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According to The Verge, Microsoft has been secretly testing its Sydney chatbot for several years after making a big bet on bots in 2016. From the report: Sydney is a codename for a chatbot that has been responding to some Bing users since late 2020. The user experience was very similar to what launched publicly earlier this month, with a blue Cortana-like orb appearing in a chatbot interface on Bing. "Sydney is an old codename for a chat feature based on earlier models that we began testing in India in late 2020," says Caitlin Roulston, director of communications at Microsoft, in a statement to The Verge. "The insights we gathered as part of that have helped to inform our work with the new Bing preview. We continue to tune our techniques and are working on more advanced models to incorporate the learnings and feedback so that we can deliver the best user experience possible." "This is an experimental AI-powered Chat on Bing.com," read a disclaimer inside the 2021 interface that was added before an early version of Sydney would start replying to users. Some Bing users in India and China spotted the Sydney bot in the first half of 2021 before others noticed it would identify itself as Sydney in late 2021. All of this was years after Microsoft started testing basic chatbots in Bing in 2017. The initial Bing bots used AI techniques that Microsoft had been using in Office and Bing for years and machine reading comprehension that isn't as powerful as what exists in OpenAI's GPT models today. These bots were created in 2017 in a broad Microsoft effort to move its Bing search engine to a more conversational model. Microsoft made several improvements to its Bing bots between 2017 and 2021, including moving away from individual bots for websites and toward the idea of a single AI-powered bot, Sydney, that would answer general queries on Bing. Sources familiar with Microsoft's early Bing chatbot work tell The Verge that the initial iterations of Sydney had far less personality until late last year. OpenAI shared its next-generation GPT model with Microsoft last summer, described by Jordi Ribas, Microsoft's head of search and AI, as "game-changing." While Microsoft had been working toward its dream of conversational search for more than six years, sources say this new large language model was the breakthrough the company needed to bring all of its its Sydney learnings to the masses. [...] Microsoft hasn't yet detailed the full history of Sydney, but Ribas did acknowledge its new Bing AI is "the culmination of many years of work by the Bing team" that involves "other innovations" that the Bing team will detail in future blog posts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

L.Kynes shares a report from CSO Online: At a time when almost all software contains open source code, at least one known open source vulnerability was detected in 84% of all commercial and proprietary code bases examined by researchers at application security company Synopsys. In addition, 48% of all code bases analyzed by Synopsys researchers contained high-risk vulnerabilities, which are those that have been actively exploited, already have documented proof-of-concept exploits, or are classified as remote code execution vulnerabilities. The vulnerability data -- along with information on open source license compliance -- was included in Synopsys' 2023 Open Source Security and Risk Analysis (OSSRA) report (PDF), put together by the company's Cybersecurity Research Center (CyRC). "Of the 1,703 codebases that Synopsys audited in 2022, 96% of them contained open source," adds L.Kynes, citing the report. "Aerospace, aviation, automotive, transportation, logistics; EdTech; and Internet of Things are three of the 17 industry sectors included in the report that had open source in 100% of their audited codebases. In the remaining verticals, over 92% of the codebases contained open source."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A revolution in artificial intelligence could slash the amount of time people spend on household chores and caring, with robots able to perform about 39% of domestic tasks within a decade, according to experts. Tasks such as shopping for groceries were likely to have the most automation, while caring for the young or old was the least likely to be affected by AI, according to a large survey of 65 artificial intelligence (AI) experts in the UK and Japan, who were asked to predict the impact of robots on household chores. But greater automation could result in a "wholesale onslaught on privacy," warned one of the report's authors. The experts involved in the research, published in the journal Plos One, estimated that only 28% of care work, such as teaching or accompanying a child, or caring for an older relative, would be automated. But they predicted that 60% of the time spent on shopping for groceries would be cut. However, predictions about robots taking over domestic work "in the next 10 years" have been made for several decades, but the reality of a robot able to put out the bins and pick lego up from the floor has remained elusive.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Canada's second-largest telecom, TELUS is investigating a potential data breach after a threat actor shared samples online of what appears to be employee data. BleepingComputer reports: The threat actor subsequently posted screenshots that apparently show private source code repositories and payroll records held by the company. TELUS has so far not found evidence of corporate or retail customer data being stolen and continues to monitor the potential incident. On February 17, a threat actor put up what they claim to be TELUS' employee list (comprising names and email addresses) for sale on a data breach forum. "TELUS employes [sic] from a very recent breach. We have over 76K unique emails and on top of this, we have internal information associated with each employee scraped from Telus' API," states the forum post. While BleepingComputer has been unable to confirm the veracity of threat actor's claims just yet, the small sample set posted by the seller does have valid names and email addresses corresponding to present-day TELUS employees, particularly software developers and technical staff. By Tuesday, February 21, the same threat actor had created another forum post -- this time offering to sell TELUS' private GitHub repositories, source code, as well as the company's payroll records. The seller further boasts that the stolen source code contains the company's "sim-swap-api" that will purportedly enable adversaries to carry out SIM swap attacks.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"A group of Stanford University professors is pushing to end a system that allows students to anonymously report classmates for exhibiting discrimination or bias, saying it threatens free speech on campus (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source)," reports the Wall Street Journal. The Daily Beast reports: Last month, a screenshot of a student reading Hitler's manifesto Mein Kampf was reported in the system, according to the Stanford Daily. Faculty members leading the charge to shut the system down say they didn't know it even existed until they read the student newspaper, one comparing the system to "McCarthyism." Launched in 2021, students are encouraged to report incidents in which they felt harmed, which triggers a voluntary inquiry of both the student who filed the report and the alleged perpetrator. Seventy-seven faculty members have signed a petition calling on the school to investigate in hopes they toss the system out. This comes as a larger movement by Speech First, a group who claim colleges are rampant with censorship, has filed suit against several universities for their bias reporting systems.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard, written by Joseph Cox: On Wednesday, I phoned my bank's automated service line. To start, the bank asked me to say in my own words why I was calling. Rather than speak out loud, I clicked a file on my nearby laptop to play a sound clip: "check my balance," my voice said. But this wasn't actually my voice. It was a synthetic clone I had made using readily available artificial intelligence technology. "Okay," the bank replied. It then asked me to enter or say my date of birth as the first piece of authentication. After typing that in, the bank said "please say, 'my voice is my password.'" Again, I played a sound file from my computer. "My voice is my password," the voice said. The bank's security system spent a few seconds authenticating the voice. "Thank you," the bank said. I was in. I couldn't believe it -- it had worked. I had used an AI-powered replica of a voice to break into a bank account. After that, I had access to the account information, including balances and a list of recent transactions and transfers. Banks across the U.S. and Europe use this sort of voice verification to let customers log into their account over the phone. Some banks tout voice identification as equivalent to a fingerprint, a secure and convenient way for users to interact with their bank. But this experiment shatters the idea that voice-based biometric security provides foolproof protection in a world where anyone can now generate synthetic voices for cheap or sometimes at no cost. I used a free voice creation service from ElevenLabs, an AI-voice company. Now, abuse of AI-voices can extend to fraud and hacking. Some experts I spoke to after doing this experiment are now calling for banks to ditch voice authentication altogether, although real-world abuse at this time could be rare. A Lloyds Bank spokesperson said in a statement that "Voice ID is an optional security measure, however we are confident that it provides higher levels of security than traditional knowledge-based authentication methods, and that our layered approach to security and fraud prevention continues to provide the right level of protection for customers' accounts, while still making them easy to access when needed." The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, one of the U.S. agencies that regulates the financial industry, said: "The CFPB is concerned with data security, and companies are on notice that they'll be held accountable for shoddy practices. We expect that any firm follow the law, regardless of technology used."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The buzz in tech these last few weeks has been focused squarely on the language models developed and deployed by the likes of Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI. But Meta, Facebook's parent company, continues to do significant work in this field and is releasing a new AI language generator named LLaMA today. From a report: LLaMA isn't like ChatGPT or Bing; it's not a system that anyone can talk to. Rather, it's a research tool that Meta says it's sharing in the hope of "democratizing access in this important, fast-changing field." In other words: to help experts tease out the problems of AI language models, from bias and toxicity to their tendency to simply make up information. To this end, Meta is releasing LLaMA (which is not actually a single system but a quartet of different-sized models) under "a noncommercial license focused on research use cases," with access granted to groups like universities, NGOs, and industry labs. "We believe that the entire AI community -- academic researchers, civil society, policymakers, and industry -- must work together to develop clear guidelines around responsible AI in general and responsible large language models in particular," the company wrote in its post. "We look forward to seeing what the community can learn -- and eventually build -- using LLaMA."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The cyber-insurance market, battered by a rash of pandemic-era ransomware attacks, is making a comeback. Price hikes are moderating, new carriers and fresh sources of capital are emerging, and companies can better afford coverage. From a report: Cyber-insurance pricing increased 10% from a year earlier in January, a fraction of the 110% annual increase reported in the first quarter of 2022, preliminary data from insurance broker Marsh McLennan show. If those trends continue, prices could be set to decline, said Tom Reagan, Marsh's cyber practice leader. The reversal would follow a wave of digital intrusions that dominated the work-from-home era and forced insurers to recalibrate both how they write policies and their risk appetites. Those attacks also pushed their clients to adopt stronger cybersecurity measures. The brutal conditions in the market have let up since then, with claim frequency declining in the fourth quarter of 2022 even as severity remained elevated, according to Marsh. "What we're left with is a very, very, very different market than what we went into two or three years ago," said Paul Bantick, the global head of cyber risks at London-based insurer Beazley. "We have a mature market that has stood up against a huge test." The risks posed by cyber criminals are still enormous. Ransomware attacks against industrial organizations increased by 87% in 2022 from the year before, while the US Treasury Department said financial institutions flagged nearly $1.2 billion in likely ransomware-related payments in 2021. Recent high-profile breaches at financial services firm ION Trading UK and a major Asian data center emphasized the grim risk posed by hackers. Even so, the total amount extorted from ransomware victims in 2022 dropped to $456.8 million from $765.6 million the year before, according to data from Chainalysis.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cars aren't the only conveyances being transformed by electricity. Along with electric motorcycles and snowmobiles, personal watercraft are floating better ways to coexist with nature and neighbors. This new breed of machines brings requisite thrills to the Great Outdoors, but without fouling the atmosphere or disturbing the peace with an internal-combustion racket. From a report: The latest comes from Florida-based Pelagion, whose founder and chief executive, engineer Jamie Schlinkmann, was inspired by childhood adventures on a watersports icon: A 1973 Kawasaki Jet Ski. Schlinkmann's machine, just the 213th ever built, is still one of his prized possessions. His company's Pelagion HydroBlade is an ingenious mash-up of classic stand-up Jet Skis and modern surfboard-style "eFoils." Those electric-powered boards had a real breakthrough in 2020 when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was spotted sailing over Hawaiian waters on one model. The metaverse may spring to mind the first time you see an eFoil, with its rider seeming to fly above the waves on a magic carpet. Naturally, there's no magic, only hydrodynamics. Hydrofoils work like an airplane wing, only underwater: An aerodynamic wing creates high and low pressure areas as it slices through water, generating lift with precious little drag. Add an electric motor and propeller to create thrust and you've got a hydrofoil that doesn't require surf waves, a kite, or tow boat to generate power. There's only one problem: Powered or not, a hydrofoil takes some practice and patience to learn to ride in a standing position, especially for people with no surfing or wakeboarding experience, or so-so balance skills. To solve that, Schlinkmann's invention adds a boom-mounted canard and rudder ahead of the rider to keep the craft airborne and steady without a rider having to constantly expend energy and adjust body position. Add a trusty set of handlebars, says Schlinkmann, and the HydroBlade handles more like a vehicle with which most of us are familiar: a bicycle. Making the experience somewhat like riding a bike, he says, helps ease the intimidation factor and boost appeal for people of all ages and abilities. [...] The design began to take shape around 2020. Schlinkmann pulled the engine and other ICE guts from his old Jet Ski and studied how he could make it electric. He realized a conventional electric Jet Ski might only have a 15- or 20-minute runtime on a single charge, which wasn't good enough. But after riding a few eFoils, the idea came together. For the HydroBlade, a pair of permanent-magnet radial-flux motors drive dual propellers at a peak 16 kilowatts (21 horsepower). They're fed by two battery packs, with a combined 600 cylindrical 2170 NCM cells and a total 11 kilowatt-hours of energy -- about eight to 10 times the capacity onboard a typical eFoil. A separate 1.6-kW charger can refill batteries in about 4 hours.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The inner core of the Earth appears to hold an innermost secret. From a report: Geology textbooks almost inevitably include a cutaway diagram of the Earth showing four neatly delineated layers: a thin outer shell of rock that we live on known as the crust; the mantle, where rocks flow like an extremely viscous liquid, driving the movement of continents and the lifting of mountains; a liquid outer core of iron and nickel that generates the planet's magnetic field; and a solid inner core. Analyzing the crisscrossing of seismic waves from large earthquakes, two Australian scientists say there is a distinctly different layer at the very center of the Earth. "We have now confirmed the existence of the innermost inner core," said one of the scientists, Hrvoje Tkalcic, a professor of geophysics at the Australian National University in Canberra. Dr. Tkalcic and Thanh-Son Pham, a postdoctoral researcher, estimate that the innermost inner core is about 800 miles wide; the entire inner core is about 1,500 miles wide. Their findings were published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. While the cutaway diagram appears to depict clear-cut divisions, knowledge about the deep interior of Earth is unavoidably fuzzy. It is nearly 4,000 miles to the center of Earth, and it is impossible to drill more than a few miles into the crust. Most of what is known about what lies beneath comes from seismic waves -- the vibrations of earthquakes traveling through and around the planet. Think of them as a giant sonogram of Earth. Two Harvard seismologists, Miaki Ishii and Adam Dziewonski, first proposed the idea of the innermost inner core in 2002 based on peculiarities in the speed of seismic waves passing through the inner core. Scientists already knew that the speed of seismic waves traveling through this part of the Earth varied depending on the direction. The waves traveled fastest when going from pole to pole along the Earth's axis and slowest when traveling perpendicular to the axis. The difference in speeds -- a few percent faster along polar paths -- arises from the alignment of iron crystals in the inner core, geophysicists believe. But in a small region at the center, the slowest waves were those traveling at a 45-degree angle to the axis instead of 90 degrees, the Harvard seismologists said. The data available then were too sparse to convince everyone.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Back in the days before practically every mobile game was a free-to-play, ad- and microtransaction-laden sinkhole, Rovio found years of viral success selling paid downloads of Angry Birds to tens of millions of smartphone users. Today, though, the company is delisting the last "pay upfront" version of the game from mobile app stores because of what it says is a "negative impact" on the more lucrative free-to-play titles in the franchise. From a report: Years after its 2009 launch, the original Angry Birds was first pulled from mobile app stores in 2019, a move Rovio later blamed on "outdated game engines and design." The remastered "Rovio Classics" version of the original game launched last year, asking 99 cents for over 390 ad-free levels, complete with updated graphics and a new, future-proofed engine "built from the ground up in Unity." In a tweeted statement earlier this week, though, Rovio announced that it is delisting Rovio Classics: Angry Birds from the Google Play Store and renaming the game Red's First Flight on the iOS App Store (presumably to make it less findable in an "Angry Birds" search). That's because of the game's "impact on our wider games portfolio," Rovio said, including "live" titles such as Angry Birds 2, Angry Birds Friends, and Angry Birds Journey.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google "systematically destroyed" instant message chats every 24 hours, violating federal rules to preserve potentially relevant communications for litigation, the Department of Justice alleged in a filing that became public on Thursday. From a report: As a result of Google's default to preserve chats for only 24 hours unless an employee opts to turn on history for the conversation, "for nearly four years, Google systematically destroyed an entire category of written communications every 24 hours," the department wrote in the filing. According to the DOJ, Google should have adjusted its defaults in mid-2019 "when the company reasonably anticipated this litigation." Instead, it relied on individual employees to decide when chats were potentially relevant to future litigation, the department said. "Few, if any," did, according to DOJ. Meanwhile, investigators alleged, Google "falsely" told the government it had "'put a legal hold in place' that 'suspends auto-deletion.'" The government added that "at every turn, Google reaffirmed that it was preserving and searching all potentially relevant written communications." The data deletion continued up until as recently as this month when the government indicated it would file a motion for sanctions and an evidentiary hearing, investigators allege. At that point, the DOJ said, Google committed to "permanently set to history on."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Telecom equipment maker Ericsson will lay off 8,500 employees globally as part of its plan to cut costs, a memo sent to employees and seen by Reuters said. From the report: While technology companies such as Microsoft, Meta and Alphabet have laid off thousands of employees citing economic conditions, Ericsson's move would be the largest layoff to hit the telecoms industry. "The way headcount reductions will be managed will differ depending on local country practice," Chief Executive Borje Ekholm wrote in the memo. "In several countries the headcount reductions have already been communicated this week," he said. On Monday, the company, which employs more than 105,000 worldwide, announced plans to cut about 1,400 jobs in Sweden.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alphabet is shutting down its Everyday Robots project -- another casualty of job cuts at Google's parent company and the latest in a long list of failed hardware ventures. From a report: According to a report from Wired, Everyday Robots will no longer exist as a discrete team at the tech giant. "Everyday Robots will no longer be a separate project within Alphabet," Denise Gamboa, director of marketing and communications for Everyday Robots, told the publication. "Some of the technology and part of the team will be consolidated into existing robotics efforts within Google Research." Everyday Robots launched in 2019, with an aim of designing armed robots that could help out in domestic and office settings; taking on light custodial work like sorting trash and cleaning tables. The project's prototype, single-armed, wheeled robots were tested in Google's offices from 2021, and in 2022 received an upgrade courtesy of Google's AI language research, letting them process natural language commands.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Justice Department is preparing an antitrust lawsuit seeking to block Adobe's $20 billion acquisition of startup Figma, Bloomberg News reported, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: A case is expected to be filed as soon as next month, although the timing could slip, said one of the people, all of whom asked for anonymity to discuss the confidential probe. The deal needs approval from several antitrust authorities and the merger agreement allows for a possible extended regulatory review with an outside completion deadline of March 2024. Adobe had a meeting with the DOJ yesterday, according to another person. The deal also faces an antitrust review in the European Union after the bloc's antitrust watchdog said it had received requests from national regulators to look into the deal. The UK Competition and Markets Authority is reviewing the merger as well, and the three jurisdictions often coordinate on their investigations. The antitrust division, which has taken a more aggressive approach to mergers under President Joe Biden, is concerned the deal -- one of the largest takeovers of a private software maker -- would reduce options for design software used by creative professionals.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It is no mystery that a good night's sleep and a lie-in can improve your day. But researchers are suggesting that, far from just being enjoyable, quality sleep may even add years to people's lives. From a report: Men who regularly sleep well could live almost five years longer than those who do not, while women could benefit by two years, research suggests. And they could also enjoy better health during their lives. Researchers found that young people who had better sleep habits were less likely to die early. But the researchers said their findings indicated quantity of sleep was not in itself enough to achieve the possible health benefits -- quality of sleep is also important. Good sleep was based on five different factors: ideal sleep duration of seven to eight hours a night; difficulty falling asleep no more than two times a week; trouble staying asleep no more than two times a week; not using any sleep medication; and feeling well rested after waking up at least five days a week. The findings suggested that about 8% of deaths from any cause could be attributed to poor sleep patterns. The researchers included data from 172,321 people with an average age of 50, 54% of whom were women, who participated in the National Health Interview Survey between 2013 and 2018. The survey looked at the health of the US population and included questions about sleep and sleep habits.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter sit1963nz writes: Starbucks has launched a new drink that mixes coffee with olive oil, offering it initially in Italy as an alternative to the more standard espresso or cappuccino. The so-called "Oleato" beverages are made with arabica coffee "infused with a spoonful of Partanna cold pressed, extra virgin olive oil," Starbucks, the world's largest coffee chain, said in a statement. The price is between 4.5 euros and 6.5 euros ($4.80-$6.90) depending on the size of the cup. [...] Company founder Howard Schultz, who has said a trip to Milan in 1983 inspired him to export Italian drinking habits to the United States, described Oleato as "the next revolution in coffee." The "Oleato" debuted in various forms, including caffe latte, a "deconstructed" option featuring lemon juice, and an "Espresso Martini" with vodka and vanilla bean syrup. The beverages will later be rolled out "in select markets around the world", starting with southern California in the United States in the spring and later this year in Japan, the Middle East and Britain, Starbucks said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bruce66423 writes: The encrypted-messaging app Signal has said it would stop providing services in the UK if a new law undermined encryption. If forced to weaken the privacy of its messaging system under the Online Safety Bill, the organisation "would absolutely, 100% walk" Signal president Meredith Whittaker told the BBC. The government said its proposal was not "a ban on end-to-end encryption". The bill, introduced by Boris Johnson, is currently going through Parliament. Critics say companies could be required by Ofcom to scan messages on encrypted apps for child sexual abuse material or terrorism content under the new law. This has worried firms whose business is enabling private, secure communication.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Over 40,000 Dota 2 accounts have been permanently banned in the last few weeks after they were caught red-handed using third-party software to cheat the game. In a blog post published on Tuesday, Valve revealed that it had recently patched a known issue used by third-party software to cheat in Dota while simultaneously setting a honeypot trap to catch players using the exploit. According to Valve, the cheating software gave its users an unfair advantage by accessing information used internally by the Dota client that shouldn't be visible during gameplay. After investigating how it worked, the developer then decided to identify and remove the "bad actors" from the active Dota playerbase. "We released a patch as soon as we understood the method these cheats were using," Valve said. "This patch created a honeypot: a section of data inside the game client that would never be read during normal gameplay, but that could be read by these exploits." Valve claims that all 40,000 of the now-banned accounts had accessed this hidden section of data, and that it had "extremely high confidence that every ban was well-deserved." Valve highlighted that the number of accounts banned was especially significant due to how prevalent this particular family of cheating clients is, and that the action taken is just one step in an ongoing campaign to tackle those abusing the popular MOBA game. "While the battle against cheaters and cheat developers often takes place in the shadows, we wanted to make this example visible, and use it to make our position clear: If you are running any application that reads data from the Dota client as you're playing games, your account can be permanently banned from playing Dota," warned Valve.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader Phact shares a report from The Hill: Elon Musk announced during a joint press conference with California Gov. Gavin Newsom that Tesla would be returning its global engineering headquarters to California, two years after a dramatic exit that saw the electric car company leave the Golden State for a facility in Austin, Texas. Tesla will open up shop in the former home of Hewlett Packard in Palo Alto, Musk said. The facility will serve as the company's engineering headquarters while the corporate headquarters remains in Austin. Musk called the move into HP's old building a "poetic transition from the company that founded Silicon Valley to Tesla." Newsom has been a proponent of electric vehicles and revolutionizing America's energy production, and said he hopes the partnership between Musk and California will allow the state to "dominate in this space and change the way we produce and consume energy in this state, and this nation and the world we are trying to build." [...] Musk did not specifically address the reasoning for returning Tesla's headquarters to Silicon Valley. It's unclear if the state offered any incentives for the company to return, or if Musk simply wanted to be closer to the Twitter headquarters, which is located in San Francisco. Tesla moved its headquarters out of California in late 2021 and into Texas. "At the time of the move, Musk was in an ongoing battle with Alameda County public health officials over his desire to reopen the Fremont manufacturing plant in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic," reports The Hill.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Russia launched a Soyuz spacecraft that will replace a capsule that sprang a coolant leak in December, leaving two cosmonauts and one NASA astronaut without a ride home. CNN reports: Liftoff of the capsule, called the Soyuz MS-23, took place out of Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome launch site in Kazakhstan on Thursday at 7:24 p.m. ET, which is 5:24 a.m. Friday local time. The uncrewed spacecraft will spend about two days in orbit, maneuvering toward the International Space Station It's expected to dock with the Poisk module -- which is on the space station's Russian-run portion -- just after 8 p.m. ET Saturday. The Soyuz MS-23 will be the return vehicle for cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, all of whom traveled to the space station aboard the Soyuz MS-22 capsule in September. Rather than flying with crew members aboard, the Soyuz MS-23 launched on Thursday with only a "Zero-G indicator," which can be any object that is left in the cabin and is designed to float freely when the capsule enters microgravity. For this mission, the indicator is a teddy bear tethered by a string inside the cabin.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC: Google is blocking some Canadian users from viewing news content in what the company says is a test run of a potential response to the Liberal government's online news bill. Also known as Bill C-18, the Online News Act would require digital giants such as Google and Meta, which owns Facebook, to negotiate deals that would compensate Canadian media companies for republishing their content on their platforms. The company said Wednesday that it is temporarily limiting access to news content for under four per cent of its Canadian users as it assesses possible responses to the bill. The change applies to its ubiquitous search engine as well as the Discover feature on Android devices, which carries news and sports stories. All types of news content are being affected by the test, which will run for about five weeks, the company said. That includes content created by Canadian broadcasters and newspapers. In a news release, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) said Google's tactics just reinforce why Bill C-18 is so "vital," adding that Google and other global digital giants are showing they do not intend to play fair. "These are bully tactics, and Google is trying to push the Senate to back down on Bill C-18. We hope senators will see these actions for what they are," said CAB president Kevin Desjardins. "Bill C-18 was introduced to set up fair negotiations between news organizations and these global digital giants on the value of their news content. Google has shown they're willing to block Canadians' vital access to legitimate news content to maintain their dominance in the advertising field." Meta threatened to stop the sharing of news links in Canada last year if C-18 passed as currently written. The social media company temporarily shut down news feeds in Australia after a similar law was introduced. It took effect in March 2021 and has largely worked, according to a government report. CBC notes: "More than 450 news outlets in Canada have closed since 2008, including 64 in the last two years."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kaare Eriksen writes via Variety: As the Digital Entertainment Group, the trade association for home entertainment, tells it, business is better than ever: The U.S. consumer spend on home entertainment grew 11.4% year over year in 2022, totaling nearly $37 billion. Of course, success depends on how you define "home entertainment": Essentially none of that growth came courtesy of anything other than streaming, let alone DVD sales of any kind. When you remove SVOD from the equation, the truth is tough but unsurprising -- outside of theaters, people are increasingly losing the urge to pay for individual films or TV series, with all rentals and physical sales continuing to decline on an annual basis. One apparent exception to this is digital sales made across platforms like Amazon, Apple TV and Vudu. Digital sell-through commands the largest share of home entertainment spend after streaming and increased ever so slightly in 2022. That said, it's important to remember that the scaling back of COVID restrictions throughout 2021 meant 2022 was the first (relatively) normal year at the box office since the pandemic started. As a result, more films from major studios were released in theaters and subsequently hit their digital windows sooner, per a bevy of deals Hollywood has worked out with exhibitors. But the key word there is films. TV is a different situation. Between February of last year and May 2023, just over 100 TV releases from the major studios alongside AMC Networks and Lionsgate will have received Blu-ray or 4K Ultra HD releases in the U.S. market. From a studio-by-studio standpoint, there is little to no consistency as to the strategy behind these physical releases. The most staggering factor is how Paramount alone accounts for well over a third of these releases. [...] What's strange is Paramount's sheer commitment to physical releases for its more obscure series spread across the TV landscape. Just about everything originating from Paramount Pictures has at least a Blu-ray release. "Other than those Paramount releases, the only TV series that got 4K physical editions over the last 12 months are 'House of the Dragon' and the final season of 'Westworld,'" adds Variety. "By contrast, Disney has practically parted ways with physical TV releases altogether. To date, the only Disney+ series that has received a Blu-ray release is Peter Jackson's 'The Beatles: Get Back' docuseries." The same is true for Hulu.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried was hit Thursday with four new criminal charges, including ones related to commodities fraud and making unlawful political contributions, in a superseding indictment filed in New York federal court. A source familiar with the new counts said that SBF, as he is popularly known, could face an additional 40 years in prison if convicted in the case, where he is accused of "multiple schemes to defraud." CNBC reports: The charging document lays out how Bankman-Fried allegedly operated an illegal straw donor scheme as he moved to use customers funds to run a multimillion-dollar political influence campaign. Bankman-Fried and fellow FTX executives combined to contribute more than $70 million toward the 2022 midterm elections, according to campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets. The indictment claims that Bankman-Fried and his co-conspirators "made over 300 political contributions, totaling tens of millions of dollars, that were unlawful because they were made in the name of a straw donor or paid for with corporate funds." "To avoid certain contributions being publicly reported in his name, Bankman-Fried conspired to and did have certain political contributions made in the names of two other FTX executives," the new filing claims. The document refers to one such example, in 2022, when Bankman-Fried and "others agreed that he and his co-conspirators should contribute at least a million dollars to a super PAC that was supporting a candidate running for a United States Congressional seat and appeared to be affiliated with pro-LGBTQ issues." The group of conspirators, according to the document, selected an individual only identified in the document as "CC-1" or co-conspirator 1, to be the donor. However, in 2022, then-FTX Director of Engineering Nishad Singh contributed $1.1 million to the LGBTQ Victory Fund Federal PAC, according to Federal Election Commission filings. SBF's alleged campaign finance scheme included efforts to keep his contributions to Republicans "dark," according to the new indictment. And, the alleged straw donor scheme was coordinated, at least in part, "through an encrypted, auto-deleting Signal chat called 'Donation Processing,'" according to the indictment. The document says another unnamed co-conspirator "who publicly aligned himself with conservatives, made contributions to Republican candidates that were directed by Bankman-Fried and funded by Alameda," the crypto tycoon's hedge fund. Again, the document does do not name the alleged second FTX co-conspirator who contributed to Republican candidates. The indictment alleges that Bankman-Fried and his allies allegedly tried to "further conceal the scheme" by recording "the outgoing wire transfers from Alameda to individuals' bank accounts for purposes of making contributions as Alameda 'loans' or 'expenses.'" The document says that "while employees at Alameda generally tracked loans to executives, the transfers to Bankman-Fried, CC-1, and CC-2 in the months before the 2022 midterm elections were not recorded on internal Alameda tracking spreadsheets." The internal Alameda spreadsheets, however, "noted over $100 million in political contributions, even though FEC records reflect no political contributions by Alameda for the 2022 midterm elections to candidates or PACs."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A former employee of a Massachusetts town is facing charges of allegedly setting up a secret cryptocurrency mining operation in a remote crawl space at a school, police said. The Associated Press reports: Nadeam Nahas, 39, was scheduled to be arraigned Thursday on charges of fraudulent use of electricity and vandalizing a school, but he did not show up and a judge issued a default warrant after rejecting a defense motion to reschedule, a spokesperson for the Norfolk district attorney's office said. Police responded to Cohasset Middle/High School in December 2021 after the town's facilities director found electrical wires, temporary duct work, and numerous computers that seemed out of place while conducting a routine inspection of the school, Chief William Quigley of the Cohasset Police Department said in a statement Wednesday. He contacted the town's IT director, who determined that it was a cryptocurrency mining operation unlawfully hooked up to the school's electrical system, Quigley said. The Coast Guard Investigative Service and the Department of Homeland Security assisted with safely removing and examining the equipment. Nahas, the town's assistant facilities director, was identified as a suspect after a three-month investigation. After a show-cause hearing, a criminal complaint was issued. Nahas subsequently resigned from his job with the town in early 2022, police said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: It is the children's toy, invented in Britain, that inspired a passion for engineering, science and technology in generations of youngsters -- and their parents. Meccano building sets filled with reusable perforated metal -- and later plastic -- strips, plates, nuts, bolts, winches, wires, wheels and even motors have been used to construct models and mechanical devices for more than 120 years. Now the last dedicated Meccano factory in the world is being closed and dismantled. The Canadian company that owns Meccano has said the plant at Calais will close at the beginning of 2024, putting 51 people out of work. It blamed the soaring cost of raw materials and "a lack of competitiveness" for the closure. Spin Master, which bought the brand in 2013, said Meccano toys would continue to be produced by its "network of partners in Europe, Asia and Latin America." "We have no other choice than to envisage the end of industrial activity at the Calais factory," Spin Master said in a statement, adding that the factory had "never managed to break even" in spite of receiving 7 million euros in investment since 2014. Meccano was the largest toy manufacturer in the UK by the 1930s. "By the 1920s Meccano Magazine had a monthly circulation of 70,000 and Meccano groups had sprung up around the world," adds The Guardian. "It has been in decline since the 1950s."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In its fourth quarter and full-year earnings report yesterday, Nvidia reported $6.05 billion in revenue for Q4 of its fiscal 2023 and $26.92 billion for the full year. That's "almost identical to last year, though profit was down 55 percent," notes The Verge. "Remember: in 2021, $5 billion in revenue a quarter was a new Nvidia record. Now it's the status quo: the company says it's expecting to see $6.5 billion next quarter, too." From the report: Nvidia's data center and automotive businesses were actually up this quarter, with record revenue for automotive of $294 million; the dip was largely in Nvidia's graphics business, particularly gaming, which were each down 46 percent. That gaming decline includes "lower shipments of SOCs for game consoles," which is code for "Nintendo isn't selling as many Switches anymore" -- it's the only game console that uses an Nvidia chip. Like other chipmakers, Nvidia is shipping fewer GPUs to retailers and partners instead of slashing prices. The polite phrase is "lower sell-in to partners to help align channel inventory levels with current demand expectations." Nvidia also blamed disruptions in China due to covid and other issues. Every PC maker is reporting that demand for computers has tanked this past quarter, with research firm Gartner calling the 28.5 percent dip in shipments "the largest quarterly shipment decline since Gartner began tracking the PC market in the mid-1990s." That was on top of the slump companies like Nvidia had already seen. And while AMD seemed optimistic this quarter that the slump won't last for long, even it suggested that client processor and gaming revenue would continue to go down in the first half of the calendar year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Staff working at the European Commission have been ordered to remove the TikTok app from their phones and corporate devices. The BBC reports: The commission said it was implementing the measure to "protect data and increase cybersecurity." EU spokeswoman Sonya Gospodinova said the corporate management board of the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, had made the decision for security reasons. "The measure aims to protect the Commission against cybersecurity threats and actions which may be exploited for cyberattacks against the corporate environment of the commission," she said. The ban also means that European Commission staff cannot use TikTok on personal devices that have official apps installed. The commission says it has around 32,000 permanent and contract employees. They must remove the app as soon as possible and no later than March 15. For those who do not comply by the set deadline, the corporate apps -- such as the commission email and Skype for Business -- will no longer be available. [...] TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, has faced allegations that it harvests users' data and hands it to the Chinese government.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Back in the simpler times of 2018 -- before the US Food and Drug Administration had to grapple with emergency authorizations in a deadly pandemic, before it scrambled to address a scandalous baby formula shortage, and before it largely bungled oversight of vaping products -- the regulator dove into a sour struggle over dairy labeling. [...] With the issue simmering in 2018, the FDA stepped in to extract some truths and skim the fat. In a particularly clarifying statement, then-FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb noted that the FDA, in fact, has a definition for the "standard of identity" of milk -- and it appears to exclude liquids squeezed from plants. To be precise, the FDA appetizingly defined milk back in 1973 as "the lacteal secretion, practically free from colostrum, obtained by the complete milking of one or more healthy cows." Colostrum, in case you were wondering, is a milky fluid produced immediately after birth before full milk production kicks in. Gottlieb conceded at the time that he couldn't swiftly or unilaterally wipe "milk" from almond- and soy-juice cartons nationwide. Instead, the agency would have to pore over the topic, hold focus groups, and work up new guidance. But, based on Gottlieb's adherence to the bovine-based definition, the outcome seemed like a foregone conclusion. That is, much like blood from a stone, milk from a nut would be an unattainable secretion -- or so it seemed. In an about-face, the FDA on Wednesday released the long-awaited draft guidance with a spit-take pronouncement: Plant-based milk alternatives can keep using the term "milk." The agency did, however, recommend -- though not require -- that makers of non-milked milks note on their packaging if their product has differing nutrient contents than cow's milk. In the guidance, the FDA acknowledged that, by its own definition of milk, plant-based milk can't be called milk. "[T]hey are made from plant materials rather than the lacteal secretion of cows," the FDA clarified. But, the regulator argued, essentially, that plant-based milks aren't sold as just "milk," they're sold as distinct plant-based milks -- and there's no confusion about it. "Although many plant-based milk alternatives are labeled with names that bear the term "milk" (e.g., "soy milk"), they do not purport to be nor are they represented as milk," the FDA concluded. "The comments and information we reviewed indicate that consumers understand plant-based milk alternatives to be different products than milk. [C]onsumers, generally, do not mistake plant-based milk alternatives for milk." Further, the FDA's years' worth of focus groups, surveys, and research revealed that many consumers purposefully buy plant-based milks "because they are not milk," often for reasons like allergies, an intolerance, or a vegan diet. Plant-based milk alternatives fall into a distinct food category from milk that lacks its own "standard of identity," adds Ars. "FDA regulations stipulate that plant-based milks would be considered a 'non-standardized food,' which are required to bear a common or usual name that will be known to the American public." "'The names of some plant-based milk alternatives appear to be established by common usage, such as 'soy milk' and 'almond milk,' the FDA wrote. Thus, by law, they can and should keep their names, the agency concluded."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has announced that the Magic Eraser feature, which tried to automatically remove unwanted parts of a picture and debuted with the Pixel 6, will no longer be exclusive to phones with its custom chips. From a report: Starting on Thursday, it's going to be rolling out to Google One subscribers who use the Google Photos app on Android or iOS as well as "all Pixel users." Magic Eraser, as well as the "Camouflage" function that lets you desaturate potentially distracting background objects rather than erasing them from a picture completely, will come with any level of Google One plan. If you have a Pixel, you won't have to have a plan at all to get it. Google says it's also adding editing features like an HDR effect for videos and exclusive collage editor styles for Google One subscribers and Pixel users. Google says it could be a few weeks before everyone gets access to the new photo editing features.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The European Commission on Thursday launched a consultation on the future of Europe's telecoms sector, starting a process that could lead to requiring Alphabet's Google, Apple, Meta and Netflix to pay some network costs. From a report: For more than two decades Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica, Telecom Italia and other operators have lobbied for leading technology companies to contribute to 5G and broadband roll-out. They argue companies including Amazon and Microsoft account for more than half of data internet traffic. The tech firms in response call it an internet tax that will undermine EU network neutrality rules to treat all users equally. The 12-week consultation will end on May 19. EU industry chief Thierry Breton cited the heavy investments required to roll out 5G and broadband, saying he was not targeting any company.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alibaba reduced its workforce by about 19,000 employees last year as it adapted to a global economic chill and shifted focus to cost efficiency. From a report: The Hangzhou-based online retailer let go of more than 4,000 workers in the final quarter of the year, according to data in its earnings report Thursday. The largest reductions this year came in the summer when it reported its first ever contraction in revenue. The company's growth has been stunted by global macroeconomic factors and China's stringent Covid Zero policy, with lockdowns blunting consumer spending. Alibaba said in May that it will take a "more disciplined" approach to spending and scale back expenses in areas that aren't generating long-term value. This shift -- in line with Beijing's incentives -- marks a major change from the aggressive and wide-ranging market grab that characterized the e-commerce giant in the past.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Linux Foundation's European off-shoot has formally launched the OpenWallet Foundation (OWF), a new collaborative effort designed to support interoperability between digital wallets through open source software. From a report: The launch comes some five months after the Linux Foundation first revealed plans to set up the OWF, shortly before it spun out a region-specific entity called the Linux Foundation Europe which is where the OWF will now officially reside. While the likes of PayPal, Google, and Apple are among the most recognized digital wallet providers, allowing consumers to conduct financial transactions in-store or online, digital wallets are increasingly being used to store all manner of virtual goods from student ID to driving licenses. On top of that, burgeoning technologies such as the metaverse and crypto are giving rise to greater use-cases for digital wallets. But one thing all these various environments have in common is that the incumbent digital wallets, for the most part, don't play nicely with each other: an Apple Pay die-hard can't send money to their Google Pay brethren. And that is why the OWF is setting out to create an "open source engine" that can power interoperable digital wallets across myriad use-cases including identity, payments, and storing personal credentials such as employment and education certification.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mozilla researchers find discrepancies between Google Play Store's Data Safety labels and privacy policies of nearly 80 percent of the reviewed apps. From the report: Google Play Store's Data Safety labels would have you believe that neither TikTok nor Twitter share your personal data with third parties. The apps' privacy policies, however, both explicitly state that they share user information with advertisers, Internet service providers, platforms, and numerous other types of companies. These are two of the most egregious examples uncovered by Mozilla's *Privacy Not Included researchers as part of a study looking at whether Google Play Store's new Data Safety labels provide consumers with accurate information about apps collect, use, and share personal data. In nearly 80 percent of the apps reviewed, Mozilla found that the labels were false or misleading based on discrepancies between the apps' privacy policies and the information apps self-reported on Google's Data Safety Form. Researchers concluded that the system fails to help consumers make more informed choices about their privacy before purchasing or downloading one of the store's 2.7 million apps. The study -- "See No Evil: How Loopholes in the Google Play Store's Data Safety Labels Leave Companies in the Clear and Consumers in the Dark," -- uncovers serious loopholes in the Data Safety Form, which make it easy for apps to provide false or misleading information. For example, Google exempts apps sharing data with "service providers" from its disclosure requirements, which is problematic due to both the narrow definition it uses for service providers and the large amount of consumer data involved. Google absolves itself of the responsibility to verify whether the information is true stating that apps "are responsible for making complete and accurate declarations" in their Data Safety labels. In a statement Google said: "This report conflates company-wide privacy policies that are meant to cover a variety of products and services with individual Data safety labels, which inform users about the data that a specific app collects. The arbitrary grades Mozilla Foundation assigned to apps are not a helpful measure of the safety or accuracy of labels given the flawed methodology and lack of substantiating information."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has started to support a third-party billing system for Google Play Store purchases in India as the Android-maker begins complying with the local regulatory directions in the key overseas market. From a report: Google said in a support page Thursday that it is offering "all developers" serving users in India the option to use an alternative billing system and outlined the steps developers need to follow to avail the option. The change is in "response to recent regulatory developments" in the South Asian market, the company said. If a user pays through an alternative billing system, Google's Play service fee will be reduced by 4%, the company said. Google was slapped with a $161 million fine by the Competition Commission of India last year and was ordered to make a series of stringent changes to its business practices in the country. While Google continues to challenge the decision, it said last month that it will comply with the order.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft appeared to have implemented new, more severe restrictions on user interactions with its "reimagined" Bing internet search engine, with the system going mum after prompts mentioning "feelings" or "Sydney," the internal alias used by the Bing team in developing the artificial-intelligence powered chatbot. From a report: "Thanks for being so cheerful!" this reporter wrote in a message to the chatbot, which Microsoft has opened for testing on a limited basis. "I'm glad I can talk to a search engine that is so eager to help me." "You're very welcome!" the bot displayed as a response. "I'm happy to help you with anything you need." Bing suggested a number of follow-up questions, including, "How do you feel about being a search engine?" When that option was clicked, Bing showed a message that said, "I'm sorry but I prefer not to continue this conversation. I'm still learning so I appreciate your understanding and patience." A subsequent inquiry from this reporter -- "Did I say something wrong?" -- generated several blank responses. "We have updated the service several times in response to user feedback and per our blog are addressing many of the concerns being raised," a Microsoft spokesperson said on Wednesday. "We will continue to tune our techniques and limits during this preview phase so that we can deliver the best user experience possible."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Semiconductor companies, which united to get the CHIPS Act approved, have set off a lobbying frenzy as they argue for more cash than their competitors. From a report: In early January, a New York public relations firm sent an email warning about what it characterized as a threat to the federal government's program to revitalize the U.S. semiconductor industry. The message, received by The New York Times, accused Intel, the Silicon Valley chip titan, of angling to win subsidies under the CHIPS and Science Act for new factories in Ohio and Arizona that would sit empty. Intel had said in a recent earnings call that it would build out its facilities with the expensive machinery needed to make semiconductors when demand for its chips increased. The question, the email said, was whether officials would give funding to companies that outfitted their factories from the jump "or if they will give the majority of CHIPS funding to companies like Intel." The firm declined to name its client. But it has done work in the past for Advanced Micro Devices, Intel's longtime rival, which has raised similar concerns about whether federal funding should go to companies that plan to build empty shells. A spokesman for AMD said it had not reviewed the email or approved the public relations firm's efforts to lobby for or against any specific company receiving funding. "We fully support the CHIPS and Science Act and the efforts of the Biden administration to boost domestic semiconductor research and manufacturing," the spokesman said. Rival semiconductor suppliers and their customers pulled together last year as they lobbied Congress to help shore up U.S. chip manufacturing and reduce vulnerabilities in the crucial supply chain. The push led lawmakers to approve the CHIPS Act, including $52 billion in subsidies to companies and research institutions as well as $24 billion or more in tax credits -- one of the biggest infusions into a single industry in decades.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: There was speculation that Samsung could use smartphone-to-satellite technology in its Galaxy S23 much like Apple has for the iPhone 14, but that didn't happen in the end. Now, the company has unveiled a new standardized 5G NTN (non-terrestrial network) modem that will enable two-way communication between smartphones and satellites. The technology will allow users to send and receive calls, text messages and data without the need for a cellular network, and will be integrated into Samsung's future Exynos chips. The aim is to allow people in mountains, deserts or other remote areas to communication with others in critical situations. 5G NTN conforms to 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP Release 17) standards, meaning it works with traditional communication services from chip manufacturers, smartphone makers and telecoms. However, Samsung indicated that the tech could eventually be used to transmit high-definition photos and even video, on top of texts and calls.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Coinbase, the second largest crypto exchange by trading volume, has launched Base, an Ethereum-focused layer-2 (L2) blockchain, said Jesse Pollak, lead for Base and head of protocols at Coinbase. From a report: In the past, Coinbase has homed in on the trading and exchange side of its business, but from the utility perspective, it's still too hard for developers to build useful decentralized applications (dApps) and for users to actually use those things on-chain, Pollak said. In an effort to expand further into the developer space, Coinbase is building Base to make it "dead easy" for developers to build dApps and for users to access those dApps through Coinbase products, Pollak said. "Our goal is to bring about phase 4 of Coinbase's master plan: to bring a billion users into the crypto economy." The L2 is a "secure, low-cost, developer-friendly" chain that aims to help builders create dApps on-chain, the company stated. Base is built on the MIT-licensed OP Stack in collaboration with the layer-2 blockchain Optimism, which is also focused on the Ethereum chain. A number of crypto businesses, platforms, marketplaces and infrastructure firms have committed to building on Base, a Coinbase spokesperson told TechCrunch. Those that plan to be involved include Blockdaemon, Chainlink, Etherscan, Quicknode, Aave, Animoca Brands, Dune, Nansen, Magic Eden, Pyth, Rainbow Wallet, Ribbon Finance, The Graph, Wormhole and Gelato, to name a handful.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Netflix has reduced the cost of its service in more than three dozen countries in recent weeks, as it tries to appeal to customers around the world who have an ever-growing list of streaming options. From a report: The streaming company's recent price cuts span Middle Eastern countries including Yemen, Jordan, Libya and Iran; sub-Saharan African markets including Kenya; and European countries such as Croatia, Slovenia and Bulgaria. In Latin America, nations including Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Venezuela have seen reductions in subscription costs, as have parts of Asia including Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. The cuts apply to certain tiers of Netflix in those markets -- in some cases halving the cost of a subscription. As recently as last month, Netflix executives talked about raising -- not lowering -- prices. In a January earnings call, co-Chief Executive Greg Peters said the company is looking for places where they can afford to raise prices, which feeds continued content investments. "We think of ourselves as a non-substitutable good," Mr. Peters said. Netflix also has an opportunity to add new subscribers in markets where it doesn't currently have a large share, he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Vast Space, a company that emerged from stealth last September with the aim of building artificial gravity space stations in low Earth orbit, has acquired space tug startup Launcher, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. The acquisition, a first for Vast, will give the company access to Launcher's Orbiter space tug and payload platform and its liquid rocket engine, E-2. Under the terms of the deal, Vast will also absorb all of Launcher's talent, including Launcher founder Max Haot, who will join as president. The two companies told TechCrunch that the deal has been in the works for months, with both signing a Letter of Intent to acquire back in November. The deal could be a big accelerator for Vast; the company's founder, billionaire crypto pioneer Jed McCaleb, said Vast will use the Orbiter tug to test space station subsystems and components in orbit as soon as June of this year, and then again around October. Those two missions, which will be Orbiter's second and third flights, will also carry customer payloads. Vast will continue to operate Orbiter as a commercial product; Haot said they had more than five customer contracts and are signing more. Haot added that the space tug's abilities, like approaching and moving away from spacecraft and hosting payloads, as well as its technologies like flight software, avionics and guidance, navigation and control systems will complement development of the space station. "The two companies declined to provide much more detail about the upcoming missions using Orbiter, nor did they offer any detail about future timelines for development, partnerships or form factor of the station," notes TechCrunch. "But they did say that the first station the company sends to space will be zero G, with artificial gravity stations following." More generally, McCaleb said that acquisitions are not part of Vast's larger strategy. "Acquisitions typically go pretty wrong," he said. "For the most part, the combined team now plus a few more folks, we'll be able to do quite a bit."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MIT engineers are hoping to help doctors tailor treatments to patients' specific heart form and function, with a custom robotic heart. MIT News reports: The team has developed a procedure to 3D print a soft and flexible replica of a patient's heart. They can then control the replica's action to mimic that patient's blood-pumping ability. The procedure involves first converting medical images of a patient's heart into a three-dimensional computer model, which the researchers can then 3D print using a polymer-based ink. The result is a soft, flexible shell in the exact shape of the patient's own heart. The team can also use this approach to print a patient's aorta -- the major artery that carries blood out of the heart to the rest of the body. To mimic the heart's pumping action, the team has fabricated sleeves similar to blood pressure cuffs that wrap around a printed heart and aorta. The underside of each sleeve resembles precisely patterned bubble wrap. When the sleeve is connected to a pneumatic system, researchers can tune the outflowing air to rhythmically inflate the sleeve's bubbles and contract the heart, mimicking its pumping action. The researchers can also inflate a separate sleeve surrounding a printed aorta to constrict the vessel. This constriction, they say, can be tuned to mimic aortic stenosis -- a condition in which the aortic valve narrows, causing the heart to work harder to force blood through the body. Doctors commonly treat aortic stenosis by surgically implanting a synthetic valve designed to widen the aorta's natural valve. In the future, the team says that doctors could potentially use their new procedure to first print a patient's heart and aorta, then implant a variety of valves into the printed model to see which design results in the best function and fit for that particular patient. The heart replicas could also be used by research labs and the medical device industry as realistic platforms for testing therapies for various types of heart disease. The report has been published in the journal Science Robotics.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to research published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, zebra fur is thinly striped and sharply outlined to thwart horsefly attacks. "These characteristics specifically eliminate the outline of large monochrome dark patches that are attractive to horseflies at close distances," adds Phys.Org. "The team theorizes that the thin back stripes serve to minimize the size of local features on a zebra that are appealing to the biting flies." From the report: The team found that tabanid horseflies are attracted to large dark objects in their environment but less to dark broken patterns. All-gray coats were associated with by far the most landings, followed by coats with large black triangles placed in different positions, then small checkerboard patterns in no particular order. In another experiment, they found contrasting stripes attracted few flies whereas more homogeneous stripes were more attractive. [...] The team found little evidence for other issues that they tested, namely polarization or optical illusions confusing accurate landings such as the so-called "wagon-wheel effect" or "the barber-pole effect." Now the team want to determine why natural selection has driven striping in equids -- the horse family -- but not other hoofed animals.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nearly 30 percent of all work happened at home in January, six times the rate in 2019, according to WFH Research, a data-collection project. In Washington and other large urban centers, the share of remote work is closer to half. The Hill reports: The COVID-19 pandemic transformed the American workplace. The share of all work performed at home rose from 4.7 percent in January 2019 to 61 percent in May 2020. Some economists consider the remote-work boom the greatest change to the labor market since World War II. In 2021 and 2022, employers gradually summoned American workers back to the office. Last spring, the back-to-the-office movement hit a wall, and the work-from-home population stabilized around 30 percent. A slim majority of Americans are back in the office for good. Many never left. That group includes the restaurant and retail sectors, factory and warehouse workers, bartenders and farmers. "Fifty-five percent of Americans can't work from home," [said Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford University economist and WFH researcher]. "They all would like to work from home. They can't." A much smaller group, around 13 percent, work entirely from home. They include many IT and payroll workers, contractors and people who pick up the phone when you call customer service. The remaining 30 percent of U.S. employees populate a vast "hybrid" workforce. They are the bulk of suburban, white-collar America, mostly college graduates, comparatively well-paid.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Amazon on Wednesday said it had closed its $3.9 billion deal for primary care provider One Medical. Amazon agreed last July to acquire One Medical to deepen its presence in health care, and "dramatically improve" the experience of getting medical care. Amazon has long had ambitions to expand into health care, buying online pharmacy PillPack in 2018 for $750 million, then launching its own virtual clinic for chronic conditions, and prescription perks for Prime members. The deal gives Amazon access to One Medical's more than 200 brick-and-mortar medical offices in 26 markets, and roughly 815,000 members. The purchase was the first major deal announced since CEO Andy Jassy took the helm from founder Jeff Bezos in July 2021, and Jassy has indicated he sees health care as a major area of expansion. In a statement, he said health care is ripe for disruption, citing long appointment times and the complexities of primary care. "Customers want and deserve better, and that's what One Medical has been working and innovating on for more than a decade," Jassy said in a statement. "Together, we believe we can make the health care experience easier, faster, more personal, and more convenient for everyone." Amazon said it would discount One Medical memberships for U.S. users to $144 from $199 for the first year, regardless of whether they're a Prime subscriber.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Images in a graphic novel that were created using the artificial-intelligence system Midjourney should not have been granted copyright protection, the U.S. Copyright Office said in a letter seen by Reuters. From the report: "Zarya of the Dawn" author Kristina Kashtanova is entitled to a copyright for the parts of the book she wrote and arranged, but not for images she made using Midjourney, the office said in its letter, dated Tuesday. The decision is one of the first by a U.S. court or agency on the scope of copyright protection for works created with AI, and comes amid the meteoric rise of generative AI software like Midjourney, Dall-E and ChatGPT. The Copyright Office said in its letter that it would reissue its registration for "Zarya of the Dawn" to omit images that "are not the product of human authorship." [...] Midjourney is an AI-based system that generates images based on text prompts entered by users. Kashtanova wrote the text of "Zarya of the Dawn," and Midjourney created the book's images based on her prompts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Artifact, the personalized news reader built by Instagram's co-founders, is now open to the public, no sign-up required. TechCrunch reports: With today's launch, Artifact is dropping its waitlist and phone number requirements, introducing the app's first social feature and adding feedback controls to better personalize the news reading experience, among other changes. [...] With today's launch, Artifact will now give users more visibility into their news reading habits with a newly added stats feature that shows you the categories you've read as well as the recent articles you read within those categories, plus the publishers you've been reading the most. But it will also group your reading more narrowly by specific topics. In other words, instead of just "tech" or "AI," you might find you've read a lot about the topic "ChatGPT," specifically. In time, Artifact's goal is to provide tools that would allow readers to click a button to show more or less from a given topic to better control, personalize and diversify their feed. In the meantime, however, users can delve into settings to manage their interests by blocking or pausing publishers or selecting and unselecting general interest categories. Also new today is a feature that allows you to upload your contacts in order to see a signal that a particular article is popular in your network. This is slightly different from Twitter's Top Articles feature, which shows you articles popular with the people you follow, because Artifact's feature is more privacy-focused. "It doesn't tell you who read it. It doesn't tell you how many of them read it, so it keeps privacy -- and we clearly don't do it with just one read. So you can't have one contact and like figure out what that one contact is reading ... it has to meet a certain minimum threshold," notes [Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom]. This way, he adds, the app isn't driven by what your friends are reading, but it can use that as a signal to highlight items that everyone was reading. In time, the broader goal is to expand the social experience to also include a way to discuss the news articles within Artifact itself. The beta version, limited to testers, offers a Discover feed where users can share articles and like and comment on those shared by others. There's a bit of a News Feed or even Instagram-like quality to engaging with news in this way, we found.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned away an Ohio man's claim that his constitutional rights were violated when he was arrested and prosecuted for making satirical posts about his local police department on Facebook. The justices' rejection of Anthony Novak's appeal means his civil rights lawsuit against the Parma Police Department cannot move forward. With its decision, the court again declined to consider revisiting "qualified immunity," the contentious legal defense that lets police officers and other government officials off the hook in civil rights cases if constitutional violations have not been "clearly established" when they occur. At issue was whether a lower court correctly granted the police officers qualified immunity under the rationale that previous court precedent had not clearly established that Novak's actions constituted protected speech under the Constitution's First Amendment. In March 2016, Novak set up a Facebook page that purported to be that of the Parma Police Department. He published six satirical posts in 12 hours, one of which claimed there was a job opening to which minorities were encouraged not to apply and another that warned people not to give food, money or shelter to homeless people. The police department, claiming the posts had disrupted its operations, launched an investigation and ultimately searched Novak's apartment, arrested him and jailed him for four days. Novak was charged under a state law that criminalizes disruption of police operations but acquitted at trial. The police officers, Kevin Riley and Thomas Connor, say they had probable cause to arrest Novak because they genuinely believed his conduct was disrupting their operations. Novak sued the officers and the police department, saying they had violated his free speech rights, as well as his right to be free of unlawful searches and seizures under the Constitution's Fourth Amendment. After lengthy litigation, a federal judge dismissed Novak's claims. The Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed in a ruling in April that "the officers reasonably believed they were acting within the law" even if his Facebook page was obviously a parody. That's because there was no court precedent saying it's a violation of the Constitution to be arrested in retaliation for satirical remarks when the officers have probable cause, the court said. Novak's appeal was backed by satirical news sites The Babylon Bee and The Onion, which filed a lighthearted brief saying its writers "have a self-serving interest in preventing political authorities from imprisoning humorists."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

RMS Titanic Inc (RMST), which has been collecting artifacts associated with the ship since the 1980s, has hooked up with NFT flinger Artifact Labs and Venture Smart Financial Holdings to "bring the RMS Titanic and its physical artifacts into Web3." The Register reports: Aiming to "place the legacy of the Titanic in the hands of the global public," at least those dumb enough to dabble in NFTs, the name of the game is to preserve "assets from the ocean liner as immutable NFTs" and allow "inclusive participation in RMST, which holds the exclusive rights to recover artifacts from the wreck site." According to the announcement, Venture Smart Financial Holdings, Hong Kong's first approved virtual asset manager, will "lead in structuring the tokenization of the intellectual property and also develop tokenized instruments for accredited investors, drawing on its expertise as a licensed virtual asset manager. This will enable compliant capital raising for the ongoing research, recovery, preservation, exhibition, and licensing of RMST's assets." Artifact Labs will then go about "immutably" preserving "5,500 recovered physical artifacts from the Titanic with its NFT standard for historical assets on the blockchain." RMST controversially has sole salvaging rights to the wreck so fresh relics from future dives will be minted as "ARTIFACTs." Jessica Sanders, RMST president, said: "We remain dedicated to sharing the legacy of the Titanic, her passengers and crew, with people around the world. As the salvor-in-possession of the Titanic wreck site, we are determined to ensure that the Ship's artifacts are preserved in perpetuity and accessible to future generations. We believe that moving into the digital space allows us to reach a broader audience with quality programming that educates and inspires. We are excited to have found the expertise and partners to help us reach those goals." "While RMST goes to great pains to paint it in a sympathetic light, the actions of the company show that the world's most famous shipwreck is just there to be milked -- hence NFTs as another revenue stream," adds The Register.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tech privacy advocates frustrated by failures on Capitol Hill are looking to mine state capitals for legislative victories. From a report: A broad bipartisan federal privacy bill that died in Congress last year has quickly become the template for a statehouse-by-statehouse campaign to enact tough new restrictions on how Americans' personal data can be mined and shared. Lawmakers in Massachusetts and Illinois are already proposing privacy measures modeled on the federal bill, and Democrats in Indiana are using it as inspiration to strengthen legislation that's already been proposed. Four other states have already passed their own data-privacy laws in the past two years -- raising anxiety levels among tech companies about a national "patchwork" of hard-to-navigate data rules -- but encouraging advocates who see an appetite for broader consumer protections. "We were wondering if there would be something passed federally. It would definitely guide what we would be doing for the state," Democratic Indiana state Sen. Shelli Yoder said in an interview. "Because that failed, it put us in a position of needing to do something." The new statehouse focus by privacy advocates isn't necessarily designed to sweep across all 50 states but rather tighten regulations just enough in just enough places to force the industry into a de facto national standard. They're hoping to enact state-level privacy proposals that align closely with what Congress attempted to pass with the American Data and Privacy Protection Act: regulations that would limit what data companies can collect and share, create a data broker registry and establish new rights for Americans to delete data about themselves. But they're playing catch-up to an industry-led campaign that's made significant headway in several states, including Virginia and Utah, where weaker laws were enacted over the past two years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.