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An anonymous reader shares a report: Newly unsealed emails allegedly provide the "most damning evidence" yet against Meta in a copyright case raised by book authors alleging that Meta illegally trained its AI models on pirated books. Last month, Meta admitted to torrenting a controversial large dataset known as LibGen, which includes tens of millions of pirated books. But details around the torrenting were murky until yesterday, when Meta's unredacted emails were made public for the first time. The new evidence showed that Meta torrented "at least 81.7 terabytes of data across multiple shadow libraries through the site Anna's Archive, including at least 35.7 terabytes of data from Z-Library and LibGen," the authors' court filing said. And "Meta also previously torrented 80.6 terabytes of data from LibGen." "The magnitude of Meta's unlawful torrenting scheme is astonishing," the authors' filing alleged, insisting that "vastly smaller acts of data piracy -- just .008 percent of the amount of copyrighted works Meta pirated -- have resulted in Judges referring the conduct to the US Attorneys' office for criminal investigation."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Asahi lead developer Hector Martin, writing in an email: I no longer have any faith left in the kernel development process or community management approach. Apple/ARM platform development will continue downstream. If I feel like sending some patches upstream in the future myself for whatever subtree I may, or I may not. Anyone who feels like fighting the upstreaming fight themselves is welcome to do so.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The UK government has ordered Apple to create a backdoor allowing access to encrypted cloud backups of users worldwide, Washington Post reported Friday, citing multiple sources familiar with the matter. The unprecedented demand, issued last month through a technical capability notice under the UK Investigatory Powers Act, requires Apple to provide blanket access to fully encrypted material rather than assistance with specific accounts. Apple is likely to discontinue its encrypted storage service in the UK rather than compromise user security globally, the report said. The company would still face pressure to provide backdoor access for users in other countries, including the United States. The order was issued under Britain's 2016 Investigatory Powers Act, which makes it illegal to disclose such government demands, according to the report. While Apple can appeal to a secret technical panel and judge, the law requires compliance during any appeal process. The company told Parliament in March that the UK government should not have authority to decide whether global users can access end-to-end encryption.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: In the most comprehensive study of its kind, scientists have found that generally, the world feels brighter when you wake up. People start the day in the best frame of mind in the morning, but end in the worst, at about midnight, the findings suggest, with the day of the week and the season also playing a part. Mental health also tends to be more varied at weekends but steadier during the week, according to the study led by University College London. "Generally, things do seem better in the morning," the researchers concluded. Their findings were published in the journal BMJ Mental Health. [...] The results showed that happiness, life satisfaction, and worthwhile ratings were all higher on Mondays and Fridays than on Sundays, while happiness was also higher on Tuesdays. There was no evidence that loneliness differed across days of the week. There was clear evidence of a seasonal influence on mood. Compared with winter, people tended to have lower levels of depressive and anxiety symptoms and loneliness, and higher levels of happiness, life satisfaction and feeling that life was worthwhile in the three other seasons. Mental health was best in the summer across all outcomes. But the season didn't affect the associations observed across the day, however. Scientists suggest that the findings may be due to physiological changes linked to the body's circadian rhythm. Cortisol, a hormone that influences mood and motivation, peaks after waking and declines by bedtime, which may contribute to better mental health earlier in the day. Factors like sleep cycles, weather, and when participants chose to respond to the survey could have influenced the findings. There's also the differences between weekdays and weekends, which have their own variations in daily routines.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After a $523 million charge on its CST-100 Starliner program in 2024, Boeing's total losses on the commercial crew vehicle now exceed $2 billion -- and there's still no clear timeline for its next flight. SpaceNews reports: In the company's 10-K annual filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Feb. 3, Boeing said it took $523 million in charges on Starliner in 2024. The company blamed the losses on "schedule delays and higher testing and certification costs as well as higher costs for post certification missions." The company had reported a $125 million charge in the second quarter and a $250 million charge in the third quarter. The company warned Jan. 23 it would take an additional loss in the fourth quarter but did not disclose a figure when it released its financial results five days later. The annual loss implies a $148 million loss in the fourth quarter. The $523 million in charges is the most Boeing has recorded in a single year on Starliner, exceeding $489 million it reported in 2019. The company's cumulative charges on Starliner are now just over $2 billion. "Risk remains that we may record additional losses in future periods," the company stated in the 10-K filing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA is planning to host a live Twitch stream next week from the International Space Station (ISS). "The stream, which takes place on February 12th at 11:45AM ET on NASA's Twitch channel, will feature Don Pettit, an astronaut currently on the ISS, and Matt Dominick, who returned to Earth from the ISS in October," reports The Verge. From the report: The astronauts will discuss "daily life aboard the space station and the research conducted in microgravity" and viewers will be able to ask them questions, according to a blog post. "This Twitch event from space is the first of many," Brittany Brown, director of the Office of Communications Digital and Technology Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, says in the post. "We spoke with digital creators at TwitchCon about their desire for streams designed with their communities in mind, and we listened. In addition to our spacewalks, launches, and landings, we'll host more Twitch-exclusive streams like this one."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CyberScoop: Ransomware payments saw a dramatic 35% drop last year compared to 2023, even as the overall frequency of ransomware attacks increased, according to a new report released by blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis. The considerable decline in extortion payments is somewhat surprising, given that other cybersecurity firms have claimed that 2024 saw the most ransomware activity to date. Chainalysis itself warned in its mid-year report that 2024's activity was on pace to reach new heights, but attacks in the second half of the year tailed off. The total amount in payments that Chainalysis tracked in 2024 was $812.55 million, down from 2023's mark of $1.25 billion. The disruption of major ransomware groups, such as LockBit and ALPHV/BlackCat, were key to the reduction in ransomware payments. Operations spearheaded by agencies like the United Kingdom's National Crime Agency (NCA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) caused significant declines in LockBit activity, while ALPHV/BlackCat essentially rug-pulled its affiliates and disappeared after its attack on Change Healthcare. [...] Additionally, [Chainalysis] says more organizations have become stronger against attacks, with many choosing not to pay a ransom and instead using better cybersecurity practices and backups to recover from these incidents. [...] Chainalysis also says ransomware operators are letting funds sit in wallets, refraining from moving any money out of fear they are being watched by law enforcement. You can read the full report here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Arm has dropped its attempt to terminate Qualcomm's Architecture License Agreement (ALA), allowing Qualcomm to continue developing and producing Arm-compatible chips for PCs, smartphones, and servers. "The Brit biz had sought to end that license in a lawsuit it brought against Qualcomm in 2022," notes The Register. "That suit is rooted in Qualcomm's 2021 acquisition of a startup called Nuvia, which was co-founded by the brains behind Apple's custom processors and had signed an architecture license agreement (ALA) with Arm that allowed it to design its own Arm-compatible CPU cores." From the report: On Wednesday, Qualcomm's latest quarterly financial report [PDF] revealed Arm had indicated on January 8, 2025 it was no longer seeking to kill off Qualcomm's ALA. During Qualcomm's Q1 2025 earnings conference call with Wall Street, CEO Cristiano Amon confirmed Arm "has no current plan to terminate the Qualcomm Architecture License Agreement. We're excited to continue to develop performance leading, world-class products that benefit consumers worldwide that include our incredible Oryon custom CPUs." [...] On the other side of the fence, Arm noted in a regulatory filing [PDF] that post-trial motions had been filed on both sides to clarify the legal situation following the jury's verdicts, and a new trial may be sought. On its own latest quarterly earnings call, which like Qualcomm's took place on Wednesday, Arm's CFO Jason Child was asked about the impact of the case. He said Arm's revenue forecasts assumed the biz was "not going to prevail in that lawsuit," and that it expected to continue receiving payments from Qualcomm, which licenses various technologies from Arm and doesn't just hold an ALA. "The primary reason for the lawsuit very much was around defending our IP and that's important," Child said. "But from a financial perspective, we had assumed that we'll continue to be receiving royalties at basically the same rates that they've been paying for in the past and will continue to pay." Qualcomm continues to pursue another case against Arm, alleging the UK outfit didn't honor some of its contractual obligations. Arm reckons that matter will reach the courts in the first half of 2026.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple plans to unveil a long-anticipated overhaul of the iPhone SE in the coming days, a move that will modernize its lower-cost model in a bid to spur growth and entice consumers to switch from other brands. Bloomberg: The company expects to announce the device as early as next week, ahead of it going on sale later in the month, according to people with knowledge of the matter. [...] The new device, code-named V59, also will be Apple's first with an in-house cellular modem, replacing a component from Qualcomm, Bloomberg News has reported. It will have a larger screen with Face ID and also include a speedier A18 chip, which will help support Apple Intelligence. The removal of the home button from the iPhone SE means that Apple will have fully phased out the iconic interface, which debuted on the first iPhone in 2007.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has begun internal testing of a new "AI Mode" for its search engine, powered by its Gemini 2.0 AI model, according to a company email seen by technology news site 9to5Google. The feature, which appears alongside existing filters like Images and News, creates a chatbot-like interface for handling complex queries and follow-up questions. It generates detailed responses with web links displayed in a card format on the right side of the screen. AI Mode targets exploratory searches such as product comparisons and how-to questions that traditional search results may not effectively address. The company is currently testing the feature with U.S.-based employees, with CEO Sundar Pichai indicating a possible launch this year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Senate Commerce Committee approved the Kids Off Social Media Act, banning children under 13 from social media and requiring federally funded schools to restrict access on networks and devices. Politico reports: The panel approved the Kids Off Social Media Act -- sponsored by the panel's chair, Texas Republican Ted Cruz, and a senior Democrat on the panel, Hawaii's Brian Schatz -- by voice vote, clearing the way for consideration by the full Senate. Only Ed Markey (D-Mass.) asked to be recorded as a no on the bill. "When you've got Ted Cruz and myself in agreement on something, you've pretty much captured the ideological spectrum of the whole Congress," Sen. Schatz told POLITICO's Gabby Miller. [...] "KOSMA comes from very good intentions of lawmakers, and establishing national screen time standards for schools is sensible. However, the bill's in-effect requirements on access to protected information jeopardize all Americans' digital privacy and endanger free speech online," said Amy Bos, NetChoice director of state and federal affairs. The trade association represents big tech firms including Meta and Google. Netchoice has been aggressive in combating social media legislation by arguing that these laws illegally restrict -- and in some cases compel -- speech. [...] A Commerce Committee aide told POLITICO that because social media platforms already voluntarily require users to be at least 13 years old, the bill does not restrict speech currently available to kids.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI is considering building large-scale data center campuses in 16 states as part of the Stargate initiative, a $100 billion joint venture with Oracle and SoftBank aimed at strengthening U.S. AI infrastructure. CNBC reports: On a call with reporters, OpenAI executives said it sent out a request for proposals (RFP) to states less than a week ago. "A project of this size represents an opportunity to both re-industrialize parts of the country, but also to help revitalize where the American Dream is going to go in this intelligence age," Chris Lehane, OpenAI's vice president of global policy, said on the call. [...] The 16 states OpenAI is currently considering are Arizona, California, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Texas, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and West Virginia. Construction on the data centers in Abilene, Texas, is currently underway. In the coming months, OpenAI will begin announcing additional construction sites "on a rolling basis," according to the presentation. Each campus is designed to support about one gigawatt of power or more. OpenAI is aiming to build five to 10 data center campuses total, although executives said that number could rise or fall depending on how much power each campus offers. The company also said it expects each data center campus to generate thousands of jobs. That includes construction and operational roles. But Stargate's first data center in Abilene could lead to the creation of just 57 jobs, according to recent reports.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Boston Dynamics Wednesday announced a partnership designed to bring improved reinforcement learning to its electric Atlas humanoid robot. The tie-up is with the Robotics & AI Institute (RAI Institute), earlier known as The Boston Dynamics AI Institute. Both organizations were founded by Marc Raibert, a former MIT professor who served as Boston Dynamics' CEO for 30 years. The Institute, founded in 2022, allows Raibert to continue the research that served as the foundation for Boston Dynamics. Both have ties to Hyundai. The Korean carmaker acquired Boston Dynamics back in 2021; Hyundai also funds the Institute, giving Raibert free rein to explore more experimental and bleeding-edge technologies than is possible in a commercial company. The Institute mirrors Toyota's creation of TRI, or Toyota Research Institute, which announced its own partnership with Boston Dynamics in October, focused on the use of large behavior models. (LBMs). The twin partnerships are designed to improve the way Boston Dynamics' electric Atlas humanoid learns new tasks. The Robotics & AI Institute deal is specifically focused on reinforcement learning, a method that operates through trial and error, similar to the way both humans and animals learn. Reinforcement learning has traditionally been extremely time-intensive, though the creation of effective simulation has allowed many processes to be carried out at once in a virtual setting. The Boston Dynamics/RAI Institute union kicked off earlier this month in Massachusetts. It's the latest in a number of collaborations between the pair, including a joint effort to develop a reinforcement learning research kit for the quadrupedal Spot robot by Boston Dynamics (which is its familiar robot "dog"). The new work focuses on both transferring simulation-based learning to real-world settings and improving how the company's humanoid Atlas moves through and interacts with physical environments. Pertaining to the latter, Boston Dynamics points to "dynamic running and full-body manipulation of heavy objects." Both are examples of actions that require synchronization of the legs and arms. The humanoid's bipedal form factor presents a number of unique challenges -- and opportunities -- when compared with Spot. Every activity is also subject to a broad range of forces, including balance, force, resistance, and motion.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tom Blomfield, founder of Monzo, challenges the notion that Americans work harder than Europeans, attributing the U.S.'s economic edge to a culture of "positivity, optimism, and ambition" rather than sheer work ethic. He argues that the "know your place, don't get too big for your boots" mindset stifles innovation, whereas the U.S.' "American Dream" fosters a more dynamic start-up culture, making it easier for entrepreneurs to bounce back from failure. Fortune reports: Blomfield said the American dream wasn't a reality that a lot of people in the U.S. get to live, but it was one that a lot of them experience. "That idea that anyone can create anything if they try hard enough is so deeply American, and it's so antithetical to the British culture," he said. Blomfield was 28 when he co-founded Monzo in 2015. While he said people in the U.K. "looked at me like I was crazy" as he tried to get a banking license, he had a much more supportive reaction in the States. The Brit said his fellow countrymen were more inclined toward a "know your place, don't get too big for your boots" attitude that stifles innovation. In Blomfield's view, this filters down to the career decisions made by the country's most promising university students. In the U.K., Blomfield says the most ambitious thing for students to do is work at a trading firm like James Street or a consultancy like McKinsey. Indeed, he suggests the default choice for PhD students in computer science is to join Goldman Sachs. In the U.S., meanwhile, Blomfield says he'll often get pitched start-up ideas by students from unexpected backgrounds, including English Literature undergrads. [...] In April, Nicolai Tangen, the CEO of Norway's $1.6 trillion sovereign wealth fund, sparked a debate with his comments that there was a difference in the "general level of ambition" between U.S. and European workers, adding that Americans work harder. Blomfield said he had read data suggesting that the latter wasn't the case. But his thoughts do align with another of Tangen's points, namely that it is easier to start again in the U.S. if a business fails than in the U.K. Backed by the "American dream" ideal that Blomfield mentioned in his interview, the U.S. has long been more closely associated with entrepreneurialism and disruption than Britain, and Europe more widely. Since these comments were made last May (reprinted yesterday via Fortune), we'd like to open this up for a "Slashdot Asks" discussion. Do you think the "know your place" mindset Blomfield cited stifles innovation? How does it compare to the mindset in the United States or elsewhere? Any insights or examples to support your point are appreciated and will contribute to a more meaningful discussion.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Entertainment Software Association is launching a new gaming event to replace E3, which was permanently canceled in 2023. According to Engadget, the new event is called iicon (short for "interactive innovation conference") and will feature many of the same major gaming companies that once participated in E3. "Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Disney, EA, Epic Games, Ubisoft, Square Enix, Take Two Interactive, Amazon Games and Warner Bros. Games are all named as participants." From the report: [T]he announcements on social media promote iicon as being for "visionaries," "changemakers" and "innovators," so our best guess is that this event will swing more toward the corporate side of gaming where people might use that language unironically. If that's the case, this won't really be a replacement for the heyday of E3, when studios big and small would showcase their upcoming projects and drop internet-breaking surprises. Instead, the inaugural event in April 2026 sounds like it will focus more on moving the needle, brand alignments and synergy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Tuesday, Hugging Face researchers released an open source AI research agent called "Open Deep Research," created by an in-house team as a challenge 24 hours after the launch of OpenAI's Deep Research feature, which can autonomously browse the web and create research reports. The project seeks to match Deep Research's performance while making the technology freely available to developers. "While powerful LLMs are now freely available in open-source, OpenAI didn't disclose much about the agentic framework underlying Deep Research," writes Hugging Face on its announcement page. "So we decided to embark on a 24-hour mission to reproduce their results and open-source the needed framework along the way!" Similar to both OpenAI's Deep Research and Google's implementation of its own "Deep Research" using Gemini (first introduced in December -- before OpenAI), Hugging Face's solution adds an "agent" framework to an existing AI model to allow it to perform multi-step tasks, such as collecting information and building the report as it goes along that it presents to the user at the end. The open source clone is already racking up comparable benchmark results. After only a day's work, Hugging Face's Open Deep Research has reached 55.15 percent accuracy on the General AI Assistants (GAIA) benchmark, which tests an AI model's ability to gather and synthesize information from multiple sources. OpenAI's Deep Research scored 67.36 percent accuracy on the same benchmark with a single-pass response (OpenAI's score went up to 72.57 percent when 64 responses were combined using a consensus mechanism). As Hugging Face points out in its post, GAIA includes complex multi-step questions such as this one: "Which of the fruits shown in the 2008 painting 'Embroidery from Uzbekistan' were served as part of the October 1949 breakfast menu for the ocean liner that was later used as a floating prop for the film 'The Last Voyage'? Give the items as a comma-separated list, ordering them in clockwise order based on their arrangement in the painting starting from the 12 o'clock position. Use the plural form of each fruit." To correctly answer that type of question, the AI agent must seek out multiple disparate sources and assemble them into a coherent answer. Many of the questions in GAIA represent no easy task, even for a human, so they test agentic AI's mettle quite well. Open Deep Research "builds on OpenAI's large language models (such as GPT-4o) or simulated reasoning models (such as o1 and o3-mini) through an API," notes Ars. "But it can also be adapted to open-weights AI models. The novel part here is the agentic structure that holds it all together and allows an AI language model to autonomously complete a research task." The code has been made public on GitHub.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A heated dispute has erupted in the Linux kernel community over the integration of Rust code, with kernel maintainer Christoph Hellwig likening multiple programming languages to "cancer" for the project's maintainability. The conflict centers on a proposed patch enabling Rust-written device drivers to access the kernel's DMA API, which Hellwig strongly opposed. While the dispute isn't about Rust itself, Hellwig argues that maintaining cross-language codebases severely compromises Linux's integrated nature. From a report: "Don't force me to deal with your shiny language of the day," he [Hellwig] wrote. "Maintaining multi-language projects is a pain I have no interest in dealing with. If you want to use something that's not C, be that assembly or Rust, you write to C interfaces and deal with the impedance mismatch yourself as far as I'm concerned." This resistance follows the September departure of Microsoft engineer Wedson Almeida Filho from the Rust for Linux project, citing "nontechnical nonsense."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A person's ability to focus on everyday tasks is affected by short-term exposure to air pollution, a study has found. The Guardian: Researchers analysed data from cognitive tests completed by 26 participants before and after they were exposed either to high levels of particulate matter (PM) using smoke from a candle, or clean air for an hour. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, found that even brief exposure to high concentrations of PM affected participants' selective attention and emotion recognition -- regardless of whether they breathed normally or just through their mouth. This can affect an individual's ability to concentrate on tasks, avoid distractions and behave in a socially appropriate way. "Participants exposed to air pollution were not as good at avoiding the distracting information," said Dr Thomas Faherty of the University of Birmingham, a co-author of the study. "So that means in daily life, you could get more distracted by things. Supermarket shopping is a good example ... it might mean that you get more distracted by impulse buys when you're walking along supermarket aisles because you're not able to focus on your task goals." The study also found that participants performed worse on cognitive tests evaluating emotional recognition after being exposed to PM air pollution.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Warner Bros. Discovery has quietly begun releasing dozens of its older films for free on YouTube, marking an unexpected shift in how the major studio handles its back catalog. Over the past month, the company has uploaded more than 30 full-length movies across five YouTube channels, without digital rights management or regional restrictions. The collection includes both critically acclaimed films like "Waiting for Guffman" and "Michael Collins," as well as commercial disappointments like the 2002 Eddie Murphy film "The Adventures of Pluto Nash." Some releases have significant historical value, such as "Oh, God!" - a 1977 George Burns comedy that earned $51 million at release (equivalent to $265 million in 2024). This move represents a departure from traditional studio practices of protecting content through strict digital rights management and paid streaming services. Warner Bros. owns multiple distribution channels, including the Max streaming service and Turner Classic Movies, which makes the decision to release these films freely on YouTube particularly notable.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The keyboard company Qwertykeys has temporarily halted all shipments to the United States in response to President Trump's tariffs on Chinese goods going into effect. The company says it's working on ways to mitigate shipping costs and that the tariffs have made it so that "all keyboards from China to the U.S. are now subject to 45% tariffs at full value." "We are closely watching the progress of the situation and really hope that there is something else we can do other than bumping the price up," the company wrote in a comment on Reddit. Qwertykeys says that its delivery partner, DHL, "now requires prepayment of 50% of the declared product value as a tariff deposit, plus a $21 processing fee per package." That would drastically raise prices for customers in the US, something Qwertykeys says is "unsustainable for both our business and customers."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scientists have grown tooth-like structures using a combination of pig and human cells, marking a step toward potential alternatives to dental implants, researchers at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine reported. The team, led by Pamela Yelick and Weibo Zhang, cultivated the structures by seeding cells into pig tooth scaffolds and implanting them in mini pigs' jaws. After two months, the bioengineered teeth developed hard tissue layers similar to natural teeth, including dentin and cementum. While not yet fully formed teeth, the structures could eventually lead to living replacements for lost teeth, addressing limitations of current titanium implants.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DeepSeek's AI app will highly likely face a US consumer ban after topping download charts on Apple's App Store and Google Play, according to analysts at US investment bank Jefferies. The US federal government, Navy and Texas have already banned the app, and analysts expect broader restrictions using legislation similar to that targeting TikTok. While consumer access may be blocked, US developers could still be allowed to self-host DeepSeek's model to eliminate security risks, the analysts added. Even if completely banned, DeepSeek's impact on pushing down AI costs will persist as US companies work to replicate its technology, Jefferies said in a report this week reviewed by Slashdot. The app's pricing advantage remains significant, with OpenAI's latest o3-mini model still costing 100% more than DeepSeek's R1 despite being 63% cheaper than o1-mini. The potential ban comes amid broader US-China tech tensions. While restrictions on H20 chips appear unlikely given their limited training capabilities, analysts expect the Biden administration's AI diffusion policies to remain largely intact under Trump, with some quota increases possible for overseas markets based on their AI activity levels.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AMD will launch its new Radeon RX 9070-series graphics cards in March 2025, promising "high-quality gaming to mainstream players" amid struggling sales. The company's gaming division reported $563 million in Q4 2024 revenue, down 59% year-over-year. The new cards will target the same market segment as Nvidia's RTX 4070 Ti ($799) and 4070 Super ($599), featuring a 4nm TSMC manufacturing process, ML-enhanced FSR 4 upscaling, and next-generation ray-tracing accelerators. Steam Hardware Survey shows AMD's current RX 7000-series cards have minimal market presence, with only the 7900 XTX and 7700 XT registering on the list. Industry research indicates AMD sells approximately one GPU for every seven or eight sold by Nvidia. The launch timing could be opportune, as Nvidia's upcoming RTX 5070 features fewer CUDA cores than the RTX 4070 Super it replaces.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI researchers at Stanford and the University of Washington were able to train an AI "reasoning" model for under $50 in cloud compute credits, according to a research paper. From a report: The model, known as s1, performs similarly to cutting-edge reasoning models, such as OpenAI's o1 and DeepSeek's R1, on tests measuring math and coding abilities. The s1 model is available on GitHub, along with the data and code used to train it. The team behind s1 said they started with an off-the-shelf base model, then fine-tuned it through distillation, a process to extract the "reasoning" capabilities from another AI model by training on its answers. The researchers said s1 is distilled from one of Google's reasoning models, Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental. Distillation is the same approach Berkeley researchers used to create an AI reasoning model for around $450 last month.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Joseph Firmage, a former Silicon Valley prodigy who built a $2.5 billion web services company in the 1990s, is now being sued by investors who claim he defrauded them through an alleged antigravity machine scheme. In 1998, at the height of his success as CEO of USWeb, Firmage claimed an alien appeared in his bedroom, derailing his corporate career. He then spent decades pursuing UFO research and attempting to develop antigravity propulsion technology, raising millions from investors. Court documents allege Firmage and associates are responsible for roughly $25 million in losses through various companies and schemes. Some investors say he used elaborate ruses, including people impersonating government officials, to solicit funds. Firmage, currently in jail on elder abuse charges, maintains he was actually the victim of international scammers who exploited his access to investors.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In 2022, writer and activist Cory Doctorow coined the term "enshittification" to describe the gradual deterioration of a service or product. The term's prevalence has increased to the point that it was the National Dictionary of Australia's word of the year last year. The editors at Ars Technica, having "covered a lot of things that have been enshittified," decided to highlight some of the worst examples the've come across. Here's a summary of each thing mentioned in their report: Smart TVs: Evolved into data-collecting billboards, prioritizing advertising and user tracking over user experience and privacy. Features like convenient input buttons are sacrificed for pushing ads and webOS apps. "This is all likely to get worse as TV companies target software, tracking, and ad sales as ways to monetize customers after their TV purchases -- even at the cost of customer convenience and privacy," writes Scharon Harding. "When budget brands like Roku are selling TV sets at a loss, you know something's up." Google's Voice Assistant (e.g., Nest Hubs): Functionality has degraded over time, with previously working features becoming unreliable. Users report frequent misunderstandings and unresponsiveness. "I'm fine just saying it now: Google Assistant is worse now than it was soon after it started," writes Kevin Purdy. "Even if Google is turning its entire supertanker toward AI now, it's not clear why 'Start my morning routine,' 'Turn on the garage lights,' and 'Set an alarm for 8 pm' had to suffer." Portable Document Format (PDF): While initially useful for cross-platform document sharing and preserving formatting, PDFs have become bloated and problematic. Copying text, especially from academic journals, is often garbled or impossible. "Apple, which had given the PDF a reprieve, has now killed its main selling point," writes John Timmer. "Because Apple has added OCR to the MacOS image display system, I can get more reliable results by screenshotting the PDF and then copying the text out of that. This is the true mark of its enshittification: I now wish the journals would just give me a giant PNG." Televised Sports (specifically cycling and Formula 1): Streaming services have consolidated, leading to significantly increased costs for viewers. Previously affordable and comprehensive options have been replaced by expensive bundles across multiple platforms. "Formula 1 racing has largely gone behind paywalls, and viewership is down significantly over the last 15 years," writes Eric Berger. "Major US sports such as professional and college football had largely been exempt, but even that is now changing, with NFL games being shown on Peacock, Amazon Prime, and Netflix. None of this helps viewers. It enshittifies the experience for us in the name of corporate greed." Google Search: AI overviews often bury relevant search results under lengthy, sometimes inaccurate AI-generated content. This makes finding specific information, especially primary source documents, more difficult. "Google, like many big tech companies, expects AI to revolutionize search and is seemingly intent on ignoring any criticism of that idea," writes Ashley Belanger. Email AI Tools (e.g., Gemini in Gmail): Intrusive and difficult to disable, these tools offer questionable value due to their potential for factual inaccuracies. Users report being unable to fully opt-out. "Gmail won't take no for an answer," writes Dan Goodin. "It keeps asking me if I want to use Google's Gemini AI tool to summarize emails or draft responses. As the disclaimer at the bottom of the Gemini tool indicates, I can't count on the output being factual, so no, I definitely don't want it." Windows: While many complaints about Windows 11 originated with Windows 10, the newer version continues the trend of unwanted features, forced updates, and telemetry data collection. Bugs and performance issues also plague the operating system. "... it sure is easy to resent Windows 11 these days, between the well-documented annoyances, the constant drumbeat of AI stuff (some of it gated to pricey new PCs), and a batch of weird bugs that mostly seem to be related to the under-the-hood overhauls in October's Windows 11 24H2 update," writes Andrew Cunningham. "That list includes broken updates for some users, inoperable scanners, and a few unplayable games. With every release, the list of things you need to do to get rid of and turn off the most annoying stuff gets a little longer." Web Discourse: The rapid spread of memes, trends, and corporate jargon on social media has led to a homogenization of online communication, making it difficult to distinguish original content and creating a sense of constant noise. "[T]he enshittifcation of social media, particularly due to its speed and virality, has led to millions vying for their moment in the sun, and all I see is a constant glare that makes everything look indistinguishable," writes Jacob May. "No wonder some companies think AI is the future."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Down an easy-to-miss turnoff on the A48 just outside Chepstow on the Welsh border, the gentle rumble of trucks, cranes and people at work mixes with birdsong in what is an otherwise peaceful rural setting. It is a crisp and sunny winter morning when I visit and, at first glance, the site appears to be little more than prefab containers and a car park. Yet, behind the scenes a group of men and women with expertise in diving, marine biology, technology, finance, construction and manufacturing are building something extraordinary. They have come together with a single mission statement: to make humans aquatic. Their project is called Deep (not The Deep) and the site was chosen after a global search for the perfect location to build and test underwater accommodation, which the project founders say will enable them to establish a "permanent human presence" under the sea from 2027. So far, so crazy sounding. Yet Deep is funded by a single anonymous private investor with deep pockets who wants to put hundreds of millions of pounds (if not more) into a project that will "increase understanding of the ocean and its critical role for humanity," according to a Deep spokesperson. Its leadership team remains tight-lipped not only about the amount (they will only say it is substantially more than the 100 million pounds being invested into the Deep campus near Chepstow), but also about the investor's identity. Whoever is behind it, the size of the investment means that an ambitious-sounding idea appears to be swiftly becoming a reality. [...] Mike Shackleford, Deep's chief operating officer, explains the thought process behind the project. "Back in the 1950s and 60s, there was a space race and an ocean race going on, and space won out. Space is tough to get to, but once you're up there, it's a relatively benign environment." The ocean is the opposite: it's fairly easy to get to the bottom, but once you're down there, "basically, everything wants to kill you," he jokes. "Yet, just about every oceanographer I've met says, 'You'd be shocked at how little we know about the ocean,'" Shackleford tells me. "So somebody has got to take those first steps to try to build some of the technology that will allow us to go down and study the ocean in situ." The idea of Deep's sentinels is that, initially, people will be able to stay inside for up to 28 days at a time -- though the hope is that this could one day be extended to months ... and beyond. "The goal is to live in the ocean, for ever. To have permanent human settlements in all oceans across the world," says Shackleford.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new study reveals that two Grand Canyon-sized valleys were formed in less than 10 minutes by "floods of rocks traveling as fast as bullets," reports Space.com. From the report: Scientists analyzed the lunar canyons, named Vallis Schrodinger and Vallis Planck, to find that these huge valleys measure 167 miles long (270 kilometers) and nearly 1.7 miles (2.7 km) deep, and 174 miles long (280 km) and nearly 2.2 miles deep (3.5 km), respectively. In comparison, the Grand Canyon is 277 miles long (446 km) and is, at most, about 1.2 miles deep (1.9 km), the researchers noted. [...] This pair of lunar canyons represents two of many valleys radiating out from Schrodinger basin, a crater about 200 miles wide (320 km) that was blasted out of the lunar crust by a cosmic impact about 3.81 billion years ago. This structure is located in the outer margin of the moon's largest and oldest remaining impact crater, the South Pole-Aitken basin, which measures about 1,490 miles wide (2,400 km) and dates about 4.2 billion to 4.3 billion years old. [...] The scientists estimate that rocky debris flew out from the impact at speeds between 2,125 to 2,860 miles per hour (3,420 to 4,600 km/h). In comparison, a bullet from a 9mm Luger handgun might fly at speeds of about 1,360 mph (2,200 km/h). The researchers suggest the energy needed to create both of these canyons would have been more than 130 times the energy in the current global inventory of nuclear weapons. "The lunar canyons we describe are produced by streams of rock, whereas the Grand Canyon was produced by a river of water," [said David Kring, a geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute of the Universities Space Research Association]. "The streams of rock were far more energetic than the river of water, which is why the lunar canyons were produced in minutes and the Grand Canyon produced over millions of years."The findings have been published in the journal Nature.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Let's Encrypt will stop sending expiration notice emails for its free HTTPS certificates starting June 4, 2025. From the report: Let's Encrypt is ending automated emails for four stated reasons, and all of them are pretty sensible. For one thing, lots of customers have been able to automate their certificate renewal. For another, providing the expiration notices costs "tens of thousands of dollars per year" and adds complexity to the nonprofit's infrastructure as they are looking to add new and more useful services. If those were not enough, there is this particularly notable reason: "Providing expiration notification emails means that we have to retain millions of email addresses connected to issuance records. As an organization that values privacy, removing this requirement is important to us." Let's Encrypt recommends using Red Sift Certificates Lite to monitor certificate expirations, a service that is free for up to 250 certificates. The service also points to other options, including Datadog SSL monitoring and TrackSSL.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Disney+ lost 700,000 subscribers in the last quarter of 2024, largely due to price hikes and expiring promotions. Despite the decline, Disney's overall streaming business remained profitable, boosted by strong box office results from Moana 2 and Hulu's 1.6 million added subscribers. IndieWire reports: Not counting Disney+ Hotstar, the cheap Disney+ service in India, Disney+ now has 124.6 million subs. ESPN+ also lost 700,000 subs in the period. Hulu was the streaming highlight, adding 1.6 million subscribers; it now has 53.6 million. All told, the company's streaming business was profitable for its third-straight quarter. So it wasn't all bad -- or unexpected. "Our results this quarter demonstrate Disney's creative and financial strength as we advanced the strategic initiatives set in motion over the past two years," said Disney CEO Bob Iger. "In fiscal Q1 we saw outstanding box office performance from our studios, which had the top three movies of 2024; we further improved the profitability of our Entertainment DTC streaming businesses; we took an important step to advance ESPN's digital strategy by adding an ESPN tile on Disney+; and our Experiences segment demonstrated its enduring appeal as we continue investing strategically across the globe. Overall, this quarter proved to be a strong start to the fiscal year, and we remain confident in our strategy for continued growth."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Register's Thomas Claburn reports: Oracle this week asked the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to partially dismiss a challenge to its JavaScript trademark. The move has been criticized as an attempt to either stall or water down legal action against the database goliath over the programming language's name. Deno Land, the outfit behind the Deno JavaScript runtime, filed a petition with the USPTO back in November in an effort to make the trademarked term available to the JavaScript community. This legal effort is led by Node.js creator and Deno Land CEO Ryan Dahl, summarized on the JavaScript.tm website, and supported by more than 16,000 members of the JavaScript community. It aims to remove the fear of an Oracle lawsuit for using the term "JavaScript" in a conference title or business venture. "Programmers working with JavaScript have formed innumerable community organizations," the website explains. "These organizations, like the standards bodies, have been forced to painstakingly avoid naming the programming language they are built around -- for example, JSConf. Sadly, without risking a legal trademark challenge against Oracle, there can be no 'JavaScript Conference' nor a 'JavaScript Specification.' The world's most popular programming language cannot even have a conference in its name." [...] In the initial trademark complaint, Deno Land makes three arguments to invalidate Oracle's ownership of "JavaScript." The biz claims that JavaScript has become a generic term; that Oracle committed fraud in 2019 when it applied to renew its trademark; and that Oracle has abandoned its trademark because it does not offer JavaScript products or services. Oracle's motion on Monday focuses on the dismissal of the fraud claim, while arguing that it expects to prevail on the other two claims, citing corporate use of the trademarked term "in connection with a variety of offerings, including its JavaScript Extension Toolkit as well as developer's guides and educational resources, and also that relevant consumers do not perceive JavaScript as a generic term." The fraud claim follows from Deno Land's assertion that the material Oracle submitted in support of its trademark renewal application has nothing to do with any Oracle product. "Oracle, through its attorney, submitted specimens showing screen captures of the Node.js website, a project created by Ryan Dahl, Petitioner's Chief Executive Officer," the trademark cancellation petition says. "Node.js is not affiliated with Oracle, and the use of screen captures of the 'nodejs.org' website as a specimen did not show any use of the mark by Oracle or on behalf of Oracle." Oracle contends that in fact it submitted two specimens to the USPTO -- a screenshot from the Node.js website and another from its own Oracle JavaScript Extension Toolkit. And this, among other reasons, invalidates the fraud claim, Big Red's attorneys contend. "Where, as here, Registrant 'provided the USPTO with [two specimens]' at least one of which shows use of the mark in commerce, Petitioner cannot plausibly allege that the inclusion of a second, purportedly defective specimen, was material," Oracle's motion argues, adding that no evidence of fraudulent intent has been presented. Beyond asking the court to toss the fraud claim, Oracle has requested an additional thirty days to respond to the other two claims.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

During the fourth quarter of 2024, AMD surpassed Intel in datacenter sales for the first time in history -- despite weaker-than-expected sales of its datacenter GPUs. Tom's Hardware reports: AMD's revenue in Q4 2024 totaled $7.658 billion, up 24% year-over-year. The company's gross margin hit 51%, whereas net income was $482 million. On the year basis, 2024 was AMD's best year ever as the company's revenue reached $25.8 billion, up 14% year-over-year. The company earned net income of $1.641 billion as its gross margin hit 49%. But while the company's annual results are impressive, there is something about Q4 results that AMD should be proud of. Datacenter business was the company's primary source of earnings, with net revenue reaching record $3.86 billion in Q4, marking a 69% year-over-year (YoY) increase and a 9% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) rise. Operating income also saw substantial improvement, surging 74% YoY to $1.16 billion. By contrast, Intel's datacenter and AI business unit posted $3.4 billion revenue, while its operating income reached $200 million. But while the quarter marked a milestone for AMD, market analysts expected AMD to sell more of its Instinct MI300-series GPUs for AI and HPC. You can view AMD's 2024 financial results here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The website of the Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek, whose chatbot became the most downloaded app in the United States, has computer code that could send some user login information to a Chinese state-owned telecommunications company that has been barred from operating in the United States, security researchers say. The web login page of DeepSeek's chatbot contains heavily obfuscated computer script that when deciphered shows connections to computer infrastructure owned by China Mobile, a state-owned telecommunications company. The code appears to be part of the account creation and user login process for DeepSeek. In its privacy policy, DeepSeek acknowledged storing data on servers inside the People's Republic of China. But its chatbot appears more directly tied to the Chinese state than previously known through the link revealed by researchers to China Mobile. The U.S. has claimed there are close ties between China Mobile and the Chinese military as justification for placing limited sanctions on the company. [...] The code linking DeepSeek to one of China's leading mobile phone providers was first discovered by Feroot Security, a Canadian cybersecurity company, which shared its findings with The Associated Press. The AP took Feroot's findings to a second set of computer experts, who independently confirmed that China Mobile code is present. Neither Feroot nor the other researchers observed data transferred to China Mobile when testing logins in North America, but they could not rule out that data for some users was being transferred to the Chinese telecom. The analysis only applies to the web version of DeepSeek. They did not analyze the mobile version, which remains one of the most downloaded pieces of software on both the Apple and the Google app stores. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission unanimously denied China Mobile authority to operate in the United States in 2019, citing "substantial" national security concerns about links between the company and the Chinese state. In 2021, the Biden administration also issued sanctions limiting the ability of Americans to invest in China Mobile after the Pentagon linked it to the Chinese military. "It's mindboggling that we are unknowingly allowing China to survey Americans and we're doing nothing about it," said Ivan Tsarynny, CEO of Feroot. "It's hard to believe that something like this was accidental. There are so many unusual things to this. You know that saying 'Where there's smoke, there's fire'? In this instance, there's a lot of smoke," Tsarynny said. Further reading: Senator Hawley Proposes Jail Time For People Who Download DeepSeekRead more of this story at Slashdot.

Google aims to release commercial quantum computing applications within five years, challenging Nvidia's prediction of a 20-year timeline. "We're optimistic that within five years we'll see real-world applications that are possible only on quantum computers," founder and lead of Google Quantum AI Hartmut Neven said in a statement. Reuters reports: Real-world applications Google has discussed are related to materials science - applications such as building superior batteries for electric cars - creating new drugs and potentially new energy alternatives. [...] Google has been working on its quantum computing program since 2012 and has designed and built several quantum chips. By using quantum processors, Google said it had managed to solve a computing problem in minutes that would take a classical computer more time than the history of the universe. Google's quantum computing scientists announced another step on the path to real world applications within five years on Wednesday. In a paper published in the scientific journal Nature, the scientists said they had discovered a new approach to quantum simulation, which is a step on the path to achieving Google's objective.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from the BBC: Banning phones in schools is not linked to pupils getting higher grades or having better mental wellbeing, the first study of its kind suggests. Students' sleep, classroom behavior, exercise or how long they spend on their phones overall also seems to be no different for schools with phone bans and schools without, the academics found. But they did find that spending longer on smartphones and social media in general was linked with worse results for all of those measures. The first study in the world to look at school phone rules alongside measures of pupil health and education feeds into a fierce debate that has played out in homes and schools in recent years. [...] The University of Birmingham's findings, peer-reviewed and published by the Lancet's journal for European health policy, compared 1,227 students and the rules their 30 different secondary schools had for smartphone use at break and lunchtimes. The schools were chosen from a sample of 1,341 mainstream state schools in England. The paper says schools restricting smartphone use did not seem to be seeing their intended improvements on health, wellbeing and focus in lessons. However, the research did find a link between more time on phones and social media, and worse mental wellbeing and mental health, less physical activity, poorer sleep, lower grades and more disruptive classroom behavior. The study used the internationally recognized Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scales to determine participants' wellbeing. It also looked at students' anxiety and depression levels. Dr Victoria Goodyear, the study's lead author, told the BBC the findings were not "against" smartphone bans in schools, but "what we're suggesting is that those bans in isolation are not enough to tackle the negative impacts." She said the "focus" now needed to be on reducing how much time students spent on their phones, adding: "We need to do more than just ban phones in schools."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Robocallers posing as employees of the Federal Communications Commission made the mistake of trying to scam real employees of the FCC, the FCC announced yesterday. "On the night of February 6, 2024, and continuing into the morning of February 7, 2024, over a dozen FCC staff and some of their family members reported receiving calls on their personal and work telephone numbers," the FCC said. The calls used an artificial voice that said, "Hello [first name of recipient] you are receiving an automated call from the Federal Communications Commission notifying you the Fraud Prevention Team would like to speak with you. If you are available to speak now please press one. If you prefer to schedule a call back please press two." You may not be surprised to learn that the FCC does not have any "Fraud Prevention Team" like the one mentioned in the robocalls, and especially not one that demands Google gift cards in lieu of jail time. "The FCC's Enforcement Bureau believes the purpose of the calls was to threaten, intimidate, and defraud," the agency said. "One recipient of an imposter call reported that they were ultimately connected to someone who 'demand[ed] that [they] pay the FCC $1,000 in Google gift cards to avoid jail time for [their] crimes against the state.'" The FCC said it does not "publish or otherwise share staff personal phone numbers" and that it "remains unclear how these individuals were targeted." Obviously, robocallers posing as FCC employees probably wouldn't intentionally place scam calls to real FCC employees. But FCC employees are just as likely to get robocalls as anyone else. This set of schemers apparently only made about 1,800 calls before their calling accounts were terminated. The FCC described the scheme yesterday when it announced a proposed fine of $4,492,500 against Telnyx, the voice service provider accused of carrying the robocalls. The FCC alleges that Telnyx violated "Know Your Customer (KYC)" rules by providing access to calling services without verifying the customers' identities. When contacted by Ars today, Telnyx denied the FCC's allegations and said it will contest the proposed fine.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Workday is cutting about 8.5% of its workforce, making it the latest technology company to begin 2025 with headcount reductions. From a report: The cuts will amount to about 1,750 workers, Chief Executive Officer Carl Eschenbach wrote in a note to employees Wednesday. "The environment we're operating in today demands a new approach, particularly given our size and scale," he wrote. Workday intends to hire in strategic areas such as AI, allow faster decision-making, and take on more people overseas, Eschenbach wrote. This will advance the company's "ongoing focus on durable growth," Workday said in a filing Wednesday. Shares of Workday jumped more than 5% on the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kaspersky researchers have discovered malware hiding in both Google Play and Apple's App Store that uses optical character recognition to steal cryptocurrency wallet recovery phrases from users' photo galleries. Dubbed "SparkCat" by security firm ESET, the malware was embedded in several messaging and food delivery apps, with the infected Google Play apps accumulating over 242,000 downloads combined. This marks the first known instance of such OCR-based spyware making it into Apple's App Store. The malware, active since March 2024, masquerades as an analytics SDK called "Spark" and leverages Google's ML Kit library to scan users' photos for wallet recovery phrases in multiple languages. It requests gallery access under the guise of allowing users to attach images to support chat messages. When granted access, it searches for specific keywords related to crypto wallets and uploads matching images to attacker-controlled servers. The researchers found both Android and iOS variants using similar techniques, with the iOS version being particularly notable as it circumvented Apple's typically stringent app review process. The malware's creators appear to be Chinese-speaking actors based on code comments and server error messages, though definitive attribution remains unclear.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Software developer and prolific blogger Herman Ounapuu, writing in a blog post: I liked Ubuntu. For a very long time, it was the sensible default option. Around 2016, I used the Ubuntu GNOME flavor, and after they ditched the Unity desktop environment, GNOME became the default option. I was really happy with it, both for work and personal computing needs. Estonian ID card software was also officially supported on Ubuntu, which made Ubuntu a good choice for family members. But then something changed. Ounapuu recounts how Ubuntu's bi-annual long-term support releases consistently broke functionality, from minor interface glitches to catastrophic system failures that left computers unresponsive. His breaking point came after multiple problematic upgrades affecting family members' computers, including one that rendered a laptop completely unusable during an upgrade from Ubuntu 20.04 to 22.04. Another incident left a relative's system with broken Firefox shortcuts and duplicate status bar icons after updating Lubuntu 18.04. Canonical's aggressive push of Snap packages has drawn particular criticism. The forced migration of system components from traditional Debian packages to Snaps resulted in compatibility issues, broken desktop shortcuts, and government ID card authentication failures. In one instance, he writes, a Snap-related bug in the GNOME desktop environment severely disrupted workplace productivity, requiring multiple system restarts to resolve. The author has since switched to Fedora, praising its implementation of Flatpak as a superior alternative to Snaps.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Nissan looks set to step back from merger talks with rival Honda, two sources said on Wednesday, calling into question a $60 billion tie-up to create the world's no.3 automaker and potentially leaving Nissan to drive its turnaround alone. Talks between the two Japanese automakers have been complicated by growing differences, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. Reuters reported earlier that Nissan could call off talks after Honda sounded it out about becoming a subsidiary. Nissan baulked as this was a departure from what was originally framed as a merger of equals, one of the people said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scientists are making significant advances in developing artificial blood substitutes, with two promising approaches emerging in 2025, the New Yorker reports. At the University of Maryland School of Medicine's Center for Blood Oxygen Transport and Hemostasis, researchers are testing ErythroMer, a synthetic nanoparticle that mimics red blood cells' oxygen-carrying capabilities. Simultaneously, the UK's National Health Service is conducting the first human trials of lab-grown blood cells. These developments address critical blood shortages - of the 38% of Americans eligible to donate, less than 3% do so regularly. Traditional donated blood also has significant limitations: platelets last only 5 days, red blood cells 42 days, and all require careful refrigeration and blood-type matching. DARPA awarded $46 million in early 2023 to develop ErythroMer, seeing potential for battlefield medicine where traditional blood storage isn't feasible. The synthetic blood can be stored as a powder and reconstituted when needed. There are still a lot of challenges, the report adds. The lab-grown blood currently costs about $75,000 per syringe compared to around $200 for a pint of donated blood, and production is limited to small quantities.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft will charge commercial customers $61 per device in the first year to continue receiving Windows 10 security updates after support ends, The Register wrote in a PSA note Wednesday, citing text, with costs doubling each subsequent year for up to three years. Organizations can't skip initial years to save money, as the updates are cumulative. Some users may avoid fees if they connect Windows 10 endpoints to Windows 365 Cloud PCs. The program also covers Windows 10 virtual machines running on Windows 365 or Azure Virtual Desktop for three years with an active Windows 365 subscription.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Since November, British telecom O2 has deployed an AI chatbot masquerading as a 78-year-old grandmother to waste scammers' time. The bot, named Daisy, engages fraudsters by discussing knitting patterns, recipes, and asking about tea preferences while feigning computer illiteracy. The Guardian has an update this week: In tests over several weeks, Daisy has kept individual scammers occupied for up to 40 minutes, with one case showing her being passed between four different callers. An excerpt from the story: "When a third scammer tries to get her to download the Google Play Store, she replies: 'Dear, did you say pastry? I'm not really on the right page.' She then complains that her screen has gone blank, saying it has 'gone black like the night sky'."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google parent Alphabet plans to spend $75 billion on capital expenditures in 2025, up from $52.5 billion last year, as it races to compete with Microsoft and Meta in AI infrastructure. CNBC: On its earnings call, Alphabet said it expects $16 billion to $18 billion of those expenses to come in the first quarter. Overall, the expenditures will go toward "technical infrastructure, primarily for servers, followed by data centers and networking," finance chief Anat Ashkenazi said. [...] Alphabet and its megacap tech rivals are rushing to build out their data centers with next-generation AI infrastructure, packed with Nvidia's graphics processing units, or GPUs. Last month, Meta said it plans to invest $60 billion to $65 billion this year as part of its AI push. Microsoft has committed to $80 billion in AI-related capital expenditures in its current fiscal year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A developer has successfully run the classic video game Doom on Apple's $50 Lightning to HDMI adapter, exploiting the device's built-in system-on-chip that runs a simplified iOS version.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Temperatures at the north pole soared more than 20C above average on Sunday, crossing the threshold for ice to melt. From a report: Temperatures north of Svalbard in Norway had already risen to 18C hotter than the 1991-2020 average on Saturday, according to models from weather agencies in Europe and the US, with actual temperatures close to ice's melting point of 0C. By Sunday, the temperature anomaly had risen to more than 20C. "This was a very extreme winter warming event," said Mika Rantanen, a scientist at the Finnish Meteorological Institute. "Probably not the most extreme ever observed, but still at the upper edge of what can happen in the Arctic." Burning fossil fuels has heated the planet by about 1.3C since preindustrial times, but the poles are warming much faster as reflective sea ice melts. The increase in average temperatures has driven an increase in fiercely hot summers and unsettlingly mild winters.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China's antitrust watchdog is laying the groundwork for a potential probe into Apple's policies and the fees it charges app developers, part of a broader push by Beijing that risks becoming another flashpoint in the country's trade war with the US. From a report: The State Administration for Market Regulation is examining Apple's policies, which include taking a cut of as much as 30% on in-app spending and barring external payment services and stores, people familiar with the matter said. Agency officials have spoken with Apple executives and app developers since last year, said the people, who asked for anonymity to discuss sensitive moves. The conversations stem from long-running disputes between Apple and developers such as Tencent and ByteDance over iOS store policies -- a source of tension between the US company and regulators worldwide. While Beijing has since 2024 targeted the practices of US tech firms from Nvidia to most recently Alphabet's Google, regulators may not formally move against Apple if the current conversations go well.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thailand cut power supply, fuel and internet to some border areas with Myanmar on Wednesday. It's an attempt to choke scam syndicates operating out of there that have become a growing security concern. Reuters: Scam compounds in Southeast Asia are suspected to have entrapped hundreds of thousands of people in illegal online and telecom operations, generating billions of dollars annually, according to a 2023 U.N. report. Thai Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul visited the Provincial Electricity Authority headquarters in Bangkok on Wednesday to oversee the effort to fight the crime rings. "They may turn to other sources of power supply or generate their own electricity. In the Thai Security Council orders, it also includes the halt in supplying oil and internet to them, which means that from now on any damage that occurs will have no connection to any resources in Thailand."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The pace of global heating has been significantly underestimated, according to renowned climate scientist Prof James Hansen, who said the international 2C target is "dead." A new analysis by Hansen and colleagues concludes that both the impact of recent cuts in sun-blocking shipping pollution, which has raised temperatures, and the sensitivity of the climate to increasing fossil fuels emissions are greater than thought. The group's results are at the high end of estimates from mainstream climate science but cannot be ruled out, independent experts said. If correct, they mean even worse extreme weather will come sooner and there is a greater risk of passing global tipping points, such as the collapse of the critical Atlantic ocean currents. Hansen, at Columbia University in the US, sounded the alarm to the general public about climate breakdown in testimony he gave to a UN congressional committee in 1988. "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) defined a scenario which gives a 50% chance to keep warming under 2C -- that scenario is now impossible," he said. "The 2C target is dead, because the global energy use is rising, and it will continue to rise." The new analysis said global heating is likely to reach 2C by 2045, unless solar geoengineering is deployed. [...] In the new study, published in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, Hansen's team said: "Failure to be realistic in climate assessment and failure to call out the fecklessness of current policies to stem global warming is not helpful to young people." [...] Hansen said the point of no return could be avoided, based on the growing conviction of young people that they should follow the science. He called for a carbon fee and dividend policy, where all fossil fuels are taxed and the revenue returned to the public. "The basic problem is that the waste products of fossil fuels are still dumped in the air free of charge," he said. He also backed the rapid development of nuclear power. Hansen also supported research on cooling the Earth using controversial geoengineering techniques to block sunlight, which he prefers to call "purposeful global cooling." He said: "We do not recommend implementing climate interventions, but we suggest that young people not be prohibited from having knowledge of the potential and limitations of purposeful global cooling in their toolbox." Political change is needed to achieve all these measures, Hansen said: "Special interests have assumed far too much power in our political systems. In democratic countries the power should be with the voter, not with the people who have the money. That requires fixing some of our democracies, including the US."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta's metaverse ambitions face a decisive year in 2025, with Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth warning employees that the project could become either "a legendary misadventure" or prove visionary, Business Insider is reporting, citing an internal memo. Bosworth called for increased sales and user engagement for Meta's mixed reality products, noting the company plans to launch several AI-powered wearable devices. The tech giant's Reality Labs division, which develops virtual and augmented reality products, reported record revenue of $1.08 billion in the fourth quarter but posted its largest-ever quarterly loss of $4.97 billion. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told staff the company's AI-powered smart glasses, which sold over 1 million units in 2024, marked a "great start" but would not significantly impact the business. The Reality Labs unit has accumulated losses of approximately $60 billion since 2020.Read more of this story at Slashdot.