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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google and Microsoft don't always take pains to make sure their products work great together -- Google originally declared Microsoft's Chromium-based Edge browser "not supported" by the Google Drive web apps; Microsoft is always trying to make you use Bing -- but it looks like Google's ChromeOS will start working a bit better with the Microsoft 365 service later this year. Google says ChromeOS will add a "new integration" for Microsoft 365, making it easier to install the app and adding built-in support for OneDrive in ChromeOS' native Files app. This should allow users to search for and access OneDrive files the same way they get to local files, or files stored in their Google Drive account. The integration will be added in "the coming months," and users in ChromeOS' dev and beta channels will be able to access it before it rolls out to all ChromeOS users later this year. ChromeOS users can currently access OneDrive and other Microsoft 365 services through their web interfaces or Android apps installed via the Google Play Store, but they don't integrate with the built-in ChromeOS Files app the way that Google Drive does. This integration will help close that gap for people who, for example, use Google products at home but Microsoft products at work or vice versa.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dangerous fungal infections are on the rise, and a growing body of research suggests warmer temperatures might be a culprit. From a report: The human body's average temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit has long been too hot for most fungi to thrive, infectious-disease specialists say. But as temperatures have risen globally, some fungi might be adapting to endure more heat stress, including conditions within the human body, research suggests. Climate change might also be creating conditions for some disease-causing fungi to expand their geographical range, research shows. "As fungi are exposed to more consistent elevated temperatures, there's a real possibility that certain fungi that were previously harmless suddenly become potential pathogens," said Peter Pappas, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Deaths from fungal infections are increasing, due in part to growing populations of people with weakened immune systems who are more vulnerable to severe fungal disease, public-health experts said. At least 7,000 people died in the U.S. from fungal infections in 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, up from hundreds of people each year around 1970. There are few effective and nontoxic medications to treat such infections, they said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Netflix created an anime that uses AI-generated artwork to paint its backgrounds -- and people on social media are pissed. In a tweet, Netflix Japan claimed that the project, a short called he Dog & The Boy uses AI generated art in response to labor shortages in the anime industry. "As an experimental effort to help the anime industry, which has a labor shortage, we used image generation technology for the background images of all three-minute video cuts!" the streaming platform wrote in a tweet. The tweet drew instant criticism and outrage from commenters who felt that Netflix was using AI to avoid paying human artists. This has been a central tension since image-generation AI took off last year, as many artists see the tools as unethical -- due to being trained on masses of human-made art scraped from the internet -- and cudgels to further cut costs and devalue workers. Netflix Japan's claim that the AI was used to fill a supposed labor gap hit the bullseye on these widespread concerns. According to a press release, the short film was created by Netflix Anime Creators Base -- a Tokyo-based hub the company created to bolster its anime output with new tools and methods -- in collaboration with Rinna Inc., an AI-generated artwork company, and production company WIT Studio, which produced the first three seasons of Attack on Titan. "Demand for new anime productions has skyrocketed in recent years, but the industry has long been fraught with labor abuses and poor wages," notes Motherboard's Samantha Cole. "In 2017, an illustrator died while working, allegedly of a stress-induced heart attack and stroke; in 2021, the reported salary of low-rung anime illustrators was as little as $200 a month, forcing some to reconsider the career as a sustainable way to earn a living while having a life outside work, buying a home, or supporting children. "Even top animators reportedly earn just $1,400 to $3,800 a month -- as the anime industry itself boomed during the pandemic amid a renewed interest in at-home streaming. In 2021, the industry hit an all-time revenue high of $18.4 billion."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ChatGPT, the popular chatbot from OpenAI, is estimated to have reached 100 million monthly active users in January, just two months after launch, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history, according to a UBS study on Wednesday. Reuters reports: The report, citing data from analytics firm Similar Web, said about 13 million unique visitors used ChatGPT per day in January, more than double the levels in December. "In 20 years following the internet space, we cannot recall a faster ramp in a consumer internet app," UBS analysts wrote in the note. OpenAI, a private company backed by Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), launched ChatGPT in late November. It took TikTok about nine months after its global launch to add 100 million users and it took Instagram 2-1/2 years, according to data from Sensor Tower. [...] Analysts believe the viral launch of ChatGPT will give OpenAI a first-mover advantage against other AI companies. The growing usage, while adding up to a substantial amount of computing cost, has also provided valuable feedback to help train the chatbot's responses. While ChatGPT is currently free to use, the company on Wednesday launched a new pilot subscription plan for the chatbot called ChatGPT Plus. It starts at $20 per month and includes access to ChatGPT even during peak times, faster response times and priority access to new features and improvements.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Physicists at MIT have for the very first time observed a resonance between two colliding ultracold molecules. The findings have been published in the journal Nature. From the report: They found that a cloud of super-cooled sodium-lithium (NaLi) molecules disappeared 100 times faster than normal when exposed to a very specific magnetic field. The molecules' rapid disappearance is a sign that the magnetic field tuned the particles into a resonance, driving them to react more quickly than they normally would. The findings shed light on the mysterious forces that drive molecules to chemically react. They also suggest that scientists could one day harness particles' natural resonances to steer and control certain chemical reactions. Overall, the discovery provides a deeper understanding of molecular dynamics and chemistry. While the team does not anticipate scientists being able to stimulate resonance, and steer reactions, at the level of organic chemistry, it could one day be possible to do so at the quantum scale. "One of the main themes of quantum science is studying systems of increasing complexity, especially when quantum control is potentially in the offing," says John Doyle, professor of physics at Harvard University, who was not involved in the group's research. "These kind of resonances, first seen in simple atoms and then more complicated ones, led to amazing advances in atomic physics. Now that this is seen in molecules, we should first understand it in detail, and then let the imagination wander and think what it might be good for, perhaps constructing larger ultracold molecules, perhaps studying interesting states of matter."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Long-term exposure to even comparatively low levels of air pollution could cause depression and anxiety, according to a study exploring the links between air quality and mental ill-health. Tracking the incidence of depression and anxiety in almost 500,000 UK adults over 11 years, researchers found that those living in areas with higher pollution were more likely to suffer episodes, even when air quality was within official limits. Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry, the researchers, from the universities of Oxford and Beijing and Imperial College London, said their findings suggested a need for stricter standards or regulations for air pollution control. The researchers drew on the data of 389,185 participants from the UK Biobank, modeling and giving a score to the air pollution, including PM2.5 and PM10, nitrogen dioxide and nitric oxide for the areas in which they lived. They found 13,131 cases of depression and 15,835 of anxiety were identified among their sample within a follow-up period of about 11 years. As air pollution increased, the researchers found, so did cases of depression and anxiety. Exposure-response curves were non-linear, however, with steeper slopes at lower levels and plateauing trends at higher exposure, suggesting that long-term exposure to low levels of pollution were just just as likely to lead to diagnoses as exposure to higher levels. "Considering that many countries' air quality standards are still well above the latest World Health Organization global air quality guidelines 2021, stricter standards or regulations for air pollution control should be implemented in the future policy making," the researchers wrote.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A radioactive capsule that was reported lost in Western Australia on January 25 has been found. The BBC reports: On 25 January, when mining company Rio Tinto reported that one of their Caesium-137 radioactive capsules had gone missing, Western Australian authorities faced a seemingly impossible task. They had to locate a pea-sized capsule anywhere along a 1,400km (870 mile) route stretching from the Gudai-Darri mine in the north of the state to a depot just north of Perth's city centre. Authorities sprung into action, mobilizing specialist search crews to look for the capsule, with firefighters among those asked to foray from their usual summer tasks. [...] Before notifying the public to the threat, on 26 January, authorities began searching in Perth and around the mine site in Newman. On January 27, an urgent health warning was issued to notify the public about the risk posed by the radioactive capsule. Health authorities had a simple message to anyone who may come across it: Stay away. "It emits both beta rays and gamma rays so if you have it close to you, you could either end up with skin damage including skin burns," the state's Chief Health Officer Andy Robertson warned. By January 27, search parties were in full force looking for the tiny capsule. But they were not scouting for it using their eyes - they were using portable radiation survey meters. The survey meters are designed to detect radioactivity within a 20m radius. Police focused their efforts on the GPS route the truck had taken, and on sites close to Perth's metropolitan and high-density areas. One site along the Great Northern Highway was prioritized by police on 28 January after unusual activity on a Geiger counter - a device used for measuring radioactivity - was reported by a member of public. But that search did not uncover the capsule. The next day, additional resources requested from Australia's federal government had been approved and those overseeing the search began planning its next phase. With the new equipment in Western Australia and ready for use by 30 January, the search ramped up. An incident controller at the state's emergency services department, Darryl Ray, described the new tools provided by the government only as "specialized radiation detection equipment." Local media reported that radiation portal monitors and a gamma-ray spectrometer were among the new items being used by search crews. But by the end of 31 January, the capsule continued to evade search crews. So the next morning, when the government revealed the capsule had been found just two meters off the side of the highway at 11:13 local time Wednesday, it seemed the all-but-impossible had been achieved. "You can only imagine it's a pretty lonely stretch of road from Newman down to Perth," Fire and Emergency Services Commissioner Darren Klemm said at a press conference on Wednesday. "You can't help but imagine there was an element of surprise from the people in the car when the equipment did spike up." While hesitant to give the exact location the radioactive capsule was found, Mr Klemm described it as "the best possible outcome." Local media reports suggest it was found some 74km from Newman - so around 200km from the mine site. No one appeared to have been injured by the capsule, according to authorities, and it did not seem to have moved from where it fell. Mr Klemm said the additional resources from the federal government proved key to finding the capsule.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On Tuesday's fourth-quarter earnings call, Snapchat maker Snap revealed that its future AR glasses will be powered by generative AI technology. TechCrunch reports: Social media company and Snapchat maker Snap has for years defined itself as a "camera company," despite its failures to turn its photo-and-video recording glasses known as Spectacles into a mass-market product and, more recently, its decision to kill off its camera-equipped drone. [...] Snap CEO Evan Spiegel agreed that, in the near term, there were a lot of opportunities to use generative AI to make Snap's camera more powerful. However, he noted that further down the road, AI would be critical to the growth of augmented reality, including AR glasses. The exec said that, initially, generative AI could be used to do things like improve the resolution and clarity of a Snap after the user captures it, or could even be used for "more extreme transformations," editing images or creating Snaps based on text input. (We should note that generative AI, at least in the way the term is being thrown around today, is not necessarily required to improve photo resolution.) Spiegel didn't pin any time frames to these types of developments or announce specific products Snap had in the works, but said the company was thinking about how to integrate AI tools into its existing Lens Studio technology for AR developers. "We saw a lot of success integrating Snap ML tools into Lens Studio, and it's really enabled creators to build some incredible things. We now have 300,000 creators who built more than 3 million lenses in Lens Studio," Spiegel told investors. "So, the democratization of these tools, I think, will also be very powerful," he added, in reference to the future integrations of AI tech. What's most interesting, perhaps, was the brief insight Spiegel offered about how Snap foresees the potential for AI when used in AR glasses. Though Snap's Spectacles have not broken any sales records, the company continues to develop the product. The most recent version, the Spectacles 3, expands beyond recording standard photos and video with the addition of new tools like 3D filters and AR graphics. Spiegel suggested that AI could have an impact on this product as well, thanks to its ability to improve the process of building for AR. "We can use generative AI to help build more of these 3D models very quickly, which can really unlock the full potential of AR and help people make their imagination real in the world," Spiegel added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At the Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2023 event today, Samsung announced the Galaxy Book3 Ultra, a 16-inch workstation laptop with a 120Hz OLED screen, an H-Series Core i7 or Core i9, and an RTX 4050 or 4070 GPU. "Samsung makes a number of Galaxy Book models, but this is the first one of the past few years that has really targeted the deep-pocketed professional user -- that is, the core audience for Apple's high-powered and wildly expensive MacBook Pro 16," reports The Verge. "It'll start at $2,399.99 ($100 cheaper than the base MacBook Pro 16), with a release date still to be announced." From the report: Like its siblings in the Galaxy Book3 line, a big draw of this workstation will be its screen. It's got a 2880 x 1800 120Hz 16:10 OLED display (a welcome change from the 16:9 panels that adorned last year's Galaxy Book2) rated for 400 nits of brightness [...]. Elsewhere, using the device felt pretty similar to using any number of other Samsung Galaxy Books, with a satisfyingly clicky keyboard, a smooth finish, a high-quality build, and a compact chassis. The Ultra is 0.65 inches thick and 3.9 pounds, which is slightly thinner and close to a pound lighter than the 16-inch MacBook Pro that Apple just released [...]. I was able to use a number of Samsung's continuity features, including Second Screen (which allows you to easily use a Galaxy Tab as a second monitor) and Quick Share (which allows you to quickly transfer images and other files between Samsung devices). For Samsung enthusiasts, those seem like handy features that aren't too much of a hassle to set up. The one feature I had issues with was the touchpad -- it registered some of my two-finger clicks as one-finger clicks and wasn't quite picking up all of my scrolls. The units in Samsung's demo area were preproduction devices, so I hope this is a kink Samsung can iron out before the final release. Unfortunately, we don't yet know how it will stack up when it comes to battery life. The M2 generation of MacBooks is very strong on that front -- and given that the Galaxy Book3 Ultra is running a high-resolution screen, a power-hungry H-series processor, and a very power-hungry RTX GPU, I'm a little bit nervous about that. If Samsung can pull off a device that lasts nearly as long as Apple's do, given those factors, hats off to them. Further reading: The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Is a Minor Update To a Spec Monster Samsung, Google and Qualcomm Team Up To Build a New Mixed-Reality PlatformRead more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Millions of Americans have used GoodRx, a drug discount app, to search for lower prices on prescriptions like antidepressants, H.I.V. medications and treatments for sexually transmitted diseases at their local drugstores. But U.S. regulators say the app's coupons and convenience came at a high cost for users: wrongful disclosure of their intimate health information. On Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission accused the app's developer, GoodRx Holdings, of sharing sensitive personal data on millions of users' prescription medications and illnesses with companies like Facebook and Google without authorization. [...] From 2017 to 2020, GoodRx uploaded the contact information of users who had bought certain medications, like birth control or erectile dysfunction pills, to Facebook so that the drug discount app could identify its users' social media profiles, the F.T.C. said in a legal complaint. GoodRx then used the personal information to target users with ads for medications on Facebook and Instagram, the complaint said, "all of which was visible to Facebook." GoodRx also targeted users who had looked up information on sexually transmitted diseases on HeyDoctor, the company's telemedicine service, with ads for HeyDoctor's S.T.D. testing services, the complaint said. Those data disclosures, regulators said, flouted public promises the company had made to "never provide advertisers any information that reveals a personal health condition." The company's information-sharing practices, the agency said, violated a federal rule requiring health apps and fitness trackers that collect personal health details to notify consumers of data breaches. While GoodRx agreed to settle the case, it said it disagreed with the agency's allegations and admitted no wrongdoing. The F.T.C.'s case against GoodRx could upend widespread user-profiling and ad-targeting practices in the multibillion-dollar digital health industry, and it puts companies on notice that regulators intend to curb the nearly unfettered trade in consumers' health details. [...] If a judge approves the proposed federal settlement order, GoodRx will be permanently barred from sharing users' health information for advertising purposes. To settle the case, the company also agreed to pay a $1.5 million civil penalty for violating the health breach notification rule.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

During Samsung's Unpacked event on Wednesday where it unveiled its new Galaxy S23 smartphones, the company said it'll work with Google and Qualcomm on an upcoming mixed-reality platform. Samsung didn't mention any specific products or timeline. CNET reports: "It's more of a declarative announcement about how we are going to get it right in trying to build the XR ecosystem," TM Roh, president of Samsung's mobile division, said in an interview with CNET through a translator ahead of the event. "Google's been investing for a long time across both experiences and technology in AR and VR," Lockheimer said onstage. "Delivering this next generation of experiences requires cutting-edge advanced hardware and software. That's why our collaboration with Samsung and Qualcomm is so exciting." Samsung has been relatively quiet about virtual reality aside from its Gear VR headset, which it launched several iterations of between 2015 and 2017. That device is a head-mounted holster for smartphone-powered VR experiences. Roh says there's been more demand from consumers for augmented and virtual reality, which is why the company chose this time to start discussing its plans. He says that the company has been researching the category for a while. "And now we believe that we have reached a certain threshold," he said. The collaboration makes sense since Samsung, Google and Qualcomm already work together to develop smartphones. Samsung builds the hardware of its Galaxy phones, while Qualcomm supplies the processor and Google manages the software's underlying Android operating system. Roh said Google and Qualcomm will play similar roles in the development of this upcoming XR platform, although they will likely overlap in certain areas. Even though Qualcomm would supply the processor, for example, Samsung might make some optimizations, just as it's done for the chip inside the Galaxy S23 lineup. "Each player is taking leadership in each category, and then we will be working very closely together across the different categories," Roh said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Monday, a group of AI researchers from Google, DeepMind, UC Berkeley, Princeton, and ETH Zurich released a paper outlining an adversarial attack that can extract a small percentage of training images from latent diffusion AI image synthesis models like Stable Diffusion. It challenges views that image synthesis models do not memorize their training data and that training data might remain private if not disclosed. Recently, AI image synthesis models have been the subject of intense ethical debate and even legal action. Proponents and opponents of generative AI tools regularly argue over the privacy and copyright implications of these new technologies. Adding fuel to either side of the argument could dramatically affect potential legal regulation of the technology, and as a result, this latest paper, authored by Nicholas Carlini et al., has perked up ears in AI circles. However, Carlini's results are not as clear-cut as they may first appear. Discovering instances of memorization in Stable Diffusion required 175 million image generations for testing and preexisting knowledge of trained images. Researchers only extracted 94 direct matches and 109 perceptual near-matches out of 350,000 high-probability-of-memorization images they tested (a set of known duplicates in the 160 million-image dataset used to train Stable Diffusion), resulting in a roughly 0.03 percent memorization rate in this particular scenario. Also, the researchers note that the "memorization" they've discovered is approximate since the AI model cannot produce identical byte-for-byte copies of the training images. By definition, Stable Diffusion cannot memorize large amounts of data because the size of the 160,000 million-image training dataset is many orders of magnitude larger than the 2GB Stable Diffusion AI model. That means any memorization that exists in the model is small, rare, and very difficult to accidentally extract. Still, even when present in very small quantities, the paper appears to show that approximate memorization in latent diffusion models does exist, and that could have implications for data privacy and copyright. The results may one day affect potential image synthesis regulation if the AI models become considered "lossy databases" that can reproduce training data, as one AI pundit speculated. Although considering the 0.03 percent hit rate, they would have to be considered very, very lossy databases -- perhaps to a statistically insignificant degree. [...] Eric Wallace, one of the paper's authors, shared some personal thoughts on the research in a Twitter thread. As stated in the paper, he suggested that AI model-makers should de-duplicate their data to reduce memorization. He also noted that Stable Diffusion's model is small relative to its training set, so larger diffusion models are likely to memorize more. And he advised against applying today's diffusion models to privacy-sensitive domains like medical imagery.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At Samsung's first Galaxy Unpacked event of the year, the company unveiled its new Galaxy S23 devices: the Galaxy S23, S23 Plus, and Galaxy S23 Ultra. Here's what The Verge's Allison Johnson says about the most premium phone of the bunch, the Galaxy S23 Ultra: Compared to the outgoing model, it comes with an updated processor, a new 200-megapixel main camera sensor, and a tweak to the form factor. The built-in S Pen is still here, naturally. And thankfully the price hasn't inflated. In fact, the starting MSRP of $1,199.99 now comes with 256GB of storage -- double last year's base model. It's a little extra shine on what was already Samsung's star smartphone. [...] The S23 Ultra also features a very slight exterior redesign. The long edges of the phone are slightly less curved, so there's more of a flat surface to grip when you're holding the device. The back panel and the screen also curve around the sides a bit less, so you might be less likely to run your S Pen off the edge of the device, which tended to happen with the more rounded design. [...] That's the short list of what's new. What's not new is basically everything else: a 5,000mAh battery, IP68 dust and water resistance, and either 8GB or 12GB of RAM depending on the configuration. Your color options this year are phantom black, lavender, green, and cream [...]. [T]he S23 Ultra is up for preorder today and starts shipping on February 17th. "Samsung's trio of flagships for 2023 offer some refined designs -- which look a little iPhone-like, if I'm being candid -- with some camera, battery, and processor improvements over last year's S22 generation," adds The Verge's Antonio G. Di Benedetto. You can view a full list of specs here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In the past year, a new term has arisen to describe an online scam raking in millions, if not billions, of dollars per year. It's called "pig butchering," and now even Apple is getting fooled into participating. From a report: Researchers from security firm Sophos said on Wednesday that they uncovered two apps available in the App Store that were part of an elaborate network of tools used to dupe people into putting large sums of money into fake investment scams. At least one of those apps also made it into Google Play, but that market is notorious for the number of malicious apps that bypass Google vetting. Sophos said this was the first time it had seen such apps in the App Store and that a previous app identified in these types of scams was a legitimate one that was later exploited by bad actors. Pig butchering relies on a rich combination of apps, websites, web hosts, and humans -- in some cases human trafficking victims -- to build trust with a mark over a period of weeks or months, often under the guise of a romantic interest, financial adviser, or successful investor. Eventually, the online discussion will turn to investments, usually involving cryptocurrency, that the scammer claims to have earned huge sums of money from. The scammer then invites the victim to participate. Once a mark deposits money, the scammers will initially allow them to make withdrawals. The scammers eventually lock the account and claim they need a deposit of as much as 20 percent of their balance to get it back. Even when the deposit is paid, the money isn't returned, and the scammers invent new reasons the victim should send more money. The pig-butchering term derives from a farmer fattening up a hog months before it's butchered.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Netflix has unveiled its plans to prevent password sharing between people in households outside of an account owner's primary location. From a report: As reported by gHacks, the streaming service has detailed how it aims to crackdown on account sharing in an updated FAQ. The information varies between countries, but it looks like the company will be paying careful attention to the devices used to log in to accounts from now on. The FAQ pages for US and UK subscribers currently highlight that devices may require verification if they are not associated with the Netflix household or if they attempt to access an account outside the subscriber's primary location for an extended period of time. The FAQ pages for countries where Netflix is testing extra membership fees for account sharing have tweaked the rules. The Costa Rican Help Center states that devices must connect to the Wi-Fi at the primary location and watch something on Netflix "at least once every 31 days." The company will use information "such as IP addresses, device IDs, and account activity" to determine whether a device signed into an account is connected to the primary location. A device may be blocked from watching Netflix if it's deemed to fall outside of the household. As further set out in the guidelines, if you are the primary account owner and you find yourself travelling between locations, you can request a temporary code to access Netflix for seven consecutive days. Alternatively, you can update your primary location if it has changed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.