. "In the room, you will find our documentation of what the reality of the war in Ukraine is," Mukka said. The walls of the digital room, lit up by red lights, are plastered with news articles and pictures reporting on events such as the massacres in the Ukrainian towns of Bucha and Irpin. On one of the walls, players can find a map of Ukraine that details reported attacks on the civilian population, while a Russian-language recording reading Helsingin Sanomat articles aloud plays in the background. This was "information that is not available from Russian state propaganda sources", Mukka said. The map has been downloaded more than 2,000 times since its release on Monday. According to Mukka, an estimated 4 million Russians have played Counter-Strike.Read more of this story at Slashdot.