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An anonymous reader quotes a report from ArsTechnica: The operator of Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall is being probed by New York's attorney general over the company's use of facial recognition technology to identify and exclude lawyers from events. AG Letitia James' office said the policy may violate civil rights laws. Because of the policy, lawyers who work for firms involved in litigation against MSG Entertainment Corp. can be denied entry to shows or sporting events, even when they have no direct involvement in any lawsuits against MSG. A lawyer who is subject to MSG's policy may buy a ticket to an event but be unable to get in because the MSG venues use facial recognition to identify them. In December, attorney Kelly Conlon was denied entry into Radio City Music Hall in New York when she accompanied her daughter's Girl Scout troop to a Rockettes show. Conlon wasn't personally involved in any lawsuits against MSG but is a lawyer for a firm that "has been involved in personal injury litigation against a restaurant venue now under the umbrella of MSG Entertainment," NBC New York reported. James' office sent a letter (PDF) Tuesday to MSG Entertainment, noting reports that it "used facial recognition software to forbid all lawyers in all law firms representing clients engaged in any litigation against the Company from entering the Company's venues in New York, including the use of any season tickets." "We write to raise concerns that the Policy may violate the New York Civil Rights Law and other city, state, and federal laws prohibiting discrimination and retaliation for engaging in protected activity," Assistant AG Kyle Rapinan of the Civil Rights Bureau wrote in the letter. "Such practices certainly run counter to the spirit and purpose of such laws, and laws promoting equal access to the courts: forbidding entry to lawyers representing clients who have engaged in litigation against the Company may dissuade such lawyers from taking on legitimate cases, including sexual harassment or employment discrimination claims." The AG's office also said it is concerned that "facial recognition software may be plagued with biases and false positives against people of color and women." The letter asked MSG Entertainment to respond by February 13 "to state the justifications for the Company's Policy and identify all efforts you are undertaking to ensure compliance with all applicable laws and that the Company's use of facial recognition technology will not lead to discrimination." "To be clear, our policy does not unlawfully prohibit anyone from entering our venues and it is not our intent to dissuade attorneys from representing plaintiffs in litigation against us," said an MSG spokesperson in a statement. "We are merely excluding a small percentage of lawyers only during active litigation. Most importantly, to even suggest anyone is being excluded based on the protected classes identified in state and federal civil rights laws is ludicrous. Our policy has never applied to attorneys representing plaintiffs who allege sexual harassment or employment discrimination."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft just forged a strategic alliance with a major solar panel manufacturer to try to make good on its clean energy goals. From a report: The deal comes as supply chain woes and allegations of labor abuse are making it increasingly difficult to deploy solar energy across the US. The plan is for solar energy heavyweight Qcells to provide more than 2.5 gigawatts of solar panels and related services to developers working with Microsoft. That's enough to power some 400,000 homes, according to Microsoft, which hailed the collaboration as a "first-of-its-kind." The company has a goal of cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by "more than half" by 2030 and to counteract its remaining pollution by trying to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Microsoft also has a 2030 renewable energy commitment -- one that it won't be able to meet unless it can encourage more solar and wind energy to come online.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In his State of the City speech Thursday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced that Uber and Lyft will be required to be zero emission by 2030. The decision by one of the world's largest markets for app-based ridehailing has the potential to affect an estimated 100,000 for-hire vehicles. From a report: Adams said the move will build on efforts his administration has made to electrify the city's fleet of vehicles while installing charging infrastructure to power those vehicles throughout the five boroughs. The mayor will likely implement his plan through the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission, which regulates the for-hire vehicle industry, including Uber and Lyft. Uber and Lyft, which normally chafe at new requirements and have been known to sue to block rules they don't like, sound largely positive toward the new development in New York.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If it's still too early to declare platform-exclusive podcast deals dead as we move into 2023, it's becoming ever clearer that this business model is likely not long for this world. From a report: Spotify in particular has spent the past few years building up its arsenal of exclusive podcast content, shelling out more than $1 billion to acquire studios, lock down popular shows and secure marquee names. Those include podcasting behemoth Joe Rogan, former Presidential couple the Obamas (through their Higher Ground media company) and even the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. But the tide is turning as we enter what many observers project to be a difficult year for the podcasting industry. As in the streaming video space, the major audio players are reportedly reining in their spending amid economic pressures, bringing the booming market of the last several years toward a close. [...] For one thing, as the digital ad market continues to sag in the months ahead, competition for podcast ad dollars is going to intensify further -- bad news for any creator whose show is limited to a single platform. Despite exponential growth in the number of shows available to listeners -- on Spotify alone, that number grew from around 700,000 at the end of 2019 to 4.7 million in September 2022, per company reports -- the podcast ad market, while still growing, has not expanded nearly as rapidly. Spotify's U.S. podcast ad revenue is projected to steadily increase by about 40 percent year-over-year through 2024, far down from the explosive growth rates of 2020 and 2021 as its podcast operations expanded.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Dutch hacker arrested in November obtained and offered for sale the full name, address and date of birth of virtually everyone in Austria, the Alpine nation's police said on Wednesday. From a report: A user believed to be the hacker offered the data for sale in an online forum in May 2020, presenting it as "the full name, gender, complete address and date of birth of presumably every citizen" in Austria, police said in a statement, adding that investigators had confirmed its authenticity. The trove comprised close to nine million sets of data, police said. Austria's population is roughly 9.1 million. The hacker had also put "similar data sets" from Italy, the Netherlands and Colombia up for sale, Austrian police said, adding that they did not have further details.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. government's cybersecurity agency has warned that criminal financially motivated hackers compromised federal agencies using legitimate remote desktop software. From a report: CISA said in a joint advisory with the National Security Agency on Wednesday that it had identified a "widespread cyber campaign involving the malicious use of legitimate remote monitoring and management (RMM) software" that had targeted multiple federal civilian executive branch agencies -- known as FCEBs -- a list that includes Homeland Security, the Treasury, and the Justice Department. CISA said it first identified suspected malicious activity on two FCEB systems in October while conducting a retrospective analysis using Einstein, a government-operated intrusion detection system used for protecting federal civilian agency networks. Further analysis led to the conclusion that many other government networks were also affected.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Yandex source code repository allegedly stolen by a former employee of the Russian technology company has been leaked as a Torrent on a popular hacking forum. From a report: Yesterday, the leaker posted a magnet link that they claim are 'Yandex git sources' consisting of 44.7 GB of files stolen from the company in July 2022. These code repositories allegedly contain all of the company's source code besides anti-spam rules.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Africa is less safe, secure and democratic than a decade ago, with insecurity holding back progress in health, education and economic opportunities, according to an assessment of the continent. From a report: The Ibrahim index of African governance, which examines how well governments have delivered on policies and services, including security, health, education, rights and democratic participation, said Covid had contributed to the stalling of progress over the past three years. Mo Ibrahim, a Sudan-born businessman who launched the index in 2007, said economic opportunities and human development had improved "quite a lot" across Africa over the past 10 years. "But on the other hand, we see other forces pulling us back. The security and safety of our people is deteriorating," he said. Ibrahim said he was concerned the climate crisis would lead to more conflict over resources, as already seen in parts of Nigeria, Darfur and the Sahel, and worried about the impact of the war in Ukraine on development indicators across the continent.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The University of Texas at Austin, one of the nation's leading computer science schools, said on Thursday that it was starting a large-scale, low-cost online Master of Science degree program in artificial intelligence. From a report: The first of its kind among elite computing schools, the new program could help swiftly expand the A.I. work force in the United States as tech giants like Microsoft rush to invest billions in the field. The university announced the initiative amid a clamor over new technology powered by artificial intelligence that can generate humanlike art and texts. And while some of the technology industry's biggest companies are laying off workers after years of rapid growth, hiring in A.I. is expected to stay strong. University officials said they planned to train thousands of graduate students in sought-after skills like machine learning, for a tuition of about $10,000, starting in the spring of 2024. School officials said the cost was intended to make A.I. education more affordable. By contrast, Johns Hopkins University offers an online M.S. degree in artificial intelligence for more than $45,000.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A 13-minute segment on a recent episode of CBS's 60 Minutes appeared to be a news story on Novo Nordisk's weight-loss drug Wegovy, but was actually a sponsored promotion violating federal regulations, according to the nonprofit public health advocacy organization Physicians Committee. From a report: The group filed a complaint with the Food and Drug Administration last week, arguing that the segment, which aired on January 1, violates the FDA's "fair balance" requirement. This law requires that drug advertisements give a fair balance to a drug's risks and benefits. The Physicians Committee claims that CBS's 60 Minutes received advertising payments from Novo Nordisk prior to the coverage, and that the aired segment only included experts who had also been paid by Novo Nordisk. The segment lauded the drug with words and phrases such as "highly effective," "safe," "impressive," "fabulous," and "robust," but didn't delve into side effects or alternative treatments and strategies for weight loss.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SoftBank Group's new startup bets hit a record low last quarter as valuations continued to slide, chilling an already frosty startup winter. From a report: The world's largest tech investor -- which at one point took part in $30 billion worth of financing rounds in more than 90 startups in a single quarter -- participated in just eight investment rounds totaling $2.1 billion in the three months ending in December, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. It was the first time the number of SoftBank's deals fell to single digits since the launch of its Vision Fund. Startup investments by SoftBank's Vision Fund unit came below $350 million in the quarter just ended, a person familiar with the matter said. In total, the segment invested more than $144 billion in five-and-a-half years, which averages out to more than $6 billion per quarter. SoftBank is not alone. Rivals Tiger Global Management, Sequoia Capital and Coatue Management have also tightened their spigots after shouldering big writedowns in 2022. Denied lucrative exits by a rout in tech valuations, deep-pocketed investors have pulled back, hitting pause on billion-dollar funding rounds that had become common in recent years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The EU's proposed Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), which aims to "bolster cybersecurity rules to ensure more secure hardware and software products," could have severe unintended consequences for open source software, according to leaders in the open source community. From a report: The proposed Act can be described as CE marking for software products and has four specific objectives. One is to require manufacturers to improve the security of products with digital elements "throughout the whole life cycle." Second is to offer a "coherent cybersecurity framework" by which to measure compliance. Third is to improve the transparency of digital security in products, and fourth is to enable customers to "use products with digital elements securely." The draft legislation includes an impact assessment that says "for software developers and hardware manufacturers, it will increase the direct compliance costs for new cybersecurity requirements, conformity assessment, documentation and reporting obligations." This extra cost is part of a total cost of compliance, including the burden on businesses and public authorities, estimated at EUR 29 billion ($31.54 billion), and consequent higher prices for consumers. However, the legislators foresee a cost reduction from security incidents estimated at EUR 180 to 290 billion annually. The question is though: how can free software developers afford the cost of compliance, when lack of funding is already a critical issue for many projects? Mike Milinkovich, director of the Eclipse Foundation, said it is "deeply concerned that the CRA could fundamentally alter the social contract which underpins the entire open source ecosystem: open source software provided for free, for any purpose, which can be modified and further distributed for free, but without warranty or liability to the authors, contributors, or open source distributors. Legally altering this arrangement through legislation can reasonably be expected to cause unintended consequences to the innovation economy in Europe."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

European Commission: Have you ever struggled to understand whether you were buying directly from Google or from a different brand, or had difficulty finding information about final costs? In order to further align its practices with EU law -- mainly on lack of transparency and clear information to consumers -- Google has committed to introduce changes in several of its products and services. Following a dialogue started in 2021 with the Consumer Protection Cooperation Network (CPC), coordinated by the European Commission and led by the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets and the Belgian Directorate-General for Economic Inspection, Google has agreed to address issues raised by the authorities and to introduce changes in Google Store, Google Play Store, Google Hotels and Google Flights to ensure compliance with EU consumer rules. Following the dialogue, Google has committed to limit its capacity to make unilateral changes related to orders when it comes to price or cancellations, and to create an email address whose use is reserved to consumer protection authorities, so that they can report and request the quick removal of illegal content. Moreover, Google agreed to introduce a series of changes to its practices, such as: Google Flights and Google Hotels:1. Make clear to consumers whether they contract directly with Google or whether it is simply acting as an intermediary;2. Clarify the price used as a reference when discounts are advertised on the platform, as well as the fact that reviews are not verified on Google Hotels;3. Accept the same transparency commitments as other big accommodation platforms as regards the way it presents information to consumers, for example, on prices or availability. Google Play Store and Google Store:1. Provide clear pre-contractual information on delivery costs, right of withdrawal and availability of repair or replacement options. Furthermore, Google will facilitate also information on the company (e.g. legal name and address) and direct and effective contact points (e.g. a live telephone agent);2. Clarify how to browse different country versions of the Google Play Store and inform developers about their obligations under the Geo-blocking Regulation to make their apps accessible EU-wide, as well as enable consumers to use means of payment from any EU country.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: More than 700 miles from Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange's backup data center on Cermak Road in Chicago is supposed to safeguard US markets, standing by at all hours in case disaster ever strikes the world's largest venue for trading shares. When markets are closed, it participates in a well-worn routine, with NYSE staffers turning on and off systems to ensure everything works. But heading into Tuesday, an NYSE employee failed to properly shut down Cermak's disaster-recovery system -- leading to a disaster. That human error, described by people with direct knowledge of NYSE's internal operations, is what triggered wild market swings when trading opened Tuesday morning in Manhattan. The chaos affected more than 250 companies including Wells Fargo, McDonald's, Walmart and Morgan Stanley, in some cases sending stock prices swinging by 25 percentage points in a matter of minutes. The episode has prompted the exchange to cancel thousands of trades at a cost that's still being determined. Meanwhile, market professionals and day traders are rattled and waiting for the exchange to elaborate on what it publicly called a "manual error" involving its "disaster recovery configuration."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

British cybersecurity officials are warning that hacking groups linked to Russia and Iran are duping people into clicking malicious links by impersonating journalists and experts. From a report: The hackers, who have similar goals but are said to be working separately, have sought to steal emails from people working in academia, defense, the media and government, as well as from activists and non-governmental organizations, according to an advisory released on Thursday by the UK's National Cyber Security Centre. "These campaigns by threat actors based in Russia and Iran continue to ruthlessly pursue their targets in an attempt to steal online credentials and compromise potentially sensitive systems," said Paul Chichester, the center's director of operations. "We strongly encourage organizations and individuals to remain vigilant to potential approaches and follow the mitigation advice in the advisory to protect themselves online."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: If you recently made a purchase from an overseas online store selling knockoff clothes and goods, there's a chance your credit card number and personal information were exposed. Since January 6, a database containing hundreds of thousands of unencrypted credit card numbers and corresponding cardholders' information was spilling onto the open web. At the time it was pulled offline on Tuesday, the database had about 330,000 credit card numbers, cardholder names, and full billing addresses -- and rising in real-time as customers placed new orders. The data contained all the information that a criminal would need to make fraudulent transactions and purchases using a cardholder's information. The credit card numbers belong to customers who made purchases through a network of near-identical online stores claiming to sell designer goods and apparel. But the stores had the same security problem in common: Any time a customer made a purchase, their credit card data and billing information was saved in a database, which was left exposed to the internet without a password. Anyone who knew the IP address of the database could access reams of unencrypted financial data. Anurag Sen, a good-faith security researcher, found the exposed credit card records and asked TechCrunch for help in reporting it to its owner. Sen has a respectable track record of scanning the internet looking for exposed servers and inadvertently published data, and reporting it to companies to get their systems secured. But in this case, Sen wasn't the first person to discover the spilling data. According to a ransom note left behind on the exposed database, someone else had found the spilling data and, instead of trying to identify the owner and responsibly reporting the spill, the unnamed person instead claimed to have taken a copy of the entire database's contents of credit card data and would return it in exchange for a small sum of cryptocurrency. A review of the data by TechCrunch shows most of the credit card numbers are owned by cardholders in the United States. [...] Internet records showed that the database was operated by a customer of Tencent, whose cloud services were used to host the database. TechCrunch contacted Tencent about its customer's database leaking credit card information, and the company responded quickly. The customer's database went offline a short time later. Many of the stores leaking customers' information claim to operate out of Hong Kong and were set up in the past few weeks. Some of the websites include: spraygroundusa.com, ihuahebuy.com, igoodlinks.com, ibuysbuy.com, lichengshop.com, hzoushop.com, goldlyshop.com, haohangshop.com, twinklebubble.store, and spendidbuy.com.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scientists from the U.S. National Institutes of Health found a link between dozens of different viral exposures and a later increased risk of Alzheimer's disease and other brain disorders. Gizmodo reports: They analyzed data from two existing and nationally representative biobank projects tracking the long-term health of residents in Finland and the UK, respectively, collectively involving around 450,000 people. They looked for links between viral infections that led to hospitalization and six neurodegenerative diseases: Alzheimer's disease (the most common form of dementia), ALS, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, vascular dementia, and generalized dementia. In the Finland data, they initially identified 45 types of viral exposure potentially linked to a greater risk of neurodegenerative illness. To double-check these results, they then ran the same sort of analysis on the UK data and found a similar relationship for 22 types of viral exposure across both datasets. Some of these exposures involved specific viral infections, such as influenza, varicella zoster virus (the cause of chickenpox and shingles), and herpes simplex viruses. Others concerned where an infection or its harmful effects took place, such as viral encephalitis or meningitis, types of brain inflammation that can be caused by many different viruses. For some exposures, the risk of subsequent brain illness extended up to 15 years later, while the strongest link was seen between viral encephalitis and Alzheimer's. The team's findings were published earlier this month in Neuron. "As vaccines are currently available for some of the associated viruses, vaccination may be a way to reduce some risk of neurodegenerative disease," the authors note.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

State Sen. Wendy Rogers (R-AZ) has introduced a set of bills aimed at making bitcoin legal tender in Arizona and allowing state agencies to accept bitcoin. Bitcoin Magazine reports: The proposed legislation (PDF) aims to recognize bitcoin as a legal form of currency in Arizona, allowing it to be used to pay for debts, taxes and other financial obligations. This would mean that all transactions that are currently done in U.S. dollars could potentially be done with bitcoin, and individuals and businesses would have the option to use bitcoin as they see fit. Specifically mentioning bitcoin alone, the legal tender bill defines bitcoin as, "the decentralized, peer-to-peer digital currency in which a record of transactions is maintained on the Bitcoin blockchain and new units of currency are generated by the computational solution of mathematical problems and that operates independently of a central bank." The acceptance bill is more broad, saying that, "A state agency may enter into an agreement with a cryptocurrency issuer to provide a method to accept cryptocurrency as a payment method of fines, civil penalties or other penalties, rent, rates, taxes, fees, charges, revenue, financial obligations and special assessments to pay any amount due to that agency or this state." The report notes that Sen. Rogers introduced the same amendment in January 2022, but it "died by the second reading."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard, written by Katie Way: MILF Manor is a reality TV show made to be dissected on the internet. Everything, from its ripped-from-30-Rock title to the Oedipal set-up of mothers and their sons thrown into the same "dating pool," is so patently outrageous that it boomerangs back into normalcy -- of course these mothers need to participate in a blindfolded contest to identify their sons by their abs alone. But MILF Manor's most understated quirk is the one that sticks out to me: There's no tanned, vaguely handsome man with veneers and a dress shirt directing the festivities. Instead, contestants receive alerts and directions via text, on iPhones in magenta cases that seem to be provided by the producers. Like more and more reality TV competition shows, there's no actual host. By my estimation, Netflix's The Circle kicked the trend off in 2020. Its contestants, who compete to create the most lovable social media presence in physical isolation, receive prompts and challenges from a big-screen TV in their living quarters. Pressure Cooker, a more recent offering from the streaming giant, is a cooking competition show where the host is replaced by a kitchen ticket printer: Competitions receive challenge instructions and the results of game-ending votes in the same way chefs take orders from their diners. The Button, a YouTube speed dating series by the production company Cut, goes a step further with the introduction of a large talking button that cracks jokes and prompts daters to ask each other cringe-worthy questions until one of them presses it, ending the date and sending in another option. Why axe the role of host when it's been a staple of the formula for so long? It could be a sign of the recession. Reality TV competition shows are famously among the cheapest television to produce, but if I've learned anything about business, it's that executives have never met a corner they're not dying to cut. It could also be that the role of reality TV host is not attracting the same iconic cultural figures it once was, when the subgenre exploded in popularity in the early 2000s. [...] At the core, though, I believe there's something more insidious at play: Robots are once again stealing jobs from red-blooded human workers. Only this time, instead of factory linemen or fast food cashiers, these laborers are C-List comedians and guys who are incredibly symmetrical but not quite hot. (Again, Jeff Probst, I am not talking about you!) Sure, I know machine intelligence doesn't experience emotion -- yet! -- and I know that all of these robo-hosts are likely operated by producers -- for now! But isn't toying with people in a high-stress, high-stakes situation, the exact job description of a reality competition host, the absolute dream gig for a robot? Seems a little too perfect. "Experts already predict that AI and machine learning could replace people working as couriers, investment analysts, and customer service representatives," concludes Way. "Adding reality competition show hosts to that list means the creep into our cultural landscape has already started, which is a distinctly scary thought, in my book. Our flesh is weak, our MILFs are fragile, and we are so, so vulnerable to the clinical calculations of our machine overlords -- uh, I mean, hosts."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

IBM on Wednesday announced 3,900 layoffs as part of some asset divestments and missed its annual cash target, dampening cheer around beating revenue expectations in the fourth quarter. From a report: Chief Financial Officer James Kavanaugh told Reuters that the company was still "committed to hiring for client-facing research and development". The layoffs -- related to the spinoff of its Kyndryl business and a part of AI unit Watson Health -- will cause a $300 million charge in the January-March period, IBM said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Federal agencies are questioning Snapchat's role in the spread and sale of fentanyl-laced pills in the United States as part of a broader probe into the deadly counterfeit drugs crisis. The Los Angeles Times reports: FBI agents and Justice Department attorneys are zeroing in on fentanyl poisoning cases where the sales were arranged to young buyers via Snapchat [...]. The agents have interviewed parents of children who died and are working to access their social media accounts to trace the suppliers of the lethal drugs, according to the people. In many cases, subpoenaed records from Snapchat have shown that the teenagers thought they were buying prescription painkillers, but the pill they swallowed was pure fentanyl -- a synthetic opioid 100 times more potent than morphine. On Wednesday, the involvement of technology companies in the ongoing fentanyl crisis will be discussed on Capitol Hill at a House Energy and Commerce Committee roundtable. One of the listed speakers, Laura Marquez-Garrett, an attorney with the Social Media Victims Law Center, said Snapchat will be the focus. "The death of American children by fentanyl poisoning is not a social media issue -- it's a Snapchat issue," she said. [...] While dealers use many social media platforms to advertise their drugs, experts, lawyers and families say Snapchat is the platform of choice for arranging sales. Dealers prefer to use Snapchat because of its encrypted technology and disappearing messages -- features that have given the platform an edge over its rivals for fully legitimate reasons and helped it become one of the world's most popular social media apps for teens. Former White House drug czar Jim Carroll said drug traffickers are always going to flock to where the young people are. "From everything I have read, I do believe that Snapchat has been more widely used for facilitating drug sales," than other platforms, said Carroll, who serves on Snap's safety advisory council and now works for Michael Best Consulting. "I think that's because of its popularity among the young." In December, Snap reported 363 million daily active users in its quarterly earnings report. That same month, the National Crime Prevention Council wrote a letter to Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland, urging the Justice Department to investigate Snap and its business practices. "Snapchat has become a digital open-air drug market allowing drug dealers to market and to sell fake pills to unsuspecting tweens and teens," the letter said. Garland didn't respond, but federal investigators have started to ask questions, multiple people said. Santa Monica-based Snap, which makes Snapchat, said it has worked with law enforcement for years to clamp down on illegal activity on its platform and has boosted moderation efforts to detect illegal drug sales. Last year, Snap said it removed more than 400,000 user accounts that posted drug-related content. "We are committed to doing our part to fight the national fentanyl poisoning crisis, which includes using cutting-edge technology to help us proactively find and shut down drug dealers' accounts," Rachel Racusen, a Snap spokeswoman, said in an emailed statement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Shutterstock, one of the internet's biggest sources of stock photos and illustrations, is now offering its customers the option to generate their own AI images. Gizmodo reports: In October, the company announced a partnership with OpenAI, the creator of the wildly popular and controversial DALL-E AI tool. Now, the results of that deal are in beta testing and available to all paying Shutterstock users. The new platform is available in "every language the site offers," and comes included with customers' existing licensing packages, according to a press statement from the company. And, according to Gizmodo's own test, every text prompt you feed Shutterstock's machine results in four images, ostensibly tailored to your request. At the bottom of the page, the site also suggests "More AI-generated images from the Shutterstock library," which offer unrelated glimpses into the void. In an attempt to pre-empt concerns about copyright law and artistic ethics, Shutterstock has said it uses "datasets licensed from Shutterstock" to train its DALL-E and LG EXAONE-powered AI. The company also claims it will pay artists whose work is used in its AI-generation. Shutterstock plans to do so through a "Contributor Fund." That fund "will directly compensate Shutterstock contributors if their IP was used in the development of AI-generative models, like the OpenAI model, through licensing of data from Shutterstock's library," the company explains in an FAQ section on its website. "Shutterstock will continue to compensate contributors for the future licensing of AI-generated content through the Shutterstock AI content generation tool," it further says. Further, Shutterstock includes a clever caveat in their use guidelines for AI images. "You must not use the generated image to infringe, misappropriate, or violate the intellectual property or other rights of any third party, to generate spam, false, misleading, deceptive, harmful, or violent imagery," the company notes. And, though I am not a legal expert, it would seem this clause puts the onus on the customer to avoid ending up in trouble. If a generated image includes a recognizable bit of trademarked material, or spits out celebrity's likeness -- it's on the user of Shutterstock's tool to notice and avoid republishing the problem content.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New bills in the state House and Senate would not only pursue collective bargaining rights across companies, as with past measures, but would guarantee a minimum wage, paid sick leave and other benefits. Companies like Uber and Lyft would also have to cover some driver expenses and pour money into the government's unemployment insurance system. Engadget reports: The new legislation wouldn't decide whether drivers are employees or independent contractors. However, Senate bill co-sponsor Jason Lewis told the State House News Service his bill would establish requirements that apply regardless of a driver's status. Previous bills would have tasked workers with negotiating for benefits that are now included, Lewis says. In a statement, the Service Employees International Union (a bill proponent) says the bill "rewrites the rules" and gives condition drivers have sought for over a decade. The Massachusetts Coalition for Independent Work, an industry-run organization that opposes the legislation, previously claimed that measures granting employee status don't reflect a "vast majority" of drivers that want to remain contractors. The coalition prefers bills that would bring the anti-employee ballot proposal to the legislature as well as create portable benefit accounts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: At the Flutter Forward event, Google released Flutter 3.7 with more Material You widgets and menus support, while also teasing the future of the app development framework. Having grown from humble beginnings on Android and iOS, Google's Flutter SDK can now help you create apps for mobile, desktop, web, and more, all from a single Dart codebase. Since launch, over 700,000 Flutter apps have been published across various platforms. Today in Nairobi, Kenya, the Flutter team hosted Flutter Forward, an event to connect with the growing global community of developers and showcase the future of app development. For starters, Flutter version 3.7 has now been released, bringing with it a whole host of Material 3 (Material You) widgets. To get a feel for what all is possible with the new generation of Material Design in Flutter, Google has prepared a fun web showcase that even allows you to toggle between Material Theming and Material You. You'll also find that Flutter 3.7 includes new support for creating menus for your app -- including native support for macOS menus, new cascading menu widgets, and the ability to add items to right-click/long-press context menus. The built-in text magnifier on Android and iOS also now works as expected with Flutter's text fields. You can learn more about the improvements of Flutter 3.7 in the full release blog. Looking ahead, the Flutter team has been working for quite some time on replacing the Skia renderer with a more robust solution of its own. Currently dubbed "Impeller," Flutter's new rendering engine has made significant enough progress to now be ready for developers to test it with their iOS apps. [...] Google is also working on new ways to help Flutter apps integrate with the underlying OS or platform. [...] Meanwhile, for Flutter web apps, a new "js" library makes it easy to call your app's Dart code from the outer page's JavaScript code. Relatedly, you can now embed a Flutter view onto a page through a standard HTML div. Both of these can be seen in a fun demonstration page. Elsewhere in Flutter web news, Google has made strides toward compiling Dart apps using WebAssembly. [...] In time, this should result in significant performance improvements for Flutter on the web. In addition to compiling to WebAssembly, the Dart team has also begun offering full support for the RISC-V architecture, with the ultimate goal of Flutter apps running on RISC-V. Another major announcement today is that Google is moving forward with its plans to release version 3.0 of the Dart programming language upon which Flutter apps are built. Dart 3.0 is available today for early alpha testing with a focus on requiring sound null safety.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Senator Joe Manchin, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has introduced a new bill that squashes a small loophole around the Inflation Reduction Act's (IRA) $7,500 EV tax credit. Engadget reports: The new credits are restricted to cars with final assembly in the US, as well as those with a certain amount of North American battery content (an amount that increases every year). But, the U.S. Treasury has delayed its final rules on battery guidance until March, which means EVs with foreign batteries can still receive the full $7,500 in credits until then. Manchin's legislation, dubbed the American Vehicle Security Act (AVSA), would push the battery requirement back to January 1st. "It is unacceptable that the U.S. Treasury has failed to issue updated guidance for the 30D electric vehicle tax credits and continues to make the full $7,500 credits available without meeting all of the clear requirements included in the Inflation Reduction Act," Manchin wrote a statement. "The Treasury Department failed to meet the statutory deadline of December 31, 2022, to release guidance for the 30D credit and have created an opportunity to circumvent stringent supply chain requirements included in the IRA. The IRA is first-and-foremost an energy security bill, and the EV tax credits were designed to grow domestic manufacturing and reduce our reliance on foreign supply chains for the critical minerals needed to produce EV batteries." Autoblog notes that the AVSA doesn't patch the other IRA loophole, which also allows for the full credit for leased cars built outside of the U.S.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hundreds of Amazon workers are on strike in Britain. The walkout marks the first formal industrial action in the country for the U.S. tech giant. CNBC reports: The 24-hour strike action began Wednesday a minute after midnight. Strikers are expected to picket outside the company's site in Coventry in central England throughout the day. At 6 a.m. London time, workers were pictured camping by a bonfire and waving union flags outside the Coventry site near Birmingham airport, known as BHX4. One poster behind the workers had a slogan that said "Fight for 15 pounds," and encouraged workers to join the GMB union. Another, which was bannered across a fence, read: "The wrong Amazon is burning." The GMB Union, which represents the workers involved, said it expects 300 employees out of a total 1,000 at the plant to turn up to the walkout. Workers are planning to hold a larger scale demonstration from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. London time. Staff are unhappy with a pay increase of 50 pence (56 U.S. cents) per hour, equivalent to 5% and well below inflation. Amazon introduced the pay hike last summer. But warehouse workers say it fails to match the rising cost of living. They want the company to pay a minimum 15 pounds an hour. They also want better working conditions. Amazon workers have raised concerns about long working hours, high injury rates, and the unrelenting pace of work, as well as aggressive, tech-enhanced monitoring of employees. "We all saw the profits they're making during the pandemic -- that's what angered people more," said Darren Westwood, one of Amazon's warehouse workers taking part in the strike. "We were expecting a better increase than what they were imposing." "Someone the other day said we're treated like robots -- no, robots are treated better," Westwood told CNBC. Further reading: Amazon To Layoff Over 18,000 EmployeesRead more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Hackers stole the source code for League of Legends, and now they're asking for $10 million from developer Riot Games. Motherboard has obtained a copy of a ransom email the hackers sent to Riot Games. "Dear Riot Games," it begins. "We have obtained your valuable data, including the precious anti-cheat source code and the entire game code for League of Legends and its tools, as well as Packman, your usermode anti-cheat. We understand the significance of these artifacts and the impact their release to the public would have on your major titles, Valorant and League of Legends. In light of this, we are making a small request for an exchange of $10,000,000." As evidence, the hackers provided Riot Games with two large PDFs they said would prove they had access to Packman and the League of Legends source code. Motherboard also obtained these files; they appear to show directories related to the game's code. If paid, the hackers promised to scrub the code from their servers and "provide insight into how the breach occurred and offer advice on preventing future breaches," according to the ransom note. In the message, the hackers included a link to a Telegram chat where they said Riot Games could speak with them. Motherboard joined this channel. Its members included usernames that matched those of names of Riot Games employees. "We do not wish to harm your reputation or cause public disturbance. Our sole motivation is financial gain," the ransom note said. The message has a deadline of 12 hours. "Failure to do so will result in the hack being made public and the extent of the breach being known to more individuals." Riot Games first announced news of a compromise last week in a series of tweets. The exact nature of the hack isn't known, but Riot Games referred to it as a "social engineering attack". It also said it had no indication that user data had been affected. On Tuesday, Riot Games said in a tweet it had confirmed hackers stole the source code for League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics, and its "legacy" anticheat platform. Another tweet said that on Tuesday "we received a ransom email. Needless to say, we won't pay." "We also want to remind you that it would be a shame to see your company publicly exposed, especially when you take great pride in your security measures," the hackers said in their ransom note. "It is alarming to know that you can be hacked within a matter of hours by an amateur-level hack." In response to a request for comment from Motherboard, Riot declined to add anything further beyond the already published tweets.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The billionaire hedge fund manager that runs a major Google investor isn't satisfied with the record 12,000 redundancies the US tech giant is making, and wants to see thousands more forced out of the organization. From a report: Estimated to be worth around $8 billion, Sir Christopher Hohn reportedly paid himself $1.8 million a day last year and is the boss of The Children's Investment Fund. He had already agitated for change in November when he implored Google execs to cut costs by reducing headcount, paying staff less, and killing off profitless business. Whether Google listened to TCI Fund or not is a moot point, but Sundar Pichai last week confirmed that 12,000 of its employees were to be booted because it hired heavily during the pandemic for a "different economic reality to the one we face today." Yesterday, he told a town hall meeting of Googlers that not hiring risked losing business. Google's workforce went from 120,000 in 2020 to nearly 187,000 at the end of September, and it is now under pressure due to slowing sales and shrinking profits. Hohn at TCI now wants to see even more dramatic action taken by senior management. "Over the last five years, [Google parent] Alphabet has more than doubled its headcount, adding over 100,000 employees, of which over 30,000 were added in the first nine months of 2022 alone," he said in the latest letter to Pichai. Hohn adds, "The decision to cut 12,000 jobs is a step in the right direction, but it does not even reverse the very strong headcount growth of 2022. Ultimately management will need to go further. [...] Importantly, management should also take the opporunity to address excessive employee compensation. The media salary at Alphabet in 2021 amounted to nearly $300,000, and the average salary is much higher. "Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The tiny startup Make Sunsets, which had been experimenting with releasing sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight in order to cool the earth, said Wednesday it would cease operations for the time being and review its approach after the Mexican government cracked down on solar geoengineering. The idea of releasing aerosols into the atmosphere to cool the earth has been around since the 1960's, but it had largely been relegated to science fiction until recently, as the urgency of climate change has become more apparent. The White House is currently coordinating a five-year research plan to study the idea, which is colloquially known as "solar geoengineering," and the quadrennial U.N.-backed Montreal Protocol assessment report for the first time included an entire chapter it. Luke Iseman, a serial inventor and the former director of hardware at Y Combinator, believed all of that research was not happening fast enough. So he started tinkering with releasing sulfur dioxide particles into the atmosphere with balloons, raised venture capital to fund the startup, and brought on co-founder Andrew Song to manage sales. Make Sunsets was planning to launch three latex weather balloons that would release anywhere between 10 and 500 grams of sulfur dioxide in January. But many industry watchers criticized its plans for being hasty and lacking sophistication. On Friday, the government of Mexico issued a statement that it plans to "prohibit and, where appropriate, stop experimentation practices with solar geoengineering in the country."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Trade Commission has ordered personal finance company Credit Karma to pay $3 million to customers the agency alleges were deceived into applying for products they weren't eligible for. From a report: Credit Karma used "dark patterns" to trick consumers into thinking they were "pre-approved" for credit card offers that they usually did not qualify for, the FTC said in a news release announcing the settlement. "Dark patterns" refer to website and app interface designs that can be used to manipulate or mislead consumers. "For many of these offers, almost a third of consumers who received and applied for 'pre-approved' offers were subsequently denied based on the financial product companies' underwriting review," the agency said in a previously issued consent decree. Credit Karma, which provides users with tools to monitor their credit scores and reports, told some users that they had "90% odds" of being approved for credit products, according to the FTC. Such practices wasted consumers' time and could have damaged their credit scores, the agency said. Credit Karma disputed the FTC's claims in a strongly worded statement to CBS MoneyWatch.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is revising its business agreements with phonemakers and other partners in India and making a series of other changes in the South Asian market to comply with the local antitrust watchdog's directions in a major shift that could invite regulators in other regions to make similar suggestions. From a report: The Android-maker, which was slapped with a $161 million fine by the Competition Commission of India last year and was ordered to make a series of changes in its business practices, said Wednesday that it will allow smartphone vendors in India to license individual apps for pre-installation on their Android-powered devices. Google will also give consumers the ability to change search engine and use third-party billing options for apps and games purchases on Play Store starting next month, it said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When Surojit Chatterjee logs out on his final day as chief product officer at Coinbase on February 3, he will have made a whopping $105 million from stock sales. From a report: According to disclosures filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the former chief product officer will also retain a further 249,315 shares of COIN stock, worth another $7.6 million. (Our estimates are based on the closing price of Coinbase stock, at $49.42 per share, on Friday, January 20, after the exercise price, which was $18.71.) Chatterjee joined San Francisco-based Coinbase from Google in February 2020 on a salary of just under $1 million per year, the filings show. All told, he has earned about $115 million since joining the company. DL News' estimate of Chatterjee's total compensation was checked with two sources who have expertise in executive compensation: Rosanna Landis Weaver, a senior manager at As You Sow, a shareholder advocacy group; and Paul Hodgson, a senior advisor and compensation expert with corporate data house Esgauge. Chatterjee's earnings are high, even as pay packages soar among high-ranking executives. For comparison, the CEO of Ford Motor earned less than a quarter of that in the same period, and Ford's revenues are five times the size of Coinbase's. A study conducted by Equilar and The New York Times found that eight CEOs were awarded more than $200 million in 2021, with two earning packages above $500 million.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The UK government will provide direct taxpayer funding to support British semiconductor companies as part of a strategy for a sector that has become a lightning rod in global geopolitics, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the plans. From the report: This will include seed money for startups, help for existing firms to scale up, as well as providing new incentives for private venture capital, the officials said. Ministers will set up a semiconductor task force to coordinate public and private support to ramp up UK manufacturing of compound semiconductors in the next three years, they added. An overall figure has not been agreed with the Treasury but it is expected to be single figure billions of pounds, one person familiar with the plans said. Chips are vital components in everything from mobile phones to cars, and shortages have the potential to cause significant disruption to supply chains. Companies already affected by the Covid-19 pandemic are reconsidering their investments in the UK due to frustrations over delays in formulating a strategy. Compound semiconductors are based on different materials to conventional "silicon" chips and are used in newer technologies like 5G wireless and electric vehicles. A UK push to develop local semiconductor manufacturing would echo US efforts to restrict exports of the technology to China and hobble its push into the chips industry. The Netherlands and Japan, key chip-making countries, are close to joining with the US to curb links with Beijing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is taking steps to separate its mobile operating system from features offered by Google parent Alphabet, making advances around maps, search and advertising that has created a collision course between the Big Tech companies. From a report: The two Silicon Valley giants have been rivals in the smartphone market since Google acquired and popularized the Android operating system in the 2000s. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs called Android "a stolen product" that mimicked Apple's iOS mobile software, then declared "thermonuclear war" on Google, ousting the search company's then-CEO Eric Schmidt from the Apple board of directors in 2009. While the rivalry has been less noisy since, two former Apple engineers said the iPhone maker has held a "grudge" against Google ever since. One of these people said Apple is still engaged in a "silent war" against its arch-rival. It is doing so by developing features that could allow the iPhone-maker to further separate its products from services offered by Google. [...] The second front in the battle is search. While Apple rarely discusses products while in development, the company has long worked on a feature known internally as "Apple Search," a tool that facilitates "billions of searches" per day, according to employees on the project. Apple's search team dates back to at least 2013, when it acquired Topsy Labs, a start-up that had indexed Twitter to enable searches and analytics. The technology is used every time an iPhone user asks Apple's voice assistant Siri for information, types queries from the home screen, or uses the Mac's "Spotlight" search feature. Apple's search offering was augmented with the 2019 purchase of Laserlike, an artificial intelligence start-up founded by former Google engineers that had described its mission as delivering "high quality information and diverse perspectives on any topic from the entire web."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alphabet's Google says it believes the complaint from the U.S. Department of Justice accusing the company of abusing its dominance in digital advertising is "without merit." From a report: The company also added it will "defend itself vigorously". The government on Tuesday said Google should be forced to sell its ad manager suite, tackling a business that generated about 12% of Google's revenue in 2021 while also playing a vital role in the search engine and cloud company's overall sales. Google, which depends on its advertising business for about 80% of its revenue, said the government was "doubling down on a flawed argument that would slow innovation, raise advertising fees and make it harder for thousands of small businesses and publishers to grow." The federal government has said its Big Tech investigations and lawsuits are aimed at leveling the playing field for smaller rivals who are up against a group of powerful companies that include Amazon, Facebook-owner Meta and Apple.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

European Union antitrust enforcers are planning to open an antitrust probe into Microsoft over its video and messaging service Teams, POLITICO reported Wednesday. From the report: An investigation based on a 2020 complaint from Slack would see Microsoft face formal EU scrutiny again, more than a decade after it ended a long-running antitrust dispute over how it misused its position as a powerful software supplier to push new products and services. Officials are focusing on allegations that Microsoft unfairly ties Microsoft Teams and other software with its widely-used Office suite. The European Commission plans to escalate the probe quickly and is preparing a statement of objections laying out competition problems with the company's behavior, two people said. In recent weeks it sent requests to rivals and customers over what evidence it plans to use, they said. Such 'access to file' requests are often a prelude to sending objections after a formal investigation has been launched.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican and China hawk, said on Tuesday that he would introduce a bill to ban the short video app TikTok in the United States. TikTok, whose parent is the Chinese company ByteDance, already faces a ban that would stop federal employees from using or downloading TikTok on government-owned devices. "TikTok is China's backdoor into Americans' lives. It threatens our children's privacy as well as their mental health," he said on Twitter. "Now I will introduce legislation to ban it nationwide." Hawley did not say when the bill would be introduced. "Senator Hawley's call for a total ban of TikTok takes a piecemeal approach to national security and a piecemeal approach to broad industry issues like data security, privacy and online harms," said TikTok spokeswoman Brooke Oberwetter. "We hope that he will focus his energies on efforts to address those issues holistically, rather than pretending that banning a single service would solve any of the problems he's concerned about or make Americans any safer."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google plans to discontinue a pilot program that allows political campaigns to evade its email spam filters, the latest round in the technology giant's tussle with the GOP over online fundraising. The Washington Post reports: The company will let the program sunset at the end of January instead of prolonging it, Google's lawyers said in a filing on Monday. The filing, in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, asked the court to dismiss a complaint lodged by the Republican National Committee accusing Google of "throttling its email messages because of the RNC's political affiliation and views." "The RNC is wrong," Google argued in its motion. "Gmail's spam filtering policies apply equally to emails from all senders, whether they are politically affiliated or not." [...] While rejecting the GOP's attacks, Google nonetheless bowed to them. The company asked the Federal Election Commission to greenlight the pilot program, available to all campaigns and political committees registered with the federal regulator. The company anticipated at the time that a trial run would last through January 2023. Thousands of public comments implored the FEC to advise against the program, which consumer advocates and other individuals said would overwhelm Gmail users with spam. Anne P. Mitchell, a lawyer and founder of an email certification service called Get to the Inbox, wrote that Google was "opening up the floodgates to their users' inboxes ... to assuage partisan disgruntlement." The FEC gave its approval in August, with one Democrat joining the commission's three Republicans to clear the way for the initiative. Ultimately, more than 100 committees of both parties signed up for the program, said Google spokesman Jose Castaneda. The RNC was not one of them, as Google emphasized in its motion to dismiss in the federal case in California. "Ironically, the RNC could have participated in a pilot program leading up to the 2022 midterm elections that would have allowed its emails to avoid otherwise-applicable forms of spam detection," the filing stated. "Many other politically-affiliated entities chose to participate in that program, which was approved by the FEC. The RNC chose not to do so. Instead, it now seeks to blame Google based on a theory of political bias that is both illogical and contrary to the facts alleged in its own Complaint." [...] "Indeed, effective spam filtering is a key feature of Gmail, and one of the main reasons why Gmail is so popular," the filing stated.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On Monday, SpaceX fueled a fully stacked Starship for the first time. Engadget reports: The "wet dress rehearsal" saw the company load the vehicle's Super Heavy and Starship stages with more than 10 million pounds of liquid oxygen and methane fuel. Additionally, SpaceX ran through some of the countdown procedures it will need to complete on launch day. "Today's test will help verify a full launch countdown sequence, as well as the performance of Starship and the orbital pad for flight-light operations," SpaceX posted on Twitter. As Space.com notes, Monday's test means SpaceX is on track to complete an orbital flight of Starship sometime in the coming months.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: New research (PDF) conducted by a professor at University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School found that the artificial intelligence-driven chatbot GPT-3 was able to pass the final exam for the school's Master of Business Administration (MBA) program. Professor Christian Terwiesch, who authored the research paper "Would Chat GPT3 Get a Wharton MBA? A Prediction Based on Its Performance in the Operations Management Course," said that the bot scored between a B- and B on the exam. The bot's score, Terwiesch wrote, shows its "remarkable ability to automate some of the skills of highly compensated knowledge workers in general and specifically the knowledge workers in the jobs held by MBA graduates including analysts, managers, and consultants." The bot did an "amazing job at basic operations management and process analysis questions including those that are based on case studies," Terwiesch wrote in the paper, which was published on Jan. 17. He also said the bot's explanations were "excellent." The bot is also "remarkably good at modifying its answers in response to human hints," he concluded. While Chat GPT3's results were impressive, Terwiesch noted that Chat GPT3 "at times makes surprising mistakes in relatively simple calculations at the level of 6th grade Math." The present version of Chat GPT is "not capable of handling more advanced process analysis questions, even when they are based on fairly standard templates," Terwiesch added. "This includes process flows with multiple products and problems with stochastic effects such as demand variability." Still, Terwiesch said ChatGPT3's performance on the test has "important implications for business school education, including the need for exam policies, curriculum design focusing on collaboration between human and AI, opportunities to simulate real world decision making processes, the need to teach creative problem solving, improved teaching productivity, and more." The latest findings come as educators become increasingly concerned that AI chatbots like ChatGPT could inspire cheating. Earlier this month, New York City's education department banned access to ChatGPT. While the education department cited "safety and accuracy" as reasons for the decision, the Washington Post notes how some teachers are "in a near-panic" about the technology enabling students to cheat on assignments. Yesterday, for example, The Stanford Daily reported that a large number of Stanford students have already used ChatGPT on their final exams. It's prompting anti-plagiarism software Turnitin to build a tool to detect text generated by AI.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

To help reduce the potential for malware, Android 14 will begin fully blocking the installation of apps that target outdated versions of Android. 9to5Google reports: For years now, the guidelines for the Google Play Store have ensured that Android developers keep their apps updated to use the latest features and safety measures of the Android platform. Just this month, the guidelines were updated, requiring newly listed Play Store apps to target Android 12 at a minimum. Up to this point, these minimum API level requirements have only applied to apps that are intended for the Google Play Store. Should a developer wish to create an app for an older version, they can do so and simply ask their users to sideload the APK file manually. Similarly, if an Android app hasn't been updated since the guidelines changed, the Play Store will continue serving the app to those who have installed it once before. According to a newly posted code change, Android 14 is set to make API requirements stricter, entirely blocking the installation of outdated apps. This change would block users from sideloading specific APK files and also block app stores from installing those same apps. Initially, Android 14 devices will only block apps that target especially old Android versions. Over time though, the plan is to increase the threshold to Android 6.0 (Marshmallow), with Google having a mechanism to "progressively ramp [it] up." That said, it will likely still be up to each device maker to decide the threshold for outdated apps or whether to enable it at all. The report notes that it'll still be possible to install an outdated version of an app "through a command shell, by using a new flag."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Strava, the activity tracking and social community platform used by more than 100 million people globally, has acquired Fatmap, a European company that's building a high-resolution 3D global map platform for the great outdoors. TechCrunch reports: Founded in 2009, Strava has emerged as one of the preeminent activity tracking services, proving particularly popular in the cycling and running fraternities which use the Strava app to plot routes, converse with fellow athletes, and record all their action for posterity via GPS. The company has increasingly been targeting hikers too, and last year it launched a new trail sports and routes option aimed at walkers, mountain bikers, and trail runners. Fatmap, for its part, was founded a decade ago, with an initial focus on providing ski resorts with high-resolution digital maps. In the intervening years, the company has worked with various satellite and aerospace companies to bolster its platform with detailed maps incorporating summits, rivers, passes, paths, huts, and more, arming anyone venturing into mountainous terrain the information they need to know exactly what they'll encounter before they arrive. With 1.6 million registered users, Fatmap's mission, ultimately, is to be the Google Maps of the great outdoors, with a premium subscription ($30 / year) unlocking access to extra features such as downloadable maps and route planning in the mobile app. The ultimate long-term goal for Strava is to integrate Fatmap's core platform into Strava itself, but that will be a resource-intensive endeavor that won't happen overnight. And that is why Strava is working to create a single sign-on (SSO) integration in the near-term, meaning that subscribers will be able to access the full Fatmap feature-set by logging into the Fatmap app with their Strava credentials. While Strava and Fatmap will remain separate products for now, Strava said that it will decide in the future whether Fatmap will live on as a standalone product once the technical integration has taken place. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. However, TechCrunch suggests the price of this deal "could comfortably be in the 9-digit range" given the $30 million Fatmap had raised in funding, "including a hitherto undisclosed $16.5 million round that it said it closed in early 2020." "It's clear that the proprietary 3D mapping technology Fatmap had developed would have taken too much time and resources for Strava to replicate itself from scratch, which is why buying Fatmap outright likely made more sense in this instance," the report added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has started testing a new split-screen feature for Edge that lets you compare two tabs side by side. The Verge reports: The feature was first discovered by Leopeva64-2 on Reddit, and it's available in an experimental flag in the beta, dev, and canary versions of Microsoft Edge. Once enabled, a new button appears alongside the address bar that lets you split an Edge window into two separate tabs side by side. Once you've split existing tabs into a single window, it creates a single tab with the combined webpages. That means you can create multiple split tabs in Edge and navigate through them. You can also pin these side-by-side tabs, duplicate them, or add them to groups just like you would any regular tabs. That makes this feature super useful if you regularly compare documents or webpages.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

2-year-old MacBooks with Apple's T2 security chip are being turned into parts because recyclers have no way to login and factory reset the machines, reports Motherboard. "It's a boon for security and privacy and a plague on the second hard market." From the report: "How many of you out there would like a 2-year-old M1 MacBook? Well, too bad, because your local recycler just took out all the Activation Locked logic boards and ground them into carcinogenic dust," John Bumstead, a MacBook refurbisher and owner of the RDKL INC repair store, said in a recent tweet. First introduced in 2018, the laptop makes it impossible for anyone who isn't the original owner to log into the machine. "Like it has been for years with recyclers and millions of iPhones and iPads, it's pretty much game over with MacBooks now -- there's just nothing to do about it if a device is locked," Bumstead told Motherboard. "Even the jailbreakers/bypassers don't have a solution, and they probably won't because Apple proprietary chips are so relatively formidable." When Apple released its own silicon with the M1, it integrated the features of the T2 into those computers. "The functionality of T2 is built into Apple silicon, so it's the same situation. But whereas T2 with activation lock is basically impossible to overcome, bypass developers are finding the m1/m2 chips with activation lock even more difficult," Bumstead said. "Many bypassers have claimed solutions to T2 macs (I have not tried or confirmed they work... I am skeptical) but they admit they have had no success with M1. Regardless, a bypassed Mac is a hacked machine, which reverts to the lock if wiped and reset, so it is not ethical to sell bypassed macs in the retail environment." Responsible recyclers and refurbishers wipe the data from used devices before selling them on. In these cases, the data is wiped, but cannot be assigned to a new user, making them effectively worthless. Instead of finding these machines a second home, Bumstead and others are dismantling them and selling the parts. These computers often end up at recycling centers after corporations go out of business or buy all new machines. [...] Motherboard first reported on this problem in 2020, but Bumstead said it's gotten worse recently. "Now we're seeing quantity come through because companies with internal 3-year product cycles are starting to dump their 2018/2019s, and inevitably a lot of those are locked," he said. "When we come upon a locked machine that was legally acquired, we should be able to log into our Apple account, enter the serial and any given information, then click a button and submit the machine to Apple for unlocking," Bumstead said. "Then Apple could explore its records, query the original owner if it wants, but then at the end of the day if there are no red flags and the original owner does not protest within 30 days, the device should be auto-unlocked."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Playing the military simulation War Thunder is now reportedly considered an official risk on background checks. PCMag reports: As GamesRadar reports, a user going by the name Add Fiat 6616 Pls posted on the War Thunder subreddit earlier this week explaining how a friend of his had applied for a job at aerospace and defense conglomerate Raytheon Technologies. As part of the security clearance process, a private investigator is used to contact the candidates "witnesses," which is shorthand for their friends. Add Fiat 6616 Pls was one of those friends and therefore received a call to answer a range of questions in an attempt to discover if the candidate's lifestyle raised any red flags. One of those question was: "Does he play War Thunder?" The question makes sense as part of a security check and national security assessment after you realize how much classified information has leaked via the game over the past few years. War Thunder is a free-to-play vehicular combat online multiplayer game developed by Russian game developer Gaijin Entertainment (which relocated to Budapest in 2015). Since 2021, there have been six incidents of restricted or classified documents being leaked during discussions about the accuracy of the vehicles used in the game.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has provided iOS 12.5.7, macOS 11.7.3, and other updates for older devices that can't be updated to the latest releases. AppleInsider reports: The new updates are for users still using older devices and operating systems and address similar bugs and security patches available in the recent iOS 16.3 and macOS Ventura releases. The security patch notes list at least 14 different systems affected by security issues that have been patched. The new update versions are: iOS 12.5.7, iOS 15.7.3, iPadOS 15.7.3, macOS Big Sur 11.7.3, and macOS Monterey 12.6.3. Users may note the skipped iOS versions between iOS 12 and iOS 15. Those are due to where devices were cut off from updating. Every device that could run iOS 13 could run iOS 15, so Apple doesn't update every version. The oldest device supported by iOS 12.5.7, for example, is the iPhone 5s, which was released in September 2013. The oldest Macs supported by macOS Big Sur are the 2013 MacBook Air, Mac Pro, and MacBook Pro. Anyone capable of updating these new updates to the older operating systems should do so as soon as possible. The update addresses known security issues that could put the user at risk.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: With all the hype and excitement surrounding generative AI technologies, there has been a corresponding growth in the interest that businesses have in using artificial intelligence (AI). While there is lots of interest in figuring out how to use AI to help a business, finding the right people to help an organization use AI effectively isn't necessarily an easy task. It's an area that has led to a surge of interest on freelance marketplace Fiverr, with a 1,400% increase in searches for AI-related services over the last six months. Organizations are looking for individuals that are able to help them take advantage of all manner of AI technologies, including generative AI capabilities for image and text generation that can help to improve marketing, sales and business operations. Fiverr has a history of helping organizations fill talent needs, growing strongly during the pandemic as demand for freelance remote skills accelerated. Fiverr is now turning its attention to AI, today introducing a series of new categories to its freelance marketplace to help businesses find the talent they need to benefit from the power that AI can bring. "We've seen a trend of increasing searches for AI-related services," Yoav Hornung, head of verticals and innovation at Fiverr, told VentureBeat. "We've also started seeing more freelancers creating offerings that are related to the world of generative AI, for the most recent tools like ChatGPT, GPT-3, Midjourney, Dall-E and Stable Diffusion." Hornung explained that Fiverr creates new categories on its service as a way to help both organizations and freelancers connect. It's an approach that isn't just about providing a specific category, but also about providing the right structure to help a company make a request to bring in the right skills to achieve a business outcome. For generative AI, there has been growing demand for AI artists that are skilled in the use of the various tools that exist. Hornung said that Fiverr has also seen a surge in companies trying to use or create products that use generative AI engines. To that end, he said companies have been looking for skilled freelancers that can help them build AI-powered applications as well. [...] The explosion in the use of generative AI tools for text generation has also led to a new demand for freelancers to help organizations with proofreading as well as fact checking. "Up until now, proofreading an article was one thing and today, proofreading or editing an article that was generated by AI is different," Hornung said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The United States plans to test a spacecraft engine powered by nuclear fission by 2027 as part of a long-term NASA effort to demonstrate more efficient methods of propelling astronauts to Mars in the future, the space agency's chief said Tuesday. From a report: NASA will partner with the U.S. military's research and development agency, DARPA, to develop a nuclear thermal propulsion engine and launch it to space "as soon as 2027," NASA administrator Bill Nelson said during a conference in National Harbor, Maryland.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Crypto companies seeking to go public over the past year have faced increased scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission, as financial distress and failures spread across the volatile industry. WSJ: Crypto-focused companies including Bullish Global, Circle and eToro have failed to secure the SEC approvals that are required of companies going public. The firms were seeking stock-exchange listings through mergers with special-purpose acquisition companies, an alternative path to going public that thrived in 2020 and 2021 before heightened regulatory checks and market turbulence ended the SPAC boom. Another crypto broker, Galaxy Digital has faced repeated rounds of questions from SEC staff about its business since filing paperwork to go public on the Nasdaq Stock Market, according to people familiar with the questioning. Galaxy, which isn't using a SPAC structure, announced in March 2021 that it wanted to become a U.S.-listed public company and hoped to clear SEC review by the end of that year. The SEC didn't set out to stop the companies from going public, according to a person familiar with the matter, but crypto firms believe the pace of the agency's review hurt their efforts, particularly after the crash of a well-known cryptocurrency and the failure of a large crypto hedge fund that hit many exchanges and lenders. The bankruptcy of crypto exchange FTX and a bear market in digital asset prices may keep the door closed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Appliance makers like Whirlpool and LG just can't understand. They added Wi-Fi antennae to their latest dishwashers, ovens, and refrigerators and built apps for them -- and yet only 50 percent or fewer of their owners have connected them. What gives? From a report: The issue, according to manufacturers quoted in a Wall Street Journal report (subscription usually required), is that customers just don't know all the things a manufacturer can do if users connect the device that spins their clothes or keeps their food cold -- things like "providing manufacturers with data and insights about how customers are using their products" and allowing companies to "send over-the-air updates" and "sell relevant replacement parts or subscription services." "The challenge is that a consumer doesn't see the true value that manufacturers see in terms of how that data can help them in the long run. So they don't really care for spending time to just connect it," Henry Kim, US director of LG's smart device division ThinQ, told the Journal. LG told the Journal that fewer than half of its smart appliances -- which represent 80-90 percent of its sold appliances -- stay connected to the Internet. Whirlpool reported that "more than half" are connected. Wi-Fi-connected smart appliances may be connected when they're first set up, but a new Internet provider, router hardware, or Wi-Fi password could take the device offline. And a smart oven is likely to be far down the list of devices to set up again once that happens. That means companies like Whirlpool are missing out on services revenue, which is increasingly crucial to manufacturers facing rising input costs, declining replacement purchases, and hungry shareholders.Read more of this story at Slashdot.