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On Tuesday Massachusetts voted to become the first state to allow gig-working drivers to join labor unions, reports WBUR:Since these gig workers are classified as independent contractors, federal law allowing employees the right to unionize does not apply to them. With the passage of this ballot initiative, Massachusetts is the first state to give ride-hailing drivers the ability to collectively bargain over working conditions. Supporters have said the ballot measure "could provide a model for other states to let Uber and Lyft drivers unionize," reports Reuters, "and inspire efforts to organize them around the United States."Roxana Rivera, assistant to the president of 32BJ SEIU, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, that had spearheaded a campaign to pass the proposal, said its approval shows that Massachusetts voters want drivers to have a meaningful check against the growing power of app-based companies... The Massachusetts vote was the latest front in a years-long battle in the United States over whether ride-share drivers should be considered to be independent contractors or employees entitled to benefits and wage protections. Studies have shown that using contractors can cost companies as much as 30% less than employees. Drivers for Uber and Lyft, including approximately 70,000 in Massachusetts, do not have the right to organize under the National Labor Relations Act... Under the Massachusetts measure, drivers can form a union after collecting signatures from at least 25% of active drivers in Massachusetts, and companies can form associations to allow them to jointly negotiate with the union during state-supervised talks. But the Boston Globe points out that the measure " divided labor advocates in Massachusetts, some of whom worry it would in fact be a step backward in the lengthy fight to boost the rights of gig workers."Those concerns led the state's largest labor organization, the AFL-CIO, to remain neutral. But two unions backing the effort, the SEIU 32BJ and the International Association of Machinists, say allowing drivers to unionize, even if not as full employees, will help provide urgently needed worker protections and better pay and safety standards.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Friday "would have been his 38th birthday," writes the EFF, remembering Aaron Swartz as "a digital rights champion who believed deeply in keeping the internet open..." And they add that today the official web site for Aaron Swartz Day honored his memory with a special podcast "featuring those carrying on the work around issues close to his heart," including an appearance by Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive. The first speaker is Ryan Shapiro, FOIA expert and co-founder of the national security transparency non-profit Property of the People. The Aaron Swartz Day site calls him "the researcher who discovered why the FBI had such an interest in Aaron in the years right before the JSTOR fiasco." (That web page calls it an "Al Qaeda phishing expedition that left Aaron with an 'International Terrorism Investigation' code in his FBI database file forever," as reported by Gizmodo.) Other speakers on the podcast include: Nathan Dyer of SecureDrop, Newsroom Support Engineer for the Freedom of the Press Foundation with an update on SecureDrop Tracey Jaquith, Founding Coder and TV Architect at the Internet Archive, discussing "Microservices, Monoliths, and Operational Security - The Internet Archive in 2024." Tracy Rosenberg, co-founder of the Aaron Swartz Day Police Surveillance Project and Oakland Privacy, with "an update on the latest crop of surveillance battles." Ryan Sternlicht, VR developer, educator, researcher, advisor, and maker, on "The Next Layer of Reality: Social Identity and the New Creator Economy." Grant Smith Ellis, Chairperson of the Board, MassCann and Legal Intern at the Parabola Center, on "Jury Trials in the Age of Social Media." Michael "Mek" Karpeles, Open Library, Internet Archive, on "When it Rains at the Archive, Build an Ark - Book bans, Lawsuits, & Breaches."The site also seeks to showcase SecureDrop and Open Library, projects started by Aaron before his death, as well as new projects "directly inspired by Aaron and his work."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This week Discover magazine looks at evidence - both old and new - for a ninth planet in our solar system:"Orbits of the most distant small bodies - comets or asteroids - seem to be clustered on one half or one side of the solar system," says Amir Siraj [an astrophysicist with Princeton University]. "That's very weird and something that can't be explained by our current understanding of the solar system." A 2014 study in Nature first noted these orbits. A 2021 study in The Astronomical Journal examined the clustering in the orbit and concluded that "Planet Nine" was likely closer and brighter than expected. Astrophysicists don't agree whether the clustering in the orbit is a real effect. Some have argued it is biased because the view that scientists currently have is limited, Siraj says. "This debate for the last decade has a lot of scientists confused, including myself. I decided to look at the problem from scratch," he says. In a 2024 paper, Siraj and his co-authors ran simulations of the solar system, including an extra planet beyond Neptune. "We did it 300 times, about 2.5 times more than what was done previously," Siraj says. "In each simulation, you try different parameters for the extra planet. A different mass, a different tilt, a different shape of the orbit. You run these for millions of years, and then you compare the distribution to what we see in our solar system...." They found that the perimeters for this possible planet were different than what has been previously discussed in the scientific literature, and they supported the possibility of an unseen planet beyond Neptune. Scientists hope a new telescope will have the potential to see deeper into the solar system. In 2025, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory on Cerro Pachon - a mountain in Chile, is expected to go online. The observatory boasts that in the time it takes a person to open up their phone and pose for a selfie, their new telescope will be able to snap an image of 100,000 galaxies, many of which have never been seen by scientists. The telescope will have the largest digital camera ever built, the LSST. Siraj says he expects it will take "the deepest, all-sky survey that humanity has ever conducted." So, what might the Rubin Observatory find past Neptune? Based on the current literature, Siraj sees a few possibilities. One is that the Rubin Observatory, with its increased capabilities, might be able to see a planet beyond Neptune... "Next year is going to be an enormous year for solar system science," he says. NASA points out that the Hawaii-based Keck and Subaru telescopes are also searching for Planet X, while "a NASA-funded citizen science project called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, encourages the public to help search using images captured by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission. And starting next year the Rubin observatory will also "search for more Kuiper Belt objects. If the orbits of these objects are systematically aligned with each other, it may give more evidence for the existence of Planet X (Planet Nine), or at least help astronomers know where to search for it. "Another possibility is that Planet X (Planet Nine) does not exist at all. Some researchers suggest the unusual orbit of those Kuiper Belt objects can be explained by their random distribution." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Tablizer for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The majority of strokes could be prevented," reports the Associated Press, according to the first new guidelines in 10 years from the American Stroke Association, which are "aimed at helping people and their doctors do just that."Stroke was the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more than half a million Americans have a stroke every year. But up to 80% of strokes may be preventable with better nutrition, exercise and identification of risk factors... The good news is that the best way to reduce your risk for stroke is also the best way to reduce your risk for a whole host of health problems - eat a healthy diet, move your body and don't smoke... Eating healthy can help control several factors that increase your risk for stroke, including high cholesterol, high blood sugar, and obesity, according to the heart association. The group recommends foods in the so-called Mediterranean diet such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains and olive oil, which can help keep cholesterol levels down. It suggests limiting red meat and other sources of saturated fat. Instead, get your protein from beans, nuts, poultry, fish and seafood. Limit highly processed foods and foods and drinks with a lot of added sugar. This can also reduce your calorie intake, which helps keep weight in check. Getting up and walking around for at least 10 minutes a day can "drastically" reduce your risk, said Dr. Cheryl Bushnell, a neurologist at Wake Forest University School of Medicine who was part of the group that came up with the new guidelines. Among the many benefits: Regular exercise can help reduce blood pressure, a major risk factor for stroke. Of course, more is better: The heart association recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic or 75 minutes of vigorous activity - or some combination - per week. How you do it doesn't matter so much, experts said: Go to the gym, take a walk or run in your neighborhood or use treadmills or stepper machines at home. Diet and exercise can help control weight, another important risk factor for strokes. But in addition, the guidelines now recommend that doctors consider new weight-loss drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound for people with obesity or diabetes. (Though "people still need to eat well and get exercise, cautions Dr. Fadi Nahab, a stroke expert at Emory University Hospital.")Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tuesday at California's Vandenberg Space Force base, the U.S. launched a Minuteman III missile, "in an important test of the weapon's ability to strike its targets with multiple warheads," according to Air and Space Forces magazine:The Minuteman III missiles that form a critical leg of the U.S. nuclear triad each carry one nuclear-armed reentry vehicle. But the missile that was tested carried three test warheads... The intercontinental ballastic missile (ICBM) test was controlled by an airborne command post in a test of the U.S. ability to launch its nuclear deterrent from a survivable platform.... Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere, the commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, said in a release: "An airborne launch validates the survivability of our ICBMs, which serve as the strategic backstop of our nation's defense and defense of allies and partners...." The three test reentry vehicles - one high-fidelity Joint Test Assembly, which carries non-nuclear explosives, and two telemetry Joint Test Assembly objects - struck the Reagan Test Site near the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands roughly 30 minutes later after launch, a flight of about 4,200 miles. "They make up essentially a mock warhead," Col. Dustin Harmon, the commander of the 377th Test and Evaluation Group, the nation's operational ICBM test unit, said in an interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine. "There's two different types. One is telemetered, so it's got a radio transmitter in it, it's got antennas, gyroscopes, accelerometers - all the things that can sense motion and movement. And we fly those or we can put one in there that's called a high-fidelity. That is assembled much like an actual weapon would be, except we use surrogate materials, and so we want it to fly similarly to an actual weapon. ... It has the explosives in it that a normal warhead would to drive a detonation, but there's nothing to drive...." The U.S. government formally notified Russia in advance of the launch in accordance with a 1988 bilateral agreement. More than 145 countries were also provided with advance notice of the launch under the Hague Code of Conduct - an international understanding on launch notifications. The U.S. also provided advance notice to China, a DOD spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine. China notified the U.S. of an ICBM launch over the Pacific Ocean in September. There is no formal agreement between Washington and Beijing that requires such notifications, but each side provided them to avoid miscalculations. Test launches happen three times a year, according to the article, yielding "several gigabytes of data" about reentry vehicles, subsystems, and payloads. "There are 400 Minuteman III missiles currently in service across Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Back in 1976, Mattel Electronics Auto Race became the very first handheld game to use only solid-state electronics, according to Wikipedia. (Its only mechanical elements were its on/off switch and hand-operated controls...) Nearly half a century goes by - until the ancient and broken gizmo reaches long-time Slashdot reader Shayde, who "dove into disassembling the unit and figuring out the problem." Ironically, at one point his voltimeter stopped working, because...its batteries were dead. But a tri-wing screwdriver reveals the game's beautiful 1976 circuitboard - before the video fast forwards through "an almost comical attempt by me, a systems software engineer, to sauter the connections back onto this 48-year-old connector." (Instead he ends up replacing the machine's 9-volt battery connector...) On his Patreon page, he writes that filming the video "took a stupidly long time to put together." But their Slashdot submission acknowledges that in the end, "Taking it apart and debugging it was fun. (Slight spoiler: I figured out what was wrong, was an easy fix), and the game plays great now!" Any Slashdot readers have memories of playing Mattel Electronics Auto Race? My one experience felt like that time that a gaming magazine had nine children (ages 9 to 12) try to play old 1970s-era videogames like Pong. ("Wow. The score is tied. It's so exhilarating..." "My line is so beating the heck out of your stupid line...")Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Digital Trends:A number of popular generative AI platforms are seeing consistent growth as users are figuring out how they want to use the tools a" and ChatGPT is at the top of the list with the most visits, at 3.7 billion worldwide. So many people are visiting the AI chatbot, its figures are rivaling browser market share. It can only be compared to Google Chrome figures in terms of monthly users, which is estimated to be around 3.45 billion. Statistics from [web analytics company] Similarweb indicate that ChatGPT saw a 17.2% month-over-month (MoM) growth and a 115.9% year-over-year (YoY) traffic growth... Googlea(TM)s Chrome browser has a solid market share of 35.4 billion users in 2024. It has seen minimal growth YoY but has grown 45.35% in the last 5 years, according to Statscounter. The article notes ChatGPT saw a jump in traffic when it changed its dowmain from chat.openai.com to just chatgpt.com -- and that OpenAI recently purchased the domain Chat.com (though "there is no word on what the company plans to do...")Meanwhile, other AI tools continue to see traffic and growth, despite not being at the same level as ChatGPT. Despite recent plagiarism claims, the Perplexity chatbot has seen 90.8 million visits in October, a 25.5% MoM growth and 199.2% YoY growth. Googlea(TM)s Gemini Chatbot saw 291.6 million visits in October, a 6.2% MoM growth and 19% YoY growth after the company introduced a new ChromeOS update that brought new AI features to its Chromebooks. Anthropica(TM)s Claude chatbot has seen 84.1 million visits in October, a 25.5% MoM growth and 394.9% YoY growth, after recently rolling out a desktop application for Windows and macOS. Microsofta(TM)s web-based Copilot website saw 69.4 million visits in October, an 87.6% MoM growth.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After missing a chance to capitalize on the AI boom, "Samsung's profit has plunged," reports CNBC, and "around $126 billion has been wiped off its market value, according to data from S&P Capital IQ." It's gotten so bad that "an executive issued a rare public apology about the company's recent financial performance."[A]s AI applications such as OpenAI's ChatGPT rose in popularity, the underlying infrastructure required to train the huge models they rely on became a bigger focus. Nvidia has emerged as the top player in this space with its graphics processing units (GPUs) that have become the gold standard used by tech giants for AI training. A crucial part of that semiconductor architecture is high-bandwidth memory, or HBM. This next generation of memory involves stacking multiple dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips, but it had a small market before the AI boom. That's where Samsung got caught out and failed to invest... SK Hynix saw this opportunity. The company aggressively launched HBM chips which were approved for use in Nvidia architecture and, in the process, the South Korean firm established a close relationship with the U.S. giant. Nvidia's CEO even asked the company to speed up supply of its next generation chip, underscoring the importance of HBM to its products. SK Hynix posted record quarterly operating profit in the September quarter... Analysts said that Samsung is lagging behind competitors for a number of reasons, including underinvestment in HBM and the fact that it is not a first-mover. "It is fair to say that Samsung has not been able to close the gap with SK Hynix on the HBM development roadmap," said Kazunori Ito [director of equity research at Morningstar]. Samsung's ability to make a comeback in the short term appears to be closely linked to Nvidia. A company must pass a strict qualification process before Nvidia approves it as a HBM supplier - and Samsung has not yet completed this verification. But a green light from Nvidia could open the door for Samsung to return to growth and compete more effectively with SK Hynix, according to analysts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Phoronix:Intel's Linux kernel test robot has reported a 3888.9% performance improvement in the mainline Linux kernel as of this past week... Intel thankfully has the resources to maintain this automated service for per-kernel commit/patch testing and has been maintaining their public kernel test robot for years now to help catch performance changes both positive and negative to the Linux kernel code. The commit in question causing this massive uplift to performance is mm, mmap: limit THP alignment of anonymous mappings to PMD-aligned sizes. The patch message confirms it will fix some prior performance regressions and deliver some major uplift in specialized cases... That mmap patch merged last week affects just one line of code. This week the Register also reported that Linus Torvalds revised a previously-submitted security tweak that addressed Spectre and Meltdown security holes, writing in his commit message that "The kernel test robot reports a 2.6 percent improvement in the per_thread_ops benchmark."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Though it breaks down faster than CO2, methane is a greenhouse gas over 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide, reports the Washington Post. It suddenly started increasing in the atmosphere in 2007 - and then in 2020, its growth rate doubled. While scientists have suspected it was natural gas, some researchers have a new theory..."The changes that we saw in the last couple of years - and even since 2007 - are microbial," said Sylvia Michel, lead author of the paper published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Wetlands, if they are getting warmer and wetter, maybe they're producing more methane than they used to...." Michel and her co-authors analyzed samples of methane, or CH4, from 22 sites around the globe at a Colorado laboratory. Then they measured the "heaviness" of that methane - specifically, how many of the molecules had a heavier isotope of carbon in them, known as C13. Different sources of methane give off different carbon signatures. Methane produced by microbes - mostly single-celled organisms known as archaea, which live in cow stomachs, wetlands and agricultural fields - tends to be "lighter," or have fewer C13 atoms. Methane from fossil fuels, on the other hand, is heavier, with more C13 atoms. As the amount of methane has risen in the atmosphere over the past 15 years, it's also gotten lighter and lighter. The scientists used a model to analyze those changes and found that only large increases in microbial emissions could explain both the rising methane and its changing weight.... Researchers say it doesn't mean that the world can just keep burning natural gas. If wetlands are releasing methane faster than ever, they argue, there should be an even greater push to curb methane from the sources humans can control, such as cows, agriculture and fossil fuels. The article includes this quote from Stanford University professor Rob Jackson (who works on the Global Methane Budget, a project tracking the world's methane sources). "You can turn a wrench in an oil and gas field to quench methane emissions," Jackson said. "There's no wrench for the Congo or the Amazon."Another recent study found that two-thirds of current methane emissions are caused by humans - from fossil fuels, rice cultivation, reservoirs and other sources. "Methane forms biologically in warm, wet, low-oxygen environments," Jackson said. "The wetlands of a rice paddy and the gut of the cow are all similar." But evidence is also emerging that natural wetlands may be responding to warming temperatures by pumping out more methane. Satellite data from recent years has shown global methane hot spots in the tropical wetlands of the Amazon and the Congo. "Wetlands will emit more methane as temperatures warm," Jackson said. "This may be the start of a reinforcing feedback, that higher temperatures release more methane from natural ecosystems...." Over 100 countries have pledged to reduce their methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030, compared with 2020 levels - but so far, that pledge has yet to see results. Instead, satellite measurements show concentrations are rising at a rate that is in line with the worst-case climate scenarios.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A 2002 Slashdot post informed the world that "Recently Blake Ross, a developer of the Phoenix web browser, has made a post on the Mozillazine forums looking for a new name for the project. Apparently the people over at Phoenix Technologies decided that the name interferes with their trademark since they make an 'internet access device'..." And then, on November 9 of 2004, the BBC reported that "Microsoft's Internet Explorer has a serious rival in the long-awaited Firefox 1.0 web browser, which has just been released." Their headline? "Firefox Browser Takes on Microsoft."Fans of the software have banded together to raise cash to pay for an advert in the New York Times announcing that version 1.0 of the browser is available. ["Are you fed up with your browser? You're not alone...."] The release of Firefox 1.0 on 9 November might even cause a few heads to turn at Microsoft because the program is steadily winning people away from the software giant's Internet Explorer browser. Firefox has been created by the Mozilla Foundation which was started by former browser maker Netscape back in 1998... Earlier incarnations, but which had the same core technology, were called Phoenix and Firebird. Since then the software has been gaining praise and converts, not least because of the large number of security problems that have come to light in Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Rivals to IE got a boost in late June when two US computer security organisations warned people to avoid the Microsoft program to avoid falling victim to a serious vulnerability. Internet monitoring firm WebSideStory has charted the growing population of people using the Firefox browser and says it is responsible for slowly eroding the stranglehold of IE. Before July this year, according to WebSideStory, Internet Explorer was used by about 95% of web surfers. That figure had remained static for years. In July the IE using population dropped to 94.7% and by the end of October stood at 92.9%. The Mozilla Foundation claims that Firefox has been downloaded almost eight million times and has publicly said it would be happy to garner 10% of the Windows- using, net-browsing population. Firefox is proving popular because, at the moment, it has far fewer security holes than Internet Explorer and has some innovations lacking in Microsoft's program. For instance, Firefox allows the pages of different websites to be arranged as tabs so users can switch easily between them. It blocks pop-ups, has a neat way of finding text on a page and lets you search through the pages you have browsed... Firefox celebrated its 20th anniversary with a special video touting new and upcoming features like tab previews, marking up PDFs, and tab grouping. And upgrading to the latest version of Firefox now displays this message on a "What's New" page. "Whether you just downloaded Firefox or have been with us since the beginning, you are a vital part of helping us make the internet a better place. "We can't wait to show you what's coming next." ("Check out our special edition wallpapers - open a new tab and click the gear icon at the top right corner...")Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a post from Financial Times: The economic and geopolitical conditions of the past year or two have created arguably the most hostile environment in history for incumbent parties and politicians across the developed world. From America's Democrats to Britain's Tories, Emmanuel's Macron's Ensemble coalition to Japan's Liberal Democrats, even to Narendra Modi's erstwhile dominant BJP, governing parties and leaders have undergone an unprecedented series of reversals this year. The incumbents in every single one of the 10 major countries that have been tracked by the ParlGov global research project and held national elections in 2024 were given a kicking by voters. This is the first time this has ever happened in almost 120 years of records. Ultimately voters don't distinguish between unpleasant things that their leaders and governments have direct control over, and those that are international phenomena resulting from supply-side disruptions caused by a global pandemic or the warmongering of an ageing autocrat halfway across the world. Voters don't like high prices, so they punished the Democrats for being in charge when inflation hit. The cost of living was also the top issue in Britain's July general election and has been front of mind in dozens of other countries for most of the last two years. That different politicians, different parties, different policies and different rhetoric deployed in different countries have all met similar fortunes suggests that a large part of Tuesday's American result was locked in regardless of the messenger or the message. The wide variety of places and people who swung towards Trump also suggests an outcome that was more inevitable than contingent. But it's not just about inflation. An update of economist Arthur Okun's "misery index" -- the sum of the inflation and unemployment rates -- for this era might swap out joblessness and replace it with immigration. On this basis, the past couple of years in the US, UK and dozens of other countries have been characterised by more economic and societal upheaval than they have seen in generations.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Law enforcement officers are warning other officials and forensic experts that iPhones which have been stored securely for forensic examination are somehow rebooting themselves, returning the devices to a state that makes them much harder to unlock, 404 Media is reporting, citing a law enforcement document it obtained. From the report: The exact reason for the reboots is unclear, but the document authors, who appear to be law enforcement officials in Detroit, Michigan, hypothesize that Apple may have introduced a new security feature in iOS 18 that tells nearby iPhones to reboot if they have been disconnected from a cellular network for some time. After being rebooted, iPhones are generally more secure against tools that aim to crack the password of and take data from the phone. "The purpose of this notice is to spread awareness of a situation involving iPhones, which is causing iPhone devices to reboot in a short amount of time (observations are possibly within 24 hours) when removed from a cellular network," the document reads. Apple did not provide a response on whether it introduced such an update in time for publication.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is generally rolling out its Gemini AI-powered Vids app that lets you create video presentations using a prompt. From a report: Some of Vids' key features include letting Gemini auto-insert stock footage for you, generating a script, and making AI voiceovers so you don't have to speak. Google advertises that the tool can help turn customer support articles into videos, make training videos, share company announcements, create meeting recaps, and more. Vids will be available by default for Workspace organizations with access, but Google notes possible usage limits may apply to features like "Help me create" and AI voiceovers starting in 2026.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Police are on the hunt for 43 monkeys who escaped from a research facility in South Carolina, after a keeper left their pen open. The rhesus macaque fugitives broke out of Alpha Genesis, a company that breeds primates for medical testing and research, and are on the loose in a part of the state known as the Lowcountry.Authorities have urged residents to keep their doors and windows securely closed and to report any sightings immediately. The escaped monkeys are young females, weighing about 7lbs (3.2kg) each, according to the Yemassee Police Department. Police said on Thursday that the company had located the "skittish" group, and "are working to entice them with food." "Please do not attempt to approach these animals under any circumstances," police said. The statement added that traps had been set in the area, and police were on-site "utilizing thermal-imaging cameras in an attempt to locate the animals". Police say the research company has told them that because of their size, the monkeys have not yet been tested on and "are too young to carry disease." In an update Friday, the local police department said the monkeys are still staying around the perimeter of the facility. "The primates are exhibiting calm and playful behavior, which is a positive indication," the department noted. "They're just being goofy monkeys jumping back and forth playing with each other," Alpha Genesis CEO Greg Westergaard told CBS News Thursday. "It's kind of like a playground situation here."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from The Verge: It's been two long years since the launch of Matter -- the one smart home standard designed to rule them all -- and there's been a fair amount of disappointment around a sometimes buggy rollout, slow adoption by companies like Apple, Amazon, and Google, and frustrating setup experiences. However, the launch of the Matter 1.4 specification this week shows some signs that the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA, the organization behind Matter) is using more sticks and fewer carrots to get the smart home industry coalition to cooperate. The new spec introduces 'enhanced multi-admin,' an improvement on multi-admin -- the much-touted interoperability feature that means your Matter smart light can work in multiple ecosystems simultaneously. It brings a solution for making Thread border routers from different companies play nicely together and introduces a potentially easier way to add Matter infrastructure to homes through Wi-Fi routers and access points. Matter 1.4 also brings some big updates to energy management support, including adding heat pumps, home batteries, and solar panels as Matter device types.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With the debut of the Pirate Bay TV series in Sweden, international viewers are finding it surprisingly difficult to pirate. TorrentFreak reports: The series premiered at the on-demand platform of the Swedish national broadcaster SVT a few hours ago. International deals haven't been announced, but pirates can generally get access anyway. Soon after the first two episodes of The Pirate Bay series came out, scene release copies started circulating online. As one would expect. The Scene group OLLONBORRE, which specializes in Swedish content, was the first to pick the show up. Within minutes, the first 1080p WEB-rips were posted on private scene servers and 720p copies followed a few hours later. Interestingly, pirate releases have yet to make their way to The Pirate Bay. We haven't seen any other copies on other public pirate sites either, which is surprising given the topic of the series. It's common knowledge that The Scene -- a secretive network of release groups -- prefers to keep its releases private. Therefore, it wasn't happy with The Pirate Bay's public nature and rise to prominence in the early 2003s, which is highlighted in the first episodes of the TV series. However, we expected non-scene release groups would be eager to pick up the show. Apparently that's not the case, yet.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The FBI is warning that hackers are obtaining private user information - including emails and phone numbers - from U.S.-based tech companies by compromising government and police email addresses to submit "emergency" data requests. The FBI's public notice filed this week is a rare admission from the federal government about the threat from fraudulent emergency data requests, a legal process designed to help police and federal authorities obtain information from companies to respond to immediate threats affecting someone's life or property. The abuse of emergency data requests is not new, and has been widely reported in recent years. Now, the FBI warns that it saw an "uptick" around August in criminal posts online advertising access to or conducting fraudulent emergency data requests, and that it was going public for awareness. "Cyber-criminals are likely gaining access to compromised US and foreign government email addresses and using them to conduct fraudulent emergency data requests to US based companies, exposing the personal information of customers to further use for criminal purposes," reads the FBI's advisory. [...] The FBI said in its advisory that it had seen several public posts made by known cybercriminals over 2023 and 2024, claiming access to email addresses used by U.S. law enforcement and some foreign governments. The FBI says this access was ultimately used to send fraudulent subpoenas and other legal demands to U.S. companies seeking private user data stored on their systems. The advisory said that the cybercriminals were successful in masquerading as law enforcement by using compromised police accounts to send emails to companies requesting user data. In some cases, the requests cited false threats, like claims of human trafficking and, in one case, that an individual would "suffer greatly or die" unless the company in question returns the requested information. The FBI said the compromised access to law enforcement accounts allowed the hackers to generate legitimate-looking subpoenas that resulted in companies turning over usernames, emails, phone numbers, and other private information about their users. But not all fraudulent attempts to file emergency data requests were successful, the FBI said. The FBI said in its advisory that law enforcement organizations should take steps to improve their cybersecurity posture to prevent intrusions, including stronger passwords and multi-factor authentication. The FBI said that private companies "should apply critical thinking to any emergency data requests received," given that cybercriminals "understand the need for exigency."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Starting November 11, TSMC plans to stop supplying 7 nm and smaller chips to Chinese companies working on AI processors and GPUs. "The move is reportedly to ensure it remains compliant with US export restrictions," reports The Register. From the report: This will not affect Chinese customers wanting 7 nm chips from TSMC for other applications such as mobile and communications, according to Nikkei, which said the overall impact on the chipmaker's revenue is likely to be minimal. TrendForce further cites another China-based source who claims the move was at the behest of the US Department of Commerce, which informed TSMC that any such shipments should not proceed unless approved and licensed by its BIS (Bureau of Industry and Security). We asked the agency for confirmation. Any moves by the silicon supremo is likely to be out of caution to pre-empt accusations from Washington that it isn't doing enough to prevent advanced technology from getting into the hands of Chinese entities that have been sanctioned. As TrendForce notes, it "highlights the foundry giant's delicate position in the global semiconductor supply chain amid the heating chip war between the world's two superpowers."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to a partial teardown video of Apple's new Mac mini, the new machine features modular storage that can be removed. "As we saw with the Mac Studio, however, replacing the modular storage is complicated," notes MacRumors. The teardown also reveals two 128GB storage chips in the 256GB model, enabling faster SSD speeds comparable to higher-capacity versions. From the report: The criticism surrounding Apple's decision to use a single 256GB chip in some base-model Macs a few years ago primarily came from a vocal contingent of tech enthusiasts, and the average customer is unlikely to even notice the slower speeds in common day-to-day tasks. Nevertheless, it appears that customers who do want the fastest SSD speeds do not need to worry about which storage capacity they choose when ordering the new Mac mini.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Anthropic has announced a partnership with Palantir and Amazon Web Services to bring its Claude AI models to unspecified US intelligence and defense agencies. Claude, a family of AI language models similar to those that power ChatGPT, will work within Palantir's platform using AWS hosting to process and analyze data. But some critics have called out the deal as contradictory to Anthropic's widely-publicized "AI safety" aims. On X, former Google co-head of AI ethics Timnit Gebru wrote of Anthropic's new deal with Palantir, "Look at how they care so much about 'existential risks to humanity.'" The partnership makes Claude available within Palantir's Impact Level 6 environment (IL6), a defense-accredited system that handles data critical to national security up to the "secret" classification level. This move follows a broader trend of AI companies seeking defense contracts, with Meta offering its Llama models to defense partners and OpenAI pursuing closer ties with the Defense Department. In a press release, the companies outlined three main tasks for Claude in defense and intelligence settings: performing operations on large volumes of complex data at high speeds, identifying patterns and trends within that data, and streamlining document review and preparation. While the partnership announcement suggests broad potential for AI-powered intelligence analysis, it states that human officials will retain their decision-making authority in these operations. As a reference point for the technology's capabilities, Palantir reported that one (unnamed) American insurance company used 78 AI agents powered by their platform and Claude to reduce an underwriting process from two weeks to three hours. The new collaboration builds on Anthropic's earlier integration of Claude into AWS GovCloud, a service built for government cloud computing. Anthropic, which recently began operations in Europe, has been seeking funding at a valuation up to $40 billion. The company has raised $7.6 billion, with Amazon as its primary investor.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scalpers attempting to profit from Sony's new PlayStation 5 Pro are struggling to sell units above retail price, as widespread availability dampens resale prospects. The $699 console, launched this week with enhanced graphics capabilities, remains in stock at major retailers across the United States and Europe. eBay listings show PS5 Pro units selling below the manufacturer's suggested retail price, with some auctions starting at $640. While isolated listings reach $2,300, most hover near retail value. UK scalpers face similar challenges, offering units at or below the $900 retail price. Even in Sony's home market of Japan, where availability is tighter, resellers on Mercari barely break even after platform fees and shipping costs. The situation marks a sharp contrast to the original PS5's 2020 launch, when widespread shortages led to significant markups. Only the console's external disc drive, priced at $79.99, commands premiums up to $130 on secondary markets.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The FBI is warning that hackers are obtaining private user information -- including emails and phone numbers -- from U.S.-based tech companies by compromising government and police email addresses to submit "emergency" data requests. From a report: The FBI's public notice filed this week is a rare admission from the federal government about the threat from fraudulent emergency data requests, a legal process designed to help police and federal authorities obtain information from companies to respond to immediate threats affecting someone's life or property. The abuse of emergency data requests is not new, and has been widely reported in recent years. Now, the FBI warns that it saw an "uptick" around August in criminal posts online advertising access to or conducting fraudulent emergency data requests, and that it was going public for awareness. "Cyber-criminals are likely gaining access to compromised U.S. and foreign government email addresses and using them to conduct fraudulent emergency data requests to U.S. based companies, exposing the personal information of customers to further use for criminal purposes," reads the FBI's advisory.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From an opinion piece on GamesIndustry.biz about the recently launched PS5 Pro that went on sale this week: What I'd argue is actually more interesting about PS5 Pro in a wider perspective isn't what Sony has done to the chips in the system -- it's what they've chosen not to include, and what it tells us about the decision-making process that's likely occurring for the company's future hardware. PS5 Pro doesn't have a disc drive. Anyone who wants to play disc-based games on the system will need to buy one of the add-on drives Sony started selling when the PS5 Slim model was released, adding further to the cost of the already very expensive device. To add insult to injury, Sony doesn't seem to have made any effort whatsoever to ensure that those drives are actually well-stocked for the launch of the Pro. I can only speak directly to the situation in Japan, where they've been out of stock at most major retailers for months and even second-hand units are being sold at three to four times SRP by scalpers. But asking around suggests that the situation isn't much better in other regions. That's a very rough welcome to PS5 Pro ownership for anyone upgrading who has a collection of games on disc. It's possible, of course, that Sony excluded the drive simply because its cost would push the Pro's price tag even higher. However, the incongruity of Sony's "Pro" console lacking the basic ability to play the games Sony sells at retailers all around the world is striking, and it's difficult to see the decision to accept that incongruity -- and the inconvenience it would inevitably cause for customers -- as anything other than strategic. Digital sales make up a bigger and bigger portion of the industry's revenues every year, but physical game sales are still a very big deal -- and physical games are products that fall outside the control of publishers and platform holders in a way that they have found increasingly irritating in recent years. People who buy physical games can sell them second-hand or lend them to their friends, retailers with physical games in stock can discount them or include them in bundles as they see fit.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The chief executive of Cop29 has been filmed apparently agreeing to facilitate fossil fuel deals at the climate summit. From a report: The recording has amplified calls by campaigners who want the fossil fuel industry and its lobbyists to be banned from future Cop talks. The campaign group Global Witness posed undercover as a fake oil and gas group asking for deals to be facilitated in exchange for sponsoring the event.In the calls, Elnur Soltanov, Azerbaijan's deputy energy minister and chief executive of Cop29, agreed to this and spoke of a future that includes fossil fuels "perhaps for ever." Cop officials also introduced the fake investor to a senior executive at the national oil and gas company Socar to discuss investment opportunities. Soltanov told the fake investment group: aoeI would be happy to create a contact between your team and their team [Socar] so that they can start discussions." Shortly after that they received an email from Socar. The UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC), the UN body that oversees Cop, says officials should not use their roles "to seek private gain" and it expects them to act "without self-interest."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

UK government-appointed commissioners have labeled Birmingham City Council's Oracle Fusion rollout as "the poorest ERP deployment" they have seen. From a report: A report published by the UK council's Corporate Finance Overview and Scrutiny Committee found that 18 months after Fusion went live, the largest public authority in Europe "had not tactically stabilized the system or formulated clear plans to resolve the system issues and recover the operation." The city council's cloud-based Oracle tech replaced the SAP system that it began using in 1999, but the disastrous project encountered a string of landmark failures. The council has failed to produce auditable accounts since Oracle was implemented in 2022, costs have ballooned from around 19 million pound to a projected estimate of 131 million pound and, because the council chose not to use system audit features, it cannot tell if fraud has taken place on its multibillion-pound spending budget for an 18-month period. In September last year, the council became effectively bankrupt due to outstanding equal pay claims and the Oracle implementation. The report from "best value commissioners" appointed by central government to investigate struggling councils said that following the Oracle implementation, "a serious lack of trust had developed between members and officers driven by the failed implementation and subsequent lack of progress to resolve the situation."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: AMD has gained a substantial 5.7 percentage points of share of the desktop x86 CPU market in the third quarter compared to Q2, the largest quarterly share gain since we began tracking the market share reports in 2016. It also represents an incredible ten percentage point improvement over the prior year. AMD also raked in a strong increase in revenue share, jumping 8.5 percentage points over the prior quarter, indicating that it is selling a strong mix of higher-end CPU models. During the quarter, AMD launched its new Ryzen 9000-series family of processors amid a scandal related to stability issues with Intel's Raptor Lake chips, which generated a flood of negative press for the company over the course of several months, and inventory adjustments for one of Intel's customers. AMD now commands 28.7% of the desktop processor market. AMD also continued to gain share in the laptop and server markets, though its gains on the desktop side of the business were the most impressive, according to Mercury Research.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Block will abandon development of its Web5 decentralized internet project and reduce investment in music streaming service Tidal to focus on bitcoin mining hardware and self-custody wallets, the payments company announced in its third-quarter letter to shareholders. The Jack Dorsey-led firm cited strong market demand for its bitcoin mining products and Bitkey wallet as key drivers behind the strategic shift.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Oregon Live: Intel told employees this week that it will bring back free coffee and tea at its work sites, one of many benefits the chipmaker eliminated last summer as it sought to slash $10 billion from its annual budget. "Although Intel still faces cost challenges, we understand that small comforts play a significant role in our daily routines," Intel wrote on its internal messaging forum, called Circuit. "We know this is a small step, but we hope it is a meaningful one in supporting our workplace culture." Intel declined comment. The company did not resume offering free fruit, another perk eliminated last summer. Employees say privately that morale has been devastated by Intel's poor financial performance and by cutbacks aimed at returning the business to profitability. [...] Christy Pambianchi, Intel's chief people officer, told employees that Intel had been spending $100 million annually on free and discounted food and beverages and couldn't afford to keep doing that. "Until we get into a better financial health position, we need to be suspending those," Pambianchi said, according to an account of the meeting reviewed by The Oregonian/OregonLive. By Wednesday the company had reversed itself, committing to keep its employees caffeinated. In August, Intel announced plans to lay off over 16,000 employees, representing more than 15% of its global workforce. Its stock dropped to a 50-year low following the announcement. Starting November 8, Nvidia will replace the chipmaker on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to Deadline's Mike Fleming Jr, Lucasfilm is developing a new Star Wars trilogy. It will be written by Simon Kinberg, who will also produce the films alongside Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy. From the report: I heard this will comprise Episodes 10-12 of The Skywalker Saga that began with George Lucas's 1977 first film, which, along with Steven Spielberg's Jaws, reshaped the global blockbuster game. Insiders disputed my intel that Kinberg will continue that storyline, saying this instead will begin a new saga, and sit alongside percolating Star Wars projects with James Mangold, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, Taika Waititi and Donald Glover. As usual, Lucasfilm and Disney are not commenting. Kinberg previously worked with Lucasfilm in co-creating with Dave Filoni and Carrie Beck the Emmy-nominated animated series Star Wars Rebels that ran for four seasons from 2014-2018. He was also a consultant on Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, the J.J. Abrams-directed film that revived the franchise in 2015. He has also been heavily involved in other franchises as writer and/or producer.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

IBM is facing a new lawsuit alleging that its Weather Channel website shared users' personal data with third-party ad partners without consent, violating the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA). The Register reports: In the absence of a comprehensive federal privacy law, the complaint [PDF] claims Big Blue violated America's Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), enacted in 1988 in response to the disclosure of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's videotape rental records. IBM was sued in 2019 (PDF) by then Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer over similar allegations: That its Weather Channel mobile app collected and shared location data without disclosure. The IT titan settled that claim in 2020. A separate civil action against IBM's Weather Channel was filed in 2020 and settled in 2023 (PDF). This latest legal salvo against alleged Weather Channel-enabled data collection takes issue with the sensitive information made available through the company's website to third-party ad partners mParticle and AppNexus/Xandr (acquired by Microsoft in 2022). The former provides customer analytics, and the latter is an advertising and marketing platform. The complaint, filed on behalf of California plaintiff Ed Penning, contends that by watching videos on the Weather Channel website, those two marketing firms received Penning's full name, gender, email address, precise geolocation, the name, and the URLs of videos he watched, without his permission or knowledge. It explains that the plaintiff's counsel retained a private research firm last year to analyze browser network traffic during video sessions on the Weather Channel website. The research firm is said to have confirmed that the website provided the third-party ad firms with information that could be used to identify people and the videos that they watched. The VPPA prohibits video providers from sharing "personally identifiable information" about clients without their consent. [...] The lawsuit aspires to be certified as a class action. Under the VPPA, a successful claim allows for actual damages (if any) and statutory damages of $2,500 for each violation of the law, as well as attorney's fees.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Variety: A "Mass Effect" TV series is officially in development at Amazon MGM Studios, Variety has learned exclusively. Daniel Casey is set to write and executive produce the adaptation. Karim Zreik will executive produce under his Cedar Tree Productions banner, with Ari Arad and EA's Michael Gamble also executive producing. Cedar Tree is currently under an overall deal at Amazon MGM Studios. Exact plot details are being kept under wraps. [...] The first "Mass Effect" game launched to rave reviews in 2007. Since then, there have been three more games in the main series, with "Mass Effect: Andromeda" debuting in 2017. There have also been multiple mobile games in the franchise, as well as an animated film, novels, comic books, and other media. The story of the first three "Mass Effect" games revolves around Commander Shepard, a human soldier in the 22nd century trying to save humanity from a race of aliens known as the Reapers. "Andromeda" moved the games much further into the future with a new protagonist, with a fifth game also in the works. The franchise is developed by BioWare and are now published by EA. In 2010, EA announced plans to turn Mass Effect into a movie, but the project was later canceled. However, Ari Arad (known for co-founding Marvel Studios) led the initial effort and is now working to bring the film to life in this latest attempt.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Max will begin a gradual password-sharing crackdown with "soft messaging" over the next few months, with a potential price increase to follow. The Verge reports: During Warner Bros. Discovery's Q3 earnings call on Thursday, chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels said this initial rollout would be followed by more progress in 2025 and 2026. Wiedenfels called password sharing "a form of price rises," as the company is "asking members who have not signed up, or multi-household members to pay a little bit more." This isn't the first time we've heard about Max's interest in password sharing, but now we have more details about when -- and how -- it will all begin. [...] Wiedenfels didn't rule out the possibility of a Max price increase, either. He said that the "premium nature" of the service leaves "a fair amount of room to continue to push a price we've been judicious about." Max last raised prices across its ad-free plans in June.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Elwood Edwards, the voice of AOL's "You've Got Mail" greeting, has died at age 74 following a long illness, according to local Ohio news station WKYC. "He worked at 3News for many years as graphics guru, camera operator, and general jack-of-all-trades, yet it was a somewhat random opportunity in 1989 that earned him international fame." From the report: That year, Elwood received $200 from the then-unknown America Online, merely because his wife worked at a predecessor company. He was asked to simply record four voiceover lines: - "Welcome"- "You've Got Mail"- "Files done"- "Goodbye" Of course, the company better known as AOL blew up, and millions around the world would hear Elwood's voice telling them "You've Got Mail" every time they logged on to the internet. Despite his face not being visible, Elwood still achieved minor celebrity status. In 2015, he even appeared on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" to utter the famous greeting as well as other audience-suggested phrases.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: If you voted in the U.S. presidential election yesterday in which Donald Trump won comfortably, or a previous election, a website powered by a right-wing group is probably doxing you. VoteRef makes it trivial for anyone to search the name, physical address, age, party affiliation, and whether someone voted that year for people living in most states instantly and for free. This can include ordinary citizens, celebrities, domestic abuse survivors, and many other people. Voting rolls are public records, and ways to more readily access them are not new. But during a time of intense division, political violence, or even the broader threat of data being used to dox or harass anyone, sites like VoteRef turn a vital part of the democratic process -- simply voting -- into a security and privacy threat. [...] The Voter Reference Foundation, which runs VoteRef, is a right wing organization helmed by a former Trump campaign official, ProPublica previously reported. The goal for that organization was to find irregularities in the number of voters and the number of ballots cast, but state election officials said their findings were "fundamentally incorrect," ProPublica added. In an interview with NPR, the ProPublica reporter said that the Voter Reference Foundation insinuated (falsely) that the 2020 election of Joe Biden was fraudulent in some way. 404 Media has found people on social media using VoteRef's data to spread voting conspiracies too. VoteRef has steadily been adding more states' records to the VoteRef website. At the time of writing, it has records for all states that legally allow publication. Some exceptions include California, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. ProPublica reported that VoteRef removed the Pennsylvania data after being contacted by an attorney for Pennsylvania's Department of State. "Digitizing and aggregating data meaningfully changes the privacy context and the risks to people. Your municipal government storing your marriage certificate and voter information in some basement office filing cabinet is not even remotely the same as a private company digitizing all the data, labeling it, piling it all together, making it searchable," said Justin Sherman, a Duke professor who studies data brokers. "Policymakers need to get with the times and recognize that data brokers digitizing, aggregating, and selling data based on public records -- which are usually considered 'publicly available information' and exempted from privacy laws -- has fueled decades of stalking and gendered violence, harassment, doxing, and even murder," Sherman said. "Protecting citizens of all political stripes, targets and survivors of gendered violence, public servants who are targets for doxing and death threats, military service members, and everyone in between depends on reframing how we think about public records privacy and the mass aggregation and sale of our data."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

U.S. Cellular has agreed to sell $1.02 billion worth of spectrum licenses to AT&T as part of its strategy to monetize its spectrum assets that were not included in an earlier $4.4 billion deal with T-Mobile. Reuters reports: Last month, U.S. Cellular agreed to sell select spectrum licenses for $1 billion to Verizon. It also signed deals with two other mobile network operators, but did not disclose the details. The latest agreement "adds a fourth mobile network operator, in addition to T-Mobile, to the list of those whose subscribers will benefit from the sale of our spectrum licenses," U.S. Cellular CEO Laurent Therivel said on Thursday. From a press release: Following this transaction, as well as those previously announced, UScellular will have reached definitive agreements to monetize approximately 55%, measured on a MHz-Pops basis, of the spectrum holdings (excluding mmWave) that were excluded from the proposed sale to T-Mobile, for a total consideration of approximately $2.02 billion. Including the proposed T-Mobile transaction, UScellular will have reached agreements to monetize approximately 70% of its total spectrum holdings (excluding mmWave), measured on a MHz-Pops basis. "After our proposed sales, we will be left with 1.86 billion MHz-Pops of low and mid-band spectrum, as well as 17.2 billion MHz-Pops of mmWave spectrum, with the substantial majority of retained value in the C-band spectrum," [said Laurent C. Therivel, President and CEO]. "The C-band licenses have a number of attributes that we believe are favorable to their long-term value. First, our C-band licenses are positioned in an attractive mid-band frequency that can deliver outstanding speed and capacity. Second, there is a substantial 5G ecosystem of equipment vendors and existing infrastructure that uses C-band. Finally, they have a lengthy build-out timeline, with first and second build-out dates of 2029 and 2033, respectively. This provides ample time and optionality for us to either monetize or deploy the spectrum in the future. We will continue to look for ways to opportunistically monetize the C-band, as well as the other remaining spectrum."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is introducing a feature to Notepad called Rewrite that will let you use AI to "rephrase sentences, adjust tone, and modify the length of your content." The Verge reports: If you're a Windows Insider with early access to the feature, you can try it by highlighting the text you want to adjust in Notepad, right-clicking it, and choosing Rewrite. Notepad will then display a dialogue box where you can decide how they want to change their text -- for example, if it needs to be longer or shorter. Rewrite will then offer three rewritten versions that you can replace your work with. It's worth noting that you'll have to sign in to your Microsoft account to use Rewrite, as it's "powered by a cloud-based service that requires authentication and authorization." Microsoft is launching this feature in preview on Windows 11 in the US, France, UK, Canada, Italy, and Germany. In July, Microsoft rolled out spellcheck and autocorrect for Notepad.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC News: The head of a company specializing in cryptocurrency was kidnapped and held for ransom in downtown Toronto during rush hour Wednesday. Police were called about a kidnapping in the area of University Avenue and Richmond Street W. just before 6 p.m., says a spokesperson with the Toronto Police Service. The suspects forced the victim into a vehicle and made a demand for money, the spokesperson said. The man was later located in Centennial Park in Etobicoke uninjured. CBC Toronto has learned the victim is Dean Skurka, the president and CEO of Toronto-based financial firm WonderFi. He was released after a ransom of $1 million was paid electronically, a source close to the investigation said. Police say the investigation is ongoing and have not released any further details. [...] The alleged kidnapping happened the same day WonderFi released its third quarter earnings results, showing a 153 per cent increase compared to its third quarter in 2023.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I had the opportunity to interview esteemed programmer Steve Yegge for the SourceForge Podcast to ask him all about AI-powered coding assistants and the future of programming. "We're moving from where you have to write the code to where the LLM will write the code and you're just having a conversation with it about the code," said Yegge. "That is much more accessible to people who are just getting into the industry." Steve has nearly 30 years of programming experience working at Geoworks, Amazon, Google, Grab and now SourceGraph, working to build out the Cody AI assistant platform. Here's his Wikipedia page. He's not shy about sharing his opinions or predictions for the industry, no matter how difficult it may be for some to hear. "I'm going to make the claim that ... line-oriented programming, which we've done for the last 40, 50 years, ... is going away. It is dying just like assembly language did, and it will be completely dead within five years." You can watch the episode on YouTube and stream on all major podcast platforms. A transcription of the podcast is available here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has confirmed it has no plans to release a 27-inch iMac, ending speculation about a larger successor to its flagship desktop computer. The tech giant will instead focus on its 24-inch M3 iMac and Mac Studio offerings.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With October's initial temperature data in, 2024 will rank as the first calendar year in modern record-keeping in which global average surface temperatures exceed the Paris Agreement's aspirational 1.5C guardrail. From a report:Holding long-term warming to the 1.5-degree target compared to the preindustrial era is crucial for lowering the risk of triggering climate change tipping points, beyond which potentially catastrophic impacts have a higher likelihood of occurring, studies show. Holding warming to that target is viewed as necessary for small island states and other extremely vulnerable nations to avoid being wiped out by sea level rise, drought and other threats. The data -- and proxy records such as tree rings and ice cores -- shows this year is likely to be the hottest in at least 125,000 years. Right now, the world is on track for as much as 3.1C (5.58F) of warming based on already pledged emissions cuts, assuming they are fulfilled. Copernicus Climate Change Service reported early Thursday that the year is headed for a temperature anomaly of more than 1.55C (2.79F) above preindustrial levels. Last year fell just shy of the 1.5C threshold relative to the 1850-1900 average.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A federal agency has issued a directive to employees to reduce the use of their phones for work matters due to China's recent hack of U.S. telecommunications infrastructure, WSJ reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: In an email to staff sent Thursday, the chief information officer at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau warned that internal and external work-related meetings and conversations that involve nonpublic data should only be held on platforms like Microsoft Teams and Cisco WebEx and not on work-issued or personal phones. "Do NOT conduct CFPB work using mobile voice calls or text messages," the email said, while referencing a recent government statement acknowledging the telecommunications infrastructure attack. "While there is no evidence that CFPB has been targeted by this unauthorized access, I ask for your compliance with these directives so we reduce the risk that we will be compromised," said the email, which was sent to all CFPB employees and contractors. It wasn't clear if other federal agencies had taken similar measures or were planning to, but many U.S. officials have already curtailed their phone use due to the hack, according to a former official.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In October, video game giant Activision said it had fixed a bug in its anti-cheat system that affected "a small number of legitimate player accounts," who were getting banned because of the bug. In reality, according to the hacker who found the bug and was exploiting it, they were able to ban "thousands upon thousands" of Call of Duty players, who they essentially framed as cheaters. The hacker, who goes by Vizor, spoke to TechCrunch about the exploit, and told their side of the story. "I could have done this for years and as long as I target random players and no one famous it would have gone without notice," said Vizor, who added that it was "funny to abuse the exploit." TechCrunch was introduced to Vizor by a cheat developer called Zebleer, who is familiar with the Call of Duty hacking scene. Zebleer said he had been in touch with Vizor for months, and as such had knowledge of the exploit, which he said he saw Vizor using.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Software engineer David Gomes writes in a blog post: I sometimes need to search for a website that will "convert a PNG to SVG", or "remove page from PDF" or "resize svg". And these apps are... okay. I don't really trust most of them with my data, and also a lot of times they just don't work or have too many ads. So, I've been noticing a trend of people just using AI agents to create full blown apps for these simple use cases. I decided to try it myself for a "resize SVG" app since I recently had to go through a bunch of websites to do this. So, I pulled up Replit Agent and even though I've used it before, it doesn't cease to amaze me just how insanely good it is. The level of polish on this product is unlike any other AI agent out there right now. It starts off by drawing up a plan and asking you for feedback on that plan. Then, it'll just go to town and try to build the app. But what's super clever about it is that the agent asks you for feedback along the way. Effectively, the Replit Agent guides you, not the other way around (as one might have expected).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A pre-dawn statewide alert about an officer shooting in Hall County triggered over 4,500 complaints to the Federal Communications Commission. The 4:52 a.m. "Blue Alert" on October 4 awakened millions of Texans, many living hundreds of miles from the incident location, to notify them about suspect Seth Altman. Air traffic controllers, healthcare workers, and other professionals reported safety concerns from sleep disruption, according to records obtained by 404 Media. Multiple residents told the FCC they disabled all emergency notifications in response, potentially compromising public safety for future alerts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Plastic pollution is changing the processes of the entire Earth system, exacerbating climate change, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, and the use of freshwater and land, according to scientific analysis. From a report: Plastic must not be treated as a waste problem alone, the authors said, but as a product that poses harm to ecosystems and human health. The authors gave their warning in the days before final talks begin in South Korea to agree a legally binding global treaty to cut plastic pollution. Progress towards a treaty on plastic pollution has been hindered by a row over the need to include cuts to the $712bn plastic production industry in the treaty. At the last talks in April, developed countries were accused of bowing to pressure from fossil fuel and industry lobbyists to steer clear of any reductions in production. The discussions in South Korea, which start on 25 November, mark a rare opportunity for countries to come to an agreement to tackle the global crisis of plastic pollution. In 2022 at least 506m tonnes of plastics were produced worldwide, but only 9% gets recycled globally. The rest is burned, landfilled or dumped where it can leach into the environment. Microplastics are now everywhere, from the top of Mount Everest to the Mariana Trench, the deepest point on earth. The new study of plastic pollution examined the mounting evidence of the effects of plastics on the environment, health and human wellbeing. The authors are urging delegates at the UN talks to stop viewing plastic pollution as merely a waste problem, and instead to tackle material flows through the whole life pathway of plastic, from raw material extraction, production and use, to its environmental release and its fate, and the Earth system effects.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Malwarebytes, in a blog post: We've acquired AzireVPN, a privacy-focused VPN provider based in Sweden. I wanted to share with you our intentions behind this exciting step, and what this means for our existing users and the family of solutions they rely on to keep them private and secure. Malwarebytes has long been an advocate for user privacy (think Malwarebytes Privacy VPN and our free web extension Malwarebytes Browser Guard). Now, we're leaning even more on our mission to reimagine consumer cybersecurity to protect devices and data, no matter where users are located, how they work and play, or the size of their wallet. With AzireVPN's infrastructure and intellectual property, Malwarebytes is poised to develop more advanced VPN technologies and features, offering increased flexibility and enhanced security for our users.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Over 60 classic Sega games are being delisted from digital stores, including Crazy Taxi, Golden Axe and Jet Set Radio. From a report: Starting on 6th December at 11:59pm PST (so, 7.59am on 7th December, for those of us in the UK), the affected games will no longer be available to purchase. Of course, if you already have a game in your library, it will remain available to download and play as and when. In a FAQ, Sega noted select individual classic titles will remain playable for those among us who have a Nintendo Switch Online subscription. No explanation was given for why these changes are being made.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nvidia will impose a 100-hour monthly limit on its GeForce Now cloud gaming service for new subscribers starting January 2025, with existing members facing the same restriction from 2026, the company said on Thursday. The gaming giant aims to maintain current subscription prices by implementing the cap, which affects roughly 6% of users. Members can purchase additional 15-hour blocks for $2.99 on Performance tier or $5.99 for Ultimate tier once they exceed the limit. The service, which allows users to stream games from remote servers, will also rebrand its Priority membership to Performance tier, adding 1440p streaming and ultrawide resolution support. Subscribers can carry over 15 unused hours monthly or switch to basic servers after reaching the cap, Nvidia said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Taiwan should pour more resources into advancing chip technology and expanding its supply chain expertise to maintain global leadership, an executive from its most valuable company said hours after Donald Trump was elected to be US president for the second time. From a report: "We should accelerate research and development to ensure our standing as an indispensable member of the global semiconductor supply chain," Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Senior Vice President Cliff Hou said in remarks delivered in his role as chairman of the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association on Thursday. "We are also working with the government to see whether we can attract foreign partners to set up design and materials centers in Taiwan." The self-governing island, home to the world's biggest contract chipmaker, TSMC, lives with the constant threat of invasion by China, which considers it a breakaway territory. The imminent change in US leadership may alter its standing in global affairs. While President Joe Biden has repeatedly voiced unequivocal support for Taiwan, Trump said the island should pay the US for defending it, calling Xi Jinping "a very good friend of mine until Covid" in an interview with Bloomberg. Hou, a 27-year TSMC veteran who obtained his doctorate in the US, added that Taiwan must also aim to develop more expertise in equipment and materials, areas that are dominated by foreign businesses. Meanwhile, the close relationship Taiwan and the US have forged over the past few decades will not be affected by the election's outcome, the executive told reporters separately on the sidelines of his trade group's event in Hsinchu. [...] In October, Trump told podcast host Joe Rogan that Taiwan took away US semiconductor business and jobs. "These chip companies, they stole 95% of our business. It's in Taiwan right now. They do a great job, but that's only because we have stupid politicians," Trump said as part of a lengthy interview where he also stated he protected Taiwan from China during his first stint as president.Read more of this story at Slashdot.