Slashdot

Silicon Valley had $74.9 billion in venture-capital investments just in 2022, reports the Washington Post (citing data from PitchBook). With 3,206 deals, "that's about $45.36 billion and 1,058 deals more than New York, the second highest region for VC fundraising." And in addition, the Silicon Valley region "was also the home of 86% of start-ups, up from 53% last year, funded by famed start-up accelerator Y Combinator." And yet Silicon Valley's share of U.S. venture capital investments last year was its lowest since 2012, "as lenient remote work policies and a spate of layoffs have fueled the departures of workers and cleared the way for rising investment in other tech hubs across the United States, notably Austin and Miami.... [N]early 250,000 people left the Silicon Valley region during the pandemic, according to census data from April 1, 2020, to July 1, 2022."Funding for companies in Miami has nearly quadrupled in the past three years, totaling $5.39 billion in 2022, while deal volume jumped 81 percent. Austin venture capital investments rose 77 percent to $4.95 billion with the number of deals jumping 23 percent. New York, Seattle, Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver and Houston also saw relatively large increases in investment and deals, data shows.... "There's no doubt that [Silicon Valley's] sort of exemplary, center-of-the-universe status has really absorbed some blows," said Mark Muro, senior fellow at Brookings Institution. Miami and Austin both benefited from fewer restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic. Early on, cryptocurrency and Web3 — a broad term for the next generation of the internet that would give people more control and ownership — were major drivers of Miami's growth. Seattle benefited from having Amazon and Microsoft in its backyard, attracting more enterprise technology and also biotech, said Kyle Stanford, lead venture capital analyst at PitchBook. "A redistribution [of funding] has definitely started. The pandemic, the fleeing of start-ups and remote work helped catalyze growth in those smaller markets," he said. Brianne Kimmel, founder of investment firm Worklife Ventures, has noticed a change in identity for the Silicon Valley region as many tech workers have moved out of San Francisco to other places like Austin or Seattle. "That's really created room for young, very technical, traditional hacker types to come to San Francisco," she said. "It's giving the city a personality it may have lost in years prior." The Post got this assessment from a VC company partner focused on investing in AI and software infrastructure. "Five years ago, 90 percent of companies would've been founded in San Francisco. Now it might be more like 70 percent, with others starting in places like Seattle and New York."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The fact remains that Google Chrome is the arbiter of web standards," argues FSF campaigns manager Greg Farough (while adding that Firefox, "through ethical distributions like GNU IceCat and Abrowser, can weaken that stranglehold.") "Google's deprecation of the JPEG-XL image format in February in favor of its own patented AVIF format might not end the web in the grand scheme of things, but it does highlight, once again, the disturbing amount of control it has over the platform generally."Part of Google's official rationale for the deprecation is the following line: "There is not enough interest from the entire ecosystem to continue experimenting with JPEG-XL." Putting aside the problematic aspects of the term "ecosystem," let us remark that it's easy to gauge the response of the "entire ecosystem" when you yourself are by far the largest and most dangerous predator in said "ecosystem." In relation to Google's overwhelming power, the average web user might as well be a microbe. In supposedly gauging what the "ecosystem" wants, all Google is really doing is asking itself what Google wants... While we can't link to Google's issue tracker directly because of another freedom issue — its use of nonfree JavaScript — we're told that the issue regarding JPEG-XL's removal is the second-most "starred" issue in the history of the Chromium project, the nominally free basis for the Google Chrome browser. Chromium users came out of the woodwork to plead with Google not to make this decision. It made it anyway, not bothering to respond to users' concerns. We're not sure what metric it's using to gauge the interest of the "entire ecosystem," but it seems users have given JPEG-XL a strong show of support. In turn, what users will be given is yet another facet of the web that Google itself controls: the AVIF format. As the response to JPEG-XL's deprecation has shown, our rallying together and telling Google we want something isn't liable to get it to change its mind. It will keep on wanting what it wants: control; we'll keep on wanting what we want: freedom. Only, the situation isn't hopeless. At the present moment, not even Google can stop us from creating the web communities that we want to see: pages that don't run huge chunks of malicious, nonfree code on our computers. We have the power to choose what we run or do not run in our browsers. Browsers like GNU IceCat (and extensions like LibreJS and JShelter> ) help with that. Google also can't prevent us from exploring networks beyond the web like Gemini. What our community can do is rally support behind those free browsers that choose to support JPEG-XL and similar formats, letting the big G know that even if we're smaller than it, we won't be bossed around.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon is making its AI-powered coding assistant CodeWhisperer free for individual developers, reports the Verge, "undercutting the $10 per month pricing of its Microsoft-made rival."Amazon launched CodeWhisperer as a preview last year, which developers can use within various integrated development environments (IDEs), like Visual Studio Code, to generate lines of code based on a text-based prompt.... CodeWhisperer automatically filters out any code suggestions that are potentially biased or unfair and flags any code that's similar to open-source training data. It also comes with security scanning features that can identify vulnerabilities within a developer's code, while providing suggestions to help close any security gaps it uncovers. CodeWhisperer now supports several languages, including Python, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, and C#, including Go, Rust, PHP, Ruby, Kotlin, C, C++, Shell scripting, SQL, and Scala. Here's how Amazon's senior developer advocate pitched the usefulness of their "real-time AI coding companion":Helping to keep developers in their flow is increasingly important as, facing increasing time pressure to get their work done, developers are often forced to break that flow to turn to an internet search, sites such as StackOverflow, or their colleagues for help in completing tasks. While this can help them obtain the starter code they need, it's disruptive as they've had to leave their IDE environment to search or ask questions in a forum or find and ask a colleague — further adding to the disruption. Instead, CodeWhisperer meets developers where they are most productive, providing recommendations in real time as they write code or comments in their IDE. During the preview we ran a productivity challenge, and participants who used CodeWhisperer were 27% more likely to complete tasks successfully and did so an average of 57% faster than those who didn't use CodeWhisperer.... It provides additional data for suggestions — for example, the repository URL and license — when code similar to training data is generated, helping lower the risk of using the code and enabling developers to reuse it with confidence.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Germany's final three nuclear power plants close their doors on Saturday," reports CNN, "marking the end of the country's nuclear era that has spanned more than six decades...."[D]espite last-minute calls to keep the plants online amid an energy crisis, the German government has been steadfast. "The position of the German government is clear: nuclear power is not green. Nor is it sustainable," Steffi Lemke, Germany's Federal Minister for the Environment and Consumer Protection and a Green Party member, told CNN."We are embarking on a new era of energy production," she said. The closure of the three plants — Emsland, Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim — represents the culmination of a plan set in motion more than 20 years ago. But its roots are even older. In the 1970s, a strong anti-nuclear movement in Germany emerged. Disparate groups came together to protest new power plants, concerned about the risks posed by the technology and, for some, the link to nuclear weapons. The movement gave birth to the Green Party, which is now part of the governing coalition... For critics of Germany's policy, however, it's irrational to turn off a low-carbon source of energy as the impacts of the climate crisis intensify. "We need to keep existing, safe nuclear reactors operating while simultaneously ramping up renewables as fast as possible," Leah Stokes, a professor of climate and energy policy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told CNN. The big risk, she said, is that fossil fuels fill the energy gap left by nuclear. Reductions in Germany's nuclear energy since Fukushima have been primarily offset by increases in coal, according to research published last year. Germany plans to replace the roughly 6% of electricity generated by the three nuclear plants with renewables, but also gas and coal.... Now Germany must work out what do with the deadly, high-level radioactive waste, which can remain dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. CNN also notes how other countries approach nuclear power:Denmark passed a resolution in the 1980s not to construct nuclear power plantsFinland began test production from a new nuclear plant last yearSwitzerland voted in 2017 to phase out nuclear powerFrance, which gets about 70% of its power from nuclear, is planning six new reactors.Italy closed its last reactors in 1990Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CIO magazine reports on "a growing number of managers and executives dropping degree requirements from job descriptions."Figures from the 2022 study The Emerging Degree Reset from The Burning Glass Institute quantify the trend, reporting that 46% of middle-skill and 31% of high-skill occupations experienced material degree resets between 2017 and 2019. Moreover, researchers calculated that 63% of those changes appear to be "'structural resets' representing a measured and potentially permanent shift in hiring practices" that could make an additional 1.4 million jobs open to workers without college degrees over the next five years. Despite such statistics and testimony from Taylor and other IT leaders, the debate around whether a college education is needed in IT isn't settled. Some say there's no need for degrees; others say degrees are still preferred or required.... IBM is among the companies whose leaders have moved away from degree requirements; Big Blue is also one of the earliest, largest, and most prominent proponents of the move, introducing the term "new collar jobs" for the growing number of positions that require specific skills but not a bachelor's degree.... Not all are convinced that dropping degree requirements is the way to go, however. Jane Zhu, CIO and senior vice president at Veritas Technologies, says she sees value in degrees, value that isn't always replicated through other channels. "Though we don't necessarily require degrees for all IT roles here at Veritas, I believe that they do help candidates demonstrate a level of formal education and commitment to the field and provide a foundation in fundamental concepts and theories of IT-related fields that may not be easily gained through self-study or on-the-job training," she says. "Through college education, candidates have usually acquired basic technical knowledge, problem-solving skills, the ability to collaborate with others, and ownership and accountability. They also often gain an understanding of the business and social impacts of their actions." The article notes an evolving trend of "more openness to skills-based hiring for many technical roles but a desire for a bachelor's degree for certain positions, including leadership." (Kelli Jordan, vice president of IBMer Growth and Development tells CIO that more than half of the job openings posted by IBM no longer require degrees.) Thanks to Slashdot reader snydeq for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Several government cybersecurity agencies united to urge secure-by-design and secure-by-default software. Releasing "joint guidance" for software manufactuers were two U.S. security agencies — the FBI and the NSA — joined with the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the cybersecurity authorities of Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, and New Zealand. "To create a future where technology and associated products are safe for customers," they wrote in a joint statement, "the authoring agencies urge manufacturers to revamp their design and development programs to permit only secure-by-design and -default products to be shipped to customers." The Washington Post reports:Software manufacturers should put an end to default passwords, write in safer programming languages and establish vulnerability disclosure programs for reporting flaws, a collection of U.S. and international government agencies said in new guidelines Thursday. [The guidelines also urge rigorous code reviews.] The "principles and approaches" document, which isn't mandatory but lays out the agencies' views on securing software, is the first major step by the Biden administration as part of its push to make software products secure as part of the design process, and to make their default settings secure as well. It's part of a potentially contentious multiyear effort that aims to shift the way software makers secure their products. It was a key feature of the administration's national cybersecurity strategy, which was released last month and emphasized shifting the burden of security from consumers — who have to manage frequent software updates — to the companies that make often insecure products... The administration has also raised the prospect of legislation on secure-by-design and secure-by-default, but officials have said it could be years away.... The [international affairs think tank] Atlantic Council's Cyber Statecraft Initiative has praised the Biden administration's desire to address economic incentives for insecurity. Right now, the costs of cyberattacks fall on users more than they do tech providers, according to many policymakers. "They're on a righteous mission," Trey Herr, director of the Atlantic Council initiative, told me. If today's guidelines are the beginning of the discussion on secure-by-design and secure-by-default, Herr said, "this is a really strong start, and an important one." "It really takes aim at security features as a profit center," which for some companies has led to a lot of financial growth, Herr said. "I do think that's going to rub people the wrong way and quick, but that's good. That's a good fight." In the statement CISA's director says consumers also have a role to play in this transition. "As software now powers the critical systems and services we collectively rely upon every day, consumers must demand that manufacturers prioritize product safety above all else." Among other things, the new guidelines say that manufacturers "are encouraged make hard tradeoffs and investments, including those that will be 'invisible' to the customers, such as migrating to programming languages that eliminate widespread vulnerabilities."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Two years have passed since the Perseverance rover landed on Mars, carrying with it the Ingenuity helicopter," notes Slashdot reader quonset. "Created from off-the-shelf components, the helicopter was only designed to last about five flights. Instead, two years later, having become the first aircraft to fly and land on another planet, Ingenuity successfully completed its 50th flight." CNN reports that the 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) helicopter has now "surpassed all expectations," transitioning into "an aerial scout for the Perseverance rover as it explores an ancient lake and river delta on Mars."Each morning, the Helicopter Base Station on the Perseverance rover searches for Ingenuity's signal around the time the chopper is expected to "wake up," waiting for a sign that its aerial scout is still functioning. But Ingenuity's solar panels, batteries and rotor system are healthy. The chopper is "still doing fantastic," said Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity team lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We're looking forward to just keep pushing that envelope." Since the helicopter left the flat floor of Jezero Crater and headed to the river delta in January, its flights have only grown more challenging. Ingenuity has flown over uncharted and rugged terrain with landing spots surrounded by potential hazards. "We are not in Martian Kansas anymore," said Josh Anderson, Ingenuity operations lead at JPL, in a statement. "We're flying over the dried-up remnants of an ancient river that is filled with sand dunes, boulders, and rocks, and surrounded by hills that could have us for lunch. And while we recently upgraded the navigation software onboard to help determine safe airfields, every flight is still a white-knuckler...." Ingenuity's team is already planning its next set of flights because the chopper has to remain at the right distance to stay in touch with the fast-moving rover, which can drive for hundreds of meters in a single day... The Perseverance rover is moving on from an area that could contain hydrated silica, which might have information about a warmer, wetter Martian past and any potential signs of life from billions of years ago. Up next is Mount Julian, a site that will provide the rover with a panoramic view into Belva Crater. Ingenuity's journey has demonstrated how useful aircraft can be on space missions, scouting places that rovers can't go or helping plot a safe path to the next destination.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Verge reports:Elon Musk has created a new company dedicated to artificial intelligence — and it's called X.AI, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal. The company, which a Nevada filing indicates was incorporated last month, currently has Musk as its director and Jared Birchall, the director of Musk's family office, listed as its secretary. The filing, which The Verge has also obtained, indicates that Musk incorporated the business on March 9th, 2023. Rumors about Musk starting up an AI company have been floating around for days, with a report from Business Insider revealing that Musk had purchased thousands of graphic processing units (GPUs) to power an upcoming generative AI product. The Financial Times similarly reported that Musk planned to create an AI firm to compete with the Microsoft-backed OpenAI. Musk even reportedly sought funding from SpaceX and Tesla investors to get the company started. Thanks to Slashdot reader mikolhome for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Online tax-filing services from TurboTax and H&R Block "want to blab your tax return secrets," warns the Washington Post. "Why? To help them make more money."If you prepare your taxes online with TurboTax or H&R Block software, at some point you'll see a message that I found confusing. "We can help you do more," TurboTax says. In this case, that "help" is funneling the private information from your tax return to Intuit — the company that owns TurboTax, Credit Karma and accounting software QuickBooks. H&R Block offers to "personalize your H&R Block experience." If you say yes, you're going to see email and other marketing from Intuit and H&R Block or its business partners that are tailored to what's in your tax return. That might include how much money you make, how much you owe in student loans, the size of your tax return and your charitable contributions. For example, a credit card company might pay Intuit's Credit Karma to show offers to high-income people. Intuit knows that information from your tax return. The Washington Post technology columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler wrote last year about how these two companies grab for your secret tax return information. He dubbed it "the Facebook-ization of personal finance." In a way, the tax prep companies are more aggressive than Facebook. What they're doing is mission creep. You might already be paying TurboTax and H&R Block to prepare or file your tax return. Now they also want your permission to pass along your secrets to make even more money off you.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SharewareHeroes.com recreates all the fonts and cursor you'd see after dialing up a local bulletin-board system in the early 1990s. It's to promote a new book — successfully crowdfunded by 970 backers — to chronicle "a critical yet long overlooked chapter in video game history: the rise and eventual fall of the shareware model. The book promises to explore "a hidden games publishing market" that for several years "had no powerful giants," with games instead distributed "across the nascent internet for anyone to enjoy (and, if they liked it enough, pay for)." And the site features a free excerpt from the chapter about DOOM:It seemed there was no stopping id Software. Commander Keen had given them their freedom, and Wolfenstein 3D's mega-success had earned them the financial cushion to do anything. But all they wanted was to beat the last game — to outdo both themselves and everyone else. And at the centre of that drive was a push for ever-better technology. By the time Wolfenstein 3D's commercial prequel Spear of Destiny hit retail shelves, John Carmack had already built a new engine. This one had texture-mapped floors and ceilings — not just walls. It supported diminished lighting, which meant things far away could recede into the shadows, disappearing into the distance. And it had variable-height rooms, allowing for elevated platforms where projectile-throwing enemies could hang out, and most exciting of all it allowed for non-orthogonal walls — which meant that rooms could be odd-shaped, with walls jutting out at any arbitrary angle from each other, rather than the traditional rectangular boxed design that had defined first-person-perspective games up until then. It ran at half the speed of Wolfenstein 3D's engine, but they were thinking about doing a 3D Keen game next — so that wouldn't matter. At least not until they saw it in action. Everyone but Tom Hall suddenly got excited about doing another shooter, which meant Carmack would have to optimise the hell out of his engine to restore that sense of speed. Briefly they considered a proposal from 20th Century Fox to do a licensed Aliens shooter, but they didn't like the idea of giving up their creative independence, so they considered how they could follow up Wolfenstein 3D with something new. Fighting aliens in space is old hat. This time it could be about fighting demons in space. This time it could be called DOOM. The book's title is Shareware Heroes: The Renegades Who Redefined Gaming at the Dawn of the Internet — here's a page listing the people interviewed, as well as the book's table of contents. And this chapter culminates with what happened when the first version of DOOM was finally released. "BBSs and FTP servers around America crashed under the immense load of hundreds of thousands of people clamouring to download the game on day one. "Worse for universities around the country, people were jumping straight into the multiplayer once they had the game — and they kept crashing the university networks..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"A group of researchers at Stanford University and Google have created a miniature RPG-style virtual world similar to The Sims," writes Ars Technica, "where 25 characters, controlled by ChatGPT and custom code, live out their lives independently with a high degree of realistic behavior.""Generative agents wake up, cook breakfast, and head to work; artists paint, while authors write; they form opinions, notice each other, and initiate conversations; they remember and reflect on days past as they plan the next day," write the researchers in their paper... To pull this off, the researchers relied heavily on a large language model for social interaction, specifically the ChatGPT API. In addition, they created an architecture that simulates minds with memories and experiences, then let the agents loose in the world to interact.... To study the group of AI agents, the researchers set up a virtual town called "Smallville," which includes houses, a cafe, a park, and a grocery store.... Interestingly, when the characters in the sandbox world encounter each other, they often speak to each other using natural language provided by ChatGPT. In this way, they exchange information and form memories about their daily lives. When the researchers combined these basic ingredients together and ran the simulation, interesting things began to happen. In the paper, the researchers list three emergent behaviors resulting from the simulation. None of these were pre-programmed but rather resulted from the interactions between the agents. These included "information diffusion" (agents telling each other information and having it spread socially among the town), "relationship memory" (memory of past interactions between agents and mentioning those earlier events later), and "coordination" (planning and attending a Valentine's Day party together with other agents).... "Starting with only a single user-specified notion that one agent wants to throw a Valentine's Day party," the researchers write, "the agents autonomously spread invitations to the party over the next two days, make new acquaintances, ask each other out on dates to the party, and coordinate to show up for the party together at the right time...." To get a look at Smallville, the researchers have posted an interactive demo online through a special website, but it's a "pre-computed replay of a simulation" described in the paper and not a real-time simulation. Still, it gives a good illustration of the richness of social interactions that can emerge from an apparently simple virtual world running in a computer sandbox. Interstingly, the researchers hired human evaluators to gauge how well the AI agents produced believable responses — and discovered they were more believable than when supplied their own responses. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Baron_Yam for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Python Software Foundation is "concerned that proposed EU cybersecurity laws will leave open source organizations and individuals unfairly liable for distributing incorrect code," according to the Register. The PSF reviewed the EU's proposed "Cyber Resilience Act" and "Product Liability Act" and reports "issues that put the mission of our organization and the health of the open-source software community at risk." From the Register's report:"If the proposed law is enforced as currently written, the authors of open-source components might bear legal and financial responsibility for the way their components are applied in someone else's commercial product," the PSF said in a statement shared on Tuesday by executive director Deb Nicholson. "The existing language makes no differentiation between independent authors who have never been paid for the supply of software and corporate tech behemoths selling products in exchange for payments from end-users...." The PSF argues the EU lawmakers should provide clear exemptions for public software repositories that serve the public good and for organizations and developers hosting packages on public repositories. "We need it to be crystal clear who is on the hook for both the assurances and the accountability that software consumers deserve," the PSF concludes. The PSF is asking anyone who shares its concerns to convey that sentiment to an appropriate EU Member of Parliament by April 26, while amendments focused on protecting open source software are being considered. Bradley Kuhn, policy fellow at the Software Freedom Conservancy, told The Register that the free and open source (FOSS) community should think carefully about the scope of the exemptions being sought. "I'm worried that many in FOSS are falling into a trap that for-profit companies have been trying to lay for us on this issue," he said. "While it seems on the surface that a blanket exception for FOSS would be a good thing for FOSS, in fact, this an attempt for companies to get the FOSS community to help them skirt their ordinary product liability. For profit companies that deploy FOSS should have the same obligations for security and certainty for their users as proprietary software companies do." The article points out that numerous tech organizations are urging clarifications in the proposed regulations, including NLnet Labs and the Eclipse Foundation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Washington Post found a new tranche of "top-secret intelligence documents" on Discord, and based on them reported Friday that U.S. intelligence agencies were aware of at least two additional Chinese spy balloons. Based on the classified documents, the Post also reports that "questions lingered about the true capabilities of the one that flew over the continental United States in January and February."The Chinese spy balloon that flew over the United States this year, called Killeen-23 by U.S. intelligence agencies, carried a raft of sensors and antennas the U.S. government still had not identified more than a week after shooting it down, according to a document allegedly leaked to a Discord chatroom by Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard. Another balloon flew over a U.S. carrier strike group in a previously unreported incident, and a third crashed in the South China Sea, a second top-secret document stated, though it did not provide specific information for launch dates.... [Chinese spy balloon] Bulger-21 carried sophisticated surveillance equipment and circumnavigated the globe from December 2021 until May 2022, the NGA document states. Accardo-21 carried similar equipment as well as a "foil-lined gimbaled" sensor, it says.... Annotating what appear to be detailed photos of the balloon that flew over the United States, presumably taken from a U-2 spy plane, intelligence analysts assessed that it could generate enough power to operate "any" surveillance and reconnaissance technology, including a type of radar that can see at night and through clouds and thin materials [including tarps].... China's military has operated a vast surveillance balloon project for several years, partly out of Hainan province off China's south coast, U.S. officials have previously told The Post. But the NGA document is notable as much for what it doesn't say, reflecting the government's possible lack of insight, at least in mid-February, into the balloons' capabilities... The lack of detailed conclusions about the balloon's surveillance capabilities raises questions about the decision to let it fly over the United States before shooting it down, an action the Defense Department justified at the time as an opportunity to collect additional intelligence. The Post also reports that another leaked document (relying on intercepted communications) assessed that within the Chinese military the balloon surveillance program lacked "strong leadership" oversight.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report from KrebsOnSecurity: KrebsOnSecurity received a nice bump in traffic this week thanks to tweets from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) about "juice jacking," a term first coined here in 2011 to describe a potential threat of data theft when one plugs their mobile device into a public charging kiosk. It remains unclear what may have prompted the alerts, but the good news is that there are some fairly basic things you can do to avoid having to worry about juice jacking. The term juice jacking crept into the collective paranoia of gadget geeks in the summer of 2011, thanks to the headline for a story here about researchers at the DEFCON hacker convention in Vegas who'd set up a mobile charging station designed to educate the unwary to the reality that many mobile devices were set up to connect to a computer and immediately sync data by default. Since then, Apple, Google and other mobile device makers have changed the way their hardware and software works so that their devices no longer automatically sync data when one plugs them into a computer with a USB charging cable. Instead, users are presented with a prompt asking if they wish to trust a connected computer before any data transfer can take place. On the other hand, the technology needed to conduct a sneaky juice jacking attack has become far more miniaturized, accessible and cheap. And there are now several products anyone can buy that are custom-built to enable juice jacking attacks. [...] How seriously should we take the recent FBI warning? An investigation by the myth-busting site Snopes suggests the FBI tweet was just a public service announcement based on a dated advisory. Snopes reached out to both the FBI and the FCC to request data about how widespread the threat of juice jacking is in 2023. "The FBI replied that its tweet was a 'standard PSA-type post' that stemmed from the FCC warning," Snopes reported. "An FCC spokesperson told Snopes that the commission wanted to make sure that their advisory on "juice-jacking," first issued in 2019 and later updated in 2021, was up-to-date so as to ensure 'the consumers have the most up-to-date information.' The official, who requested anonymity, added that they had not seen any rise in instances of consumer complaints about juice-jacking." The best way to protect yourself from juice jacking is by using your own gear to charge and transfer data from your device(s) to another. "Juice jacking isn't possible if a device is charged via a trusted AC adapter, battery backup device, or through a USB cable with only power wires and no data wires present," says security researcher Brian Krebs. "If you lack these things in a bind and still need to use a public charging kiosk or random computer, at least power your device off before plugging it in."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Virginia Norwood, an aerospace pioneer who invented the scanner that has been used to map and study the earth from space for more than 50 years, has died at her home in Topanga, Calif. She was 96. The New York Times reports: Her death was announced by the United States Geological Survey, whose Landsat satellite program relies on her invention. Her daughter, Naomi Norwood, said her mother was found dead in her bed on the morning of March 27. The Landsat satellites, speeding 438 miles above the surface, orbit the earth every 99 minutes and have captured a complete image of the planet every 16 days since 1972. These images have provided powerful visual evidence of climate change, deforestation and other shifts affecting the planet's well-being. Ms. Norwood, a physicist, was the person primarily responsible for designing and championing the scanner that made the program possible. NASA has called her "the mother of Landsat." At the dawn of the era of space exploration in the 1950s and '60s, she was working at Hughes Aircraft Company developing instruments. One of a small group of women in a male-dominated industry, she stood out more for her acumen. "She said, 'I was kind of known as the person who could solve impossible problems,'" Naomi Norwood told NASA for a video on its website. "So people would bring things to her, even pieces of other projects." [...] Over the next 50 years, new Landsat satellites replaced earlier ones. Ms. Norwood oversaw the development of Landsat 2, 3, 4 and 5. Currently, Landsat 8 and 9 are orbiting the earth, and NASA plans to launch Landsat 10 in 2030. Each generation satellite has added more imaging capabilities, but always based on Ms. Norwood's original concept. The Landsat program has mapped changes in the planet brought on by climate change and by human actions. They include the near disappearance of the Aral Sea between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the shrinking of the Great Salt Lake in Utah, the evolving shape of the Mississippi Delta, and the deforestation and increasing agricultural use of land in Turkey and Brazil.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The official in charge of a secretive Pentagon effort to investigate unexplained aerial incursions has co-authored an academic paper that presents an out-of-this-world theory: Recent objects could actually be alien probes from a mothership sent to study Earth. Politico reports: In a draft paper dated March 7 (PDF), Sean Kirkpatrick, head of the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, and Harvard professor Avi Loeb teamed up to write that the objects, which appear to defy all physics, could be "probes" from an extraterrestrial "parent craft." It's unusual for government officials, especially those involved in the nascent effort to collect intelligence on recent sightings, to discuss the possibility of extraterrestrial life, although top agency officials don't rule it out when asked. After Loeb posted it online, the paper gained notoriety from a post on Military Times and has also circulated among science-focused news outlets. More than half of the five-page paper is devoted to discussing the possibility that the unexplained objects DoD is studying could be the "probes" in the mothership scenario, including most of the page-long introduction. One section is titled: "The Extraterrestrial Possibility" and another "Propulsion Methods." Kirkpatrick's involvement in the academic paper demonstrates that the Pentagon is open to scientific debate of the origins of UFOs, an important signal to send to the academic world, experts said. But they add that his decision to attach his name to a theory considered in most academic circles to be highly unsubstantiated also raises questions about AARO's credibility. The paper explains that interstellar objects such as the cigar-shaped "Oumuamua" that scientists spotted flying through the galaxy in 2017 "could potentially be a parent craft that releases many small probes during its close passage to Earth." The paper goes on to compare the probes to "dandelion seeds" that could be separated from the parent craft by the sun's gravitational force. It examines the physics of how the smaller craft could move through the Earth's atmosphere to reach the surface, where they could be spotted by humans. The paper notes that the "probes" could use starlight to "charge their batteries" and the Earth's water as fuel. It also speculates on the motive for aliens to send exploratory probes to Earth. "What would be the overarching purpose of the journey? In analogy with actual dandelion seeds, the probes could propagate the blueprint of their senders," the authors write. "As with biological seeds, the raw materials on the planet's surface could also be used by them as nutrients for self-replication or simply scientific exploration."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: About a year ago, Ben found out that one of his friends had quietly started to work multiple jobs at the same time. The idea had become popular during the COVID-19 pandemic, when working from home became normalized, making the scheme easier to pull off. A community of multi-job hustlers, in fact, had come together online, referring to themselves as the "overemployed." The idea excited Ben, who lives in Toronto and asked that Motherboard not use his real name, but he didn't think it was possible for someone like him to pull it off. He helps financial technology companies market new products; the job involves creating reports, storyboards, and presentations, all of which involve writing. There was "no way," he said, that he could have done his job two times over on his own. Then, last year, he started to hear more and more about ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by the research lab OpenAI. Soon enough, he was trying to figure out how to use it to do his job faster and more efficiently, and what had been a time-consuming job became much easier. ("Not a little bit more easy," he said, "like, way easier.") That alone didn't make him unique in the marketing world. Everyone he knew was using ChatGPT at work, he said. But he started to wonder whether he could pull off a second job. Then, this year, he took the plunge, a decision he attributes to his new favorite online robot toy. "That's the only reason I got my job this year," Ben said of OpenAI's tool. "ChatGPT does like 80 percent of my job if I'm being honest." He even used it to generate cover letters to apply for jobs. Over the last few months, the exploding popularity of ChatGPT and similar products has led to growing concerns about AI's potential effects on the international job market -- specifically, the percentage of jobs that could be automated away, replaced by a well-oiled army of chatbots. But for a small cohort of fast-thinking and occasionally devious go-getters, AI technology has turned into an opportunity not to be feared but exploited, with their employers apparently none the wiser. The people Motherboard spoke with for this article requested anonymity to avoid losing their jobs. For clarity, Motherboard in some cases assigned people aliases in order to differentiate them, though we verified each of their identities. Some, like Ben, were drawn into the overemployed community as a result of ChatGPT. Others who were already working multiple jobs have used recent advancements in AI to turbocharge their situation, like one Ohio-based technology worker who upped his number of jobs from two to four after he started to integrate ChatGPT into his work process. "I think five would probably just be overkill," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Sega parent company Sega Sammy Holdings is nearing a deal to purchase "Angry Birds" maker Rovio for $1 billion. Polygon reports: Rovio is best known for Angry Birds, the physics puzzle game that launched on iOS in 2009. Rovio has delivered multiple sequels, spinoffs, and tie-ins with other brands, including Star Wars, Transformers, and the animated movie Rio. Sega and Rovio also teamed up in 2015 to bring Sonic the Hedgehog characters to Angry Birds Epic, a turn-based RPG. An animated series and two feature films were also released using Angry Birds characters. Angry Birds' global success hasn't translated to Rovio's other games, which include action-role-playing game Darkfire Heroes and colorful matching games Small Town Murders and Sugar Blast. Sega's current mobile game lineup includes a variety of Sonic the Hedgehog running games and retro games from the Sega Genesis era.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A proposed Indian government unit to fact-check news on social media is not about censoring journalism nor will it have any impact on media reportage, a federal minister said on Friday. Reuters reports: Recently amended IT regulation requires online platforms like Meta's Facebook and Twitter to "make reasonable efforts" to not "publish, share or host" any information relating to the government that is "fake, false or misleading." Rajeev Chandrasekhar, India minister of state for IT, said in an online discussion it was "not true" that the government-appointed unit, which press freedom advocates strongly oppose, was aimed at "censoring journalism." The Editors Guild of India last week described the move as draconian and akin to censorship.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Global sales of semiconductor fab equipment grew by 5 percent during 2022 to hit an all-time high, with China the largest buyer despite a fall in its investment amid the standoff with the US over access to chips and other technology. The Register reports: The figures come from SEMI, the industry body for electronics manufacturing and supply chain, in a new Worldwide Semiconductor Equipment Market Statistics (WWSEMS) report. According to the report, sales of chipmaking kit hit $107.6 billion last year, up from $102.6 billion in 2021, as semiconductor companies invested to add more capacity, despite the downturn that took hold in the latter half of last year as inflation gripped many economies. "The record high for semiconductor manufacturing equipment sales in 2022 stems from the industry's drive to add the fab capacity required to support long-term growth and innovations in key end markets including high-performance computing and automotive," claimed SEMI president and CEO Ajit Manocha. These results also reflect a desire by chipmakers in multiple regions to avoid any repetition of the supply chain issues that surfaced during the pandemic, he added. Many companies cut investment then, in response to falling orders, leading to shortages when demand picked up again. China remained the largest market for semiconductor equipment despite seeing a 5 percent slowdown in investments compared with the previous year, according to SEMI. This drop is likely caused by US moves to curtail China's ability to make advanced chips, which has now extended beyond American companies such as Applied Materials to include others such as Dutch photolithography giant ASML, as Washington has browbeaten allied nations including the Netherlands and Japan to join its sanctions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's chief executive, has declared that 2023 will be the "year of efficiency" at his company. So far, efficiency has translated into mass layoffs. He has conducted two rounds of cuts over the past six months, with two more to come; these will eliminate more than 21,000 people. Mr. Zuckerberg is also closing 5,000 open positions, which amounts to 30 percent of his company's work force. At the same time, some of Meta's top executives have moved away and are managing large parts of the Silicon Valley company from their new homes in places like London and Tel Aviv. The layoffs and absentee leadership, along with concerns that Mr. Zuckerberg is making a bad bet on the future, have devastated employee morale at Meta, according to nine current and former employees, as well as messages reviewed by The New York Times. Employees at Meta, which not long ago was one of the most desirable workplaces in Silicon Valley, face an increasingly precarious future. The company's stock price has dropped 43 percent from its peak 19 months ago. More layoffs, Mr. Zuckerberg has said on his Facebook page, are coming this month. Some of those cuts could be in engineering groups, which would have been unthinkable before the trouble started last year, two employees said. "So many of the employees feel like they're in limbo right now," said Erin Sumner, a global director of human resources at DeleteMe, who was laid off from Facebook in November. "They're saying it's 'Hunger Games' meets 'Lord of the Flies,' where everyone is trying to prove their worth to management." Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is not the only big tech company that has hit the brakes on spending. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce and others have laid off thousands of workers in recent months, shed office space, dropped perks and pulled back from experimental initiatives. But Meta appears to face the most challenges. Last year, the company reported consecutive quarters of declining revenue -- a first since it became a public company in 2012.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Back in 2021, Samsung brought SmartThings to Android Auto. Google is now opening the door for more smart home/Internet of Things (IoT) apps on Android Auto and Automotive. 9to5Google reports: Android Auto today supports media and mapping/navigation apps. Google is now "enabling developers to bring [IoT] apps to cars." This might include controlling home security and doors from a touchscreen UI rather than having to rely on voice commands (assuming Google Assistant supports your home ecosystem). Google offers driving-optimized templates in the Android for Cars App Library, with testing via the Automotive OS emulator for Android Automotive OS and the DHU for Android Auto. Expect a consistent grid-based layout throughout apps. In fact, "drivers of cars using Android Auto can now download IOT apps developed with the Android for Cars App Library immediately from Google Play."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alphabet's Google received a mixed ruling on Thursday from a San Francisco federal judge in a patent lawsuit brought by Sonos over wireless audio technology, failing to invalidate all of the patents before a trial but narrowing Sonos' claims. Reuters reports: The case, set for trial May 8, is part of a contentious intellectual property dispute between the former business partners over their smart speakers that includes lawsuits in the United States, Canada, France, Germany and the Netherlands. Sonos won a limited import ban on some Google devices from the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) last year, while Google has sued Sonos for patent infringement at the ITC and in California. [...] Sonos accused Google in the San Francisco case of infringing four patents related to multi-room wireless speaker technology. U.S. District Judge William Alsup previously invalidated one of the patents and determined Google infringed another. Alsup found Thursday that a second Sonos patent was also invalid, but rejected Google's request to cancel the remaining two patents before trial. The judge also said Google did not infringe one of the surviving patents willfully, reducing Sonos' potential damages. Alsup also said he would hold a separate bench trial after the jury trial to determine whether Google's redesigned speakers infringe Sonos' patents.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Parler, the self-described "uncancelable free speech platform," has been sold and shut down while its new owner conducts a "strategic assessment." The platform will be back eventually, new owner Starboard says. The Parler website is now a simple page containing only today's press release announcing the acquisition, which was completed without financial terms being disclosed. "No reasonable person believes that a Twitter clone just for conservatives is a viable business any more," the acquisition announcement said, promising a revamp. "While the Parler app as it is currently constituted will be pulled down from operation to undergo a strategic assessment, we at Starboard see tremendous opportunities across multiple sectors to continue to serve marginalized or even outright censored communities -- even extending beyond domestic politics," the press release said. No timing for a return was mentioned. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Starboard founder and CEO Ryan Coyne said that Parler is "going to take a breath of fresh air." Ars notes that Starboard was formerly called Olympic Media and owns conservative news sites American Wire News and BizPac Review. The previous owner, Parlement Technologies, tried to strike a deal to sell to Ye (formerly Kanye West) in mid-October but canceled the deal after Ye praised Hitler and Nazis. The company laid off a majority of its staff earlier this year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nvidia's most-advanced graphics cards are selling for more than $40,000 on eBay, as demand soars for chips needed to train and deploy artificial intelligence software. From a report: The prices for Nvidia's H100 processors were noted by 3D gaming pioneer and former Meta consulting technology chief John Carmack on Twitter. On Friday, at least eight H100s were listed on eBay at prices ranging from $39,995 to just under $46,000. Some retailers have offered it in the past for around $36,000. The H100, announced last year, is Nvidia's latest flagship AI chip, succeeding the A100, a roughly $10,000 chip that's been called the "workhorse" for AI applications. Developers are using the H100 to build so-called large language models (LLMs), which are at the heart of AI applications like OpenAI's ChatGPT. Running those systems is expensive and requires powerful computers to churn through terabytes of data for days or weeks at a time. They also rely on hefty computing power so the AI model can generate text, images or predictions. Training AI models, especially large ones like GPT, requires hundreds of high-end Nvidia GPUs working together.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: For Red Hat, which turned 30 on March 27, it was a cause for celebration. From a business that got started in one of its co-founder's wife's sewing room, it became the first billion-dollar pure-play open-source company and then the engine driving IBM. It has been a long strange trip. Sure, today, the tech world is dominated by Linux and open source software, but in 1993, Linux was merely an obscure operating system known only to enthusiasts. Red Hat played a significant role in transforming the "just a hobby" operating system into today's major IT powerhouse. Red Hat co-founder Bob Young, who previously ran a rental typewriter business, was one of those who became intrigued by Linux. In 1993, he established ACC Corporation, a catalog company that distributed Slackware Linux CDs and open-source software. [...] In 2003, Paul Cormier, then Red Hat's vice president of engineering and now the company's chairman, spearheaded the shift from the inexpensive prosumer Red Hat Linux distribution to the full business-oriented Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). At the time, many Linux users hated the idea. Even inside Red Hat, Cormier said that many engineers were initially opposed to the new business model, causing some to leave the company while others stayed. The change also upset many users who felt Red Hat was abandoning its original customers. However, enterprise clients had a different perspective. Whitehurst, who became Red Hat CEO in 2008, said, "Once RHEL was in the market, we had to fully support it to make it truly consumable for the enterprise." They succeeded, and Red Hat continued to grow. This is the model that turned Red Hat into the first billion-dollar-a-quarter pure open-source company. Impressive for a business built around an operating system once considered suitable only for the "lunatic fringe." Then, in 2018, IBM acquired Red Hat for a cool $34 billion. There was nothing crazy about that move. [...] Another change that was already present in Red Hat, a shift towards supporting the cloud, has accelerated. Today, while RHEL remains the heart of the business, the Linux-powered cloud has become increasingly important. In particular, Red Hat OpenShift, its Kubernetes-powered hybrid cloud application platform, is more important than ever. Where does Red Hat go from here? When I last talked to Cormier and Red Hat's latest CEO, Matt Hicks, they told me that they'd keep moving forward with the hybrid cloud. After all, as Cormier pointed out, "the cloud wouldn't be here" without Linux and open source. As for Red Hat's relationship with IBM, Cormier said, "The red lines were red, and the blue lines were blue, and that will stay the same."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's been a rollercoaster ride for Korean tech conglomerates LG and Samsung. In 2021, it was reported that they were about to reach a major business deal regarding OLED panels, but in 2022 it seemed like the talks fell through. Now, in 2023, the talks may have resumed. From a report: The Elec reports that Samsung Electronics and LG Display have resumed discussions on a deal that would see LG supplying more than 200,000 white OLED (WOLED) panels to Samsung for a new line of Samsung-branded TVs that could launch as soon as 2024. That number would potentially be just the start of a longer partnership. When news of the negotiations first broke a couple of years ago, it was reported that the conversation was started at the behest of the South Korean government in response to an international situation wherein LCD panel-producing Chinese companies like BOE were driving up the cost of LCD panels, threatening Samsung's TV dominance. At that time, Samsung was all in on LCD technology in its TVs, competing with LG's increasing focus on OLED. Because of those market changes, and because OLED, in general, has achieved a bigger portion of consumers' display spending compared to LCD, Samsung needs to further diversify with OLED to ensure its future success -- at least until Micro LED becomes an affordable OLED alternative.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

rmdingler writes: Montana lawmakers have moved one step closer to passing a bill to ban TikTok from operating in the state, a move that's bound to face legal challenges but also serve as a testing ground for the TikTok-free America that many national lawmakers have envisioned. Montana's proposal, which has backing from the state's GOP-controlled legislature, is more sweeping than bans in place in nearly half the states and the U.S. federal government that prohibit TikTok on government devices. The House endorsed the bill 60-39 on Thursday. A final House vote will likely take place Friday before the bill goes to Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte. He has banned TikTok on government devices in Montana. The Senate passed the bill 30-20 in March. TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese tech company ByteDance, has been under intense scrutiny over concerns it could hand over user data to the Chinese government or push pro-Beijing propaganda and misinformation on the platform. Leaders at the FBI, CIA and numerous lawmakers of both parties have raised those concerns but haven't presented any evidence to prove it has happened. Supporters of a ban point to two Chinese laws that compel companies in the country to cooperate with the government on state intelligence work. They also point out other troubling episodes, such as a disclosure by ByteDance in December that it fired four employees who accessed the IP addresses and other data of two journalists while attempting to uncover the source of a leaked report about the company.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The "right to repair" movement has made considerable inroads over the past five years, partially due to support from the Biden FTC. State-level legislation aimed at dismantling repair monopolies has made progress, despite industry lobbying efforts to weaken the proposals (e.g., Kathy Hochul in New York State). Federal legislation, however, faces challenges in a troubled Congress. In response, a bipartisan group of 28 state attorneys general has penned a letter to key congressional committee leaders, urging them to advance stalled right to repair bills. From the letter: "The Right-to-Repair is a bipartisan issue that impacts every consumer, household, and farm in a time of increasing inflation. It is about ensuring that consumers have choices as to who, where, when and at what cost their vehicles can be repaired. It is about ensuring that farmers can repair their tractors for a reasonable price and quickly enough to harvest their crops."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter jth1234567 reports: In late January, a Steam user posted a negative review for the game Warlander, warning potential buyers about the shady anti-cheat system the game was using, the apparent problems being intrusive data collection and difficult removal after the game itself had been uninstalled (the review text is no longer available). This review stayed on top as the most helpful review for nearly three months, which must have been a big thorn in the side for the developer and the publisher. Until yesterday, when they managed to get a Steam moderator to remove the negative review. In a perfect, consumer-friendly world it should have been another way around, and the game's sales page removed until the claims were investigated by Valve, but this is not a perfect world. However, things didn't end there. Apparently the Steam moderator categorized the negative review as "attempting to scam users or other violations of Steam's Rules & Guidelines", which meant that all those 2439 people (plus people who have it 437 awards) got their accounts restricted for 30 days, during this time none of them can up- or downvote any Steam reviews at all. Support tickets from affected users to Steam Support have received a default response saying Support will not help nor adjust the length of vote bans. The Steam review system was never perfect, but the impact of this kind of behavior from Valve will render the whole system completely pointless, as negative reviews can be culled by the developers/publishers at any time, and people will just stop marking any negative review as useful to avoid these kinds of repercussions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Once the leading player in the semiconductor industry, the company is attempting to pull off one of tech's most complex turnrounds. From a report: It was nearly a decade ago when Intel, then the undisputed leader in global semiconductor manufacturing, made a fateful decision. A new technology, extreme lithography, was offering a way to pack more computing power on to the silicon wafers from which tiny chips, essential for widely used products like smartphones and PCs, are cut. Using light to etch complicated integrated circuits, EUV promised an unparalleled degree of miniaturisation, but Intel executives believed it would take years for the method to become practical. Instead, they stuck with older manufacturing techniques for their next generation of chips. This turned out to be a historic mistake, one with consequences that are being felt at a time when the US has put advanced chipmaking at the centre of its national industrial policy. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which adopted EUV in 2019, has leapfrogged Intel to become the world's most advanced chip manufacturer, closely followed by Samsung. Along with other slips, the judgment call has left Intel -- and the US -- scrambling to catch up. "Hindsight is 20/20," says Ann Kelleher, head of technology development at Intel and the executive charged with restoring the US chipmaker's manufacturing processes. "It's very easy to look back and say, 'If something different was done...'" Intel is today at another crucial juncture. If, as planned, the company finally produces chips made with EUV in large volume later this year, it will be an important step on the road back. Nowhere will progress be watched more anxiously than in Washington, where the Biden administration is facing an imminent decision about how much financial backing to throw behind the company. Last year's US Chips Act committed $52bn in direct subsidies to support semiconductor manufacturing and boost research and development, along with an estimated $24bn worth of tax credits over the next eight years. The law was designed to reverse a slide that has taken the US share of chip production to 12 per cent, from 37 per cent in 1990. The centrepiece of that plan is to bring leading-edge manufacturing back to the US. For better or worse, that leaves Washington with little choice but to bet heavily on Intel, despite it being the laggard in one of the tech world's most important races. Yet falling behind in advanced chip production is not the only problem hanging over Intel. Big shifts in its customers' needs -- such as the rise of artificial intelligence -- are threatening to sideline its traditional PC and server chips. Its attempt to go into direct competition with TSMC by becoming a so-called chip foundry, manufacturing chips on behalf of other companies, represents the biggest change to its business since it abandoned its original memory chips for processors nearly 40 years ago. To make things even harder, a yawning financial hole has opened up under the company at just the moment it is trying to make up for years of under-investment with a surge in capital spending. The depth of the reversal, which the company says is caused by a temporary inventory correction, shocked Wall Street in January, when Intel warned its revenue would tumble 40 per cent in the first three months of this year. The setbacks mean that a central piece of US industrial policy is now riding on one of the most difficult and complex tech turnrounds ever attempted. As the US Department of Commerce begins to weigh how to distribute the Chips Act subsidies, deciding how fiercely to back Intel will be a central question.:Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The SEC is considering reopening the comment period for its proposal last year to re-define the definition of "exchange." From a report: The small proposed change would have sweeping implications for traditional financial firms and crypto -- and specifically decentralized finance (DeFi). The SEC's proposed change to Rule 3b-16 of the Securities Exchange Act would apply the definition of exchange more broadly -- with the Commission arguing that the rule as originally envisioned would've otherwise covered systems like DeFi. It would touch so-called alternative trading systems, request-for-quote platforms and indication-of-interest platforms, as well as other sorts of messaging ones. "Make no mistake: many crypto-trading platforms already come under the current definition of an exchange and thus have an existing duty to comply with the securities laws," Chairman Gary Gensler said in a statement. "These platforms match orders of multiple buyers and sellers of crypto securities using established, non-discretionary methods. That's the definition of an exchange -- and today, most crypto trading platforms meet it."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The stock market, real estate and cryptocurrencies did poorly in 2022, but the global luxury goods market grew 20 percent. People may have had less, but they spent more on fine arts and collectibles that serve no function except to provide pleasure. From a report: The culture is bursting with new material -- every day, thousands of new books are published and 100,000 new songs are released on Spotify -- but the old stuff offers a sweeter emotional payoff for many. It could be tapes or posters or pictures or comics or coins or sports cards or memorabilia. It might be from their childhood or the childhood they never had, or it might merely express a longing to be anywhere but 2023. The common element is this: People like to own a thing from a thing they love. For Mr. Carlson and millions like him, the nostalgia factory is working overtime. When Mr. Carlson first began to look for sealed VHS cassettes, they were considered so much plastic trash. "Back to the Future," "The Goonies," "Blade Runner," were about $20 each on eBay. He put them on a shelf, little windows into his past, and started an Instagram account called Rare and Sealed. Then tapes began to get scarcer and much more expensive. People trapped at home had lots of money to spend during the pandemic. But it was more than that. Objects with a bit of history have an obvious attraction in a high-tech world. The current cultural tumult, with its boom in fake images, endless arguments over everything and now the debut of imperious A.I. chatbots, increases the appeal of things that can't be plugged in. At the same time, advances in technology mean it is ever easier to buy expensive things online. Bids at auctions routinely reach tens, even hundreds, of thousands of dollars.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The European Space Agency's Juice probe has blasted off on a landmark mission to Jupiter's moons, rising on a plume of white from its launchpad in Kourou, French Guiana, on the north-eastern shoulder of South America. From a report: The mission, which was delayed for 24 hours after lightning threatened to strike on Thursday, intends to uncover the secrets of Jupiter's Great Red Spot, its enormous polar auroras, and how its mighty magnetic field shapes conditions on the gas giant's nearby moons. It is the moons themselves that are the main attraction. Despite the frigid conditions that prevail, nearly half a billion miles from the sun, Juice will visit three of Jupiter's moons -- Europa, Callisto and Ganymede -- which harbour deep liquid water oceans beneath their icy surfaces. The discovery of sub-surface saltwater oceans on Jupiter's moons has pushed them high up the list of solar system venues to explore for signs of life and habitability. If hydrothermal vents -- found on ocean floors all over Earth -- exist on the Jovian moons, they may provide enough warmth for life to thrive in the darkness. "I'm so thrilled to see Juice finally on its way," said Prof Andrew Coates, from the UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory, who helped build two instruments on Juice called Pep and Janus. "This is an excellent mission to look at habitability of Jupiter's moons."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a discussion about threats posed by AI systems, Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO and co-founder, has confirmed that the company is not currently training GPT-5, the presumed successor to its AI language model GPT-4, released this March. From a report: Speaking at an event at MIT, Altman was asked about a recent open letter circulated among the tech world that requested that labs like OpenAI pause development of AI systems "more powerful than GPT-4." The letter highlighted concerns about the safety of future systems but has been criticized by many in the industry, including a number of signatories. Experts disagree about the nature of the threat posed by AI (is it existential or more mundane?) as well as how the industry might go about "pausing" development in the first place. At MIT, Altman said the letter was "missing most technical nuance about where we need the pause" and noted that an earlier version claimed that OpenAI is currently training GPT-5. "We are not and won't for some time," said Altman. "So in that sense it was sort of silly." However, just because OpenAI is not working on GPT-5 doesn't mean it's not expanding the capabilities of GPT-4 -- or, as Altman was keen to stress, considering the safety implications of such work. "We are doing other things on top of GPT-4 that I think have all sorts of safety issues that are important to address and were totally left out of the letter," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The European parliament is preparing tough new measures over the use of artificial intelligence, including forcing chatbot makers to reveal if they use copyrighted material, as the EU edges towards enacting the world's most restrictive regime on the development of AI. Financial Times: MEPs in Brussels are close to agreeing a set of proposals to form part of Europe's Artificial Intelligence Act, a sweeping set of regulations on the use of AI, according to people familiar with the process. Among the measures likely to be proposed by parliamentarians is for developers of products such as OpenAI's ChatGPT to declare if copyrighted material is being used to train their AI models, a measure designed to allow content creators to demand payment. MEPs also want responsibility for misuse of AI programmes to lie with developers such as OpenAI, rather than smaller businesses using it. One contentious proposal from MEPs is a ban on the use of facial recognition in public spaces under any circumstances. EU member states, under pressure from their local police forces, are expected to push back against a total ban on biometrics, said people with direct knowledge of the negotiations. Agreement between MEPs, who have been fighting over measures to police artificial intelligence for close to two years, is critical to kick-starting broader negotiations over the AI Act. The proposed law would represent some of the toughest rules on the development of AI and comes in the wake of rising concerns about potential abuses of the technology.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Motherboard has discovered a swatting-as-a-service account on Telegram that uses computer generated voices to issue bomb and mass shooting threats against highschools and other locations across the country. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: Known as "Torswats" on the messaging app Telegram, the swatter has been calling in bomb and mass shooting threats against highschools and other locations across the country. Torswat's connection to these wide ranging swatting incidents has not been previously reported. The further automation of swatting techniques threatens to make an already dangerous harassment technique more prevalent. Swatting is when someone calls in a bogus threat in an attempt to direct law enforcement resources to a particular home, school, or other location. Often, swatting calls result in heavily armed police raiding an innocent victim's home. At least one case has resulted in police killing the unsuspecting occupant. Torswats carries out these threatening calls as part of a paid service they offer. For $75, Torswats says they will close down a school. For $50, Torswats says customers can buy "extreme swattings," in which authorities will handcuff the victim and search the house. Torswats says they offer discounts to returning customers, and can negotiate prices for "famous people and targets such as Twitch streamers." Torswats says on their Telegram channel that they take payment in cryptocurrency. [...] On their Telegram channel, Torswats has uploaded at least 35 distinct recordings of calls they appear to have made. Torswats may have made many more swatting calls on others' behalf, though: each filename includes a number, with the most recent going up to 170. Torswats also recently shuttered their channel before reappearing on Telegram in February. In all of those 35 recordings except two, Torswats appears to have used a synthesized voice. The majority of the calls are made with a fake male sounding voice; several include a woman which also appears to be computer generated. Torswats is seemingly able to change what the voice is saying in something close to real-time in order to respond to the operator's questions. These sometimes include "where are you located," "what happened," and "what is your name?" [...] Earlier this month, Torswats allegedly changed their tactics: they claimed to have made a swatting call using their own voice. In the subsequent recording, they start with much the same script as their automated voice. "I've done something really bad and want to kill myself," they tell the operator. They then claim they came out to their parents as a transgender woman, that they have an AR-15, and will shoot any police who respond. "Forgot to cut off my laugh at the end," Torswats wrote on Telegram.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Millennials are the largest untapped market that video game companies should be focusing on, per a new study from Fandom, which finds that the generation spends more time gaming than both Gen Z and teens. Variety reports: According to fan-community platform and entertainment company Fandom's annual Inside Gaming report, which was released Thursday, "despite teens and Gen Z spending more time gaming than they did last year, older generations of players are spending more hours per week gaming." Compiled based on proprietary user data from Fandom.com and a global study that examines how gamer motivations and behaviors vary by generation, the report found that 52% of Millennials surveyed rank playing video games as their top interest and 40% of Fandom's Millennial audience spends over 22 hours per week gaming, compared to only 29% of tweens. Additionally, Fandom's report found that "influence to purchase brands that have investments in the gaming space gets stronger with age," as Fandom's millennial users are at least 24% more likely to be "heavily influenced" to buy games compared to the average Fandom user. But that doesn't mean studios and developers should start sleeping on the younger generations: While 45% of gamers overall are spending more time gaming than they did a year ago, and Millennials are the demo playing the most of anyone, the biggest growth in overall time spent gaming vs. last year was seen among tweens and teens, up 63% and 48%, respectively.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A NASA probe sent to observe Jupiter's swarm of asteroids recently caught the first glimpse of its rocky targets, capturing deep-space images of four of the mysterious Trojans. Gizmodo reports: The Lucy spacecraft used its highest resolution imager, L'LORRI (Lucy LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager), to photograph four Trojan asteroids during a two-day period from March 25 to 27, NASA announced on Thursday. The first asteroids to be seen by Lucy are: Eurybates, Polymele, Leucus, and Orus. Those four are part of two large groups of rocky bodies that lead and follow Jupiter as it orbits the Sun. Lucy is still a long way from reaching its asteroid targets, which are currently about 330 million miles (530 million kilometers) away from the probe. That's more than three times the average distance between Earth and the Sun, according to NASA. The initial set of images are the first in a series of observations to measure how the Trojan asteroids reflect light when seen from a higher angle than ground-based observations, according to NASA. The images will then help NASA decide on exposure times to use for Lucy's close-up observations of the asteroids.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: South Korea is to offer reclusive youths a monthly living allowance of 650,000 won ($490) in order to encourage them out of their homes, as part of a new measure passed by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. The measure also offers education, job and health support. The condition is known as "hikikomori," a Japanese term that roughly translated means, "to pull back." The government wants to try to make it easier for those experiencing it to leave the house to go to school, university or work. Included in the program announced this week, which expands on measures announced in November, is a monthly allowance for living expenses for people aged between nine and 24 who are experiencing extreme social withdrawal. It also includes an allowance for cultural experiences for teenagers. About 350,000 people between the ages of 19 and 39 in South Korea are considered lonely or isolated -- about 3% of that age group -- according to the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs. Secluded youth are often from disadvantaged backgrounds and 40% began living reclusively while adolescents, according to a government document outlining the measures. The new measures aim to strengthen government support "to enable reclusive youth to recover their daily lives and reintegrate into society," the government said in a statement. Among the other types of support are paying for the correction of affected people's physical appearance, including scars "that adolescents may feel ashamed of," as well as helping with school and gym supplies. South Korea also has a relatively high rate of youth unemployment, at 7.2%, and is trying to tackle a rapidly declining birthrate that further threatens productivity.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A team of researchers in Florida have created a way to mimic nature's ability to reflect light and create beautifully vivid color without absorbing any heat like traditional pigments do. Debashis Chanda, a nanoscience researcher with the University of Central Florida, and his team published their findings in the journal Science Advances. NPR reports: Beyond just the beautiful arrays of color that structure can create, Chanda also found that unlike pigments, structural paint does not absorb any infrared light. Infrared light is the reason black cars get hot on sunny days and asphalt is hot to the touch in summer. Infrared light is absorbed as heat energy into these surfaces -- the darker the color, the more the surface colored with it can absorb. That's why people are advised to wear lighter colors in hotter climates and why many buildings are painted bright whites and beiges. Chanda found that structural color paint does not absorb any heat. It reflects all infrared light back out. This means that in a rapidly warming climate, this paint could help communities keep cool. Chanda and his team tested the impact this paint had on the temperature of buildings covered in structural paint versus commercial paints and they found that structural paint kept surfaces 20 to 30 degrees cooler. This, Chanda said, is a massive new tool that could be used to fight rising temperatures caused by global warming while still allowing us to have a bright and colorful world. Unlike white and black cars, structural paint's ability to reflect heat isn't determined by how dark the color is. Blue, black or purple structural paints reflect just as much heat as bright whites or beige. This opens the door for more colorful, cooler architecture and design without having to worry about the heat. It's not just cleaner, Chanda said. Structural paint weighs much less than pigmented paint and doesn't fade over time like traditional pigments. "A raisin's worth of structural paint is enough to cover the front and back of a door," he said. Unlike pigments which rely on layers of pigment to achieve depth of color, structural paint only requires one thin layer of particles to fully cover a surface in color. This means that structural paint could be a boon for aerospace engineers who rely on the lowest weight possible to achieve higher fuel efficiency. The possibilities for structural paint are endless and Chanda hopes that cans of structural paint will soon be available in hardware stores.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The world's largest music company, Universal Music Group, is asking major streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music to block artificial intelligence companies from using its music to "train" their technology, according to a recent report in Financial Times. Variety reports: Confirming the report, a UMG spokesperson told the FT: "We have a moral and commercial responsibility to our artists to work to prevent the unauthorized use of their music and to stop platforms from ingesting content that violates the rights of artists and other creators. We expect our platform partners will want to prevent their services from being used in ways that harm artists." The process involves the AI companies uploading copyrighted music from the platforms into their technology and thus enabling the bots to digest the lyrics and music and then essentially create songs or melodies in those styles. [...] UMG has been sending takedown requests to the streamers "left and right," FT quoted an unnamed source as saying. "We have become aware that certain AI systems might have been trained on copyrighted content without obtaining the required consents from, or paying compensation to, the rightsholders who own or produce the content," the company said in an email from last month, according to the report. "We will not hesitate to take steps to protect our rights and those of our artists." The website drayk.it delivered users a custom Drake song, although it has since been shut down.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Andrew Cunningham writes via Ars Technica: Microsoft is aware of the problems running Windows on the Steam Deck and other similar handheld Windows PCs, and at least some developers inside the company have spent time thinking of ways to address them. That's the thrust of a leaked presentation (posted in two parts by Twitter user _h0x0d_) about a new "Handheld Mode" for Windows, developed as part of an internal Microsoft hackathon in September 2022. As presented, Handheld Mode includes several components: a new first-time setup screen that simplifies driver installation and setup; an improved touchscreen keyboard that fits better on a 7-inch screen and can be controlled Xbox-style with the built-in buttons and joysticks; a simplified Nintendo Switch-esque game launcher; and improved OS-wide controller support thanks to the open source Steamdeck Windows Controller Driver (SWICD) project. The presentation also calls for other changes to Windows' default behaviors, like always opening apps in full-screen mode when in Handheld Mode, better UI scaling for small screens, and "mapping of controls to common Windows functions."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The hackers who breached data storage giant Western Digital claim to have stolen around 10 terabytes of data from the company, including reams of customer information. The extortionists are pushing the company to negotiate a ransom -- of "minimum 8 figures" -- in exchange for not publishing the stolen data. On April 3, Western Digital disclosed "a network security incident" saying hackers had exfiltrated data after hacking into "a number of the Company's systems." At the time, Western Digital provided few details about exactly what data the hackers stole, saying in a statement that the hackers "obtained certain data from its systems and [Western Digital] is working to understand the nature and scope of that data." One of the hackers spoke with TechCrunch and provided more details, with the goal of verifying their claims. The hacker shared a file that was digitally signed with Western Digital's code-signing certificate, showing they could now digitally sign files to impersonate Western Digital. Two security researchers also looked at the file and agreed it is signed with the company's certificate. The hackers also shared phone numbers allegedly belonging to several company executives. TechCrunch called the numbers. Most of the calls rang but went to automated voicemail messages. Two of the phone numbers had voicemail greetings that mentioned the names of the executives that the hackers claimed were associated with the numbers. The two phone numbers are not public. Screenshots shared by the hacker show a folder from a Box account apparently belonging to Western Digital, an internal email, files stored in a PrivateArk instance (a cybersecurity product), and a screenshot of a group call where one of the participants is identified as Western Digital's chief information security officer. They also said they were able to steal data from the company's SAP Backoffice, a backend interface that helps companies manage e-commerce data. The hacker said that their goal when they hacked Western Digital was to make money, though they decided against using ransomware to encrypt the company's files. [...] If Western Digital doesn't get back to them, the hacker said, they are ready to start publishing the stolen data on the website of the ransomware gang Alphv. The hacker said they are not directly affiliated with Alphv but "I know them to be professional." Western Digital said they're declining to comment or answer questions about the hacker's claims.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon announced on Thursday it's releasing a ChatGPT and DALL-E rival it calls Amazon Bedrock. Insider reports: Bedrock is a suite of generative AI tools that can help Amazon Web Service customers -- businesses who run their operations on Amazon's data servers -- build chatbots, generate and summarize text, and make and classify images based on prompts. While OpenAI's ChatGPT is run solely on its GPT-4 language model, Bedrock users can perform specific tasks by selecting from a range of machine learning models it calls "foundation models," such as AI21's Jurassic-2, Anthropic's Claude, Stability AI's Stable Diffusion, and Amazon Titan. A content marketing manager, for example, can use Bedrock to create a targeted ad campaign for a new line of handbags by feeding it data so it can generate product social media posts, display ads, and web copy for each product, according to an AWS blog post. A preview of Amazon's generative AI toolkit is currently limited to select AWS customers. So far, Coda, an AI-document generation firm used by companies like Uber and the New York Times, is using Bedrock to scale its business operations, according to Amazon.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

International Business Machines is exploring a sale of its weather operation, WSJ reported, citing people familiar with the matter, as the technology company seeks to streamline its operations. From a report: An auction of the business is at an early stage, the people said, and there may not be a deal. Should there be one, private-equity is most likely the buyer in a deal that could be valued at more than $1 billion, the people said. IBM agreed to buy the business in 2015, purchasing The Weather Company's business-to-business, mobile and cloud-based businesses including Weather.com, which provides weather forecasts around the globe. The deal price at the time was pegged at more than $2 billion. The Weather Channel wasn't part of the deal, but agreed to license weather-forecast data and analytics from IBM. The deal was part of a push by IBM to use its cloud infrastructure to provide accurate weather forecasts and help companies control costs. The business issues more than 25 billion forecasts a day, according to the company's website. A sale of the weather unit would be a part of a broader push by IBM to streamline its operations as the once-dominant company's shares languish near levels they traded at more than 20 years ago.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon is introducing a cloud service called Bedrock that developers can use to enhance their software with artificial intelligence systems that can generate text, similar to the engine behind the popular ChatGPT chatbot powered by Microsoft-backed startup OpenAI. From a report: The announcement indicates that the largest provider of cloud infrastructure won't be leaving a trendy growth area to challengers such as Google and Microsoft, both of which have started offering developers large language models they can tap into. Generally speaking, large language models are AI programs trained with extensive amounts of data that can compose human-like text in response to prompts that people type in. Through its Bedrock generative AI service, Amazon Web Services will offer access to its own first-party language models called Titan, as well as language models from startups AI21 and Google-backed Anthropic, and a model for turning text into images from startup Stability AI. One Titan model can generate text for blog posts, emails or other documents. The other can help with search and personalization. "Most companies want to use these large language models but the really good ones take billions of dollars to train and many years and most companies don't want to go through that," Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said on CNBC's "Squawk Box" Thursday. "So what they want to do is they want to work off of a foundational model that's big and great already and then have the ability to customize it for their own purposes. And that's what Bedrock is."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Instant messaging platform Discord says it was cooperating with U.S. law enforcement's investigation into a leak of secret U.S. documents that has grabbed attention around the world. From a report: The statement comes as questions continue to swirl over who leaked the documents, whether they are genuine and whether the intelligence assessments in them are reliable. The documents, which carry markings suggesting that they are highly classified, have led to a string of stories about the war in Ukraine, protests in Israel and how the U.S. surveils friend and foe alike. The source of the documents is not publicly known, but reporting by the open-source investigative site Bellingcat has traced their earliest appearance to Discord, a communications platform popular with gamers. Discord's statement suggested it was already in touch with investigators. The White House also urged social media companies on Thursday to prevent the circulation of information that could hurt national security.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Early Wednesday, San Francisco police made an arrest in the April 4th killing of tech exec Bob Lee," writes Slashdot reader xevioso. "Lee was stabbed in the early hours of April 4th, and later died. His killing prompted a host of claims that this was yet another example of San Francisco's slide into chaos, but the person arrested is reportedly another tech exec." Mission Local reports: The alleged killer also works in tech and is a man Lee purportedly knew. We are told that police today were dispatched to Emeryville with a warrant to arrest a man named Nima Momeni. The name and Emeryville address SFPD officers traveled to correspond with this man, the owner of a company called Expand IT. Multiple police sources have described the predawn knifing that last week left the 43-year-old Lee dead in a deserted section of downtown San Francisco as neither a robbery attempt nor a random attack. Rather, Lee and Momeni were portrayed by police as being familiar with one another. In the wee hours of April 4, they were purportedly driving together through downtown San Francisco in a car registered to the suspect. Some manner of confrontation allegedly commenced while both men were in the vehicle, and potentially continued after Lee exited the car. Police allege that Momeni stabbed Lee multiple times with a knife that was recovered not far from the spot on the 300 block of Main Street to which officers initially responded.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The leader of a small online gaming chat group where a trove of classified U.S. intelligence documents leaked over the last few months is a 21-year-old member of the intelligence wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The New York Times. The National Guardsman, whose name is Jack Teixeira, oversaw a private online group called Thug Shaker Central, where about 20 to 30 people, mostly young men and teenagers, came together over a shared love of guns, racist online memes and video games. On Thursday afternoon, about a half-dozen F.B.I. agents pushed into a residence in North Dighton, Mass. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland later said in a short statement that Airman Teixeira had been arrested "without incident." Federal investigators had been searching for days for the person who leaked the top secret documents online. Starting months ago, one of the users uploaded hundreds of pages of intelligence briefings into the small chat group, lecturing its members, who had bonded during the isolation of the pandemic, on the importance of staying abreast of world events. [...] The Times spoke with four members of Thug Shaker Central, one of whom said he had known the person who leaked for at least three years, had met him in person and referred to him as the O.G. The friends described him as older than most of the group members, who were in their teens, and the undisputed leader. One of the friends said the O.G. had access to intelligence documents through his job. While the gaming friends would not identify the group's leader by name, a trail of digital evidence compiled by The Times leads to Airman Teixeira. The Times has been able to link Airman Teixeira to other members of Thug Shaker Central through his online gaming profile and other records. Details of the interior of Airman Teixeira's childhood home -- posted on social media in family photographs -- also match details on the margins of some of the photographs of the leaked secret documents. Members of Thug Shaker Central who spoke to The Times said that the documents they discussed online were meant to be purely informative. While many pertained to the war in Ukraine, the members said they took no side in the conflict. The documents, they said, started to get wider attention only when one of the teenage members of the group took a few dozen of them and posted them to a public online forum. From there they were picked up by Russian-language Telegram channels and then The Times, which first reported on them. The person who leaked, they said, was no whistle-blower, and the secret documents were never meant to leave their small corner of the internet. "This guy was a Christian, antiwar, just wanted to inform some of his friends about what's going on," said one of the person's friends from the community, a 17-year-old recent high school graduate. "We have some people in our group who are in Ukraine. We like fighting games; we like war games."Read more of this story at Slashdot.